Lanky Alan Jackson is facing a Tennessee TV camera and, via it, a roomful of national press critics in Los Angeles.
A lead rider in country music`s posse of young cowboy hats, the Georgian is usually a softspoken man in the shy mold of the old western movie heroes, but not today. Promoting his career`s first special, scheduled for Aug. 3 on The Nashville Network, he relies repeatedly on humor to cross wide-ranging journalistic minefields.
Asked whether he sought his well-known job in TNN`s mailroom back in 1985 as a way into the musical bigtime, he makes a pun.
”Naw,” he says, ”I tried to get into the female room, but couldn`t.”
Would he ever smash a guitar onstage like Garth Brooks? asks another critic.
”If I was paying for it, I probably wouldn`t.”
Jackson even volunteers, deadpan, the whimsical disclosure that he has just finished a rap album. ”Traditional rap,” he adds, spoofing his reputation as one of country music`s staunchest neo-traditionalists.
It is in fact such a cool performance that, in a dressing room interview a few minutes later, he is asked half-seriously if it is true that he was once shy.
”I still am,” he says seriously, ”especially when I`m around people who don`t know me. My daddy`s the same way. He`s a real quiet guy. But he can be pretty funny one-on-one.”
In professional approach, Jackson is as different from headline-making bomb-throwers Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus as day from night. His TNN special,
”One Night In Austin,” eloquently illustrates that a tall man standing at a microphone singing sometimes can be as dramatic as someone swinging on a rope or frantically dancing the ”Achy Breaky.”
The special reflects Jackson`s no-frills, reality-based point of view. It was filmed at a live concert, all proceeds benefiting the excellent PBS-TV series ”Austin City Limits.”
It features as little post-production work as possible. ”We tried not to do anything that wasn`t normal,” Jackson recalls, ”and we didn`t fix (edit) that much,” he recalls.
”Most people do a live show and then go in and redo everything so there`s nothing left live except the crowd hollering. We didn`t. We patched a few obvious things, but I believe if you`re going to do a live show let it be as live as possible.”
Such a view is a departure from the calculated flamboyance that has been spreading across country stages in the wake of the unpredictable Brooks` mega- sales of records and concert tickets. It has divided country music into two camps.
Jackson laughs at the thought of legendary country star Merle Haggard dancing on a stage. He intimates that he thinks most of country music`s real fans come to shows to hear music, not see a circus.
”But I think there are different opinions on what`s entertaining,” he goes on.
”I could go out there and run back and forth or drive a tractor onstage; you do anything like that and the crowd`s going to get excited and scream. But to me it takes away from the music. To me it`s a lot harder to stand up there and sing your song and entertain the crowd.
”I have as many young fans as any other kind, and they`re the ones down front screaming and hollering. I don`t think they feel like they`re missing out on anything.”
One of the major changes wrought in country music since Brooks took it to the forefront of America`s pop consciousness is that more journalists seem interested in covering it but most can`t seem to believe what has happened.
Jackson chuckles wryly and reports that, as in today`s long-distance session with the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles, he is continually asked not about his career but about the phenomenon of which he is a part.
”Most interviews I do now, nobody wants to talk about your music or what`s going on with you,” he says. ”They all ask, `Why do you think country music`s doing so well?` `What changes made it come about?`
”Most of the questions are about that or the look thing-which I`m sick of talking about, too. You know, `we saw you in some magazine,` some big hunk thing. They don`t even ask you about what song you`ve got out or anything.
”I tell them that as far as I can see there hasn`t been a big change in the music. What I do musically is basically the same thing Hank Williams did 40 years ago: the same type of song, the same type of arrangements and instruments, just higher-tech production.
”I attribute all the growth to accessibility. There are more country radio stations now than there`ve ever been, so more people can hear it, and because it`s on TV more, more people who wouldn`t have listened to it before are giving it a chance and finding that it isn`t what they always thought it was like. They`re finding that it`s good.”
Jackson`s most recent chart-topper, ”Midnight In Montgomery,” shows how good country music can be and how strongly Jackson is anchored to its traditions.
An eerie tune about an encounter with a ghost during a visit to the grave of Hank Williams, it harkens back, not only in lyric but instrumentation and vocal style, to one of country music`s most influential artists. Jackson collaborated on the writing of it with songwriter Don Sampson, and he says both of them had made pilgrimages to Williams` final resting place.
”The time I went was late at night and real stormy, and it was scary to be up there,” he says. ”I just sort of wrote from that experience. If you`re a big fan of Hank`s, and you go to that grave, you can feel weird about being there.”
A new member of the Nashville royalty reigning with the commonest sort of touch, Jackson confesses that he also feels odd walking the halls of The Nashville Network, where as recently as six years ago he says he was employed as ”really just the office gofer.
”What makes me uncomfortable is people I used to work for, like the bosses,” he says. ”You still feel a little like you`re supposed to be their employee or something.”
Last month, he was the big winner in the network`s national awards show, capturing TNN-Music City News Awards for album, single and male vocalist of the year.
Asked where he plans to go from the winning of those awards, he grins and calls up that dry sense of humor again.
”Well, that night my folks were in town, and we were all tired,” he says. ”I had a glass of milk and cornbread and went to bed.”
