TigressPen
06-01-2008, 05:22 AM
I hope you agree that this article is a feel good story. It brought smiles to my heart just knowing that in this world of 'me,me, me' some still feel the way this young lady does. I suppose it was the closing line, Crystal Shwanda's own words that made me want to add this story here.
I, too, was raised with that outlook engrained in me. For I was always told, if you can't laugh it off, then laugh with it.
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http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080601/ENTERTAINMENT01/806010355/1005/NLETTER01&source=nletter-news
From life on a Canadian reservation to country radio, Crystal Shawanda held on tight
Crystal Shawanda grew up watching her friends die.
Shawanda, an Ojibwe, was born and raised on the Wikwemikong reservation on Canada's Manitoulin Island, a place, she says, where suicide was so common it was considered a way of life. She didn't find out differently until she moved to Nashville as a teenager to chase her dream of country music stardom.
"It comes from a sense of hopelessness and not having anything to look forward to and seeing no end in sight," said the 27-year-old singer, seated at a wobbly table on the back patio at Tootsies Orchid Lounge on Lower Broadway. "There's things that I think people dream about doing, whether it's something as crazy as being a country music singer or as normal as starting a business, and there's a lot of people who grew up with this mindset that you can't do that and it's just the way it is."
Shawanda left the reservation when she was just 13 to pursue a country music career, or at least an education in music that would get her closer to Nashville. Now she has a major record label deal, a new single, "You Can Let Go," out on country radio, and an appearance scheduled at next week's CMA Music Festival.
Life on the reservation was so spartan that until Shawanda was 10, her family didn't even have indoor plumbing.
"My whole record label came to the reserve and they're like, 'Wow, that's where you grew up, in that little house?' " she recalled. "And they're like, 'You had an outhouse? I was like, 'Yeah.'
"I didn't think of it. Me and my brothers, it was always a fun thing. I'd be like, 'OK, I have to go to the bathroom.' And my brothers were like, 'OK,' and they'd grab a flashlight and we'd run back there and scare each other.
"All these things, I didn't realize were that bad. Then, when we finally got indoor plumbing I thought it was a new invention. I'd been to my friends' houses and some of them had it, but I never questioned why they had it and we didn't. I guess I was just so happy with my family that I never felt like, 'Well I want what they have.' "
Family dreamed with her
Shawanda recalls a joyful childhood, filled with memories of a close-knit extended family and many hours spent playing outside.
"Every meal is an event," she said. "At breakfast, my uncles will come over from one side of the family, then at lunch my cousins will come over from another side of the family. Then at dinner, if they find out my mom is cooking pies, they all come over. There's probably like 30 of us.
"We were encouraged to enjoy the outside. In the summer, I did a lot of strawberry picking and a lot of fishing and swimming. And in the winter we'd build snowmen. My parents tried to make fun out of everything."
So when Shawanda's father, a trucker, announced he had landed a route that went through Nashville, it sounded like the ultimate adventure.
The aspiring country singer was barely a teenager, but when she and her parents pulled into town later in the week, she said she knew she had found the place she was destined to live her life. They parked at a truck stop across the river and walked into town, past all the bars on Broadway, before stopping at Tootsies.
"I looked in the door, and I was afraid to get up and sing, because if I did and I wasn't good enough, then I wouldn't have anything to look forward to or anything to dream about," she said.
Shawanda didn't sing that time, but when she came back to Nashville a few months later she couldn't resist hopping on stage. By the second song, she got a standing ovation. She was hooked.
"I felt like I walked into heaven," she said. "I knew this is where I was going to live. This is where I was going to make my dreams come true."
With the support of her family, Shawanda moved to Nashville for the first time when she was 16, but ended up moving back to Canada. She made several more attempts at making it in Music City before her final try almost six years ago.
"The last time I went home, I went home to quit," she said. "Then I woke up one day and said, 'OK, I'm moving to Nashville, and even if I don't make it, I did what I love. I got to sing every day, and if in 15 years I was still singing for tips, it's a good life. It's better than cleaning toilets, and I know, because I've done that, too.'
"My nieces and nephews, seeing them grow up, they're at an age where they know what's going on now, and I didn't want to set that example for them — that you have to give up."
More in store than music
When Shawanda got back to Nashville, she found a job at a department store but was fired soon thereafter. In an attempt to pay her bills, she called Tootsies and asked for enough gigs to make ends meet. She got that and more.
DeWayne Strobel was the guitar player in the band that played after her. He approached her to play guitar in her band. She had something else in mind.
"Her voice just stopped me," he said. "I gave her my number and told her to call me if she needed a guitar player for her band. She said, 'I don't know about the guitar player part, but I'll give you call.' "
Shawanda said she was too nervous to call Strobel on the phone the next day, so she went downtown to find him in person. They were married six months later.
