By Angela King

During his career in country music, Travis Tritt has ruffled more feathers than a pack of coyotes in a chicken coop -- just ask him.

But the always plain spoken Tritt isn't going to start catering to the powers-that-be on Music Row, even though he believes that's what it will take to achieve superstar status in the industry. Instead, his latest release, Strong Enough, is an appeal to his numerous fans, who already know what he brings to the table.

With seven platinum-plus-selling albums in his 12-year career, as well as TV guest spots and movie roles, it seems disingenuous to think of Tritt as anything but a star. But the artist maintains that he has labored with a lack of respect and acknowledgement, and he believes he's been held back by "the Nashville establishment [and] awards shows. After I won the [Country Music Association] Horizon Award in 1991, I realized I wasn't getting nominated a whole lot [or] recognized a whole lot."

Ultimately, Tritt says he wants to make music his own way and be respected for it. In his opinion, doing exactly that brought his relationship with Warner Bros. to an end following 1998's No More Looking Over My Shoulder, and it led him to take a two-year hiatus from the industry. After his break, Tritt returned in 2000 with his debut for Columbia, Down the Road I Go. It was a hugely successful comeback.

Strong Enough, Tritt's second Columbia project, is due Sept. 24, although the title of its first cut, "You Can't Count Me out Yet," would seem more appropriate for his previous album.

"It took going through that [comeback] and having it be successful to write that song," he says. "I had a lot of nail-biting, a lot of fear and trepidation in releasing that album. I had been away so long and was with a brand-new label. It was a lot of stuff I had not experienced before. I was concerned, wondering if we would have a shot again."

Relaxing into his recent success, Tritt maintains that Strong Enough is a quintessential Tritt project. He either wrote or co-wrote nine of the 12 songs, including first single "Strong Enough To Be Your Man," which is No. 27 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.

Tritt says, "Most of this album was pretty much along the lines of all the different types of music that I've tried to venture into at one point or another."

But venturing out can be difficult for him. "For years, I've heard people talk about the outlaw image, [calling me a] rough-around-the-edges country rocker. Then the last album came out, and they are calling me a traditionalist. People like to try and put a label on things, put you in a box. I hate those boxes. It limits you if you're trying to do different things and experiment with music."

Tritt will tape a "CMT Crossroads" show with Ray Charles on Sept. 10 that will air in December, and a "CMT Most Wanted Live" special that will air Sept. 29. He'll also provide a voice to a character in Disney's animated bluegrass musical, My Peoples, due out in 2005.

September 5 , 2002
Country Vet Porter Wagoner Unplugs

By Jim Bessman

Just in time for his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Porter Wagoner is releasing "Unplugged." With a legendary recording career spanning nearly five decades under his belt, Wagoner believes the acoustic project is his best to date. If so, the Sept. 10 release, his second for Select-O-Hits-distributed Shell Point Records, would at least top the title of his acclaimed 2000 label debut, "The Best I've Ever Been," Wagoner's first to include all new material in 25 years.

"It got such wonderful reviews, and it was a great product because the songs were so well-written," says Wagoner, whose last album was almost wholly written by Damon Black, a Missouri farmer who wrote the songs for Wagoner after selling his farm. "But I would have done it even if I'd known it wouldn't be successful: A few things in life you do because you know they're something you need to do -- same with 'Unplugged.'"

The Grand Ole Opry veteran, who is now celebrating his 45th anniversary at the venerable country music institution, was prompted to record again so quickly by the unsettling realization that he had gotten "out of the swing of things."

"I was standing on the sideline watching other people do things, and it really got to me," he recalls. "I felt I still had great material inside me that hadn't come out and that I could do a better job singing and presenting a song."

Wagoner had been aware of other acoustic, unplugged-type albums and thought the idea of "Porter - Unplugged" had the right ring when his steel guitarist Fred Newell suggested it. "I didn't want to do a bluegrass album -- though I love bluegrass," he says. "The first music I was interested in was Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys, and I listened to bluegrass religiously on the radio while growing up. But I felt so many bluegrass albums are out now since O Brother, Where Art Thou? -- which is a wonderful thing -- but I wanted to do a country album, because I'm a country music person."

