Reba: My Story (41 page)

I
’VE HAD A GOOD LIFE MYSELF, AND IT MAKES ME FEEL GOOD TO
give something back, not only through my music but also through social involvement.

One way I’m doing that is through the Reba Ranch House. It’s connected to the Texoma Medical Center in Denison, Texas, about sixty miles away from the town where I grew up. It’s a home away from home for families whose loved ones are hospitalized at the Center, so they can be nearby to care for and comfort them. Ranch House
Director Barbara Potter takes care of the house along with Billie Jennings, the housekeeper. It has eight bedrooms with a living room, library, playroom, and kitchen. The lighted walkway through the woods from the ranch house to the hospital center is dedicated to the memory of my band.

It’s a project I’m very proud of. My heart goes out to the folks who stay there. The Development Committee, Barbara, Billie, Narvel, and I all hope you never have to come back again. But if you do the Reba Ranch House is there for you.

Recently I’ve gotten involved with another wonderful organization, Habitat for Humanity. It’s a group that builds new houses or restores abandoned ones for, as their slogan goes, “God’s People in Need” around the world. Volunteers work side-by-side with the homeowners, who contribute five hundred hours of “sweat equity” and then get zero-interest mortgages to buy the property. So I helped select Gail Kinzer, who is a data-entry operator with two children, to be a homeowner. I underwrote the construction costs of her new Nashville home. And here’s a nice twist: That home was the first one in the entire worldwide Habitat for Humanity program ever to be sponsored and built entirely by women!

S
INCE WE FIRST STARTED IN 1988, STARSTRUCK ENTERTAINMENT
has been expanding to include three music publishing companies, a publicity agency, a concert booking and promotions agency, a construction company, a racing stable, a jet service company, my fan club, an advertising company, and an artist management company that includes four managers and their assistants.

The music publishing companies were formed after I had been a contract writer for several years in the 1980s for the Welk Music Group in Nashville. The songs I wrote before that went into Red Steagall’s publishing company. My biggest hit—in fact the only single ever released of a
song I’ve written is “Only in My Mind.” In it, after being asked if he or she ever cheated, the person answers, “Only in my mind.” I wrote it in my dressing room one night on tour, with my eyeliner pencil on a paper towel. I recorded it, and it went to number five on the
Billboard
charts. I’m very proud of that.

But while I do w rite songs myself, most of the material my companies publish comes from eight to ten staff writers. They’ve produced some terrific work, including “For My Broken Heart” and “It’s Your Call,” both title songs from my platinum-selling albums. Their primary job isn’t necessarily to create songs for me. Our song pitchers, as we call them, make sure as many producers and artists as possible hear Starstruck songs.

As for me, no matter who writes them, or publishes them, I’ll only record songs that I love, that touch my heart. I almost hate to tell you some of the songs that I’ve turned down, including “Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?” which was a big hit for George Strait. I really toyed with that one, but I could never get used to that line in it about “cold Fort Worth beer.” I’d never sung a song with beer in it, so I just decided it wasn’t right. And I also passed on “Learning to Live Again,” a great song, which Garth Brooks picked up. When I saw him singing it on the Jay Leno show, I said, “Hey Narvel, I turned that song down,” and he said,
“You did what?”
But I thought it was better for a man to sing, and I’m just really glad for Garth that he did it.

I’m not sick about turning those songs down—again, I just had to go with my gut feelings.

So, while I believe in my writers, of course, I’m also very honest with them. If I don’t like a song, even if it’s a good song, it’s just not for me. I think that is one of the reasons my career has stayed strong for seventeen years—because I’ve learned that the song is the foundation of it all. The song has to be the best.

As of February 1994, our aviation company has expanded to owning two jets and managing three. We lease
them to anyone who has a need—corporate people as well as entertainers. I feel it’s a business that has lots of room to grow. We deal in sales, management, leasing, and charter.

Our construction company started after we completed all the building at our place in Gallatin, Tennessee. The next big undertaking will be our new headquarters for Starstruck Entertainment, which will cover five lots on Nashville’s world-famous Music Row. Construction began in February 1994.

Starstruck Farms, our horse racing division, is expanding too: We handle horses all the way from breeding to watching them run on the track. Since I’ve always been a fan of horses and racing, it thrills me to watch horses race down the homestretch, and even more so if one of them belongs to me.

At the beginning of 1994, Starstruck Farms has twenty-nine horses, with three babies on the way. Three of them are quarter horses and the rest are thoroughbreds. We also have three horses in partnership with Joe Gehl. We have horses in New York, Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Texas, as well as at our place in Gallatin, Tennessee. They have run at such major tracks as Saratoga, Belmont, Aqueduct, the Meadowlands, Gulfstream, and Oaklawn. We’ve had a few letdown-losings, but also some exciting wins!

Patricia Lounsbury-Lagden, our Starstruck Farms manager, breaks the horses we buy and gets them jockey-ready. The horses are then sent to Kindergarten Farms in Ocala, Florida, where Jimmy Gladwell prepares them for the track.