"We fell in love and sat down and mapped out a plan for the band and to get a record deal," Strobel said. "And so far it's working out pretty good. It's like anything else: It gets discouraging if you try and find something discouraging. But if you look for the positives, you don't pay as much attention to the discouraging.
"If you truly love your partner, you're going to want them to achieve what they've dreamed of. … I just try and help do my part. I play guitar and try and be her assistant, and then we get to go hold hands at night, and that's pretty good."
About two years after the pair met and started playing together, Shawanda landed her record deal with Sony BMG Nashville. Strobel said his wife had received other offers along the way, but that she was holding out.
"She was looking for RCA," he said. "Every time she would talk about doing a showcase, it was never, 'We're going to do a showcase for the industry,' it was always, 'We're going to do a showcase for Joe Galante.' "
Shawanda played three showcases for Galante, chairman of Sony BMG Nashville. At the end of her set at the last showcase, she said he extended his hand and said, "Welcome to the family." Since then, Shawanda has recorded her debut album, Dawn of a New Day, which is the English translation of her last name, and released her first single, "You Can Let Go," to country radio. This Thursday she will have another first when she makes her debut appearance at the CMA Music Festival.
Shawanda's family is traveling from Canada to see her play on the Greased Lightning Daytime Stage on Thursday.
"They've been dreaming with me every step of the way," she said. "Sometimes we don't know if we want to laugh or cry, and sometimes we can't believe it."
But Galante can believe it. He said Shawanda's voice has a raw, emotional quality that commands attention.
"From the moment you hear her, you have a connection," he said. "But I think people also need to see her, and there isn't a time she doesn't get up there where she says something that doesn't grab you.
"She's got this moment now, and she's doing it for herself and she's doing it for her people, and I think that's a very heavy, important burden," he said. "I don't think there is anyone who has parents or grandparents who have struggled to live the American dream who doesn't know what this woman is all about. It speaks to the fabric of this country."
Shawanda said her upbringing on the reserve caused her to be more open-minded and maybe more open-hearted.
"When you leave, your first experience off the reserve is going to affect you forever. You're either going to be excited to explore the world, or it will make you want to go back home.
"For me, even though I'm gone, I still tell my husband stories about things that happened back home, because I don't want to lose that," she said.
"I wouldn't be the person I am if I didn't grow up through that, and my family has given me this great view of the world where nothing is so bad you can't laugh it off."
I, too, was raised with that outlook engrained in me. For I was always told, if you can't laugh it off, then laugh with it.
---------------------------------
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080601/ENTERTAINMENT01/806010355/1005/NLETTER01&source=nletter-news
From life on a Canadian reservation to country radio, Crystal Shawanda held on tight
Crystal Shawanda grew up watching her friends die.
Shawanda, an Ojibwe, was born and raised on the Wikwemikong reservation on Canada's Manitoulin Island, a place, she says, where suicide was so common it was considered a way of life. She didn't find out differently until she moved to Nashville as a teenager to chase her dream of country music stardom.
"It comes from a sense of hopelessness and not having anything to look forward to and seeing no end in sight," said the 27-year-old singer, seated at a wobbly table on the back patio at Tootsies Orchid Lounge on Lower Broadway. "There's things that I think people dream about doing, whether it's something as crazy as being a country music singer or as normal as starting a business, and there's a lot of people who grew up with this mindset that you can't do that and it's just the way it is."
Shawanda left the reservation when she was just 13 to pursue a country music career, or at least an education in music that would get her closer to Nashville. Now she has a major record label deal, a new single, "You Can Let Go," out on country radio, and an appearance scheduled at next week's CMA Music Festival.
Life on the reservation was so spartan that until Shawanda was 10, her family didn't even have indoor plumbing.
"My whole record label came to the reserve and they're like, 'Wow, that's where you grew up, in that little house?' " she recalled. "And they're like, 'You had an outhouse? I was like, 'Yeah.'
"I didn't think of it. Me and my brothers, it was always a fun thing. I'd be like, 'OK, I have to go to the bathroom.' And my brothers were like, 'OK,' and they'd grab a flashlight and we'd run back there and scare each other.
"All these things, I didn't realize were that bad. Then, when we finally got indoor plumbing I thought it was a new invention. I'd been to my friends' houses and some of them had it, but I never questioned why they had it and we didn't. I guess I was just so happy with my family that I never felt like, 'Well I want what they have.' "
Family dreamed with her
Shawanda recalls a joyful childhood, filled with memories of a close-knit extended family and many hours spent playing outside.
