'Star' tour ends: Iowan brings 'Nashville' to Spencer Saturday
By Bruce R. Millerbmiller@siouxcityjournal.com | Posted: Thursday, November 27, 2008
For Iowan Shawn Mayer, the folks with "Nashville Star" saved the best for last.
This weekend, she and the rest of the show's finalists perform their tour's final concert in Spencer, Iowa, just miles away from her May City home.
"They'll finally get to see where I'm from," she says by phone from Nashville. "I can hardly wait to take them to my hometown bar and the house I own. I just wish we had more time."
Since September -- when the tour began -- Mayer, winner Melissa Lawson and runners-up Gabe Garcia and Coffey have been too busy to even consider life off the road.
Already, Mayer has signed a publishing deal with a Nashville company and been pitching Lawson songs for her debut CD.
A Shawn Mayer debut is in the works, too ("I've written around 12 songs since the TV show ended"), but she hasn't slated studio time because she doesn't have a benefactor -- yet. It's expensive to hire studio musicians to cut a demo, she says. "So if I don't get any label interest after the tour, I'm going to save up and do a really, really good production of my original, 'I'm Not Looking Back.' I get tons of requests to get that out."
Already Mayer has done a couple of acoustic cuts that can be found on her MySpace page. There, she can gauge interest and decide what her next step might be.
Meanwhile, she's basking in the glow of touring success. Audiences have been extremely receptive and, she says, the merchandise vendor on the tour admitted "the crowd was so loud it gave me goosebumps."
"I'm always paranoid...I'm always doubting myself. I don't know if they like me."
Fans, though, say Mayer is more user-friendly than she was on TV -- even though she's singing a lot of "man-hater" songs like "Gunpowder and Lead" and "Before He Cheats."
"It's really intimidating...but I've learned how to connect with the audience. That's my favorite part."
On the NBC reality series, connecting wasn't always possible. "When you have to move to a certain area because of camera shots you can't be natural. It's hard to perform and have people see exactly who you are. In a live show you get to look into people's eyes and sing to them. It's a blast."
While touring, the four contestants have become close friends -- so close Garcia and Mayer have come to play tricks on each other. He constantly scares the others by pounding on the van -- as if it has been hit. She teases him about female fan attention. At one show, she hung women's underwear from his guitar and got fans in the front row to throw "big women's underwear from the Dollar General store" onto the stage.
"We all get along really well," Mayer says. "But Gabe says he's going to get me back. I told him he's only got one show left."
At the Clay County Regional Events Center, Mayer hopes to sing a song she wrote when she was 16, "Hometown of Mine." "I swore to everybody back home that when I moved to Nashville and got a record deal I would come back home and sing it."
Lawson and Garcia say she should.
"I want to make it happen," she says.
Who: Shawn Mayer and the "Nashville Star" tour featuring winner Melissa Lawson
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Clay County Regional Events Center, Spencer, Iowa.
Tickets: $24-$44. Available at all Ticketmaster outlets.
This weekend, she and the rest of the show's finalists perform their tour's final concert in Spencer, Iowa, just miles away from her May City home.
"They'll finally get to see where I'm from," she says by phone from Nashville. "I can hardly wait to take them to my hometown bar and the house I own. I just wish we had more time."
Since September -- when the tour began -- Mayer, winner Melissa Lawson and runners-up Gabe Garcia and Coffey have been too busy to even consider life off the road.
Already, Mayer has signed a publishing deal with a Nashville company and been pitching Lawson songs for her debut CD.
A Shawn Mayer debut is in the works, too ("I've written around 12 songs since the TV show ended"), but she hasn't slated studio time because she doesn't have a benefactor -- yet. It's expensive to hire studio musicians to cut a demo, she says. "So if I don't get any label interest after the tour, I'm going to save up and do a really, really good production of my original, 'I'm Not Looking Back.' I get tons of requests to get that out."
Already Mayer has done a couple of acoustic cuts that can be found on her MySpace page. There, she can gauge interest and decide what her next step might be.
Meanwhile, she's basking in the glow of touring success. Audiences have been extremely receptive and, she says, the merchandise vendor on the tour admitted "the crowd was so loud it gave me goosebumps."
"I'm always paranoid...I'm always doubting myself. I don't know if they like me."
Fans, though, say Mayer is more user-friendly than she was on TV -- even though she's singing a lot of "man-hater" songs like "Gunpowder and Lead" and "Before He Cheats."
"It's really intimidating...but I've learned how to connect with the audience. That's my favorite part."
On the NBC reality series, connecting wasn't always possible. "When you have to move to a certain area because of camera shots you can't be natural. It's hard to perform and have people see exactly who you are. In a live show you get to look into people's eyes and sing to them. It's a blast."
While touring, the four contestants have become close friends -- so close Garcia and Mayer have come to play tricks on each other. He constantly scares the others by pounding on the van -- as if it has been hit. She teases him about female fan attention. At one show, she hung women's underwear from his guitar and got fans in the front row to throw "big women's underwear from the Dollar General store" onto the stage.
"We all get along really well," Mayer says. "But Gabe says he's going to get me back. I told him he's only got one show left."
At the Clay County Regional Events Center, Mayer hopes to sing a song she wrote when she was 16, "Hometown of Mine." "I swore to everybody back home that when I moved to Nashville and got a record deal I would come back home and sing it."
Lawson and Garcia say she should.
"I want to make it happen," she says.
Who: Shawn Mayer and the "Nashville Star" tour featuring winner Melissa Lawson
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Clay County Regional Events Center, Spencer, Iowa.
Tickets: $24-$44. Available at all Ticketmaster outlets.
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