REBEL WITHOUT A RECORD DEAL
In Review, May 11, 1999
by Rebekah Gleaves
Cher just cut his song. Prince loaned him a studio. And even Amy Grant digs the music of Nashville’s Judson Spence. So when will everyone else get it?

Spence For Hire
Holed up in his Cummins Station studio, Judson Spence likes to work late at night – really late at night. He likes the quiet this time of day affords. At 3 and 4 a.m., few Nashvillians are stirring and Judson revels in these wee hours. There is a beautiful anonymity to late-night hours. A time when interruptions are few and any who are awake have their own specific business to attend. Cities never really sleep, but late at night most of Nashville dips into a dreamy haze, with only cab drivers, Metro employees and vampires like Spence taking advantage of a town with its guard down.
Spence is not the sort to meet with other songwriters at 11 o’clock on a Monday morning to pen a country hit. You won’t find him bopping around town, showcasing writer’s nights and plugging a new album. He’s not likely to drop names, though he has the names to drop. While some recognize his name, few of Nashville’s prominent local entertainers know his face. Simply put, in a town full of musicians, Spence is just different.
But, while little of his time is spent whittling a self-promoted musical career, most of his time is spent being a musician. Those who know him well estimate that he writes a song every day – a startling statistic he cannot deny. Rather than talk about music, he just makes it. Real, emotional, wonderful music that traverses categorization and transcends labels.
Occasionally, Spence will play around town. At the Exit/In a few months ago, those in the know packed the house and were rewarded. These are the lucky folks who have already been tipped off and realize that walking, talking and breathing among us is an underrated, but diversely talented, Nashville musician.
Spence won’t volunteer the information; you’ll have to read liner notes to know that he is the one responsible for “The Power,” the second track on Cher’s new album and the same song that was cut a few years ago by Amy Grant. In addition, he is not apt to talk about his own Top 20 hits, his rapid rise to international fame or the widespread belief that he is a musical casualty. Spence is happy in Nashville, content in making music every day and existing on his own terms. And Nashville, despite all of the other talents clogging her studios and bars, is lucky to boast Judson Spence.

Hippies, Bikers and God
Pascagoula, Miss., isn’t known for much. Those in the shipping industry know the name of this gulf coast city, and fans of Ray Stevens will recognize it as the place where the squirrel went berserk. For the rest of us, it is the land that provided and coddled Judson Spence.
A prodigy in the manner of Prince, Stevie Wonder and Elvis, rarely are stories as perfectly suited to a made-for-TV movie as Spence’s. As a child, both of his parents felt the call to become Pentecostal ministers – at the same time Judson was diagnosed with diabetes. With his son on insulin and sent to the Mayo Clinic, his father deemed the illness a test from God and decided that he would not preach if his son had diabetes. Mysteriously, the doctors came back soon thereafter and apologized for having misdiagnosed the healthy little Judson.
The pentecostal church in Pascagoula was home to nearly every sort of parishioner. Spence’s parents approached any and all, and soon their church grew from 15 members to 1,000.
“They ministered to bikers, everybody,” says Spence. “I remember people driving their bikes right up into the church because they didn’t want to leave them parked outside. My folks were just like ‘come on.’ Going into my teenage years, I was surrounded by hippie musicians coming to church in flip-flops and cut-off blue jeans, ex-drug addicts, people who had just gotten out of prison. Not your typical church scene. Guitars, basses, horns, drums, B-3 organs, pianos. Every day there was music in the house and music in the church.”
So it seems like a natural development that Judson would turn to music. He says that all of his musical knowledge arrived through trial and error, that he has never taken lessons, and that aside from his mother’s nudging and prodding, his considerable talents are simply a gift he has received.
However, Judson is hardly the only talented Spence. His younger brother Jody, who also lives in Nashville, makes his living as a musician/songwriter/producer. And Judson and Jody’s mother, Donna, boasts musical talent in her own right.
“My mother is the best musician I know,” says Judson. She does everything. She has three or four records out that she’s done all on her own. ‘Dynamite Donna’ is her nickname. My mom told me at a young age, ‘If you can whistle it, hum it or hear it, it’s on that guitar. Go and find it.’ That was the extent of my musical training. It came really naturally. I’ve never had any lessons or anything like that.”
Hardly going unnoticed, his abilities were spotted by The Camerons, a traditional folk/Scottish music family that stopped in Pascagoula when Judson was 15. They needed a bassist, and though Judson had never played bass, his mother signed him up for the job, originally slated to be one week filling in while the group was on the road. The week turned into two years, with Judson leaving school and traveling all over Europe and the United States. Eventually, Jody Spence also joined The Camerons, and Judson left to pursue a different kind of music: rock ’n’ roll.

