When it comes to country music, there is a choice of parties.
Hank Williams Jr. has a roarer going on over at a big spread near Nashville. It's really a video event, fired up just so there could be a raucous, celebrity-studded promo for Hank's hit tune, All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming over Tonight. And there it is, a real booze-and-barbecue bash, with lots of huggy-bunny country gals sashaying all around folks who dropped in, sometimes via limo, to pay old Hank Jr. their respects. There's Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson. Hank Jr. sings his song, roaming all around the large house and out into the yard, which appears to be the size of one of the smaller islands in the Pacific archipelago. The visiting celebs all make eye contact with the camera. Everyone looks to be having a helluva good time.
Rodney Crowell has a party going on too, and it's also for a video. Out on some piece of road in Wartrace, Tenn., he grabs his guitar and starts lip- syncing the words to I Couldn't Leave You If I Tried. He stops what little traffic there is. Drivers and passengers, none of them recognizable to anyone but their neighbors, climb out of cars, pickups and delivery trucks to join in the song. They all smile, mostly at one another, and dance around.
You can forget about all those snazzy houses and all those famous folks. Hank and Willie and Waylon and other "outlaws" of the '70s have suddenly become -- no, could it be? -- the older generation in country music. The Crowell shindig is right where the action in country music has moved: the crossroads. There has been a lot of traffic there lately, at the delicate junction where country meets its past, sizes up its future and -- probably most important -- guns its musical motor and goes off in its own direction. And Crowell, a wonderfully gifted songwriter and rambunctious performer, isn't even driving the fastest car in the pack.
Once all the records sold and hits charted and awards won are totted up, the slickest wheels on the road would belong to Randy Travis, 29, whose first album, Storms of Life, sold 2 million copies, whose second, Always and Forever, sold 3 million.. Travis' major career worry for the past year would appear to be that his new album, called Old 8x10 and just now in stores, might dislodge Always from the top of the country charts, where it has perched for almost a year. One million copies of Old 8x10 have already been ordered up by retail outlets, and reorders seem a solid bet. The record's blend of sweet vocals and straightforward sentiment should go down smoothly with Travis' growing number of fans.
Travis has some daunting stats going for him, sure enough. But all the commotion in country music right now is more than just a matter of numbers. Overall, its radio share has remained consistent during the past few years; it corners a mite above 10% of the national audience. And sales of records and tapes are fine, thank you: in 1987, country accounted for about 10% of the 5.6 billion musical dollars plunked down in the U.S.