ArizonaRealCountry.com 45 June 2018 • Shania Twain was born in Windsor, Ontario, on Aug. 28, 1965. Her birth name is Eilleen Regina Edwards. Of five siblings, Twain is the second oldest. Shania's brothers and sisters are Jill, Carrie-Ann, Mark, and Darryl. • When she was young, her mother remarried Jerry Twain, who adopted her when she was 4-years-old and whose surname Shania kept for her music career. She adopted the name “Shania” at age 24. Ojibwa for “I’m on my way,” the name draws from the heritage of her stepfather. Her record label, Mercury, didn't think Eilleen Twain flowed well, so they asked her to change her last name. Instead, she became Shania Twain professionally, although she's still known as Eilleen in personal circles. It's difficult to imagine a country superstar named Eilleen, isn't it? • Shania's first performance was in the 1st-grade show and tell where she performed "Country Roads." • Her mom noticed Twain's talents, and soon the youngster was being shuttled to radio and TV studios, community centers, senior citizens' homes, "everywhere they could get me booked." An 8-year- old Twain was often pulled out of bed to sing with the house band at a local club but only after alcohol sales ended at midnight. At the age of 10, Shania wrote her first song. It was titled “Mama Won’t You Come Out to Play.” In high school, Shania played the trumpet. • Before becoming a singer, Shania held a number of odd jobs. She once was asking, "Would you like fries with that?" and no doubt uttered that phrase hundreds of times as she worked the counter at McDonald's. To this day, she calls French Fries the only junk food she'll touch. • McDonald's wasn't the only hands-on employment Twain knew growing up. She later worked as a supervisor for her stepfather’s reforestation business six months out of 12 between ages 17-21 as the foreman of a dozen-man crew in the Canadian bush, where she learned to wield an ax and handle a chainsaw as well as any man. She enjoyed the "rugged existence." "I loved the feeling of being stranded," she says in a 2005 biography. "I'm not afraid of being in my own environment, being physical, working hard. I was very strong; I walked miles and miles every day and carried heavy loads of trees. You can't shampoo, use soap or deodorant, or makeup, nothing with any scent; you have to bathe and rinse your clothes in the lake. It was a very rugged existence, but I was very creative and I would sit alone in the forest with my dog and a guitar and would just write songs." • Although Twain landed a record deal with Mercury Records on the basis of her original material, her self-titled 1993 debut album featured only one of her songs, the feisty "God Ain't Gonna Getcha for That." It took a phone call from a distant admirer, rock producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange (AD/DC, Def Leppard, Foreigner, Bryan Adams and many more) for Twain to find a true believer, both in her voice and her original songs. The first song Shania sang to Mutt was the chorus of "Home Ain't Where His Heart Is (Anymore)". Twain and Lange met face to face in Nashville at Fan Fair in 1993 they fell in love and were married on December 28th, 1993, by which time they'd written half an album's worth of tunes together. • Academy Award winner Sean Penn directed Shania’s second music video for the song “Dance with the One That Brought You.” Sean Penn was an early financial backer. It was only $100, but it came at a time the singer needed it most. • The single "Any Man of Mine," hit the charts in May and became the first of four consecutive No. 1 hits for Twain, including "(If You're Not in It for Love) I'm Outta Here!," "You Win My Love" and "No One Needs to Know." Part of the video for "Any Man of Mine" was shot on Bo and John Derek's ranch in St. Inez. The project won a Grammy for country album of the year and was named album of the year by the Academy of Country Music in 1995. It may be one of the most expensive country albums ever produced. According to Robin Eggar’s 2005 biography, it took five hours to fit Shania perfectly into her black bell-bottom pants for the video for “(If You’re Not in It for Love) I’m Outta Here!” that he nicknamed his car Shania in honor of the Canadian singer. The Canada Post put Shania’s face on a stamp in 2014. The Shania Twain stamp is part of a series on famous Canadian country musicians, including k.d. lang, Tommy Hunter, Renee Martel, and Hank Snow. The city of Timmins Ontario