This is a hook I came up with based on all those old Robert Young (Marcus Welby, M.D.) television commercials where he would say "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV". It had several rough permutations ("I'm not a fool, but I play one when you wear that dress" and things along that line) before I settled on "I'm not a fool, I just play one on Jim Beam".
I was back in North Carolina at the time, and I was finishing up a writing session with Donald "Rome'" Wood on a song we had started in Nashville called "You Can Lead A Man To Water (But You Can't Push Him In)", which was about some people's seemingly uncontrollable urge to make sure that everyone they come across in life is "saved". I had met Rome' at one of Doak Turner's 3rd @ Three gatherings in Nashville. Doak introduced us since he knew we were both from North Carolina, and it turns out that we had lived only about 45 minutes away from each other. At the time Rome' was going by his radio name of Dave Stone, which is how I still think of him from time to time. He had a radio show in Fayetteville, North Carolina and a weekly segment he called "The Writers' Block" where he interviewed hit writers from Nashville and played the pre-hit demo recordings of their big songs. He had invited me on the show (in spite of the fact that I didn't have any big radio hits) on the strength of the song "My Dog Jesus" which he had heard me play at Doak's. As I recall, I played that song, "That's What I'm Talkin' About" and "I Recall My Daddy" on his show.
Anyway, after we finished up "You Can Lead A Man To Water", we had a little time left and I pitched the idea for "I'm Not A Fool" to Dave (that's who he was back then) and he thought it was worth writing. We tossed around a few ideas before he had to head back to Fayetteville.
I beat the song around a little bit, and had a workable chorus and a pretty good second verse by the time I talked to Dave again. I told him what I had and asked him when we could get together to finish it. He said "Are you sure you want to share it? Sounds like you've got most of it written." I told him that since we had started it together that I felt like we should consider it a co-write. We got back together and hammered away until we got it mostly nailed down. He told me that he hated the line "A cap comes off a bottle, and evil genie casts a spell". I told him "too bad".
I ended up cutting "I'm Not A Fool" for my "What's Not To Love About That?" CD. My producer Duane Sciacqua played some great Dobro parts on it, and my buddy Jose Primero (Joe First) added some tasty accordion. It's not a combination that you hear everyday, but I thought it worked real well.
Rome' still hates that "genie" line....
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