From This Moment On

by Shania Twain

  Well, in order to do that without the playing and singing suffering, you have to know your parts so well that the music becomes an extension of yourself—but without sounding as though you’re on automatic pilot. One aspect of playing live that people don’t always appreciate is the physicality it demands. Ever try scooting around a stage while wielding an electric guitar or bass? By the time you’re midway through a set, it can feel as if someone strapped an anchor around your shoulders using battleship chains. Musicians need to be up to the task physically as well as mentally. And the only way to do that is to rehearse repeatedly until you build up those calluses on your fingers and commit every movement to muscle memory, just like an athlete. Also, if you’re going to develop the onstage telepathy that characterizes any great performing unit, there is no substitute for practice, practice, practice. How else do you think musicians learn to play together with genuine precision? Jamming is great, and there is a lot to be said about feeling your way through a song, but lots of times this can be sloppy as well. Although it may be amusing to them, musicians who just make it up as they go along can make for painful listening. Jamming can be like a private joke: the only ones enjoying it are the ones who can make sense of what’s being said/played. My personal feeling is that if you have your chops up to scratch and know exactly where you are going with your part, then you have true liberty to ad lib without crashing into anyone else.

  We drilled the approximately twenty-song set for weeks on end in the gym at Loon Echo, until we were all exhausted and about as perfect as you could get. Marc Muller, our extraordinary pedal steel guitarist, worried aloud that all this rehearsing might dull everyone’s spontaneity. “I honestly think we’re ready,” he said.

  “Not yet,” I replied. Everyone looked up. “When you can do cartwheels while singing and playing at the same time, then we’re ready.” I might have said this with a half smile, as I never did ask any of my band members to cartwheel while performing, but I was serious. By the time we wrapped up dress rehearsals, with lighting, full sound—the whole shebang—here’s how tight we were: the versatile Hardy Hemphill could play guitar or piano and sing while knocking off one of his beloved crossword puzzles in ink. One time during a run-through, violinist Allison Cornell wandered over to Hardy’s side of the stage, looked over his shoulder, and yelled over the gale of sound, “Six down: deceased!” without missing a note. They both doubled over with laughter at the realization of how far we had come as a band.

  Was it overkill? Maybe. I know that most of the musicians thought so. But I’d always been big on aiming for excellence and shooting for the best performance possible, and I couldn’t hold a candle to Mutt in the department of getting things spot on. Anyone working with the two of us was going to be involved in the quest for perfection. I believe it all paid off. Our very first show was on May 29, 1998, at the 4,600-seat Sudbury Community Arena in my old hometown. It was surreal being back in Sudbury, where I spent some of my childhood career in clubs and talent shows, to now be preparing for my international concert tour as a bona fide recording artist. My parents were missing the before and after of Eilleen Twain, but they were there with me in spirit on that rehearsal stage, as if I were in a time warp. So much had changed, yet I still felt so close to the small-town Northern girl I had always been.

  Jon Landau came backstage and remarked, “Wow! You guys sounded like you’ve already been on tour for three months, not just one day.” That was high praise coming from someone who had stood in the wings for probably hundreds of shows by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, widely regarded as one of the greatest live outfits ever to grace a stage.

  Even with all that rehearsing, I had to get used to singing while being in perpetual motion from trying to command such a vast stage. In most of the little clubs I used to play, there was no need to move about, seeing as how there wasn’t any room. Truthfully, I was never entirely satisfied with my vocals, but I came to realize that unless I stood still, I just wasn’t going to give a studio-level performance. Onstage, it was more important to me to touch as many members of the audience as possible, whether shaking hands, signing autographs, or simply making eye contact while singing. My only goal was to leave the fans who came to my show satisfied that their hard-earned money had been well spent.

