who - I think it's an important part of your ca- reer and how you became who you are as an artist. I listened to Reba, Barbara Mandrell, The Judds, Eddie Rabbit, and pretty much anyone else on country radio in the 80's, but out of all of them, I seriously loved Reba [McEntire]. I think I wanted to be her. (Laughs) I was slightly obsessed, some would say. (Laughs) But I learned a lot from her as an artist. She was one of the biggest women in country music at the time. What I didn't know at the time, was that she is not a writer! Nei- ther is Barbara Mandrell or Wynonna. I had no idea that there was a difference between singers and songwriters, and I'm actually quite thankful that I didn't know that at the time. I didn't care about being a songwriter back then, I just wanted to be singing on big stages and being famous and all that. I bought the guitar because I thought you needed to write your own songs, and I'd need a guitar to do that. Who knew? But eventually, through the growth of my own career, I fell madly in love with writing and being the big famous singer just wasn't as important to me any- more. I love performing, but I'd be completely content being a songwriter and having some- one else sing my songs. Once I fell in love with songwriting, I dis-


covered some amazing songwriters that have influenced my writing incredibly. I have been heavily influenced by the likes of Shawn Colvin, Kim Richey, and my all time favorite writer, Lori McKenna. I am so impressed by what a multi-faceted


artist you are. Tell me about your art - when did you get started? Ah... my art. It's kinda funny how that


came about. My entire life has been about music. I had no outside hobbies, or an alter- nate career thought. I loved photography, but I knew I couldn't afford to do both music and photography, so I let go of photography all to- gether. So, that was the biggest choice in for


me in what art to follow in my life. I picked music. So, years and years of doing nothing but music, my plan was to do just that - music. What happened was, the industry changed. Cd's are almost non existent any- more, people download everything these days. But I make my living on Cd sales. So when sales started to drop, I started starving to death. (Laughs) I knew I had to do some- thing, and I knew that if you go to any concert they have a lot of different merchandise op- tions. Tshirts, tour books, 8x10's, Cd's, collec- tor edition records or cassettes (retro is in), backpacks, beer koozies, and on and on and on. The big stars are having the same prob- lem as I am - Cd's aren't selling like they once did. So, you make your living on merchandise sales at shows. I started adding more and more merchandise options, but there wasn't anything that stood out at unique. There's only so many beer koozies a person is gonna buy, ya know? So I thought I needed some- thing different. Something that no other artist was doing. I had gone to a heavy metal festival about


fifteen years ago - my older brother plays heavy metal - my sister and I went to his show in an effort to support him. Neither of us are into heavy metal. (Laughs) So, as everyone else there was dressed in solid black, we were wearing color and seriously stuck out like a sore thumb in the crowd. We were walking around looking at all the band merch and there wasn't one thing that she and I would have bought. None of the Cd's, Tshirts, Koozies, or band posters really ap- pealed to us. But then we stumbled across this table with a ton of jewelry. What hap- pened? We bought a few bracelets! Fast for- ward to my own shows, and then delima of sales being low and I remembered that con- cert all those years ago. I came up with this rule.... "always have something to sell to someone who doesn't like your music." So, I


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