None For The Road Despite Huge Success Of Album, Shania Twain Flouts Nashville Convention By Refusing To Take Her Act On Tour

Shania Twain is writing her own rules for country music success.

Fueled by such chart-topping singles as “Any Man of Mine” and “(If You’re Not in It for Love) I’m Outta Here!,” 1995s “The Woman in Me” has sold 6 million copies, making it the biggest-selling album by a female artist in country music history. Yet the record’s distinctive, rock-edged sound has more in common with Michael Bolton than Willie Nelson.

Still, a year after its release, “The Woman in Me” - which recently won a Grammy for best country album - is No. 1 on Billboard’s country albums chart and No. 8 on the pop chart, in the company of Alanis Morissette, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey.

With that kind of momentum, Shania Twain (pronounce it Shuh-NEYE-uh) could easily sell out arenas. But the 30-year-old singer is taking an unusual approach to touring: She’s not.

While that strategy isn’t rare in pop music - Carey, Barbra Streisand and R.E.M. have also sold millions of albums without hitting the road - it’s unheard of in country. Country newcomers embark on club tours without the benefit of one hit, much less five.

Instead, Twain is spending the year making personal appearances in markets where her sales are healthiest. She drew 20,000 autograph- and photograph-seeking fans to Minneapolis’ Mall of America recently. She doesn’t sing, she doesn’t dance - she just signs and smiles.

“Without hits, you can’t have a great show,” Twain says. “You need to allow some time for these songs to prove themselves. The music has to lead the way. By early ‘97, we’ll have enough songs to plan a good hour or hour-and-a-half show of songs that people are familiar with.”

But her reasoning flies in the face of country music’s grass-roots mantra: Careers are made by getting out there and singing for the people.

“I don’t buy the fact that she doesn’t have that much material,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, the leading concert-industry trade publication. “She certainly has enough to do an album. Nobody says she has to perform for an hour and a half. And she could go out and open a show for George Strait or Reba McEntire if she wanted to.”

Chances are Twain’s sexy wardrobe, innocent smile and high-energy, rock-influenced songs would upstage even the colorful McEntire. But every minute Twain spends away from the road spurs the industry rumor that she lacks the vocal muscle to carry a live performance, that she’s a product of husband-producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange’s studio trickery.

Not true - at last year’s Fan Fair in Nashville, Twain pulled off the requisite three-song showcase. She sang her breakthrough hit, “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?,” and introduced “Any Man of Mine” to an eager crowd. She’s no Patty Loveless or Pam Tillis, but she can carry a tune.

The country-music industry gripes are not surprising: Twain is viewed as an outsider. She’s Canadian, lives in New York instead of Nashville and is married to a rock producer known for working with Def Leppard and Bryan Adams. She’s also friends with actor-photographer John Derek, husband of pin-up actress Bo, who shot the glossy cover photos for “The Woman in Me” and directed the “Any Man of Mine” video.

“She didn’t really do it the Nashville way,” says country music critic Robert Oermann, a commentator for The Nashville Network’s Country News. “She’s never really lived here. She didn’t get a Nashville publishing deal. She didn’t work the room like everybody else.”

So the release of “The Woman in Me” was greeted with raised eyebrows and smirks.

“It was a love-it-or-hate-it thing, as I recall,” says Oermann. “But it piqued everybody’s curiosity because it was so ear-catching and different. After the thing really started selling, then came the inevitable ‘She really can’t sing. She really didn’t write those songs.”’

The vocal rumors are just “sour grapes for not touring,” says Bruce Feiler, a Nashville-based free-lancer who recently wrote a cover story on country music for The New Republic. “For much of its history, country music has been based around touring as the primary source of income. Country stars would get a hit or two and go on the road for about 300 days. She didn’t put her time in on the bus.”

Not lately, anyway. Twain is quick to mention she’s been touring most of her life. Born in Windsor, Ontario, and raised on the music of Dolly, Willie and Waylon, Twain had a childhood career singing country at local bars. She signed with Mercury Nashville in 1991 and toured in support of her 1993 self-titled debut album, an innocuous country-pop record too fluffy even by Shania standards. But since the record flopped, there wasn’t much demand for shows.

“I’ve been touring my whole life as a nobody,” she says. “With me, it’s not new to tour. It’s new not to tour. People didn’t know what I was doing before this record happened. … What I have done with this album is take a break and say, ‘Listen, I want to tour with a real roster of songs behind me that are going to support the show as opposed to the show supporting the songs.”’

Her game plan appears to be working: Last month, she took home the Grammy Award for best country album, beating out Trisha Yearwood, the Mavericks, Dwight Yoakam and John Michael Montgomery. She’s nominated for four Academy of Country Music awards, including female vocalist, single and album of the year.

“I think what we are seeing is a lot of people outside of country music are buying the record,” she says. “I get a lot of fan mail now from mothers writing me saying, ‘You know, my 12-year-old daughter never used to listen to country, and now she and her friends listen to it because of you.’ I have to say a lot of that is because of the sound this record has, what Mutt brought to the album as a producer. It’s given country a whole new sound that it’s never heard before.”