DAVE'S DIARY - 23 MAY 2005 - DEANA CARTER

STORY OF DEANA CARTER'S LIFE

Deana Carter

When Deana Carter's six-year marriage to fellow singer Chris DiCroce broke up she moved to West Hollywood and made movies and rhinestone light switch plates. "Every night I would get a bottle of wine, some glue and rhinestones,' Carter, now 39, told Nu Country TV. "I would drink the wine and crank up the radio. I rhinestoned the back of the toilet, it was crystals. It looked like Liberace had sat there. I'm so talented now at colour co-ordinating rhinestones." The Nashville born singer-songwriter also branched out into acting and script writing after arriving in California in 2001. "I moved to LA out of a divorce that is not even final yet and I was negotiating out of a record deal. There was so much transition. I had more time to audition and practice and go to acting classes and such between record deals."

She wrote a script for a sitcom Queen For A Day and appeared in a TV show Raising Dad.

Carter also appeared in cult movie The Badge with singing actor-director Billy Bob Thornton and Patricia Arquette - latter day lead of psychic TV show Medium.

So it wasn't hard for the singer to find fertile phosphate for the videogenic songs that adorn her sixth album The Story Of My Life.

"It was so honest," she revealed.

"It was risky of myself, creatively, to put myself out there. But I followed it with my heart."
Deana draws parallels between her dad and herself in the title track of The Story Of My Life.

FRED CARTER JR

"I was born in a sixties winter/ my mum was young and my dad had an appetite/ a saint and a sinner/ wrestling with what's wrong and what's right." - The Story of my Life - Deana Carter

Fred Carter Jr is a famed session guitarist and kidney transplantee who played on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline and Simon & Garfunkel classics The Boxer and Sounds Of Silence. "His kidney transplant was 11 years ago this year," Carter recalled. "He's doing great. I say my thanks every day for his transplant." Carter has no qualms about tearing pages from her colourful life to illustrate songs on her family and love. "It's very literal," she said.

"My mum was young when they met, 10 years younger than him. I sing that dad had an appetite. It had a double meaning. He was worldly and she was very innocent. He was very driven for success - she was not."

So was this a natural extension of her huge hit Did I Shave My Legs For This - the story of her embryonic relationship with an older man?

"Yes, we do mimic our parents in a lot of ways. I was in relationship with a guy who was much older than me - either he was past his prime and I was coming into mine.
There was nothing I could do to keep his attention."

JIMMY BOWEN

The singer left Goodlettsville High School at 17 and tried unsuccessfully for a record deal but went to university instead.

Carter majored in rehabilitation therapy at the University of Tennessee and took a job in 1989 as a therapist at Tennessee Christian Medical Centre, working with stroke and head injury patients.

And after two years of juggling four jobs she followed her musical dream and famed producer and label boss Jimmy Bowen signed her to Liberty Records in 1991.

But her belated debut disc Did I Shave My Legs For This didn't emerge for four years because of label changes.

The Bowen produced version featuring 12 original Carter songs was only released in Australia and Europe.

"Jimmy Bowen was really a believer in me," Carter says.

"He signed me as an alt country artist - he made me write so many songs for four years before I could record that album. Then we went in and re-recorded the album."

The original version included her tune Rita Valentine and Turn Those Wheels Around - one of three co-writes with Chuck Jones - and dedicated to Willie Nelson who gave her live performing break at his July 4 picnic.

She also included Graffiti Bridge penned with Pam Tillis's second ex-husband Bob DiPiero and I Can't Shake You - collaboration with Dean Dillon.

JAMIE DENTON

Carter confessed that much of the inspiration for her first album came from childhood sweetheart and latter day Hollywood actor Jamie Denton. Denton, a fellow Goodlettsville High graduate with a brace of TV and movies, is best known here for his portrayal of Mike the plumber in top rating Desperate Housewives. He also appeared recently in Jag, Threat Matrix, West Wing, Ally McBeal and Reba - starring Reba McEntire. Her song Before We Could Even Say Goodbye - one of only three songs to survive the second release of her debut disc - was a focus. The others were her originals I've Loved Enough To Know and the title track. "He was my everything for about six years," Carter confessed. "He was obviously the impetus for Before We Could Even Say Goodbye. And even in Strawberry Wine. Many of my other songs are not about him directly, more about the emotions I have carried - the influence of him in my life in every relationship. He held the bar in a lot of relationships. I still adore him - he's such a lovely special person to me. He's such a special guy." < Jamie Denton

But Carter's U.S. debut disc was delayed when Bowen suffered cancer and retired and was replaced by producer Scott Hendricks who slashed 25 acts.

Only Carter and Dean Miller - son of the late Roger - survived the cull.

Hendricks didn't feel the album was right for America and asked her to find eight new songs and introduced her to producer Chris Farren.

STRAWBERRY WINE

"He was working through college on grandpa's farm/ I was thirsting for knowledge and he had a car/ I was caught somewhere between a woman and a child/ when one restless summer we found love growing wild/ on the banks of a river on a well worn path." - Strawberry Wine - Matraca Berg-Gary Harrison.

