Reba: My Story (20 page)

And I honestly think my low tolerance of smoke was God’s way of telling me to get out of the nightclubs and onto the concert stages, that I wasn’t getting anywhere there. Then, on December 10, 1982, the Statler Brothers asked me to tour with them as their opening act. I know in
my heart I wouldn’t have become a part of their tour if I hadn’t put my foot down about not singing in clubs.

At that time, the Statlers had enjoyed a remarkable recording career, and had been named “Vocal Group of the Year” more often by the Country Music Association than any other group. They still hold that record.

The brothers had always liked having a girl singer as their opening act. In the late 1970s, they’d used Barbara Mandrell. In 1982, they paid me $3,500 a night and they showed me the courtesy and professionalism that they’re famous for.

I even got to do a television special with the Statler Brothers. The setting was a fictional place called McEntire Town, in which the Statlers were the bad guys and Mel Tillis was the sheriff. Everyone knows that Mel used to stutter badly, but in 1976, when he was named “Entertainer of the Year,” he credited Minnie Pearl with giving him the confidence to act. He said that Minnie told him the secret of comedy was not to rush your lines, but to stand there and wait for the crowd to respond. He must have learned that lesson well, because he’s one of the most entertaining and funny people I’ve ever known—on and off the stage. I’ve learned a lot from observing him.

Another great thing about Mel is that he doesn’t put on airs—he’s pretty much the same offstage as he is on. I once did a show with him in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, along with Janie Fricke. Even as recently as the early 1980s, that was something you hardly saw—two girl singers on a country-music package show.

Mel came by my bus to visit with a chaw of tobacco in his mouth. Lana Sheffield was my traveling companion, helping out with my bookkeeping, mail, and errands at the time.

Well, Lana took a paper towel and lined the bottom of a Styrofoam cup, then handed it to Mel. Mel was very impressed that Lana had known what to do. Here he was, a headliner and a big star, and yet he appreciated someone’s
knowing the old, country ways. Lana told him everyone knew how to do that in southeastern Oklahoma.

I
FELT SO LUCKY, AS A GREENHORN IN THE COUNTRY MUSIC
business, to be hanging around the Statler Brothers and Mel Tillis. They sure were a lot of fun.

After I left the Statler Brothers, I opened for Conway Twitty, Ronnie Milsap, and then Mickey Gilley. All of them were great to work with, but the food provided at mealtime by each headline act was as different as their music.

The Statlers didn’t provide food for their opening acts. We never knew from night to night if we were even going to get something to drink.

Milsap provided a deli tray and a loaf of bread. Susie and I would take the bread out of the wrapper, make sandwiches for us and the band, then put the sandwiches back in the bread wrapper and carry it with us to eat after the show. That would be our supper.

Conway provided a full meal, and Gilley gave us T-bone steak, soup, salad, and other vegetables, along with dessert. The meal was set out each day between sound check and show time. And by show time, not a bite was left!

I
ALSO STARTED PAYING MORE ATTENTION TO HOW I SOUNDED
, thanks to a lesson from Tom T. Hall.

Many folks think he was the best country songwriter of the 1960s and 1970s. It would be easier to list singers who didn’t hit with his material than it would be to list all of those who did.

I was his opening act on one show where the sound system was terrible. There was distortion and feedback, and I couldn’t understand a word I was singing.

I went over to Tom’s bus after my set. His bus had air-conditioning, and mine did too, but it wasn’t working very
good that year. He did his show, and we wound up visiting again on his bus when he came offstage.

“Were the monitors bad when you were up there?” he asked.

“Oh Lord, yes,” I said.

“Why didn’t you say something?” he said.

“Well, Tom,” I said, “I’m just the opening act. I’m just proud to be here.”

“Well,” he said, “you still should have said something.”

When Tom did his set, he stopped his show and made sure they fixed the sound system before he continued.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said, “that’s something I’ve been really looking forward to.”

“What?” he said.

“When I get rich and famous,” I said, “all I’m gonna do is bitch and sing.”

Tom fell off the couch laughing.

N
EXT I TOOK A CLOSE LOOK AT THE WAY THE BAND BEHAVED
itself. When you’re on the road, the people you take with you represent you. For example, if one of my band members gets falling-down drunk in a hotel after our show, and the public sees that, they won’t say so-and-so was drunk. Instead, they’ll say something like, “Reba McEntire’s such-and-such player was in here, and he sure got drunk.” They’ll tell everything he did, and they’ll attach my name each time they tell it.

