Artist Spotlight: Trueheart

Ross Vick III has distinguished himself in many areas.

His resume includes a 20-year stint in the toy industry, where he excelled at sales and marketing. His friends know him as a father of four, a husband, a historian, and a wine aficionado.

And in the world of AC Radio, we know him as the creative force behind TrueHeart, a band that is the rarest of gems -- a talented group of performers who make music exclusively for adult audiences.

Ross set a course for the AC chart at the suggestion of his producer, Gary Leach. “I had been toying around with the idea that `We're in Texas, and if you're from Texas everybody thinks you're country,’ so we did a lot of country-oriented music for a while,” explains Vick. “But when Gary listened to my writing and my approach to things and saw us live, he said, `I'm sorry, but you guys aren't folk, you're not country, and you're not pop or rock. You're adult contemporary. If there was ever a genre that you are, that's you.’

“When we talked about my influences -- radio station, music and otherwise -- he said, `You are what you eat, and you grew up on diet of AC Radio. That's what you are. That’s one of the things we are trying to get across to AC Radio right now. We're promoting and providing product directly to AC radio for AC Radio, and that's what sets us apart from most of the other artists who are on the AC chart right now.”

Road To Success

TrueHeart’s first AC single -- the title track to their current CD, “The Road” -- earned Vick and company a spot on the AC Top 30. Its success is especially gratifying to Vick, who wrote the song to help deal with his grief over the death of a young family friend.

“He was one of my son’s best friends. My wife and I were close friends of his parents. We vacationed together since the kids were in elementary school. He was diagnosed with osteosarcoma and fought it for around two years. It finally got the best of him.”

To pen the tune, Vick imagined himself in the shoes of an 18 or 19-year-old man and expressed how he might have dealt with the trauma of losing a friend. “When I was writing `The Road’ it was really me trying to let my son Ross know that you never know what’s around the next turn, so you better love the journey. Because you may never reach the end of the road.”

TrueHeart’s current AC single, “Plan For Peace,” came to Vick with natural ease.

"My fingers went to the fingerboard on my guitar and I played that opening riff. I started singing, the words and melody came out of my mouth, and I typed them into my word processing program as fast as I could. When it was done, it was done.

“That was absolutely a stream of consciousness. I have family and friends fighting overseas, and again, in the wake of our friend's passing, the idea of children dying in vain was very raw on my heart and in my mind."

The song serves as an outlet for Vick’s strongly held personal conviction that we have an obligation to improve the world around us. “It breaks my heart to see how much more we can do as individuals to ease the suffering of our neighbors around the world, and I just wish that someone might develop their own plan for peace and put it in motion. And if listening to that song gives someone the inspiration to take it upon themselves to do that, then I think I would have left the world better than I found it."

Internet Explorer

While Vick seeks a successful partnership with AC Radio, he’s open to other ways of exposing his music. Downloading songs on the internet comes to mind. “As an artist, I love it,” he explains. “It gives me an opportunity to circumvent the gate-keepers in the industry.

“If I can get people interested in my music by offering it for free on the internet, and that would inspire them to come see a live show or share that track by virtue of purchasing an iTunes download or by going to a local record store and picking up a CD, it’s really just part of the marketing effort. So yeah, I think it’s terrific.”

Downloading music is also easy on the wallet. “I have no problem paying 99 cents for a song. Although since I was a child, that price would have increased by 100%,” Vick explains with a laugh.

“I would suggest that the cost of a song is keeping up with inflation. When I was 12 or 13, and vinyl singles were all the rage, I would go out and pay 99 cents or maybe $1.29 for two tracks on a 45. And now I am buying one track for 99 cents. If you factor inflation in over since 1965 or 1970, I’d say it’s a helluva deal.”

A Family Affair

While in the toy business, Vick worked with family. He still does. His sister Karen Vick Cavazos and brother Patrick Vick appear on “The Road.” Singing together is something they have always done and enjoyed -- even though they put their musical dreams aside to work in the family’s toy-related business.

“We basically walked away from our musical interests to assure the success of that business. When we got back into it three years ago, it was the first time we had sung together in almost 20 years.”

Vick says the musical reunion was great. “It's always so much fun for me to sing with my siblings. We're probably the best living room vocalists you will ever hear. That's our environment and where we really shine. We've got a glass of wine or a tankard of beer in front of us, and we're just enjoying each other's vocal harmonies. I do most of the songwriting, so it's a real satisfying thing for me to create words and music that my siblings enjoy singing.”

