Lynn Anderson - Dreaming Big

Northmusic: You were born in Grand Forks, ND and started singing as a teen?

Anderson: Grand Forks, North Dakota, that’s correct.  

Well, my mom said I could sing before I could talk and my dad says I could ride a horse before I could walk.  That might be kind of legendary, I’m not sure. 

Northmusic: Have you always wanted to sing country music songs? 

Anderson: You know what?  I really didn’t care. I just kinda grew up singing. I like every kind of music. The part that I gravitated to the most when I was growing up was the westerns! You know, Saturday morning westerns, I just always wanted to be a cowgirl. So my dreams basically came true. My very first record was called “Ride, Ride, Ride” – and that was nothing
 but a western song and it became a country hit. Over the years, I’ve done a little interesting combination of  country and western and bluegrass. I got to sing with Lawrence Welk, Dean Martin and Bob Hope and that was mostly show tunes. 

I have had people ask me if I’m a country singer.  It was really a disadvantage for people to put you in a little box so they know exactly what to expect from you. I don’t like that.  I like to be able to do a lot of different things and I think maybe it’s because of that, I’m still around after all this time.

Northmusic: Your newest record, Cowgirls, has songs that your mother wrote? Did you like recording them?

Anderson: Oh yes. Well like I said my very first record was Ride, Ride, Ride – it’s about horses. She (my mother) wrote that on the way to the Miss Rodeo California contest. You know the horse was in the trailor. I didn’t have a record contract yet, but at the time I said that well when you get that done, I want to record it myself and everyone laughed because it was like a pipe dream,
but the fact is that was a big hit for me. My life has continued to be kind of a combination of Dale Evans and Patsy Cline or something like that--some kind of cowgirl and country music.

Northmusic: How do you balance the music side of your career with the success you have had with horses and the rodeo?

Anderson:  Well you know that’s all part of my heritage. My mother, from the time I could remember, made up songs. She would sing in the kitchen and play guitar. People like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens would come over for dinner and to listen to what my mother would create – both with her guitar and in the kitchen – she was a pretty great cook too!

Then my dad’s family raised horses. So those two things I really feel are my American roots-- I’m a cowgirl and I’m a singer.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Northmusic: You live in New Mexico instead of Nashville. Is that due to the horses? 

Anderson: No, it’s actually because my boyfriend was raised in New Mexico.  His name is Mentor Williams.  

Do you like pop music at all?  Well, he wrote (sings)“Gimme the beat boys and free my soul, I wanna get lost in your rock and roll, and drift away…”He wrote “Drift Away”. He wrote “When We Make Love” for Alabama!  That was dedicated to me, a little romantic song. Now he was raised in New Mexico so that’s where he wanted to retire and live and me being raised in California, I assumed I’d retire somewhere out west, so New Mexico works great for me.

Northmusic: Do you raise horses there? 

Anderson:  We do raise some babies, but we don’t have a ranch as such. I’ve got a stallion I keep in Texas – Greensville—with a trainer named Teddy Johnson.  But we don’t actually raise babies there. What we do is work with horses and children.

Northmusic: You participate in horseback riding therapy. What’s that about?

Anderson: I’ve been doing that for a long time.  My grandmother, going back a long time, told me “there’s nothing better for the inside of a kid, than the outside of a horse.”  So she always used horses and kids.  

Like 30 years ago, friends started a therapeutic riding program in Nashville, called “Special Riders”  It still exists, it’s now called “Saddle Up” and we work with handicapped kids and horses that might have been abused or neglected. I was on the board of the Handicapped Riding Association of America. 

It’s amazing! You may have a kid that’s insecure, or one that might not be able to walk, might not be able to hear properly or have problems seeing. They might even have self-esteem problems.  They feel put aside. They feel they can’t do anything good enough, but boy put them on top of a horse!  And when we do this we have one person leading the horse, one person on either side of the rider at their knee. So if they might lean sideways to the right or the left there’s someone right there to catch them. 

All of a sudden they are like taller than the biggest guy in the group. You put someone on top of a horse and all of a sudden they’re shoulders are two feet higher then everyone else and if their legs don’t work, if they approach that horse in a wheel chair, suddenly that horse’s legs are walking underneath them and it’s amazing to see the smiles that you get from the kid. 

Northmusic: Sounds very rewarding. 

Anderson:  Well, I’m blessed as well, I have three healthy kids.  We really have been amazing blessed with our health and so on, but being able to do what my granny said using those horses to help those kids is great.  We started a program in Ft. Worth, Texas called the Rocky Top Riders and now there’s a new one in Taos, New Mexico called Equine Spirit Sanctuary. 

Horses and critters and children – I truly believe it’s magic. 

Northmusic: To return to the music business, you have performed with many different people – anyone in particular stand out?  Any event? 

Anderson:  There’s been so many, it’s really kind of hard to break it down to one.  I was lucky enough to come into the music business at a time when there were the old timers, the greats like Bob Hope and Red Skelton and Lucille Ball and Dean Martin – and I got to work with those people. When I was first starting, it was amazing to be able to learn from those people. Now I’m able to kind of pass that on. I love working with some of the wonderful people in county music now.  It’s a thrill to be able to do something I love for a living. 

