August 11th, 2000

How does it feel to be back on the road after a long break?

"It feels great! It really does. Taking time off was a good thing for me. i sort of rejuvenated myself. But it feels good to be back out in front of the people again. After eleven years of going in and doing a record and then hitting the road, going back home, doing another record, then hitting the road... it just got to be too much of a routine. A boring routine for me. I thought I needed some time to breathe and take a step back and look at what was going on with my own personal life. The fact is, it seemed like every year when I came off the road, it was to come home and continue to work-going back in the studio and thinking about the next project when we would only be on the third single release from the last one. After a while any artist would become exhausted from that. It made it difficult for me to have any heart about going back out there on the road."

"Today I feel that the songs mean a lot to the audience that I play to and the lyric content is very important to them. It's always so very difficult for me to find ten great songs to put on an album. I'm just not one of those artists who says, 'Well, I'm looking for some radio hits and that's about it... a little bit of country and this and that.' It's got to mean something to me as well as to the people that I'm making the music for."

"It seems like I've grown and matured with each project. I can see myself growing-not being as shy as I used to be and not being afraid to take chances here and there. I'm really proud of what's on Strong Heart, the new album. It gave me an opportunity to go to my husband (Emory Gordy Jr.) who's been my producer for many years now, and say, 'Honey, I want to do a little something different, a little edgier. Something that I can merge into what I'm already doing and make it work.' There are a couple of songs on the album that do that. One is a song that Emory and I wrote together called You Don't Get No More.I don't hear it as a single, you know? I could be wrong... but it's fun for me. It's very swampy and has a greasy feel to it-a kind of dirty feel to it. Especially with Mr. Jimmy Hall on harmonica on it. There are a lot of wonderful musicians on her that make it come alive and make it fun: Steuart Smith on guitar, my own keyboard player Mike Rojas who's been out on the road with me, Jerry Douglas and Dan Dugmore on lap steel. We have some great musicians. They give it that swampy feel. It couldn't go any other way. I tell you though, Emory is really responsible for the feel of it because he had this weird tuning going on with his bass guitar and all the other musicians were going, "Man, what are you doing?" and they were all trying to copy his licks."

So you and Emory actually wrote You Don't Get No More?

"Yes, we did. I'm not really a musician. My only instrument is my voice. If I had any other producer than Emory, it would be hard for us to communicate because he is an amazing and talented producer and musician. He plays bass on all my records. Another song that rocks is The Key of Love, which Emory and Al Anderson wrote. The reason I think that we were going in that direction this time is me. I would play records by a lot of blues artists. I'd play some of Bonnie Raitt and say, 'She's so cool. I'd love to find that little knack they have and merge it into what I'm doing today in country.' That's what I love about Linda Ronstadt, especially the Heart Like a Wheel album. It showed an edgy side of her but then also a country side. They were able to mix it up and I'm all for mixing. i feel like this record, out of all the records I've done, is the most adult one I've done. It's for the adult who's young at heart, like myself. That's what it's all about. Sometimes we look at our age and think, 'Oh, I'm aging. I have to act my age.' No you don't. It's what you feel in your heart. All the songs on this album are what I feel in my heart. The first cut, You're So Cool, is basically about a grown woman who gets a crush. There's nothing wrong with that. We all do still get crushes. I look at Harrison Ford and get a big, huge crush.'[laughs]

Tell me about your duet on the album with Travis Tritt, Thirsty. The intro to that song made my hair stand on end. It's just beautiful.

Emory and I talked a lot about that song. We thought it would be so cool to open that song with something like a morning rise. I think Travis does a wonderful job on it. He's a truly great singer and has some bluegrass roots. I love to hear him sing those sentimental-type songs. I think our voices worked really well together, too. For me to sing that song, i had to hold back a little because I just want to sing out. There's another song on here called She Never Stopped Loving Him that I had to hold back on, too. It's almost another How Can I Help You Say Goodbye. We thought it's almost an answer song to He Stopped Loving Her Today. Before long, Travis is going to be our neighbor [laughs]. He lives in Hiram, Georgia, and we're building a house in Georgia too. It won't be too much longer.

