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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Richocet Promises New Album Superior To First

Jack Hurst Chicago Tribune

Ricochet deserves a vacation. In its first year, the group spent 261 days on the road and 19 consecutive weeks as country music’s top-selling group before winning Top New Vocal Group titles from the Academy of Country Music and Country Weekly magazine.

Now they’re back with the new single “He Left A Lot To Be Desired” and a soon-to-be-released second album titled “Blink of An Eye.” A blink can be the length of a career in Nashville these days, but apparently not for Ricochet, whose members promise album number two is superior to its predecessor.

“It’s a lot more confident performance, the songs are real strong, and the band’s matured a lot,” says lead vocalist and guitarist Heath Wright.

“This record felt like it was a long time coming,” reports bassist Greg Cook. “We had made the first one 18 months ago. A first record is intimidating … like being held under a microscope. For the second we … felt free this time to make more suggestions, to try out newer things.”

Steel player Teddy Carr describes the vocals - which already have logged such hits as “Daddy’s Money,” “What Do I Know” and “Love Is Stronger Than Pride” - as “bigger this time around.”

The Ricochet vocal sound, Wright says, results from putting two tenor parts (the sibling sounds of drummer Jeff Bryant and fiddler Jr. Bryant above the lead, then adding a baritone (keyboardist Eddie Kilgallon’s) and low tenor (Cook’s) beneath it.

Several of the most important songs on both albums were pulled out of a large pile of submitted demos by their co-producers, Ron Chancey (who played a large part in the careers of the Oak Ridge Boys and Sawyer Brown) and Ed Seay (Martina McBride and Collin Raye), but Ricochet has some songwriting talent of its own.

Kilgallon co-wrote George Strait’s recent No. 1 single “One Night At A Time,” while Cook wrote one on the new Ricochet album, titled “The Girl Formerly Known As Mine.”

No vacation appears in sight. They’re presently on the road with John Michael Montgomery.

Not just another Lee Ann

Lee Ann Womack - whose new album, “Lee Ann Womack” (Decca), is one of the finest out there - says she was always “excited about” the fact that there was no other Lee Ann on the national female country scene.

Then the explosion of LeAnn Rimes burst that bubble just as Womack was readying her own entry. Several people suggested she change her name to avoid confusion, she says, but she finally decided to stay as-is.

“Nobody’s going to confuse us,” she theorizes. “Except for the fact that we’re both, hopefully, good at what we do, we don’t look anything alike. And she’s 14, and I’m 30.”

Alabama still pluggin’ away

Alabama, which has sold 57 million records, and is in the 16th year of its superstardom, is out there autographing their 19th RCA album, “Dancin’ on the Boulevard.” The group is making the rounds of Targets, Wal-Marts and similar retail chains in the Southeast.

Why would a band with that kind of sales history still be doing in-store autographings, you ask? Because that’s how you sell 57 million records and hang around - prominently - for 16 years.