John Berry

JOHN BERRY INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
ALL QUOTES BY JOHN BERRY

We’ve had some good singles off this record, “Change My Mind” came out and it wouldn’t go away. That song was on the charts for 22 weeks. You know I’m having so much fun it feels like I’m not even working. I’ve got scheduled to start recording my new album on July 22 and it’s due out November 1st. So I’m going to be slaving in the recording studio to get things done. We’re still in the song selection process.. It’s very likely that we’re going to record the song “Take care Of My Angel”. Then we’ll see if it makes the selection or not. That’s a song I wrote years ago for my daughter Heather Marie, so it’s a very special song to me.

This year we’re going to play about 170 tour dates and next year we’re going to do about 100. My wife sings in my band and we take our kids on the road with us most of the time. We’re hoping that by the Fall of next year the kids will start staying home pretty much while I’m out on the road touring. By then my wife and I feel it’ll be time for them to settle down.

I’m going to try and do most of my touring in the summer months next years so that then I’ll go out during the Fall and Spring without my family traveling with me. We’re intentionally cutting back for the children and I want to be with them as much as possible.

Without music, John Berry wouldn’t be. Music is my life breath.

You know before I was signed to my record deal, I would never get a full time job. That sounds really weird, but I didn’t want to be tied into a job in such a way that I couldn’t go out and sing. So I never had a full time job and then in 1981 I had a motorcycle wreck and I was working at a plant in Georgia Herman Miller, they make office partitions and furniture and I worked there at that time in the plant in Atlanta as a part time employee with full time hours. But when I had that motorcycle wreck I never went back to anything else. As a matter of fact for about three years after the motorcycle wreck, all I could do was sit on a stool and play my guitar and sing.

My first album came out in 1979 but I started playing full time in 1982. I’ve never worked a full time job since then. When I’m feeling stress for doing shows and stuff I really like a good massage. There’s nothing like a really good massage. When I’m feeling the stress that’s what I want to have and I really enjoy a good massage. I don’t know if my children want to follow in my foot steps and have a career in country music. My two boys well, I don’t know. My three year old boy Shawn has a drum kit at home and he plays with it lot. He’ll come out on-stage at times and play with my bands drummer and he has a lot of fun. And my other son Kalein (spelling?), he just turned two and he has perfect pitch he’ll sing a song and there’s no bad notes. He has perfect pitch at two years old, it’s scary.

On this new album we’re inviting a couple of folks to sing duets with me, so there should be a couple of interesting duets.

We’ve got one song you never imagined it and you’ll never believe it if we pull it off. I can’t tell you what it’ll be but if we pull it off, you know because it’ll be our first single release off of the new album. You know part of the reason my wife sings with me in my band is, otherwise we’d never see each other. The country music industry itself makes it very difficult for families to survive together intact., I’ve got some heat because I take my young children out on the road with me for long periods of time.

But I want my family to stay together throughout these busy times. We won’t have it any other way. When I first said, I’m taking my family out on the road with me, everybody said to me,’You’re not going to do that! You’re crazy! It’ll never work.’ I was told the road is no place to raise kids. I simply said,’Don’t tell us what to do with our kids.’ My sister has got five children and she’s home schooled five kids and she’s been very successful at it. Her advice was that children have no idea what life’s supposed to be like. You teach them. And if you raise your kids in an environment where maybe their hours are a little different then most other kids, maybe our kids don’t go to bed at night a 8:00 o’clock. They don’t get up every morning at 6:30. But we can see already their adjusting and doing real well.

Taylor Marie will be 8 this January and there’s going to be that need to have her own friends and she’s getting interested in gymnastics and dance. However while they’ve been small, it’s been a good thing to have them on the road. They’ve learned a lot. The home school has been great for Taylor Marie and she’s doing just great. She’s doing things in her first grade subjects that I still have problems with. The children are also very friendly children. If there’s other kids around, you can bet within five minutes my kids know who they are and they are out playing with them. My kids are very social and we’re proud of that.

I hope my kids will remember me and when they get older and they’re thinking back to when they were kids, they’ll think about me the way I think about my dad. And no matter what I’ve got going on, or no matter how busy we are, like no matter how busy my dad was, he was a construction worker all his life,he’d come home from work dog tiered, and we I was a kid I’d see him pull up to the house after a hard days work and he’d sit in the car and I’d see him sort of collapse. Then he’d see me and my brother and he’d get out of that car and be a renewed man. Then after that hard day of work he’d take me and my brother out to play a game of softball or baseball or he’d take us fishing. I’ll never forget that.

You know as a kid, it didn’t dawn on me that side of his life that my dad was giving me, when he was just completely exhausted, and he had a second job to go to, well, now I think back on that and I realize he was an amazing man. He always made time for us. And I hope that’s what my kids will always remember about me is that I always made time for them. They deserve that, there good kids.