Three years ago, Tracy Byrd was earning $800 a week in Texas honky tonks and watching new Nashville signees Trisha Yearwood and Mark Chesnutt take off like rockets on their first singles.
Then Byrd was signed by MCA Records, the same company that launched Yearwood and Chesnutt, and he assumed he was in line for takeoff.
“I thought, `My record’s going straight to the top, too,’ ” the East Texas native recalls.
“Then `That’s The Thing About A Memory’ only got to No. 43. I’m sitting there going, `I must really stink. It ain’t happening with me like it did with Mark and Trisha.’ “
Byrd, 28, doesn’t stink, as observers of the country scene certainly know. He in fact is smelling like a rose.
His current single, “The Keeper Of The Stars,” charged up the charts and boosted sales of his second album, “No Ordinary Man,” after three previous singles–“Lifestyles Of The Not So Rich And Famous,” “Watermelon Crawl” and “The First Step”–yielded only so-so response.
He has toured with big-drawing superstar Reba McEntire in the high-profile, middle-of-the-bill spot earlier occupied by such giants as Vince Gill, Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn and John Michael Montgomery. McEntire explains why:
“Tracy Byrd is a great singer and a great-looking guy. One of the reasons he works so well with our tour is the totally different aspect he brings to the show. He is a very traditional country singer with a traditional show.
” his career has really skyrocketed.”
It can be expected to continue rising. After two albums that contained hits but didn’t measure up to his own standards, he is looking forward to one in July that he describes as killer.
In other words, he finally has mounted the launch pad.
“We’ve sold about 600,000 units in the last 12 weeks,” he says. ” `Keeper’ took us from gold to platinum quick. And they’re still getting orders in.”
Not small orders, either. MCA-Nashville executive Tony Brown reports the album sold 50,000 copies two weeks ago.
This turn of events is richly satisfying to Byrd for more than the obvious reasons. For one thing, he was the one who goaded MCA executives into making “Keeper” the album’s fourth single. (“They said, `It’s four minutes and 10 seconds long and we don’t think radio will play it,’ and I said, `All I know is, people are crying their eyes out every night in the front row and writing me letters saying it changed their lives.’ “)
For another, he has had to sit by and watch several singers signed after him–including fellow East Texan and friend Clay Walker–blow past him to become overnight sensations while his own records had to fight to get noticed.
“Clay graduated from high school with my little sister,” Byrd says. “We’re from the same town–Vidor, Texas–and I was super happy for Clay, but, yeah, it was frustrating to me. I was a little depressed. I hung in there, though, and we kept cutting .”
Son of an employee of the DuPont Chemical Co. in Orange, Texas, Byrd had been playing bars from Houston to Lake Charles, La., for 2 1/2 years when he was recruited to take over Mark Chesnutt’s locally prominent slot in a Beaumont, Texas, watering hole called Cutter’s.
The place’s owner had divined that Chesnutt was soon to be signed to a major recording contract, and he wanted to have Byrd established as the replacement before Chesnutt left. Starting there as Chesnutt’s opening act, Byrd ended up playing at Cutter’s 3 1/2 years and leaving with a recording contract of his own, along with some vivid memories.
“I wouldn’t trade those days for nothin’–every night was an adventure,” he says, mentioning one memorable Wednesday altercation that involved about 50 of that evening’s 300 patrons.
“People say, `You played at a nightclub?’ and I say, `No, I played at a beer joint.’ In fact, I’d always say that onstage: `Friends, this is a beer joint.’ “
But none of that kept Byrd from becoming one of the more heavily pursued of Nashville’s ’90s signees.
His initial showcase in the Tennessee capital three years ago drew top executives from such companies as Warner Bros., Capitol (now Liberty) and Sony. MCA had a representative there, too, but only a lower-level employee because, he says the firm’s higher-ups thought they had all the traditional-styled singers they needed.
The MCA representative was so enthralled by Byrd’s showcase that he pleaded with his bosses, and they invited the Texan to audition privately with just his guitar at their offices the next morning.
After he did, they got in line–behind a delegation from Warner Bros.–to come to Cutter’s on a weekend and see his regular show. Both labels made offers, and Byrd’s lawyer played them off each other for six months.
“Finally he called me up at home and said, `They’ve given all they’re gonna give, and both of ’em are equal. Where do you want to be? Think about it a couple of days and call me back.’ I said, `Don’t hang up. MCA.’ They’re both great labels, but I had watched MCA for four years, and it seemed like they were devoted to an artist and knew that sometimes it took years of development to break an artist.”
That kind of company turned out to be the kind he needed. His self-titled debut album, made with producer Keith Stegall and released in 1993, required assistance from Tony Brown to get its biggest hit, a song called “Holdin’ Heaven.”
When the time came to record his second album, Brown was unavailable, so Byrd chose Nashville veteran Jerry Crutchfield, long Tanya Tucker’s producer, and together they came up with “No Ordinary Man.”
He and Crutchfield went into the studio to begin the third album late last year. The result, titled “Love Lessons” and scheduled for release in mid-July, is head and shoulders above his previous two collections, Byrd promises.
“My first two albums I haven’t listened to five times apiece,” he says. “This one, I bet I’ve listened to it 350 times already. I found that niche that I’ve been looking for between the traditional country and the groovin’ new country kind of sound.”
He cites his opportunity to appear before McEntire’s huge crowds as greatly responsible for his late blooming.
“You can’t put a price tag on being on tour with her,” he says. “For example, we played the Pyramid in Memphis and sold it out: 20,000 people. “I’d have to play 20 beer joints to get that kind of exposure. Twenty big beer joints.”