Growing up, I used to get up and watch Roy (Rogers) and Dale (Evans) and then getting to actually work with them! To me working with them, Gene Autury and John Wayne was and is incredible and I hope I can pass that on. 

Through my work with handicapped kids, horses and dogs I’ve gotten other music people involved.  Kix Brooks has gotten involved with riding horses for the Cancer Society. We’ve invited and got Tanya Tucker started in doing that. LeAnn Rimes, we met at a rodeo in Texas, and this year there are some new people, like Sheryl Crow, who want to be part of country music—so I’ve invited her to come ride a horse and become a cowgirl. Step up! Jewel is already a real cowgirl, so I’ve invited her to come help us with the Mary Kay Foundation – wear that pink cowgirl hat and let’s go make some money for women’s cancer. 

Northmusic: Do you have any favorites in today’s country music? Or someone in the past that you particularly looked up to or liked? 

Anderson:  I have so many of the old favorites! A couple of nights ago I got to sing western songs down in Texas and I sang a Patsy Cline song, Faded Love. But for the new kids, I like Jennifer Nettles (Sugarland), she just really sings. I like Carrie Underwood—she’s a great singer and I like Kelly Pickler--I think she’s good. I like Taylor Swift. Some of the more traditional people are giving her a hard time but when I started I was teen-ager from California and people were saying now who’s this kid and what does she know about country music. So I think the thing is let’s see who’s still standing after 20 or 30 years. 

Northmusic: How do you feel about new artists having hits out of the songs you sang first? 

Anderson: I think it’s a wonderful compliment. I was able to sing with Martina McBride about a year ago when she redid Rose Garden.  The whole album she did called Timeless, to me was some of the greatest country songs in the history of our business. I totally agree with her that we need to continue those traditions and keep alive those really basic country songs. We need to understand that for our music to survive we need to pass it on to a younger generation, encourage them to listen to those words, pay respect to where it came from.  

That’s the one thing I love so much about Martina’s version of Rose Garden.  She did it so close. She really respected the original – she even used like four of my musicians. She was very true to the original which is a very big compliment to me. Martina is one of my favorite singers that’s out there today – I really think she is fine, fine, fine! 

Northmusic: How often to you do concerts now? 

Anderson: I’m working more this past year than I have in 10 years. And who knows why. Perhaps part of that credit goes to Martina putting Rose Garden back out there.  I’ve been paying more attention to my health lately, and all of a sudden when I thought about it I realized I enjoy my

music and  I can do this. I was sitting back and watching the music go by for ten years and then suddenly stepping up and Martina was the impetus to seeing that this music is still viable. Rose Garden is still a great song. It’s really a song that needs singing – the words still mean the same thing they meant 30 years ago. There are still people who are going to listen to this song and still get something out of it. So I said, get up their girl and sing it.

The really good music stays, no matter how old you are, no matter how young you are, if it touches your heart and it means something to your life then that’s special. I really think God put me here for a reason and put Mentor and I together in the same family. My mother wrote all of Merle Haggard’s early things – my husband, who is now deceased, wrote 10 songs for Tammy Wynette. It seems like my life is based in music. I have deep, deep roots in country music. This is what I’m here for. 

Northmusic: Do you like performing in a particular venue? 

Anderson: I like it all. I love the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut. I was here a couple of months ago. Dr John was in the lounge, I was in the main room and Ringo and the All Stars were in the Arena.  When we got done with our thing, we all went over to the Arena and I got to stand up and sing (she sings) “all we are saying is give peace a chance…”  

I got to sing “A Little Help from My Friends” and do a little bit of that stuff.  I realize that I’ve outlived the ingénue thing where I really don’t care if I’m in the Top 10 this week.  I’d love to be, but the fact is its ok because I have been there. I can get up with Tina Turner and sing a song; I was able to sing with Ray Charles, sing with Johnny Cash. Now I can stand up and sing with Paul McCartney or I can sing with Gladys Knight – it’s music and I’ve been able to sing some great music with some great people--what a gift! 

Northmusic: So what’s next? Do you have plans for a new CD? Or anything you haven’t done yet that you feel you still haven’t done yet? 

Anderson:  Well we are in the middle of two CDs right now. We are doing another Western CD and we are also working on an Americana CD.  

The one thing I still want to do – I’m working on a movie theme. There’s one thing I’ve always wanted to do throughout my whole career -- sing a theme song for a movie. Rose Garden had been used in a movie soundtrack, but to me that doesn’t count. It doesn’t count unless it can be a movie theme. I want to sing for the Oscars. Really, if you are going to dream you might as well dream big!  Wednesday I’m leaving for Germany for a week to do some stuff over there but literally the lady that’s working on this movie is flying to Germany with me. You just never know. 

Northmusic: They tell you about the movie and the song gets written? 

Anderson: It works in a lot of different ways.  The first thing they do is write the movie or give you a layout for the movie and then you write around it. My brother-in-law wrote a song called “Evergreen” that did win the Academy award after Barbara Streisand sang it for t

he movie “The Star is Born.”  So that’s my husband’s brother. So now we have this idea for the movie and Mentor is going to write the theme song and I get to sing it. The whole idea of actually getting to sing the theme song for a movie that will actually get out there is something that sounds like a  great thing to think about! Might as well dream big. I’ve been able to have some exciting times in my life, so nothing is impossible.