If you have been a country fan for a while, you will know John Berry’s music. He is a grammy winner and 2020 marked the 27th anniversary since signing a major label deal and the 41st year of being a country music recording artist. He was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2019 requiring 35 treatments of combined radiation and chemo. That hasn’t slowed John down. He has a new album out now called “Find My Joy,” a nod to putting life into perspective after his battle with cancer.
Sue Bonzell:
I’m excited that we have a Grammy award-winning country artist in the studios today. I’m going to be interviewing John Barry. Welcome John.
John Berry:
Good to be with you.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh my gosh. I’m excited to have you here. You’re a long time country music artist. How many years in country music?
John Berry:
Well, my first album came out in nine with on a major label in ’93. Well, I guess the album actually came out in ’94. The first single that charted came out in ’93 and then the second single got in the top 20, late ’93 and then the album with Your Love Amazes Me and the other two songs Kiss Me in the Car and She’s Got a Mind of Her Own came out early ’94.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay. Now if everybody loves ’90s country right now.
John Berry:
they should.
Sue Bonzell:
as well as, well they should. That’s do to because of you as well.
John Berry:
Oh no, no.
Sue Bonzell:
That’s part of, you know, you’re part of that-
John Berry:
Very small part, but there was a lot of great, a lot of great country music during the ’90s.
Sue Bonzell:
Now I know that I had a CD of yours back in the day. A CD.
John Berry:
Cassette tape.
Sue Bonzell:
Maybe a cassette tape. I don’t know, but the song, Your Love Amazes Me, that’s probably my favorite song. Tell me about that song and kind of the success of that song back in the ’90s.
John Berry:
Well, it was written by Chuck Jones and Amanda Hunt Taylor and I was the lucky guy who drew the card to get to record it.
Sue Bonzell:
Yes.
John Berry:
Now, Tanya Tucker drew the card before I did.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh really?
John Berry:
she recorded it, but she did not include it on her record.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay.
John Berry:
I was on Capital Records as well as she was.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay.
John Berry:
She turned, and so I told them, I said, “I want to cut this song.” They said, “Well, Tanya’s putting it on her record.” I said, “Well, if she doesn’t use it. I want to be first in line to get it.” They said, “Well, she’s not going to pass on this song.”
Sue Bonzell:
It’s a good song. Right?
John Berry:
It’s a ridiculous great, great song. She recorded it and but she turned her record in completed and it wasn’t on there.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh my goodness.
John Berry:
I got the song, but of course, every time I see Tanya Tucker…
Sue Bonzell:
You say thank you.
John Berry:
She won’t let it go.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh really?
John Berry:
Yeah. You owe me John Barry. Don’t you forget?
Sue Bonzell:
I love that story. I did not know that.
John Berry:
She actually ended up putting her version that she did record, but didn’t include on her record. She included that recording on her greatest hits record a few years later.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh, okay. All right.
John Berry:
Now I also, I haven’t heard it, but I understand Andy Childs also recorded a version of it.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay. When Tanya came out with that on her greatest hits, did everybody go, “Oh, is that a cover of John Berry’s song?”
John Berry:
Yeah, but she did a good job, but you know to me-
Sue Bonzell:
Of course she did.
John Berry:
But to me, it’s one of those songs the singer is not real important.
Sue Bonzell:
Yeah.
John Berry:
It’s just a great, great song.
Sue Bonzell:
It is a beautiful song. That’s one of my all time favorites. Now you have been a Grammy nominated for that song and it has six and a half million spins all done on Spotify only.
John Berry:
Cool.
Sue Bonzell:
Which is like, that’s like crazy, crazy. You were nominated for a Grammy for that song, but you actually received a Grammy. Tell us about your Grammy award.
John Berry:
I was a part of the project Country Salutes Gospel and I had the song Blessed Assurance on that album. I’m not sure who got the actual Grammy, but I got a nice certificate. It said thanks for participating.
Sue Bonzell:
Thanks for participating.
John Berry:
But it was cool. I mean, I’m listed as a Grammy winner.
Sue Bonzell:
I love that. See, Grammy winner. Exactly. Now you also won a CMA for a vocal event of the year.
John Berry:
I did?
Sue Bonzell:
It says right here for A Long Haired Country Boy with Charlie Daniels and Hal Ketchum.
