Click the photo above for a photo gallery from the making of the 'CMT Crossroads.' Here, Patrick Stump of the Fall Out Boy and Kimberly Perry of The Band Perry talk over their parts as they rehearse a song on Oct. 1, 2013, in Nashville. (Photo: Larry McCormack/The Tennessean)
Kimberly Perry and Patrick Stump stood on stage huddled around a microphone, pens in hand, with a lyric sheet to The Band Perry’s current single “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely.”
Stump, lead singer for rock group Fall Out Boy, was baffled — even with the help of a teleprompter — the first time his group and Perry’s sibling trio attempted the soaring ballad in rehearsal. While Kimberly Perry nailed the lyrics to her trio’s song, Stump didn’t even attempt the lines assigned to him and asked to go through the song with just Kimberly Perry and a guitar.
“There were a lot of rhythms that just came in sideways in my head,” Stump said of “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely.” “By the end of it, that will probably end up being my favorite song because that was the one we spent the most time on.”
The unexpected collaboration between The Band Perry and Fall Out Boy and the initial confoundedness with “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely” is par for the course for CMT’s long-running cross-genre duet series, “Crossroads.”
While members of both bands struggled at times during rehearsals, they managed to learn each other’s songs enough to confidently perform them together during the next day’s live taping of “Crossroads.”
“It’s interesting because there’s all this angst going (into the taping) about who is going to do what,” said John Hamlin, executive producer on “Crossroads” and senior vice president of music events and talent at CMT. “When ultimately the musicians step onto the stage for the first rehearsal, they instantly speak a language that the rest of us don’t speak and they work it out between themselves. They are always very gracious and very generous and very inclusive.”
Confusion on stage
Fall Out Boy’s lead singer called the show “a cool challenge.” Members of both bands — sitting in a semi-circle in a back room at Nashville’s Rocketown, where the episode taped in early October — said it was a test they each tackled differently.
After deciding which songs to play — four from each act and a cover song — The Band Perry dissected every element of the Fall Out Boy tunes.
Kimberly Perry (vocals) and her brothers Neil Perry (mandolin, guitar) and Reid Perry (bass) carved out time on tour to pick apart both the recorded and live versions of the songs.
“Like us, they will change when they play live from the CD,” Reid Perry said. “We wanted to make sure that we were playing exactly what they were going to come in here and play.”
Neil Perry admitted they struggled with the songs’ arrangements because Fall Out Boy songs aren’t the “verse, prechorus, chorus, verse” to which the Perrys are accustomed.
“We could learn the chords and I would make a mistake or Reid would and Kimberly would be like, ‘Guys, y’all have to buckle down and learn this,’ ” Neil Perry said. “Our response was, ‘Kimberly, we’re not just sitting here.’ ”
Even with intense preparation, The Band Perry had hiccups once they were on stage playing Fall Out Boy songs live.
“If I look at you panicked, it means, ‘What’s the key?’ ” Kimberly Perry told Stump while rehearsing “Alone Together,” then asked about a line she thought was mislabeled on the teleprompter.
“I’m Ron Burgundy; if it’s on the teleprompter, I’ll read it,” he replied, a reference to Will Ferrell’s comedic character in the movie “Anchorman.”
They moved on to Fall Out Boy’s “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark.” When Kimberly Perry apologized for missing a line, Stump explained that his vocals were “double-tracked” because the lyrics are “such a mouthful.” He suggested splitting up the lines of the verse so “it’s a sprint, not a marathon.”
She liked the idea and they were able to quickly move through the last two Fall Out Boy songs — “Sugar” and “Thanks for the Memory” — before launching into rehearsal for their shared parts on The Band Perry’s hits.
The Band Perry and Fall Out Boy (Photo: Larry McCormack/The Tennessean)
Stump said that when it came time to learn The Band Perry’s songs, Fall Out Boy often didn’t even know where to start.
The rock band was confused by unfamiliar instrumentation, including fiddles and banjos, that Stump said prevented them from being able to “pick stuff out by ear.”
“There’s a lot of counter melodies,” added guitarist Joe Trohman.
“What’s the main thing to do?” asked bass player Pete Wentz, who had the added challenge of playing guitar — an instrument with which he isn’t familiar — on The Band Perry’s songs.
“I took a guitar home last night and I was like, ‘Wow, it’s got two more strings on it than I’m used it,’ ” he said.
Trohman said when he and his fellow band members got on stage for the first rehearsal with The Band Perry he felt like he was “still learning.”
After that rehearsal, Trohman went out drinking with The Band Perry’s guitarist and then went back to his room and practiced the songs all night long.
“It’s totally different once you get up there,” he said. “It’s like when someone shows you a riff and it’s an easy riff and finally it clicks, you feel like an idiot.”
Hamlin said most acts he books to appear on the show have similar experiences.
