Shania Certain To See Bigger Crowds

Skyrocketing Shania Twain’s CD “The Woman in Me” continues to be one of country music’s top-selling recordings despite the fact that she has yet to hit the concert trail to support it.

She recalls that her first and only U.S. tour so far - in support of her obscure first album - was nothing like the throng-drawing spectacle her second promises to be.

“We did a ‘Triple Play Tour’ with Toby Keith and a guy named John Brannon,” says the petite Canadian reared in the snowy wilds of northern Ontario.

“It was a marketing concept (by Mercury Records) just to get us out there in front of (industry) people … and it was a good experience for me. I had been singing all my life, but never in the United States, and it really helped me settle into what was happening here. It was very grueling, and I got a good idea of what the pace can be,” she recalls.

“Then I did a lot of things on my own (independent of Keith and Brannon) the way a lot of new artists do, touring as much as I could and losing money and knowing that my record wasn’t where I needed it to be,” Twain explains, “and just hoping to get another shot at it. It helped me get a foot in the door.

“Sean Penn, for instance, directed one of my videos, and the right people seemed to be picking up on it. Mutt (Lange, her producer and husband) was one of those right people.”

Rock and pop producer Lange, with whom Twain already has been hard at work writing and recording her third album, has produced such huge acts as AC/DC, Def Leppard, The Cars, Bryan Adams and Michael Bolton.

She says that although she certainly didn’t expect her second album to produce such big, immediate hits as “Any Man of Mine” and “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” her husband’s expectations were different.

“He doesn’t bother working on things he doesn’t think are going to go anywhere,” she explains.

Foxworthy a hillbilly Newhart?

Jeff Foxworthy, the Southern-drawling comedian who has made a handsome career out of making rednecks feel good about themselves while others laugh at them, recently had both of his albums (“Games Rednecks Play” and “You Might Be a Redneck If …”) in the Top 10 of Billboard’s Country Album Chart, and two singles (“Party All Night” and “Redneck Stomp”) in the Top 20 of Soundscan’s Country Singles Chart.

Country enters CD-ROM realm

Thanks to Honest Entertainment, country music has invaded the computer realm of CD-ROM.

Honest Entertainment Records’ contemporary country songstress Kate Wallace, who has written tunes for such artists as Billy Ray Cyrus and Neal McCoy, has become the first country artist to have her music available for play on CD-ROM units as well as conventional CD players.