Ricky Van Shelton`s opulent Tennessee farmhouse, which commands a tree-shaded bank of the historic Cumberland River, overlooks a long yard and a second structure that counterpoints its style and comfort.
That building is an 1800s-style log cabin with wood-shingle roof, rock chimney and plank doors.
”Those are the old Z-brace doors,” the singer notes with characteristic knowledge.
”I had some guys build me some, but they put the Z backwards. . . . If the Z is backwards, the years of swinging open will make a door sag. So I took those doors off and said, `Hell, I`ll do it right.` ”
Shelton seems almost as much of an anachronism as the log cabin at the end of his yard. He`s already sold more than 3 million albums and recently enlisted a high-powered management team. But among fellow neo-traditional
”hat acts” on today`s booming Nashville scene, he`s a comparative frontiersman, a doggedly self-reliant loner who glories as much in backwoods basics as in the perks of popularity.
His rambling farmhouse, with its wide-screen TV and its bar from an English hotel, is a monument to the fulfillment of a long-cherished dream of stardom, but the log cabin is where he goes to find the man who was there before the hoopla.
”I come down here every day that I`m home,” he says, sitting in front of the cabin`s blazing fireplace. ”I`ve even come out here at 3 o`clock in the morning. I can`t stay away. This is my space. I have all my junk and tools here.”
The slender, muscular ex-plumber knows how to use those tools. He made several items for his cabin, including a wooden peg bed and cherry table.
This backwoods setting may seem a strange place in which to discuss Dolly Parton, but then again maybe not. After all, Parton grew up in a Tennessee mountain home.
Shelton and Parton have a brand-new duet single, ”Rockin` Years,”
written by her brother. Parton invited Shelton to do it, and he says she seemed ”tickled to death” when he agreed.
When the pair met to record the song, Shelton was ready. He says he listened to her recording of the song over and over until he learned every vocal inflection in it. When they started running it down in the studio, he recalls, she gave him a startled look that seemed to say, ”You`ve been rehearsin`.”
”Because I knew it,” he adds emphatically. ”I knew everything she was gonna do.”
A Parton-Shelton duet is one of those commercial combinations that seemingly could only have come from the mind of a marketing genius. In fact, Shelton`s association with Jim Morey, one of Parton`s managers, had to help.
He hooked up with Morey through a Nashville mogul who has become his other new professional adviser: Dale Morris, longtime manager of Alabama.
”There comes a point in your life when you need some clout,” Shelton says.
He called Morris for some advice, to find out ”who were the rats in the business and who to trust.
”Dale told me a few things, and then he said, `Listen, before you make any decisions, let me tell you something. Me and Jim Morey`-I had never heard of Jim at the time-`are thinking of starting a management company together. Before you make a decision, give me a little time.` ”
Shelton now is the initial beneficiary of a potentially-powerful commercial alliance of Morris` Nashville experience and Morey`s equally impressive Hollywood expertise.
Shelton began his `91 touring schedule with an entourage of three buses, two tractor-trailers (filled with his own sound and lights) and a merchandise truck. He is scheduled to be working with Patty Loveless through April.
Later in 1991, he says, he hopes to be able to do ”a date here and there, or something” with Parton to capitalize on ”Rockin` Years.” He
”would love” to accompany her to Japan when she travels there to open a Far Eastern Dollywood entertainment park sometime this year.
His willingness to go overseas may seem startling, as his distaste for air travel is well known. It is just one of several changes the Grit, Va., native has made.
He initially balked at meeting President Bush a year or so ago, but, after doing so, he became a Bush partisan. Similarly, a couple of years ago he privately belittled the idea of taking his music to Europe and Asia.
”I still have a lot of anxiety about it,” he says. ”It`s kind of scary, because I know there`ll be different customs, and you won`t know what to say or do, and that creates the anxiety. I don`t know protocol.
”But I`ve had a change of heart, and I`m ready to go. I got named International Male Artist last year, and I figure if the time is right, the time is now. I`m ready to go see what it`s all about. Make some new fans. Become international.”
He laughs a little at that thought, though. It is, after all, a big step for a man who just a few years ago made his living with a shovel.
A deeply artistic bent, expressed not only in music but in a lifelong interest in painting, further complicated his transition to the glittering but frequently vicious world of big-time entertainment.
He accepts a lot of the blame for that himself.
”I make mistakes,” he readily acknowledges. ”I say stupid things and things I don`t mean, things that ain`t true or don`t make sense. But I`m human, I err. I`m human, and I`m living and learning. Each day I learn something different, and I`ll say I`m sorry. If I`m wrong, I`m sorry.
”I`m learning more about myself; I think pressure makes you do that. My career`s been wonderful, and I could walk away right now with a big smile on my face from more success than most people ever dream of. But in this success I`ve also had a lot of hard, trying times that people don`t know about and I won`t discuss. It ain`t no bed of roses.
”I`ve dug ditches 10 hours a day for months at a time, doing groundwork for plumbing. I`ve pulled tobacco, got up hay, worked on farms, done every kind of back-breaking job you can do-I`ve done those things all my life-so I can tell you:
”You don`t know what pressure is `til you get in front of the public and get scrutinized and everybody watches what you do and what you say and you`re responsible for this and for that and your life is signed on the dotted line, everything you do and own is up for grabs from lawyers and lawsuits. You have no idea what it`s like `til you go through it, and you can`t tell nobody, and couldn`t nobody understand it if you did.”
He has learned to accept the pressures.
”In 1990,” he says, ”it became easier for me. Things started running smoother and I was doing more quality shows. You know, it is what I do. I love music, so I`m in my element now when I go out on the road. I know now why Willie (Nelson) wrote the song `On the Road Again`; it gets in your blood, and I`ve always loved playing.
”Back home in Virginia, all I played was clubs and parties, and it was fun. I miss those days. But when you become professional, it becomes big business, and you`re dealing with record companies and promoters and doing interviews and being watched and people are working for you and things change. ”It takes you a while to adjust to that.”