"Every meal is an event," she said. "At breakfast, my uncles will come over from one side of the family, then at lunch my cousins will come over from another side of the family. Then at dinner, if they find out my mom is cooking pies, they all come over. There's probably like 30 of us.
"We were encouraged to enjoy the outside. In the summer, I did a lot of strawberry picking and a lot of fishing and swimming. And in the winter we'd build snowmen. My parents tried to make fun out of everything."
So when Shawanda's father, a trucker, announced he had landed a route that went through Nashville, it sounded like the ultimate adventure.
The aspiring country singer was barely a teenager, but when she and her parents pulled into town later in the week, she said she knew she had found the place she was destined to live her life. They parked at a truck stop across the river and walked into town, past all the bars on Broadway, before stopping at Tootsies.
"I looked in the door, and I was afraid to get up and sing, because if I did and I wasn't good enough, then I wouldn't have anything to look forward to or anything to dream about," she said.
Shawanda didn't sing that time, but when she came back to Nashville a few months later she couldn't resist hopping on stage. By the second song, she got a standing ovation. She was hooked.
"I felt like I walked into heaven," she said. "I knew this is where I was going to live. This is where I was going to make my dreams come true."
With the support of her family, Shawanda moved to Nashville for the first time when she was 16, but ended up moving back to Canada. She made several more attempts at making it in Music City before her final try almost six years ago.
"The last time I went home, I went home to quit," she said. "Then I woke up one day and said, 'OK, I'm moving to Nashville, and even if I don't make it, I did what I love. I got to sing every day, and if in 15 years I was still singing for tips, it's a good life. It's better than cleaning toilets, and I know, because I've done that, too.'
"My nieces and nephews, seeing them grow up, they're at an age where they know what's going on now, and I didn't want to set that example for them — that you have to give up."
More in store than music
When Shawanda got back to Nashville, she found a job at a department store but was fired soon thereafter. In an attempt to pay her bills, she called Tootsies and asked for enough gigs to make ends meet. She got that and more.
DeWayne Strobel was the guitar player in the band that played after her. He approached her to play guitar in her band. She had something else in mind.
"Her voice just stopped me," he said. "I gave her my number and told her to call me if she needed a guitar player for her band. She said, 'I don't know about the guitar player part, but I'll give you call.' "
Shawanda said she was too nervous to call Strobel on the phone the next day, so she went downtown to find him in person. They were married six months later.
"We fell in love and sat down and mapped out a plan for the band and to get a record deal," Strobel said. "And so far it's working out pretty good. It's like anything else: It gets discouraging if you try and find something discouraging. But if you look for the positives, you don't pay as much attention to the discouraging.
"If you truly love your partner, you're going to want them to achieve what they've dreamed of. … I just try and help do my part. I play guitar and try and be her assistant, and then we get to go hold hands at night, and that's pretty good."
About two years after the pair met and started playing together, Shawanda landed her record deal with Sony BMG Nashville. Strobel said his wife had received other offers along the way, but that she was holding out.
"She was looking for RCA," he said. "Every time she would talk about doing a showcase, it was never, 'We're going to do a showcase for the industry,' it was always, 'We're going to do a showcase for Joe Galante.' "
Shawanda played three showcases for Galante, chairman of Sony BMG Nashville. At the end of her set at the last showcase, she said he extended his hand and said, "Welcome to the family." Since then, Shawanda has recorded her debut album, Dawn of a New Day, which is the English translation of her last name, and released her first single, "You Can Let Go," to country radio. This Thursday she will have another first when she makes her debut appearance at the CMA Music Festival.
Shawanda's family is traveling from Canada to see her play on the Greased Lightning Daytime Stage on Thursday.
"They've been dreaming with me every step of the way," she said. "Sometimes we don't know if we want to laugh or cry, and sometimes we can't believe it."
But Galante can believe it. He said Shawanda's voice has a raw, emotional quality that commands attention.
"From the moment you hear her, you have a connection," he said. "But I think people also need to see her, and there isn't a time she doesn't get up there where she says something that doesn't grab you.
"She's got this moment now, and she's doing it for herself and she's doing it for her people, and I think that's a very heavy, important burden," he said. "I don't think there is anyone who has parents or grandparents who have struggled to live the American dream who doesn't know what this woman is all about. It speaks to the fabric of this country."
Shawanda said her upbringing on the reserve caused her to be more open-minded and maybe more open-hearted.
"When you leave, your first experience off the reserve is going to affect you forever. You're either going to be excited to explore the world, or it will make you want to go back home.
"For me, even though I'm gone, I still tell my husband stories about things that happened back home, because I don't want to lose that," she said.
"I wouldn't be the person I am if I didn't grow up through that, and my family has given me this great view of the world where nothing is so bad you can't laugh it off."