Yearwood takes her
time fashioning latest release
Trisha Yearwood is preparing for the release of her first album in four years.
( ASSOCIATED PRESS )
By BRIAN DUGGER
It’s fair to say Trisha Yearwood is getting a little antsy ahead of the release
of her first album in four years.
“I am more than ready for this record to come out,” she gushes from her home in
Oklahoma.
She’s just received word that “Georgia Rain,” the first single off the album,
“Jasper County,” has moved from No. 18 to No. 15 on the charts, continuing its
agonizingly slow trek upward 20 weeks after its release.
“This is all so new to me. I’ll say, ‘Guys, are we doing all right?’ and they’ll
say, ‘Yep, we had a great week.’ Now you have to wait two or three weeks for
songs to move out of the top of the charts before everything else can start
moving up,” she says. “When I hit No. 1 with ‘She’s in Love with the Boy,’ it
took 12 to 14 weeks. Now it will take 25 weeks. It’s painful.”
Yearwood’s official return for her fans will be Tuesday, when “Jasper County”
will be on store shelves. Lots of things have changed since Yearwood released
her gold-selling “Inside Out” record in 2001. Possibly the biggest personal
change for her has been her relationship with Garth Brooks, the country megastar
who paved the way for today’s generation of stars.
Brooks, who retired in 2001 to help raise his three children, proposed to
Yearwood in May in front of 7,000 fans at a performance in Bakersfield, Calif.
She’s now living with him in Oklahoma. The couple has not said when they will
marry.
Shortly after Yearwood finishes lamenting the slow pace of the charts, Brooks
checks in on another line, and she puts him on speakerphone, finishing a short
conversation with “I love you, baby.”
“He’s tried hard to stay out of my career. We’ve always kept things separate,
but now that we’re under the same roof, it’s impossible. I mean, when I’m
listening to songs, he’s there. I wouldn’t put him in the position of asking him
‘Do you like this? Should I record it?’ But if a song moves him, I want him to
tell me,” she says.
“The biggest thing he’s done for me is to be a real source of encouragement.
He’ll tell me, ‘Remember who you are. Just find the music and be true to
yourself.’ ”
Partially because of that advice, Yearwood scrapped the earliest version of her
new album because it just didn't feel right. Initially she planned to take about
a year off after "Inside Out" to regroup and clear her head, but after she had
cut the tracks for 10 or 12 songs on the new album, she approached producer
Garth Fundis and told him the songs just didn't inspire her.
"I'd never made a record where I had to work so hard to love the songs," she
says. "Garth [Fundis] said there's nothing wrong with regrouping if I didn't
feel it was right."
So her return to country music was postponed as Yearwood sought fresh material
from publishing companies.
"We went back and asked them to dig deeper, to think of making a Trisha Yearwood
record. There are so many songs in Nashville, but the publishing houses usually
give you the stuff that's right at the top of the catalogs, the fresh stuff.
There are a lot of great songs sitting in basements that haven't been picked,"
Yearwood says.
One of the songs that was not on the original album was "Georgia Rain," a story
song that lets Yearwood show off her rich vocals. It's one of the most striking
ballads of the year, and it's continuing to move slowly up the charts.
"I really wanted a song about Georgia, and I wanted a story song because I just
love songs that tell a story. Originally the lyrics were 'Augusta rain on the
red-dirt clay.' Augusta is a pretty good size city, but I wasn't sure someone
around the world would recognize it. I wanted it to be Georgia rain. Now it's
'Georgia rain on the Jasper County clay,' " she says, explaining that she's from
Jasper County, Georgia.
Her reintroduction to radio also was delayed by the unsettled climate in the
country music industry, which affected her label, MCA.
"MCA ended up merging with Mercury, then ended up merging with DreamWorks, and I
didn't really want to release my new album in the middle of all of that. At that
point, we didn't just have the MCA roster to compete against. Suddenly there was
Mercury and Shania Twain, and DreamWorks and Toby [Keith]. I had to pick the
right time. Yeah, it all changed from taking a year off to being a comeback
record.
"People were saying, 'Oh, Trisha is taking all this time off, she must be
searching for herself.' Well, not really," she says with a chuckle.
Before her time away, Yearwood, who will be 41 on Sept. 19, had established
herself as one of the most successful female country artists, piling up 20 Top
10 hits, including nine No. 1 singles, in 12 years. She won back-to-back CMA
awards as Female Vocalist of the year in 1997 and 1998, and also won three
Grammys. She became a mainstay on the charts with hit after hit, including
"That's What I Like About You," "The Woman Before Me," "Thinkin' About You," and
"In Another's Eyes."
Yearwood's supporters won't be disappointed with the new album. It stays true to
her roots and has several examples of those soaring vocals that long have
endeared her to her fans.
"The goal really was to make a traditional Trisha Yearwood album," she says.
"It's contemporary country, not any slick pop. I'm really happy how it turned
out."
Besides "Georgia Rain," a couple of songs on the new album hold special meaning
for Yearwood.
"I want my fans to love every single song, but I think the diehard fans are
going to love 'Trying to Love You,'" she says of one of the sweeping ballads on
the record.
"And I just got to tape an episode of Extreme Makeover, and I sang 'Standing Out
in a Crowd' for all these kids that have special problems. This song is all
about accepting who you are, so that was a cool way to showcase that song."
Despite her successes, her time out of the spotlight cast a seed of doubt in her
mind whether her fans and radio would still remember her, but those fears were
eased when she debuted "Georgia Rain" on the CMT Awards in Nashville on April
11.
"I wondered if people were just going to say, 'Oh, it's just her,' but the
response was so nice. After that, I did the country radio seminar, and people
were so complimentary and nice," she says.
"I'm nervous, but a lot of that anxiety I felt leading up to making the record
is gone. … When we went back into the studio [after starting the project over],
it was instantly right. It was fun, effortless, the way music is supposed to
be."