After nearly disappearing from view two years ago, Jo Dee Messina hung on to emerge as one of country's hottest stars.
June 4, 1999 BY BRIAN MCCOLLUM
FREE PRESS MUSIC WRITER
All right, we knew country stars were an unpretentious lot. But here, for heaven's sake, is Jo Dee Messina, cleaning her kitchen cabinets while she conducts an interview.
Not that she's disengaged from the conversation. No, she's got plenty of serious stuff to talk about -- namely, the amazing revival of her career after almost losing everything, a triumph capped by a big win at last month's Academy of Country Music Awards, where she took top female honors.
It's just that, well, Messina is busy these days. Real busy. Dashing across the country, performing here, starring there, radio, press, TV, the works. She spent 256 days on the concert road in 1998. She'll endure -- aww, probably enjoy -- the same relentless schedule this year, as her latest album parks itself in the top 10 and noses toward double platinum status.
So when she gets an actual spare moment to scrub her furnishings at home just outside Nashville, she dives in with relish.
"I've been very lucky," she says. "I always tell folks that if you ever begin to believe you're more than you really are, that's when it's time to step back and take a look at things."
Acting humble is a science in country music -- Garth Brooks could write the textbook, and probably will, if it gets him on TV -- but with Messina, you have the feeling the modesty is very, very genuine.
Those close to the 28-year-old Boston native say fame still hasn't sunk in. She's not taking anything for granted. And that's no surprise, considering just how close Messina came to becoming the latest casualty of the modern Nashville machine, to losing her career and winding up as a single-paragraph entry in the next "Encyclopedia of Country Music."
After a pair of top 10 hits in 1996 -- including the No. 1 single, "Heads Carolina, Tails California" -- Messina disappeared from public view. When a third single from that breakthrough album failed to hit, her label, Curb Records, decided to back off promoting the record, and set its sights on the follow-up. Work on that disc bogged down as Messina and the label hunted for the right set of songs.
Like so many contemporary country artists, she abruptly found herself at the mercy of a merciless industry driven by hit singles and fresh faces. Nashville in the '90s is a revolving door, and Messina realized she was headed to the outdoor side. The calls from high-powered industry players quit coming in, the party invitations quit showing up.
"The touring slowed down, the airplay slowed down, and pretty much the money stopped coming in," she recalls. "This gross debt that was incurred with touring and making records -- it was building and building, without being serviced."
By late 1997, Messina had finished her new record; her attorneys and management staff had finished drawing up legal papers. They sat her down to deliver the grim advice: Save yourself. File for bankruptcy.
"I said, 'Let's just wait a couple of weeks, let's meet again then,' " she says. "Then I'd keep saying let's wait a couple of weeks."
It was excruciating. But then, lightning: "Bye Bye," a sassy breakup tune made all the more fun by Messina's sweet-tinged vocals, started inching up the charts. Bit by bit, request lines started lighting up. Radio programmers began taking note. The new album, "I'm Alright," started moving off store shelves.
By spring, the song was No. 1 on the country chart. "By the grace of God and radio and fans, 'Bye Bye' did very well and enabled me to work again, to play shows," she says. "People ask me, 'Did you want to quit?' I'm just sitting there going, 'Let's try to get through next week, or next month.' Here we are a year later -- not totally out of debt, but at least with a way out."
The album's title track followed "Bye Bye" to the top spot, and Messina was soon crowned the new queen of country music.
When George Strait asked her to join this year's lineup for his supersized touring extravaganza -- a country festival that's selling out stadiums across the country -- she was flat-out floored.
"To be asked to be on this tour just blew me away at first," she says. "I was shocked, but so grateful that they chose me."
Every show, Messina has her personal assistant take snapshots from the back of the stage.
"So you see me, and then the crowd," she says. "That's so I'll always remember what it was like to be a part of this. When I'm 70 years old with my grandkids -- 'Look at all these people looking at me!' "
During the daylong festival, Messina heads out to sign autographs in Straitland, the outdoor midway where fans mingle and buy merchandise. Ask her why people are connecting with her and her music, and she pauses to think about it.
"I don't know ...I think a lot of my fans realized that I'm just me. I hang out. I talk to 'em," she says. "Maybe it's just that I love people -- maybe they can tell that. I'm not drop-dead gorgeous, I'm not intimidating, I goof around all the time."
Her friends in the business uniformly say her comeback is a blessing for country music.
"I'm tickled to death for Jo Dee," says Kenny Chesney, among Saturday's festival lineup at the Pontiac Silverdome. "We've been friends for a long time. It's always nice to see good things happen to good people. She cuts really good songs -- she deserves this."
Messina isn't taking anything for granted -- she understands, better than many, just how this business works.
"It's a frightening thing from my standpoint," she says. "There's so much incredible talent in country music right now, that it's almost ...scary. That would be the word. Because you always stay on your toes." And if you're lucky, you get an occasional chance to get on your knees and clean the house.
"All of this," says Messina, "really touches my heart."
