Clipped this from the Jam TV site:
Sara Evans is Ready for Her Payday
You'll have to excuse Sara Evans if she
sounds a bit flustered, though you can
hardly
blame her. For one thing, she and her
husband are in the middle of trying to sell
their
Springfield, Tenn., home and a couple of
prospective buyers have arrived smack in the
middle of her phone interview. Then there's
the
matter of her country music career, which
has
been a sweet and sour mix of critical
acclaim
and stubborn radio support. Three months
after moving to Nashville, Missouri native
Evans found legendary country songwriter
Harlan Howard to be one of her biggest fans
and supporters. At the six-month marker, she
was the toast of Music Row and the
bewildered prize in a multilabel bidding
war.
Her 1997 debut, Three Chords and the Truth,
was hailed as a great white hope for
traditional
country, a Patsy Cline record spiked with
the
Bakersfield grit of Dwight Yoakam producer
Pete Anderson. But the album was "too
country" for country radio, and died a quiet
death. Fighting fire with fire, Evans
bounced
back last year with "Cryin' Game," a
contemporary country pop, sure-fire Top Ten
hit that didn't even crack the Top 40.
At the time of this interview, Evans had her
fingers crossed for the follow-up single and
the
title track from her new album, No Place
That
Far. It didn't debut in the Top 40, as she
had
hoped, but it has since proven to have
long-distance legs: after twenty-two weeks,
the single currently sits at No. 18 on the
Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, smack
between the Dixie Chicks and Shania Twain.
Her album, meanwhile, jumped from No. 42 to
No. 31 on the Top Country Albums Charts last
week and was designated the week's
"Pacesetter." The twenty-seven-year-old
singer/songwriter has been on the edge of
her
seat, watching the charts and waiting for
her
horse to come in for a long time. At long
last,
here she comes.
How worked up do you get over the
charts?
Oh, I get extremely worked up. I get
frustrated,
honestly, because I just think, "What do
they
want?" It's so hard to be in this business
and
not have radio success. It's very hard to
get on
a tour, it's hard to sell albums -- it's
hard to do
anything. You're sort of stuck between that
place of having a record deal and having a
hit.
So there's, like, no money. I'm like the
girl that
everybody says, "You're the best artist who
hasn't broken yet." I'm like, "Well, that's
flattering for a while, but I'm sick of that
title."
Tim McGraw, every time he sees me, he's
like, "Keep making records girl, they're
gonna
get it one day, don't you give up." And it's
like,
you know, that's easy for him to say.
(Laughs)
Is it true that, because you had Pete
Anderson as your last producer, your first
album was perceived as an "L.A. album,"
which sort of got it stonewalled at country
radio?
Yeah, that was a big part of it. Dwight and
Pete are not considered to be the
friendliest
people to country radio that you could ever
meet, and also the fact that it was so
country.
I mean, we had three shuffles on that album,
and we cut "Tiger By the Tail," and all
these
country songs because that's what I wanted
to
portray myself as. And I think it was just
bad
timing for an album that country.
So was the change in producers for this
album a deliberate attempt to play the
radio game?
Yes, that was a big push by my label. They
love Pete, too, but it was just real obvious
that
radio did not like the production of my
first
record. They didn't feel like it was a safe
record to play on their stations. I was very
depressed and stressed about it, because I
had planned on making all my records with
Pete, but he totally understood. He said,
"You
gotta do what you gotta do." So we chose
Norro Wilson and Buddy Cannon because
they have had great success at keeping
records country yet making them progressive
enough to be on the radio.
What's the abridged Sara Evans back
story?
I grew up in a little bitty town in Missouri
called New Frankland. I was raised on a
tobacco farm, like, fifteen minutes from
town.
I'm the third oldest of seven kids. And when
we were little, I don't know why, but my
parents decided that my brothers would take
guitar, bass and banjo lessons, and I would
be
the lead singer. And I took mandolin
lessons. I
started at four, and we had a bluegrass band
with some other people and called it the
Sara
Evans Show, and I was the little lead singer
playing the mandolin. And it just grew from
there, and that became a source of income
for
our family. So that's really all I've ever
done,
and I haven't known anything else that I
ever
wanted to do.
So are you looking for Shania-level
success, or would you be happy with a
low-key but successful critical standing?
No, I'll tell ya, I really don't want to be
just like
a press darling. I mean, I love that, don't
get
me wrong, but...
You want it all...
Well, I do, and I think, vocally, why not? I
deserve that. And I'm not trying to be
arrogant
at all, but why shouldn't I be on the radio
as
well? And I don't think I'm so different to
where
I'm not commercial. I think my new record is
very commercial. But yeah, I would like to
be
the Queen of Country Music someday. Sure.
Does the prospect of that impress the
people looking at your house at all?
I hope so, because I really want to sell
this
house! (Laughs) Yeah, it's like, "Don't they
know who I think I am?" This house could be
famous someday. Like the legendary Hank
Williams house on Music Row, the original
home of Hank Williams. And this is the first
house I ever bought as well. We're asking
$117,900. Old farm house with five acres...
RICHARD SKANSE
(January 14, 1998)