John Berry:
I knew it was nominated. Did we win that? Did they? Oh, we did. Oh.
Sue Bonzell:
See?
John Berry:
Wow.
Sue Bonzell:
This is awesome.
John Berry:
I’d like to thank my family.
Sue Bonzell:
You get to do your…
John Berry:
I’d like to thank Charlie for inviting me and Hal Ketchum for being a part of that.
Sue Bonzell:
Yeah.
John Berry:
That was a great day.
Sue Bonzell:
Yeah?
John Berry:
Shooting that video.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh, I bet.
John Berry:
It was so much fun. We recorded the, we did the recording of the song itself at Charlie’s studio and out on Mount Juliet. Then a few months later, they called and said, “Hey, can you come shoot the video [inaudible 00:04:13] do it on the front porch of the log cabin here?
Sue Bonzell:
Nice.
John Berry:
we did. Hal of course was there. The two of those guys are just screaming, just wonderful people. We had a lot of fun.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh, I can imagine.
John Berry:
It was a great, it was a great day.
Sue Bonzell:
I can imagine. I mean-
John Berry:
The video looks like we’re having fun and we were.
Sue Bonzell:
it’s real, there was no acting involved.
John Berry:
No acting involved.
Sue Bonzell:
No acting.
John Berry:
Which was good for me.
Sue Bonzell:
Now you’ve continued to make music for 40 years, 40 some years [inaudible 00:04:41].
John Berry:
My first album came out in 1979.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh my goodness. Wow.
John Berry:
A record called Humble Beginnings.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay. There you go. Humble beginnings.
John Berry:
I’m really, I’m really glad you never heard it. Can you say sucks on podcast? It sucks.
Sue Bonzell:
Sure. You can say whatever you want.
John Berry:
Sucks. It’s horrible. we actually found a couple of boxes of my first two album, no, my first album and my third album. Humble Beginnings and Tired of the Game. I think it’s the third one. We’ve been selling them online, but we put a disclaimer asking people to please just use it as a poster. Don’t actually listen, don’t unwrap it and actually listen to it.
Sue Bonzell:
That’s funny.
John Berry:
It will ruin your entire perception of me musically.
Sue Bonzell:
Well see, but that, it does give perspective though, as any-
John Berry:
Oh, it gives you perspective alright.
Sue Bonzell:
Well, I mean really as any artist or anybody doing, I mean, even me doing these podcasts, I look at some of the beginning ones and I go, “Oh my God, I’m terrible.” It’s like, you know, you just keep getting better at it.
John Berry:
We thought we knew what we were doing.
Sue Bonzell:
Right. Oh, you still do. You still do.
John Berry:
Yeah.
Sue Bonzell:
You still do. Now you just released a new album, correct?
John Berry:
Yeah. Yeah. It came out this year, just in March and it’s called Find My Joy and we releasee it with Gaither Gospel Music.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay.
John Berry:
I’ve been wanting to cut this record for years and years, and I’ve actually started it a few times, but different people involved or different perspectives. We ended up cutting some tracks that sounded like I should be 23 years old and you know, it just didn’t sound like me at all.
Sue Bonzell:
Right.
John Berry:
We just never really got anywhere with those recordings. Then I had throat cancer three years ago. After going through that, I don’t know if you’ve ever had any kind of cancer or dealt with cancer, the treatments will kill you. Cancer’s tough, treatments will kill you.
Sue Bonzell:
Right.
John Berry:
The radiation was really rough. The chemotherapy was the worst thing ever.
Sue Bonzell:
Wow.
John Berry:
It literally the chemotherapy, the radiation sucks the life out of you, drains you. If there’s anything left, the chemo takes care of that.
Sue Bonzell:
Wow.
John Berry:
Just sucks the joy out of living completely. I got an email from my manager, Brian Smith and he sent me a song written by Steve Dorf, who he also manages. A song called Find My Joy. I said, “What joy?” next.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh, oh man.
John Berry:
I listened to it for months. That was when I was going through the cancer treatments and trying to recover and to recover and finally he kept asking me if I listened to that song. No. I finally did and much further into the recovery and the song really just spoke to me. It was a great song, a wonderful song about realizing that you’re not alone, no matter what trials you’re going through, whatever it is you’re facing, you’re not doing this by yourself. It was really awesome. Steve’s such a great writer if you know Steve, they should, he’s written songs that are part of the soundtrack to their lives.
