Kickin’ it with DJ Kat 🎶

Okay, I confess I have a bawdy sense of humor and songs with fun, playful lyrics make me giggle. I recall driving the backroads of Tampa Bay in my red Mustang listening to Big & Rich sing “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.” lol! No wonder one of the chapter headings in Real Women Wear Red is “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.”

I could hear the crowd yelling out “Ride a Cowboy” every time the band sang “Save a Horse” when I was still down the hall from the Country Western Saloon, as one of the lounges had been turned into Country Dance Night. Country music wasn’t my thing so I would probably not have made an appearance, but I was curious by the Dear Abby at Sea e-mail I had received earlier today. (From Real Women Wear Red)

But it was Brooks & Dunn who inspired Eric’s Nevada cowboy scenes in The Tom Jones Club.

This book came about because of two things:  well-maintained older women seated in the first two rows of a Tom Jones show in Vegas and listening to Brooks & Dunn singing songs such as “My Heart is not a Hotel,” “Whisky Do My Talking” and “She’s About as Lonely as I’m Gonna Let Her Get.” It’s not your usual cowboy romance and Lucky is “not your usual romance heroine” as Happily Ever After Reviews said. I’ve given the story my own personal twist.

The country music craze of the 90s is what brought hubby and me together. Hubby loves country music with a clever lyric and country dancing – ooooh, that black cowboy hat, black jeans, and grey suede boots moving on the dance floor…

I’m listening to Vegas Country online while I write this – and what you may not realize is that Vegas is full of cowboys – Nevada ranches surround “Sin City” – and when there’s a rodeo in town, well, the cowboys take over. And there’s a country music station you can pick up between Barstow and Las Vegas that exists just for truck drivers and cowboys driving in the middle of the night.

Here are some of our favorite country songs with clever titles and/or clever lyrics:

Don’t Be Falling in Love As She’s Walking Away – Zac Brown Band
If You Can Truthfully say You’ve Been True Just One Day, That Makes One in a Row – Willie Nelson
If You Can’t Undo the Wrong, Undo the Right – Willie Nelson
What’s a Memory Like You Doing in a Love Like This – John Schneider
What Would Your Memories Do – George Strait
Dancin’ All Around It – Alan Jackson
I’m Leaving – Aaron Tippin
Closing Time – Radney Foster
He Broke Your Memory Last Night – Reba McEntire
Couldn’t Love Have Picked a Better Place to Die – Clinton Gregory
God Will – Lyle Lovett
If I Were the Man You Wanted – Lyle Lovett
I Left Something Turned on at Home – Trace Adkins

If you have an ear for lyrics, you probably also have an ear for clever lines in books and/or movies. So what song lyrics and/or lines stand out for you?

I’d love to share music videos of all of my favorite fun country songs, but there’s not enough bandwith. So, I’m just going to share one of the funniest and/or trashiest songs I’ve ever heard – lol! But no matter how trashy, there’s something about a cowboy… no wonder they’re so popular in romance novels.

I Like My Women a Little on the Trashy Side – Confederate Railroad

Chiron of Chiron Radio had a fabulous post this week featuring Imelda May and other amazing “new to me” lush women who sing the blues. And this led me off on my own search of new female singers on Pandora, which I discovered while creating an “Imelda May” station. Wow! What an incredible find! But before I share some of those with you, check out what Chiron said about Lucky in my latest romance novel, The Tom Jones Club:

One of my buddies, Kathy Holmes, shares my hunger for lush tunes. Her most recent book, The Tom Jones Club, features a cabaret singer which reminded me of Jeff Beck’s recent collaboration with Imelda May. To finish up our show, I have cued up a recent video of one of my very favorite guitar heroes and the delicious Imelda, with a song guaranteed to give you chills.

Imelda May – Walking in the Sand:

This definitely gives me the chills and speaks to my own blues singing soul, something I’d thought was my first love. But life has taught me that, instead of performing on a real live stage, I perform vicariously through the characters in my novels. No wonder so many of them are wannabe performers.

Here’s another one from Imelda May – Big Bad Handsome Man:

This led me to discovering The Mother Truckers – name alone cracks me up, and the title, oh yeah!

