If you want to know why Underdog was written, all you have to do is go back to the year 2010. It was the worst year of my life, but you wouldn’t have guessed it from the first couple of months. I started off the year with an award-winning and established touring act hot off two big Top 20 singles. We had been named the opening act for the biggest tour in the US(Tim McGraw and Lady Antebellum), and my son was just turning 6 months and had cleared his bouts with colic. The record label I was on at the time had heard some new songs that I’d just written, and the head of A&R told me that they were some of the best songs that they’d heard from me. The songs were about all of the things that I’m proud of: my family, friends, this country, God, and all the people that keep those things at the forefront of our lives.

I told my wife Maria that this was going to be the year everything finally came together for us. She’d been with me since I was just a guy with some songs, no record deal, nothing. I asked her to marry me with not a whole lot in my bank account, just the promise of a love that would always be hers. We’d always promised ourselves not to get too excited about things, but all signs pointed to a massive year. Everything was rosier than it had ever been. And if I could talk to that guy who sauntered onto an airplane to go to that first McGraw show, the one with the swagger and head in the clouds, I’d just tell him these words. Things change.

Fast-forward three months. My main collaborator in The Lost Trailers decides to quit to pursue a solo deal.

Initiate tailspin.

Then came the phonecalls, first from people who were now representing my new singer’s entity:
“You’re not gonna keep The Lost Trailers going are you?” Which was a pretty ballsy thing to say to me, seeing that when I started The Lost Trailers over 10 years ago, it was nothing but me, my guitar, some songs, and a love for country music. If you listen to “The Story of the New Age Cowboy”, the first Lost Trailers record, that’s pretty clear.

Then the economic realities came, touring income- decimated, money flow-gone.

Before a third of the year was over, so were many of the dreams that I’d worked my whole professional life for, at least that’s the way I felt at the time. I remember distinctly walking like a zombie into Tom Douglass’s songwriting room for a session as my career was imploding, and he asked me what I wanted to write, and I took out my guitar, and sang, “It don’t take long, to go from good to gone.” And he looked at me and said, “First off, I want to write this song with you, I can tell how real this is to you. But, are you OK?” I felt a little better after writing that song, but when I went home I had a pair of cute blue eyes looking back at me from my one-year-old, and my 2-year-old little girl ran up to me and wanted to play. And in that moment, all I could think of was “How am I gonna feed these kids?”, which was a far cry from the conversations that my wife and I had earlier in the year when we were talking about starting to set up college savings accounts since things were going so swimmingly. Now it was flooding. Literally.

My friend Drew Alexander had invited me and Maria to dinner, and I was looking forward to just one night where I didn’t have to confront the stark realities of my new life. As we got into the car, it started raining. Drew called me, “Man, looking pretty bad out there, you sure you guys can make it down?” I said, “Drew, we’re definitely coming, a cold beer and time by the grill sounds like exactly what I need.” So we headed out. I didn’t think anything about the traffic on I-24, and when I entered the freeway from the ramp I was oblivious to what was going on. Luckily, I saw a Camry backing up the opposite direction on the shoulder of the road, and I saw a look of real fear in the driver’s eyes. Without thinking, I immediately hit my hazards and started backing up on the shoulder of the road right behind the car. My wife started saying, “What are you doing? This is illegal!” and my little girl noted the concern in my wife’s voice, and started crying, and then my little boy started howling, too. When I got back up the entrance ramp, I drove across the overpass and looked at a scene I’ll never forget. Water covered the entire I-24 section I was just on. Cars were already up to their door-handles in water. We could have washed away with them. It was the Nashville flood of 2010.

I never made it to that dinner. I never made it out to a lot of places after that. Nashville was flooded, there was oil gushing thousands of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf, the stock market was getting drilled, unemployment was the highest it had ever been, and generally everything you heard on the news was pretty bad. Add to that everything that was going on in my professional life, and I freaked. I told my wife that I was going down to Atlanta to see a friend. This was a lie by omission. I was going to see my old boss from 10 years ago. While he is a friend, I was going there for a reason, and it wasn’t to hang out and catch up on old times, it was a hail-Mary to secure some sort of an income. As I drove into that parking lot, and sat in the waiting room to go back to his office, I had this strange sensation as if part of me was outside myself, looking down at me going, “NOOOO!!! Don’t do it!”. But my boss came out, and probably before he’d gotten out his first word, I said, “Is there anyway I can get my old job back?”

Shock.

Since I’d worked there I’d been discovered by Willie Nelson, been in one of the most played new acts on country radio(and in the Atlanta area, which was where the job was, my song “Holler Back” had been an anthem that had been staple on the airwaves for the last 2 years). In the past year, my boss had seen me on the ACM’s, the CMA’s, and on other awards shows. He was confused. Why was I here? What happened?

I let him know what was going on, and basically told him that I needed to feed my kids and I would take whatever job he had.

He got very quiet. Then he looked me in the eyes and said this.

“I will help you. But you’ve got to make sure you’re doing the right thing. We’ve all been very proud of you watching what you have done in country music. And I know that you love it, and that you’re trying to figure out your next move. But consider this. You might not be done. If you are, I’ll try to find a place for you.”

