Thursday, Jul 03, 2008
Mobile Press Register Article About Carla....."Singer Blazes Unconventional Trail To Fame"
Category: Music
For every aspiring country-music star lucky enough to be struck by a Nashville thunderbolt -- for one example, see the story on Ashton Shepherd elsewhere on this page -- a hundred or a thousand more put heart and soul into building their own lightning rods.
They need not suffer by the comparison. After all, any of them could be next week's discovery. In the meantime, their hard work and dedication to their dreams often are worthy of admiration.
Case in point: Mobile's own Carla Williams, who recently took possession of the first finished copies of her debut album, "I'm Home."
Here's a disc that seems aimed squarely at contemporary country radio, from the sass of the I'm-dumping-you opener "If I Smoked," through a series of tunes about good times and bad men, to the affecting imagery of the title ballad:
"Long stretch of midnight blacktop, flattop, barbed wire, coyote crying at the moon/ Packed into a subway like sardines, starving for air like an empty balloon/ Deadbolted in a Motel 6, in the sticks/ neon sizzlin' outside of the room/ Anywhere everywhere, here or there, I don't care, long as I'm with you..."
Carla Williams has not taken the conventional path to get to this point, thanks in part to a couple of supporters whose participation itself constitutes an endorsement.
When Williams decided it was time to chase the dream, she approached a possible producer she'd found via Myspace: Mobilian Milton Brown, who's no stranger to the entertainment industry.
He wrote and directed the 2002 movie "Mi Amigo," and also has been active for decades as a songwriter. Probably his best-known tune is the theme song to the movie "Every Which Way But Loose."
Brown was intrigued enough to bring the project to the attention of a longtime
co-conspirator, composer and songwriter Steve Dorff, whose credits include several Emmy and Grammy nominations and more than a dozen Top 10 songs.
Their involvement indicates that there is something out of the ordinary about Carla Williams, and it's not hard to see what that something is: A mature, silky voice that seems particularly well suited to ballads. There are several on "I'm Home," including the piano-driven "Mobile," which stands a good chance of becoming at least a local favorite:
"Shrimp boats on the bay/ cast their nets tonight/ not knowing what they'll catch/ beneath the Southern stars so bright/ I guess it's just like you and me/ our love remains a mystery/ Mobile, I'm missing you tonight..."
As Williams and Brown tell it, her backers provided money to pay for the cost of recording a professional-quality album in Nashville and Los Angeles. Brown and Dorff took a speculative approach.
"I have so much trust in Milton and Steve," Williams says. "They've asked for nothing up front ... we're in this together."
Possibly their main contribution, Brown said, was helping her build a list of songs that would best showcase her abilities. Both of them contributed to various tracks as co-writers, but the 10 songs on the disc come from other sources as well.
Brown said he and Dorff's thought, going in, was "Maybe we can open a few doors to find great material, that people would not necessarily give to an unknown singer."
The next step? Getting that lightning rod in position for the strike.
"We have not presented it to anyone at this point," Brown said recently. No label has heard it, no Nashville power players. That'll change soon, he said, as they shop it around, looking for someone who wants what Williams has to offer.
The CD isn't for sale yet. Williams has no regular local performances booked. Even the online presence is sketchy, though a proper Web site and Myspace page should be coming soon. To hear sound samples, look for links to Williams at www. myspace. com/miltonlbrown.
Hope is nebulous. But the album is real, and it's solid enough to keep them going.
On the one hand, Brown is confident they've got something worth hearing.
"We went into this thing with high expectations, but you don't know until you've got a finished product," he says.
On the other, he and Williams are both clear on the point that nothing is guaranteed in the music business. The financial risk outweighs the chance of a reward, so you have to have the goal of creating something beautiful.
"If it doesn't happen, it won't be because she didn't try," Brown says, "or because of lack of talent."
"Life is full of not having guarantees," Williams says. "So many doors have opened at this point ... If it doesn't happen, I'm okay with that." "This has been a dream, my whole life, to at least record a CD or be an entertainer," she says.
There's enough anticipation in a statement like that to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
Just the way it does when there's lightning in the air.
