Parkes’ golden girl of country music, Dianna Corcoran, has spent a month at home “grounding” herself as her career takes a new direction.
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“I’ve come back to Parkes because it is my favourite place in the whole entire world,” the two-time Golden Guitar winner said.
“I try to get back at least once a year because I need to reset - I sometimes notice myself getting caught up in it all.
“So I need to come home and just be me again. It can be a very shallow industry and world.
“I know people like to stomp on their hometowns a little bit but I’ve never been like that. I feel like I am so at home here.
“I even said to my husband ‘if I depart this earth early, make sure my remains get back to Parkes somehow, they just have to’.”
Dianna and her music publisher husband Ben Bailer, who also runs a record label, are based in Nashville and also live partly in New York and partly in Germany.
“A lot of people don’t know Nashville is the the capital of all music, not just country music,” she said.
“Country music is actually just a tiny part of it. In fact where we live it’s all a very hip hop and indie kind of area.”
With a population of about 1.6 million, Nashville is the fastest growing city in the United States.
“It’s a magical place,” Dianna said.
“Ben and I were having dinner one night and we made a joke about how every waitress and waiter writes music and sings.
“And they’re all incredibly talented though too, not just a little bit, they are serious talents.
“Anyway, our waiter goes and gets his guitar and sits down and sings us a song!
“There is nowhere else in the world that that is the situation, everyone sings in Nashville.”
Dianna is taking a break from stage work and is concentrating on writing and producing music.
“I’m mostly writing for TV and film and a few pop artists throughout Europe,” she said.
“A lot of my stuff is on MTV (Music Television) shows at the moment.
“I have a contract with them where I constantly stream music for them to use on different TV shows.
“I’ve actually lost track as to what shows my music is on.”
Dianna said some of her tracks are instrumental, some she sings herself and others she pays people to sing for her.
“For example, I did some songs for the Hunger Games movies and I paid a girl with a sort of dirty voice to sing them because they needed to be that real dark sound whereas it would sound stupid if you put my angelic voice all over the hunger games,” she laughed.
“I’m also writing lots of pop tracks for Europe and Japan which is fun.
“I’ve just had a multi-platinum hit in Japan and South Korea.”
Dianna has recently signed a deal to host an American TV show called Hookers in a Limo.
“It sounds filthy of course, so I was in as soon as I heard the name,” she laughed.
“Downtown Nashville is party town every night of the week, all year long.
“The street is blocked off, there are people everywhere and lots of country cowboy type up-and-comers singing on the streets.
“It is very country downtown, they get into that touristy honky tonk bars image and they really take advantage of it.
“So Hookers in a Limo is about songwriters who instantly write songs in a limousine as we drive around.
“They sit up in a limo with their guitars and tourists get in and give them ideas to write about and they write a song on the spot. It’s really cool.”
Dianna said there is a lot going on in her career and taking a break from the stage has been amazing.
“I thought I would miss it a lot more than I do,” she said.
I love making music and when you are on stage you are just replaying it.
“That was always an issue for me.
“I love to write new music and be in the studio producing it and making it come alive - that’s my passion.
“So I’m doing more of that and as I age that’s perfect.”
Dianna said she would like to start releasing music that has no rules.
“Moving forward I’d love to release some of my music nobody ever gets to hear, just because it didn’t fit me as an artist,” she said
“Even though I am singing it on the demo cds, I’ve never released it because it’s not Dianna Corcoran style.
“And for me it’s like well actually it is - it’s just that we never sold it as my style.
“I can't’ tell you how many hundreds of songs I have fully produced that are ready to go that no one’s ever heard.
“I just think that’s an epic waste of music, epic waste of the talent of all the people who put into those tracks.
“So that’s what I’d like to do instead of sticking to all the rules of creating another pop country record, I don’t want to do that.”