Courtney Eoff, one of the winners in the “Lone Star Song Search,” has been singing all her life.
“That’s the way the story goes,” she said. “Before I was talking, I was humming. I come from a musical family. My mom sings and dad plays the guitar and sings. There is either talking or singing going on in our house.”
The Rockdale High School graduate recently won a statewide competition with her song, “Don’t M-E-SS With Texas,” that she wrote the lyrics and music for in the “Don’t Mess With Texas” litter campaign contest.
She heard about the competition through a friend’s mother, so she looked into the rules.
“Late one night around 12:45, I was recov-ering from foot surgery and couldn’t sleep, so I just wrote down all my ideas,” she said.
The next morning she showed them to her mom and dad and within minutes a 30-second jingle was born.
“I just wanted to do something catchy and fun; something that would stick in their heads,” she said of the song that earned her a home-recording studio that she will get to create herself.
The judges said this about her song, “The youthful and catchy song she wrote captures the spirit of the campaign. Her lyrics really drive home the true message that ‘Don’t mess with Texas’ really means don’t litter.”
She hopes her win will help her develop into a professional singer and songwriter, a path she embarked on when she performed at 15 at the Rockdale Fair Association’s queen pageant. The next year she had her first professional gig at The Ranch in Rockdale.
“It was the first time I put together a set list,” she said. She pulled that off with a lot of technical help from her dad, Brooks, and brother, Carson.
Last summer she was hoping to get more live audience experience performing at oprys and other venues around the state, but COVID-19 dried up those plans.
She is hopeful for a good summer this year, but it is a wait-and-see proposition, she said.
Churches and revivals have given her the chance to perform in front of audiences, too.
“I just enjoy the music,” she said, noting she is a member of First Baptist Church in College Station, where she plans to sing.
She is currently living in College Station attending Texas A&M as a sophomore.
She had just moved to Rockdale because her mother, Alesha, got a job in the school district, when she first saw the A&M campus.
“We were driving by and I said ‘this is where I need to be,’ ” she said. “Then after the tour I was sold. I felt at home there.”
She is majoring in marketing, not music, however, but she has a reason.
“I value education and I value school. I want to learn the business side of it. Music will always be in my life,” she said.
In keeping with that she is currently taking classes in marketing, supply-chain management, finance and general management, she said.
As far as music goes she likes Dolly Parton songs and The Chicks.
But her favorite is Grammy-winning songwriter and singer Lori McKenna.
“She is probably my biggest song-writing person that I look up to,” Eoff said.
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