Vince Gill’S ‘The Key’ Too Country For Fans
A few months ago, Vince Gill said he thought “it would be a really sad commentary” if his current album, “The Key,” were regarded as “too country” by his industry, but that seems to have been how country radio viewed the package’s recent single.
The song, “Kindly Keep It Country,” peaked in the Billboard country Hot 100 charts at No. 33. Its reception didn’t come as a total surprise, though. Asked at the time if he had any fear of this kind of reaction to the album in general, Gill said he guessed so.
“That’s always in the back of my mind regardless of what I do or what I record,” he says.
Recently, Gill has begun producing his first album for another artist, bluegrass gospel singer Sonya Isaacs Surrett. He met her when she and her family were playing the Grand Ole Opry the same night he was, but the album Gill and she will make together isn’t likely to be as country as the music the Opry’s audiences are accustomed to hearing.
But you never can tell. To a question as to whether it will be as country as “The Key,” Gill says he doesn’t know.
“I think that to be a good producer I have to let her be the artist she wants to be and find the songs she likes rather than trying to make my record and put a different singer to it.”
Half nelson applied
Sawyer Brown seems to be taking a page from Garth Brooks’ catalog of exploits by disregarding CMT’s demand that it change its latest video, “Drive Me Wild.” Remember the flap when Garth refused to add a disclaimer to “The Thunder Rolls?”
A CMT spokesperson has been quoted as saying the cable network wanted Sawyer Brown to remove an eight-second intro depicting highly popular wrestler “Stone Cold” Steven Austin because it doesn’t include the band or relate to the lyrical story line and is of inferior quality. Sawyer Brown lead singer Mark Miller refused to permit the network to air “Drive Me Wild” without it.
Sawyer Brown realizes that wrestlers are making news these days, and not just on sports pages. Jesse “The Body” Ventura recently was elected governor of Minnesota, “Hulk” Hogan claims to be running for president, and “Stone Cold” is currently red hot.
Miller publicist Ronna Rubin says the Denver-based Great American Country cable network, as well as regional outlets, are airing “Drive Me Wild,” so it won’t go without watchers.
But Miller’s response, which explained that Austin was a friend and had gone to some trouble to participate in the clip, contained one thought that possibly raised eyebrows and inspired chuckles around the music industry. Miller was quoted as saying the band wasn’t going to let CMT “tell us how to make videos” because “radio has never told us how to make records.”
Maybe it has never happened to Sawyer Brown, but the impression here is that the industry as a whole has been told how to make records by radio for at least a couple of decades, and never more than now.