Music has been a lifeline for me since forever. I remember my Dad singing “Joy To The World” to me when I was a little girl — the Three Dog Night one, not the Jesus one. It never occurred to me to wonder what the heck “Jeremiah was a bullfrog, he was a good friend of mine” meant. I just knew when that music started, everything felt automatically more fun. I remember that it was a Conway and Loretta song playing on the radio (AM, of course) that we were singing along with as I sat in the floorboard behind the passenger seat when our car was hit on W. Wright Street (no relation). In a yet-unknown instance of foreshadowing, it was the Anne Murray song, “Could I Have This Dance” that was playing — and that I was harmonizing along with — when I heard my Aunt Tommie whisper to my mom in the front seat something about how well I could sing. Hugh Prestwood got it 100% right when he wrote “The Song Remembers When.”

Like many kids, I sweetly thought the performers were inside the television box, and I don’t know exactly when that belief morphed to one of more accurate understanding about how such events were broadcast. I grew up so close to the Louisiana State Line that all four (4) of our television channels came from Shreveport, Louisiana. If there was a program that centered on musical performance, it was on my schedule. Porter and Dolly, The Johnny Cash Show, Hee Haw, Nashville On The Road . . . and, not to be pigeon-holed, even as a kid . . . Solid Gold, Soul Train, The Midnight Special, Sonny and Cher, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Captain and Tennille . . . and the awards shows — CMA Awards, Grammy Awards, Image Awards. When MTV was invented, I only got to watch it when I went to visit one of my city-dwelling friends. I loved every music countdown show that I knew of, and after my Dad got me a real live stereo for Christmas in 6th grade, I would record my favorite songs during the countdown because buying records/tapes was not all that common.

I remember that the first 45 I bought with my own money was “Love Is Thicker Than Water” by Andy Gibb, and I relied heavily on my cousin Gary’s music collection as well as my Dad’s to entertain my ears. I loved album art and reading every liner note. I became very adept at knowing exactly which song on which track of an 8 track tape I needed to change tracks on so that I could hear my favorite song in exactly that spot on another track. I was especially good at that trick on the “Grease” soundtrack. I knew that record forward and backward and never saw the film until I was an adult! I loved dancing along with music, performing, and matching songs with situations.

It never really occurred to me that a regular girl could actually get a job in the music business. Until I made some amazing musician friends while a student at Baylor University in late 80’s. I did not drink alcohol as a college student, but I did love going out to hear live music with friends. There were a couple of great country bands in Waco, one called Sons of the Desert and another called Midnight Highway. Midnight Highway had several members who were Baylor students/graduates, but they broke up not long after I began going to see them. Some of those guys formed a new band called “Santa Fe,” and somehow, my roommate, Dotti, and I started hanging out with them pretty regularly. Dotti introduced her friend Rita, and the three of us became really good friends with those Santa Fe boys — we didn’t date each other, but we loved listening to music, watching movies, cooking and hanging out. A lot. Some of the highest GPA’s I made at Baylor were earned when I was taking 18 semester hours of advanced Political Science, education and Spanish coursework, working at Hankamer School of Business and at the Russell D. Hunt Law Firm . . . AND going to clubs where the guys were playing from 8 pm to 3 am and then to Whataburger and then to their crash-pad of an apartment to do music and movies and laughter all night long. My Breakfast of Champions during that time was a 32 ounce Dr. Pepper and a bag of BBQ Fritos. An absolute dream of a time.

But . . . as they do . . . that band broke up, too. And one by one, each of those guys made their way to Nashville and began to put in the time and hard work to make their way. While working 2 or 3 other jobs at a time and apartment-sharing to make ends meet. I was teaching high school Spanish and U.S. Government near Waco, and my friend Jeff — the keyboard player for Santa Fe — called me one day to tell me that Giant Records was looking for a new receptionist . . . “but you gotta be present to win . . . ” — thanks, buddy. But that was the impetus for me to stop and think, “Why not? I’m single, I don’t have a mortgage, a pet, a lot of debt, or much of anything else that is tethering me to the life I have right now . . . for real, why the heck not?”

