Danni Leigh

When I was growing up I was listening to standard bluegrass or traditional country music. My daddy used to have Jerry Reed, Merle Haggard, and Buck Owens records around the house a lot. Of course I watched Buck Owens on “Hee Haw” a lot. So, today if I put something on for my listening pleasure it’s going to be Buck, George Jones, Merle or Willie.

Now I’m really proud of my new record, because I think we really brought that sound across in the music. That’s where I come from and that’s what I love.

I started singing in church and that’s pretty much when I told my mom and dad that I wanted to sing.

So singing on-stage came pretty natural to me.

As I grew older after High School, at age 19, I has every intention of moving to Nashville but I kept hearing all the horror stories. So I moved to Florida because I thought I could make a living, singing in all the clubs and bars across the state. It was 1989 when I moved to Orlando. I had intention of going to Disney to see if I could get a gig there, but when I heard about signing contracts and all that stuff, I ended up singing in bars, because I didn’t want to sign a contract. Then I got together with a band that Artimus Pyle from Lynyrd Skynyrd put together. After that, boy I got a taste of the road and it was a mighty sweet taste in my mouth. So, I figured that I’d pretty much burned out Florida so I moved to Nashville which was pretty much about five years ago.

I got a job as a waitress at the Blue Bird café® I met my manager and I got signed to to Warner / Chappell Music. I went in there knowing what I did best, that’s real country. I was pretty clear to everybody involved what my sound was right from the start. So we got a tape together that was unmistakable my sound and we took it over to Decca Records and we got a record deal. You know, it’s not easy out on the road. I’ve always had a pretty good head on my shoulders and common sense. I feel like common sense is what it takes to make it in this business. There are things to watch out for.

Getting into this and singing in bars with people who have done it for a while is probably one of the best things as far as experience goes, that you can do because they teach you the ropes.

They’ll show you what to look out for and give you warning signs of what to look out for with different people. I met a lot of people when I was out on the road singing in the bars who I’m not real proud of (she laughs). I mean some of them were scary people. It just built more of a character into me. I went through some pretty rough stuff down in Florida and I did a lot of odd jobs to keep my head above water financially. So, just singing in the different bands and getting comfortable with the different musicians, that’s one of the most important factors I learned that I incorporate into my stage show.

When you’re on-stage, and if you don’t have that experience and you’ve got a major record deal, then that can all fall apart on you.

After all, those people out there in the crowd, they’ll tell you the truth. They give you the truth. For me singing in the bars, I learned to play and sing a lot of cover songs. You feel which covers sing easier for you. I sing songs by Patsy Cline, Lori Morgan and Patty Loveless. Doing that stuff in the bars and singing all those cover tunes, that all helped me create eventually what was my own sound. Being from the Eats coast, my heart kind of took me to the music our West. It was really cool stuff and very pleasing to me. So I call my music East Coast meets West coast and there’s a chick in the middle slamming it all together. When I got the room in my life to write, with people who had been writing in Nashville,I learned that I have a lot of stuff to write about. My writing comes from my experiences and everything I’ve gone through. Some of it comes out of playing in the bars and some of it comes from personal heartache and things like that. So, I won’t sing a song by somebody else, unless I’ve lived that song and I know what the lyrics are talking about.

To me the best way as an artist and to give a song justice, is that you have to know what they’re trying to put across in the words to that song.

All of the songs I’ve written or co-written on this record, I’m proud to say that I’ve experienced every one of those feelings and emotions that are in the lyrics to each song. I’ve been amazed in all the work that has been done to put my album out to the public over the past year. I knew it took a lot of people to create an album, but it takes so many people working 110 per cent, including myself to make my project work. Without everyone working with me, the project wouldn’t have turned out as well. Hey, it’s really competitive in this town (Nashville) right now. You’ve got to go and in do what I call “scratch and growl”.

Everybody who is working with you has to be on top of things. I talk to my guys all the time and I tell my guys in my band and in my crew I had no idea just how much you’ve got to do whenever you’re out here on the road. You’ve got to be intelligent enough, common sense has to be there. You’ve got to be able to call people up and talk to them and be honest with them. As a matter of fact, right now as a new artist, there’s more business side of things to do and prepare to be on top of then the actual performance side of things. By the time I get to the stage, I could be doing an hour and fifteen minute set, and when I’m up there that time goes by in what seems to me to be like three minutes. Then it’s right back to the business. You don’t want to let your guard down and maybe miss out on an opportunity. I’ve been shocked on how much you have to be on top of the business.

I ask so many questions. I want to be there whenever decisions are being made. As a new artist, you need to know what’s going on because it’s definitely a big part of all this. You know I don’t have an image, it’s the truth. If I open my mouth, sometimes it’s good and sometimes it may be bad, but it’ll always be the truth. That goes down to the way I dress and the way I walk and whatever else. It’s just all me. I believe people like Dwight, Buck, Willie and Merle are. When you hear them speak you know that what they’re saying is the truth. If Clint Eastwood would run for President, I’d vote for him(she laughs). You watch him on TV and yet when somebody pulls a character off so well as he does or the way John Wayne did, you’ve got to believe that’s the way they are.