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Billy Gilman's latest sets a young poet's verse to music

03/30/2003

BY ANDY SMITH
Journal Arts Writer

Hope Valley's country star, Billy Gilman, turns 15 in May. He gives his height as 5 feet, 5 inches tall, his voice is starting to change, and he's counting the days until he can drive a car.

In the meantime, Billy has an intriguing project to occupy his time, the release of a new album called Music Through Heartsongs -- Songs Based on the Poems of Mattie J.T. Stepanek. It's due in stories April 15.

Mattie, 13, has a rare form of muscular dystrophy. When he was 3, he started writing poetry to help him cope with his illness. He was a published author by the time he was 11, and has published five books already.

His messages of hope, inspiration and peace have made him a favorite of Oprah Winfrey's, and his books have already sold 1.5 million copies.

Implicit in most of Mattie's poetry is the idea that we don't have much time on this earth, so we should appreciate what's been given to us.

He is now gravely ill in a Washington, D.C.-area hospital. "The doctors are trying so hard to find something to keep him alive a little longer," said Angela Bacari, Billy's vocal coach and co-manager.

Billy said he spoke briefly with Mattie by phone last week, and he seemed in fairly good spirits: "He would say, 'I can breathe good today, Billy.' "

Billy Gilman was only 12 when he became the youngest person to have a song on Billboard's country music charts, his hit single One Voice.

The impetus for the Heartsongs album came from a joint appearance by Billy and Mattie on Larry King's talk show. King is one of Mattie's many admirers, and with an assist from a friend, Nashville producer/songwriter Bruce Roberts, he decided to have both Billy and Mattie on his show the same night, in March of 2002.

Thanks to showbiz technology, that doesn't mean they actually met -- Mattie was in a studio in Washington, D.C., while Billy was in New York.

Nevertheless, the idea for the album was born.

Right after the show, Billy says, he got a call from Bacari.

"She said, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could put some of Mattie's poems to music,' " Billy recalled in an interview last week. "I was not that keen about it, but she said, 'Just try it.' "

Billy spoke in the low-ceilinged basement studio at Bacari's Westerly home. "This is where it all happens," Bacari said, waving her arms around the modest room.

The walls of the Bacari home are filled with show-biz memorabilia from Billy's career and that of Bacari's grandson, Nicolas King, who recently appeared on Broadway in Carol Burnett's Hollywood Arms.

Bacari said she called Scott Simon, Billy's Nashville manager, who was already out buying Mattie's books.

"It was like a chain reaction," Bacari said.

Album producer David Malloy, who's been working with Billy since 2000's One Voice, said he had never heard of Mattie Stepanek before he got the call from Simon. At first, he said, he had some doubts about the project.

"Originally, I'm thinking it would have to be 'songs inspired by' Mattie's poems," he said. "Because when I first looked at them, I felt they weren't really songs. They don't usually rhyme, for one thing. They're more like little prayers."

But as the team of songwriters assembled by Malloy, Simon, and Billy's record company, Sony Music Nashville, began working on Mattie's poems, the melodies started to suggest themselves.

"It was one of those projects that was meant to be," Malloy said.

Words and music

The Stepanek family has been closely involved with the project from the start.

Mattie's mother, Jeni, is listed as executive producer on the record, and Mattie had veto power if he didn't like a song. Bacari said Mattie did request some changes, notably when the music didn't convey the proper mood of one of his poems.

Three of the songs on the record incorporate his voice.

That was made possible when Billy and Mattie finally got to spend some time together, in February at a Heartsongs Gala in Washington, D.C. The two spent an hour reviewing the songs on the upcoming album and getting to know each other.

"He's an amazing person," said Billy. "I look at him, and any problems I might be going through just seem like nothing."

While in Washington, Malloy recorded Mattie talking into a digital tape recorder. Then he took the tape back to Nashville, where most of the album was recorded in January and February, and fitted Mattie's spoken words into the songs.

Two of the vocal tracks, though, were recorded in Rhode Island, at StarTrak Studios in Warwick.

Sony Nashville has sent out a four-song sampler of the record.