  The set list was rapidly filling up with hits. Come On Over’s first two singles, “Love Gets Me Every Time” and “Don’t Be Stupid (You Know I Love You),” reached number one and number six, respectively, on the Hot Country Songs chart. Oddly enough, the tenderhearted love song “You’re Still the One,” a personal favorite of mine, started slowly upon its release at the beginning of 1998. The first week in May, shortly before the tour kicked off, the single finally nicked the number one spot, then fell back. But “You’re Still the One” would spend the next two months at number two on the Hot 100, giving me my first Top 10 pop hit. It also was my first record to receive airplay on adult contemporary radio, staying at number one for most of the summer. Although the song has country elements of warm, acoustic strumming, the verses are dominated by piano, while a smoldering organ, my least favorite instrument, stands out as the most prominent sound on the choruses. The music, I believe, transcended genres, and the universal message of the lyrics gave it broad crossover appeal. For sure, “You’re Still the One” stood as a career landmark for me.

  My two years of promoting The Woman in Me taught me what I did and did not like about being on the road. Above all else, I craved personal space and control; a measure of consistency, too, would help to preserve my sanity. So this time around, I traveled mostly by bus, with as little flying as possible. To me, living out of the bus was preferable to staying in hotels, because it allowed me to keep my clothes folded in drawers and not in a suitcase. It was my home on wheels. It cost me $1 million to buy my road home. It was worth it.

  Two familiar faces from Timmins accompanied me: Larry and Helene Bolduc, my ex-boyfriend Paul’s father and mother. They’d always been like adoptive parents to me, and even though Paul and I had broken up five years before, we’d remained close. Larry, who’d driven transport truck for more than twenty years for Sears, was my bus driver, and Helene filled in as my personal assistant, as Kim had two young children and needed to be home working in the upstate New York office.

  One other benefit of traveling by bus was that we could hit the road immediately after the show, giving us an hour’s head start on the trip to the next destination. As soon as the encore ended and the houselights came up, I was hustled offstage and ushered into a waiting car for a police escort to the bus, which was parked just off the nearest highway—usually a few minutes outside of town. The bus was too big to maneuver easily through traffic, so taking the car instead enabled us to get out of there just ahead of the concertgoers.

  Nevertheless, the driver had to move quickly before we got caught up in the congestion like a fly in honey, or we’d be marooned for an hour, along with everyone else. Larry would swerve around other cars, braking suddenly, turning sharply, while I bounced around in the backseat. It reminded me of a car chase scene from The Dukes of Hazzard.

  The whole time, Helene or my sister Carrie would be trying to help me wriggle out of my shirt. For this tour, we’d arranged for me to end each show wearing a local sports jersey, which I’d then autograph and give to the promoter to auction off for charity. However, I couldn’t take the shirt off without first removing the battery pack to the inner-ear monitors that I wore in order to hear myself onstage. We’d duct tape the battery pack to the back of my bra, so that it stayed hidden under my long hair; a wire then ran up between my shoulder blades and connected to a pair of budlike earpieces. After a show, my hair was usually damp with sweat, and the wire would often get all tangled up in it. So as we’re sliding around the backseat, Helene or Carrie is trying to carefully take off this gear without yanking out my hair or tearing off some skin—sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. I’d be cursing and ouching until I was finally freed. I must have lo
oked like Houdini trying to escape from a strait- jacket.

  As soon as I climbed on the bus, I headed for my bedroom compartment, where Tim waited for me on my bed. I’d brought him along in order to help stave off the loneliness of the road and also to provide security.

  Tim was a proud, classically handsome German shepherd with the typical golden tan coloring with black markings, large, imposing head, and long, pointy ears. He’d received two years of intensive Schutzhund training in Austria, personal protection schooling. Schutzhund simply means “protection dog” in German, and German shepherds are but one of a number of breeds to compete for and win a Schutzhund title. Tim stuck with me everywhere I went. He slept beside my bed, followed me to the bathroom door, and, in short, never let me out of his sight, no matter what.