Sue Bonzell:
Yes, absolutely.
John Berry:
He’s written songs for everybody. You know, when you look up in the songwriter’s hall of fame and you see all these people, and there’ll be these songs that they’ve written, you get Steve Dorf. It’s like pages.
Sue Bonzell:
Pages. Pages.
John Berry:
How does somebody do that? We got together and we were just talking about some things and I was listening to that I’d heard some things that he had produced. I said, “He might just get what I’m talking about.” We started talking about putting this record together. I wanted to do something. I wanted to record this project, which is ended up being Find My Joy is a mix of six old classic hymns and four new faith based songs of faith.
I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time, like I said, but coming out of having throat cancer and going through that experience and all that, it gave me an opportunity to go in with a real heart of joy to go record these songs. We ended up recording Find My Joy, which Steve wrote, and the title track Something Bigger Than Me and Live Like You.
Then he was co-writer on three of those three. There was another relatively new song compared to the old hymns, really new, a song called Blessings, Laura’s story. She wrote and had a hit with 10 years ago, a Christian radio. Steve brought… I sent him lots of these hymns that I was wanting to consider, and he knew some of them, but then some of them, he didn’t know. He knew How Great Thou Art, which everybody’s heard that before. But there were some other ones like Great is Thy Faithfulness. He’d never heard before and some of these other ones he’d never heard. You think how does somebody not hear these songs? Well-
Sue Bonzell:
Some people don’t.
John Berry:
Well, he’s Jewish and he’s from New York.
Sue Bonzell:
Well then there you go.
John Berry:
Yeah. He said, where these songs been all my life? I said-
Sue Bonzell:
Won’t hold it against him though.
John Berry:
I said that they’ve been in the Baptist church Steve. They don’t play it in synagogue. But he brought this musicality to the sessions, because it was just beautiful music.
Sue Bonzell:
Yeah.
John Berry:
He didn’t bring the attitude of, “Well, this is how it’s always been done,” because he didn’t know how it’s always been done. He had no idea.
Sue Bonzell:
Right.
John Berry:
He brought a real freshness to it. Most of the record, almost all of it is recorded with a small band, piano, bass drums and a guitar and 45 string players.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh wow.
John Berry:
It’s just-
Sue Bonzell:
Oh my goodness.
John Berry:
It’s just beautiful.
Sue Bonzell:
That is-
John Berry:
That’s what I wanted. I always wanted to this type of record to be an extension of some of the Christmas music I had done years before.
Sue Bonzell:
Yes. [inaudible 00:11:04].
John Berry:
Big and beautiful and just lush and you know, and that’s what Steve ended up doing with this.
Sue Bonzell:
What a blessing to be able to work with him as well.
John Berry:
Right.
Sue Bonzell:
Like you said, it’s probably great that he was not familiar.
John Berry:
Oh yeah.
Sue Bonzell:
With the tradition of it, so you could actually have some fun with it, do it a little bit differently. Yeah.
John Berry:
Yeah. And do it in a way that was just, like I said, with his musicality wrapped around it.
Sue Bonzell:
Yeah, exactly. See, this is we’re getting the behind the scenes on all the music. The name of the album is Find My Joy.
John Berry:
My Joy.
Sue Bonzell:
You guys can go look for that. It’s out now. I understand that in 2018 you became, let’s see there was official John Berry Day in your hometown?
John Berry:
Oh, in Athens?
Sue Bonzell:
Yes. June 16th.
John Berry:
Yeah. I’ve had it twice in Athens.
Sue Bonzell:
Twice.
John Berry:
Yeah.
Sue Bonzell:
You have two days when you have two days?
John Berry:
I have two days. The first time was years ago when my first album came out on Capital Records, they declared John Barry Day. Then this last time they back in, I guess in [inaudible 00:12:04] is that when it was, and they give you the key to the city and everything, and then dag gone they went and changed the locks.
Sue Bonzell:
I was going to say, I always wonder when you get the key to the city, I mean, you know.
John Berry:
Yeah. They change the locks on you. What good’s the key now?
Sue Bonzell:
Well, they’re very proud of you obviously, which is great.
John Berry:
It’s a great town. Athens is a-
Sue Bonzell:
As well they should be.
