"Being a faceless studio musician is a lot like being an offensive lineman," ventures Nashville's Brent Rowan. "There's someone behind you getting a lot of money and recognition, but there's a real sense of pride in knowing that they couldn't 'run the ball' without you--even if they don't recognize that all the time. I like that feeling of a supportive role."
    If Rowan sees himself in that role, then his performance would surely rank as "All-Pro." In a town that lists nearly 1,500 guitarists in the union book, he is probably Nashville's busiest studio picker--only Local 257 knows for sure. But with an average of 620 sessions per year, it seems likely that his only real challenger is the great veteran Reggie Young.
    Rowan is also one of Nashville's tiny handful of players paid double union scale for sessions.

Among the dozens of artists he's helped "run the ball" are Alabama, the Oak Ridge Boys, T. Graham Brown, John Conlee, Lee Greenwood, Hank Williams, Jr., Dolly Parton, Reba McIntire, Conway Twitty, Dobie Gray, Sandi Patti, Mickey Gilley, and Glen Campbell.
     At one point in mid July 1986, Brent's multi-faceted guitar sound graced six of the top eight singles on Billboard's Hot Country charts. And even if you don't listen to country music, chances are you've heard him in the past year playing on the NBC theme or on jingles for 7-Up, Allstate Insurance, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Honda, Dr. Pepper, and Coca-Cola.

Do you feel like you have a recognizable style?
    I would hope not. You don't really want to interject style if you're working over 600 sessions a year, because the radio's going to start sounding the same. I may try to create a style for a particular artist I've worked with often--such as John Conlee--and then approach it from that angle every time I work with him. But what I do with T. Graham Brown might be totally different. In my opinion, the greatest compliment you can have as a studio player in this town is to have somebody you work for a good bit hear a record and not recognize it's you playing. That's letting them and yourself know that you're not growing stagnant. It just makes me feel great when someone says, "That doesn't sound like you." That means I've given somebody another angle to what I do--another approach to playing or another sound.

Where do you start on a song in the studio?
    The producer generally plays a cassette demo of the song from the publishing company. From there they tell you it's in the right direction or they want to try something different -- it's too aggressive, or it's not aggressive enough. By working with a particular producer often, you generally know playing approaches that have worked for him in the past, so you might go down a tried-and-true avenue first. The choice of the guitar depends on the timbre of the vocal and the attitude of the song.

How do you decide what you're going to play?
    The key to my job is interpretation of lyrics. We're trying to create moods that help songs sell. That's what we're doing with commercial music in the studio. If it's a slow or mourning kind of song, there are definitely ways to make the guitar sound sad. There are definitely ways to make it sound happy. You just have to interpret the lyric content and the mood that they're trying to convey. It's also important to treat each artist special. How is he singing? How is he phrasing? What register is he singing in? Which guitar will sound best? You can play the greatest guitar lick in the world, but if it's not appropriate to the song, it doesn't work. If they're leaning toward a guitar intro, my goal is to give them an intro that, either by sound or choice of notes or both, is instantly recognizable in the first two beats, so when it comes on the radio they'll know what song it is and turn it up. That's how players can help create hit sounds.

Are the decisions of what to play left up to you?
    Once in a while the producer will hear something in the control room and offer an opinion that he likes a certain sound or something, but 98% of the time the decisions are mine. I like to take chances. Babe Ruth struck out more times than any other player in history, but he also hit a lot of home runs. He swung the bat and took chances.

Does a producer let you know when you've pushed too far?
    Yes, but if I play something real far out the first time, and he backs me up, I'm still likely to end up further out than he would have let me progress on my own. If I'm in an overdub situation, I may just play some off-the-wall thing, and he'll say, "No, that's a little bit too wild." But then I'll pull it back in, and compared to what I just played, it will be real sane-sounding. But if I'd started off by asking, "What do you want?" he'd never have let me go that far.

Is there often more than one guitarist on session?
    There might be an acoustic player and an electric player, but you very, very rarely have two lead players working a session like Dean Parks and Larry Carlton used to do in Los Angeles. It's probably because of budgets, but a friend of mine thinks it's because the guitar is such a male ego instrument that two players couldn't get along with each other.

Do you approach a demo session any differently than you would a master session?
    Not at all. A guy told me once that he was surprised I was playing a certain lick on a demo session, because it sounded like a record lick to him. To me, if I didn't play that lick and stored it up or even wrote it out, it might take up so much of my memory and my musicality that I might miss three or four other things
waiting for the spot to use it. His point was that if you don't play that on the record somebody else will play that and get credit for it. These licks or musical ideas come from somewhere, and you have to play them. It's like a river that has no outlet -- no fish can live in it. You can't just store them up. The thought of sandbagging or waiting for the right situation never occurs to me. You can gain a lot more than you lose by going ahead and throwing it out there. Even though that was a demo, the guy knows he has a good demo. Two years from now he may be in control of RCA Records or MCA, and if he thought you were sandbagging... I just don't go for that. I believe in giving it everything you got -- swinging the bat.

Do you ever get to play an instrumental?
    Not really. A few years ago RCA did an album called Swingin' [RCA, CPL1-4953], which was instrumental versions of some of the current country hits. It had guys like David Briggs [keyboards], Shane Keister [keyboards], Eddie Bayers [drums], and James Stroud [drums] on it -- a lot of guys work for major dates. The closest we really come to that is on jingles. You're allowed quite a bit of latitude on those sessions.