Wagoner, who recorded Monroe material on his 1965 RCA album "The Bluegrass Story," returned to his Monroe roots on "Unplugged" with "Girl in the Blue Velvet Band," altered from its original waltz time. He also included the Dolly Parton-penned "Lost Forever in Your Kiss," which he and his former protege previously recorded as a duet on their 1972 RCA album Together Always. Wagoner enlisted steel player/vocalist Don Warden -- an integral part of his seminal '50s and '60s trio and since then a longtime member of Parton's management -- to add backup vocals on "I Cried Again."

But Willie Nelson is the star guest of "Unplugged," dueting with Wagoner on Nelson's own "Family Bible" and "Silver Eagle Meets the Great Speckled Bird," both of which Wagoner previously recorded. "We'd never sang together, so it was the icing on the cake," says Wagoner, adding that Nelson will help him launch the album with a joint Sept. 14 Opry appearance.

Other cuts deserve special mention: Lead track "Silence in the Wind" is "one of my favorite songs I ever wrote," says Wagoner, who also penned the album's "After All" with Christie Lynn. "Moses Jones," by Damon Black, "is a story song about an old black man I was raised with and is unique because of the way Damon writes."

Wagoner, who just turned 75 and will be inducted during the Country Music Association Awards in Nashville Nov. 6, is anxious to tour next year in support of "Unplugged."

"I feel that I can do a great show with the new product," says Wagoner, who jokes that he feels "like a new person -- slightly used" after recently undergoing a successful surgical procedure. "I'm back 100%," he adds, "though when I returned to the Opry a few weeks ago I said I was only 70 to 75% -- and they said that's all I ever was!"

August 28, 2002
Tribute Is 'All Relative' For Pam Tillis

By Deborah Evans Price

On her debut album for Sony's Lucky Dog label, It's All Relative - Tillis Sings Tillis, Pam Tillis is carrying on the family tradition. For this tribute to her legendary father, Mel, Tillis puts her own creative stamp on some of his best-loved classics as well as reviving lesser-known gems from his catalog.

In creating the 13-song collection, which was released Sept. 3, Tillis had a deep well of material to draw from, as the senior Tillis debuted on the country singles chart in 1958 and racked up 36 top-10 hits." Here she breathes new life into her father's classics and, in some instances, serves up an entirely different take on them.

"When these songs were written, they were influenced by the music of the time," she says. "I didn't feel like it was out of line to throw in some modern influences in my treatment. Some of them I did by the book, but some I did with my influences."

Tillis enlisted participation from family, friends, and musical heroes for this labor of love. Asleep at the Wheel's towering frontman Ray Benson co-produced four tracks with Tillis in Austin (she produced the rest solo), and "It's All Relative" features guest appearances from Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, who lends her vocals to "The Violet and a Rose," which also features Marty Stuart on mandolin.

Tillis also covered "So Wrong," a Mel Tillis song recorded by Patsy Cline. The Jordanaires, who sang on Cline's recording, appear on this new version as well. Trisha Yearwood and Rhonda Vincent contribute vocals to "Honey (Open That Door)," while "Dad and the whole family sang on 'Come On and Sing,'" she says. "The whole album is a real family affair."

Tillis admits it was daunting to record songs previously cut by Cline, her dad, Ray Price, and other legends. "How do you do something that Ray Price and Dad sang?" she says of "Burning Memories." "It was scary to do something like that and the one that Patsy Cline had done. You can't beat those versions, but you just try to sing it with all the feeling and passion that you have."