renamed a street for her, gave her the key to the city, and built the Shania Twain Centre in her honor. • On January 1, 2011, it was announced that Twain and Swiss businessman, Frederic Thiébaud, were married in Puerto Rico. It is the second marriage for both. “I have an incredibly romantic husband [business exec Frédéric Thiébaud]. He is constantly creating special moments for me like hand-picking flowers to decorate my breakfast plate” says Shania. • On June 8, 2011, at a press conference at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Twain announced that she would headline Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for two years. From 2012-14, Twain played 105 concerts at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace as part of her Las Vegas residency, Shania: Still the One. To announce her residency, Shania shut down the Las Vegas Strip when she arrived on horseback, accompanied by a herd of 40 other horses. More than 346,000 tickets were sold for Shania’s Las Vegas residency, earning the star more than $43 million over two years. One of her two sisters, Carrie-Ann, was a background singer for Shania: Still the One. • Twain has won at least 220 awards in her career. This includes five Grammys, 26 Canadian Country Music Awards, and nine Billboard Music Awards. In 1999, Shania Twain became the first Canadian to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year Award. That same year, Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) named Twain both country songwriter of the year and pop songwriter of the year. Twain was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2011. On June 2, 2011, Twain received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It is the 2,442nd Star on the Walk of Fame in the Category of Recording. Twain has sold more than 75 million albums globally, and 48 million in the U.S. alone. • In 2011, Twain published a memoir, titled “From This Moment On,” which she wrote completely on her own without the help of a ghostwriter. In her memoir, Twain admits she struggles with stage fright. In fact, she once wet her pants in school but covered the mess by spilling a glass of water. ''As far as the trumpet players on either side of me knew, the puddle ... was nothing more than H2O!'' Twain writes. On the list of things the singer has overcome, this one seems pretty minor. • According to a 2009 University of Toronto study, Twain has a perfect face. The calculations are based on the precise distance between facial features. She speaks French, drives a secondhand car and likes salt on apples. Just the Facts SHANIA TWAIN In 1987, at age 21, Twain lost her parents in an automobile accident. She took on the responsibility of raising her three younger siblings. She managed to keep the household going with a job at Ontario's Deerhurst Resort, which not only provided for her new family responsibilities but also gave her an education in every aspect of theatrical performance, from musical comedy to Andrew Lloyd Webber to Gershwin. Shania suffers from dysphonia, a stress disorder that can affect vocal chords. Twain is a devotee of the Eastern spiritual movement Sant Mat, which emphasizes the importance of daily meditation and abstinence from drugs and alcohol. • Shania's nickname for Mutt was “Love”, and Mutt's name for Shania was “Woody” because her old hairdo reminded him of Woody Woodpecker. Twain retreated to her home in Switzerland at the end of 1999 where she and Lange welcomed their first child, a son named Eja, in the summer of 2001 while preparing her 2002 release Up!, featuring the hit single "I'm Gonna Getcha Good." • Her song “Up!” was even used as a wake-up call for Canadian astronaut Dave Williams when he was in space on the Space Shuttle Endeavor in 2007 and it wasn’t the first time a Shania song has been blasted into the cosmos. In 2001, her hit 'Honey, I'm Home' woke up members of the Space Shuttle Atlantis crew. • In 2008, Twain and Lange divorced. Lange's wandering eye proved to be the couple's undoing. On November 12, 2008, Twain made her first television appearance since her split from her ex- husband when she appeared as a surprise presenter at the 42nd CMA Awards. • On January 1, 2010, Twain carried the Olympic Torch through her hometown as part of the 2010 Winter Olympics torch relay. Second generation racecar driver Tim Fedewa told Sports Illustrated Real Country Legends 96.3 welcomes Shania Twain to Talking Stick Resort Arena on July 30th.