Best known as a singer of romantic country ballads, Doug Stone admits he was nervous before starting his 1992 stint as the show-opener on Hank Williams Jr.`s Rock `N` Country Tour.
Having heard how Williams fans have been known to drown out opening acts with indignant ”We want Hank” chants, Stone decided to open his sets with a head-banger titled ”The House Is Rockin`,” a song he says he had recorded but has yet to put on any of his albums.
”I was thinking that I had to have something to get Hank`s crowd into what I was doing,” Stone explains.
”A lot of people who like the ballads come to the shows expecting me to lullabye `em to sleep,” he says, ”and by the time the show`s over I`ve turned `em upside down and shook `em two or three times.”
Stone, a former Georgia auto and truck mechanic, almost never simply stands at the microphone, although he says that is what he did until he signed his recording contract.
”This career is like anything else,” he says. ”When I started in mechanics, I started out greasing and changing oil and worked myself up to building engines, building trucks. That`s the way I feel with this, except I don`t know where the stopping point is. I think you can always improve.”
As for the reaction to his onstage dynamics, he says he is ”letting go,” figuring that ”if it`s bad it`s bad and if it`s good it`s good; at least it`s totally me.”