August 23, 2002
Dixie Chicks Come 'Home'

By Phyllis Stark

The title of the new Dixie Chicks album, Home, works on a number of levels. For starters, it's the group's first major-label effort recorded in its home state of Texas, as opposed to Nashville. The Chicks co-produced the album with singer Natalie Maines' father and well-known Texas musician/producer, Lloyd Maines, and worked up the arrangements in Natalie's living room in Austin.

The title also reflects a newfound domestic tranquility for the three members of the group -- Maines, Martie Maguire, and Emily Robison -- as well as the fact that they are coming out of a self-imposed break of a year-and-a-half. During that time, Maguire got married and Maines gave birth to a son. Robison is expecting her first child, also a son, in mid-November.

Finally, the title describes the trio's return to its longtime label home, Sony Music, after a contentious, yearlong legal battle marked by back-and-forth lawsuits during which the group sought to be freed of its Sony contract as a result of alleged accounting discrepancies and Sony sought to enforce a contract that called for five more albums from the trio.

Home, released on August 27, is the Chicks' third album for Sony Music. They recently had the distinction of becoming the first female group and the only country group ever to earn back-to-back diamond awards, certifying sales of 10 million units of each of their first two albums, from the Recording Industry Association of America.

The members of the Chicks spoke with Billboard about their music, touring, their finally resolved battle with Sony, and more.

Why did you decide to make a more acoustic, bluegrass-flavored album at a career point at which most country artists who have tasted success choose to take their music in a slicker, poppier direction?

Robison: To me, it's just more of us being us. Yes, there's a bluegrass flair, but if anything, it's just kind of peeling back a few layers. It's not going off in a different direction. It's being able to hear the banjos and fiddles and dobros and the harmonies and the more intricate arrangements a little bit more, peeling back some of the drums and some of the keyboards. I feel like it's more essential Dixie Chicks.

Maines: I don't think the album is scary. It doesn't sound that different from us. There's a lot less attitude, and it's not quite as humorous and lighthearted as the other two. But I don't think any artist can remake an album that they've already made. We've all matured emotionally and in years as well, and I think the music just reflects that this time.

Maguire: We feel like we have to record and perform music that is speaking to us at the time. On our year off we were inspired by a lot of acoustic music. Emily and I grew up around bluegrass, but we've never been so inspired by bluegrass as in this last year.

When you're touring, you don't get to hear a lot of live music. And living in Austin, Texas, it's all around you. We took that year [off] to actually go hear some artists. I took several trips to Ireland and got in touch with different layers. My husband [who is Irish] has a whole collection of music that I've never heard before, and I got inspired by a lot of [that].

What were your goals for this album?

Maguire: One of our goals was to showcase the picking more, the instrumentation more, the harmony more. We felt like it was a good opportunity to record some songs that we've always wanted to record but never really had a place on the other records.

What are your plans for touring behind "Home"?

Robison: We'll be gearing up to get ready for [a] spring [tour]. Most likely it will be [outdoor] sheds, and we're going to try to do more of a festival-feeling tour [with other acts.] I don't think this album would translate real well to arenas.

In our long list [of other acts to consider for the tour], we're including everyone under the sun, from country to classic rock to singer/songwriters-everything.

Did the lawsuit detract from your music?

Maines: We had already planned on taking at least a year off after the Fly tour. We'd been working for four years solid, and we were really tired and burned out and [didn't have] a lot of creative energy flowing. So the lawsuit happened at a good time.

When we were ready to go in the studio to make music, that's exactly when we did it. We didn't care if we had a label. We financed everything. We did everything ourselves... and it was so much fun. I think we'll probably never be able to do that again, so I'm glad we got this opportunity.

Part of the resolution of that deal is that you got your own Sony imprint, Open Wide Records, on which Home is being released. Do you plan to eventually sign other artists?

Robison: To me, [having our own imprint] means a little bit more stability within the label. It means that they recognize you're basically making the artistic decisions. It gives us the freedom to sign other people down the line on our own label if we want to and really develop other acts. It may be phase two of our careers. We may want to start flexing our muscle behind other people. It opens up a lot of opportunities and possibilities.