Liver Spots in TJ

"All they wanted was a steel guitar player," says Rick Schmidt about his appearance in a Shania Twain video. Schmidt, a Carlsbad-based pedal steel player, says he's done work "for everyone from Minnie Pearl to Scott Weiland." Last fall, though, while playing downtown with the Shadowdogs, Schmidt caught the attention of a producer who cast him in the Twain video for "I Ain't No Quitter." The video, which is aired on the CMT channel, was shot in Tijuana.

"They drove us down to a restaurant in Lord-Knows-Where, Tijuana," says Schmidt. "It was converted to look like a honky-tonk. They shot it in TJ just to save money. I met a bunch of hot dancers at the border, and they took us all down in a van. Shania wasn't even there. She shot her part the day before....

"I thought I was gonna be in [the video] big time. I ended up being in there for two or three seconds; it's just my hands in front of a video screen with Shania singing. All I am is a hand model. I'm 54, so they had a makeup artist fix up my liver spots.... I got $350. I had to negotiate to get that much. It was more than what the dancers got. You know what they say about the squeaky wheel."