Valentines Day… a response to an interview question Feb 12th
I’ve been more people’s Valentine than I care to remember! LOL… I’ve spent too much of my adult life being single… and while Valentine’s Day dates where a lot of fun in my teens and early twenties… I wasn’t always pleased with the status of my relationships in the years that followed. For the most part, however, I tried NOT to reevaluate my entire life on that day and just have some fun.
The Boys of Summer…
In my high school years, I always took all things musical very seriously. Many times it was at the expense of my school work. I tried to be a good student but I would stay at the dance studio until late at night and put off doing my home work. High school was boring because it was an all girl private Catholic School and I had a hard time concentrating on my work… especially when boys started entering the picture. I was a little boy-crazy and I really knew how to pick ’em. Not gonna mention any names here cause one of them ended up being seriously dangerous in the end! This guy was my first real “boy-friend” and I dated him through high school and into my first year 
of College. I had a few crushes earlier on but nothing major. This guy went crazy on me at some point and I haven’t seen him since … other than a little “stalking” incident a few years later in Hollywood. My dating relationship, dance, and music pretty much consumed all of my time. By now I was majoring in theater and I was impatiently waiting for the future to unfold. I eventually got through all that and was off to spread my wings, be on my own, and hopefully support myself. I landed a dance position with a show in Hot Springs Arkansas. I met a young guitar player there by the name of Jimmy Craig, and started a new friendship with him. We had our dreams in common and we hung out more and more… eventually becoming romantically involved. He was a good boy friend and even though it didn’t last, he’s a good friend to this day. Somewhat later he became friends with my brother Phillip because of their shared musical aspirations. He’s a very talented musician and someday, if things work out, I’d like to do something musical with him again as well.
The Formative Years:
I was born Julie Clare to Joseph Frank and Peggy Anne Myers in Memphis TN. I was their fifth and last child, a bit of an afterthought or possible mistake… as there was five years between myself and my older sister Dina. I’m told I was a precocious child, slightly hyper active, and physically adventurous. Apparently I was always tumbling or dancing to music, that was virtually always playing in our home, from the day I could stand holding onto the sides of my crib and playpen. As a five or six year old I mastered the technique of climbing up the walls of a hallway or door frame by using both my hands and feet to put pressure on the opposing sides. My mother took pleasure in my physical adventures and enrolled me in ballet, tap, and jazz dance classes when I was very young. Even before all that, I wanted to be on a stage badly enough that at five, I lied about my age at an audition to land the roll of the “Fairy” in Peter Pan. I can’t believe I made it in there because I couldn’t even say the name of the Catholic Private school, “Immaculate Conception”, I was supposedly attending as I had no front teeth! I was in Grade one when I brought my much older brother David to school to accompany me on guitar as I sang “I’m Leavin’ on a Jet Plane” at the school talent show. I won for the Grades 1 through 5 category and I’m not certain if I wasn’t allowed to enter again or why it is that I don’t remember another talent show in all my Grade School years. Perhaps they wanted to make sure more people had the opportunity to win these things and had rules to help make that happen. It wasn’t long before my mother added acrobatic and gymnastic classes on top of it all. I realized when I was older that my mother lived vicariously through my exploits of the things she got me involved in. My entire family was very supportive and I loved all that stuff. It was also years later that I found out that the reason my brother’s friends would ask me to do back hand-springs across the back yard all the time was because they would be on drugs and they loved the trippy effect of seeing that under the influence. I lived it all day long and dreamt about it every night. One of the things that stands out as a great memory is the Mid-South Fair. Here, some of my best friends and myself were doing all kinds of dance, dance mixed with acrobatics, and/or solo singing. It was all a big competition and I had to work hard to win a spot on these stages. Music and dance has always been huge in Memphis. One really great memory that stands out is a dance group I belonged to winning first place one year. Christmas shows, recitals, and performances were great and most of it came easy. I always looked forward to anything on a stage…except for gymnastic meets. They made me so very nervous. Maybe it was that there were bigger expectations on me than those I had of myself…I’m not sure. Music and dance proved to have the bigger pull on me and there was a lot of time when that was all I wanted to do.
juliecmyers 