The recently begun and much-in-demand tour of reigning Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year Vince Gill and Patty Loveless, which features a complete Loveless show as a prelude to Gill’s performance, is not an arbitrary spur-of-the-moment pairing.
The two have sung backup for each other on several records and even before that, Loveless notes, back when Gill was on RCA Records, his producer was Emory Gordy, who since then has become Loveless’ husband as well as her producer.
Gill and Loveless were planning an old-fashioned country male-female duet album-a rarity these days-before she parted ways with MCA, for which Gill now records, to go to Sony Music a couple of years ago.
“We were selecting songs and having meetings (with record executives),” she recalls. “It was about to take place, and MCA was all worked up for it. But then when I chose to make a change and asked MCA to release me, that really kind of dissolved that idea.
“Of course, they continued it on with Reba (in a Gill-McEntire duet project), and it was successful as singles for them. But we really were going for an album, the Dolly Parton-Porter Wagoner kind of duet.
“I don’t know, maybe it was meant for it not to happen at that time. It still could happen. Look at The Trio (of Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris), and look at all the different labels they were on (individually). So I have to dream about it.”
– On Friday, at a luncheon for 1,000 employees, Garth Brooks will be at the EMI Manufacturing factory in Jacksonville, Ill., where his records are manufactured, to receive plaques for the sale of 50 million copies.
His “The Hits” album is at the top of the charts and has passed the 5 million mark.
– Reba McEntire basically has her own traveling town.
Her entourage and stage ensemble is easily country music’s most mammoth of the moment. McEntire, whose 1994 tour outgrossed that of any other country act for the year, is out there in 1995 with a schedule of shows almost twice as long as last year’s, about 120 compared with about 70. This year’s foray is supported by an 80-person crew and transported by six buses and 13 trucks.
– Alan Jackson has added new Mercury artist Wesley Dennis to his concert bill for much of 1995, which should help the newcomer’s name get known around the field in a hurry.
Dennis (whose first album, “Wesley Dennis,” has just been released) was discovered by Jackson’s record producer, Keith Stegall, and sings in a traditional style very compatible with Jackson’s.
In his first Jackson date at Springfield, Ill., Dennis was given a standing ovation-which is said to be highly unusual on a Jackson show for anyone besides Jackson.
– A serious buzz is developing in Nashville over the impending debut of singer-songwriter Kim Richey, who has been singing vocal background on records by such artists as Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year Pam Tillis, Rodney Crowell and Radney Foster and has written songs recorded by Trisha Yearwood, George Ducas and Radney Foster.
Richey’s initial Mercury Records album, “Kim Richey,” is due in May, but she has been associated with Nashville-recognized performers for some time. She and Bill Lloyd, who was Radney Foster’s partner in the now-defunct RCA Records act Foster & Lloyd, had a band together when they were undergrads at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green.
Although Lloyd urged her to move to Nashville, she wasn’t persuaded to do so until she heard Steve Earle’s landmark latter-day country-rock album, “Guitar Town,” seven years ago-and she began writing songs only after she arrived.
