DEAR WHEN MAGAZINE READERS:
I HAVE GREAT NEWS! WE HAVE RECOVERED OLD DATA FROM YEARS UPON YEARS AGO. The below interview with Country Star, Tracy Byrd was first published on May 21, 2001 (we believe) and we lost it! Due to God’s glory and grace we have recovered it from a web archive called WayBackMachine! ENJOY THE INTERVIEW BELOW 
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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 2001
Tracy Byrd has wrapped his melodious baritone around a trunkfull of
great songs. Along the way, he has received two gold albums, two platinum
albums, and one double platinum album, No Ordinary Man, which contained the smash hit ” The Keeper of the Stars “.
The song, winner of The Academy of Country Music Song of the Year, has become a classic of the genre, and one of the most popular wedding songs ever. He’s been written about in magazines, been interviewed for television, and starred in his own videos for years. This issue of whenmagazine.com is honored and proud to feature him here.
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Born in Beaumont, Texas, Tracy is a man of humble origins. His easy going style of talking is friendly and direct. It was he who made this interview so easy. Scheduled as a fifteen minute interview, Tracy and I talked for almost an hour. He gave freely of himself, even as his young son wanted to play his Barney game on the computer with Dad. We are in his debt, and sincerely thank him.
Tracy cares about kids not his own as well. His annual Tracy Byrd Homecoming Weekend is a golf and fishing tournament that benefits Buckner’s Children’s Village in Texas. In this way, he combines his personal enjoyments with a way to help kids.
Similarly, he combines his music with his love of the great outdoors with his Wonders of Wildlife CD, and hopes to spread the word about the responsible use of our natural resources. He has also served as country music’s national spokeperson for the Special Olympics. He even has a special line of ” Lifestyles of the Not so Rich and Famous ” fishing lures, that he helped design, and he donates ten cents of every lure sold to the Special Olympics. Not bad for a fella from Texas that was almost too shy to sing in front of other folks.
Starting out, his first recording was in a tiny studio in a shopping center for $ 8.00. Soon, he got himself hooked up with a band, and spent a lot of time driving around Texas and Louisiana, playing the clubs and roadhouses. He met another talented young man around then, named Mark Chestnutt. They played together in a now defunct club called Cutter’s in Beaumont. They got to be friends, and when Mark got his shot in Nashville, Tracy took his place at Cutter’s and hoped for a way to follow Mark to Tennessee. Time, some great good luck, and a lot of work later, Tracy got his chance. It’s a tad more elaborate nowadays on Music Row, but it’s still the same guy from Beaumont. Believe this or not, he came to Nashville and left without a record contract the first time. So he got himself some top flight management, came back, and made the grade. And the rest is country music history.
Tracy shed some light on what’s been keeping him busy lately, and sprung a surprise or two for his near future, that we just couldn’t keep. As you read this interview, keep in mind that the punctuation and grammar is merely our attempt to capture that soft East Texas lilt to his speech, that is just a part of what makes Tracy Byrd a special man. It looks like to us at whenmagazine.com that Tracy is getting ready to take his music, and his career to new heights. We were tremendously excited to be a small part of that. (more…)
(Note: Just to think this was one of our first interviews back when we first came on board in the online media sector – Curt Bizelli)
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(Note: It appears that we may “still” be missing the beginning of the interview unless this is the way it was formatted. You can still enjoy and be amazed by how much has changed over the years!)
WhenMagazine.com: How was Hank Jr. ?
Tracy Byrd: He was great, just great.We went on the bus and hung out with him about fifteen minutes before he went on. Then he just went out there, and gave ‘em a typical Hank Jr. show. He was wound up, and feelin’ good. He was pretty cool. It’s just amazing to go to his shows. He was at the Astrodome for the Houston Live Stock Show and Rodeo. And lookin’ up on the screen when they put the camera on kids in the audience, you know, fourteen, fifteen years old…and he’s doin’ stuff he did twenty years ago, and they’re just rockin’, knowin’ every word. He’s still huge, you know, even though he hasn’t had a legitamate hit in ten years. They still love all that old stuff.
WM: You went to the show with Mark Chestnutt ?
TB: Yeah, me and Chestnutt and our wives.