  In fact, when I first got Tim, I didn’t realize how seriously he took his “job” until we were on a video shoot together and he was so insistent on staying near me that he kept barging his way into the frame. Finally, I took a heavy leather lead and tied him outside my wardrobe trailer in the shade, gave him some water, and returned to the set. Maybe ten minutes later, a panicked Tim came darting onto the set, ruining a scene. He’d chewed completely through the leash. I learned my lesson, and from then on made sure to tie him up close by so that he could at least see me and hear my voice at all times. That kept him calm. Still, taking no chances, I replaced the leather lead with a metal chain. He came close to gnawing his way through that on several occasions.

  I loved Tim, and we shared the tour bus for the entire eighteen-month tour. The crowd noise and pyrotechnics of the show would have been too much for him, so while I performed, he waited patiently on the bus, lying on my bed. I tried taking him to sound checks at the beginning of the tour, but the pyro tests with the rifle-like concussive sound made him wild in defense mode. He would start barking, with the hair on his back standing on end, searching incessantly for where the sound was coming from. The fire of a gun was especially alarming to Tim, as it was part of his training to become alert and try to protect against a perpetrator when he heard the shot of a firearm. He was taught to find and retrieve firearms, in fact, so he was going nuts, desperate to do his job and protect me

  Tim and I had a little routine: I used my bedroom as my dressing room. After I finished getting dressed, I’d call him up on my bed, kiss him on the head, and tell him to stay there until I got back. And he did. The moment I returned, he’d practically bowl me over. He was so overwhelmed with excitement and relief that he had me in his sights once again, and that he was now able to do his job. He was obviously panicked from the separation anxiety he’d endured in my absence. We were only apart for the one-hour sound check on show days and the approximately two-hour shows, but it didn’t take much for Tim to get worked up, as his training was to never leave the side of the person he was meant to be protecting. I’d take him outside for his last bathroom break, when what I really wanted to do was get out of my sweaty stage clothes, hit the shower, slip into some PJ’s, and relax for the ride ahead. Naturally, Tim made it his business to take his sweet time before doing his business, especially if it happened to be raining out.

  As soon as I’d finished showering, I’d signal Larry, and off we’d roll into the night. (Trying to shower on a moving bus is like taking a shower during a major earthquake while standing on a bar of soap. I tried this once and realized that unless I wanted to break my neck, showering on the bus while it was stationary was necessary.) I probably should have gone right to sleep, but I never slept well in a moving vehicle, making mobile living not the most practical choice while touring, but the pros outweighed the cons. I’d usually stay up and talk to Helene or chat on the phone or watch a movie during the first hours of making our way to the next city, while rewarding myself with my naughty late-night snack of orange soda and yellow cheddar cheese popcorn.

  It’s amazing how much living space can be squeezed into a bus. My personal space was in the center area, closed off from the driver and from Helene’s sitting and sleeping area in back. Helene and I shared a side door, but the layout afforded me a surprising amount of privacy.

  The trip from city to city could range from six to ten hours, and I’d typically be awake for much of it before finally drifting off—only to be jolted awake a few hours later when we’d arrived at our parking spot either at the venue or nearby. As the bus was maneuvered into its space, it shimmied and jerked till it finally stilled in parked position. It was impossible to sleep through the parking of the bus. Larry, having driven all night, would then head off with Helene to a hotel, where they could get a more comfortable sleep, leaving me and Tim to ourselves.

  My dog was impatient to go right outside. I didn’t share Tim’s excitement, as you might imagine, but I didn’t have to. Check this out: I’d had the bus customized with a special floor hatch that opened to a ramp leading down to a luggage bay below. Without having to leave my compartment, I could hook Tim to a lead attached to a run line outside and let him out through the hatch in the floor. He could then take care of business and run around to his heart’s content, and if he wanted shade, he could always lie down in the bay. A security camera kept him in my view at all times until he was ready to come back in. It really worked beautifully.

