Lookin’ like a tramp, like a video vamp

Fact 6: I’ve been in several music videos.

Back in the 90’s, I was in a few music videos. The first, Diamond Rio’s “This Romeo Ain’t Got Julie Yet,” filmed on May 29, 1993 and our part was “concert footage” from a show they did at Six Flags Over Texas. That one technically doesn’t count, but I don’t care. 😉

Video number two is the video I can best be seen in. August 15, 1993, the band Little Texas was in town, filming the video for “God Blessed Texas.” There was an open casting call, so I picked up a friend and the two of us headed down to South Fork Ranch to take part. The scenes in front of South Fork, our assisgned spots were sitting on the fence next to the band. We were also placed in charge of the water cooler, so between takes, we were getting water for all the guys. I’ll include a few pictures from the video behind the cut.

Me & Tim Rushlow
Me & Brady Seals

The following pics are from my scenes of the video itself. In the first pic, I’ve got an arrow pointing to me. See those BRIGHT blue pants? That’s me. In the pic beside it.. I’m the brunette *directly* behind the guitarist’s (Porter) head. So, if you ever see the video, just keep your eyes open and look behind Porter whenever they’re in front of the South Fork Mansion. You’ll find me & my bright blue pants sitting on the fence.




Three years later, on May 31, 1996, I spent roughly 6 hours of the day at Billy Bob’s Texas filming another video. This time the artist was Bryan White, and the song was “So Much For Pretending.” All of the up-close indoors footage in that video was shot that day. You can semi-see me in a few places, mostly though it’s just my hand or hair that you see. While I might be seen better in the “God Blessed Texas” video, “So Much For Pretending” was my favorite shoot. We had so much fun joking around with everyone between takes, and I came away from that with a lot of new friends; both fans and members of Bryan’s band.

The last video was Colin Raye’s “I Can Still Feel You”. That video was shot May 11, 1998 in Nashville, Tn. My friend and I were sitting at a bar, watching a band play, while Colin walks through the establishment trying to find his lost love. It’s been so long since I’ve seen the video, I don’t recall if you can really see us or not. We found out later that if we hadn’t taken our time getting back to Dallas, we could’ve been in yet another video. Brad Hawkins filmed the video for “I’m The One” here in town, and the shoot was open to all the local fan club members. Oh well, I’m lucky enough that I was in the ones I was. 🙂

Baby write this down, take a little note

My email has gone nuts. My host has been having some massive issues for the last two weeks. (First time they have since I’ve had service with them.) Currently, I can send emails from my webmail account – but I can’t receive them. Kind of. The webmail portal itself doesn’t update to show any new or received mail. But if I have that email address also forward to a different account not hosted with them (say, my old hotmail account), the emails show up there. So I don’t show receiving any mail in webmail, but I actually do get it at hotmail. At least I know the auto-forwarder is working? I logged a ticket with them last night. Getting tired of waiting – I want my normal email back! It’s REALLY starting to piss me off. Not too long ago I was bragging about how good my service is via that host — and now boom. Absolute crap.

And on a completely random note – I actually dislike the song that gave me the title of this post. It’s from “Write This Down” by George Strait. Why do I dislike it? Check out the lyrics for the song. He’s upset that he’s losing his girlfriend/wife/whatever; yet he treats her like a damn secretary. If he wants her to have in writing how much he loves her — wouldn’t it mean more if HE wrote it down, instead of dictating for her to do it herself? If he’s that lazy that he can’t write down a few words, he’s probably pretty lazy in every aspect. No wonder she’s leaving him, he probably expects her to do everything. That’s one of those songs I’m just never going to understand the appeal of, I’m sure.

Make me sing, make me sound

I’m in a very ramble-y mood today… and yet I don’t really have any specific topic I want to ramble about. Therefore, this is liable to be all over the place.

