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Hearing local country singer Colleen Rae describe the process of selecting the material for her debut album, What You Need is Me, one can imagine a trip to the drive-thru song barn.
"Hi, I'd like a romantic ballad with extra cheese, a side of honky tonk and a mid-tempo hit single."
"You want fiddles with that?"
Rae admits that's "pretty much" the way it works in modern country music, an industry as dependent on song pluggers as modern civilization is on fossil fuels. There is no need for an alternative energy source just yet. You'll know.
A veteran performer with a decade's worth of experience at the age of 26, Rae performs this weekend at the Wild West Saloon. Last night was the CD release party for a recording that doesn't contain any of the artist's own material, not even a co-write, though she's written her own songs in the past. Does this even matter? Kenny Rogers didn't write the songs on his new album, either. One could argue that the process of choosing music is just as much a creative process as writing it. It at least turns out to be as much work.
"It took me four years to find those songs," Rae says. "It was making sure I had the right songs." She adds, "Maybe it would've been easier to sit down to write what I was feeling, and I have a good handful of those songs that I think would be good for project No. 2. I want to develop my own songwriting."
The songs on What You Need Is Me were culled from more than 400 submitted demo tapes, some from heavy cats like Cyril Rawson, who's had songs cut by Gretchen Wilson - and all this from a little blurb in Country Music News. Rae also wrote letters to songwriters she liked. One submission came from Harlan Howard, who wrote Patsy Cline's I Fall To Pieces. He died in 2002 shortly after replying to Rae.
"I almost choked when I got the CD," she says. "I'm just a nobody artist in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, but (Howard's wife Melanie)'s answer was, 'That's our job. We're song pluggers and we want artists to record our songs.' "
Working with area producer Louis Sedmak for a smooth CD that hits all country music bases, Rae says each and every one of the songs on the record "represents a little piece of me.
"They all have certain meanings to me. I believe in all the messages in each song, so I'm able to sing what's there. There were a couple of songs that came across my desk, one like 'I'm going to run red lights' and things like that. It was a cool song for tempo and music-wise, but lyrically, I think that's why I get hung up on a song and have to pass."
With some country music radio stations finding it "too country" - oh, the irony - Rae's debut is more than just a work of creative song selection and performance. It's a way inside. When it comes time to head to Nashville, she will wield what she calls "a huge business card - now there's actually something to talk about," she says, then starts singing Something to Talk About.
Guess what? Bonnie Raitt didn't write her best-known song.