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Too Something
It was my ninth time appearing in front of a Nashville executive to sing a few songs and try to snag a record deal. The first eight tryouts had led to stone-cold rejections. I didn't have the right look. My hair was dated. I wasn't a beauty queen. I was a little too old, too heavy, too rock and roll. Too something.My songwriter friend Kenny Alphin -- half of the well-known duo Big & Rich -- thought a lot of deal-making executives were used to new talent they could dress and mold. Maybe they took one look at me and thought, There's no way I can control that woman. On that count, at least, they were right.
This particular audition in 2003, when I was 30 years old, was in the office of the president of Sony Music Nashville, John Grady. The night before, when I learned the appointment was for 8 a.m., I went a little crazy.
I called my manager, Dale Morris. "Dale," I said, "eight in the morning is too early to sing. I can't do it. I'm a club singer. I've been singing at night my whole life!" Dale said, "Well, get up at six."
I said, "What?"
He said, "If you get up at six, eight will seem like ten. Then you can sing your heart out."
That morning, waiting to sing three songs for a man behind a desk, without a microphone, lights or amps, I was nervous. It's very hard to stand there and let someone judge whether you're worthy of a commercial career in 10 minutes. But in this business, it was something I had to do. And I knew one thing: They'd have to drag me out of there before I'd give up.
I've always been a fighter. Most of the people I knew growing up in rural Illinois struggled just like my family did. Outside of farming, there wasn't much of a local economy. If you weren't a pig farmer or corn farmer, you'd be down at a diner or truck stop flipping eggs, an auto mechanic working in a shop in your backyard or a bartender pouring drinks. The best you could hope for, if you wanted new horizons, was to latch onto a skill or career that could take you out of there.
That's how I viewed my singing. My mom, Christine, says I started carrying tunes when I was three. By the time I was four or five, Mom was setting up impromptu concerts at Kmart on Saturday afternoons. She'd find a blue-light special, plant me on a box and announce she had a treat in store. I'd belt out a Patsy Cline tune, and shoppers would go nuts. Mom was proud of me. Soon I was competing in talent shows.
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