He hitch hiked nine round trips on what he called the Tennessee Texas Turn Around, almost 18,000 miles chasing the American Dream. It started in February 1982 from small town Friendswood Texas to the Country Music Mecca called Music Row, Nashville Tenn. Driving his 1981 Jeep Scrambler pulling a small U-Haul trailer at a time when you could simply blow in to town and within 2-3 days land a rental place set up your share of utilities with room mates you didn't know. A few months went by and Mears knew he couldn't make the Jeep note so he drove it back home, handed the keys to the Bank, caught a one way bus ticket to Beaumont where he caught a free ride back to Nashville. Mears was able to find room mates at 1010 18th Ave. South and all shared the hopes and dreams of fame and fortune. In 1984 he got a job cleaning out and helping refurbish an old Victorian house at 1109 17th Ave. South.
Bob Doyle who worked at ASCAP at the time was the new owner of the building and Mears convinced Doyle to let him live there and watch security at night. Doyle agreed and this is where he would survive the coldest winter in Nashville's history. In January of 1985 the wind chill got down to 37 below zero and Mears' weight dropped to 147 pounds, eating once a day. There were piles of asbestos insulation and several dead frozen pigeons throughout the building. Mears had a space heater and a quilt his Memaw made him to stay warm. One night the quilt caught fire and Mears put it out leaving a good sized burn hole in it. Weeks later Mears shot a burglar who had broken into the next door neighbor's home. This man had been involved in 2-3 murders and had a lengthy rap sheet. Mears said later “I couldn't afford to lose my guitars or my coffee pot.” When Spring finally came, he got a job at the old Post Office Downtown working nights as a Mail Handler. He walked to and from Music Row and the Post Office down town.
The gig at the vacant house played out and Mears got a third rental on Music Row. An upstairs flat in a turn of the century house at the corner of 18th and Division where he lived the next three years. About a year later Bob Doyle called with the news he'd gotten a major artist major label cut on a song called Always Have Always Will Mears had written in the summer of 1983. Long story short it became the first single off Janie Fricke's album “Black & White” produced by the legendary songwriter/producer Norro Wilson. On October 4, 1986 the single and album both went to number one the same week. Mears had accomplished the task he set out to do. Not only did his song top both Single and Album charts, Mears was the recipient of the Rising Star Award at the 1987 televised 7th Annual Songwriters Awards Show. As well as ASCAP's writer and publisher awards for “Among The Most Performed Country Songs In 1986”. Finally, at the 1986 televised Academy Of Country Music Awards Show, (televised in 1987) Always Have Always Will was CBS Records nominee for Single Record of The Year. Not bad going from living in a vacant house to standing on stage in front of a few million television viewers in a year and a half. And not bad for a songwriter who never had a publisher support him.
In 1988 Mears left Nashville for Austin where he put a band together called The Texicans. They played South by Soutwest in 1989 and 1990. At the 1989 Aqua-Fest in Austin and with only 3 gigs under their belt, The Texicans took the Country Stage in front of a crowd of thousand or so. Chuck Berry, The Original Rock and Roller Songwriter was on the main stage. Mears recounted, “I was nervous as heck with only three gigs so far, worried I was gonna mess up and in between my songs I heard Chuck Berry singing HIS songs. Songs that laid the blueprint of all Rock and Roll. I couldn't believe it!”
Then in 1993 back in Nashville, Warner Brothers Records gave Mears a demo budget, so with longtime friend Roger Brown (Menard Texas) producing, they cut several sides. The record label turned down the project and Mears had had enough. The band broke up, the IRS was hounding him for unpaid taxes so he went back to Texas, found work in the Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice System as a Correctional Officer including one day of training on Texas' Death Row. Leaving this profession, he spent the next 25 or so years in warehousing and distribution. But he never stopped writing. Never stopped believing and never gave up. Which brings us to today. Mears and Brown have come together again to release these first 14 songs covering a distant 30 plus years of writing alone and away from the music world. And it shows.