As of this writing, Nashville songwriter (and Morgantown native) Kevin Major still hasn’t been excommunicated for “Sister Mary Margarita’s,” his comedic-take tune about an enterprising order of nuns who open a tequila bar to save their failing church.
People, though, do come up and shake his hand – even as they’re blinking tears – after hearing his song, “Broken,” which is about persevering, in the shadow of those life-calamities that can threaten to swamp it all.
And there’s his raucous, singalong about a certain WVU basketball player who wore No. 44 and wound up being the West, by God, logo of the NBA.
On Thursday, Major who grew up in Suncrest and graduated from Morgantown High School with the Class of 1985, is coming back for an evening at The Encore on Powell Avenue.
It didn’t take long for every ticket to be snagged for the show, billed as, “An Acoustic Evening of Songs and Stories,” at the Sabraton club.
“This is actually my first full show,” said Major, who does play out in Nashville.
He regularly performs his original material at the “songwriter’s rounds” that are a staple of those who practice the craft in the place populated by them.
“And it’s in my hometown, so I’m pretty excited,” he continued.
“It’s going to be mostly my original songs. I just want people to have a good time with the music.”
Rock ‘n’ roll, baby
That’s what got him into all this: He was 12 when he unwrapped a $50 acoustic guitar from J.C. Penney on Christmas morning.
Never mind that Disco was still upon the land.
The aspiring head-banger from Suncrest had pledged his sonic allegiance to AC/DC, the choogling three-chord, blues-rockers from Australia’s Outback.
All those Chuck Berry-infused solos from the band’s lead guitarist, Angus Young, in particular.
Major, by way of some very tender fingertips on his fretting hand, received his first music lesson that morning, as he recalled, with a chuckle.
“Do you know how hard it is to play AC/DC riffs on a $50 acoustic guitar from Penney’s? Pretty damned.”
He kept riffing, though. At MHS he and some buddies formed a band. And he lived for Gwen Rosenbluth’s English classes, where the teacher showed him just what a well-tempered sentence can do.
Major went to Brad Paisley’s turf for college. Paisley, a West Virginian who went on to mega-stardom in Music City, is a native of the Ohio Valley.
As a student at Wheeling Jesuit University, Major became a fixture at open mic nights, where he began a slow turn to country music and the idea of perhaps penning some tunes himself.
When he and his family relocated to Nashville 25 years ago, he decided then he was going to write songs and pitch them, too.
Jerry West (and other tales of Nashville)
Don’t look for Major, who is also in possession of an MBA, to quit his day job anytime soon.
He’s an assistant vice president and information technology professional with a major insurance company in Nashville.
“I’m never going to get rich doing this,” he said of his songwriting gig, “but it’s a good outlet. I love the music, but I mainly love telling stories.”
And Nashville, he said, has plenty of people setting plenty of stories to music.
You’ve got your cheating songs and your silly songs, he said.
And your tear-jerker songs, your love songs, the breakup ones and the boot-scooters, too.
Visit his “Kevin Major Music” channel on YouTube for a cross-section of what he does in the songwriting arena.
Major’s muse often says hello from the hills and hollows of his native Mountain State.
That’s how the song about that aforementioned basketball player from here – Jerry West – was born.
Major wrote the song, “Jerry Alan West” two years ago a tribute to the athlete, widely regarded as the best to play the sport.
He wrote the song with Paisley in mind, actually, he said – and he’d love to see it playing on the big screen at the Coliseum during Mountaineers basketball games.
It’s a “big song,” he said, with a throw-your-arm-over-your-buddy’s shoulder, chorus:
He was better than the rest
He was better than the best
So raise your voice and beat your chest
For Jerry Alan, Jerry Alan, Jerry Alan West
Major literally stopped in his tracks last week when he heard the news of West’s passing.
“I had been living with the song for a couple of years,” he said, “so it was pretty surrealistic to learn that Jerry West was gone.”
Before that, he had also pitched it WVU athletic officials, in hopes of it being used for marketing.
In the meantime, he had heard from sources that West, himself, had heard the song and liked it.
“That’s good enough for me.”
