Annie Clements Music

Me and Billy C.

Posted on 19. May, 2009 by annie in Notebook

Can I just tell you how awesome my life is? It’s kinda ridiculous. If you listen to country radio than you will no doubt have heard Billy Currington’s latest number 1 hit “Don’t”… You know, “Baby, baby dooooooon’t! Don’t you say you’re leaving. Why doooon’t you stay a liiiiiitle bit looooonger!” It’s like one of my favorite songs of all time. So much so that I drive home during the count down and rush in the house just in time to turn it up on the stereo and jam out hardcore when it comes on. I call people to tell them the song is on the radio. I even learned to play it on piano. Basically I’ve been driving everybody crazy with this song for weeks.

Here’s where things start to get awesome. About a week before we started touring I was hanging out with Jen and said, “Hey Jen? How awesome is that Billy Currington song? You know, the one that goes like this…” and proceeded to sit at her piano and try my best to bang out the chord changes to “Don’t” – I’m not an expert pianist… She agreed that it was awesome and said calmly and casually, “You know he’s coming out on the road with us right? I’ll ask him if you can sing backup on it sometime.” I stared at her in shock. Holy smokes. Impossible. How could this be true? Could my luck really be this good?

Sure enough, a few weeks later Billy is out on the road with us. The guys in his band are totally sweet and cool and we’re having a blast, trash-talking about how the Sugarland band can totally kick the Currington band’s butt in a series of relay races. (We like to challenge bands we tour with to an end-of-tour Band vs. Band Challenge complete with competitions like the over-under relay, the egg on a spoon relay, the water balloon toss; you know, stuff that proves once and for all who is the better band.) One day, as I was making a spot of tea in catering I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Billy.

Billy: So Jennifer tells me you love our song “Don’t.” Would you like to sing it with us tonight?

Me: (Insides turned to mush) Wow, are you serious? Oh my gosh, I would love to! I love that song so much. Oh man, thank you thank you thank you!

Billy: Great! See you up there!

Ahhh!!! Can you believe my good fortune? Because I can’t. I ran backstage and got ready, pacing all around, shouting at everyone about how awesome my life is. I was a nervous wreck all through Billy’s set, waiting for the song to start. There’s video footage of me standing by the stage in the dark, squirming around, biting my backstage pass. Then the song kicked off and I took the stage! I told Billy I was too nervous to come up front and that I wanted to stand in the background discreetly. After viewing the brief video capturing about 25 seconds of my performance, it appeared that I was not discreet at all. Rather, I was sashaying back and forth to the beat like one of the Supremes.

The whole thing was over before I knew it. Billy hugged me and I dashed offstage only to discover I had worn my pass around my neck on stage like a big goober. Very unfortunate. Everyone said I sang well and looked like I had a lot of fun up there. That’s for sure! Well, just wanted to share a sweet slice of my life with you. I “Don’t” believe things can get much better! (Couldn’t resist…)

Tags: annie clements, billy currington, sugarland