Bio & Album Preview

If Hank Williams and his mentor, Fred Rose, came back to life in top form, they could not have crafted a more soulful array of songs than singer Teea Goans presents here in her debut album, The Way I Remember It.  Goans’ sweetly plaintive voice comes at you like a beam of light through utter darkness.  She doesn’t simply sing country music, she delivers its very essence.

While Goans is clearly the star of the album, it is very much a communal triumph, beginning with producer Terry Choate and associate producer Joe Spivey.  Choate was the Director of A&R for Capitol Records during the phenomenal rise of Garth Brooks and has lately distinguished himself as producer of Larry Gatlin and The Gatlin Brothers’ adventurous album “Pilgrimage,” as well as the Grammy-nominated and Emmy-winning “Jumpin’ Time” CD/DVD by the 11-member Western Swing ensemble, The Time Jumpers.  Spivey, a multi-instrumentalist and long-time leader of John Anderson’s band, is now a stalwart in The Time Jumpers’ crew of Nashville superpickers.

All the musicians and singers backing Goans are standouts too.  In addition to Spivey, who provides acoustic guitar, fiddle and mandolin, there are three other Time Jumpers in this magical mix: steel guitarist Paul Franklin and fiddlers Aubrey Haynie and Kenny Sears.  Then there’s the legendary electric guitarist, Leon Rhodes, an alumnus of Ernest Tubb’s fabled Texas Troubadours, plus drummer John Gardner, pianist Dirk Johnson, pedal steel guitarist Mike Johnson, bassists Larry Paxton and Matt McKenzie, electric guitarist James Mitchell, harmony vocalists John Wesley Ryles and Cindy Richardson Walker and string arranger Kristin Wilkinson.

Goans, Choate and Spivey spent more than a year selecting the 11 songs on this album.  Naturally, they turned to the master composers, most of whom are members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.  From the great Ernest Tubb came “Walking The Floor Over You.” Willie Nelson contributed “I’m Still Not Over You,” Merle Haggard and Red Lane “I Didn’t Mean To Love You,” Bill Anderson “Walk Out Backwards,” Curly Putman and Sonny Throckmorton “Made For Loving You,” Hank Cochran, Red Lane and Dale Dodson “He’ll Be Back,” Joe Allen “Lying In My Arms,” Rick Holt and Red Lane, “Same Ol’ Song And Dance,” Jim Owen “Two Arms, Two Lips, Too Lonely, Too Long,”  Jim McBride, Don Poythress and Jerry Salley “I Don’t Do Bridges Anymore” and Angela Kaset and Rob Crosby “Letter From God.”  It’s hard to imagine a more lyrical lineup.

In a stroke of good fortune at which Goans still marvels, Choate was able to enlist Dan Tyminski, of Alison Krauss’ Union Station band, to serve as her vocal partner on the tender “Made For Loving You.”

Teea Goans (pronounced TEE-uh GO-uhnz) grew up in rural Lowry City, Missouri, not far from the Kansas border.  “We listened to an AM radio station that played classic country music,” she recalls.  “When I started to school in the 1980s, I didn’t even know who Michael Jackson and Madonna were.”  Although she was singing in church by the time she was three years old, it wasn’t until she turned eight that she got her big break.  That’s when the producers of the nearby Truman Lake Opry spotted her wowing a crowd in a talent contest.

With her mother’s cautious approval, Teea became a full-fledged member of the Truman Lake Opry a year later.  She continued to perform there every week until she was 17, frequently opening for such Grand Ole Opry acts as Bill Anderson, Little Jimmy Dickens and Grandpa Jones.  “It was the best launching ground I could have had,” she says, “because we had a live crowd and a live band.  I got familiar with all kinds of music there, and I learned to sing harmony and really hone my stage presence.”

Goans’ primary musical influence during those early years was her maternal grandmother—the late Della Lee Faulkner.  A locally popular singer in the 1960s, Faulkner might have pursued a career in Nashville, Goans says, had she not had seven children to care for.  “When I started singing at this little show, my grandma would come along and sing with me.  That’s why I feel that any talent I have, I got from her.”

After high school, Goans earned her associate’s degree at Longview Community College in Kansas City.  She remained there after graduation, supporting herself by selling phones for Verizon.  Then, in September 2002, she had an epiphany.  “I remember the day vividly,” Teea says, “It just hit me like a ton of bricks that it was time for me to go to Nashville.” Aided and encouraged by her mom, dad and grandmother, she packed a U-Haul and set out for Music City.  “On Halloween night, I moved into my apartment.  I didn’t know a soul in Nashville, but we had to go out and buy candy because so many trick-or-treaters were stopping by.”

As providence would have it, the week after she arrived in Nashville just happened to be “CMA Week,” during which the Country Music Association presents its annual awards.  “I was so excited about that,” Teea says.  “I went to the Grand Ole Opry House [where the award show was being held] and just sat outside there, as if someone was going to come by and invite me in.”  Goans continued her job with Verizon.

In 2003, Teea married her high school sweetheart.  A couple of years later, he persuaded her it was time to stop selling phones and start following her musical star.  She began writing songs as soon as she left her job, and she sang demos for other writers.  “I’ve had a lot of opportunities come my way that I could never have imagined or asked for,” she muses. “I always say that God opened doors I would have never knocked on.  That’s how it’s been ever since I came to Nashville.”

