John Berry's Wildest Dreams Come True

John Berry readily admits that his music has come a long way. After all, it had nowhere to go but up after his first record 20 years ago. "I can't listen to it now," John says. "It's awful. I recorded it in the basement of my parents' house in a four-track studio. My first three or four albums were all these really bad songs that I wrote. It was just that acoustic-guitar-player- singer/songwriter kind of thing."

But now John feels Wildest Dreams, his new album on the Lyric Street Records label, is his best work yet.

"I love it. I think it's the most 'me' record I've ever done. I think I'll call it . . . 'Mini-Me,' " he says, slipping in a reference to the summer's hit movie Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. "I think it's a remarkable record. I'm thrilled with how it sounds. My producer, Mark Spiro, really raised the bar when it came to song selection. Wildest Dreams is very uplifting, fun and positive."

John's enthusiasm is sparked by his new single, "Power Windows," which was a Top 40 pop hit for Billy Falcon in 1991. "This is a fun song with a great message," he says. "And that's a hard combination to find."

The first single from that album, "Love is for Giving," failed to catch on at radio, but John admits that he stays out of the single-picking game. He leaves that to the record-company honchos.

"It's like asking somebody, 'Which one of your kids is your favorite?' " John says. "I'm not even involved in that. If they ask me, 'What do you think about this for a single?' I say, 'I don't.' I record the songs and I turn them in. I'm not good at choosing songs that are going to make the American public go 'Wow!' That's not in my job description -- to pick songs that are marketable."

John believes the sky is the limit for his new album.

"Other than going triple platinum," he says, smiling, "I hope that this album will re-introduce my music to people. It's been three years since Faces. I didn't think my career would last three years. So to have a three-year break is kind of scary."

Looking back, John compares those early days in the studio to now. "It's more expensive," he says. "But the process is still the same. You sing into a microphone, it goes through a board and then it goes on tape.

"That was the best thing about making all those independent records -- I learned the process. So when I came to Nashville and started recording, I knew what was going on. I didn't walk in the studio and go, 'Wow, what's that big mixing board for?' "

The longtime resident of Athens, Ga., recently moved to Nashville to be closer to the music business. His family's dream house is under construction.

"We just moved here," John says. "We're living in a hotel right now, so it's not that much fun. But we've been going out to our house, and it's progressing quickly. It'll be finished soon."

John's family -- wife Robin, daughter TaylorMarie, 9, and sons Sean Thomas, 5, and Caelan James, 4 -- was enthusiastic about the move.

"They always loved to come up here to visit while we were working," he says. "They're going to like it fine, because there's a lot of young families in the neighborhood. Taylor-Marie and Sean are in school. Our youngest is going to pre-school for a few days a week.

"TaylorMarie was really nervous about being the new kid in her class," John recalls. "She was home-schooled her first two years, and then in third grade she went to a private school in Athens. So she was really nervous on her first day of fourth grade.

"We were standing in the door of her classroom and as we were introducing ourselves I could see a group of girls in the classroom. When I said, 'This is my daughter, TaylorMarie,' a girl at the table overheard me. Taylor had been on the class roll all week. One of the girls turns to the other and says, 'It's her -- she's finally here!' She jumps out of her chair, runs over to her and says, 'Hi TaylorMarie. My name's Lauren.' She takes her hand and she was gone.

"We didn't see her again until school was out that day. The last time I saw her, she was just laughing and giggling. So it was just great.

"We couldn't have planned it to be better than that."

With a new album, new home and new life, the same might be said for John.

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