So I realized that it’s important that the people who travel with you represent you in a respectable way, both on- and off-stage.

In the early 1980s, the guys in my band used to “party hearty.” My motel room was often close to theirs. I’d have to tell them that if they couldn’t be quiet when they came in, to go to the bus and sleep there instead of waking me up. It worked for a while.

Then there was the night, when we’d just finished a show with Johnny Duncan up north, that Preecher had to come to me. “We’ve got a problem,” said Preecher. “Narvel left to go to a party, and we can’t get into the van.”

The van was my group’s only vehicle.

My band and I caught a ride with Johnny to the hotel, and Narvel showed up a few hours later.

“I’ve got the van keys,” he confessed.

In the middle of the night, Preecher had to find someone to unlock the gate behind the auditorium we had played in so we could get our van.

Narvel was beat from the late hour, but I made him get up early the next morning to drive his annoyed boss to the airport. He didn’t feel like hearing a rules lecture from me shortly after daylight, and I knew he felt bad enough and embarrassed enough about the whole situation. So I let the band handle it. They teased him for a long time after that one.

O
F COURSE, NOT EVERY EMBARRASSING INCIDENT IS PREVENTABLE
, and some that happened to us are pretty funny. There was the time we did some shows in Quincy, California, followed by a show in Columbus, Ohio, for our first appearance ever at the Ohio State Fair. Due to the distance involved, the band and I flew to another show we had scheduled somewhere in between, while Preecher and the others drove the bus to Ohio, stopping along the way at Nevada’s Mustang Ranch, one of the nation’s most famous spots for female/male “hospitality.”

Preecher claims that he had gone to sleep, only awakening the next morning when he noticed the bus was not in motion. He says he looked out the bus window, saw where he was, and went back to sleep. That’s what he says.

“Reba McEntire” was printed on the front of my bus. Someone later said that some of the Mustang girls stood
under the sign to be photographed while wearing little more than a smile. Isn’t that great publicity? For all I know, the photographs are hanging in the lobby of the Mustang Ranch.

One mishap for which Preecher was totally blameless took place in Texas. The band and I played Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth and had stopped afterward at a truck stop near Arlington. The bus was being filled with diesel fuel as most of us ate. Preecher, who had a touch of the stomach flu, stayed in the men’s room a little longer than the rest. He told Wayne Lewis that he’d be right out, but Wayne forgot.

We drove off without Preecher. We noticed his absence about the time we reached Pecos, 450 miles away, when we checked his bunk to find it empty. We hadn’t heard Preecher yelling and screaming as the bus left him in a cloud of smoke. Since he was then the road manager, he had my travel itinerary and knew that we would be spending the night in El Paso. So he hitched a ride with a truck driver, and almost beat us there.

On another Preecher excursion when I wasn’t along, he and Larry stopped at a truck stop, where Larry drained oil from the engine onto the driveway. That isn’t allowed.

As Preecher later reported it, a trucker who had recently washed his rig drove through the oil and it splashed onto his rims. He bounded out of his rig and told Larry he was going to “whip his ass.”

Preecher said that Larry told the trucker “Nighty-night,” and knocked him out.

Someone called the sheriff. Perhaps the lawman was a Reba McEntire fan, because when he saw the bus and realized who owned it, he took the truck driver to jail. Larry and Preecher kept this incident a secret until years after Preecher left my organization!

Larry and Preecher did seem to get into more than their share of scrapes. There was a time in Shreveport when I was ready to fire them both. I had ridden in a car from the hotel, with a friend of mine, Lisa Cacioppo, to the racetrack
where we were to perform on a stage in front of a grandstand. The bus was running in front of me. I saw it stop suddenly.

I didn’t know that Larry was staring at a puddle of water, wondering if it was shallow enough for him to drive through. But rather than get off the bus to check, I learned later, Larry turned to Preecher, the road manager.

“What should I do?” Larry asked.

“Go for it!” Preecher shouted. “Kick it in the ass.”

Water sprayed higher than the bus as Larry slammed the accelerator to the floor and plowed headlong into a curb under the water. The right wheel was fine, but the left fender was dented and almost caved in.

I pulled around to the front of the bus when it stopped and got out of my car. Larry was still in the driver’s seat, too high up to see what had happened. He was just casually looking around. “What the hell is wrong with her this time?” Larry says he was thinking.

I was astounded—and steaming. It was raining, but the falling water did little to cool my temper. I stomped on board.

First, I suggested that we all get together and wreck the entire bus. Larry had no idea why I was so mad.