Pure And Simple

Terrye Newkirk began writing songs in high school, and by 1965 she was a contract writer for Viva Music, the publishing company owned by Snuff Garrett and Leon Russell. Songs by her and co-writer Roger Tillison were recorded by Pat Boone, Gary Lewis, the Electric Prunes, and others. She had met Roger in Norman, Oklahoma, while briefly attended the university there. Roger was working at a club in Lawton, the Gallerie, playing his and Dylan's songs, she recalls. I'd been singing in a folk group in high school and fooling with songwriting. We started writing some songs together and trying to make money to go to L.A. She and Tillison also recorded as the Gypsy Trips for Liberty Records, with Russell arranging. They worked with L.A. session legends like James Burton and Jim Keltner. Terrye lived for a while at the mission, Russell's home on Skyhill Drive, which housed Tulsa musicians and served as recording studio for J.J. Cale, Carl Radle, Tommy Tripplehorn, and others. She and Tillison even appeared on the cover of Cale's Leather-Coated Minds album, Take a Trip Down Sunset Strip. She was a member of a short-lived rock band led by Cale, and was friends with Levon Helm, sax master Bobby Keys, and fellow Oklahoma Cityan Eddie (Jesse Ed) Davis. Of course, they all became famous after I knew them, she laughs. It was a magical place and time. In late 1966, she met fellow songwriter Steve Young, back in L.A. from Montgomery, Alabama, and they moved together to an apartment above a Chinese grocery in Silverlake, chronicled in Van Dyke Parks's The All Golden, on his innovative album, Song Cycle. Terrye was offered a new contract with Garrett and Russell, but Young was not keen on having a competing writer in the family. He must have been very young to demand that I give up my writing, and I must have been very young to agree to it, she says now. Young had been in prior bands with Steve Stills and others, and he soon joined Stone Country, a group that played both of L.A.'s Ice Houses and venues all over the West. Terrye went to work as a telephone operator to help support the household. Steve soon grew tired of the musical constraints of Stone Country, and began performing as a solo at the Troubadour and other music clubs. It was evidently at one of these performances where an Eagles member heard Seven Bridges Road, later recorded on their Live album. In late 1969, the couple relocated to San Francisco, eventually opening Amazing Grace Music in San Anselmo and living in the apartment behind the Druids' Hall in Nicasio. One day, Terrye was upstairs, secretly playing a new song. Steve came to ask her what it was. It was My Oklahoma. Steve recorded it for RCA in Nashville, and others' versions followed. The Youngs' son Jubal Lee was born in San Francisco in 1971, and they realized they wanted to bring him up in the South, as well as to live a more rural life. They bought a farm in Leipers Fork, Tennessee, about an hour from Nashville, where Steve was now recording. Unfortunately, the marriage did not long survive the move, and Terrye moved into Nashville proper, where she worked at Gruhn Guitars and the original Station Inn. The separation seemed to unleash a pent-up wave of creativity. Over the next few years, Terrye wrote about sixty songs, some of which were recorded by Crystal Gayle, Riders in the Sky, Country Gazette, Country Gentlemen, Stony Edwards, and the Nashville Jug Band. At the same time, she was completing her degree in English and Journalism at the University of Tennessee-Nashville. This led to a job as a reporter at The Tennessean, Nashville's morning daily. Songwriting royalties were welcome, but they were inconsistent. Terrye put her music on hold once again to focus on supporting Jubal and herself. For the next couple of years she worked in journalism, writing for Nashville! Magazine and freelancing for local and national publications from Country Music to the National Catholic Reporter. In 1982 she was offered a teaching fellowship at Vanderbilt University-ideal because it permitted her to be at hom