Reba: My Story (40 page)

Many singers used a house band that C.K. had put together and the rest paid for their own bands’ time, as well as transportation and lodging. Monies from ticket sales and fan donations were deposited in Nashville’s Third National Bank a few days in advance, so there would be checks ready to present to the families at the show.

The evening was bittersweet. The sellout crowd seemed a little confused at first, C.K. remembers, because they didn’t know if they were meant to let go and have a good time at a concert memorializing such a sad event. Eventually, the overall mood was happiness.

The evening was a difficult one for me—it was gratifying to be a part of this great tribute to my people, but deeply emotional too. Narvel and I had reached that stage of mourning where you think you’re beginning to recover but you’re not. So at first we weren’t even sure that we should even go. The previous weeks had drained us, spiritually and physically. I wasn’t scheduled to entertain, and we weren’t certain what our function would be.

But I realized that some of the entertainers were reaching out to me as well as the families. And I decided my place was with them, I belonged there.

I used to end all of my shows with “Sweet Dreams.” It had been the last song the band had ever heard me sing. So in the middle of the benefit program, I walked onstage and sang it a cappella, just as I had done that night in San Diego.

I
N MAY 1991, I WENT INTO THE STUDIO TO RECORD
FOR MY
Broken Heart
, the album that was my commemoration of the band and of other lost loved ones. Some of the session musicians, among others, remarked on how sad the songs were, but as I wrote for the liner notes:

F
OR MY BROKEN HEART
MEANS THE MOST TO ME OF ALL THE
albums I’ve recorded. It clearly expresses my feelings of hurt and my hope for healing. In the time after the tragedy, my thoughts were really reflected in the words of the title song, “… I guess the world didn’t stop for my broken heart.”

I heard that song, written by Liz Hengber and Keith Palmer, for the first time in early 1991 and I remember how it gave me chills. Originally, I planned to record it with Clint Black. But the crash and other things prevented Clint and me from getting together. I never recorded it as a duet.

The final song on the album is called “If I Had Only Known,” obviously dedicated to my band and Jim. Matt Rollings and John Jarvis played for me on it. I recorded that song last intentionally. I thought that once the musicians were through laying down the instrumental tracks on the other songs, they’d leave the building. So if I did happen to lose it when I sang the song, at least I wouldn’t have an audience. One of the few who stayed was Larrie Londin, the greatest drummer I’ve ever worked with. We lost Larrie in the summer of 1992; I miss him terribly.

I ran through the song once with John and Matt and then recorded it. “That’s it,” I told Tony Brown, my producer. “That’s all I can do.” He understood. There was so much of my heart in that song it tore me up to sing it. Listening to it later, I realized that the song isn’t in perfect meter, but that didn’t seem to matter.

It is a song about living for the moment, the only moment we know for sure we have:

T
HERE HAVE ONLY BEEN A FEW TIMES THAT I HAVE SUNG
“
IF I
Had Only Known.” For a while I wasn’t sure that I could perform it publicly at all. I tried it at one of my shows as an encore, and it left people walking out of the auditorium very sedate and quiet. I performed it on an AIDS benefit television special, which seemed appropriate. I also performed that song in a video for the St. Jude’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and it’s on the sound track for the movie
8 Seconds
, the Lane Frost story. I also sang it on “Oprah Winfrey,” where some of the audience cried through the whole song.

I was caught off guard on that show. Right after I was introduced, the first thing I was hit with was film footage of the crash, while a camera stayed on my face to register my reaction. I was shocked, but now I see that Oprah is a very wise woman. She recognized how, when you’re a public figure, folks look to you for leadership. They want to see how you handle a tragedy that might be similar to one they once went through or might go through. But for a while, I was too brokenhearted to assume the role.

M
USIC IS SO WEIRD SOMETIMES, SO THERAPEUTIC AND HEALING
. It’s almost like it’s waiting to be there for you when you need it—just like a good friend with open arms. In 1992, when I went into the studio to record my new album,
It’s Your Call
, the first song I chose was Skip Ewing’s “Lighter Shade of Blue.” I had found it just before we left on that
fateful trip to San Diego and it had really moved me. Then, when we returned to Nashville after the crash, on the night of March 16, I had gone back down to my office in the house and played that song again. It gave me hope in those dark days that my sorrow would eventually subside.

When the new album came out in 1993 with “Lighter Shade of Blue” on it, people would ask me if I was “over” the crash. I could only say, “It’s just like the song … ‘I’ve only turned a lighter shade of blue.’ ”

I
N THE AFTERMATH OF THE CRASH, WE WERE TOURING A
lot but I found myself wishing for something different to do to get my mind off the accident. The answer to my prayer came from Ken Kragen, Kenny Rogers’s manager. Kenny was making a two-part television miniseries,
The Gambler IV: The Gambler Returns
, and he wanted me to be in it. I had thought that
Tremors
would be my first and last movie, but I really needed a distraction and I knew it would be a lot of fun to work with Kenny. I’ve always been a huge fan of his. I got to play a madam back at the turn of the century. It was a western so I rode a horse and wore beautiful full dresses.

