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Gone Country 3: Micky Dolenz
Gone Country 3: Micky Dolenz
Posted: January 15th, 2009 at 2:03 pm | By: Micky Dolenz
Micky Dolenz is one of the celebrities participating in this season of Gone Country 3. He shares his thoughts about the upcoming experience.
My name is Micky Dolenz and obviously most of the people are going to know me from the television show, where I played the wacky drummer, called The Monkees. I’ve done just about everything in the business, from producing and directing, writing, performing, and most recently I’ve been doing a lot of Broadway musical theater. I did Aida, the Elton John/Tim Rice musical for two years, I just did the revival of Pippin, a famous musical, I did Grease, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum — recently I’ve been doing a lot of that. Also on the road doing concerts, three or four a month doing fly dates with my band. And when I’m in Los Angeles, mostly my day job is developing and producing and directing television shows and movies.
Originally I didn’t want to do this show because I don’t like reality shows. Most of them are mean-spirited with all that backstabbing kind of competition stuff and contrived drama and conflict. So originally when they approached me, I just sort of turned it down flat. And then the agent encouraged me to watch a few episodes and I did, and I realized that this show is not like that. It’s not mean spirited, it’s fun and kind of upbeat, and most importantly, there is a goal at the end which is to write some country tunes with some Nashville writers and to perform.
Unbeknownst to many people, 90% of the songs I’ve ever written are country songs. And I’ve never had the opportunity to have them released or exploited because people assume I’m a wacky drummer from an old TV show. On top of that, my mom was from Austin, Texas, and I grew up in California on a ranch. I was riding a horse when I was four, and I’m an expert rider, I’ve done team penning and cutting horse and polo and jumping and all the other equestrian activities, and I’m also an expert shot with the rifle or hand gun. And I go out every year and backpack over the Sierra Nevadas out in the wilderness, so in many ways my lifestyle has been very country, even though it was on the west coast. I went in to talk to the producers of the show and I brought all this up because I said the traditional impression of me is obviously is this wacky drummer from an old TV show. But my real life is considerably different. And I wondered how that would fit in to this format and he didn’t seem to think that would be a problem. I’ve been kind of a closet country western fan for many years and I’m coming out of the closet, shall we say.
This is a dream come true, the chance to work with someone like John Rich of course, the chance to work with Nashville songwriters, and this is kind of a short hand way to get into that world. Earlier on, I was a huge Johnny Cash fan when I was younger, but even before that I remember, because of my mom, watching old Gene Autry and Roy Rogers movies and listening to the Sons of the Pioneers, and then of course Marty Robbins. And invariably when I write …I play guitar, that’s my instrument, and every time I write a song, it ends up as a country song. I’ve watched the show and I’ve seen what actually goes on. I’m looking forward to the songwriting process and the performing. As far as living with a bunch of strangers in a house, I don’t think I’m going to mind that so much. The thing that I’m going to find the most annoying is all the cameras around 24/7 because I’m a very private person — otherwise I probably would have been doing these shows a long time ago. But I guess you get used to it. My fans will watch the show because they are my fans. Fan will watch whatever you do. They may not like it, but they’ll watch. What I’m hoping is to generate a new set of fans through the country music world, but I never really think about what my fans are going to think. I don’t think you can really approach your art or your craft or music of whatever in that way, trying to double think or second guess or sort of reverse engineer your career from what you hope people will like. Like Ricky Nelson said, “You can’t please everyone, you gotta please yourself,” and I think that’s sort of the way I look at it. You do what you do, you do what you love, build it and they will come. And if they like it, fine, if they don’t, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. And you can’t please everybody all the time.
