Wow, has it really been almost four years?
If you've ever been to The Sandbar, you've heard our song. We play it after every hurricane and everyone gets on the bar and dances along with Heather on the television screen.
Our first Sandbar song was recorded in 2002 at a local recording studio. Peach rewrote the words to "Copa Cabana" to fit The Sandbar: "at The Sandbar, Sandbar in Lawrence..." and our friend Showtime sang the song. We used that song for about a year until we decided that we needed our very own, original song.
In November of 2003, a group of us took a trip to Nashville. Some of us flew out early so we'd have more time to check out the city; another group loaded up into an RV and made it a road trip. Peach co-wrote a song about The Sandbar with two friends: Dusty Workman, of the local band Dixie Road, and his buddy Eddie Kilgallon, who co-wrote George Strait's big hit (well one of them anyway) "One Night At A Time." So we had some pretty credible names behind our song!
On the big day, our group met up at County Q Production Studio in Nashville. We were all just hanging around the lobby area, waiting to be told what to do and where to go, when a guy walked in the front door. He looked a little familiar but no one thought too much of it; he made his way through our crowd and went through a door. Brother Pants, never one to miss an opportunity, told him we were all waiting for the restroom. A few minutes later, Dusty drags the man back out to the lobby exclaiming "don't you all know
who this is!" Turns out, the ordinary familiar looking guy was the lead singer of Lonestar (a pretty popular country band), Richie McDonald. So we all oooh-ed and aaaahh-ed for awhile, took pictures with him, and got autographs. He was even gracious enough to let us record him bellowing "Look out! Here comes the hurricane!" for our video, which we did indeed use.
We had a great time in the studio. Eddie brought in a reggae singer to do the lead vocals- but Eddie himself ended up doing a better job, so that's him you hear singing our song. The Sandbar group can be heard in the background in various places during the song. We were thrilled to have our own original Sandbar song that captured all the things we love about the place.
