A Second Chance: The Jeff Copley Story

When music is in your heart, the flame never truly burns out. In fact, the flame burned for Jeff Copley for nearly three decades after his music career “ended.”

Only about a month after his debut album hit shelves and after one video on CMT, Copley’s career came to a screeching halt when his record label, Polydor Records, abruptly closed its doors.

Oftentimes, that is where the story ends. But for Copley, it was just the end of a chapter.

Three decades (and several career paths) later, Copley’s album is available for fans, new and old, to enjoy, giving it a second chance to earn the recognition it deserved in the 1990s.

It’s giving Copley a second chance too, as he has plans to record new music and return to the stage more regularly in 2025.

Before delving too deep into chapter two, though, it’s important to look back to chapter one, page one, when a kid from West Virginia was falling in love with artists like Conway Twitty and Keith Whitley, and seeing several aspiring artists from his home area starting to make it big in the industry.

“One unique thing about where I grew up is that there are a lot of artists who made it big in country music. People all the way from Ricky Skaggs to Patty Loveless to Dwight Yoakam. They were all from what’s called the Country Music Highway; it’s US-23, and it eventually leads to Nashville,” says Copley. “I don’t know if it’s in the water, but this area has been really fruitful with artists, musicians and songwriters. It always helped me keep the dream alive and made me think that I could achieve my dreams.”

That dream began when Copley started performing in church, which eventually evolved into playing in a popular local band after high school.

“Like a lot of folks growing up in Appalachia, I got to sing for the first time in front of a crowd in church,” says Copley. “When I graduated high school, I joined a band of local guys from Louisa, Kentucky, and we started playing in festivals around the area. The band was called Desperado. We were building up a pretty good fanbase. We even had the chance to open up for Marty Stuart and Martina McBride in Luisa.”

Soon, it wasn’t only fans that were taking notice.

“I got invited to perform at a songwriter showcase in Paintsville, Kentucky. That night, there happened to be a gentleman named Donnie Canada in attendance. He was business partners with Harold Shedd, who was a legendary record producer and label president,” says Copley. “It was hard for me to believe that an actual music industry person came to hear me. Donnie ended up inviting me to Nashville and introducing me to Harold, and that led me to signing a recording contract and going into the studio.”

After securing a record deal with Polydor Records, Copley was able to sidestep many of the gatekeepers new artists have to face when they move to Music City.

“When I went to Nashville, I already had industry people in my circle of friends, and there were doors opened for me that normally could take years to open,” says Copley. “I bypassed a lot of the negative aspects of moving to Nashville, like not knowing who to trust. It was amazing coming from a small town to Nashville where I could pursue my dream. I could see that I had an honest-to-goodness shot at it. I could see it happening.”

Not only could he see it happening, he could hear it too, as his first single, “Evergreen,” from the album of the same name, began playing on country radio.

“I came back home for a weekend after we released the album. I knew ‘Evergreen’ was going to be the single,” says Copley. “A friend of mine and I had gone to get a load of hay for the horses. We were trying to absorb all of the music industry stuff that had happened and were wrapping our minds around the album being released and getting ready for all of the things that new artists have to prepare for. On the way to the barn, I heard ‘Evergreen’ for the first time driving down the road in an old ’65 Chevrolet cattle truck. It felt like it was out of a fairytale.”

The fairytale continued as Copley began to feel the momentum from “Evergreen.”

“The song was doing really well. There was a buzz in Nashville about me. The people at the record label were excited. So were the people at radio. It was getting really positive acclaim,” says Copley. “Radio was adding the music, and CMT was playing the video. They typically started new artists’ videos slowly and built them up over time. They started ‘Evergreen’ in medium rotation right off the bat. It blew our minds.”

Just as the train was picking up steam, though, it abruptly came off the tracks when Polydor Records closed its doors, leaving Copley without a label home.

“The record was out for about a month when we got the news that Polydor was closing its doors and going bankrupt. The majority of the artists on the label were brand new, but they had one established artist who had a hit record, which was Toby Keith,” says Copley. “When the label closed its doors, the parent company, Mercury, took Toby in. The rest of us were left to shop for a new deal.”

Though he did try to land a new record deal for a short time, he couldn’t find much traction, and quickly left Nashville to pursue other ventures.

“Getting one record deal is like winning the lottery. It’s so rare. I really didn’t get much encouragement from music industry people. I was told that because I had some exposure and released a record on a label that had gone under, there was a bad vibe. Nobody gave me any hope to stay,” says Copley. “I had been offered a position as a real estate agent with Century 21. It didn’t sound like a bad career, so I went and got my real estate degree and worked as an agent in Boyd County, Kentucky for a decade. Not long after that, I got a position as a property manager with a company that owned commercial real estate.”

All that time though, Copley admits to keeping his musical flame alive.

“I never completely gave up. The live shows were very few as I focused on living my best life and getting myself established,” says Copley. “I continued to write and play music, just not as often.”

People never forgot about “Evergreen” though, and a surprise call from former producer, Russ Zavitson, got the wheels in motion for country music fans having the opportunity to hear the full album.

“Twenty-seven years had gone by. Russ gave me a call one day and said that somebody had uploaded the ‘Evergreen’ video to YouTube and that it had 27,000 views. He thought we should reach out to Universal Recordings, who held the Polygram masters, to see if we could get it released,” says Copley. “He reached out to a guy he knew at the label. For thirty years prior to that, it was sitting in the archives, collecting dust on a shelf. Nobody could get it unless you went on eBay and found somebody who had a copy. Now, we’ve got the album released and it’s streaming everywhere.”

Getting Evergreen released has allowed Copley to put the constant “what if” question in the past as he looks toward the future for the first time in a long time.

“That question never left my mind for thirty years. It haunted me. I don’t think there was a day that went by where I didn’t think about it. I was wondering where I’d be now,” says Copley. “I told myself that everything happens when it’s supposed to happen. Maybe that wasn’t my time, but maybe now is my time. I have high hopes.”

With a positive response out of the gate, Copley is encouraged by how Evergreen is being received, all these years later.

“I’m so thankful. It confirms that we were on the right track,” says Copley. “We picked the best songs we could find. There were phenomenal musicians on the record and I had one of the best producers in the business. I’m really proud to have the album out there and to get this response all these years later.”

The album’s release has also allowed Copley to reconnect with old fans and friends who wondered what happened to him all those years ago.

“We didn’t have a way to communicate with people back then to let them know what happened. I would have loved to stay in closer contact with the fans, but it wasn’t available at the time. Now, I’m getting a chance to do that,” says Copley. “I’ve enjoyed meeting people again. I’ve been attending concerts, fairs and festivals this summer and doing meet and greets and telling people my story. The response has been really cool.”

Soon, though, Copley is looking forward to being on stage at those events.

“I have done very few shows in the last thirty years. I continued to play my piano and guitar, and I continued to sing and write lyrics, but I haven’t done too many performances. I know I’ll be able to step right back into it and take off,” says Copley. “When I go to some of these shows, it’s all I can do to just sit back and listen, because I want to be on stage so much. When you’re an artist, you know that you feel alive when you’re on stage connecting with people. It’s what you love and what you dream of.”

With plans to both take the stage and return to the studio in 2025, Copley is looking forward to his musical future more than he ever has.

“I’m looking forward to it now more than I was when I was 23, because I feel like I have a story to tell. And it’s a feel good story,” says Copley. “So many times you hear about somebody losing their record deal and it turns into a sad story. Thanks to the man upstairs, my story is a positive one, and I’m looking forward to sharing that with people.”