John Berry:
It’s a great town. I lived most of my life in the Athens, north Georgia area. That’s where I met my wife, Robin and all our kids, our three kids are born there and we love Athens and it’s just a real vibrant college town. It’s a lot of fun.
Sue Bonzell:
Yeah. Well, you got to love the hometowns.
John Berry:
Oh, yeah.
Sue Bonzell:
Hometown’s is a good thing. Good thing. I do want to play a game with you.
John Berry:
Okay.
Sue Bonzell:
We’re going to do a little game that’s going to be coming up, but first, would you be willing to play some music for us?
John Berry:
Sure.
Sue Bonzell:
Maybe a song for us?
John Berry:
I’d love to.
Sue Bonzell:
Would that be okay? Okay, great. Legendary, John Berry is here in the Up N Country studios. When we come back, he’s going to be playing a song for us.
John Berry:
Hi, my name’s John Berry, and I’d like to play a song for you that was my first number one record 28 years ago on May the 10th of 1994. Your Love Amazes Me. (Singing).
Sue Bonzell:
Okay. That song is my absolute favorite. Your Love Amazes Me. Thank you so much for playing that for us.
John Berry:
Oh, I’m glad to enjoyed it.
Sue Bonzell:
Thank you. Make sure you go get his new album, find My Joy. If you haven’t already, you can go get that now. You can go get some old stuff too.
John Berry:
Oh yeah.
Sue Bonzell:
Right?
John Berry:
Lots of old stuff.
Sue Bonzell:
There’s a whole bunch in the library.
John Berry:
Lots of old stuff.
Sue Bonzell:
Lots of old stuff he says. Well, are you ready to play a game with me?
John Berry:
Sure.
Sue Bonzell:
All right.
John Berry:
Let’s play a game.
Sue Bonzell:
It’ll be mostly painless.
John Berry:
Okay.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay. Well, I usually play-
John Berry:
Don’t let it hurt too much.
Sue Bonzell:
You probably heard of truth or dare.
John Berry:
Oh no.
Sue Bonzell:
Here at Up N Country we play truth or truth. No daring. We don’t want anybody breaking an arm or anything like that.
John Berry:
Okay. That’s good.
Sue Bonzell:
I’ve got some questions in my little basket.
John Berry:
Okay.
Sue Bonzell:
You get to pick a question.
John Berry:
I’m going to pick this question. Right?
Sue Bonzell:
That’s the magic one. Okay. You go ahead and read it and then I’ll let you answer it.
John Berry:
Are you answering?
Sue Bonzell:
No. You are.
John Berry:
Have you ever broken the law? Trying to get here on time.
Sue Bonzell:
To get here on time. You were breaking the law?
John Berry:
Let me see. Have I ever broken the law? I don’t think so. No.
Sue Bonzell:
See, no, he didn’t. He was wearing the halo earlier.
John Berry:
Yeah.
Sue Bonzell:
I said it’s like, come on. I mean really?
John Berry:
I’m not an Indian outlaw.
Sue Bonzell:
Yeah. Right? Exactly. It’s not really your style.
John Berry:
Yeah. I don’t do outlaw country. I’m not an outlaw.
Sue Bonzell:
Well, we’ll do another one. How about that one?
John Berry:
Okay. This looks like a long one here. What’s the craziest thing you’ve done on public transportation? Oh gosh. I’m so boring. I’ve never done anything on public transportation, except fall asleep?
Sue Bonzell:
Flying or anything like that?
John Berry:
Flying. Oh, my wife jokes. She said, “You’re the only person I know that goes to sleep before the plane takes off.”
Sue Bonzell:
Wow.
John Berry:
And wakes up when we land.
Sue Bonzell:
You are the only person that I know that can do that as well.
John Berry:
I said, it’s part of the plan. I stay awake so I can go to sleep when I get… I will make myself stay awake until I get on the plane because that baby goes down, I don’t want to know about it.
Sue Bonzell:
You’re already pre-planning.
John Berry:
Pre-planning going down so I miss it.
Sue Bonzell:
You don’t mind flying? Flying’s no problem for you?
John Berry:
Well, I actually was a pilot.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay.
John Berry:
I was a pilot, I had my own little airplane.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay.
John Berry:
Loved that.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay.
John Berry:
Because I’m in control.