WM: Are you and Mark from the same part of Texas ?
TB: Yeah, we live in the same town, Beaumont.
WM: So you guys are pretty good friends, then ?
TB: Yeah. We’ve known each other…gosh, for fifteen years.
WM: Wow, that long ? I know that you replaced him in a club when he got a deal…
TB: Yeah. He got a deal, and they were lookin’ for somebody to replace him. And I was playin’, Lord, a different place every weekend, just haulin’ stuff all around. We were playin’ places from Lafayette, Louisiana, all the way to Houston, and all up and down I-10 there. We were playin’ another place in Beaumont at the time. The owner of the club came over, and said Mark got a record deal, I’d like you to come over there and take his place. So I dismantled the band I was in, went over there and played with Mark’s band, while he was cuttin’ his record in Nashville, doin’ his videos, doin’ this, doin’ that. He was gone a lot that year. I just fronted for his band until they left, and then I put my band together, or back together, and took over. The place was called Cutter’s in Beaumont. Mark played there for five years, and then I played there three and a half, four years after that. It’s no longer open.
WM: Yeah, a house band situation can be really good.
TB: Yeah, that was a great deal. I mean, we played four nights a week there, and never had to move a thing.
WM: So, I hear that you and Mark have a new duet.
TB: Yeah. We’ve been wantin’ to do this for years, and we finally got the opportunity to do it.
WM: I hear it’s kinda’ rockin’.
TB: Yeah, it is, it is. It even talks about ole’ Bocephus in there.
WM: Really ?
TB: Yeah. It talks about Van Halen, George Jones, and Bocephus. It’s a great tune. We were lookin’ to do this duet for years. We had both been on MCA for several years. I was on there for eight years, and Mark had been there about ten. Then I left MCA, and signed with RCA.That’s been two years ago. So we couldn’t do anything until he got off MCA, or somethin’ happened. Finally, he got off MCA last year, and we decided to do the duet. We found a song almost immediately. It kinda’ just fell into our lap. I was in the studio, trackin’ for my album, and Billy Joe Walker, my co-producer, came in and said Man, I got this song I want you to listen to. I think it would be a really cool song. And I listened to it, and I said, Man that’s not just for me. That’s our duet, right there. So we sat down and listened to it together, and Billy Joe goes, You know what ? Change a couple of lines, and that is a duet. It’s called ” That’s a Good Way to Get On My Bad Side “. It’s got kind of little things all through it, like we’re both real agreeable guys, real easy goin’ guys, but there’s certain things that’ll tick us off.
WM: Yeah, both of you guys seem real laid back.
TB: Yeah. It goes on about those little things, you know, messin’ with our ladies is a good way to get on our bad side.
WM: That’ll do it.
TB: Politicians tryin’ to take our guns away, that’s a good way to get on our bad side.
WM: Amen to that.
TB: You know, that kind of stuff.
WM: Yeah, your publicist, Melissa, read me some of the lyrics and I can’t wait to hear it. It sounds like just the kind of country I love, that crosses the lines.
TB: Yeah, you’re gonna love it. It’s real loose too. We loved the demo so much that we got a majority of the demo players to play on the master, ’cause it just felt so loose, and alive. We booked a totally different band for anything else I cut for this project. We actually had one of the co-writers, Rivers Rutherford, come in and play acoustic, ’cause it’s got this great acoustic riff in it, real dominant. He’s just a great player.Tracy Byrd
WM: That was my next question: Who wrote it ?
TB: Rivers Rutherford and George Terrance.
WM: We are very much looking forward to hearing it.
TB: I think it’s something that’s going to be really fresh on the radio. I think that people are really going to turn an ear to it, ’cause it sounds so different from anything that’s out there.
WM: I’m with you on that. I think we really need to shake it up a little bit, you know, some more up tempo type stuff.
TB: We concentrated on that on this record, really big time. We worked hard on finding the right material. It’s a good one. I think it’s the best one I’ve done. I know I’ve put more work into it than any one before. I hope it does well for me.
WM: And, of course, we wish you the very best. You have another project called ” Pass It On “, from the Wonders of Wildlife CD. Could you tell us a little about that.
