Kyle Frederick: From the Crossroads to Clay Walker

Kyle Frederick came to a crossroads in 1980, not more than a year after graduating from Bowling Green High School. The choice was college or a music career in Nashville. Fortunately, he chose the latter.

That choice paid off in amazing dividends. For years he and his guitar graced the stage with some of country music’s biggest and brightest stars. The path he chose at the crossroads has now put him in the position of tour manager for country music star Clay Walker. Frederick is also general manager of Sondaddy Publishing Co., owned by Walker and Patrick Joseph Music.

Frederick’s decision was unusual to say the least. A young man from a prominent business family in Bowling Green, as in all small towns, is expected to follow in the family footsteps. He reached within himself and found the faith to forge a different path to his future.

His family was not all that jazzed about his decision not to attend Western Kentucky University. His mother Pat Frederick said it was very frightening to them. “He promised that if he didn’t get some kind a good musical position within a year he would go back to college,” she said. “He went up there to register before he decided to go to Nashville. He got all the way up the hill and came back home. He didn’t want to do that�Kyle wasn’t the least bit worried about it. He had complete confidence in himself.”

That sense of confidence, combined with a warm and caring personality is one of Frederick’s greatest assets. His demeanor is soft, friendly and professional in every sense of the word. In conversation his head tilts to the side as he listens intently to every word spoken. One cannot help but notice he is a person of character and concern.. Obviously, Clay Walker saw these traits. In the higher echelons of the music business, where thousands of dollars filter through so many hands, it is imperative to have trustworthy people.

Walker’s band leader and keyboard player Van Rentz said that Frederick was one of the best tour managers he has worked with. “I’ve worked with other guys who were real business-minded but they didn’t care about hurting people’s feelings,” Rentz said. “They didn’t care what they said to people “For the most part, a lot of people look at it like, “I ain’t got to deal with these people tomorrow so I don’t care.’ But, he’s not like that, he is very caring about people in general. I think that’s probably the reason for him being successful at it.”

Pat said he was successful because of his love for music and the need to be in the midst of it.

It is a miraculous event for anyone to get a steady gig as a musician in Nashville. It is even more unlikely for a working musician to end up in management, especially for a major recording star. That’s kinda like having your cake, eating it, and then getting three more to take it’s place. Faith, hard work and determination paid off.

Frederick’s first stint with success started evolving during his junior year in high school. He joined forces with a local band known as TyBarc, a rip-roaring flamboyant rock show�about as far from country music as one can get. The band consisted of Tony Lindsey on vocals, Jeff Brooks and Frederick on guitar, David Dorris on bass and Mitchell Plumlee on drums. TyBarc put out a single, “Whisper,” that achieved a phenomenal regional success. The band was managed by Wallace Barr at Sound Seventy Productions in Nashville and attracted interest from several major record labels.

At 17, Frederick was on the road with TyBarc as a warm up band for major concert acts like Black Oak Arkansas, Wet Willie and Brownsville Station.

After a few name and personnel changes TyBarc’s window of opportunity started to close. When one door closed Frederick went through another.

“I decided after high school that I was going to move to Nashville,” Frederick said. “Randy Goodman, who’s a friend of mine also from Bowling Green, was working at a talent agency called Top Billing. He suggested that I come check out Nashville. I did and moved straight away.”

Before Frederick crossed the bridge from musician to management he left no stone unturned. His original motive for the move to Nashville was to make a living playing guitar, and it didn’t take long for this goal to come to fruition.

Around 1980 he joined an eclectic rock band that Goodman was working in called Ed Fitzgerald and Civic Duty. They were included on some of the local hero albums put out by Nashville’s hot-rock radio station, KDF.

Not long after Civic Duty disbanded Frederick auditioned for a honky-tonk artist named Joe Sun and got the gig.

The next two and a half years were very productive for Frederick. He played guitar on the album Sun released on Electra/Asylum Records and did a three month tour of Europe.

Frederick called his old friend Kevin Lovelace, also from Bowling Green, when Sun needed a sound man. Lovelace stayed with Sun for several years but Frederick got an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“Randy Goodman again called me,” Frederick said. “While I was with Joe Sun, Randy got a job at RCA and RCA had signed this guy named Earl Thomas Conley. Randy called me to help put a band together for Earl.”

Frederick now found himself with a major artist, on a major label, churning out major hits like: “Holding Her and Loving You,” “Heavenly Bodies” and “Love Don’t Care Whose Heart it Breaks.” He also played on two of Conley’s albums, “Treadin’ Water” and “Make it Easy on Me.”

After five years of touring, Federick’s gig with Conley ended in 1985. “Frankly, at that time I was quite burnt out from traveling so much and the rigors of it,” he said. “I was at a point where I needed to move forward and mature more.”

He put together a band and started playing locally and got a job at Store House Furniture Company where he delivered and assembled furniture.

This brief period of introspection ended in ’87 when he was asked to do a three month European tour with Sun.

“The day I got back from Europe, Bill Lloyd asked me to go on tour with Foster & Lloyd,” Frederick said. “I hadn’t even unpacked.” Lloyd and Fredrick had played in the 1975 band Over which also included Lovelace, and Bobby Baldwin.

