I may have been the only woman to try to master a Kris Kristofferson song since Janis Joplin recorded “Me and Bobby McGee,” and I guess I pulled it off, at least according to Kris’s wife. Soon after that session, she called me and said, “I’ve only seen those blue eyes cry a few times and he cried when he heard your recording of this.” That, of course, made me cry.
Someone asked me why I connect so strongly to the older generation of artists like Merle, Loretta, and Kris, and I guess my answer is that, like them, I’m an old soul. I feel like they are an important part of my career and can help me move forward as a singer and songwriter. In turn, I think I may be part of their careers, too, in some way that reconnects them to my audience.
A quick comment about another song, “California Girls,” on that second album. Now I have nothing against Hollywood celebrities, but boy, they seem to be taking over the world these days, and that doesn’t leave much time or space for the rest of us. We’re not all movie stars or even need to be. The song is a response to all of those prefect size-zero female images we’re all assaulted with every time we turn on the TV or pick up People. When John and I were kicking around this idea, he asked what Hollywood celebrity I wouldn’t want Grace to be like when she grows up, and out came Paris Hilton. I don’t even know Paris Hilton, but she seems like one of those people who are just well known because everyone knows her. No offense, Ms. Hilton, and I’m sure you’re not the airhead all those late-night comedians say you are, but most women could never come close to having your life. And that’s a good thing. As I say in the song, “Ain’t you glad we ain’t all California girls?” And California boys, too.
“California Girls” is a great example of how the people who come to my concerts affect my work. Most fans don’t know it, but performers rely on them heavily for honest feedback. It’s part of the back-and-forth relationship that helps people like me grow and change. Fans tell me by their reaction when I’m doing things right and when I’m not. I started playing “California Girls” in concert for a year before we decided to include it on an album. The reason it made it on that CD was because the fans put it there. Their response told me I was on to something.
One especially memorable song on All Jacked Up that I didn’t write is “I Don’t Feel Like Loving You Today.” Grace helped me pick that one. We were riding together to the store one day and I popped in the demo to listen to it, and when it was over, Grace said, “Mommy, I really love that song.” Since I loved it, too, it was a no-brainer. It is a timeless, indescribably beautiful song, and I am so fortunate that it came my way.
There’s a “hidden” track on All Jacked Up that I’m especially proud of. It’s not really hidden, it’s just a final track that gets no mention in the album notes. It’s a Billie Holiday song called “Good Morning, Heartache.” What was I doing singing a Billie Holiday song, you might ask? It was something I wanted to do since I was a kid and first heard Billie Holiday sing in an old movie. There was so much passion and sorrow in her voice. Music, I realized very early in life, doesn’t discriminate. We all feel the same.
So we decided to record the song in one take, with no mixing or redubbing afterward, just like Billie Holiday might have recorded it. And we did just like I said when I introduce the song on the album: “Four players, one microphone, one voice, one take.” We all crowded around the one mike, the bow of the fiddle hit the opening note, and off we went. It was exhilarating. In fact, as I later told one reporter, it was one of the coolest experiences of my life.
That first rush of my career lasted a good eighteen months. A lot of the time, frankly, I didn’t know what I was doing. Other people—my managers, PR people, record executives, and the like—were telling me what to do. I just woke up after three hours of sleep and did it. By the time I attended and performed at my second Country Music Awards ceremony and received my second award—the first was the Horizon Award and the second was Female Vocalist of the Year—I felt like I had become a much different person in some ways than the girl who had walked into John Grady’s office with a slight chip on her shoulder. I was a touring pro, a media pro, and more confident than ever about my ability to write songs that were true to me.
I slowly began to see how the game was played and became more and more involved in the decisions that were determining my life. I became a better businesswoman and career strategist than I ever expected. If things go wrong from here on out, I can only blame myself.
That’s the career side. In a lot of other ways, I was unchanged. Despite all the exciting, mind-bending things that had happened in those eighteen whirlwind months, I was still a singer second and a mother and family girl first.
It was time to get back to the farm, or as we soon came to call it, “Camp GW.”
CHAPTER 10
CAMP GW
Some people look down on me
But I don’t give a rip
I’ll stand barefooted in my own front yard
with a baby on my hip
“Redneck Woman”
If you were to ask me what was the biggest change that I experienced after that first flush of success, I’d have to say this: For the first time in my life, I could breathe. Like a lot of people, I had spent most of my life up to that point holding my breath, waiting for something awful to upset my life once again. Living with my mother and stepfather as a kid, you never knew what was going to happen next. I always felt I had to be on guard and prepared for every unpredictable event that might occur, from a vicious family argument to packing up in the middle of the night and moving to Little Havana. And we all held our breath about money. There was never enough and a bill-collector or an irate client was liable to be pounding on the front door at any time.
The constant worry about money alone can smother you. It’s all you can think about. It’s every fight you have with your spouse; it’s every thought that goes through your head. Every time you look at your child, you’re tormented by the question, “How am I going to afford college?” It’s at the root of every medical crisis, since you probably don’t have any insurance. “How am I going to pay for this operation?” It’s getting someone out of jail after a DUI or a fight down at the bar. I can tell you, for a good part of my life, a thousand and one money worries were choking the hell out of me. I think they choke a lot of people, certainly a lot of people where I come from.
