From Rock to Country
by J.P. Pennington

As many Exile fans know, the group has had success in two completely different formats. We were strictly a rock band from our inception in 1963 and were lucky enough to gain national and international attention in 1978, when the song "Kiss You All Over" suddenly took us from an act that was primarily known regionally, to the band that did "that naughty song," making us a 15 year overnight sensation!

To this day, when I'm interviewed, the inevitable question is "Why the switch to Country Music?" In the next few paragraphs, I'll attempt to explain the reasons for the switch and the process by which we went about it.

"Kiss You All Over" was a huge, worldwide success by any standard. It sold over 6 million singles, spawned a multi-platinum album and took us to places in the world that we had only dreamt of seeing. We suddenly went from a band that only played shows within roughly 100 miles of our Kentucky homes to playing national tours. We were being stuffed on jets to appear on television shows all over Europe and other locales around the globe. Wide-eyed and green to that kind of success, it was impossible for us to think of what the future might hold. We just drank in the moment and tried to hang on to the huge wave that swept us up and took us for the ride of our lives!

We continued to release singles from the Mixed Emotions album, but couldn't seem to get the airplay that would sustain the momentum that "Kiss" had created. We recorded three subsequent albums on the Warner-Curb label, garnering success in many other countries, but it became a struggle, domestic-wise, to make ourselves be taken seriously as an act that had some "legs" in the business of pop music. Over this period of time, a few of our songs ended up being recorded by various country acts. The first one was a song that I wrote for the Mixed Emotions album called "Stay With Me." It ended up being a top five hit for a then-popular country group called Dave and Sugar. It was my first hit as a writer. Three more Exile-penned songs became country hits in the next few years. "Take Me Down" and "The Closer You Get," written by Mark Gray and me became hits for the white-hot band Alabama, and "It Ain't Easy Being Easy," written by Les Taylor, Mark Gray and Shawna Harrington was a huge hit for Janie Fricke. While having hits as writers provided some of us with improved financial conditions, it didn't really do much to help the band's struggles with an ever-shrinking radio audience.

Sometime during 1980, we had a meeting to look at our future as a pop band. We felt we had two choices: either call it quits or, by virtue of our success in country music as writers, to give it one more go and try to turn ourselves into a country act and look for a new record deal in Nashville. The latter was our choice. We left the road and took a "house gig" at a local bowling alley bar in Lexington, Kentucky called the Rebel Room. We figured by having a place to play 4 nights a week and rehearse during the day that it would allow us to more easily make the switch in formats. We played at the Rebel Room for about a year and then went to another bar across town, Breedings, while continuing to write "country" songs and play them in front of an audience. During our time at Breedings, our manger, Jim Morey, was seeking out Nashville people he thought might be interested in working with us. He introduced us to Buddy Killen, who was a successful country producer and publisher. Buddy was a big fan of "Kiss You All Over" and seemed to like our new songs and I believe, he was intrigued with the prospect of helping to turn a pop act into a successful country one. He owned a bar in Nashville called The Bullpen Lounge and set up 3 different label showcases over the next few months. We were passed on by every label in town, except for one - Epic Records. Epic's boss, Rick Blackburn, came to all 3 showcases and finally decided to give us a shot. We then took our new songs to Nashville and, under Buddy Killen's tutorship, recorded our first country album, simply entitled Exile. We released the first single, "The High Cost Of Leavin'" without much success. We were pretty down in the dumps over that and I guess some of us felt like all of the work we had put in on this project wasn't going to come to fruition. However, the second single, "Woke Up In Love," became an instant country smash. It was followed by a string of 7 straight number one's and some top fives. We ended up having 10 number one singles altogether in a run that lasted for quite a few years!

To me, the greatest satisfaction of the country success came with the fact that we were able to pull ourselves out of a huge, black hole and find a place for ourselves again by working hard and believing in something enough to almost will it to do well. We were extremely lucky, and I feel, that the time was right for such a group to be accepted by country radio and by country music fans.

That's the way it happened. Many small details and individuals were left out for the sake of literary economy, I suppose. Otherwise, I'd be up for a week trying to name names and remember everything that went into Exile becoming a country band.

A country band we remain. I hope you were somewhat enlightened.