ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 4, 1997 TAG: 9704040022
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG THE ROANOKE TIMES
Country comedian Cledus T. Judd says a life on stage beats cutting hair.|
If Shania was mine she'd have to agree
Can't no one cook road kill better than me.
So goes the first track of Cledus T. Judd's CD "I Stoled This Record," which starts with a burp and an "excuse me" and ends the same way, courtesy of the class clown-turned-comedian and well, uh, singer.
"Heck, I've only been in the music biz since about 1993," Judd, 32, said this week in a telephone interview. "I'm a rookie, but I'm a good rookie."
And he's on tour, stopping tonight at Spurs in Roanoke and ending up in Florida sometime this fall.
The tour is called "Cledus went down to Florida," for a song of the same name, a spoof of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."
But Judd lives in Georgia. If "Cledus Went Down to Georgia," he wouldn't be going anywhere. And Florida is a little riper for parody, which is Judd's business.
He is often billed as the "Weird Al Yankovic of Country Music."
"That's a good thing," Judd said. "Though I don't know if I like being compared to a guy named `Weird.'''
He hopes to do a duet with Yankovic some day. The two have never met, "though we've talked on the phone ... about lawsuits, how to avoid them. We're going to write a book on that."
Actually, Judd always gets permission before he parodies someone. Country star Shania Twain was so agreeable she actually appeared in his video for ``(She's Got a Butt) Bigger than the Beatles."
"She was sweet," said Judd, who does takeoffs on Twain's "Any Man of Mine" and "If You're Not in it for Love (I'm Outta Here)."
"She liked it," he said of his CD, which has sold more than 200,000 copies. "She said she and her husband listened to it and wished me luck, and if there was anything she could do to let her know. She did the video."
This despite the fact his song "If Shania was Mine" includes the lyric: "I'd love to seduce her but she married her producer" along with another line about her unattainable "yummy little tummy."
Judd - in real life, Barry Poole - got his start in Marietta, Ga., when some friends dared him to compete in a local club's amateur night competition. He won $50, which his friends spent on beer over the course of the evening.
Until then, his only singing had been in the shower. "I'm no great singer," he said. "Hopefully, it sounds funny; that's what we shoot for. It beats cutting hair for a living." That's what he used to do in Atlanta.
His most complicated haircut?
"When you're dealing with women, they're all complicated," he said. "It's just a pair of scissors, not a magic wand. Some come in looking like Rosie O'Donnell, but they want to leave looking like Farrah Fawcett."
His biggest audience so far was in Ohio, where he opened for Billy Ray Cyrus in front of 27,000 people. This summer, he'll play in front of 70,000 at a West Virginia jamboree.
He's not nervous, though.
"Shoot, they're my friends out there," he said. "Minnie Pearl says, 'Just treat them like your friends and that's what they'll be.'''
PERFORMANCE: Cledus T. Judd performs at Spurs in Roanoke tonight. Show
time is 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $8.| some day. The two have never met, "though we've talked on the phone
... about lawsuits, how to avoid them. We're going to write a book
on that." color.
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Cledus T. Judd hopes to do a duet with Weird Al Yankovic
by CNB