“Quite a bit, they arrive and it’s harder than they think it is going to be, but that challenge makes for better shows,” he said. “It’s tedious and you’re trying to get through it and the footing is unsure. Then they think about it that night and realize they really have to do their homework. These people are all professionals and perfectionists, and they want it to be good. Then you can see it click.”
Friendships develop
Kimberly Perry was pleased to report that the bands finished rehearsal 30 minutes early on the day of the show.
“It really jelled,” she said.
That isn’t always the case on “Crossroads.” Both Hamlin and executive producer and co-creator Bill Flanagan point to the same pairing — Faith Hill and The Pretenders — as a performance that didn’t go as smoothly as they had hoped.
They agreed that Hill came in thoroughly practiced but said that Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde likely had underestimated the complexity of Hill’s music. This was a more serious issue because the show aired live after a Super Bowl.
“Chrissie had a little punk rock attitude,” Flanagan said. “I think she thought, ‘I know what country music is, I grew up in Ohio for the ’50s and ’60s.’ But she’s been living in London for 35 years, and I think she was surprised to find out how sophisticated Faith’s songs were. And it was a live show. It was like, ‘Holy cow, we can’t even fix this if it goes sideways.’ Five minutes before the live show began, she was sitting in her dressing room with her iPod on singing along with Faith songs. It was a nerve-wracking couple of days.”
The list of positive collaborations, they agree, is significantly longer.
The recent pairing of country trio Lady Antebellum and rocker Stevie Nicks resulted in not only a memorable show but also a friendship between the artists. When Lady Antebellum gathered to watch the episode together, Nicks sent flowers. And Lady Antebellum’s Hillary Scott recently told ABC Radio that Nicks had just sent her infant daughter, Eisele, “some of the most beautiful little clothes.”
The “Crossroads” collaboration between country duo Sugarland and Bon Jovi influenced the direction of the rockers’ subsequent country-inspired album.
The combination of Train and Martina McBride produced what Hamlin said was one of his favorite duets in the history of the show, “Broken Wing.” From there, Train singer Pat Monahan and McBride continued to work together with each showing up to sing at the other’s concerts, and Monahan appearing with McBride on the 2011 ACM Awards.
“You want these artists to (make these cover songs their own) when they are collaborating on their songs and other people’s songs,” Hamlin said. “On the occasions that that magic happens, you end up seeing these incredible friendships and longstanding professional relationships develop.”
The Band Perry said they had definitely learned from Fall Out Boy.
Kimberly Perry joked she and her brothers were going to “rip off” the rock band’s songwriting process, which entails Wentz writing a bunch of lyrics out on a sheet of paper and Stump picking the ones he likes and turning them into a song.
Wentz laughed and said that the band should “please” do that, but Stump issued a good-natured warning to the siblings.
“There was a lot of trial and error to get us there,” he said. “(Be careful.) There was a lot of arguing, fistfights.”
Reach Cindy Watts at 615-664-2227 or ciwatts@tennessean.com.
Tuning in
“CMT Crossroads: Fall Out Boy and The Band Perry” will air 10 p.m. Friday on CMT.
About the series
“CMT Crossroads,” which pairs artists of different genres to collaborate on each other’s songs, has been in production since 2001. Partnerships have included the first pairing of Elvis Costello and Lucinda Williams; Keith Urban and John Mayer; and Taylor Swift and Def Leppard.
Taylor Swift and Def Leppard (photo: Rick Diamond).
CMT tapes four shows a year, and even though more than 40 mash-ups are already on the books, co-creator Bill Flanagan said there is still a slew of artists he would love to see on the show.
Country artists Tim McGraw and Miranda Lambert, British rock band Coldplay and Nashville-based rockers Kings of Leon are all near the top of the list. Flanagan said it’s just a matter of “finding the right date,” and he doesn’t necessarily mean a number on a calendar.
“I bumped into Kings of Leon a couple of days ago in New York and said, ‘You guys have to come down and do ‘Crossroads,’ ” he said. “Come down? They live here. I was like, ‘You guys have to come out of your house and do ‘Crossroads.’ We’ve always got a bunch of balls in the air. Then you see which ones come through.”
Flanagan said the show had been in talks with McGraw to do an episode since before it premiered, but that he is sure “we’ll find the right matchup one of these days.” Flanagan has had the same issue with booking Lambert. As for Coldplay, he said, “it’s always something they would like to do, they just have to find the right moment.”
But even when everything lines up — the right date, the right acts, an open venue — the show still can not work out.
Merle Haggard was an early target on the show. He said he would only agree if he could film his episode with Bob Dylan.
“I said, ‘That’s not going to happen,’ ” Flanagan said. “ ’Bob won’t do anything on TV.’ But I did my duty and I went to Bob and he said yes.”
Unfortunately for Flanagan, when the men started making plans to appear on the show, they decided a concert tour together would be more fun and did that instead.
“I felt like I should have at least gotten a T-shirt out of that tour,” Flanagan said.
— Cindy Watts, The Tennessean
