Susan Haynes country artist

I know Susan from the old days of Franklin Road Academy....

Susan Haynes is a study in contrasts. Beneath her petite frame lies a steely resolve that willed her to follow a creative path in life when everyone around her often took the safe route. Her sweet voice sings with strength about the fragility of honest emotion. She's a spirited southern belle, cursing and praising with equal ease. And though she's a perfectionist when it comes to her music, she's finally found acceptance with being less than perfect herself-an evolution that's in its full glory on Crooked Little Heart.

"I never said out loud, 'I want to be a singer,'" she surprisingly admits. "I always wanted to, but I was raised in an atmosphere where it wasn't appropriate to claim a lot of space or call attention to yourself. So it took me awhile to be willing to put it out there."

Still, Susan spent her girlhood doing what came naturally, in spite of a more conventional upbringing. "I have a childhood friend who's still mad at me," she laughs, "because I always wanted to be Olivia Newton-John and I made her be Pat Benatar. She brought that up at a high school reunion. I was like, 'You're a brunette, I'm a blond-it's not my fault.' There was constant, ridiculous lip-synching. In the fifth grade I was Snoopy in 'You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.' I sang in high school and college productions. I sang 'Xanadu' on roller skates one year, and 'Fame' wearing legwarmers. I've got videotape-it's all very humiliating," she smiles.

The Atlanta, Georgia native-daughter of a corporate litigator father and a homemaker mother-Susan says singing has always been her "default" mode. "No matter what I'm doing, I'm always making up melodies in my head or singing a song. It's always been there, but I never saw anybody pursue a creative life in my family. I thought music would be a hobby, although it was always at the very core of who I am."

So much so that, as a college freshman in Nashville, she finagled a coveted internship at BNA Records in the A&R department. Upon graduation, got a job as studio manager at Loud Recording Studio, owned by legendary producer James Stroud. "I had instinct enough to say, 'I want to stick around this business just in case,'" remembers Susan who, at the time was still a "secret" singer. "I thought maybe I'd be typing a memo and singing loudly and somebody might discover me," she jokes wryly. "Or maybe somebody would knock on my door one day and say, 'Hey is anybody here looking for a record deal?'"

As studio manager at Loud-a job title which she says is a "fancy term for receptionist, cleaning lady and coffee maker"-Susan saw a string of other singers coming in one by one, recording their albums or singing demos. "I'd think to myself, 'I can sing as well as her,'" she jokes. "Whether or not that was true, I don't know, but I realized, 'Maybe people really can do this for a living.' The more I was around it, the more it seemed feasible."

And then one day, Susan was discovered almost exactly how she had once daydreamed. "I was typing up a lyric for a male R&B artist who happened to be in the studio," she remembers. "It was a song I knew, and I was singing the lyric so I could type it more easily, from memory, and he overheard me singing. He went to James Stroud, his producer, and said, 'Did you know your receptionist can sing?' James came out and said, 'You sing?' And I stammered, 'Um, maybe...I don't know...is that bad?' He said, 'Well when you do something, I want to hear about it.'"

That encouragement spurred Susan to finally start pursuing her goals. That, and an unraveling marriage. "I got married at 24 and divorced at 27," she explains. "Before, I had put it off because I'd been in a real unhealthy marriage that had taken all my energy. I really didn't do anything to further my career. But when that ended, I went, 'I have no excuse now.' I knew I had to honor that part of my spirit if I was going to be happy. And that meant getting to it."

Susan got to it by playing some of her demos for Dann Huff, who was then Stroud's right hand man and an aspiring producer. He offered to produce her, but by the time Susan felt she'd found her artistic voice, Dann had gone from "aspiring" to "most-wanted" producer. He was at the helm of Faith Hill's multi-platinum Faith album, and a host of other big names in country music. Susan suddenly found herself waiting at the back of the line for Dann's busy schedule to open up. She used the time to develop her writing, as a staff writer for EMI Publishing.

