Stealing the Spotlight

Music has always been a part of Edmond musician Devin Derrick’s life. When he was a kid, his parents owned the Derrick Club, now known as the Wolf Trap in Edmond, where bands played six nights a week. Derrick’s grandmother was a booking agent for Randy Travis.

All along, Derrick was learning everything he could about his dream. “I think that’s just a part of any goal that anybody has in life. You learn from people’s downfalls and you learn from their successes and that’s what I was doing, I was just taking it all in, soaking it up,” Derrick says.

But along with making music, Derrick had another hope… to be a part of movies. He made the decision to tackle Nashville first, but now, with the film industry growing in his home state, Derrick is getting the opportunity to do it all.

For 10 years, Derrick lived and performed out of Nashville in pursuit of his goals. He has opened for artists such as Alabama, Blake Shelton and Tracy Lawrence. Derrick bought his tour bus from Shania Twain. He says this with a laugh because he had to have it repainted. It was all pink.

Though perhaps one of the greatest music moments of Derrick’s life came in 2002, with a knock on his tour bus door in Nashville. It was a representative for Johnny Cash and he wanted a demo CD.

Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash died in 2003 but three years later Derrick got the opportunity to work with Cash’s son, John Carter Cash who produced two songs on Derrick’s latest album. One such song is “Lady,” a tune written by Johnny Cash for June.

“Recording that was an incredible thing in my life that was a lot of fun and a great learning experience,” Derrick says. “That was a pretty big highlight in my life.”

If there’s anything Derrick knows about a career in the music business, it’s that it’s a journey. From Nashville it was on to Las Vegas where Derrick spent time performing before returning to his Oklahoma roots. “I’ve traveled all over the United States and I like it here the best,” Derrick says of Oklahoma.

In addition to being geographically advantageous for touring, Oklahoma held the hospitality Derrick had missed. “If you live there and you’re from here, to no discredit to the people in Las Vegas, the people are just different, and you just can’t find any homemade pies out there either,” Derrick laughs.

Derrick is polite and optimistic, much like his home state. And it is here that Derrick got the chance to blend his two passions, music and movies. It was with the recently released rodeo-inspired family film “Cowgirls n’ Angels.” Derrick got to be an extra in the film, which also used three of his songs in the movie, including “Certifiably Crazy” produced by John Carter Cash.

“It was great to be in the movie,” Derrick says and adds, “to be in any movie and have your music played is an incredible feeling.” In addition, he says it is good for the country music genre. “It proves that country music is not dying. It’s growing. It’s all kinds of intertwined now.”

And Derrick adds that having more films coming to the state these days is positive for the community. ” ‘Cowgirls n’ Angels’ is a really good family-oriented film. It’s got a great message, it’s got a great cast and being filmed here in Oklahoma makes it just that much better.”

From there, Derrick has been in as many films as possible in the past year, moving from extra roles in films such as the Oklahoma-filmed “Yellow,” to speaking parts like his role in the upcoming Stillwater-inspired film, “Hay Days.” Derrick has several other films in the works and if such a career as his is a journey, then it is also a roller coaster, full of ups and downs. The key, Derrick has learned, is not to jump off. “There’s no career in this world that’s smooth. There’s always red tape and it’s a rocky ride here and there,” he says but adds, “if a person just keeps their nose clean and stays focused then they’ll succeed.”

It is this motto Derrick clearly embodies. He is fully engulfed in promoting his upcoming films and planning shows around his new album “I Hate Lovin’ It,” released in June. “If you want to make it in this business, to me the definition of success is to never give up. You have to just keep going, have that perseverance and that drive to make it.”

And for Derrick, that drive is kicked into high gear.