Book

C.H.O.R.E.S.

Challenges-Heartbreaks-Obstacles-Rejections-Emotions-Situations

“Take a sneak peak at just some excerpts from my upcoming book” Jamey

Alan Jackson had a song out with a video where his car broke down and the mechanic started telling him all of the things that needed fixing and how much it would cost.  While the mechanic was working on his car he grabbed his guitar and wanted to sing a song he wrote.  He then wanted Alan’s opinion and so he starts telling him all of the things that he needs to do with his song. The song is a great example with Alan making the point that its a craft that takes skill and talent. Talented professional writers arrangers, producers, and musicians the right singer to get the message across harmony singers, engineers etc that are all blending just right is what is needed to create a song. There has been a lot of hit songs that were just a poem or partial lyric written because that writer recognized that they needed professional talented people skills.  It takes talented people that have the skills for this profession and like everyone else have bills to pay.. Anyone interested in any part of music as a career get in touch with Keith because you will need the material to learn the number system.

When we first started the company in the 80’s this is what we did to help songwriters for years.  Now here is where the absurdity comes in; for some reason there was this lady who was convinced that we owed her money because she said we made $4 Billion dollars and she really believed it.  About once every 6 or 8 months we would get a letter where she went to an attorney that would get a percentage of what she would collect.  These attorneys really did not believe that she was owed billions of dollars but they did think that maybe since we are in Nashville that she may be owed a few thousand.

The attorneys would contact us and I would let them know that this information was not true.  The attorneys were pretty thankful that we let them know right away so that they would not have to invest a lot of their time.  The more times that this would happen the angrier she would get and she would send us all kinds of hateful and threatening letters.  In one of the letters she was saying how she was praying for a Hurricane to destroy us & everybody that we knew family etc.

Now anybody knows that after a few years of running a company that you pretty much run into some people like this every now and then. Where the thing got serious was when she sent a BOMB threat letter with BOMB!! wrote on the outside of the envelope.  This was right after 911 had happened so the Postal Authorities got involved. All this time she would call our office and say things to come across like she was the IRS or she had talked to God and we are going to be destroyed.

We were advised to start gathering information and keeping a journal of her contacts, calls and recordings from answering machine.  In the meantime she had kept going until she went through the court system regardless of an attorney and I had to go to New York on a $4 Billion dollar lawsuit.  Just before leaving to head to New York I told her that I would give her every dime she invested for the demo we produced that was really only a few lines of a half written lyric that talented people created a song for her. Even though we created a great song for her and she only invested a few hundred dollars she refused, so I had to go from Florida to New York for court appearance.

Now everyone in the courtroom was laughing and I had a buddy with me and the judge said for each one of us to go outside separately while the other one told the judge what they would agree on a settlement.  Now this lady had her son with her who was very intelligent and like everyone else, thought that she was maybe owed a few thousand.  My friend that was with me told me what she had told the judge while I was outside.

I had already told the judge that I was not giving her one red cent because I had to take off of work and make the trip to New York .  Plus I also knew that I had the evidence to send her to prison for 10 years.  The judge looked at us and said; “Uh, there is definitely a lot of difference on what can be agreed on today (she said she would settle for $300 million dollars today) so we are going to have to reset another trial date.”  When we started to walk out everyone had to wait for the elevator.  I approached her son & told him that “if I had to come back and pay an attorney to represent me next month that I was going to let the postal authorities take over for that bomb threat and she would go to jail for 10 years. I saw the biggest surprise on her sons face and he looked at her and before he could say a word, she went into the corner of the wall crying.  He immediately started apologizing to me and pleading with me to “please do not press charges against her because this is my mother and I love her and please understand that she is mentally challenged.”  As I had mentioned before, when I first saw her son he came across very intelligent and I simply told him to take her home and to contact the judge and that would be the end of it.

By the time that I got back to my Florida office I had a call from the judge apologizing for everything and of course that was the end of it Now here is where I guess if you want to say the disbelief comes in: She actually called me 3 days later and wanted to know if I would record another one of her songs.

Another thing that I think companies go through sooner or later is disgruntled people working with you.  If you go back to the 1990’s, websites were just starting to be built and only a small amount of people had those skills.  There was a guy that put our website together and what I was not aware of at that time was the fact that he also had total control of the site.  Like anyone else working at our office of course he was trusted and everything was fine.  Then he decides that he would try to distort $7 thousand dollars from us. (you can read his full letter when book comes out).

Not only did we not give in to him, we also contacted the authorities.  I had went out of town after all of this for a 13 city talent showcase tour.  I had no clue of what was happening.  When he found out he was going to be arrested of course he left town. He still had control of our website so before he left he recreated the site and wrote letters that led people into all kinds of sites that could give them worms or hateful profanity type things.

This was something totally new to me and I started contacting everyone involved with the site, credit cards and anything to get everything cleared up.  It took a while working with the authorities to finally get control of our website; plus it took a while to reassure our clients of what had happened.

We also experienced identity theft and this also was because of someone working with us. Our credit cards had been stolen, bank accounts and loans made against our credit.  Now it only took about 2 weeks to find out and track down what was happening.  In the meantime we also had gotten a tremendous bill from Opryland Hotel for rooms etc.. and drugs were found on the person responsible for it all.  We had insurances on our cards and everything so its not like we lost a lot of money on all of our cards etc.  But anyone that has had to deal with identity theft knows how aggravating it is and what kind of frustration it can cause.