Country stars live glamorous lives — stylists, tour buses, catering, sold-out shows and television appearances — but it hasn’t always been glitz and glory for your favorite artists. In fact, many had to work jobs that were downright awful, greasy and smelly before they got to where they are today.
Faith Hill served up burgers and fries at an extremely famous fast food joint, and, judging from her experience there, she probably doesn’t show up in their drive-thru very much. Once upon a time, Carrie Underwood was a gas station attendant. And Craig Campbell was in prison — not as an inmate, but as an employee.
There many more country stars who started their careers out of the spotlight and in the daily grind: Kix Brooks, Toby Keith, Garth Brooks, Gretchen Wilson, Jason Aldean and more are featured in the photo gallery above. But if we’re picking the worst job of the bunch, Dierks Bentley definitely tops the list. He did a job that no one would want to do because it literally stinks!
Curious about other stars’ pre-fame jobs? Click through the gallery below. You’ll probably agree that a music gig is much better than most of these artists’ other ventures into the working world.
Kelly Clarkson
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Kelly Clarkson
Kelly Clarkson held down a surprising number of jobs before becoming a superstar. She was a vacuum cleaner saleswoman and a telemarketer in Ft. Worth, Texas. She also moonlighted as a cocktail waitress and one of those women who go from bar to bar hawking energy drinks.
Blake Shelton
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Blake Shelton
Blake Shelton probably had the most boring pre-fame job. He dubbed tapes — as in cassette tapes. There’s a small portion of Taste of Country readers who’ve never held a cassette tape (or tried to reel it back in with a pencil), but even those who remember the days of Side A and Side B didn’t know that people got paid to dub cassette tapes.
Reba McEntire
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Reba McEntire
Reba McEntire was a cowgirl who helped her father turn bulls into steers. “I would stand behind the bull and hold his tail while Daddy sliced the sack and cut the cord and let the testicles fall,” McEntire explains. “Daddy would pass the testicles to me and I’d put them in a bucket.”
Faith Hill
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Faith Hill
“Fries, burgers, cash register — I did it all,” Faith Hill says about working at McDonald’s. “I hated it. God bless the people that work there.” Hill flipped burgers prior to moving to Nashville. Upon moving to Nashville, Hill ditched restaurant work in favor of a job behind a desk at publishing office. She no doubt smelled better at the end of each day.
Dierks Bentley
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Dierks Bentley
Dierks Bentley might have held the most disgusting pre-fame job: emptying house-boat toilets after they’d been on the water for a day, week or longer. Unfortunately he wasn’t working with modern equipment, so there were malfunctions. “I tried to outrun the rain,” he says of one specific stormy morning. “Got nailed.” No day on the road can ever be that bad.
Kix Brooks
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Kix Brooks
During college, Kix Brooks spent some time working for his father on an oil pipeline in Alaska, and then moved to Maine to write advertising. In 1983, he recorded a single that flopped and then released his debut album in 1989. Ultimately, he wouldn’t find success until being teamed with Ronnie Dunn to form Brooks and Dunn.
Jason Aldean
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Jason Aldean
Jason Aldean‘s country music dreams rode on the back of a Pepsi truck for years before he officially moved to Nashville. The singer began working at a Georgia Pepsi plant at age 17, and soon drove the delivery truck. ”I was the guy that rode around in a truck and delivered drinks to all the convenience stores, so this was kind of my back-up plan,” Aldean says.
Gretchen Wilson
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Gretchen Wilson
Before taking her talents to Nashville, Gretchen Wilson paid her dues in bars and clubs around rural Illinois. Mostly it was just one bar, a dive called Big O’s. By age 15 she had dropped out of school to tend bar and cook for the rowdy customers. She worked her way up to manager pretty quickly, and always kept a loaded 12-gauge shotgun near her for protection.
Toby Keith
Toby Keith
Toby Keith’s first employment was at his grandmother’s bar. It was there he’d help out doing odd jobs while watching bands come play nightly. He says the experience shaped his future, and he’s written multiple songs about those nights.
Lee Brice
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Lee Brice
Before, and perhaps during, college at Clemson University, Lee Brice helped out at his father’s commercial electric business in his hometown of Sumter, S.C. It’s likely he didn’t spend too much time 100 feet in the air in a tiny bucket during his tenure with dad, however — the singer has a fear of heights.
Carrie Underwood
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Carrie Underwood
Carrie Underwood was 21 years old when she auditioned for American Idol, and she was no slacker prior to doing so. She took jobs as early as her freshman year of high school, which is when she worked as an attendant at a Checotah, Okla. gas station. Later, she put in time at a hotel, a pizza place and a veterinary clinic. After high school, Underwood went to Northeastern State University, where she focused on journalism.
Craig Campbell
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Craig Campbell
Before Craig Campbell became a country star with hits like “Family Man” and “Fish,” he worked as a prison guard at the Rogers State Prison in Reidsville, Ga. During his two-year run as a guard, he did everything from search cells and inmates, to patrol the grounds of the strictly male facility.
Colt Ford
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Colt Ford
Colt Ford once had two professional loves: country music and golf. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to be successful at both, so the singer (whose real name is Jason Farris Brown) dropped his clubs for the pen and microphone. It’s not clear how much professional golf he played — one article says he appeared at only a single Nationwide Tour event — but he did quite a bit of teaching.
Rodney Atkins
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Rodney Atkins
Rodney Atkins was an ambitious young entrepreneur who opened his own lawn mowing business at age 12. He started out mowing a neighbor’s lawn before starting a landscaping business, which included mowing cemetery plots for $10 a plot. That’s pretty good money! Even after all his country music success, Atkins refuses to hire a landscaper at his own home in Nashville. He prefers to do it himself, pushing dirt around with his own tractor.
Garth Brooks
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Garth Brooks
Between customers, Garth Brooks would write music, turning out at least one of his hits amongst selling Justins and the Luccheses. Mid-90s hitmaker Ken Mellons tells the story of running into Brooks as both tried to fit cowboys and cowgirls in boots of just the right skin and color. “He gave me his business card, and I still have it today. I thought that was pretty neat, and a few months later I’m driving down the road and hear him on the radio,” Mellons says.