The Artist Formerly Signed by Atlantic
 Back in Pascagoula, Spence’s family’s long-time friendship with June Carter and Johnny Cash yielded several visits to Nashville, with Judson finally deciding to make the move in 1987.
“The thing I kept being told before I moved here was, ‘You can’t go to Nashville and do rock ‘n’ roll. You’re funky, man. Nashville won’t even know what to do with this.’”
Jody Spence soon followed his older brother, and he and Spencer Campbell formed a band to back up Judson, a band that caught the attention of Prince guitarist Dez Dickerson. Dickerson took the boys to Minneapolis, where they recorded an album, and then back to Nashville where just weeks later, they were playing showcases and Judson was sifting through a dozen offers from record labels.
“I literally went from sleeping on my friend’s floor and eating tomato soup and vegetable egg rolls at the International Market to record companies flying me first-class all over the world at 20 years old,” says Spence.
Atlantic Records wooed Spence, eventually releasing his first major label album and helping him score his first big hit.
“I signed with Atlantic at the end of 1987,” says Spence. “I did a record for them that was released in mid-1988. The first single was a Top 20 song – ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’ was the name of that song. I was not prepared for what happened with Atlantic. I was young. I didn’t know anything. I’d just moved from Pascagoula nine months earlier.”
After a tour that included extensive dates in Europe and Asia as well as the U.S., Judson’s star seemed cemented. Then it all, inexplicably, fell apart.
“My second Atlantic record, after creative differences with the label, was never released,” says Spence. “I filed bankruptcy to get out of all my deals. I thought, ‘I can forsake what I know I should be doing and do what the head of a label wants me to do, or I can bite the bullet and start over’. That seemed like a better decision, and it was. For me, it wasn’t really difficult at all. It was a relief. Even knowing that I was going to lose my house, my car, everything I had except my musical gear, it was still a relief – and I felt it immediately.”
So here he was, a wunderkind back at square one in Nashville. Loaded only with an arsenal of songs and a closet full of instruments, Spence tried to plan his musical attack. But starting over is tough, and depression set in. During a particularly low point, he separated from his wife, left his instruments behind and joined a cousin in Central America for three months of intensive physical labor and humanitarian work that took him through Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. He returned to Nashville rejuvenated and ready to act on his gift again.
Jody Spence and Spencer Campbell joined him in his parents’ get-away home in White House, Tenn., to record PainFaithJoy in 1995, an album Judson says he is still very proud of. PainFaithJoy fell on the ears of the right people and once again the major labels came knocking. His decision to sign with Pioneer Music Group (PMG) might now be considered a mistake, but Judson doesn’t think so.
“I signed with Pioneer because I was burnt out on the major label scene. I don’t have to be Madonna. I don’t have to run out and be the biggest thing. That’s just not interesting to me,” says Judson.
Pioneer Music Group, owned by Pioneer Electronic Corporation and headed by Bernie Leadon, a founding member of The Eagles, soon discovered that it, as a company, did not have the chops to make it in the industry. Artists like Spence were left in the lurch.
“As we got into it, as they began to release records and operate in the real world and get beat up a little, things started getting just a little freaky,” describes Spence.
One day just a few months ago, employees showed up for work at PMG to find that the company was no longer in business.

Seven Million Records Later
 So now, it’s starting-all-over time for Judson, and he is impressively optimistic.
“I feel good, really good, about being free,” says Spence. “I don’t have to get another record deal. I’ve got four records finished and ready to go. The idea that I can now sit back and think, ‘Okay, I’m not rushed into anything,’ is a very good position for me.”
His brother Jody also seems to share Judson’s positive attitude.
“I think the whole roller coaster ride he’s had was meant to be. When he moved here in 1987 and everyone was after him, they blew him up big time. Who knows where he would be – he might be dead – if it had all happened the way everyone said it would. It’s inevitable that it will happen for him because he’s a true artist. After all the ups and downs, I think Jud has hung in there well. I think he’s tapped into another source. He’s my brother and I know it sounds cheesy, but I think he’s special.”
Performing and recording aside, songwriting has provided Judson with an extra sense of security.
“Music and songs are right there, just floating around,” says Spence. “There are songs out there that have been contributed to by everyone from John Lennon to Fats Domino and by people you’ve never even heard of. Words, ideas, melodies – they’re always there. It’s like going fishing.”
One such fishing trip proved infinitely profitable for Spence. In 1991, he wrote “The Power” with Tommy Sims, a song that was a hit for Amy Grant, covered by Diana Ross and now appears on Cher’s new album Believe.
“One day I got a call saying that Amy Grant wanted to cut ‘The Power.’ Then, later, I got a call saying that Century 21 wanted to use it in a national television commercial. About a year ago, I got another call saying that Cher cut ‘The Power’ and it ended up on her new record. Now she’s sold seven million copies worldwide.”
His song “Wonderful Life” found its way to Bill Murray’s 1994 hit movie Scrooged and his take on Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away” was aired on The Wonder Years.
“Your priorities start to change when you are forced to choose a road that you aren’t comfortable with initially. This whole business is so vanity driven. It’s so intangible that at the end of the day, the song is the only thing that will have a life of its own.”
If songs truly could come to life, then Spence, with a catalog of hundreds of songs – many never reaching ears other than his own – would have powers bordering on the divine.
Before PMG locked its doors, Spence’s new album, I Guess I Love It, managed to make it to some radio stations, including Nashville’s Lighting 100. Liking what they heard, 100 currently plays Spence’s song “Sputnik.” Keith Coes, the music director for FM 100, describes Spence’s music as “an awesome mixture of rock and funk with R&B leanings [and] some audible Southern influences.”
Coes continues, “We don’t know what’s going to happen with his new music, but we’re playing [‘Sputnik’] because it is just a great song.”
Like Coes, Spence doesn’t really know what to expect either. For the time being, he seems content simply being able to write and record, waiting out another storm in his career.
“I love music, I love being blessed and cursed with the gift of music. No matter what kind of gift you have, when you have a gift there will be times when it is blessing you and rolling over you like water. Then there will be other times when it will be a thorn in your side. The music business is not a place for the weak-hearted. It is not a place for people who can’t take discouragement.”

copyright 2007 BOLD Records