The new version featured Matraca Berg-Gary Harrison penned smash hit Strawberry Wine and two other #1 hits - the Berg penned We Danced Anyway and the title track. "Matraca talked about the song being a reference to one of her boyfriends and a farm in Missouri somewhere," Carter explained. "So I would say "yes" it is based on a true story, and it definitely hit my heartstrings and my first love too." Carter wrote another hit Count Me In with Jones and Love Ain't Worth Making and How Do I Get There with Farren.

The album sold more than five 5 million copies.

"It was just bizarre because it happened in six weeks," she recalled.

"It was so quick. It took so long for the radio airplay to catch up to what the buzz was.

Radio really broke that record, and the buzz started within that. But there were a lot of radio programmers who were reluctant to play it. So you had this wave happening. When the other people got on it, it just impacted it even more. Nobody knew. Nobody saw it coming. It was a very different sounding song for the time. It was a progressive song - a 4:57 waltz about first love. It was really a phenomenon at the time."

But Capitol tried to replicate the success with similar songs on her next album.
"I was very pissed off," Deana recalled, "There was a record company guy with a stop watch, saying can we get to the chorus 30 seconds quicker. It was ridiculous. It wasn't about the music at all or the message - more their mind set of a lot of people."

EVERYTHING'S GONNA BE ALRIGHT

"I live by the river on the wrong side of town/ nothing much to do here but listen to the sound/ of a train I'll never catch passin' me by/ of the muddy water drinkin' the tears that I cry." - Dickson County - Deana Carter-Matraca Berg.

Carter's third album featured her father's composition Everything's Gonna Be Alright as the title track. It featured five Carter originals - she wrote The Train Song, Never Coming Down and Michelangelo Sky with Farren and Chuck Jones, Ruby Brown with Tim Krekel of The Sluggers and Dickson County with Berg. Dickson County - west of Nashville en route to Memphis - was once home of seven times wed former convict and singing actor David Allan Coe and fellow outlaw Steve Earle whose fourth wife became his sixth after he split with his fifth spouse.

The outlaws did not live together - I interviewed Coe at his rural complex in Dickson in 1983 and Earle in Fairview in 1988.

"I always love to write with Matraca," Carter revealed.

"I was a big fan of hers before I got to write with her. If the label wouldn't let me do my own songs I would go to her begging for songs. I would say you and I are like the same person. She's so talented - any chance I get to write with her I will."

Berg, wife of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band singer Jeff Hanna, is a prolific writer. She released acclaimed solo disc Sunday Morning To Saturday Night on Rising Tide in 1997 after two RCA discs The Speed Of Grace and Lying To The Moon. RCA later released a retrospective Lying To The Moon And Other Stories featuring Rising Tide and RCA tracks including Eat At Joe's from her unreleased 1991 album, Bittersweet Surrender. Berg's discs didn't have the sales clout of the Carter album that sold 400,000 units and fuelled Carter's Greatest Hits in 2002. < Matraca Berg

She also recorded a low profile Christmas album for Rounder before she left Capitol and signed with Arista.

In the interim period Carter split with singing spouse Chris DiCroce whom she met in 1991 and married in 1995.

DiCroce scored airplay on Nu Country FM in 2000-1 for his album American Dream on his independent label Flyboy.

Ironically when Deana was busted for DUI in Nashville she was taken to jail where a drug dealer asked her if she was married to Tim McGraw.

"I was signing autographs in jail, which was humiliating," Carter recalled.

I'M JUST A GIRL

"You and tequila make me crazy/ you run like poison in my blood/ one more night might be kill me baby/ one is too many and one more is never enough." - You And Tequila - Deana Carter-Chuck Jones.

Carter co-produced her Arista disc I'm Just A Girl with Dan Huff and included 12 of her original songs including two with Chuck Jones. "I also had Chuck Jones songs on every album - but not on the new record," Carter said. "He was always important to me - maybe I'll write with him for the next record." The former cheerleader designed the cover as a magazine front page to illustrate a co-write with Wendy Waldman of Cover Of A Magazine. "I'm a magazine whore," Deana revealed.

"I love magazines and articles. I was writing with Wendy Waldman and I've got these magazines. All of these people are on the cover. I want to do that sometime. It's my sick fantasy to be a Cosmo cover."

Many of those songs were divorce debris - good examples were Me And The Radio and Goodbye Train, penned with Berg, and You And Tequila, with Jones.

"This is a bummer, but at the same time, I was able to write about it," Carter says.

"Here you are divorced, and you could consider dating your husband again. I'm sure every song has some kind of undertone of what I was going through with Chris. It was my life. Me And The Radio is probably the most directed at my divorce and a turning point in my life to having to make a conscious choice to move on. No matter what you do for a living all we have is music to get through certain situations."

ME AND THE RADIO

"I'm headed out of town and man I feel like flying/ snow is on the ground and everything is dying/ I'll come back alive when I cross 65." - Me And The Radio - Deana Carter-Chuck Jones.

Sadly the timing was off - it was released on the same day as the U.S. invaded Iraq.

It peaked at #6 on the albums chart and spawned only one #15 hit There's The Limit.

