Debbie Moore: Trip Creates Idea For Song

Debbie Moore is a songwriter, singer and entertainer, so it would seem that something as simple as a road trip with her sister and duet partner, Carrie Moore, wouldn’t be much of a basis for a song. Debbie explained why that trip was so different when American Songwriter caught up with her for the story about her very first cut, the Mark Wills hit “Wish You Were Here.”

Debbie Moore is a songwriter, singer and entertainer, so it would seem that something as simple as a road trip with her sister and duet partner, Carrie Moore, wouldn’t be much of a basis for a song. Debbie explained why that trip was so different when American Songwriter caught up with her for the story about her very first cut, the Mark Wills hit “Wish You Were Here.”

“I was driving home one night, thinking about a trip that my sister and I were getting ready to take, to entertain the troops in Korea and Japan,” Debbie says. “It was our first international flight and I wasn’t looking forward to it. We were going to be out of the country for three weeks. I started tinking about loved ones and hoping everyone would be safe while we were gone, including us.

“Then, I thought about how it would be to send a postcard and then not come back. Morbid thoughts, I know, but I think whenever you say goodbye to someone, you always think about when you’ll see them again.

“So, I started thinking about a ‘postcard from heaven.’ When the idea hit me, I literally go chills. I told Carrie about it, and she got chills too. I knew I had to write the song with someone who could take this very delicate subject and work miracles with it.”

Debbie thought that Skip Ewing could be that person, and it just happened that Carrie had worked at his booking agency. She called Skip’s manager to set up a meeting.

“It took three months to get the meeting,” Debbie recalls. “I had just returned from that trip to Asia. I met them at the Pancake Pantry in Nashville. I was so nervous. I told him about the idea. There was silence. I told Skip that I had also mentioned the idea to Bill Anderson. He looked at me and said, “I’m writing with Bill this morning. Why don’t you come over and we’ll see what happens.’ I had no idea he was writing with Bill that morning! The stars lined up for us that day.”

Debbie and Skip went to the Acuff-Rose offices and worked all day on “Wish You Were Here.” They put finishing touches on it the next day, Skip did a demo, and within a month Carson Chamberlain had put it on hold at Mercury.

Months later the writers heard that Mark Wills had recorded the song, then it was going to be the album title, and finally that it was going to be a single.

The album was released in May ’98 and the single in January ’99. It went to number one on all three country charts in April ’99, almost three years to the month that Debbie and Skip met at the Pancake Pantry.

“That just goes to show you how patient you have to be in this business,” Debbie acknowledges.

She started writing songs when she was a teenager, but in the last four years she really began concentrating on her songwriting, attending songwriter workshops and camps as well as reading books on the subject. “I’ve learned a lot from that, and from co-writing. Because of the success of “Wish You Were Here,” I’ve had the opportunity to write with some great songwriters, and I’m very thankful for that.”

Debbie says she doesn’t know what to tell other songwriters. “I really didn’t have a plan. I moved to Nashville in 1984 to be a country singer. I still pursue that dream on a daily basis and still work the road a lot.

“I would say never give up. Get to know as many people as you can. Work on your dream every day. As the saying goes, ‘Do what you love and the money will follow’. I really believe that.

I’ve also read that when Hank Williams wrote ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” he wasn’t thinking about royalties, his guts were aching. So, I think you have to live it, feel it and get it on paper!”