"The Hitmen of Music Row"'s Tony Mullins.
"Me And My Gang"
Written by Tony Mullins, Jeffrey Steele & Jon Stone
The song "Me and My Gang" by Rascal Flatts started out as a guitar riff and melody that I had been working on at home called "Running Away". I was going to use that title as the hook in the chorus.
The next day I was on the book to write with Jeffrey Steele and a new artist Jon Stone.
That morning on the drive in to Music Row I remember singing that wowwowwowwow guitar riff that eventually turned into the "Me and My Gang" intro. When I walked into the room, Jeffery and Jon were already there and the first thing I remember saying was, "Guys I got this wild guitar riff, check this out."
I started playing it and I'll never forget Jeff saying, "Wow, that might go with this title I got called 'Me and My Gang'."
I said, "That's different, I can't believe somebody ain't wrote that title yet." The next thing I know, it was on and we wrote the whole song in less than three hours. The line in the song that says "Dude named Elrod jammin' on an iPod" was placed in the song at the last minute. I got a call from Dan Huff late one night saying he was in the studio cutting vocals with Gary Levox of Rascal Flatts and that Gary wanted to change that one line and he would call me back in an hour for the new line. Talk about pressure! That hour I had to come up with something and pray they liked it.
I tried four or five times to call Jeffrey but could not find him, so when Gary called me back, the first thing that came out of my head was how about "Dude named Elrod jammin' on an iPod" and Gary said "I love that, that's it!" and hung up. I'll never forget hearing Rascal Flatts' version of "Me and My Gang" for the first time on the radio. I almost wrecked my truck — it was so rockin' and different from anything else on the radio and sounded like a big ole hit.
RSS Feeds