Vick grew up in a household where he frequently heard Burt Bacharach songs and Broadway show tunes. But his fascination with music kicked into gear with the purchase of his first album: the soundtrack to “The Alamo” featuring the Marty Robbins tune “The Ballad of the Alamo.”

“I was a huge Alamo-phile and still am,” the seven-generation Texan confesses. “I remember watching the movie `The Alamo,’ and thinking it was the most heroic, and terrifying, and sad and magnificent thing I’d ever seen.

“`The Ballad of the Alamo’ isn’t in the movie, but it’s on the soundtrack, which Dmitri Tiomkin was the arranger and songwriter for. I would sit there for hours on end listening to it, and replaying the movie in my mind, looking at the artwork. It really made an impact in my life, and it’s one of the things that started my interest in music.”

Around The Dial

Vick’s musical interests grew as he began tuning in to what would become his favorite childhood radio station. "I grew up in a little town in East Texas called Lufkin. At that time, it had about 20,000 people and we had one AM station -- KRBA -- and we could do dedications. It was such a thrill for us -- 5th, 6th and 7th graders -- to call up and dedicate a song on that radio station.

“My recollection is that station played everything from Cole Porter to Porter Waggoner, from `Hey Jude’ to `Act Naturally.’ It was a real eclectic mix of music, and I grew up thinking that that's what radio should be. It should not be the same 16 artists rotated over the course of seven 24-hour periods.“

A watershed moment in America’s pop culture history also helped to set a young Ross Vick on his musical destiny. “I was 4 or 5 the first time the Beatles were on The Ed Sullivan Show,” he recalls. “I remember seeing that moment and saying, `That's what I want to do. Those men are doing what I want to do when I grow up.’ I'm 48, and I am waiting for that moment when I grow up so I can be just like them."

Vick took a big step in that direction when TrueHeart played the famed Cavern Club in Liverpool. "That was
awesome. There are two stages in the Cavern Club. There's the stage that everybody knows from the old pictures. Then there is the new bigger stage that has a lighted dance floor. We played on the bigger stage, but the cool thing is, that's where Paul McCartney did one of his concerts from. So we were in the same room.

“The Cavern Club that exists today is a facsimile of the original club, which was destroyed in order to put up a little shopping mall,” explains Vick. “But the club that exists today is exactly like the old one. It's the same dimensions and everything, and it is tiny. When you read all the stories about how the Beatles were packing 300 and 400 people in there, you wonder how in the world could they get that many people in a space that small.

“But it was a terrific experience, and we also played across the street at Lennon's. We loved it. It was like being on holy ground."

Road Signs

“The Road” was produced, arranged and engineered by the aforementioned Gary Leach, known for his work with LeAnn Rimes and others at Rosewood Studios. Leach also contributed keyboards, guitars and vocals to the album. Their connection was so deep that he and Vick co-wrote several of the songs on the CD.

"Gary is one of the great treasures in the music industry,” says Vick. “He is all about the artist. He is all about results. If he thought, at any time, that I wasn't being sincere in a vocal recording session, he would not have any trouble turning the track off and telling me to go outside for a few minutes and get myself back together. He knows quality when he hears it, and he's not going to settle for anything less. He wouldn't let me cut any corners.”

Vick is impressed with the results . “As a songwriter, there is nothing more rewarding for me than to hear somebody else's interpretation of my work. That is the highest compliment. That Gary could take what I offered him for `The Road’ and to turn it into a Top 25 track on AC Radio -- it was great, and it was delicious doing that."

Guilty Pleasures

As he does with his work, Vick takes his pleasure seriously. “My guiltiest pleasure is wine tasting. I didn't know anything about wine, and just thought that wine was wine. But I have discovered it through some friends and through a lot of time spent with my wife exploring the nuances of wine.

“And one of the things we are also doing as a promotional and marketing effort with TrueHeart is finding people who like the music and using our collective positive energy to connect with them on synergistic business ideas, like holding wine-tastings at our favorite bar so that when TrueHeart is on stage playing, you can come in and taste the 2002 Silver Oak Alexander Valley release. And then compare that to the 2005 and find out why they taste different.

“Wine tasting and enjoying alone time with my wife. We have a little farm out in east Texas that has been in our family since before the Civil War, and we grow pine trees on it. My wife has a green thumb, and we like to go out and plant trees and just be outdoors together. It's fantastic. Those are the greatest moments in my life. And then tasting the wine later that night. I believe in working hard and playing hard. Absolutely."