"For Our World," a lush ballad, is a plea for peace, which Malloy said Mattie wrote in response to the attacks of 9/11.

"The Gift of Color" is a more playful tune, propelled by a funk bass line, electric piano and guitar. It begins by thanking God for color in general, then extends that into a celebration of racial diversity, as Mattie expresses his thanks for "sharing these colors in the peoples of the world."

The most dramatic, and personal, song is "It Happened Anyway," Mattie's response to the death of his brother, Jamie. The Stepanek family has already lost three other children to the same disease that afflicts Mattie.

"If wishes could bring him back he would be here with me today/ But then I remember that it happened anyway," Mattie wrote.

Billy really lets his voice soar on this one, the notes cascading from his throat.

"It's tough to sing some of these lyrics," Billy said. "I have to put myself inside his head, as though these things had happened to me. You have to sell the lyrics. It's like acting, in a way."

Stylistic diversity

None of the songs on the sampler sound like country tunes, although Malloy said that on the full disc, which has 12 songs, there are a couple of country numbers.

Malloy said he was looking for diversity in both lyrics and musical style.

Bacari and Billy co-wrote the music on a couple of the songs, a first for them. "I wanted to do more," Billy said. "On my last two albums I went in, sang, and went away."

So Billy and Bacari, with help from songwriter and producer Sandy Linzer, collaborated on the Latin/rock of "About Watches" and the ballad "About Memories."

Malloy said Heartsongs was particularly satisfying for him, because the record company imposed relatively few demands.

"The main thing for us was to maintain the integrity and the meaning of the poems -- that was what it was all about," Malloy said. "Even though there was a bittersweet quality, because of Mattie's condition, it was a great record to work on because there were no parameters. There's so much of that these days, especially in country music."

That's also fine with Billy, who said he listens to lots of different music -- Broadway, country, rock, pop.

"I don't like to stay the same," he said. "I want to sing every kind of music."

Malloy said Music Through Heartsongs gives Billy the opportunity to do just that.

"Billy's made the perfect record for where he is right now -- his age, his voice," Malloy said. "It's the perfect project for him."

Voice in transition

Heartsongs comes after a period of relative inactivity for Billy. One Voice, his debut, made him a star and sold 1.5 million copies. Then he released a Christmas disc, Classic Christmas, followed by Dare to Dream, which came out in the middle of 2001.

Dare to Dream sold more than 500,000 copies, but sales were disappointing when compared with the splash made by One Voice. Since then, Billy has been taking it easy, at least until Heartsongs came along.

His voice on the record is still powerful when it needs to be, but its range is dropping. That actually makes some of the songs, such as "The Gift of Colors," more convincing.

Billy said his voice is migrating from a mezzo-soprano register -- a feminine range -- down to a tenor.

"People make it so dramatic, my voice changing," he said. "It's a natural thing."

He said Music Through Heartsongs is about Mattie's lyrics, not the singing.

"I think it's a really diverse, powerful album. Musically, I'm thrilled with it," he said. "I concentrated on the message, not on the voice. If I crack, I crack. That's life."

But Bacari said Billy wasn't always so relaxed about his voice changing.

"I was worried at first," Billy admitted.

"Very worried," said Bacari.

Billy said he would sit at the piano and figure out which notes he could no longer hit -- "There goes my F, there goes the C."

Looking ahead

In order to protect his vulnerable vocal cords, when Billy sang in the studio on Heartsongs, he was not allowed to talk for the rest of the day. That wasn't at all easy for Billy, who's a talkative guy.

He's not planning to tour for Heartsongs, either, although he's got a lot of TV appearances lined up to promote the record. He's already sung on Oprah Winfrey's show, and there are appearances planned for Good Morning America, Live with Regis & Kelly, and many more.

With his eclectic tastes, Billy says he's not sure what he'll be doing in, say, 10 years. He is certain of one thing -- he'll be singing.

"I want to be singing forever," he said. "After recording the album, I would have to rest my voice and not sing, and it was driving me crazy.

"Without singing, it's like I can't breathe, like I can't have air."

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