NASHVILLE-It isn`t surprising, in light of Clint Black`s recent courthouse fire and rain, that his brand-new album and tour are titled ”The Hard Way.”
Black, though, declines to decry the legal ramifications of his decision to leave the rock `n` roll management firm that took him from obscurity to superstardom.
”I have within myself a large capability for looking to the bright side,” says the singer, scheduled to appear Saturday at the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park with Billy Dean, Aaron Tippin and Little Texas.
”In my life, it`s not hard (to look on the bright side),” he continues. ”I have a lot of bright sides. It`s just a matter of, if you`ve got to chop down a tree, it ain`t going to fall over (by itself), so get started.
”And when you get a blister on your hand, don`t complain. The tree`s got to come down, and if a blister`s got to come from it, then you`re going to have a blister.”
The positive-thinking Texan has had a blisteringly eventful year. First, he married Houston-rooted Hollywood actress Lisa Hartman. Then he separated himself from the Texas firm of rock `n` roll manager Bill Ham in favor of Moress, Nanas & Shea, a Nashville-Los Angeles management company that represents Hartman.
Meanwhile, he also managed to write and record the newly released album, a collection distinguished by a number of first-rate songs. Black says its title refers to the way the album was done, not to the atmosphere surrounding it. The recording process itself was more involved than it had ever been for him before.
”I initially went into the studio back in November and pre-produced the album, which is what I always had wanted to do,” he recalls. ”I had always wanted to spend time working on it and looking at it before going in and doing it for real.
”So we cut in November and a little bit of December, then resumed in February and March.”
Under the sort of stress Black has undergone, most artists might have produced a package less memorable.
”I`m very focused,” he explains. ”I have no problem, when I`m doing one thing, to just be doing that. I separate things. I worry about this when I have to deal with it. When I`m sitting with the attorney and the business managers, I focus on that, and when I`m not with them, there`s no reason to focus on them.”
Asked what role Hartman has played in his recent legal decisions, he answers, ”Support. She`s my best friend and my partner in life, and she takes care of me more than I ever thought anybody would or could,” he says. ”She`s made me much, much better than I was and better than I ever thought I could be in every way. She has made me a better person.”
His career, in contrast to his marriage, doesn`t look quite as rose-colored, even to him. He notes that after leading the charge of the new, young Nashville neo-traditional ”hat acts” three years ago, he has been eating the dust of some of them over the past 18 months.
Part of the reason for that, he believes, is that in contrast to him, some of his fastest-rising peers have benefited from Soundscan, which ranks artists for the Billboard charts according to actual, rather than reported, radio airplay.
”I haven`t had a record out since Billboard`s been using that, and it has done a great deal for Garth (Brooks) and Travis (Tritt) and Alan
(Jackson),” he says.
”I`m real anxious to see if it can affect me the way it has them. Those guys have enjoyed tremendous success from it, and if the initial sales of this album are comparable to those of my first two records, Soundscan should put me in a great position on the pop album charts.
”Then it will be interesting to see if that has an impact on the
(country music) industry (raising his profile within it). I hope it does. Garth has done great.”
When their first albums came out, Black`s was the name on everybody`s lips while Brooks` was being whispered only by Nashville insiders. Then, most observers say, Black became a victim of his own popularity.
While he was so busy that he didn`t have time to get into the studio to make a second album, Brooks did so and passed him, quickly gaining a reputation as one of the most electrifying stage acts in America. Asked if on his ”Hard Way” Tour he is swinging on a rope onstage, a gimmick for which Brooks is famous, Black grins.
”No rope,” he says. ”I`d probably hang myself with it.”
For another nomadic outing scheduled to extend through next Mar. 15 and to visit 150 cities at a pace of five a week, however, Black has assembled more imposing stage machinery than he has used before. It starts with a new $250,000 set, four new band members (bringing his total onstage to 11) and
”all the lights we can fit up there.
”And everyone in the band is using earphone monitors, so there are no amps and monitors onstage, nothing to interfere with what the audience is seeing and hearing,” he says.
Black obviously is out to see how much ground he can gain on Brooks, and he has some tools for the task. Although he is nowhere near as flamboyant onstage, he is, many women maintain, better-looking, and as a songwriter fully as deep and perhaps even more prolific.
He writes-or cowrites, with band member Hayden Nicholas-virtually everything on his albums. The new one boasts the current single, ”We Tell Ourselves” along with such memorable others as ”A Man Has His Will and a Woman Has Her Way,” the title song and the chillingly intelligent ”Wake Up Yesterday,” which is about a man waking up dead.
Black and Nicholas wrote ”Wake Up Yesterday” on vacation on the Hawaiian island of Maui, he says. He no longer lives in Texas, splitting his time between California, where Hartman must keep a residence, and Nashville, where he must.
In enduring his legal travail, he presents an appearance of mental toughness and self-discipline bent not only on enduring but prevailing. Forbidden by his attorneys to discuss the details of his court cases, he leaves no doubt about the mood in which he approaches them.
”I have felt the full range of emotions-remorse, anger, relief and happiness,” he says. ”But no matter what pain and suffering come from doing the right thing, you`ve got to be able to recognize what you have to do and be thankful for recognizing it.
”I`m a very realistic person. My principles are very strong. When things become clear to me, I will do what`s right at all cost.”