One of those doors turned out to be quite a wide one.  “I had been obsessed with the Grand Ole Opry on WSM [radio] since I was a child,” Teea says.  “I used to listen to it every Saturday night.  In 2006, we were at the Wilson County Fair, and I noticed that WSM was broadcasting from there.  I got to talking to one of the girls manning the [merchandise] table, and I said, ‘You know, if you guys ever need any volunteer work, I would love to do anything—answer phones, sell T-shirts, whatever.  

“So about a month later I got an e-mail from her.  She said, ‘We’ve got some things coming up if you’re still interested.’  Of course, I was.  The first thing I worked was the Ray Price show at the Ryman Auditorium in 2006.  [The Ryman is owned by the same company that owns the Opry and WSM.] Ray Price is my end-all and be-all.  I love him.  So I sold T-shirts for him out in the lobby.  I didn’t do a lot with the station at first, but as they needed me they’d call me in.  About a year into it, they called and told me that Keith Bilbrey, who was doing the Opry warm-up show, needed somebody to book the show and run talent—that is, go to the Opry with him every Saturday night and work backstage bringing him the artists he wanted to interview. They said, ‘Can you do that?’  And I was like, ‘Yeah!  And you’re going to pay me?’”

Goans is candid about her shortcomings at the time: “I was producing something I had no idea how to produce. I had no broadcasting background.  I knew nothing about radio except that I listened to it.  But all of a sudden, I’m backstage every weekend with these people I just adore, they know me and we’re friends.  I never, ever wanted to mention to them that I was a singer.  I never wanted to use my connection at the Opry as a way to get my music out there.  So no one knew I sang.  They just knew me as the girl that worked at the Opry and WSM.”

Once Teea was inside WSM, the breaks kept coming. “About a year and a half into my job with Keith, they brought me in and said, ‘We have this idea for a show.  It would run between the first and second show on the Saturday night Opry, and we think you could host it.”  Again she recited her lack of qualifications.  But what WSM was looking for, she discovered, was someone who could host Inside The Opry Circle from a fan’s perspective—and she certainly had that.

Even as her Opry responsibilities expanded, Goans continued to write and demo songs.  Steel guitarist John Hughey (who has since died) played on one of her demos.  A disc jockey at WSM alerted her to the fact that Hughey was in a band called The Time Jumpers that played every Monday night at the Station Inn, Nashville’s foremost bluegrass club.   “I went to the Station Inn and fell in love--hook, line and sinker--with The Time Jumpers,” Teea says.  “Besides John Hughey, I knew some of the other Time Jumpers from my work at the Opry.  One night they got me up to sing a couple of songs, and that’s how I met Terry Choate.  He’d been working with The Time Jumpers for years. He said, ‘I believe we can do something with your singing.’”

Thus began the journey that culminates in this extraordinary album—an album with a distinct point of view.  “People have used country music as a stepping stone to move over into pop,” Goans observes.  “I feel we owe it to country music to respect its traditions and get it out there for people to hear in its purest form.  There is such a big audience out there that’s not being fed, that loves this kind of music.  After we cut the first four songs, Terry took them around to people, and the enthusiasm spread like wildfire.  People like Little Jimmy Dickens and Bill Anderson were cheering me on.  That blew my mind.”  The completed album is sure to blow (and expand) more minds, especially those that ache for authenticity.  Teea’s debut is an exhilarating reminder of why so many of us grew up loving country music.

Lately, even the weather seems to have conspired on Teeas’ behalf.   On a Saturday in January of this year, a fierce snow storm swept in and basically shut Nashville down.  Goans’ husband came home from work early, and the two of them settled in for a cozy evening.  “We were in our PJs,” she says.  “I had my hair up in a pony tail on top of my head.  I had no makeup on.  I was in for the night.  Then I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize.  I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just let it go into voice mail.’  So I do, and they leave a message.  In a while, I pull it up and listen to it.   It says, ‘Hey, Teea.  This is Steve Gibson.  We’ve had a few cancellations tonight at the Opry, and we’re wondering if you’d like to sing—if you can make it in.’ This is at 4:30, and the show starts at 7.  My heart drops, and I start screaming at the top of my lungs. My husband is jumping up and down.”

After the screaming and the jumping subsided, Goans rushed into action.  Suddenly the snow didn’t seem so formidable.  She summoned her parents, who now live in Nashville, and before long the whole family was trekking to the Ryman, where the Opry is held during the winter months.   Just before she went on stage, Bill Anderson called to give her a pep talk.  “I think I was very blessed in that I didn’t have time get super overworked about my first time on the Opry,” Teea reflects.  “If I’d had two or three weeks to think about it, I would have been a nervous wreck.”

Goans remembers watching Jean Shepard perform and waiting for her own cue to come on stage.  “My fear was that I would lose it when they introduced me, because my grandma and I had dreamed so long of this moment.  But I walked out there, and a complete feeling of peace came over me.  It was like I’d done it a million times.”  She sang “Walk Out Backwards” and “I’m Still Not Over You,” and the crowd loved her.  Afterward, her “Opry family,” watching from backstage, surrounded her and showered her with congratulations.  “That’s when I lost it,” she says.

Teea smiles at the memory and, for a moment, she’s that little girl in Missouri again, listening to AM radio with her grandma and dreaming her long-shot dream of making it in Nashville.
-Ed Morris