Sue Bonzell:
That’s a good thing.
John Berry:
Flying a jet, flying on a jet as a passenger I’m not such a big fan.
Sue Bonzell:
No?
John Berry:
No.
Sue Bonzell:
You’re a little worried about the pilots, or?
John Berry:
Well, it’s just, I don’t know. It’s just herding cattle, get them on, get them off. I’m not real crazy about that whole thing, but it’s just, I like piloting my own little plane.
Sue Bonzell:
Your own. Do you still have a plane?
John Berry:
No, I sold it. My wife did not like me piloting my own plane and she would have nightmares night before long trips.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh, no.
John Berry:
She should have gotten her license because I got so many hours of time, because at the time when I got my license, we lived in Athens, Georgia. I would get a lesson up to Nashville for meetings.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay.
John Berry:
The pilot would wait for us. We’d spend the day and then we’d get on the plane with take lesson back home.
Sue Bonzell:
Yeah.
John Berry:
She’d sit in the back seat terrified.
Sue Bonzell:
Take the lesson. But she was taking the lesson though. Right?
John Berry:
She should have. She should have and then she would’ve realized it’s not going to fall out the sky.
Sue Bonzell:
Right.
John Berry:
Then yes now we would still have a plane today.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh. Well, oh well it’s kind of like motorcycles too. You know, it’s kind of like, “Ah, they’re a little dangerous,” but-
John Berry:
Let’s see if we’ve can find a more interesting one than and airplane.
Sue Bonzell:
All right. Let’s try again.
John Berry:
What I can actually talk about? That’s upside down. How many x?
Sue Bonzell:
How many Xs numbers are currently in your phone?
John Berry:
Oh.
Sue Bonzell:
Probably zero. I’m going to guess.
John Berry:
Oh, I would say, I would say zero. Yeah. I’ve been married 30 going on 34 years. I would say there’s zero Xs.
Sue Bonzell:
Zero Xs. There better be.
John Berry:
Because back then, there weren’t any mobile phones.
Sue Bonzell:
Right? Exactly. Exactly. Okay. You’ve been married for 35 years.
John Berry:
Yeah. Well coming up on 34 years. Yeah.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay. All right. What’s what’s your secret?
John Berry:
I have no idea. Merry good.
Sue Bonzell:
Merry good. Okay. That’s… All right. Start with step one.
John Berry:
Yeah. But no, we just, we spend a lot, we spend a lot of time together.
Sue Bonzell:
Yeah.
John Berry:
We work together kind of like you guys.
Sue Bonzell:
Yeah.
John Berry:
We just… Years ago and I have to give credit to my dad and to my wife when I had brain surgery back in ’94.
Sue Bonzell:
Oh wow.
John Berry:
I turned into somebody else.
Sue Bonzell:
Wow.
John Berry:
Really bad, really bad person. When I was going through all that, my dad really was a good listening post for my wife. He told her one time, he said, “You know, love is not a feeling. It’s a decision you make.” I hope that you will hold onto that decision you made to love my son through this. She did.
Sue Bonzell:
That is awesome.
John Berry:
Found out there’s a thing growing in my head they had to remove.
Sue Bonzell:
Wow. Had the surgery I woke up, I was me again.
Wow. That is incredible.
John Berry:
But, yeah. It’s, so that’s, I think that’s it. It’s just we got married and we decided that we were going to love each other.
Sue Bonzell:
Aww.
John Berry:
She doesn’t always like me a lot, but she really, you know, she loves me anyway.
Sue Bonzell:
She’s… It’s, you know, at certain days where you go, “You know, I love you, but I don’t like you right now.”
John Berry:
I love you. But would you please go away?
Sue Bonzell:
Right, exactly.
John Berry:
Just for a little while.
Sue Bonzell:
Well, you obviously are doing something right. I want to thank you again for being here and playing a song for us.
John Berry:
You bet.
Sue Bonzell:
Playing the game.
John Berry:
You bet.
Sue Bonzell:
And sharing all that great history about the amazing country music that you’ve been creating for so long.
John Berry:
Well, thank you.
Sue Bonzell:
Absolutely. Thanks for watching Up N Country. Be sure to like and subscribe and leave us a comment. We do new episodes every Tuesday and be sure to follow Up N Country on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. You can follow me too at Sue Bonzell on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
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