Dick Lowry, the director, helped me a great deal with my acting technique. One of the most important tips he gave me was to slow down and lower my pitch when I was talking before a camera. Kenny always talks so fast that he had me rattling like an auctioneer to keep up with him! I’ve used Dick’s advice in every movie I’ve made since.

My next role came in 1993, in the made-for-TV movie
Man from Left Field
, in which I co-starred with Burt Reynolds. Burt is not only a great actor, but he’s also a great director. Part of the reason I accepted the role was that Burt had directed me earlier in an episode of his hit television series “Evening Shade.” Burt is also great with the folks around Jupiter, Florida, where we filmed the movie. He has given so much back to his community. They all think the world of him—just like I do.

In the movie, Burt unintentionally helped me moderate my speech because he talks so slowly himself—enough so that I sometimes wondered if he had forgotten his lines. He’d look down at the tablecloth or stare into space when I thought he should be talking. But that was just the timing that makes him Burt Reynolds.

In one scene, where Burt and I were lying in the sand, he had about three pages of dialogue to do. If I’d thought about it, I would have wondered how in the world he could memorize all of that. Suddenly, I heard a tiny, muffled voice.

“Where is that coming from?” I said to myself. But I stayed in character, as you’re supposed to do until someone yells, “Cut.”

I heard Burt say his line, then the little electronic voice again. Finally I noticed a wire running from inside Burt’s shirt to an earpiece. Someone off camera was feeding him his lines! I thought that was clever, and had I known that could be done, I might have asked for the assistance myself.

Man from Left Field
was a fun movie to do. All the kids in it were local kids, and they did a marvelous job! Look out Hollywood! Shelby was with me part of the time on the movie so it was a lot more vacation than work. Sandi did my hair for the movie and I did my own makeup. Thanks, Burt, for the opportunity.

That same spring, I got the part of Ma Tex in the movie
North
, which had a cast accomplished enough to intimidate
any fairly green actor: Bruce Willis, Dan Ackroyd, Kathy Bates, and many more! I learned a lot by watching them work. The film’s star was Elijah Woods, the child actor star of
Huckieberry Finn
. It was produced and directed by Rob Reiner, who treated me as nicely as I could have ever asked for.

None of the actors were allowed to drive their cars onto one of the locations outside of L.A. We all had to drive to a certain point and then be shuttled in—except for Bruce. But his idea of a car was an eighteen-wheel semitrailer truck that carried his private gymnasium. I sure got a kick out of that!

And I really enjoyed Dan Ackroyd. On the first day, after Dan and I had rehearsed our dance routine a couple of times, I thought I was making a joke when I said to Rob, “I think he could have a career in dancing someday.”

“Uh, he’s already had a pretty good career there,” Rob said.

I had forgotten that Dan and the late John Belushi had developed the characters the Blues Brothers, who sang and danced in their hit motion picture, on “Saturday Night Live” for years, and even opened for the Rolling Stones. I felt like I had my foot in my mouth plumb up to my ankle.

Dan entertained us on the set with stories about his actual ghostbusting service, which he and his brother had set up and which may have inspired Dan’s hit movie
Ghostbusters
. The service is very serious and scientific. They literally go into houses that are supposed to be haunted and rid the places of the presences. His great-grandfather conducted séances so Dan kinda came by his ghostbusting honestly.

And in 1994, I got a small cameo part in the movie
The Little Rascals
. That came about after I had met the director and producer, Penelope Spheeris, when I was auditioning for a part in
The Beverly Hillbillies
. I didn’t get that part, but Penelope remembered me and I got to work with
her in her next movie. It was great. She’s a super director and I loved working with her.

I’m also releasing my own made-for-TV movie, based on my video
Is There Life Out There?
It’s the story of a woman who’s made a good life—marriage, children, a home—but she can’t help but wonder if she’s missing out on something. The video ends with the woman (me) receiving a college diploma and a chance to make her good life better.

Nothing I’ve ever done has touched so many women’s hearts. I can’t count the number of letters I’ve gotten from women who said they went back to school after watching that video. I even received a letter from a guy who said that he was working two jobs, and came home from work one night to find his wife crying on the couch. He looked at the television screen and saw my character getting her diploma. He vowed then and there that he was going to put his wife through school, no matter what it took from him.

She’s a lucky woman to have a man like that.

It’s responses like these that make me feel so blessed and lucky at what I get to do for a living—that I have the chance to give people a message that can inspire their lives. The songwriters, Rick Giles and Susan Longacre, did a lot of good for people by creating and writing that song, and it’s one that I’m proud to sing. I hope that the movie will help spread the word that yes, girls—and guys too—there is life out there; and you can reach out for your dreams.