Deryl Dodd
Story and photos by Mary Jane Farmer
Double D brings to his stages today’s country, distinct and dynamic, with a vocal inflection that tells the tales his lyrics introduce. Deryl Dodd is the personification of Nashville’s loss being Texas’ gain.
Thursday night (Jan. 27, 2011), when Deryl and his band hit the Cape Buffalo stage in Addison, Texas, Deryl Dodd demonstrated just what it was that Chris LeDoux saw years ago in DD’s music. This was only a few days before his 4th release, “You’re Not Looking For,”off his latest CD made a decent debut on the Texas Music Chart Monday when it entered halfway up the chart at No. 28.
Deryl spent more than a decade in Nashville, where he had some experiences, some successes, and some disappointments. It ended when he contracted a debilitating disease. He overcame that, and Nashville, through dedication and hard work.
Deryl learned a lot during the years he spent in Nashville, and he’s treated all those lessons like a surgeon would on the operating table — keeping all the good stuff and throwing out all the bad stuff. Just as an example: Deryl, having had some major hits nationwide in the 1990s, qualifies as a star, yet doesn’t act the part. He, and the guys in the band, are friends with their friends and with friends they just haven’t met yet. Also, he said, his record label hired one person whose responsibility was Deryl’s attire and stage presence. He was supposed to wear glitzy, satiny shirts and such. Now, he dresses in denim pearl snaps, approachable and truly Texas.
Kerry Wilson on bass and backup vocals, Steve Rhain on lead guitar, and Andrew Raley on drums make up the Homesick Cowboys. And he’s been where they are, one of the boys in the band when he played for Martina McBride and with other Nashville country pop artists.
LeDoux covered the Dodd/Brett Beavers song “One Ride In Vegas” in the later 1990s, and took it to the top, as LeDoux seemed to do with so many songs. Deryl sang that song, Thursday night, with compelling authenticity, lending with “God bless Chris LeDoux!”
He explained how he went back into the studio to make a slight adjustment to “Death, Taxes, and Texas” three weeks after it hit the No. 1 spot on the Texas Music Chart. That was also the same week that the Texas Rangers baseball team made it into the World Series. Most artists wouldn’t mess with perfection, but for Deryl it wasn’t a hard decision. With timely pride he revamped and re-sent the song to radio stations as “Death, Taxes, and Texas Rangers.”
Double D
- The current Texas Music Chart song, “You’re Not Looking For” is another one Deryl has changed, enhanced, since it was released on the Smith Music Group-distributed CD “Together Again.” In December, weeks before he released the new version, Deryl played it for me before his Toys For Tots fundraiser at Cutter’s Saloon in Denison. I had earlier reviewed the CD when it first came out, and so had a working knowledge of it, and yet this seemed a brand new song to me.
Someone said to me Thursday night that it’s like Deryl is rediscovering his musical roots. I am convinced he’s never abandoned them. Deryl Dodd remains authentically country and refreshingly current.