The Mother Truckers – Love Me Like a Man:

Here are some other fabulously lush women singers I discovered Saturday night:

Devil Doll – The One Who Got Away:

Eilen Jewel – Sea of Tears:

Missy Higgins – This is How it Goes:

Mink Stole – Sometimes I Wish I Had a Gun:

Ingrid Lucia – Sunny Afternoon:

Kim Lenz – He’s All Mine:

Gina Sicilia – Don’t Wanna be no Mother; Don’t Wanna Be no Wife:

And one more cuz I scared myself writing my suspense manuscript:
Katie Melua – Scary Films:

A huge thanks to Chiron for introducing me to this fabulous music and for the mention of Lucky and The Tom Jones Club. I hope you’ve all discovered something new, as well.

Bakersfield is the inspiration for the book within the book (THE TOM JONES CLUB) called Breakfast in Bakersfield. In fact, that was one of the titles I pondered using for THE TOM JONES CLUB, as it’s the subplot driving the main plot.

For those of you not familiar with this area, Bakersfield is a popular place to eat, well, breakfast, when you’re doing the L.A. to the Central Valley trek, although the old landmarks have disappeared.

Like the people in The Grapes of Wrath, California’s Central Valley was settled by those from Oklahoma and Arkansas during the Dust Bowl, including my dad’s family and my step dad’s family (my step grandma thought the movie was too harsh on the real people, although my grandma says it was pretty accurate). Still, you will feel that influence in the Central Valley today. In some places, it’s like time stopped. For example, my step dad’s family settled in this area and remain there today. So when my hubby dared to step foot in Aunt Betty’s kitchen, she was all alarmed and said, “There’s a man in the kitchen.” This was rather shocking for my Jersey Shore hubby who enjoys cooking. lol!

My step dad charged out of the Valley and headed for L.A. when he was still a teen. He longed for bigger horizons than what the valley offered. But we used to do the breakfast in Bakersfield thing on our way to his old hometown to visit his family about twice a year – usually once in the summer during the grape harvest (his sister’s husband’s family owned a vineyard) and once over Christmas.

We’d leave our home in Orange County (just south of L.A.) at about 5 a.m. and arrive in Bakersfield in time for breakfast at one of those roadside cafes with a “Let’s Eat” sign blinking on top – it was the highlight of the road trip. And that experience inspired me to write the “Breakfast in Bakersfield” scenes in THE TOM JONES CLUB, excerpt below.

Los Angeles, September 1973
Breakfast in Bakersfield

The Los Angeles traffic at that time of the morning back was practically nonexistent. They sailed through the hushed city, over the mountains, and to the crest of the Grapevine where they could see the entire valley below as the sun was starting to rise in the east. Matt pulled over at a rest stop so they could all stretch their legs.

At a long and lean six feet two inches, Matt and his Levi-encased legs seemed to be the only one needing stretching. He pulled out a Lucky Strike from his blue-buttoned shirt pocket, lit it with the lighter he carried in his left Levi jacket pocket, and exhaled quietly as he seemed entranced by the view. Red, Syd, and Mona stayed in the car, Red’s head leaning against the window as if she was snoozing while Syd watched Red, and Mona watched Matt.

Matt seemed to disappear inside himself as his gaze never left the valley below. He never said a word. He extinguished his cigarette, got back in the car, and kept driving until two hours later when he pulled up in front of a small shack with a large, red-lettered sign displaying “Let’s Eat” on top of the weathered building.

(THE TOM JONES CLUB, available on amazon.com.)

And this reminds me of the Dwight Yoakum/Buck Owen song, “Streets of Bakersfield.”

Some of the scenes in my writing were inspired by real-life events that happened at Disney World when we lived in Florida. For example, check out this scene:

I met the real Mr. Unobtrusive at the valet desk at the Animal Kingdom Lodge at WDW. While waiting for the valet to bring us our car after having a wonderful dinner at Jiko, a mysterious man scooted past me to pick up his bag and said, “Excuse me, but I try to be unobtrusive.” My head spun around so fast and my imagination was immediately caught up in this mystery. Who was this man and who says something like that? I really wanted to know his story – where was he from, what did he do, what was he doing at WDW – he didn’t seem like the usual guest.

Originally, this scene belonged to Copper – an Orlando resort concierge who claimed she could figure out where a person was from just by looking at him. Copper then made it into The Tom Jones Club as Lucky’s new friend and I gave Mr. Unobtrusive to Lucky and placed them all in Las Vegas. Instead of knowing where a man was from by looking at him, Lucky’s claim was knowing what kind of a man he was by what he drank – check out Lucky’s Guide to Wine and Men.