Country AND Cool

Once upon a time, when I worked for a website called CountryCool.com I was backstage at the Wildhorse for an interview with this brand spanking new boy band trio and they twisted the lyrics around to "I Was Country..." to include CountryCool.com. Thanks to the WayBack Machine, you too can travel back in time to that night (although unfortunately they don't have our video, and tragically, I don't have it anymore either.)

You know what struck me as wild when I went and looked at that site? 2 Things really... First off - I'd totally forgotten that Hazel had written for them too, I didn't know her back then. And secondly, we carried the internet stream of WMZQ in Washington, which is the station Jon Anthony was at for the 8 years before coming to XM. We were working together years ago, and didn't even know it!

Since I've posted photos in the last week of Jon and I both looking enormous next to little short people, I thought I'd post a picture of us together where we look semi-normal, and you can see I'm wearing ridiculous heels, which didn't help my picture with Barbara any. I've since deleted the picture of me and her, LOL, but this was taken the same night. No one even giggled about my picture of Barbara and Mrs. Kenny Chesney in the Funny Flashback??

Speaking of Kenny - I saw his mini-movie tonight. Hatless! I was shocked. Hubby asked if Vane was really hispanic... I haven't met her, but I didn't think she was, although she's got some sort of exotic, potentially foreign look. She's beautiful, that's for sure. Although I thought he'd learned his lesson about putting his girlfriends in his videos.

Have you heard ShortCuts yet? (Those of you who wanted to :-P ) I listened to most of it on the treadmill at the gym Friday night, and thought it sounded pretty cool. Of course, I may be biased. ;-)

And on a semil-related note, I just saw the video for MG's "Some People Change" for the first time. (I've GOTTA get TiVo.) I thought the tent performance scenes were a little off from the really poignant scenes in the verses... didn't quite have the right feel to them. But I do love Troy's vocal performance on this song.

Ok, on to the meat of this post, which is Friday's event for Barbara Mandrell. The "reception" thing was actually a press conference staged for the show that GAC is doing on the making of this album, She Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool (A Tribute to Barbara Mandrell.) So that was wierd... we had to stage the clapping for her entrance, and it was all choreographed. It wasn't a press conference, it was a television shoot. Barbara's parents were there, and Irby got up and spoke, which was really cool. He was hysterically funny.

It was a small crowd - 100-120 people or so, but it was all heavy hitters. I've looked for coverage on CMT.com but don't find it yet. Ed was there, so maybe Monday. Barbara spoke quite a while, and was really just classy. They unveiled the album cover, and we all got advance copies of the album.

Reba, as you'd expect, does a killer job on the title track, and Kenny pops up in the cameo performance that George Jones does. He gives a really good vocal performance, although he obviously doesn't have the "presence" of Jones when he pops up. The standout track on the project though is LeAnn Rimes doing "If Loving You Is Wrong." She nails it. When we talked to Barbara later she pointed it out as being one she was really proud of. Dierks does a great job on Fast Lanes and Country Roads too - I need to use that song in a Road Trip sometime.

Following the press conference there were 5 of us taken into a conference room for a Round Robin interview with her. ABC Radio, CMT Radio, Westwood One and X Radio were there, plus me. We each got 2 questions, and all agreed we could have gone another hour. Not that I expected any less, but Barbara was so gracious, and really sincere and genuinely appreciative of the artists doing the project.

My 2nd question to her was talking about how some artists make a career out of retirement and the never endng farewell tour... I asked her to explain why she was so adament about not picking up a microphone again and to tell her fans how she felt about the decision 9 years later. She about had us all near tears as she talked about going out on top of her game and what her life was like now. It was a very passionate and emotionally charged response. And then... came the follow up.

The girl sitting next to me was from CMT Radio. And she broke down telling Barbara about seeing her in Branson when she was 12 and telling her dad "I can do that. Someday I'm going to go to Nashville." And she asked Barbara if she knew how many people she'd inspired. It was quite the moment. The girls in the room are all crying at that point. Reminded me of the days my neighbor Jenny and I would sit on the roof of my playhouse and sing "You can eat crackers in my bed anytime" even though we had no idea what that meant.

When we wrapped up she hung out for a few more minutes talking, and one of the guys did his Reba impression for her, which cracked her up. Before she left she stopped and thanked each of us for being there, and said something to us individually. Barbara Mandrell thanked me for asking such good questions. That's gonna rank right up there as a career highlight.