I was really invested in my students at Connally High School, and I was enjoying being their teacher and trying to find ways to get them to think critically and big and beyond the limits of their circumstances. I decided to apply to Belmont University’s Music Business program in Nashville, and my application was reviewed, and I was invited to go to do an in-person interview with the director (or Dean) of the program. I don’t remember the entire timeline, but I felt guilty leaving my students, and my thinking was that if I was leaving to pursue further education, it might not be as weird as if I said, “I’m gonna go work in the music business . . . with my Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and Spanish.” That school year ended, and I packed up my life and moved back to my hometown of Marshall, Texas, to muddle my way through the transition.

My parents thought I was off my rocker — it was inconceivable to them that I would even consider doing something so frivolous with no guarantees of being able to make a living . . . throw away that expensive private school education . . . to hang out with musicians? Those musicians were such good people, though, that they had won over my family when they signed a contract with my younger sister who was part of the leadership of a group at her high school called “T.R.U.S.T” – “Teenagers Resisting Unwanted Substances Together. She thought big. They hired Santa Fe to play a show at the high school. And my family welcomed those guys with open arms — and had some stereotypes and preconceived notions dashed in the process.

I went to Nashville to do the Belmont interview (which went very well), and on my way off campus, I passed the College and Career Center — I saw a flyer there with lots of classified ads for jobs in the area. I took it with me. I was beating the streets while there, literally inviting myself into record companies, publishing companies, management companies and leaving cover letters and resumes. So wide-eyed. On that flyer, there was an ad for a music publishing/artist management company that was looking for some front-office / administrative assistant help. I called and got an interview with their executive assistant/office manager. She liked me, and she asked if I could delay my return to Texas for a week so that I could interview with the VP who was in Canada that week for Thanksgiving. It was not November, and that confused me, but I learned. My dad knew someone who worked in Nashville’s city government, and he had arranged for me to meet up with him, and I interviewed for a position with him that he ended up offering me. The other interview was on the books by then, and I asked him if I could have a week to let him know. I left the music company’s VP interview in the pouring-down rain with my Ford Mustang loaded up, and I returned to Texas that day. A week or so later, they called and offered me the job and asked if I could start November 1st. Yes!

So, on Halloween Day of 1993, I set out again in that beat up Ford Mustang and drove to Nashville. My Waco friends had told me I could crash on the couch in their apartment for a while because they were in and out of town and knew my $12,000 salary was not going to get me into anything resembling safe for a single girl. I stayed there, and I made home-cooked meals, and eventually, they talked and told me that they had decided that if I wanted to just live there, I could — I’d have to share a room with one of them if that was okay. Yep. I roomed with Jeff with our two twin beds and common restroom. They were hardly ever there, but when they were, we had a fun time and resumed late night adventures at the local Waffle House.

Remember “Could I Have This Dance” from back there at the beginning? The company I went to work for was based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and was called Balmur, Inc. The owner and primary recording artist client? Anne Murray. Music royalty. And my boss. My parents were still worried about me, but I will never forget the moment that I was sure my Mom was on board with my new life: I learned that Balmur wanted their U.S.-based Canadian employees have excellent health care coverage, comparable to their home country’s, and I told my mom that they covered 100% of my health insurance premium, and that my co-pay to see a doctor was $5.00 USD. It may as well have been a $50,000 raise. I could sense the relief in her voice instantaneously.