These horses are beautiful, temperamental, calm, flighty, and fun. The hardest thing about having stables is seeing one of the horses get so sick or injured that it has to be destroyed. We’ve lost three horses so far, and it’s been heartbreaking.

One of them was Kiowa Cowboy. Narvel and I had gotten that horse as a yearling at the Keeneland Sales in
Lexington, Kentucky. Before you give a horse a name, you have to check by computer to be sure that it hasn’t been used before. But I very much doubted that anyone else would pick “Kiowa Cowboy,” which was the name of my high school mascot hack in Kiowa, Oklahoma. Narvel thought the name was goofy and suggested, “Well, why don’t we call the next one ‘Burleson Elk’?”—referring to his Burleson, Texas, hometown.

But I won out.

Kiowa Cowboy was a three-year-old who won three of his seven races. His specialty was racing up from last place to a contender’s position. I’ll never forget his fifth race on March 5, 1993, at Aqueduct. It was snowing and the track was muddy. Kiowa Cowboy was last coming out of the starting gate and was never mentioned again until the homestretch. Then suddenly the announcer was shouting, “And they’re making the turn, coming down the homestretch, and it’s Go Cuervo, Cinco Roy, followed by Kiowa Cowboy. But dashing through the snow, through the sleet, here comes Kiowa Cowboy!”

He won by three lengths.

Kiowa Cowboy quickly rose from a $25,000 claiming horse to a stakes horse, and I just know that, had he lived, he would have been a potential Kentucky Derby competitor. That horse had a lot of heart. It was during a Kentucky Derby “prep race” at Aqueduct on April 16, 1993, that he suffered his fatal injury. He was coming from eighth place to within a nose of taking the lead, but when he changed leads he put his foot down wrong and broke it. When he went down, he threw jockey Herb McCauley free from the saddle; Herb fortunately escaped injuries except for a broken collarbone.

Kiowa Cowboy had to be put to sleep immediately. It wasn’t our decision to make. The track veterinarian just had to do what was humane.

We lost a second horse at Belmont to a viral infection. And on October 16, 1993, we lost a three-year-old stud
colt to colic, which is a twisted intestine. He was in intense pain and he had to be put down.

Narvel and I have a few other horses now, A Firm Mister, Red McFly, and Chockie Mountain, who are as promising as Kiowa Cowboy. We can’t wait to see what 1994 holds for all of our horses.

A
S FOR THE MUSIC END OF THINGS
,
FOR MY BROKEN HEART
, as of this writing, is headed for triple platinum. It won “Country Album of the Year” at the American Music Awards in 1992. Its follow-up,
It’s Your Call
, also went double platinum in record time.

And in 1993, I got the chance to celebrate the success of someone especially close to me, one of my best friends in the business, Vince Gill, whom the Country Music Association named “Entertainer of the Year.” His song, “When I Call Your Name,” which had been out only two years, had become the second bestselling country music song of all time. It was with Vince that I did the fourth and fifth duets of my career, “Oklahoma Swing” and “The Heart Won’t Lie.” I’d done my first two with Jacky Ward, “Three Sheets in the Wind” and “That Makes Two of Us” and my third with Hank Williams Jr., “Mind Your Own Business.”

“The Heart Won’t Lie” was a big hit for Vince and me. In 1992, he toured with me, and we did “The Heart Won’t Lie” together onstage. But now when I perform it alone in my live show, we project a videotape of Vince on a video wall and on the video screens. I stand next to Vince’s video image so that it looks like we’re singing together. I once had a fan ask me who I got to stand in for Vince Gill. That’s when I knew our optical illusion was working well. The crowds love it.

One night in 1993, Vince opened my show at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles during the last game of the 1993 World Series. An avid sports fan, he set up a small television onstage, right between his sound monitors. During
his instrumental breaks, he kept stepping back to look at the game, and then he would ease forward when it was time to sing again. You know what? He never missed a note!

It was funny how I met another person who, like Vince, I became a huge fan of.

Back in December 1989, when I was pregnant with Shelby and, on doctor’s orders, flat on my back in bed, I had lots of time to listen to demo tapes, to get ready for my 1990 LP,
Rumor Has It
. One night, when Narvel came home from the office, he asked, “Did you find any good songs today?”

I said, “I don’t know about the songs, but there’s one girl singing on a lot of these tapes, and
she’s great
!”

Her voice was so believable, so personable—it touched me. When I played Narvel the tapes, he agreed with me. Checking up, Narvel found out that her name was Linda Davis and that she was on Sony Records and was represented by Irv Woolsey, George Strait’s manager.

Before long, Linda left Irv and asked Narvel to be her manager, and after asking for her release from Sony, he got her a deal on Liberty Records. Then, after two albums and not much success, Narvel asked Jimmy Bowen to release her from her contract.

Linda decided to take a break from recording and get refocused. So Narvel asked me if I’d be interested in having Linda sing backup for me on the road. I thought it was a great idea and said, “How about getting Lang”—her husband, Lang Scott, who has a great voice and also plays acoustic guitar—“to join us too?”