TB: Sure. Chestnutt is on that album. A bunch of folks. I had this idea to do an album… ( Here, Tracy’s little boy interrupts, wanting to play a Barney video game on the computer. Tracy gently re-directs him to Mommy. We both had a laugh over this very genuine, human moment. It showed a very different side of Tracy than we normally see. No wonder his hit ” Put Your Hand in Mine ” struck a chord deep within him ). Anyway, I had this idea to do this album about conservation. ” Pass it On ” is a single that we had specially written for this album. It kinda’ encompasses about the outdoors, how I feel about it. Just like my boy in here right now, you know, pass it on, the tradition of the outdoors, huntin’, fishin, and all the things I grew up with. It’s becoming slightly less common for people to raise their kids in that tradition. Slowly, there’s less and less public land to hunt and fish on. It’s kinda’ my take on that. The album’s in all the record stores. Wal Mart and Bass Pro Shops really jumped on it. Camouflage helped finance it. The proceeds from the sale of it go back to the Wonders of Wildlife Museum in Springfield, Missouri, at the Bass Pro Shops. All the money from the museum goes to conservation. It kinda’ helps the hunter…well, to somebody that doesn’t spend a lot of time outdoors, the hunter is a bad guy. He’s been made to look that way. What the Wonders of Wildlife tries to do, is educate people a little.You know that at the turn of the century, the wild turkey and the white tailed deer were borderline extinct. Thanks to hunter’s dollars, buyin’ the huntin’ and fishin’ licences, and the Pittman-Robertson Act, which takes a certain percentage of any outdoor product and puts it in a fund for that state to help re-introduce fish and game there, we brought back the white tailed deer. There’s now more white tailed deer in the United States than there’s ever been. Wild turkeys are the same way. Ther are now wild turkeys in forty eight states, just flourishing.
WM: I never realized that, about the white tailed deer. I mean now, you are always hearing on the news that there are too many deer, and hunters are going to have to be used, or they’ll starve to death.
TB: There are too many, now. ( Laughing )
WM: That’s pretty incredible.
TB: There’s too many, and their habitat is shrinking. Another thing these conservation organizations do, like White Tail Forever, Ducks and Quail Unlimited, is raise money to buy land with the thought of not touchin’ it, so we’ll have a future habitat for these birds and deer to flourish in. So we’ll have them forever. I kinda’ go around preachin’ that gospel, just to let people know that, yeah, there are some bad hunters out there, poachers, and we’re ashamed of them. But the majority of the hunting community are good, honest people, who really care about the animals, and the furthering of their lives. Part of that is going out and taking a resonsible harvest each year. If you don’t do that, they’re gonna’ die of hoof and mouth disease, starvation or somethin’ a whole lot worse if they’re not taken responsibly by a hunter. The Pass it On CD was somethin’ to help get the word out.
WM: That’s a great concept. Kind of like pruning back a tree. You cut it back heavily to make it grow better.
TB: It really is.
WM: That album just doesn’t get the attention that such a fine collection of artists, headed, of course, by yourself, that you would expect.
TB: It actually is just a great CD to listen to. It’s got a hit from Hank Jr., Mark Chestnutt, Jerry Kilgore’s on there, Andy Griggs, Kenny Chesney’s on there, Montgomery-Gentry, Sammy Kershaw, John Anderson…it’s just a list of hits, and a great listenin’ CD. Just throw it in your car, and you hear a bunch of songs that you like, and remember.
WM: I’m looking forward to hearing it. Also, I had to tell you that I just love that picture on your web page of your band in drag. Especially that good ole’ boy with that low cut red dress. Now what was that all about ? ( Both of us are laughing, now )
TB: Yeah, he’s got all that hair growin’ on his shoulders…
WM: He sure does !!! ( Here, I lose it completely )
TB: I told him, My God Brett, ( that’s my guitar player ), you are the ugliest woman I have ever laid eyes on. Looks like a sideshow freak.
WM: It does look a little strange.