I didn’t know what to say. I got a glimpse of the picture of a little dollhouse that was behind him. He caught my eye wandering to the house and he smiled.

He said, “Oh, that’s a new dollhouse I made. Would you like to take a closer look?”

We got up, and I looked very closely at the picture. It was one of the most beautiful dollhouses I’d ever seen. I couldn’t help but think, in the midst of all this, how much my daughter would love that.

“Would you like me to make one for your kids?”

I almost lost it then. 4 months ago I could have said, “Hell yes! And I’ll pay whatever you want for it!” But now, I just said, “Oh, man, well its fantastic, but I can’t really afford that right now.”

He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You’re good for it. Lemme make one for your daughter. When’s her birthday?”

I said, “September 20th.”

He said, “It will be ready by her birthday next year, September 2011.”

We talked some more, and then I left. As I hit the freeway I thought to myself. OK, I didn’t really secure a job, I still don’t know what to do, and now I’ve got to pay for this elaborate dollhouse. It was then that I did what I should have done so many years before. I pulled to the side of the road, turned off the car, and bowed over the steering wheel, and audibly whispered, “Lord, please take over. I don’t know what I’m doing. Please save me, and lead me to what you want me to do. And please help me find a way to pay for that dollhouse.”

I want to proceed this statement by saying that I am not a Holy Roller, I’m just a simple guy who believes in Jesus Christ, and that God is in control. In the past I’ve acted like I was in control. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am not, especially after what happened next. At that time, I had no income, no one to make music with, and no real immediate future as an artist or even as a songwriter.

Then, within days, I got a call from EMI Publishing Nashville, the new President Ben Vaughn. He called me to say that he wanted to talk with me when I got back to Nashville. When we talked, he told me that even though EMI didn’t really have to(which they didn’t), they were going to change my deal from a record based deal to a songwriter deal, which would afford me a yearly salary. He said that he believed in me, and also that I’d been doing a great job with The Lost Trailers, and that I’d be making a mistake to turn my back on everything that the LT’s have done over the years. I was in a transition, and just needed to take some time to be creative and things would work its way out.

Within a month, I received a check in the mail from my involvement in co-writing the song “Different Kind of Fine” on Zac Brown’s record The Foundation. That was a major lifeline at the time, and I’ll always be grateful to Zac and Wyatt for letting me be a part of that amazing record. Within 2 months I received a call asking if Garth Brooks and Lifetime could use some of my old LT copyrights on his movie “Unanswered Prayers”. Shortly after that, two amazing artists, a duo from Texas, Lighter Ray, and a singer/songwriter from my neck of the woods in Georgia, Corbette Jackson, asked for my services as a producer/manager. And then, a crucial piece fell into place, a songwriting session with a fantastic vocalist who had recently come to Nashville from Lubbock, TX, named Jason Wyatt. Laura Wright, who set this session up, basically changed both of Jour lives by seeing that we would be a good team. We immediately struck up a friendship, and after 2 months he became my main collaborator in The Lost Trailers.

And finally, I finished “Underdog”. I started off writing the chorus months before on tour in Saskatoon, Canada, in a tiny and unassuming hotel room when I was in the midst of all of the changes. I felt at that time that I was up against insurmountable odds. There were two things that happened that day that really affected me.

Number one, I got an email from my sister-in-law with pictures of my nephew Jake. As I saw the pictures of this happy and healthy one year old, I couldn’t help but go back to the days right after his birth. He was two months premature and my brother and sister-in-law spent countless hours in the NICU. They were scared, stressed, and sleep deprived for months, and seeing this picture of that healthy baby boy a year later put things in perspective for me.

The second was a memory of my family watching the Sugar Bowl, a long time ago. I forget now who was playing in the game, but I remember my Mom in her chair watching the kickoff. And I said, “Mom, who are you going for?” And she looked at me, smiled, and said, “I root for the underdog.”

That memory stopped me, and in the midst of the toughest times in my life, I got out some hotel stationary and started jotting out these words, and what ended up was more than a song, but it’s my statement on life.

I believe in the underdog,
Who chases dreams and breaks down walls,
The shy kid who gets the prom queen,
Who’s never been the star of anything.
And those two lovers hitched at city hall,
They got each other, so they got it all,
Call me a dreamer, say I’m a little naïve,
Oh, But I believe in the underdog.

I continued working on the song with David Lee Murphy, one of my favorite writers, and put the finishing touches on it with Jason Sever, a fantastic singer in town, and finally my buddy Harrison Tobin. Then Jason Wyatt brought the song to life with one of the most heartfelt and sincere vocals I’ve ever heard.

And yes, I bought the doll house. I picked it up from my old boss and gave it to my daughter on her birthday, September 20th, the day that Underdog was released as a single to country stations everywhere.

I just wanted you to know where this music comes from. The fact that you are reading this right now is a miracle in itself, because I know how close things came to this not happening. This song is a sign that God can come down and change a man’s life in the blink of an eye. I’m living proof, and quite frankly, I’m just blessed to be a part of this great cause called Country Music. Hope you like it.

Best,

Stokes Nielson

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