It’s a very good thing, being able to breathe freely. Now that I no longer had to worry about where the next rent payment was coming from, or what kind of bartending job I could find to make ends meet, I set out to build a home life in Nashville. I bought some land in the country about forty-five minutes from town. Charlie Daniels lives out in the same part of the country. Charlie is a well-known figure in these parts. In a little nearby town, Mount Juliet, he built and paid for a beautiful park for the community.
This God’s little acre—or a few of them—is really what I’ve always dreamed of in my heart. I’ve always wanted to have a piece of land that was similar to the land my grandma and grandpa lived on while I was growing up. I don’t have any raspberry or blackberry bushes—yet—but I have a whole lot more than they ever had. Compared to the flatland of Southern Illinois, this place is all rolling hills and green, lush foliage. I just wish my grandma was standing on the dock of my little fishing pond right now reeling in a catfish. I can see her pulling it out, walking over to the cleaning stand, gutting it, and getting it ready to fry up at the house tonight. She’d love every inch of this place. She’d think she was in heaven, which is exactly what I think, too.
The house is not all that big but it’s plenty big enough for me and Grace. When asked about my dream house, I usually say that I never want a house bigger than I can clean myself. First of all, I enjoy cleaning—it’s almost a form of meditation, and a great time to sing. I was cleaning the day Aunt Brenda heard me singing and got me my first karaoke gig. Secondly, I just don’t like the idea of other people coming in and cleaning up after me. That’s just not right. That’s not
the way I was raised. The family pitches in to help, but there’s no one around the house asking me if they can refresh my drink.
Then I asked the people closest to me—my blood family—to come join me in Tennessee. First my mom moved out and we got her her own place down the road. Then my brother, Josh, and his wife, Amy, moved out and took over a very important part of my business—handling all the merchandise with my name on it. Josh had his own masonry business—a high-stress job—and Amy was bartending and going to college when I called them up and asked them to come down and help out. I wasn’t sure they’d like it but they took to the road and to the job.
Merchandising is a big business—hats, jackets, T-shirts, tank tops, pictures, key chains, posters, the whole nine yards. Josh and Amy go on the road every time I go on the road and they do a terrific job of managing and marketing all of those goods. Like a few other moves I have made, I see involving Josh and Amy in my career as both a good business decision and a good family decision. They’re always close by. Josh and I spend more time together than we have in years.
And they keep an eye on all the bootleggers palming off shoddy crap with my name on it. They’ll scan the words “Redneck Revolution Tour”—the name of my current tour—on a thin T-shirt along with my face and hawk it for ten or fifteen bucks. People buy them not knowing the difference. When Josh and Amy catch them in the act, they’ll often say they were “authorized by the organization.” Josh and Amy come right back, “Well, that’s funny, because we are the organization!”
Then my Uncle Vern came out and is now living in his own trailer on the property while his own separate house gets built. I like having Vern around for a lot of reasons. I’m a single mom living alone in the country and being within shouting distance of Vern makes me feel secure. Plus, Vern can fix, repair, grow, or kill damn near anything. He’ll put together a homemade trap for the large, scary snapping turtles we have roaming around the pond, then fix up a batch of turtle soup for dinner. Since moving to the farm, we’ve been constantly working to improve it and make it a wonderful place to retreat to. That involves draining ponds, clearing brush, cutting trees, even reconfiguring the landscape—Vern’s in the middle of all that.
Next came my Aunt Vickie and her current husband, Uncle Dennis. Both of them had good jobs back in the St. Louis area—she was a steel welder, as I said, and he was a mechanical engineer and did design work in the sheet metal industry—but I guess the attraction of moving to the country and being near their “favorite niece” was just too strong for them. I’m sure glad they did. Dennis stepped right in and took over the administration of my fan club, another big job. He also handles any and all special projects that might come up, like putting together the photos for this book or maybe shooting documentary footage when we are on the road. If we had titles, his would be Special Projects Coordinator.
Vickie is a godsend. She pretty much takes care of the farm, the horses, and oversees darn near everything else. Horses are a big part of the life out here and Vickie is the chief wrangler. When one of our colts, Bandit, was born, Vickie was the only one here to help with the birth. She waited near the mare barn for weeks until the colt came, then called in our neighbors to help her with the birth.
We now have nine horses on our little version of the Ponderosa. Five are geldings, two are colts, one is a mare, and one is a pony. If you’re ever planning to buy a horse, especially a horse for your kid, don’t buy a pony. They are without a doubt the meanest, most ornery, most worthless pieces of crap on the face of the earth. They’ll chomp at you, kick at you, anything to drive you away. Ours just eats grass, keeps the mare company, and not much else. Of course no one told me about the personality of ponies before I decided to get my own.
