ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 22, 1997 TAG: 9701220005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NASHVILLE
SOURCE: JIM PATTERSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mark Chesnutt is pale as a ghost and an hour late, and too exhausted to really care.
He heads straight to a sofa in the offices of Decca Records, plops down and stretches out for an interview that threatens to turn into a nap at any moment. To promote his ``Greatest Hits'' CD, he's been on 10 planes in the past four days.
``They say you're supposed to be up and happy during interviews, but I'm tired,'' he says. ``Three weeks of this,'' he grumbles about his promotional duties. ``That's what I've been doing every day.''
Chesnutt is no modern, prepackaged phenom. His father, also a country singer, started taking Chesnutt to honky-tonks when he was 15. That's where Chesnutt's expressive, country-to-the-guts voice was molded and matured.
Though he performs in more upscale venues these days, his heart is still in those southwestern Texas bars. He lives not in Nashville, but outside his native Beaumont, Texas. (He has been married to Tracie Chesnutt for almost five years, and has a 3-year-old son Waylon, named after Waylon Jennings.)
George Jones stormed out of the same area in the 1950s, but things changed from then until Chesnutt had his first hit, ``Too Cold at Home,'' in 1990.
In the meantime, country music moved
closer to pop music, in its proclivity for young, pretty faces and fads that are lucrative in the short term.
``They look pretty and they sing pretty decent and they're 20 years old,'' Chesnutt, 33, says evenly of some of his current competition. ``That's what they're [music industry leaders] looking for.'' And, they're always ``up and happy'' during interviews.
Chesnutt, in comparison, will never be mistaken for a model and makes no attempt to play the perky star.
His meal ticket is his voice, a country instrument in the grand tradition of Jones and Merle Haggard. And he'll still be singing country music when the time in the sun has passed for many of today's pretty young things of the moment.
At a time when Jones and Haggard aren't welcome on country radio playlists, ``Greatest Hits'' collects 14 songs that give traditional country fans hope that there is still something on the radio for them besides George Strait.
``[We] need some good meat and 'taters songs, you know?'' Chesnutt said of his mission. ``Some good country lyrics, good country songs. Radio don't say, `It's too country,' and they'll play it if it's good AND country.''
Producers Mark Wright and Tony Brown have helped Chesnutt succeed by surrounding his voice with modern production values. Hits such as ``Bubba Shot the Jukebox,'' ``It Sure Is Monday'' and ``Gonna Get a Life'' have resulted.
He grudgingly makes videos and does interviews. Managers talked him into performing a Garth Brooks-style choreographed show a few years ago. A year later, he went back to a plain stage that emphasized music over spectacle.
``I had these big ramps and I was carrying around this monster light system and they were telling me I had to be over here at a certain time and over there at a certain time during the set.
``After a year or so of doing that, I just felt real stupid,'' he says.
Chesnutt prepared himself to play smaller venues if his music-driven show couldn't compete for the crowds. That hasn't become necessary yet, because he continues to score hits and hustle on the road.
``You really can't take off very long and expect to keep things going,'' Chesnutt said.
``I haven't seen my son and my wife in three weeks. It'll be another week before I see them. It's hard to do. But if I ever quit selling records and quit getting hits, well I'd probably still be playing the honky-tonks.''
A gleam creeps into his tired eyes, and Chesnutt has a smile on his face when he raises his head to make the point: ``Yeah, I'd still be banging my head against the wall in some beer joint.''
|n n| Elsewhere in country music ...
SHOWTIME 1997: Country music fans can look forward to getting more bang for their buck in 1997. Among the package tours are a double-bill of Reba McEntire and Brooks & Dunn, and another featuring Clay Walker, Terri Clark, James Bonamy and Emilio. Fruit of the Loom plans a sort traveling state fair, with a fairground open even to people who don't buy a ticket to see a show headlined by Hank Williams Jr., and featuring Travis Tritt, Charlie Daniels and Jo Dee Messina.
O'KANES REUNION: Fans of the 1980s hit duo The O'Kanes can hear two new songs by Kieran Kane and Jamie O'Hara on the new ``Night of Reckoning'' CD on Kane's Dead Reckoning Records. The new recordings are ``Rocky Road'' and ``When We're Gone, Long Gone.'' The whole CD, featuring the label's roster of Tammy Rogers, Kevin Welch, Mike Henderson and Harry Stinson, is excellent.
FAD BANDWAGON: There's a bluegrass ``Macarena'' record out on Imprint Records. Billed as the GrooveGrass Boyz, the musicians behind it are some heavy hitters: Mac Wiseman, Doc Watson, Del McCoury and his son Ronnie McCoury. Wish these guys would get together again and record something worthy of their talents.
LENGTH: Medium: 99 linesby CNB