‘Here’s Your Sign’ Moves Up The Charts

Comedian Bill Engvall’s hit single “Here’s Your Sign” with Travis Tritt went through a couple of incarnations before making it to country radio.

Based on the title track of Engvall’s top-selling debut album, the single’s gist is basically that stupid people should wear signs so as to not waste the time of those more fortunate. The supporting actor on NBC-TV’s “The Jeff Foxworthy Show” says when Warner Bros. decided to release a musical single and film a video, they asked him his choice to provide the singing.

“I initially said I wanted Travis Tritt and Marty Stuart, because they were touring together then and I had been a big fan of Travis’ for a long time,” Engvall says. “I love that kind of driving honky-tonk music.”

But then Stuart was unable to participate “for one reason or the other,” and Tritt, in the midst of finishing and releasing his own album, wasn’t sure he would have enough time to do both. Warner executives suggested finding somebody else, and Engvall called Joe Diffie, with whom he had worked on a lengthy tour. Diffie agreed to do it.

“In fact,” Engvall recalls, “Joe cut the original single, and it was ready to go. Then his record label got involved and said, ‘Will this be played on the radio?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. It’s a record, “Here’s Your Sign.” So they backed out on it.

“Then Travis called back and said, ‘I’ve got two days to do this. Let’s go.’ He went into the studio and recorded the song in like an hour, and I flew into Nashville the next day and we shot the video in 12 hours.

“And Travis could not have nailed it any better. That was exactly the way I wanted it to sound.”

He isn’t the only one, apparently. “Here’s Your Sign” has been the biggest-selling single in the nation in recent weeks. The album is in the top five on the country hit charts.

Yoakam appears on ‘Ellen’

Dwight Yoakam always seems to be where the attention is.

Yoakam is scheduled to be one of the special guest stars on the much-anticipated “coming out” episode of the sitcom “Ellen” on ABC, April 30.

He joins Academy Award-winning Billy Bob Thornton (in whose “Sling Blade” Yoakam had a role), Demi Moore, Oprah Winfrey, Laura Dern and k.d. lang.

Wynonna has solo hits album

Wynonna now has her own solo greatest-hits collection to put alongside her others by The Judds.

Titled “Collection,” it features 10 Wy solos, including “Only Love,” “Is It Over Yet,” “Girls with Guitars,” “She Is His Only Need” and her “career song,” “No One Else on Earth,” of which she says: “There is no other song on Earth like this song.”

Songwriter breaks out

Singer-songwriter Matraca Berg, who has had a large number of songs recorded lately by her peers, is now recording an album of her own for Rising Tide Records.

Berg expects its release in August and adds although she has hung on to most of her songs for the album, a couple have slipped out into the marketplace, one to Mindy McCready and another that’s a Clint Black-Martina McBride duet. She isn’t worried, though.

“I write all the time,” she says.

Berg has written “Strawberry Wine” and “We Danced Anyway” by Deana Carter; Patty Loveless’ “You Can Feel Bad,” McBride’s “Wild Angels” and Trisha Yearwood’s “Everybody Knows.”