That's what I've heard. Tell me about your house.

Oh, we don't have to talk about the house. It's coming along but it won't be finished until sometime next spring. It's a very big project and took a lot of planning, just like this record.

Okay, back to the record then. Tell me about the title cut, Strong Heart.

"That's a song that Emory wrote with Kris Tyler. Emory always had that title in his head and he basically wrote around how Kris and I were both feeling in our personal lives at the moment. It's a very spiritual-type love song. So is Thirsty.

Pieces On The Ground is also a great song.

"I love songs like that. They're just spiritual, and I love having them on my albums. It's important to me. I would not have done the song if I didn't feel like I had experienced it. I wasn't sure it was going to make the album. Because when you listen to You're So Cool and You Don't Get No More and That's The Kind Of Mood I'm In and then you hear The Key of Love you have to put Pieces On The Ground at the end. When I heard that song it made me think about my uncle who had passed away-but now I think about Emory's new grandchild. His youngest daughter had her first child, Suzanne. She's fourteen months old, and is just an angel. She's this angel who has come into our lives. She smiles and is a ray of hope, like the song talks about. I carry her picture and a videotape of her that I watch on my bus every night before I go to sleep, because it's the only thing that will put me to sleep."

It's a shame that you couldn't find any good back up singers. You only have Trisha Yearwood, Matraca Berg, Ricky Skaggs, Claire Lynch, Rebecca Lynn Howard...

[laughs]"You're So Cool has Matraca and Carolyn Dawn Johnson because they wrote the song. When I heard their demo of it I fell in love with the background vocals. There's this sassy, spoiled-little-girl kind of feel. This 'yeah, yeah, yeah.' They really had it down perfectly. Of course Rebecca Lynn Howard and Ricky Skaggs are a perfect match on The Last Thing On My Mind. When we added Claire Lynch and Trisha Yearwood to My Heart Will Never Break This Way Again I thought, "Man, Trio again.'"

There are so many people in country, singers and musicians, who are willing to come in and lend their talents. Is that peculiar to Nashville and country music?

There's so much of that that goes on. So many musicians have come that way from L.A. Emory's one of them. He lived in Los Angeles for fifteen years and was a session player for people like Barbra Streisand and Billy Joel and he also went out and played with John Denver and Neil Diamond. A lot of the L.A. musicians have come to Nashville because they're looking for that feel again. Nashville has it now. You can go from one studio to the next and somebody's doing something in the same studio. It's a very cool thing. I hope that we never lose that."

When I watch you onstage it strikes me how laid back you appear. You have energy, but it's in your voice and not necessarily in running around the stage.

"One of the best compliments I was ever paid was from a friend of Emory's who became a fan. His name is Pat Johnson and he's into martial arts. He commented to me that when he watches certain people's shows he doesn't feel a part of what's going on up there. But then he said, 'With you, I always feel like I'm a part of what's going on.' We really didn't know each other that well, so it wasn't because he knew me. He's a big Willie Nelson fan, and he feels that Willie draws the audience in, but some artists don't. They put up a wall and the audience can't get beyond it. There's no connection. I try to give the people as much music as possible in my shows. I'm a singer-not a talker. I just let the music speak for itself. I know there are only ten songs on this album but there's about forty-five minutes of music on here. I think people enjoy the music as much as hearing me sing if the combination is good. I believe that's what Emory tries to do. He tries to make it very listenable and entertaining and enjoyable. Even for himself. I sometimes don't see how producers and engineers can sit every day and listen to me sing these songs over and over so many times. But Emory can remember things that just amaze me about the songs. That gives me the freedom to go in and do what I need to do. Because of taking time off the road, I was able to be much more a part of this record than ever before.