Randy Travis

Airizona daily star
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/caliente/305365.php
'Thu, Aug 20, 2009
Randy Travis will perform at Centennial Hall on Saturday courtesy of UApresents.
COURTESY OF ROGERS & COWAN
If you go
• What: Randy Travis in concert.
• Presented by: UApresents.
• When: 8 p.m. Saturday.
• Where: Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd.
• Tickets: $29-$64 through uapresents.org.

Singer chats on music, touring
Randy Travis stops in Tucson
By Cathalena E. Burch
Cburch@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.20.2009
Randy Travis had just returned from a whirlwind tour of Ireland last week and was feeling jet-lagged.
He played shows in Dublin and Belfast and a handful of little towns and hamlets, many with county this or that in their names.
Did anything about this trip qualify as a vacation?
"Not for me," he said with a chuckle in a phone call last Thursday to chat about his first Tucson show in four years.
But there were plenty of opportunities to see Ireland's lush landscape as he and his band drove from town to town.
"We got to see a lot of the countryside. It was very, very beautiful," he explained.
The jet lag should be a faint memory by the time the Travis tour bus pulls up to Centennial Hall for his UApresents show on Saturday.
Travis, the multi-award-winning country and gospel singer and actor, chatted about his music, turning 50 and the 25th anniversary next year of his national debut. He is considering how he will mark the anniversary as he also contemplates a trio of
acting roles and begins laying the groundwork for a follow-up to his 2008 country record "Around the Bend."
Was turning 50 traumatic?
"It's just another year. I can do pretty much anything now that I could do at 25. Sometimes it just hurts a little more, I'll say that."
Congratulations also on your 2009 Dove Award for best country album. You've spent the better part of this decade doing gospel.
"Two years ago I put out a country record, 'Around the Bend.' But country radio is not chomping at the bit, so to speak, to play something new from me. . . . It's a struggle to get country radio to play anything new by me. I don't understand that one, but that's the way it is."
Some people think you've left country and are just doing gospel.
"The perception seemed to be that I had disappeared from country music. But I never have; I have been here the whole time, touring nonstop for almost 24 years now. Recording
and singing country stuff and recording and going out and playing gospel stuff, too."
But you have had great success with the gospel music. You just won your eighth Dove
Award. Some might say that "Three Wooden Cross," your gospel-crossover country hit of a couple years ago, changed the course of contemporary country.
"It's just a great song. If it opened some doors — maybe it did, I don't know . .. great. It was just a great country song, a wonderful piece of writing."
Were you shocked when Carrie Underwood called you and asked if she could record "I Told You So"?
"I was honored. . . . If a song has been published, you don't have to ask to record it. So I was kind of taken aback when she asked would it be all right. And then they asked me to come in and sing on the last verse and chorus. I was very honored by that.
"She's just a sweet, sweet lady. A phenomenal singer, but just down to earth and totally unaffected by her success."
This is your first country show here in four years. What can we expect?
"When we do a country performance, I think people are going to expect to hear 'Diggin' Up Bones,' '1982,' 'On the Other Hand,' 'Forever and Ever Amen.' So it's kind of like going through a greatest hits package, and that's always the way I will approach a live country performance."
You're out on the road pretty steady year-round.
"I think most people in country music, we start touring and for the most part we tour until we die."
That's sad.
"I don't mean it in a bad way. I mean it in a great way. If you've had that experience of knowing that response of a live audience . . . you feel something there that I've never felt anywhere else. Not in the studio. Not writing. Not trying to act in front
of a camera. Only in front of that live audience on those special nights. Man, there's nothing like it."