Trailer Choir Recall the Night Their Musical Lives Changed

Trailer Choir, the rowdy trio comprised of Mark Fortney ('Butter'), Vinny Hickerson ('Big Vinny') and Crystal Hoyt, were happily playing local Nashville bars and clubs and developing a large fan base, when they were discovered playing out one night by country superstar (and record label owner), Toby Keith. It was a life-changing moment that is forever etched in their minds.

"At that particular show, we had packed out a place," Butter tells The Boot. "We had 250 fans in Nashville, which is not an easy thing to accomplish. We filled up a room. And my initial feeling was -- Billy Block, the guy that hosted the show we were involved in -- he came up to the stage. We got done, the place is loud, and he's standing down on the stage looking up at me, and he [says], 'Butter, Toby Keith is in the back of the bar waiting to meet you guys.' And I said, 'Come on, man,'" he said, unsure whether Billy was kidding.

Already accustomed to the attention of music executives, they had also faced their share of disappointments. "At that point, through us coming together and what we had been building, we had started seeing some real record people showing up to our shows," Butter explains. "Real industry people that had the potential to change your position and change where you were in this thing. And we started feeling a little buzz around our shows."

Still, they had their hopes crushed a few times before, and knew that anything could happen. "We were believers in what we did and our talent. But I can't tell you how many times in this business, and it never ceases to end, where you think something means something or it's going this way, and then for no reason, it evaporates or it changes."

Toby, impressed with the band both on and off the stage, wasted no time in adding them to his label, Show Dog (now Show Dog-Universal), and inviting them out on his Big Dog Daddy tour. And while they all say they are immensely grateful for Toby and his support and encouragement, they insist they would still be making music even if he hadn't signed them.

"Things were moving in a direction that it would have automatically gravitated towards," adds Crystal, who famously joined the band only a month earlier, by boldly jumping up on stage and grabbing a mic. "They were already touring and doing a lot of frat parties and doing a lot of touring as it was, so I think the next natural step would have been, if someone else hadn't signed us to some other kind of a deal, to have recorded our own record and be out there doing this."

Trailer Choir's first single, 'Off the Hillbilly Hook,' from the debut project of the same name, found its way onto the soundtrack of Toby's film, 'Beer for My Horses.' Releasing a new single this spring, 'Rolling Through the Sunshine,' they're also hard at work on a new album.