Chely Wright, singer, songwriter, country music star, writes
in this moving, telling memoir about her life and her
career; about growing up in America’s heartland, the
youngest of three children; about barely remembering a time
when she didn’t know she was different.
She
writes about her parents, putting down roots in their
twenties in the farming town of Wellsville, Kansas, Old
Glory flying atop the poles on the town’s manicured lawns,
and being raised to believe that hard work, honesty, and
determination would take her far.
She writes
of making up her mind at a young age to become a country
music star, knowing then that her feelings and crushes on
girls were “sinful” and hoping and praying that she would
somehow be “fixed.” (“Dear God, please don’t let me be gay.
I promise not to lie. I promise not to steal. I promise to
always believe in you . . . Please take it
away.”)
We see her, high school homecoming
queen, heading out on her own at seventeen and landing a job
as a featured vocalist on the Ozark Jubilee (the show
that started Brenda Lee, Red Foley, and Porter Wagoner),
being cast in Country Music U.S.A., doing four live
shows a day, and—after only a few months in Nashville—her
dream coming true, performing on the stage of the Grand Ole
Opry . . .
She describes writing and singing
her own songs for producers who’d discovered and recorded
the likes of Reba McEntire, Shania Twain, and Toby Keith,
who heard in her music something special and signed her to a
record contract, releasing her first album and sending her
out on the road on her first bus tour . . . She writes of
sacrificing all for a shot at success that would come a
couple of years later with her first hit single, “Shut Up
And Drive” . . . her songs (from her fourth album, Single
White Female) climbing the Billboard chart for
twenty-nine weeks, hitting the #1 spot . . .
She writes about the friends she made along
the way—Vince Gill, Brad Paisley, and others—writing songs,
recording and touring together, some of the friendships
developing into romantic attachments that did not end
happily . . . Keeping the truth of who she was clutched deep
inside, trying to ignore it in a world she longed to be a
part of—and now was—a world in which country music stars had
never been, could not be, openly gay . . .
She
writes of the very real prospect of losing everything she’d
worked so hard to create . . . doing her best to have a real
life—her best not good enough . . .
And in the
face of everything she did to keep herself afloat, she
writes about how the vortex of success and hiding who she
was took its toll: her life, a tangled mess she didn’t see
coming, didn’t want to; and, finally, finding the guts to
untangle herself from the image of the country music star
she’d become, an image steeped in long-standing ideals and
notions about who—and what—a country artist is, and what
their fans expect them to be . . .
I am a
songwriter,” she writes. “I am a singer of my songs—and I
have a story to tell. As I’ve traveled this path that has
delivered me to where I am today, my monument of thanks,
paying honor to God, remains. I will do all I can with what
I have been given . . .”
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