Sedgwick native who’s been chasing stardom in Nashville returns for ‘homecoming’ tour

It was just over eight years ago that Tawna Goforth and her husband, Chad, packed up all of their belongings in a fifth-wheel travel trailer and headed from Wichita to Nashville.

And although she didn’t become the country music star she hoped she could be – at least not yet – the Sedgwick native wouldn’t change a thing.

“When we moved here, everything was kind of pulling us back to Kansas,” she recalled from her home north of Nashville. “Our dog ran away, the window busted out of the truck as we were bringing the camper down here, just random things that made us think, ‘Don’t go! It’s too scary!’

“Now we remind ourselves, eight years later, if we hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have known what was beyond our comfort zone. What would we be if we weren’t living our true authentic self and chasing this journey?” she said. “I feel like we’ve grown so much. I told myself I’d always regret it if I didn’t at least try.”

Goforth is returning to Kansas for a “homecoming tour” next weekend, including two shows at the Kansas State Fair, a gig at the Wichita Union Stockyards and at the fall festival street dance in Sedgwick.

The stage where she’ll be set up in her hometown is right in front of Sedgwick Motors, which was operated by her parents, Mason and Karen Mosiman when she was a child, and M&M Hardware, which her Uncle Bruce ran, joined later by her father. Both of them are to retire soon from the businesses founded by her grandfather, Goforth said.

“That was kind of Grand Central Station for us,” she recalled.

When she was in high school, she was acting and singing in school musicals and catching the performing bug. By the time she entered Butler County Community College, she was in her first band, Turnback Creek, which played country cover songs and gained some notoriety in Wichita, including opening for country acts Justin Moore and Thompson Square.

She married her high school sweetheart Chad, a Clearwater native who worked at Spirit Aerosystems in Wichita, in 2012 and decided to quit the band and “be newlyweds.” In 2014, they made the decision to move to Nashville.

“I kind of felt like a big fish in a little pond there in the music circuit around Wichita,” Goforth said. “Turnback Creek was one of the most well-known cover bands at the time, and I thought, ‘If I can do it here, I can do it in Nashville.’ Coming here was, ‘Whoa, OK. Maybe now I’m a little fish in a big pond.’”

They set up their fifth wheel in a campground near the Grand Ole Opry. Chad got a job at an aircraft plant in Nashville and Tawna did office work.

Their story got the attention of the HGTV series “House Hunters,” which followed the couple looking for a home in Music City. It aired in 2015 and included Tawna singing a few snippets of her own songs, but nothing materialized in her music career because of the exposure.

“If I can sing on the show, maybe someone will see it and it would be a unique story and a unique path,” she hoped.

It did, however, get the attention of a casting agent in Nashville (and a native of Manhattan), who hired the couple as “seat fillers” for the various country music awards shows in town. Their job was to scramble to seats when an artist won an award so the auditorium looked full for a TV audience. She’s been next to country stars such as Chris Stapleton and Keith Urban, but a “speak when you’re spoken to” policy leaves nothing more than a nod.

As her husband advanced in his job, Tawna was frustrated with office work, and they decided she could pursue her dream by performing on Broadway in Nashville, nicknamed “Nashvegas” for its endless line of nightclubs and honkytonks.

“I quickly realized that wasn’t for me,” she said. “I had done the cover band thing, and I really wanted to write my own music. I felt like that was a more direct path, more serious and not singing other people’s songs.”

She’s made herself known as a songwriter and has regular collaborations with other composers.

“Singing and being the artist was all that I knew,” living in Kansas, she said. “I didn’t know about all these people behind the scenes.”

Goforth said she could still see herself as a singer-songwriter but would be comfortable getting some of the songs that she wrote sold to another singer.

“The older I get, I don’t want to seem like I’m settling,” she said. “I’m 33 now, and there’s a realistic side of me that sees these young girls coming in – 18, 22 – that are already getting record deals as artists. But I’m still holding out hope there will be a forefront for me as an artist and not just a writer.”

She’s released one song, “Pieces,” about her maternal grandfather, Raleigh Lackey of Valley Center, whom fans of Cowtown knew as “Lucky Luke the Drugstore Cowboy,” singing vintage tunes.

He was diagnosed with dementia and Parkinson’s, she said, and Goforth had a fear that “he might forget who I was,” especially living so far away. Lackey died last October.

She wrote, recorded and mixed the song all on her own in 2020.

“COVID just showed everybody how possible it is to do it all on your own,” she said.

Tawna Goforth Homecoming Tour

Kansas State Fair: Noon, Sept. 15, People’s Bank & Trust Arena; 4 p.m. at Roadhouse Bar & Grill

Wichita Union Stockyards, 6251 W. MacArthur: 9 p.m. Sept. 16

Sedgwick Fall Festival Street Dance: 8 p.m. Sept. 17