Foster & Lloyd was another Randy Goodman project on RCA. They hit the charts with their single “Crazy Over You.”

The band was made up of Bruce Bouton, Radney Foster, and four Bowling Green natives: Bill Lloyd, Marc Owens, Byron House and Kyle Frederick.

“We did some Roy Orbison shows in the Northeast that were just a blast,” Frederick said.

Frederick stayed on this journey until the middle of �88 when he started concentrating on developing himself as a pop artist.

The owners of Castle Production and Publishing Company, Jozef Nuyens and his father saw Frederick play live and signed him as a production artist. At that time House, who had been with Foster & Lloyd, was working as an engineer at Castle.

“I had gone back to work for the furniture store,” Frederick said. “So I would leave the furniture store and head for the Castle (recording studio) and work till the wee hours of the morning with Byron.”

Shortly thereafter he quit working for the furniture store and started doing clerical work for an ad agency, Gish Sherwood and Friends. It was at this point he decided to put out a solo project.

This venture drew a lot of interest from Atlantic and Warner Brother’s and produced a CD, “In This House,” on Castle Records. “It’s something that I am rather proud of,” said Frederick.

The album is a driving force of rhythmic groove and gutsy vocals. Frederick’s rhythm guitar and Lovelace’s drumming are the engine under the hood. The fuel in the tank is provided by some notable heavyweights that Bowling Green lays claim to: JoNell Mosser and John Cowan on back up vocals and Chris Carmichael on mandolin. It was recorded by House, who also plays bass.

“We came close to getting a deal but it didn’t happen,” Frederick said. “ My daughter (Rhea) was born in �89 so I took a deep breath and thought this obviously wasn’t supposed to happen now so I concentrated on working and living in Nashville and maintaining a marriage.”

The next year Frederick put together a hot local rock act called The Alaskans that gained a good local following around Nashville.

“In �92 I got a call from Byron House one day while I was at the ad agency,” Frederick said. “Byron was putting this band together to do showcases at about five major markets. The money was incredible. Our rehearsals were paid, they were flying us all over the place. They were paying us more money than I had ever been paid to play music.”

Frederick soon found himself on board with a new artist that James Stroud was producing for Giant Records named Clay Walker.

Stroud, who also started as a working musician, is now the “principal executive” at DreamWorks Records Nashville, the country division of the record company formed by Hollywood moguls Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Along with Walker, Stroud has produced such acts as Clint Black, Toby Keith, Tracy Lawrence, John Anderson, Little Texas, Tim McGraw, Lorrie Morgan and Martina McBride.

After several weeks of rehearsals they did showcases for radio stations in markets like Atlanta, Dallas, New Orleans, Las Vegas and Chicago. The results of this promotional tour were obvious with Walker’s first single, “What’s it to You,” climbing the charts.

“That incarnation of that band split up because most of those players were session players,” Frederick said. “I stayed on and Clay hired me as the band leader.”

He served as the band leader for a couple of years. Then Walker went through some management changes and he asked Frederick to be the road manager. For the next year and a half he wore two very demanding hats: road manager and playing guitar.

This put Frederick in the driver’s seat of a caravan that was headed straight to the top of the country charts. Walker was turning out more and more hits like “Dreaming With My Eyes Wide Open,” “One Two I Love You,” “Live Until I Die,” and “This Woman and This Man.”

“It became so that I couldn’t be faithful to both jobs,” Frederick said. “Now we’ve got two tractor trailers, three buses, and 20 to 30 people under our employ. And I’m trying to play guitar and also road managing, and now I’m tour managing: settling shows, dealing with lots of money and lots of responsibility. I just decided that I had played guitar for 30 years and I had reached my pinnacle at the time musically. I had an opportunity on the business side of it so I dedicated myself to the tour managing and Clay’s day to day operations. That’s what I’m doing to this day.”

Frederick’s dedication to his new career was soon rewarded with his appointment to the position of general manager of Sondaddy Publishing Company. This puts him in charge of every task associated with producing a song. When he and Walker are not on the road or planning the next tour, Frederick spends his time taking care of individual copyrights, securing licensing agreements with performance rights organizations like ASCAP and BMI, setting up demo sessions, arranging studios, studio musicians, pitching the songs and taking care of all accounting associated with the business.

The day to day operations of the publishing company and Walker’s tour management are run from an office in Frederick’s Nashville home, where he and his wife, Claire Davidson, reside. She is a noted singer/songwriter who had one of her songs covered by George Jones on his last album.

“I’ve learned an incredible amount and met some incredible people and been involved in some incredible events,” Frederick said. “To see Clay’s career blossom and see what happens when you work directly with an artist that sells millions of records. It gives a lot of satisfaction being involved with that. “

“In all honesty I’ve learned a whole lot from Clay�He’s a sharp guy. He knows a lot about people and a lot about business, and obviously a lot about entertaining and music. I feel like Clay’s grooming me to learn more and more and become as involved as I possibly can in the growth of his career�I can see myself working with Clay for many years to come.”

“The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind.” W. Somerset Maugham (1874n1965), British author.

Mitchell Plumlee is a writer and musician. His blog can be found at www.blindbutnowisee.blogspot.com