Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 5, 1993 TAG: 9305050204
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
One of those hunks - Billy Dean - laughed at the tag.
"We're trying to sidetrack that," he said in a recent telephone interview during a stop in Greenville, S.C. After all, Dean and headliner Alan Jackson both are married with children.
(Actually, Dean's wife is expecting their first child in June.)
Still, the dimpled, hatless Dean downplayed the hunk image for the tour, which stops at the Roanoke Civic Center Thursday. He suggested the "Over-the-Hill Old Guy Tour." Better yet: "The Over 6-foot, 4-inch Tour." Both of the lanky singers stand around 6 feet 5 inches.
Add cowboy boots, and we're talking oak trees.
Then Dean broke the macho country hunk myth wide open. (Dare we say it?) He talked openly and honestly about . . . his voice doctor.
"It's good to hear myself talk again," he admitted without shame. (Macho country hunks just don't have voice doctors! They smoke cigarettes and drink bourbon.)
It seems that the flu, combined with back-to-back shows, laziness and overall wear-and-tear caused Dean to lose his voice a few weeks back, forcing him to cancel some concert dates.
He checked in with Vanderbilt University Medical Center's Voice Center in Nashville - the saving grace of such country crooners as Kenny Rogers, Vince Gill, Patty Loveless, Larry Gatlin and Kathy Mattea. (Can you imagine the waiting room?)
"I'm fortunate I didn't do any permanent damage."
Dean did get some sound advice, though. He is supposed to drink plenty of liquids. "I'm sitting here with a gallon of water in front of me now," he said.
He has to warm up before performing, which he said he got lazy about when his career picked up. His routine starts with humming, then running through the vowels and finally practicing any words or phrases in his songs that give him trouble. He also now has his voice doctor's 24-hour on-call telephone number.
"You have to take special precautions," he said.
Dean, 31, was raised in Quincy, Fla., in the musical shadow of his father, a mechanic who fronted a local weekend band called The Country Rock. The elder Dean taught his young son to play guitar and gave him his first break - at age 8.
Dean showed he could write songs in junior high school, penning a lovesick ballad in place of a term paper about "Romeo and Juliet." The tune earned him an A.
In high school, he performed regularly with his father's band and played solo sets occasionally at pubs in Quincy and Tallahassee. He also starred on the school basketball team.
That led to an athletic scholarship and an unhappy year at East Central Junior College in Decatur, Miss. "Sitting on the bench was humbling for me," Dean said.
He returned to Quincy and took up again on the regional club circuit. He recorded a single, "Christmas Gift for Mama," that got played on area jukeboxes and radio stations and earned him a local following of fans.
"Man, I was a big celebrity."
Sarcasm aside, it helped him after he moved to Nashville in 1983. He said whenever the rent was short, he would drive to Florida for a weekend of nightclub work to make up the shortfall.
He also played clubs elsewhere and sang demos for other songwriters trying to pitch their material to the record labels. His poster-boy good looks landed him in some commercials for Tennessee tourism, McDonald's, Chevrolet and Valvoline Motor Oil. One year, he even took a summer gig at a KOA Campground near Nashville singing two nights a week.
Finally, Dean scored success as a songwriter when Randy Travis recorded his song, "Somewhere in My Broken Heart." But before Travis released the song, Dean got signed to a record contract himself. He also recorded "Somewhere in My Broken Heart" and ended up releasing it before Travis.
The song went to No. 1 in 1991 and Dean was on the country hot list.
Since then, he has released two more albums and stayed on the charts with "If There Hadn't Been You," "Only the Wind," "Trying to Hide a Fire in the Dark" and his signature song about growing up in Florida, "Billy the Kid." That also is Dean singing the theme song to the Saturday-morning cartoon "The Wild West Cowboys of Moo Mesa."
Dean said he will be touring with Jackson through May, then he plans to take a month off after his child is born before testing the waters as a headliner act this summer on the fair circuit and in some larger nightclubs.
Nightclub audiences are important right now, he said. They buy a lot of records and they sometimes latch onto songs that radio otherwise would ignore and turn them into hits.
"I don't think you're ever too big to play a club," Dean said.
(Or too much of a hunk.)
by CNB