I’m back to listening to my iPod at work instead of the radio. I finally had enough of the inane chatter from the DJs. One thing I’ve noticed over the past few weeks that cracks me up: it seems like every single time “Nothing But You” plays on my iPod, the song either immediately before or after it is “Train In Vain.” Considering I have it playing on a random shuffle — it’s odd that those two songs always end up together. One song, the person is trying to move on from a bad relationship, trying to get rid of the only thing they have to lose… and the other is pointing out to an ex how badly they lied. In my mind I can see it as a progression: “Train in Vain” shortly after the end of the relationship, and “Nothing But You” after they’ve got a little more time behind them, and have started to heal. And yes. I am very aware that I’m rambling about the order of songs on my iPod. I did mention that I’m ramble-y today, didn’t I?

I’ve fallen in love with Jason Sellers‘ music all over again. I imported both his “Matter of Time” and “I’m Your Man” cds onto my iPod, and I’ve been listening to them like crazy. His vocals on “Every Fire” are so beautiful; and it amuses me that it’s his ex-wife, Lee Ann Womack, singing backing vocals on that tune. It seems like that song has been playing on repeat on the jukebox in my mind.

I’m one of those people who ALWAYS has to have music on. Whether it’s the iPod, radio, or iTunes – if it’s in my control, then there’s music playing. (If none of those are on, usually I’ll have the TV on, mostly for background noise in place of music.) There’s just something about it that keeps me going, keeps me moving, keeps me focused. When I was very young (about 4-7 years old), we used to go back and forth to Shreveport to visit my Grandma once every few months. If we were in the car and the radio was off, I would pitch a fit and say I was getting carsick without the music. I can’t remember if I actually did start feeling carsick or not, but it was what I always insisted. I do, however, remember that on almost all of those trips to my Grandma’s, we would hear “Boy From New York City” at least once each direction. Since that was one of my favorite songs as a kid, I always got a kick out of that.

My memories are heavily tied into music, as well. I hear a song and can recall specific memories related to it, whether lyrically or because it was playing as whatever it was happened. “The Song Remembers When” describes my song-based memory pretty well, in fact. Music is one thing I know I can always count on. If I am depressed, I can put on sad songs to make me cry even harder, or I can put on happy, bouncy songs to try to lift my spirits. Great music always makes a road trip more fun, but I do have to be careful not to let the fast songs influence my lead foot too much.

When I was little, I had a fairly diverse group of friends, and whenever I’d hang out with them, I’d always allow them to choose the music we listened to. As a result, I was exposed to a wide variety of styles and fell in love with almost all of them. My parents used to play the likes of Roger Whitaker, ABBA, and The Carpenters on our home stereo system. My next-door neighbor’s family exposed me to country music, while she herself introduced me to Latin pop and heavy metal. (I have distinct memories of sitting on the floor of her room, listening to Menudo back in the early 80’s – yes during the days that Ricky Martin was a member.) Friends from the neighborhood, Girl Scouts, and school all introduced me to other genres, including rap, R&B, a wider spectrum of pop/Top 40/rock, etc. Through out all of it, I’d find artists I loved, others I didn’t, and amassed a pretty diverse collection of cds.

In elementary school, there was a group of us girls who would always get together at recess. We’d all gather together on swings or seesaws, and spend the entire time singing. We knew every word to the entire “Innocent Man” album by Billy Joel, as well as a good chunk of Whitney Houston and Prince songs, amongst many others. I can remember us sitting on the seesaws and singing “We Are the World“, or us on the swings singing “Mickey” at the top of our lungs as if it was only yesterday. That tradition kept up through roughly 8th grade, us gathering together before school in junior high. By then, the artists of choice had changed more into Guns N Roses, Whitesnake, etc. That was all before I completely ruined my singing voice, though. At least back then I sounded pretty decent. If I tried something like that now, people would probably offer me money to stop singing.

I could keep going and going, but I think it’s probably best for me to stop this ramble here before it goes on for pages. I will add one final note, though. If it’s not obvious how infused music is to my life by this ramble… check out the titles of the posts in this blog. So far, about 85% of them are taken from song lyrics. (The title of this post is from the song, “Andante, Andante.”)