Her hit appeared in an Eminem movie - she previously landed songs in Hope Floats and Anastasia.

There was also a co-write with new neighbour Dwight Yoakam.

"He lives in LA four miles from my house," Carter says, "I thought there are some people I want to write with. I called him and asked him if he wanted to write. I didn't plan it on a duet until we got into the room. It just worked out that way. Dwight is cool. He's a little edgier, a little different. He's revered as an icon I think.""

But Deana was dumped from Arista just five months after I'm Just a Girl was released in March 2003.

Ironically she received the news the day she returned from a tour with Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban.

"The car had just dropped me off. My phone's ringing. I run in, trip over my bags, answer the phone - and I'm dropped. I could not believe it."

VANGUARD VICTORY

"I've got a friend that wears go-go boots to Sunday school/ we used to sit and drink pink champagne on her tin roof/ riding it out in her Thunderbird, singing out loud every single word of Jack and Diane" - One Day At A Time - Deana Carter.

Carter produced her sixth album at the home studio of James Michael - an L.A.-based engineer, songwriter and musician. She recorded the disc for California label Vanguard, distributed here by Shock. "No one at the record label heard a note until the album was finished," Carter said. Carter enlisted a long time friend to play her soul sister in the video clip for the disc's first single One Day At A Time. "The girl who plays my best friend in video is a very dear friend," Carter added.

"We dressed up as characters including Elvis and Kurt Cobain. She's from Alabama - we met through my younger brother. She settled in L.A."

The vibrant video has been slotted into Series #4 of Nu Country TV in July.

"Thelma and Louise got nothing on me/ you can tell ol James Dean to get in line/ thanks to Elvis and Kurt Cobain/ the world will never be the same."

SUNNY DAY

"I don't wanna write another love song/ until I know you're coming back to me." - Deana Carter.

The post divorce era also flavoured her writing - hurting tunes I Don't Want To Write Another Love Song, Getting Over You and Sunny Day.

"It was all literally true," Carter confessed.

"I could not write another song because of how broken I was. I went into writing Sunny Day the same way, feeling I'm not good enough, I can't sing. It was the belief system."
Carter's songs reach deep into her psyche.

"I Want To Be The Girl You Left Me For is fairly self explanatory," she said.

"It's the feeling you get as a woman when you look at this other person your significant other is with. It's more so leaning toward. You feel the relationship waning - and them enjoying it. All your doing is you're wishing the other person could be you."

But is She's Good For You a sibling of Chely Wright tune I Got Him Ready For You?

"It's the conversation you have with your ex about all the things you once shared," she added.

"You say she's good for you and I'm happy about that for you but it's bad for me - it sucks."

NO ORDINARY SONG

Carter's tune Ordinary - a bonus track on the Australian pressing of I'm Just A Girl - was reprised on The Story Of My Life. "I wrote it with Hilary Lindsay and Troy Verges," Carter recalled. "It's about when you go through a break up and finally one day you wake up feeling better. It takes a while but you feel so inspired. You feel you are getting your Mojo back. I never released it in U.S. Arista was kind enough to let me take the song and re-record it for this album."

Carter has a fine line in car and city songs - the resurrected love song Atlanta And Birmingham has the fodder for a video.

"I love videos," Carter says, "it's nice to have that extension of your creativity."

Vanguard has sent different singles to country, Americana and mainstream radio.

"Any album that I ever put out I'm going to send it to country radio first," she says.
"We'll just see where it lands. I never excluded any genre on my first record. I was just making a record I wanted to make. It's the same thing on this one. I was just making music. I wasn't really trying to do anything cognitively to take a path."

Another tune - not on the album - is available online.

"There's a song called Bleak Texas on Rolling Stone.com," Carter revealed, "my parents heard the un-bleeped version."

KATIE

"Katie likes to run around/ in cotton panties and a crown/ she's driving all the boys insane/ suckin' on a candy cane." - Katie - Deana Carter.

Carter confessed there were links between Rita Valentine from her debut disc and Katie on her new album.

"I loved that song - Rita Valentine - thanks for bringing it up," Carter said.

"Katie is a combination of all the Katies - Katie Couric, Kate Beckinstall, all these Kates in the entertainment industry. A real sweetness."

FAMILY DOCUMENTARY AND OZ TOUR

Carter lives with her filmmaker fiancé Chris Hicky - father of her son Gray Hayes - who created a documentary for CMT during her pregnancy.

He filmed her at home, on stage, in the studio recording the album, the doctor's office, with family and in the hospital where she welcomed her son.

She became pregnant on the eve of recording and gave birth on September 15 - two weeks after finishing the album.

"I feel like there was a birth and re-birth all at the same time," she says.

"The new chapter has begun, and I couldn't be happier."

"It was very intense," says Deana.

"There was 90 hours of footage of me. It traced my pregnancy. It also featured my dad at home."

Despite the immediate demands of motherhood the singer is keen to tour here.

"I'm begging my agents to get me to Australia and New Zealand," Carter says.

"It would be wonderful. I adore Keith Urban - he's so talented and so cute, the whole bowl of wax. I couldn't believe he wasn't Mick Jagger over there, he's so talented."

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