Crowd Pleaser With A Flair For Showmanship, John Michael Montgomery Headlines His Own Tour And Goes For A Third Platinum Album

John Michael Montgomery, in the country-music catbird seat at age 29, has an enviable concern: Will his third album, “John Michael Montgomery,” attain the platinum-plus status of his first two CDs?

The album, released 12 days ago by Atlantic, is already No. 1 on the country album chart and the debut single, “I Can Love You Like That,” is No. 4 on the country singles chart. His Grammy profile - he appeared on the recent telecast and earned country-song honors for “I Swear” - isn’t going to hurt. And he’s been deemed a “hot property” by People magazine for 1995.

Montgomery is headlining his own tour in ‘95, having kicked it off this month.

All this success hasn’t changed one facet of Montgomery’s life: He still lives at home, in the Nicholasville-Lexington area of Kentucky.

“Nashville is for some people, and for some people it’s not, and I’m one of those that it’s not,” Montgomery said from his home. “Besides, it’s just three hours’ driving time. I do have my management company there, and I go to cut records there, but I enjoy being able to get away from it all.

“Nashville can be pretty fabricated and materialistic,” Montgomery continued. “I still like being associated with, and hanging out in, the real world.”

In the early days (amazingly, just three years ago), he remembers playing in the clubs in Lexington five nights a week. Working on his first album in the studio cut his club time to three nights a week. “That was still a lot of driving then,” Montgomery allowed.

After 12 years of club work, beginning at age 15 in a family band with his dad and brother, Montgomery was discovered at home. He’d never fooled around with demo tapes or making big trips to Nashville to get noticed, he said.

“I never did have to go to Nashville and mingle,” he said. He approaches it all with cool confidence tempered with a realistic outlook.

Montgomery said the new album is “just songs I helped pick, stuff that I like to sing.” It’s more of a sampler of his current style than anything, defining him even more than his first release, “Life’s a Dance.” The second album, “Kickin’ It Up,” was a showcase for Montgomery’s winning stage style, which is high-energy and no-holds-barred. His sales figures for the first two albums are remarkableapproaching-phenomenal, in the 5.5 million range.

Montgomery has a favorite album cut on the new project, “Like a Rodeo.” “There’s a song that has horns on it, like big-band country swing,” he said. “It’s the neatest thing on the album.”

The remainder of the album, he said, is “really good love songs that are not saying the same old thing, and songs that kick butt and pin your ears back.”

The album is self-titled “because I couldn’t think of anything else,” Montgomery said. “It’s several different songs, it broadens the range of what I like to sing,” he explained. “And hopefully, people know my name well enough now” that they’ll buy a self-titled album.

His tour this year is going to be a little more complicated than carrying in a guitar case and an amp. Opening for Reba McEntire all of last year helped Montgomery set his own stage for success, he said.

“We’re able to get out and play some of the bigger places and arenas. I’ve got four tractors and trailers, and four buses, big video screens and everything,” he said, barely containing a swagger in his voice.

“We started out with two tractor-trailers, but it’s like going to the grocery story with a little bitty list of milk and bread, and coming out with a whole bunch of stuff,” he said.

Montgomery’s shows can get wild. Last spring at Fan Jam, Montgomery used a promotional pickup as an impromptu stage prop during a guitar solo, bouncing in the bed and strolling across the roof. The crowd loved it. No word on what the truck dealer thought.

“I’m kinda unpredictable,” he admitted. “Usually when you stick an electric guitar in my hands, I may stand on somebody’s shoulders or something. I kinda go back to my Southern rock days. I think, ‘If I could do it upside-down, how neat would that look?”’

He has never injured himself, he said, but there was a time when he attempted to jump atop a bank of speakers, “and ended up falling right into them.” But, he added proudly, he never quit playing as he extricated himself.