Excerpt from The Buddy Wayne Chronicles, Part 2

Here is another excerpt from The Buddy Wayne Chronicles, which I have just published through Lulu.com.

For more information, or to order, log on to http://www.lulu.com/content/780892.

This excerpt introduces us to a bluegrass singer with one very unfortunate attribute: her name.--D.H.

Brittany Lynnette Spears was born in Beattyville, Kentucky, a small town about 70 miles south of Lexington, almost on the dividing line between the bluegrass lowlands and the Appalachian mountains.   She grew up as a proud daughter of the Appalachians.  Her parents, Tommy Lynn and Rebecca, instilled in her a love for all aspects of that life.  The father was a librarian who attended storytelling festivals, while the mother stayed to take care of the children and was a master at sewing her own clothes.  They also loved bluegrass music and introduced their young daughter, and four other children, to the art form. 

The Spears Family Band consisted of Bunch on the mandolin, Blanton on the guitar, Bradshaw the washboard player, and a cute-as-a-button singer named Brittany.  She was the center of attention for more than the usual reasons.  Her ponytailed hair, freckled face, and beauty-queen body gave the look of innocence that belonged in another era, and for that matter, was perfect for Idealia.  Her sexiness could sell calendars, and in fact, it once did, on behalf of a local bank. 

The parents were also involved: Tommy was the business manager, introduced the band’s songs, and even played guitar when Blanton was not available.  Rebecca was the secretary and even bought and selected the clothes that the family performers wore on stage. While the Spears Family Band was established at home in Kentucky, it took off once it arrived in Idealia some years ago, under circumstances eerily similar to how Buddy Wayne Barefoot, a fan of bluegrass music, arrived. 

“We were traveling back to Kentucky after a festival at the Walt Disney World complex in Florida,” Tommy Spears recalled in a casting interview with Barefoot.  “Our flight got strange once we arrived at cruising altitude [the critical point at which seatbelts become optional and passengers can move about the cabin].  The lights suddenly went out and the oxygen mask went out.  My God, we thought we would going to die. “Then the strangest thing happened.  We landed on a cloud!” 

“Did that cloud reveal something like Idealia?” Buddy asked. “Absolutely, it did,” Tommy answered.  “But the strange thing is that it looked so much like home.  The first sign that we weren’t home was when I heard a strange voice from some angel that told me that I was in ‘an ideal place for you.’  I thought it was a strange dream, until we got to our house and found out that there was nothing there. 

“We worried so much until the next day, when suddenly all of our sheet music and our recordings and even our bank records showed up at this shack where we are now.  Then, I knew that we were home.  Or so we thought.” 

“How did you know that you were really in Idealia, rather than Kentucky?” 

“When I saw signs with found places like Barefoot Creek and Bobo Mills and other buildings like that.  Those are certainly not things I see back home.  What’s more, we looked for a TV or CD player or other things we had, and found that thy weren’t there.  That’s when it hit us.  We’ve been adjusting ever since to our new life here.” 

“How important is music to you and your family?  Is it even more important now than ever before?” “Very important.  It is our lives.  It is the way we express ourselves.  And come to think of it, now that we aren’t distracted by TV, video games, or other things like that, we can focus on our careers.  At the same time, we know that our roles as entertainers have changed.  People like us are the stars of Idealia, not just bit players in a much bigger world.” “

Bigger fish in a smaller pond, if you will?” 

“You can say that.” 

At the end of the interview, Tommy Lynn Spears, on behalf of the family, agreed to put the Spears Family Band on a future episode on My Ideal World.  However, in order for the appearance to take place, the other band members had to activate a clause in the remaining family members’ contract in which any or all of them could stay on as background artists.  That stipulation was not significant to the public but very important to the family, and  they agreed to the clause as a show of support for Brittany’s ambitions. Brittany had just gotten the group’s blessing to begin her career as a solo artist. 

That decision, on one level, was heart-wrenching because of how closely knit the family was.  But Brittany was thought to be talented enough, and mature enough, to handle it.  Also, she vowed to keep her act clean and decent, providing wholesome entertainment that everyone could enjoy.  She did not have to worry about embarrassing friends, family, and the public with her choice of music or career.   

The same could not be said about her near-namesake, one of the most famous prominent musicians of both the 1990s and the 2000s.  

Like Brittany Lynnette Spears, Britney Jean Spears had also grown up in the rural South—Kentwood, Louisiana—and had her start in family-oriented entertainment, as one of the members of the 1990s revival of the classic television series The Mickey Mouse Club.   But as soon as Britney left the show, and signed with Jive Records, as well as Florida-based talent manager Louis Perlman, all pretense of an innocent image ended.  Even on her debut hit song and album, Hit Me Baby One More Time, she used sex to sell herself and her music.  As if to add to that reputation, she sang the famous words “I’m not that innocent” on the hit song on her second album of the same name, Oops I Did It Again. 