"That was a turning point for me," says Susan, "because I'd gone through the divorce and then I finally found my artistic angle. In that experience, I learned how to be more authentic, genuine and honest about who I was. Once I discovered that part of myself, I thought, 'Okay now I'm truly ready to sing something.' Until then, I didn't even convince myself when I sang."

It was during this time that Susan wrote "Crooked Little Heart"-the song that is now the first single and the title cut of her debut album. It's a tortured confession of someone stuck in an unhealthy relationship, and an unflinching admission of personal imperfections. The song's tone is a theme running throughout the album. The musically upbeat "Damn This Tangled Mind" (one of the five songs Susan co-wrote) speaks of being unable to move on from an old love; the raucous opener, "Drinkin' In My Sunday Dress," celebrates a bed-ridden bender with tongue squarely in cheek; and the aching ballad "Being Gone" eloquently describes the ending of a co-dependent relationship.

"I am much more likely to be the person that says, 'I messed up,' than to look at you and say, 'You did me wrong,'" admits Susan. "For a long time, as most people do, I tried to hide my imperfections. You try to hide that part of yourself you don't like very much. I hit a real wall when my marriage failed and I didn't have a job. My life wasn't turning out the way I thought it was supposed to. I had to figure out how to like myself, having 'failed' on several levels. I would argue now that it wasn't truly a failure. It was something I needed to go through. It helped me to embrace what wasn't perfect, and what was flawed and very vulnerable about myself."

Susan brought this newfound self-awareness into the studio when she finally was able to record with Dann. "It was surreal," she recalls of that first day. "I was so nervous I made myself sick. I didn't sleep for three days. I'd gotten so wound up because I'd waited for so long. But then I walked into the vocal booth and did the first song. And I went, 'Good God, I could do this every day of my life, all day long.'

"To hear something all of a sudden in its big fat glory coming at you through the headphones-it takes on an energy and a life all of its own. It's overwhelming. It was a good day," she smiles.

Susan says Crooked Little Heart is an accurate reflection of her personality and her music, as well as the transformation she's undergone in the process. "I've cut the apron strings from what I thought I was supposed to be," she states with pride. "This record truly honors who I really am. And I'm comfortable with that. I'm perfectly happy with being perfectly flawed."

Suzanna Gratia Hupp explains meaning of 2nd Amendment!

On October 16, 1991, Hennard drove his 1987 Ford Ranger pickup truck through the front window of a Luby's Cafeteria at 1705 East Central Texas Expressway in Killeen, yelled "This is what Bell County has done to me!", then opened fire on the restaurant's patrons and staff with a Glock 17 pistol and later a Ruger P89. About 80 people were in the restaurant at the time. He stalked, shot, and killed 23 people and wounded another 20 before committing suicide. During the shooting, he approached Suzanna Gratia Hupp and her parents. Hupp had actually brought a handgun to the Luby's Cafeteria that day, but had left it in her vehicle due to the laws in force at the time, forbidding citizens from carrying firearms. According to her later testimony in favor of Missouri's HB-1720 bill[1] and in general, after she realized that her firearm was not in her purse, but "a hundred feet away in [her] car", her father charged at Hennard in an attempt to subdue him, only to be gunned down; a short time later, her mother was also shot and killed. (Hupp later expressed regret for abiding by the law in question by leaving her firearm in her car, rather than keeping it on her person. One patron, Tommy Vaughn, threw himself through a plate-glass window to allow others to escape. Hennard allowed a mother and her four-year-old child to leave. He reloaded several times and still had ammunition remaining when he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head after being cornered and wounded by police.

Reacting to the massacre, in 1995 the Texas Legislature passed a shall-issue gun law allowing Texas citizens with the required permit to carry concealed weapons. The law had been campaigned for by Suzanna Hupp, who was present at the Luby's massacre and both of whose parents were shot and killed. Hupp testified across the country in support of concealed-handgun laws, and was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1996. The law was signed by then-Governor George W. Bush and became part of a broad movement to allow U.S. citizens to easily obtain permits to carry concealed weapons.