Taylor, Dierks, Joe + More Share Halloween Stories
Taylor Swift is on a crusade for traditional Halloween garb. The singer tells CMT that she and her best friend Abigal have always been "anti-teeny-tiny, little costumes." She explains that too many girls her age use Halloween as an excuse to dress in the skimpiest costume they can find. Taylor says that when she was in high school, just a few short years ago, girls would tan for weeks before Halloween so they could look good in the small amount of clothing they conjured up. She maintains the entire point of Halloween is to look scary. To prove her point, last year the singer dressed as 'Star Wars' wookie Chewbacca for Halloween.
Holy cow, Batman, it's ... Jason Michael Carroll and his entire family trick-or-treating at my door! That could be the reaction of some of the country singer's neighbors this Halloween when they see Jason and his brood in their superhero and villain costumes. Jason's family always picks a theme for their costumes -- last year they dressed as the Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc crew and the year before that Star Wars characters. This year, Jason will be the Caped Crusader. "I have an awesome Batman costume and J.W. will go as Robin," Jason Michael reports. "He's having a lot of fun saying 'Holy cow, Batman!' Gavin's going to be the Joker, my wife Wendy is Catwoman, Savanna is Supergirl and Stori is Batgirl."
Dierks Bentley and wife Cassidy are dressing daughter Evie in character for her first Halloween. Dierks explains, "Evie likes to play drums, but then she'll take the drumstick and we'll have like a sword fight and she kind of looks like a little Yoda. So we went online and got her a Yoda outfit -- the ears and cape. But I'll be on the road, of course, playing a gig as I am on any important date. I'll get lots of good pictures though!"
Joe Nichols hasn't been too successful with Halloween costumes, whether as a kid or in recent years. "I wanted to be Dracula for Halloween one year and we didn't have any money, so my mom made me a cape out of a woman's silk dress. I ended up just looking like a little boy in a woman's silk dress! Then a few years ago, I had a midnight hay ride for all the people at my house. I hid by a fence and when I jumped out to scare everyone, the fence caught me in the throat and everyone laughed instead. This year, I'm playing in Florida on Halloween. My wife wants me to dress up like a doctor ... guess I know what she wished I had done with my life!"
Sunny Sweeney recalls a Halloween costume that ended up embarrassing her. "In the third grade I dressed up as Dolly Parton – I had balloons stuffed in my shirt and this huge wig. I went to the Carnival at my school and no one knew what I was supposed to be . . . I got embarrassed and took out the balloons – it's still my favorite costume, though."
Jody Stevens of the new country duo Fast Ryde is also all about the costumes -- and has been, even when his peers weren't playing along! "When I was in the eighth grade in Hendersonville (north of Nashville), it wasn't cool anymore to wear costumes. You would just go door-to-door and get candy. But I went as a ghost anyway. I wouldn't let everybody else's lack of spirit ruin my Halloween." The other half of Fast Ryde, James Harrison, had a favorite costume when he was a kid. "For probably five or six of my 12-year trick-or-treat career, I went as a ninja. I just loved that costume!"
The Bellamy Brothers have another kind of costume story. When they were in Saudi Arabia in the mid 1980s, they bought a couple of the native robes and headdresses to wear on Halloween, which was happening just as they arrived back in Florida. With their kids anxiously awaiting the anticipated treats, Howard and David donned their newly-purchased clothing and hopped in David's well-known red and white '57 Chevy to conquer the neighborhood. "We stopped at houses all over the county, including a lot of friends and families we'd grown up with, but nobody seemed to recognize us," David recalls. "Everywhere we stopped, people seemed overly anxious to hand over their loot for the kids, though." Later that night, as the Bellamy's and their kids headed home with their goodies, they saw the lights of a police car pulling up behind them. They dutifully pulled over only to find one of their buddies, who also happened to be a cop, getting out of the cruiser. "He walked up to the car and said he thought we were still overseas. We explained we had just arrived home that afternoon. He said, 'Well, you've got half the county scared to death in them outfits. We've been getting calls all night that two Middle Eastern guys had stole David Bellamy's 1957 Chevy!'"
