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Published Sunday, November 08, 2009 in Local

Cowetan in online country music video competition

By Sarah Fay Campbell

The Newnan Times-Herald

Coweta resident Stacia Watkins is now in the top 32 of CMT's Music City Madness competition.

Watkins, who spends her days answering calls at the Coweta 911 center, has created a video for her song "I Believe."

Watkins has until noon Monday to receive enough votes on CMT.com for her video to advance to the top 16.

The winner of the contest will receive a recording session broadcast on CMT.com, an audition before the A&R executives at Valory Music, which represents Reba McEntire and many other big-name country stars, and a chance to spend time with Reba herself.

To view Watkins' video and vote, go to http://www.cmt.com/interact/music_city_madness/vote/bracket.jhtml?quad=0. Or you can visit the Music City Madness main page at www.madness.cmt.com. Click on "vote now." Watkins' video is accessed by clicking on Jack Ingram on the far left of the Web page. There is no limit to the number of times you can vote. If the voting panel does not come up, it likely means your Flash player needs to be upgraded.

"I Believe" is about a woman dealing with the death of her husband.

Watkins has always been a singer but only started writing her own songs about two years ago.

"I Believe" is the second complete song she has written by herself.

"I was really happy with the way it turned out," she said. "Even though when you watch the video, it is very heartbreaking ... I also find it a very hopeful song," she added.

Many of her song ideas come to her while she is driving. "I'm really not one to sit around and try to think up lyrics," Watkins said.

She doesn't write lyrics then the music, or vice versa. Instead, both the words and a melody come to her at once. She sings straight into the voice recorder on her cell phone and then transfers those ideas to her recorder at home, and refines them. When she picks up her phone and starts singing, "people think I'm weird," Watkins said. Another song, which she hopes to record soon, came to her while she was drying her hair.

When she came up with the opening line to "I Believe" -- "a reflection of my former self, staring back at me" -- "I was going to go somewhere else with that song ... but when I started writing it, it turned into what it is," Watkins said.

Watkins and her former band, Broken Rhoads, had entered the CMT contest last year and made it to the top 64. The band broke up last December, and "this year, I really wanted to do it again," she said.

She had posted on her Facebook page that she was trying to put together a video. A high school friend, Tina Sauls, who is a production assistant for movies, saw the post. "She said, 'I can do it,'" Watkins said.

"I went to Valdosta one weekend. We recorded it over two days," she said. The characters in the video are old friends, and the farm where the video was filmed belongs to a family friend. Her family and friends "got together one weekend and they did an awesome job," Watkins said. "I'm very blessed to have so much support."

Watkins is originally from Valdosta. She moved to Newnan in March 2008. She picked Newnan for several reasons. It's about halfway between Valdosta and Nashville. There's a thriving music scene in Atlanta, and her best friend lives here.

Though Atlanta is a music hot spot, Watkins hasn't really interacted with anyone in the Atlanta music scene. She travels to Nashville to record her songs, and has also done some demo singing for songwriters.

She works with producer and songwriter Chip Martin in Nashville. While still living in Valdosta, Watkins judged a singing competition. "The winner had amazing songs ... I asked, 'Who are you working with?'" Watkins said.

The winner told Watkins about Martin, and "that's how I met up with him," she said. After she completes a song, she sends it to him and he arranges it for instruments. He also gives her great advice and encouragement.

Watkins said she is trying to get a new band together and is particularly looking for a guitarist to work with. "I'm really looking for a guitarist who wants to play open mic stuff," she said.

Watkins may be familiar to some Cowetans from her recent performances in "Putting on the Red: Coweta's Got Talent," a benefit for the American Red Cross.

"It was a lot of fun," she said of the competition. "I was excited to do something for the Red Cross. Working at 911, I know how important the Red Cross is, because we use them all the time."

Watkins' mother knew her daughter was going to be musical even before she was born. She says her rambunctious baby would stop kicking when she turned the radio on. Watkins started performing with a song-and-dance group, the Baby Blues, when she was 4. "We'd go to pageants and festivals," Watkins said. "I say at age 5, I went solo."

She couldn't have done it without the support of her family.

"My mom and my sister -- my poor sister -- they got dragged to every festival, funeral, wedding. Anywhere I could sing. They took me all over southwest Georgia," she said. "I was really lucky."

You can hear some of Watkins' other songs at her Web-site, www.staciawatkins.com .