Patricia Conroy finally has her foot in the door. After a decade of struggle and work, Conroy is one of the biggest and most honored country music successes in these parts.
Since relocating to Nashville two years ago Conroy -- who appears tonight at the Pacific National Exhibition -- and her Morningstar Management team have been working to get her current album distributed in the lucrative U.S. market.
Now, through a company called Intersound, which works with various jazz and gospel acts as well as Crystal Gayle, the Bellamy Brothers and others, Conroy will be the newest Canadian trying to crack the American charts.
``It means that I'm getting a shot at the U.S. market,'' Conroy says. ``Not to strictly look at it in just a business sense but I do want to get my video on CMT and get a single to radio and get it worked to some degree. So, really, it's my U.S. debut.''
At the end of last year, Conroy was set to launch that debut. She was setting up tours and getting radio play based on her Country Music Television video exposure.
When Canada's New Country Network video channel came along and shut the American CMT out of our market, CMT retaliated by barring Canadian artists not signed to U.S. record deals. Of all Canadian acts, Conroy was the most affected.
``Yeah, I was really caught in the middle. I seemed to be in the eye of the hurricane. It hurt me financially and from a career standpoint. It shut the door when I was barely getting it open. It set me back a year.
``I'd just started touring the States and going to radio stations and cultivating a relationship with CMT and TNN. And I think I was making some real headway. I had the platform to release the single Somebody's Leavin' and it was just starting to take off. Ironic as it was, somebody did leave. But I'm coming back, too.''
In terms of stage work, she was never really gone. She and her band bus all over the continent with an occasional break at home. When we spoke, Conroy was enjoying a two-day layover in Nashville before heading back up to Canada -- still her principal tour route -- and a string of one-night stands from Ontario to the PNE. A week earlier, she'd been in Germany.
``That was excellent. It was one of the biggest country music festivals in Germany -- close to Dresden -- and it was all German bands except for myself. They played American country music and I came out with a complete set of originals.
``I think they were expecting me to play, you know, Carlene Carter and Pam Tillis and all that stuff.''
Though she's Montreal-born, Conroy made her music career here and tonight's show will be something of a homecoming. There are those in Canada who disagree with our artists trying to break out south of the border but, while Conroy misses her Vancouver friends and fans, she has few regrets about her move to Tennessee.