From then on, Britney’s reputation had become that of a provocative, controversial, and empty-headed diva with questionable talent.  Her latest adventures—ranging from a lesbian kiss with Madonna and Christina Aguilera to venturing into a gasoline station bathroom barefoot (what the irony!), to marrying a high-school pal, only to have the marriage annulled just 30 hours later, to shaving her head after going in and out of drug rehabilitation—were splashed on tabloids all over the world.  Furthermore, she was a punching bag for critics on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum in the United States.  The leftists used stories about her and other celebrities to buttress their argument that the real injustices of the world were not being discussed, in the name of non-stories that only generated profits for the networks’ corporate owners.  The conservatives used her exploits to symbolize all that was wrong with American culture and society.   

Despite knowing all of this, the other Brittany Spears thought that she was safe in her career as a bluegrass artist.  After all, the music sounded so much unlike the other Britney’s music that few people who paid attention to one of the singers had even heard of the other.  And those who did probably had a parochial attitude that made for indifference, maybe even hatred, for the side they opposed.  Most importantly, Brittany was in an alternate universe, which, by definition, could not communicate with the real world.  All the Idealians were considered dead and buried; only they knew that they were actually alive. 

Brittany Spears thought that she could make it. 

She was wrong.   

The Spears Family Band’s debut came in late spring on My Ideal World.  At first, the performance was of the same good quality that had become the hallmark of the weekly program. The band performed “Two Roads,” a classic song by Krauss that was designed as Brittany’s debut as a solo act.  Everyone could see the infectious smile and the stage presence as Brittany pranced around the stage, strategically located on the very center of the Barefoot Walk shopping center, which led to the entertainment venues on one side and the marketplace and government buildings on the other.  This could have been one of those “a star is born” moments. 

Once the performance finished, however, something unprecedented occurred.  For perhaps the first time in the show’s history, an act was booed off the stage.  And Brittany was seen on camera in tears.   Horrors!  Unspeakable!  What could have possibly happened to make that sacrilegious act a reality?   Buddy Wayne had to beg the fans to stop the booing.  And for the most part they did upon his command.  He then took the stage and begged for an explanation.  “What in the great and glorious name of Althea McBiddlewhiskers did you do tonight?” One of the audience members spoke up, “I just don’t like Brittany Spears.  She is a whore!”  (This was an interesting flashback for Barefoot; one year, he came to Las Vegas Motor Speedway with a car with Britney Spears’ picture on the hood and the word “WHORE” on the bottom in the caption space.  The back of the car, above the bumper, contained this: “She’s not that innocent”; that was derived from part of the chorus of “Oops, I Did It Again.”   NASCAR ordered that particular car to be re-painted, with the picture and phrase covered up, before it could go racing.  They thought that the depiction was libelous.  Oh, and as if to add more intrigue, Spears was in concert in Las Vegas that very weekend.) Another said, “Brittany go to hell!” It was clear that either those two bystanders couldn’t tell Brittany Spears the bluegrass singer from Britney Spears the pop diva, or they thought that Britney Spears had snuck into Idealia through a celestial back door, then changed her music to a traditional style in order to gain favorable publicity for herself. 

It didn’t take long for B.W., Bunky, and the rest of the show’s staff to draw the conclusion that Brittany Spears’ soundalike names, and unfair comparison to the pop diva, had something to do with it.   

Brittany was later brought into the production office, located in the Bankston building just off stage.  During the meeting, Brittany explained that this wasn’t the first time that she had been treated in this way.  Her problems began when her band was performing at a festival held in Clarksburg, West Virginia about a year earlier.  The band performed all of the standard bluegrass songs in a five-song set.  The crowd rose to its feet as it realized how special the act was that was performing on the stage. After the group finished, the band members introduced themselves. 

Once Brittany introduced herself, the crowd started turning on the band members.  Although the host pleaded with the crowd with the don’t-kill-the-messenger cliché, those in attendance continued to boo so loudly that Brittany began crying as she fled the stage.  She kept crying in the car, and her spirits were not lifted at all on the long minivan ride through the backroads as the family band returned to Beattyville. 

“I could not sleep all night or eat for three days,” she recalled. “Oh, my God, all for this?”  Buddy Wayne replied. “Yes, all for this.  Everybody thought that I was Britney Spears and that my appearance was nothing more than a publicity stunt to help her career.  Everybody here knows that I am so different from her.  I am a wholesome country girl, a ‘jillbilly’ if you will.  All I can asking you, in fact I am pleading you, for your immediate help.  I need you more than I can ever tell you.”  At the end of these comments, her voice broke down and she simply could not continue.