You will know the voice right away, even if you have never heard it. A backcountry baritone canters along a line of swaying melody, taking it easy, taking everything easy. The prides, the miseries, the dalliances and departures that are the mother lode of country music, all are delved into and delivered up with the sidling grace of an unordained preacher taking the back door into honky-tonk heaven.
In the fast lane of a Los Angeles freeway, a Randy Travis song on the car radio can put you, all at once, onto a stretch of two-lane blacktop. A tune like On the Other Hand or What'll You Do About Me can turn a city singles bar into a state-route sugar shack. If there is a new spirit in country, just about the friendliest place to get acquainted with it is on the tracks of Travis' fine new album, Always & Forever.
"Pure country went down for several years," Travis observes, and his recent success has done a lot to pick it up and dust it off. His previous album, Storms of Life, has sold 1.3 million copies so far (the new album, out a month and a half, has already sold more than half that). It has corralled him four awards from the Academy of Country Music, including best single and best album, and four more from last week's Music City News Awards. "Boy," he recalls, still wondering a little at the memory, "when the Academy announced | male vocalist of the year, you're talking about a shock. Winning in the same category with George Jones and George Strait!" Along with his armful of trophies, Randy got himself invited to join the Grand Ole Opry -- at 28 he is the youngest member ever -- and is currently burning up the interstates on tour.
Country music now holds about 10% of the recording market (down from 15% in 1981). Nashville music executives insist, however, that everything is turning around. Forecasts like that are as reliable as the 6 o'clock weather, but at the moment Nashville seems to have the talent to back up its boast. "I know that country music is going out to a lot of kids," Travis says. "You see a lot of teenagers and even little kids who know the words to the songs." There still may not be an overabundance of youth at a typical country concert, but the music in the Nashville air has a youthful flair that embraces and reconciles the roots rock of Steve Earle, the delicate harmonies of the Judds, the lively lyrical byplay of the O'Kanes.
In this crowd, Travis is the proud traditionalist. He has not redefined country so much as reminded everyone of its truest instincts. "I don't like to hear a country singer doing crossover," he admits. "Young people started turning their radios to hear Alabama and Kenny Rogers, and they began to hear George Strait and Ricky Skaggs." It is not necessary to press Travis' good country manners by asking his candid opinion of Rogers. The performers who command his respect can be heard in the echoes his music stirs: Strait and Skaggs and, especially, George Jones, and, reaching further back, Bob Wills' Western swing. At concerts Travis will even do tunes associated with Roy Rogers and those harmonizers of early sunrises and dusty trails, the Sons of the Pioneers. He shows pride in his roots and stays close to them too. He has, after all, been away only for a few years.