“sold” by john michael montgomery.

this one is for my sisters as a kind reminder for us never to give up on our dream of becoming nashville’s next headlining quartet.

back during my “i heart country music” phase when 8-tracks were a thing of the past and downloads were not yet cool (thankfully), my older sister would play this track relentlessly.  appearing on the country heart-throb’s self-titled album in 1995, i fondly recall the moment when my number-one-fan-of-a-sister ran into the rec room with her boombox to tell us what she could do.  her new talent: the ability to recite the mile-a-minute auctioneer twang word for word.  i was 13 years old at the time and still emulated my sister.  so what did i do?  became her back up singer naturally of course.

sadly, nashville never called but i would get my chance seven years later at my sister’s wedding to prove that this was no karaoke act.  at canadian weddings it is a quirky tradition to play a game that gets the bride and groom to kiss several times during the reception.  my older sister chose to have people sing songs with the word ‘love’ in it.  so, alongside my two younger sisters (who somehow got suckered into liking country music too) we got up in front of 120+ family and friends and belted out the words to “sold”.  no acoustic – just the microphone.  we definitely didn’t invent some new type of country beatbox but we did have everyone clapping and stomping their feet by the end of it. 

for some reason the song known as “the grundy country auction incident” became the soundtrack to our sisterhood…and i would sing it all over for them again because embarrassingly enough, i still know all of the words.