Is TV show her last chance? Singer stays so close to fame — and it's so painful

Jamie Floyd was only 11 when she was offered a deal on a major record label, and it was the absolute best, most exciting feeling in the world.

After school that day, Floyd, at her best friend’s house, got a call from her mother saying plane tickets had arrived to fly her and her mom to New York. 

Floyd laid down on the floor, looked up at the ceiling and shouted and laughed and shouted some more.

“What happened to LeAnn Rimes is going to happen to me!” she thought.

But the deal never developed, and five years later, on the day the label dropped her, Floyd was on the floor again, sobbing.

“I was as heartbroken as I thought I could get. It was a very dark thing to experience as a kid,” she said.

“I was grieving what I thought was the loss of my career.”

And yet, that day, the 16-year-old girl decided to leave her home state of Florida and move to Nashville to try again.

Floyd, now 33, has soared and crashed several times since, coming oh-so close to success only to go back to waiting tables, a roller coaster ride full of laughter and pain.

“I’m grateful for everything that’s happened. But,” she said, her voice breaking, “the first dream, the reason why I came here has not come true.”

Her biggest shot yet, though, starts Monday night when she appears on the USA Network show "Real Country," kind of a country music version of NBC singing contest "The Voice."

“Do I feel like this is my last chance? I don’t know, but it’s my greatest chance,” said Floyd, a server at the upscale restaurant, Josephine, on 12 South.

“This is the big question mark in front of me right now: Can I take the platform they’ve given me and get to that next step that I haven’t been able to reach just yet?”

It’s the next step in a journey to performing that she literally was born into.

Beating out Chris Young

Her mother and father are both musicians who did top-40 covers in Florida country clubs.

When their daughter was 2, the little girl started singing on stage with her parents.

Her uncle played in pop star Taylor Dayne’s band, and that’s how Floyd got introduced to mega-producer/label chief Ric Wake, who eventually offered the poised, talented 11-year-old girl a deal.

There was a catch — Wake wanted the girl to sing pop music instead of the country music she was performing as an opening act for Rascal Flatts, Mark Wills, Andy Griggs, Daryl Worley and others in the mid ‘90s and early 2000s in Florida.

And that eventually was the main factor in the record deal falling apart five years later.

Devastated, Floyd moved to Nashville, started a long string of server jobs including at the Panera Bread on 21st Avenue near Vanderbilt.

She also enrolled at Belmont University.

Once there, Floyd, in front of powerful Music Row execs, beat out a fellow student named Chris Young (now a big star) to win the school’s annual country showcase competition.

Floyd had to leave Belmont before she graduated so she could work full time to support herself and her music dreams.

That’s when her songwriting started to take off.

Hello, Dolly

At 24, Floyd got a cut for the first solo album for Ronnie Dunn after he left Brooks & Dunn.

Between shifts at 360 Bistro in Belle Meade, Floyd wrote a couple of songs that found their way into a Dolly Parton Lifetime TV movie, "A Country Christmas Story."

After working Lockeland Table, Floyd wrote songs overnight for an A&E/Lifetime Original Movie on serial killer Charles Mansion called "Manson’s Lost Girls."

Floyd wrote the title track to Ashley Monroe’s 2015 Grammy-nominated album, "The Blade."

And Floyd found herself at the California premiere of Burt Reynold’s final film, "The Last Movie Star," because she wrote all 12 songs for the soundtrack.

Despite the successes, Floyd only spent a year on a music publishing company’s payroll — so she wrote most of those songs while working full time in restaurants.

“I went to a premiere with Burt Reynolds, borrowed money to get there, and as I flew home the next day, I was studying the wine list for Josephine on the plane,” she said.

Not that she isn’t grateful for the chance to hang out with one of the nation’s biggest movie stars.

“There is joy there. I recognize I’ve had extraordinary things happen, because I’ve worked extraordinarily hard.

“And I’m grateful for the job I have,” she added. “But that’s not what I came here to do.”

Through it all, Floyd kept playing Nashville clubs, networking with Music Row, always striving to get noticed as an artist, not just a songwriter.

About a month later, Floyd got a call to audition for "Real Country," a new USA Network singing contest show starring Shania Twain, Travis Tritt and Jake Owen, who invited her to perform on the show.

She landed a spot on the show. Floyd said taping it was amazing — the lights, the packed Municipal Auditorium, the make-up, the outfits, big country stars rooting for her, the pressure to perform.

“It made me feel like I was closer than I’ve ever been. When you finally get to walk into your dream and you’re Cinderella and they put the dress on you and it’s all there, just like I pictured — I know what it’s like now at that level.”

Floyd can’t reveal what happens on the show. But she can say, after it was all over, that going back to her server job again was really hard.

“I’m like, ‘Wait! My life was back on that stage!’ The first couple of weeks back, I was going home very upset.

“But,” she added, “it was this highest level of gratitude I’ve ever had for having been a part of something that I could miss so much.”

Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.

Tune in

What: "Real Country" on USA Network, a singing competition show where three singers battle it out each episode for a spot on the grand finale show

Who: Country stars Shania Twain, Travis Tritt and Jake Owen are the show's "panelists"

When: 10 p.m. Central on Mondays and Tuesdays; Jamie Floyd makes her first appearance on the episode airing Dec. 10