Williams, Skynyrd Pairing Draws Rock-Country Crowd

The just-concluded Hank Williams Jr./Lynyrd Skynyrd spring coheadlining tour went so well the two parties are talking about resuming it in the fall.

The pairing of Southern rock and country legends has drawn throngs in Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tenn., Louisville, Ky., and Huntsville, Ala. The crowd in Huntsville was so large, says Williams manager Merle Kilgore, that the entire show had to be moved from a 15,000-seat football field to the facility’s parking lot next door.

“Thank the Lord it was a beautiful day,” says Kilgore, adding that Huntsville police later informed him that in the group of more than 20,000 Southern rock and country zealots there was a total of “only 35 injuries - and no serious ones.”

Williams plans only 50 show dates in 1995, says Kilgore, who indicates that public response to the veteran performer’s records is heartening. Although country radio’s reception of the thundering title song of his recently released first Curb Records album, “Hog Wild,” has been “spotty,” the album could become eligible for certification as “gold” (connoting 500,000 sales) within another six weeks, Kilgore reports - despite the absence of heavy-rotation airplay.

“We’re going to come out with a ballad from the album titled ‘Heaven and Hell’ (in late August), because when Hank sang that song at the Skynyrd concerts, cigarette lighters lit up just like when they did ‘Tuesday’s Gone,”’ Kilgore says.

“We’ve also got two (other) songs (from the album) that they’re playing like crazy on the major heavyrotation stations, but they’re only playing them like on a Friday. Those are ‘Wild Thing’ and ‘Daytona Nights.’ Chuck Howard, the (album’s) producer, is going in to do an edit and shorten those songs, and we’re making both of them available to radio as summer records.”

Earle plugs in

Re-emerging singer-songwriter Steve Earle’s excellent Winter Harvest Records album, “Train a Comin’,” is a riveting acoustic production. But the influential country rocker’s next album, to be finished by July 1 and released in October, will be “more electric,” says his manager, John Dotson.

“It IS a little like the current one, though, in that the centerpiece of the new one is his guitar and voice,” Dotson adds. “Then they’re building everything else around that. And this is among the best batches of songs he’s ever written.”

Earle was a guest on Marty Stuart’s recent “Marty Party III” videotaping for a special on The Nashville Network. The arrangement was rooted in a long friendship between Earle and Stuart, Dotson says, and rose out of Stuart’s recent request that Earle do a duet with him on a forthcoming Buddy Holly tribute album.

Mandrell concert on TNN

On June 14 via the cameras of TNN, Barbara Mandrell is scheduled to bring to the rest of North America a live performance she recently took to her hometown, Nashville, in her first performance there in 13 years.

Titled “Barbara Mandrell: Steppin’ Out!” and filmed before an audience of 4,000 at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry House, the onehour production features Mandrell in a Las Vegas-style show that exhibits her multiple talents as singer, instrumentalist and dancer doing everything from pop and country to - yes - rap.

She performs some material from her current album, “It Works For Me,” and as an instrumentalist plays guitar, steel guitar, banjo and sax.

The Wright stuff

Chely Wright, 24, recently named Top New Female Vocalist at the Academy of Country Music Awards, says she was congratulated afterward by two of country music’s most famous females.

“Before the show started, I looked over and saw Loretta Lynn,” Wright says. “She mouthed the words, ‘I love you, honey.’ We talked after the show, and she was so proud of me that I felt like I had made my mother proud.

“And after the awards, Barbara Mandrell took my hand and said, ‘Chely, take it all in and savor it. This is the most exciting time.”

Wright’s biggest thrill as a fan, however, seems to have come the afternoon before the show, when she bumped into Buck Owens. She says she blocked his path, held out her hand and said, “Hi, Buck.”

“He asked my name, and I told him, and he said, ‘I know who you are.’ He said, ‘Where did you learn to sing like that?’ I said, ‘From you and Connie Smith.”’