POSTED: 7:48 am CST December 17, 2006
UPDATED: 8:01 am CST December 17, 2006

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- If former Bee Gee Barry Gibb was looking for some inspiration for the country album he plans to record here, he couldn't have picked a more hallowed piece of ground to put down stakes.

Gibb bought and is restoring the lakefront house belonging to the late Johnny and June Carter Cash.

"It's going to be nice," Gibb said Wednesday during a reception in his honor by the performance rights organization BMI. "We'd like to use it as our second home. I would like to come here and write songs. I am planning on making a country album. That is really who I am."


Gibb, known for Bee Gees disco hits including "Staying Alive," said he and his two sons have about three completed songs and several others in the works.

"I am a country artist, always have been a country artist, and this is my chance to get some self-expression out because the group is no longer the group," he said. The Bee Gees disbanded after the 2003 death of his brother, Maurice.

And if Cash's old property doesn't stir his creativity, maybe Roy Orbison's will. Orbison, who died in 1988, lived right next door.

"Do you realize how many hit songs have been written in that 4- or 5-acre area, including Roy Orbison next door? The inspiration, being surrounded by the musical atmosphere that has been there for 35 years, we just had to do it."

Sometimes, Gibb says, he can sense Cash's spirit in the house.

"You feel like someone is watching," he said. "You feel like there is a presence in the house of both Johnny and June. I still haven't seen a tall man wearing black clothes yet, but I am very much into it and hope that I do."

Now that should be interesting

funkpill said:

i dont like country at all BUT one of my favorite bee gee songs just happens to be their only country song! called "rest your love on me"

this is the Andy Gibb Olivia Newton John version http://www.youtube.com/wa...msXmZEh70s

but the bee gees version is better

"I'm Barry effin' Gibb!"

CalhounSq said:

Mazerati said:

That's not their only country song.

CalhounSq said:

love that skit!

For a moment there, I thought it said, "Barry Gibb to cut hair..."

He did write Islands in the Stream, which was a pretty big country hit.

IrresistibleB1tch said:

The first time they did it, it was HILARIOUS!!! It'll never be that funny again, but I still love it