By PHIL SWEETLAND
Music and Radio contributor
The New York Times
NASHVILLE – She’s an ex-Park Ranger and he’s a successful landscape designer/contractor, but it’s as a songwriting team that Cheryl Ashton and Dean Backholm are winning top competitions and attracting major attention, both along Music Row and at Country Radio.
In early February, their hooky tempo tune `Undeniable’ won both the all-genre Grand Prize and Best Country Song at the Fourth Annual Texas Songwriters Cruise, whose judges included the Nashville mavens Jason Blume, Steve Seskin, Brian White, Steve Leslie, and EMI’s Tom Luteran, as well as the red-hot LA Pop producer Eddie G.
They met on the very first Texas Cruise, and though Ashton lives in Nashville and Backholm in Seattle, they became fast friends.
“Every year, we’ve written a song on the cruise,” Ashton said, as the 2009 voyage headed towards its final stop in Galveston. “Last year, we started ‘Undeniable’ on the cruise.”
“That song took a whole year to write,” Backholm said. ‘Undeniable’ was demoed in Nashville last December, and features gigantic Country hooks, punctuated by an aggressive arrangement ideal for today’s Radio. The combination proved to be sheer magic for the All-Star panel of judges. By midweek, Eddie G, whose recent multi-platinum credits include both High School Musical and Hannah Montana for Disney in Hollywood, asked Ashton and Backholm to work on some new songs.
Perhaps the total contrast in backgrounds of the two writers helps them create such unique hits.
Backholm’s father Elven, who is 91 years old and still active, was a professional trumpeter. Dean’s 83-year-old Mom Doris was a vocalist. “They played great stuff, and my Dad was even in a barbershop quartet,” Backholm said.
He continued: “In our family, our first instrument was always piano. You had to learn to play piano.” Before meeting Ashton, Backholm recorded a solo album of Steely Dan/Chicago-flavored originals. One of the tracks was a ballad called “Mother And Child,” which in 2008 was featured on a special Mother’s Day album ‘Stork Tunes’ where the other artists included, among others, Celine Dion, Billy Joel, Norah Jones, The Dixie Chicks and Wynonna.
Ashton, on the other hand, came to music and songwriting in a far less conventional manner. She moved to Nashville four years ago from Hollister, California – which was a pleasant town decades before it became a T-shirt – and spent 20 years as a Park Ranger in the Golden State. She earned a degree at Chico (Calif.) State University in the school’s renowned Forestry Department, not exactly the standard Belmont background for Music Row.
Cheryl’s job duties included supervising music for the Park’s Campfire Programs. Her natural gift for humor showed up in the parody songs she would compose about camping, aerobics, or whatever else struck her funny bone. “I just kind of dabbled in it, but then I realized everybody really liked the songs,” she says.
Friends suggested that she try her hand at writing Country songs, and the first three tunes she created were all published. She worked with TAXI and other services, and several of Ashton’s songs were soon being recorded by indy artists. But something seemed amiss.
“I never got a penny off of any of them,” she said.
Undaunted, Cheryl got into the music biz full-time in LA, moved to Music City, and soon met Backholm on the first Texas Cruise. Ashton’s songs – including “Listen To My Touch” and “God Didn’t Mean It” – by this time were regularly winning contests, both in the States and overseas.
Another crucial songwriting seminar for the pair took place in Kauai, Hawaii, where Backholm first met one of his true musical heroes – Jeffrey Steele. Steele’s massive talents and unique writing and production styles would greatly influence `Undeniable,’ and other compositions including `You Nasty Hot.’
“I knew Jeff’s work, but I didn’t know all about him,” Dean says. “He said, ‘Let’s just start, I’ll tell you some of the stuff I’ve written.’ He sits down in front of 12 wannabe songwriters, and Jeffrey’s just on fire.”
So during the cruise when Steve Leslie mentioned that one of Nashville’s hottest young acts, the Locash Cowboys, might be a natural fit for ‘Undeniable,’ and someone else observed that Steele has been producing the Cowboys, it was clear that one of the first pitches for the Grand Prize-winning tune would be to Jeffrey for the Lo-Cash Cowboys.
The Texas Cruise’s track record of success is remarkable: The 2007 Grand Prize winner, Jennifer Adan, wrote the song that began February at No. 1 on the Billboard Country Singles chart, Blake Shelton’s “She Wouldn’t Be Gone.”
Nashville and Country Radio have long featured the work of elite songwriting pairs. The Dynamic Duo of Cheryl Ashton and Dean Backholm are gearing up to continue that legacy with some of the freshest, funniest, and most aggressive Radio-friendly music around.
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