Duane Allen of the Oak Ridge Boys remembers the year he and wife Nora Lee almost got arrested. "We try to be dressed up when our grandkids come home from school. One year we had to go to the bank, so off we went, fully dressed. When we walked in, the bank thought they were being robbed ... bells started going off and people came from private offices and surrounded us. Nora Lee was dressed to kill and I had a mask on. I loved it. But we were almost arrested until we showed them our IDs."
Fellow Oak Ridge singer Joe Bonsall also learned a lesson about costumes a few years ago. "When my granddaughter was just three years old (she's 14 now), she was coming over to our house on Halloween around 6:00 PM to show off her princess costume. Well old 'Pop Pop' here dug out his death costume -- full black robes, a huge skull head with red eyes that blinked on and off and that big scythe." Joe was standing in the driveway when his daughter Sabrina arrived with Breanne, who was not too sure she wanted to get out of the car. All of a sudden my red eyes start to blink and I turn to her and announce in a loud creepy voice that I am the Paracles of Death and I've come to eat her nose! Princess Bre starts to scream and proceeds to run down the street in a fit of pure horror. Bottom line ... I was in the dog house with my wife Mary and my daughter Sabrina for a long time after that. Breanne would not talk to me for weeks."
More Halloween stories from your favorite stars:
James Otto: "My favorite Halloween memories were trick-or-treating with friends in the snow in North Dakota and then having snowball fights for all the candy. Whoever won the fight got the whole stash! Darth Vader was my favorite costume one year."
Jessica Harp: "I always loved Halloween, mainly because I love candy! But also because I enjoyed nothing more than playing dress-up as much as possible when I was younger, so it was an excuse to dress up and get candy!"
Whitney Duncan: "I always liked Halloween mainly because of all the candy. My best memories of Halloween were later in high school when me and my friends would roll people's yards with toilet paper and they would hide and spray us with the water hose."
Emma Jacob: "Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year. The night before Halloween our entire family gets together and carves pumpkins, we each have our individual one. Then the day of Halloween my mom starts making homemade chili and homemade apple cider in the afternoon. The night of Halloween our family all sits down and eats the chili and drinks the hot apple cider. Then after the trick-or-treating we all sit down together again and have powdered sugar doughnuts and hot chocolate."
Jimmy Wayne: "When I was nine years old, I had a major crush on a girl named Roxanne. Our friendship consisted of me standing on the sidewalk while she stood in her yard. We were divided by a fence. All we could do was stare at one another. We never even spoke. One Halloween, I went around the neighborhood and collected candy. The next day I met Roxanne at the fence and handed her all of my candy, with a necklace in the bag as well, hoping for at least one kiss. Needless to say, that never happened. If you lived on 3rd Street in Kings Mountain, N.C., in 1981 and your name is Roxanne, I hope you liked the candy!"
Bill Anderson: "When my mom went into labor with me on Halloween night, my dad went to get the car to drive her to the hospital only to find that pranksters had let the air out of his tires and soaped up his car windows. I was almost one of those taxicab kids!! Thankfully, I was born in the hospital the next morning at 11:27 AM."
Jason Aldean: "One thing I try to do at the beginning of every year is sit down with my booking agent, look at the calendar and say these are the days I'll take off. Halloween is always one of those days. It's important, because my oldest is six and the youngest is two. They're not gonna dress up for Halloween forever so I want to be there to see it."
Steve Wariner: "I remember one Halloween a few years back when we took my nephews and niece trick-or-treating in downtown Franklin, Tenn. Oakley, the youngest, was about four years old at the time and had a costume with a mask that covered pretty much his entire head. It wasn't necessarily the easiest thing to pop on and off. Well, Oakley had difficulties with that mask right off the bat! I noticed he wouldn't put it on until we were knocking on the door. Maybe he couldn't breathe, maybe he was claustrophobic, I'm not sure. The minute we'd get the candy, while the people were still closing their door, he'd rip that mask off! Needless to say, it was a long and busy night for me because that mask was on/off, on/off, on/off the entire time! I thought we were gonna wear that doggone costume out and me with it! I'm not sure I even got any candy, come to think of it!"
More From TheBoot
