Country music video shot in Nacogdoches, Texas

By Michele Marcotte - The Daily Sentinel - Friday, May 23, 2008

Seated inside Banita Creek Hall, Crystal Sands beamed with excitement.

"This is going to be fun," she said, displaying her mega-watt smile as videographers and music producers moved around her at the Nacogdoches music venue.

Sands, who recently released her self-titled debut, country album, was eager to start the first scene of her "Hank You" music video, which would include Sands shaking it down in a Coyote Ugly-type bar scene.

"It's a fun song," Sands said. "You know there's Hank Williams, Hank Thompson, Hank Snow and we're going to correlate them in the video ... but it's not really about them, it's about a divorce."

Wood Newton, who co-wrote the lyrics with Nashville songwriter Sarah Majors, said the song describes a woman who comes in contact with her soon-to-be ex-husband.

Newton's lyrics describe a smoky bar that embodies the interior of Banita Creek Hall, down to the old juke box.

"It's kind of her bar," Newton said, describing the wife. "And (the husband) gets escorted out ... (The whole video) goes with the story line of the song."

In addition to Banita Creek Hall, Newton and his team of videographers also shot footage at Nacogdoches attorney Jeff Burch's law office on East Hospital Street and an open field in the Central Heights area.

Sands, a Tyler-based singer/songwriter, got her big break in the music business more than two years ago through the social networking site MySpace.

She said while living in her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, she recorded Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and put it up on her MySpace page. Sands describes Cline as her biggest musical inspiration, adding that every time she sings one of her songs she gets chills inside.

"Not even a week later, I heard from this lady and she was telling me ... that she thought I had a good voice and all that stuff," Sands said.

The woman, Cheryl Hill, is a music journalist who connected Sands to a colleague, Corene Schwab.

Schwab, who had just established the Ah-Ha Music Entertainment Group, immediately brought Sands on board, getting her debut album in the works.

"We started the album last June and it took about eight months, I guess, to get all the recordings," she said. "I had to travel from Maryland to Nashville a couple times to get all the songs done."

While Newton wrote many of the album's tracks, two of the songs were penned by Sands herself.

"Wrapped Around His Finger" is a song about a Baltimore guitar player, Sands explained.

"He wore his wedding ring for about a year after his wife passed away," she said. "... it's just about her still being wrapped around his finger even though she's not there."

The other song, "More Than Gas" came from one of Sands' personal experiences.

"This is way back before I had a vehicle and I was in this relationship, and I was thinking 'You know, I really want to break up with him,' but there was a part of me that always held on to him and it doesn't matter where I am in the world, I'm still going to be with him. Even if I'm not physically with him, I'm going to need more than gas to get away from him."

Sands said the feeling of knowing she could drive for days and her heart would still be with him was a big inspiration for her lyrics.

"But, now that I have a set of wheels, it did take me away from him," she said, with a laugh. "It brought me all the way down here to Texas."

Sands performs all across the state, from East Texas venues such as Bootleggers in Tyler to The Finish Line in Fort Worth.

"I can't explain the feeling (of performing on stage)," she said. "But, that's what I do it for, that feeling."

Sands has already begun work on her next album, which will be comprised of all her own songs.

"I've just been writing a lot," she said.

In addition, Sands will also be featured in an upcoming weekly television series "Texas County Line," which follows performances of traditional Texas artists. The show will debut in July.

RETURN TO MAIN PAGE