Hey y'all, and welcome. I'm Carol Ann. I clean teeth four days a week at a family dentist's office in Madison, and the rest of the time I write country songs. I have been doing both since I rolled into town in 1991 with a Corolla full of clothes and a spiral notebook full of songs that were, I can tell you now, mostly terrible.

I grew up in Pike County, Kentucky, up a hollow where the radio only came in after dark. My grandma had a Silvertone guitar with a crack in the top and she taught me three chords on it when I was nine: G, C and D. She said that was all Hank needed and it would do for me. Some days I think she was right. Some days I know it.

I don't have a staff deal yet. I do have one song signed to a little publisher on Music Row, a co-writing partner I trust, a writers' night I play the first Monday of every month, and about four hundred songs in a milk crate under my bed. A few of the ones I'm proudest of are on this page. Please remember they're mine, and don't go putting your name on them. I know where you live. (I don't. But Grandma would've.)

Tuesday, September 21, 1999
Dwight and I finally cracked the bridge on "Twenty Dollars of Regular" tonight. We've had the verses since June and the bridge just sat there like a mule. Turns out the answer was to put her up on the Cumberland Plateau and let her roll the window down. Took us three months and a whole pot of coffee. That's songwriting for you.

Monday, September 6, 1999
Labor Day writers' round at the Tin Cup over in East Nashville. Played "Porch Light On" last and a lady in the back cried and then came up after and told me her boy's been gone six years. I didn't know what to say, so I hugged her. I think that's why I do this, honestly. That, and the free iced tea.

Tuesday, August 17, 1999
Got word from my publisher that "The Good China" is on hold for a new artist's first album! For those of you not from here: a hold means a producer likes it enough to keep other people from cutting it while they decide. It does not mean it's recorded. It does not mean anything, really, until it does. I've had four holds in eight years and none of them turned into a cut. But I'm letting myself be happy about it through at least Labor Day. I'm not allowed to say who. Don't ask me at church.

Sunday, July 4, 1999
Redid this whole page tonight with help from my nephew, who is fourteen and thinks I'm hopeless. He got rid of the spinning guitar I had, which I miss. I watched the fireworks over the river from a parking garage roof downtown and came home and typed in the new songs.