They took me under their collective wings . . . and taught me . . . and exposed me to the people, places and stories that would slowly weave me into the “inside.” I got to attend live tapings of television shows, be a fancily-dressed seat-filler at the Country Music Awards, work in Toronto for nearly two months on a special project. I learned about copyright law, booking studio time, making travel arrangements, dealing with concert promoters, media buys, photo sessions, album packaging. I was sent on errands for creamer for the company coffee to the little store down the street we fondly called “Murder Mart,” because, well, someone was murdered there. I was promoted soon after starting there, and I think my $12,000 nearly doubled to something almost-livable. I soon moved into the position of “tape-copy girl,” which meant that I prepared the cassette and ultimately CD mixes of our staff writers’ songs that our songpluggers would take to make pitches to recording artists, producers, and A&R staff at the record labels. I got to help catalog the special material that would come to be featured on Anne Murray’s box set. Like the “work tape” that Kenny Loggins made of “Danny’s Song” when he wrote it in the bathroom at a party after learning he was going to be an uncle.

I got promoted again in the Creative Division to “Creative Manager,” and I began my journey as a songplugger. We got a fun intern who sat in the cubby next to mine, a kid named Blake Shelton. The new tape-copy boy. We were surrounded by writers’ rooms where professional songwriters would get together and birth and develop new songs every day. It was amazing. Blake asked me if I would sing with him in some of the coffee shop and small bar gigs he was playing around town, so I did that for a while. I don’t remember if we ever made any money, but I do remember getting paid in coffee and pastries at one place we played.

Then a cool girl named Jenny O came to work with us, and we became fast friends. She was a singer/songwriter, and I began performing with her around town. One year and one day after starting my job at Balmur, I got to sing with Jenny at an open mic night at The Bluebird Cafe. We had such good time, along with guitar player Chris Graffagnino. A favorite place to play was the Bell Buckle Cafe, on a live radio show they broadcast from there. They paid us in food, too. And tips. One of our gigs was as the opening act for Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown at the Bell Buckle Blues (Bluegrass?) Festival. I’m sure the correct details of that fun experience are in journal somewhere.

I signed my first songwriter to a publishing contract at Balmur — a woman named Trina Harmon, who I had begrudgingly gone to hear play at a writers’ night in Franklin, Tennessee one night. I was smitten — she was wildly gifted, genuinely humble and clearly a go-getter. I only got to work with her for a year, but she went on to have astounding success in multiple genres, and, incidentally, performed at both my first wedding and Jessica Simpson’s and Nick Lachey’s. So there’s that. Now, in addition to her work as a musical creative, she has built a career as an artist coach and spreads love, guidance and encouragement to creatives in various industries.

Eventually, I left Balmur to go to work as Creative Director for Bluewater Music Corporation, a Texas-based company owned by a brilliant and passionate man who, along with his painstakingly chosen staff, built one of the most respectable writer rosters that Music City has ever seen — Jim Lauderdale, Chris Knight, Kim Richey, Tim Krekel, “Big” Al Anderson, Casey Beathard, Sandy Knox, David Lynn Jones, among many others. My time at Bluewater expanded my horizons beyond Nashville and into pitching songs for television shows, soundtrack albums and films. Some of my most fun successes in that wacky world were placing songs in the Kevin Costner film, “For Love Of The Game,” the Steve Zahn film, “Happy, Texas,” and television shows like “Providence,” “Dawson’s Creek,” “Ed,” and others that I can no longer remember. Again, that’s what journals are for, right?

I made some outstanding friends while in Nashville, and I learned more about myself than I knew was to be known. I got to travel and do fun things like attend the Telluride Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival and to be the first person to pitch to the organizers of the early South By Southwest Film Festival for our songwriters to provide the live music for the kick-off event. How had no one else thought of that before me?

The Nashville that I arrived in on Halloween evening of 1993 was aglow with fall colors . . . and snow (I remember thinking, “What the heck have I done? Snowing. In October?”) and possibility. And I was fearless enough to chase that possibility all the way to 2001. By then, it had become more business than music, and I stopped singing in the shower, only listened to talk radio in the car and realized I needed to take myself out of there before my lifelong love of music waned irreversibly. And I wanted to explore the world.

Music has connected me to so many people and places and projects that I treasure and that are priceless to me. It would be so different now. So I’m grateful for my Nashville. The one with the Skyline.