TB: That was in Warsaw, Indiana. There was this theater where we played that books ten or twelve acts a year. In fact, we’re playin’ there again in March.The rest of the year, they book about seventy plays. So it’s mainly a live theater venue. Anyway, I was doin’ this song in the show that a buddy of mine wrote, a great song called ” New Orleans Love “. During that part of the show, the band leaves the stage, and I set on a stool and just play acoustic. I do four or five songs like that during the show, and I always end it up with ” New Orleans Love “. It’s a song about these two ole’ boys, goin’ to New Orleans, and they end up hittin’ on this cross dresser, you know…( I dissolve in laughter, thinking of Brett in that red dress )…and they end up gettin’ in a fight … and the hook is it’s tough, those memories of New Orleans love. They end up spendin’ two nights in jail, and it’s really funny. It talks about these two transvestites, and it’s a great hilarious song. So the guys are backstage, and they’d seen the wardrobe for all those plays, I mean just walls of clothes. And they asked the people there, when we come offstage, can we strip off our shirts and dress up like women ? Now, after I do that song every night, I start introducin’ the band, one by one. So I started introducin’ them, and here they came. Every one of them in a dress. And, oh my God it was… ( here, we both gasp for breath between brays of laughter )
WM: I bet that kinda’ caught you off guard, didn’t it ?
TB: Oh yeah, because I had no idea they were gonna’ do it. When they first walked out, I just died. I couldn’t believe it.
WM: I can imagine. Well, it sure looks like you all were having a blast.
TB: We always have a blast. But that night was especially funny. Luckily, there were several fans that got tons of pictures, and we got some of those to put on the web site. It was hilarious.
WM: It reminded me of when I used to play in the clubs. One of your songs we used to play was “Watermelon Crawl”.
TB: Oh, really ?
WM: Oh yeah. Some of the things the young ladies would do during that song…
TB: I know what you mean.
WM: I bet you do. But my personal favorite of yours is one I never got to play, and that’s ” Put Your Hand in Mine “. When I first heard it, I thought, OK, it’s another story song. But when it got to the hook, it reached out and floored me.
TB: Yeah, it’s a killer song. It did the same thing to me. It blew me away when I first heard it. Skip Ewing and Jimmy Wayne Barber wrote it. The demo I got on it was just Skip and a piano, which was strange, because I’d never heard Skip do a piano-vocal. He’s such a great guitar player. I heard it and said, my God that’s a great song.
WM: He sure has a way with a song.
TB: Oh yeah. I mean, he’s a super talented guy.
WM: Yeah, I’m jealous.
TB: Believe me, me too. We knew that was a good one.
WM: Yes it’s a great, great song. You can hear the George Strait influence in it, and yet, it’s all you. It doesn’t sound so much like him, I guess, as it is the subject matter…
TB: Yeah. I love Strait, that’s for sure. He’s a hero of mine, and a big part of the reason that I’m in the business. (more…)
WM: Well, I guess you’re a hero to more than a few young fellas yourself. That’s gotta’ be a neat thing.
TB: Oh yeah. It feels great.When the kids come up to me, sayin’ you’re an influence on me…I mean that’s just like…that’s the best, right there.
WM: What project are you looking forward to most this year, in your career ?
TB: Well, without a doubt, this new album that’s comin’ out, the duet with Chestnutt, and a possible tour. If this thing is the hit that we think it is…
WM: Then you guys would tour together ?
TB: Yes, we’ll tour together. And that’s gonna’ be great, ’cause it’s gonna’ be like old times again. We’ll be back together again like we used to be at Cutter’s. And if this is as big a hit as we think it can be, RCA has mentioned the possibility that we could do a complete duet album.
WM: Wow ! Two major stars together like that…
TB: Not like the Moe and Joe thing, but more like Waylon and Willie, or Jones and Haggard.That is exciting to think that that could possibly happen. The duet is a killer song, a great first single, but this albums loaded. I don’t think I could give radio much more of what they need than what I have on this album. So I’m hopin’ we’ll get heavy airplay on this thing, and get things rollin’ again. ” Put Your Hand in Mine ” was my last hit, then we had a couple of misses on the next two singles, so I’m ready to get back on the radio, and get some albums sellin’. Obviously, the whole market’s down right now, but I’m hopin’ we’ll see it swing back around.
WM: Well, we wish you the best. We hope it takes off in the stratosphere for you, because we’ve enjoyed you guys for many years, and look forward to many more.
TB: Well, thank you man.
Tracy would love for you to purchase his Music Below!
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