Nashville, TN. (Top40 Charts/ RCA) - It's said that everyone has their "six degrees of separation" and ABC's Primetime is set to prove
Martina McBride is no exception. From small town Sharon, Kansas singing in her family band, moving to Nashville , recording demos and soon after signing a record deal. Who are the people who helped
Martina McBride fulfill her dreams? Correspondent Jay Shadler visited with Martina in Nashville this week to trace back the early days of "wanna-be-country-singer" and how knowing one person who knew another person led to McBride's lucky break.
To further prove the theory, Primetime has selected six people who have three things in common - they do not personally know Martina McBride, they live in small towns and remote places around the country and they have the desire to sing and be heard. Primetime and Martina McBride are giving these six hopefuls the chance to use the process of six degrees to meet the country music superstar and have her produce their very own professional demo at one of the top recording studios in the country - Blackbird Studios. Primetime and Sony BMG have teamed up to allow those demos to be heard by music executives - something Martina can attest to is no easy feat.
"To get the chance to be heard in this business, it takes talent first and foremost but it also takes a lot of determination and even more luck," admits McBride. "Looking back, the naivete it took for me and my husband John to move here with only a few contacts was crazy but one connection led to another and I think you have to believe it will happen and take that chance."
ABC's Primetime will capture the journey from their most immediate connection through each step leading them closer and closer to the superstar. They are not allowed to call anyone at random but must use the six degrees of separation concept (made famous in 1967 by social psychologist Stanley Milgram whose experiments suggested that two random US citizens were connected on average by a chain of six acquaintances). ABC's Primetime aired an earlier episode entitled The Human Chain proving the theory using people in the New York and Philadelphia area who were not directly related and from very different backgrounds. All were able to connect.
Filming will also include Shadler and McBride retracing the beginning steps of her musical career in Sharon and Wichita , Kansas , McBride on her 2007 national tour, the meeting of one or all of the six contestants who make the connection as well as the demo recordings in Nashville . An airdate for the two 1-hour specials has not yet been scheduled.
Martina's new album Waking Up Laughing will be in stores April 3rd. Her multi-city arena tour with openers Little Big Town and Rodney Atkins kicks off April 12th in Kansas City .