  Sometimes we were able to park on neighboring farms, which gave me an opportunity to ride Dancer. That’s right: he came along, too, for much of the tour, riding in a mobile stall. Being able to ride him while enjoying nature definitely helped to clear my head, but I really made the most of my limited free time. By late afternoon—and remember, since I’d be up half the night, I generally didn’t get out of bed until around ten or eleven—I’d either ride Dancer when he was there or take long walks with Tim, and before I knew it, it was approaching three in the afternoon, time to head to the venue for the pre-performance sound check. All in all, I had a pretty good setup and lifestyle on the road. Having it so personalized helped make the eighteen months manageable.

  The first U.S. leg of the tour took us to approximately eighty cities, ending with two shows at the Miami Bayfront Park Amphitheater in mid-January 1999. By then the Come On Over album had been out for more than a year and had delivered two more number one country hits, the rock-heavy “Honey, I’m Home” and the dramatic love song “From This Moment On.”

  “Honey, I’m Home,” which draws you in with an infectious, danceable groove before changing tempo on the choruses, is sort of my playful take on the Johnny Paycheck classic “Take This Job and Shove It,” but from the female perspective. While I can’t vouch for this 100 percent, I think it’s safe to assume that it’s the only chart topper in country music history to contain a reference to premenstrual syndrome. “From This Moment On,” practically a wedding vow set to music, was my first record to feature another recording artist, Bryan White, and for the international version, the lead singer from the group Boyzone, Ronan Keating. A few times during both tours, men were proposing to their girlfriends during the performance of this song. I was told by countless fans that it was a popular wedding song. This was an unexpected fact about the song that pleased me. The song was living a life of its own, independent of me. It now belonged to the public, and a large number of them decided it was going to be their wedding song. Some couples even came to my concerts in full wedding apparel. I just loved this.

  Music moves people, and I was touched by how much my music did this for the fans. This was what I was doing it for; this was what made all the hard work so worth it. I took pleasure in the pleasure the music brought to them and their lives. “You’re Still the One” and “From This Moment On” went to number one on the Adult Contemporary chart and reached the top five on the Hot 100.

  When we flew off to Australia for seven dates in February, “That Don’t Impress Me Much” was on its way into the Top 10 on both the country and pop charts. A tongue-in-cheek put-down song about men who think they’re hot stuff but, in reality, leave the woman singing the song ice cold, it could be a cousin of Ca
rly Simon’s biting 1973 number one hit “You’re So Vain.” Except that in her song, the guy in question is so besotted with himself that it’s inconceivable to him that she might be referring to someone else. My man, on the other hand, is so conceited and condescending, but, above all, clueless, that it would never dawn on him that he was the star of “That Don’t Impress Me Much.” In fact, he’d probably listen to the lyrics, grunt, and say, “Man, what a jerk that guy must be!” This character was fictitious, but it spanned a stereotype that most women, by their thirties, have met at least once in their travels, so in that sense, I was confident I was writing about a sort that really did exist.

  The cowbell-propelled song had an unhurried rhythm and marked a bit of a return to more traditional country rock. It was the sixth release from Come On Over, and we still had five more singles to go, plus four solid months of shows in North America without a breather.

  24

  Come On Overseas

  Until I was almost twenty-seven, I was about as provincial as they came, having never even been outside of Canada. Being married for the past five years to Mutt, who’d lived and worked on several continents, had expanded my world considerably, and in 1995 I got to go to Egypt to shoot the video for “The Woman in Me (Needs the Man in You).” Now, in 1999, the ongoing—make that never-ending—Come On Over tour would be taking me to Australia and Europe, after which my husband and I were set to move to Switzerland.

  We’d bought a French château–style estate in an area referred to as the Swiss Riviera. “The world is our oyster” type thinking made us consider many different places to settle. Any corner of the world was a possibility. We were open to trying something new, but our goal was to choose somewhere we could enjoy some anonymity, an attractive landscape, and convenient access to North America. We figured that if the local language was not English, which language could we live with and actually enjoy learning? Croatian might not have been our number one choice of second languages to learn, for example, but we were attracted to the Latin-based languages such as Italian, Spanish, and French.