![]() ![]() Their Colorado friends still call it “Susie’s Song.” “For other women, like myself, it was their divorce song,” she said. He played her a song, which Strait would later record, called “She Let Herself Go.” The story, about a woman finding freedom after her husband left, felt bizarrely and specifically like Susie’s story. In the early 2000s, Dillon met Susie while he was in Crested Butte to play the old Country on the Rockies music festival. When you’re a wordsmith like Dillon, you do get a lot of songs that mean something to people.Īs Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, said, Dillon has written “words and melodies that have enriched us all.”Īnd his gift might’ve helped him get the girl. “It’s become my ‘Five O’clock Somewhere’,” Dillon says, referring to the Alan Jackson/Jimmy Buffet hit. The song’s reach has only gotten stronger, after Chris Stapleton made it famous again in recent years. ![]() That changed in 1984, when Dillon had a baby on the way. Life was a party to me and I partied hard.” “Back in my 20s, Jack Daniel’s was a real good friend of mine,” Dillon said. When asked if the story - which includes the words “Liquor was the only love I’ve known” - is based on his life, Dillon says, “Oh my god, yeah.” David Allan Coe and George Jones would go on to record versions of the song. One night, he met up with Linda Hargrove and they wrote “Tennessee Whiskey” together in under an hour. He also spent a lot of time drinking whiskey, which sparked an idea for a chorus. When it came to getting your heart broken, getting in fistfights, getting thrown in jail … I’d go live it so I knew what I was talking about.” ‘Raw and real’ songs “So what would I do? I’d go out and live it. “For the longest time, in my 20s and early 30s, I thought, ‘How are you going to write about something if you’ve never lived it?” Dillon said. “And the only way you can get to that bar is write, write, write, write. “You’re constantly striving to get to that bar,” he said. There, Dillon had “not the worst upbringing, but not the best.” There, he escaped from it all by dreaming about music. Dillon has also penned songs for Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, Brooks & Dunn and Alabama.Ī day like this makes Dillon think about the 7-year-old kid from East Tennessee who picked up a guitar and started writing little tunes about love. Today, he’s one of the most revered songwriters in the genre, thanks in part to a long and loyal relationship with Strait, who has recorded more than 60 of Dillon’s songs.ĭillon co-wrote Strait’s first single, “Unwound,” in the 1980s, kicking off illustrious careers for both men. And obviously they’ve had some sort of impact on somebody or I wouldn’t be sitting here today.” Living his dream “You do a lot of looking back on your life and what all transpired and the songs you wrote. “Just to be in that unbroken circle of country music legends, it makes you ponder, it makes you think,” Dillon, 65, said. ![]() She handed the phone over so Dillon could talk to another friend.ĭillon is now in the company of Hall of Fame inductees such as Gill, Garth Brooks, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard. “Oh, Vince Gill is calling,” Susie said at one point. He tossed out the word “humbled” more than once while he pet his poodle, Virgil, and sipped his soda and ignored his phone. Sitting down for an interview with The Gazette on the back porch of his ranch, overlooking hundreds of acres of hay fields and mountain views, Dillon seemed relieved that the news he’d kept secret for months was out in the world. ![]() This wasn’t a day for tears, at least as far as anyone could tell under Dillon’s dark sunglasses and cowboy hat. When Dillon found out about the honor back in March, Susie came home to find him crying. “Have y’all heard the big news today?” asks Dillon, who sports a hard-to-see smile under his long gray mustache. (Photo by Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette) JERILEE BENNETT THE GAZETTE Once he found out, his phone started ringing off the hook from well-wishers.He takes a congratulatory call from Vince Gill on Wednesday, August 12, 2020. Legendary country music songwriter Dean Dillon was just hanging out on his ranch near Gunnison, Colorado, on the day it was announced that he was going into the Country Music Hall of Fame. ![]()
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