Who were some guitarists that had a big impact on your playing?
    Most of the guys who influenced me I think of as orchestrators on the guitar. It's much beyond licks and more like a concept of playing. Some of my favorites might be different than some of the big ones you hear. Andrew Gold, who did a lot of early Linda Ronstadt records, was one of my favorites. Another guy I like is John Farrar, Olivia Newton-John's producer. He played guitar on most of her albums and wrote a lot of her hits. It wasn't so much the music, but what he chose to play to fit the music. Waddy Wachtel is a great rhythm guitarist. Obvious influences are all the L.A. studio guys like Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Steve Lukather, Jay Graydon, and Dean Parks. From Memphis there was Reggie Young and Steve Cropper. Jimmy Johnson from Muscle Shoals always played just enough to embellish the band. Clapton, Beck, and Hendrix were very important to me. I backed into all those guys because I didn't hear much pop or rock music until 10 years ago. That's why they're still fresh and exciting to me. I love Albert Lee and Mark Knopfler. Al McKay from Earth, Wind And Fire plays great rhythm. From New York there's Cornell Dupree, David Spinozza, and Eric Gale. There's a guy named Todd Sharp who played great on Christine McVie's solo album. Then there's Stevie Ray Vaughan, Billy Gibbons, and Chuck Berry. Eddie Van Halen is another great influence. I've used solos on country records that came from him, including "Busted" by John Conlee. It's a very basic form of what he's doing.

What do you mean when you say you like a guitarist who orchestrates?
    To me it means being an ensemble player and playing the exact right part for the song while fitting in with the rest of the band--making what you play become so important to the record that when somebody covers that tune, they have to play the same licks. Glen Frey and Joe Walsh were like that with the Eagles. When you hear a band cover "Witchy Woman" or "Tequlia Sunrise," they play those exact guitar licks. The guitar part becomes so important to the record that it wouldn't be the same song without it.

There are nearly 1,500 guitarists listed in the Nashville union book. How many of them are really working?
    I'd guess that five or six players are doing 70% of the charted work. But then you've got maybe 50 who are making a good living.

So there's still an "A" team?
    Yeah, but when you say that, it implies there's a "B" team somewhere, and that's not right. The "A" team in the past was just the busiest guys, and I have tons of respect for them and for all the players in this town.

How do you think Nashville stacks up against the L.A. and New York recording scenes?
    We are directly competing with New York and L.A. sound-wise and player-wise. I can't prove this but someone at the union office told me that there are more records being made in Nashville than anywhere else. The guys doing most of the session work here can play anything that you want at any time, in any kind of style. Part of what we're fighting is the image that the only thing that comes out of here are Mel Tillis and George Jones records. Country music has changed and broadened a lot. The more contemporary Christian things are some of the hipper stuff being done. Versatility comes into play here because you may have to do an Albert Lee or Ricky Skaggs-type tune on the same session that you have to do a ZZ Top or Larry Carlton kind of thing. Players have to be able to do anything because the album budgets are typically smaller, so there are fewer spots. You don't have one date to do just one track, like you might in L.A. In two sessions--six hours--you may have to do two to seven master-quality songs. It depends on the artist and the producer. For a guitar slot to be open on those things, you've got to be versatile. My record collection goes from Ricky Skaggs to Bryan Adams to Hendrix to Tina Turner to Timbuk 3. I need to be aware of everything, so if the producer says, "Make it sound like the new Pretenders album," I'll know what he means.

How have things changed since you started in the studios?
    It's become much more high-tech. When I started, very few people were using cartage. Half the drummers used the house sets. At one point, drums didn't move for 10 to 15 years. Most guitarists used house amps. When I moved here, it was just at the beginning of people using the Boss chorus to split guitars into stereo. The first guys started sending one line out to the amp and one direct. I never saw anybody using two amps before I did. Now it's all changed. We're competing with L.A., and we need to be able to pull off a sound that Steve Lukather or Michael Landau creates. The same equipment being used in L.A. is now being used here.

Do you ever get to play in live performing situations?
     I do some artist showcases (special performances for record executives and industry figures), and I was the house guitarist for Charlie Daniel's Volunteer Jam last year. It's neat to see an immediate response to the music, because I don't see that much. It's a way of releasing a lot of what gets built up by only playing sessions. You can play a lot more than you ever get to on a session. If you can get past the initial fear of losing the security that you have of being able to punch in and start going for it, you'll play stuff that you'd never play on records, because you'll never hear it again. On records you know that if it's a hit, you'll have to hear it every single time it's played. If you make a glitch that they decide to leave, it's gonna bug you every time.

Do you ever get feedback from the record-buying public?
    Once in a while someone will call from out of town and ask how I did such-and-such. That's always incredibly humbling to me because it's easy to think that nobody hears what you're doing. The director of national radio in Sweden called me once, and we did an over-the-phone radio thing. He was asking me about licks on fades I'd done three or four years before. I was freaking out. I actually could recall the things he was asking about because they were some of the things that I thought were pretty cool. I figured this guy was really in tune, or somebody was really settin' me up.

Have your practice habits changed since you've become such an in-demand player?
    I practice much more now and work harder than I ever did getting here. You think you work harder getting up the ladder to a certain point, but I invest much more time, energy, and money in striving to stay where I am. When you're coming up the ladder, you've got definite players to use as a barometer to let you know how you're doing. It's a lot harder progressing when you have fewer barometers around you. I definitely feel that you should always play the guitar like you're hungry--like your eating depends on what you're playing right now. That's what it's actually like when you start out, there's something fresh about playing on the edge. I know there's some kid out there staying up all night learning licks like I did when I first came here and wanted to play so bad. I don't want to relinquish what I've worked real hard to get. I just feel you've got to give it everything you've got, so when you lay your head on the pillow at night you know you've treated the world fair, and it's treated you fair, and you're even.
    When the time comes that what I do is no longer popular or I get too old, I'll still be playing guitar, because it's just something I have to do. It's nice that I can make a great living playing guitar, but that's not why I do it. I love playing so much that it's just like I'm a little kid in a big candy store--and they're paying me to play in the candy store.