Vickie and the others are riding the horses all the time, but because of those crazy couple of years traveling the world, I’m just getting the fever about now. It’s probably been fifteen years since I rode on a regular basis and of course, after the first few outings, I was sleeping with a warming pad between my legs. We now have a professional trainer who works both with the horses and with us to do things the right way. He’s not really a horse whisperer, though. He’s more like a horse shouter.
Vickie loves working with the horses and overseeing the whole farm, as does her son, Matt, who also moved out from Illinois to help with the family enterprise. It’s definitely a family affair—our own version of Walton Mountain—and it couldn’t feel more right to me. None of these people have ever done what they are doing right now, but we were all raised to be able to do whatever it takes to get things done, and the various jobs just kind of fell into place. Some of my family needed a new start; some just needed a new challenge or a change of scenery. They all came down and found their niche.
In her job of dealing with contractors, road-pavers, horse people, and the like, Vickie claims the work atmosphere in Tennessee is a lot different than Southern Illinois. It’s more “relaxed” here, meaning people often take longer and work slower, meaning we all have to adjust to a more leisurely pace. To me, that’s a plus. I’ve been in a hurry my whole damn life. Taking things a little slower is good exercise for me.
There’s a real advantage to working with your family, assuming you enjoy being together. As Matt has said, he can come out to the farm every day and every person he talks to he knows he can trust one hundred percent. And I feel the same way. I can call Vern, Matt, or Vickie with a problem and not have to deal with a stranger who may or may not be in the mood to rip me off.
Vern has another way of putting it. “Where we’re from,” he says, “there are a lot of deceiving sons of bitches. And that’s all they do. They don’t work. They just con you out of your money.”
Now surrounded by my family, I sometimes wonder how any of us made it to this point. Alcohol, drugs, and a terrible marriage could have easily ruined my mom, but she’s now in better shape than she’s ever been. Vickie’s had a hundred ups and downs. Given what he’s gone through, Vern should probably be dead, but he’s probably out fishing right now. For reasons I can’t quite explain—maybe just pure stubbornness—we all survived. We are a clan of survivors.
Living out on that farm is like a vacation for me. After being on the road, coming home to people I love and trust and have known all my life is incredibly relaxing. Life on the road is manic and to keep your sanity, you have to decompress. The people on the farm don’t move at my speed. I have to move at their speed and it’s good for me. It helps me to slow down, breathe deeper, and enjoy all that God has given me, both family and animals.
Of course, my Illinois kin bring some of their old life with them, especially Vern. Last Fourth of July, for instance, Vern decided to throw a little party at a place a ways from the farm, out on Chicken Road, where he was living at the time. People drove in from Illinois, pitched tents, and started partying. It went on for three days and rained the whole time. Everybody started calling it “Vernstock.” Even Big O showed up in his wheelchair and got stuck in the mud two or three times. A very good time was had by all, but no one died and everyone got back home safe, as far as I know.
I’m afraid another edition of Vernstock is coming to my farm this year and it has me a little worried. I got Vern to agree to invite only ten or so of his rowdy friends, keep them close to his trailer, and not let them scare the horses. Vern says they’ll just get up at dawn, fish all day, drink a little at night, sit around a fire, and tell jokes. Hell, assuming things don’t get out of hand on day one, I’ll probably even join them.
Since I found the farm, it’s been nothing but work-work-work-beer-work-work-beer-work. We’re all building houses—I’m building a guesthouse for the next relative that might decide they want to live up here—putting up new fences, laying new water pipes, and fourteen other projects. I hope to have a few cattle someday, for no other reason than we can saddle up the horses and get a workout wrangling those cows. Whatever’s going on, everyone’s part of it. I wake up in the morning, stand on my porch, and wa
tch Vern driving around on the tractor, cutting grass or clearing brush, and bitching at Matt. Or vice versa. Or watch Grace jumping up and down on her outdoor trampoline. Or walk down to the barn and see Vickie herding the colts into their exercise bin or turn and catch Josh reeling in a catfish at the pond, then toss him back to grow a little bigger. Another relaxing, balance-restoring day at Camp GW.
But that’s just half my life these days. The other half is the road. I’ve said that I really miss the farm when I’m on the road and really miss the road when I’m on the farm. They both have their occasional rough spots, of course, but they both provide a unique kind of satisfaction for me. If home is Camp GW, then I guess you have to call life on the road Bus GW.
Right in front of my eighteen-stall horse barn sits my touring bus, ready to roll when David Haskell, my tour manager and all-around taskmaster, gives the order. My bus is a bit cramped on the highway, especially when Grace or someone else is traveling with me. Sometimes I’ll invite another songwriter to ride with me so that we can use the isolation of the road to work. Then there’s always my dog, Gibson, a black baby Lab who flops all over everything.
I love to take Grace with me but it’s not always possible. I had special cabinets built to hold all of Grace’s toys and stuffed animals and games and everything else a six-year-old wants to have on the road. The bus has slide-outs so it’s a little more spacious for both of us when parked outside a venue in Omaha or Birmingham.
When it’s time to leave, I hop on my bus with my driver and meet all the rest of the buses at a designated spot so that we all leave together. We leave as a family. We all drive together. We all run together.
Redneck Woman Page 15
