Adkins headlines night of remembrance at ballpark

Friday, July 3, 2009

Click here to enlarge this photo Photo by JAMES MINCHIN Trace Adkins' 10th album is "X (Ten)." The country star will perform at Regency Furniture Stadium July 4. Waldorf-based Kool Productions has billed the event, "A Night of Remembrance," and more than 150 family members of fallen soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan have been invited to attend. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

At the National Memorial Day Concert in Washington, D.C., Trace Adkins performed one song: "Til the Last Shot's Fired," off his latest album, "X (Ten)."

"It was an overwhelming experience," said Adkins, on the phone during one of his media days. "You just have to march out there and deliver and do the best you can and try to savor the moment."

Adkins, whose speaking voice is considerably rougher than his singing voice, apologized for calling a bit late, and seemed a bit talked-out. (He said he had been on the phone with a "long-winded" reporter from The Washington Post.)

On Independence Day, the country star will be in Waldorf, and perform for 90 minutes. The local production company, Kool Productions, has billed the event "A Night of Remembrance," and has invited more than 150 family members of fallen soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan to attend the concert as guests and meet the headliner before he takes the stage.

Adkins, meanwhile, will likely play the aforementioned, violin-driven ballad that begins on the fields of the Civil War and sweeps through the shores of Omaha Beach and fields of Vietnam and mountains of Afghanistan. He sings: "And I'm still hopin', waitin', prayin' / I did not die in vain."

Stretching out "vain" (before urging the listener to say a prayer for peace, for every fallen son), Adkins' voice has rarely sounded so reedy. He says the song continues to send chills down his spine, and it does the same thing to a reporter.

Spliced into the song is a refrain sung by the West Point Cadet Choir, and Adkins allows their voices to sing the final words. The question Adkins asks himself is this: What if we knew that soldiers were caught in a state of purgatory?

After Kool Productions was able to book Adkins, "We realized he had been very active in support of the military," said co-founder Ray Mertz. "After we were able to get a deal, we were then fortunate enough to have him for a July 4 event."

Adkin's second single from 2005's "Song's About Me," "Arlington," was a first-person account of a soldier about to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. But Adkins has also performed for troops overseas. In late 2008, he spent about 10 days in Iraq and Afghanistan, playing three or four concerts a day with the USO.

"It's always a humbling experience to visit the troops," Adkins said. "Talk about feeling like a worthless human being. These guys are doing all the heavy lifting and I'm just reaping the rewards."

During his USO tours, Adkins noted that he tried to make his performances light and fun, to provide his audience a brief escape from the realities of their day jobs rather than reaffirm them. He was referring — indirectly, anyway — to another side of his catalogue: Another thing Adkins is known for, after all, is his willingness to record songs others shy away from.

Say, 2005's "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk." It was a crossover hit about nice badonkadonks, and it placed Adkins in the Hot 100's Top 40 for the first time. Adkins, at times, has made fine humor in the linkage of mainstream country stars to their pop chart-topping hip hop/R&B counterparts. For example, in the funkabilly "Hillbilly Rich," off X (Ten)," he notes, in some words, that country stars, too, have a tendency to amass piles of bling.

Adkins grew up in Sarepta, La., a dry town with five churches and fewer than 1,000 residents. In his 2007 book, "A Personal Stand: Observations and Opinions from a Free-Thinking Roughneck," Adkins likens his early years to a "Norman-Rockwell-style" Southern childhood in small town America.

He played football from seventh grade through his freshman year at Louisiana Tech University. "Football is life, encapsulated," he wrote.

In high school, Adkins had his first of several near-death experiences, when he plowed a '55 Chevrolet truck into the back of a school bus.

Growing up, Adkins sang bass in a Southern gospel quartet, The New Commitments, which played in churches. He left the group, though (after a pastor said his hair was too long to enter a church), and began to sample country singing at jubilees, where he could be backed by a band.

For Adkins, college ended shortly after injuries forced him out of football. He tried, at first, to get a job at his father's paper plant, but his father would not allow it. He got a job in an oil field, then an offshore oil rig, playing guitar and singing at night. Six years later, a honky tonk band pulled him onshore, and a six-month leave turned into three years that broke up his first marriage and ignited alcoholic tendencies. (Adkins went to rehab in 2001 and says he has been sober for almost six years.)

Adkins quit the honky tonk circuit and went back to the rig. However, a booking agent convinced him to return — and to sell his house and move to Nashville, where he was discovered and signed by an executive at Capitol Records.

His 1997 debut album, "Dreamin' Out Loud," had the No. 1 single, "(This Ain't) No Thinkin' Thing," and while subsequent albums were commercially successful, it took him another decade to snag a No. 1 ("Ladies Love Country Boys"). Last year, Adkins' public profile shot up even higher, though, when he was the runner-up on Donald Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice" television show, during which he raised more than $500,000 for a food allergy charity, as his young daughter has a severe case.

Adkins said he likes songs that reflect both the good times and the bad, songs that are both happy and reflective. And his new album — his 10th, as the title implies — indeed includes a mix, with Adkins synthesizing traditional notions of a country sound to varying degrees, and his vocals, tough yet refined, providing the only constant.

Although he did not write the songs, two tracks, the poppy "Happy to Be Here" and "Sometimes a Man" (a dose of neo-George Jones), conjure the deaths he has managed to escape (his second wife shot him the chest) and a few of the demons he has managed to shed. Unlike Jones or Johnny Cash, though, Adkins has no intention of allowing his life to turn into a muse. He said he was hesitant to include "Happy to Be Here" on the album, but his label insisted.

"The only reason I am uncomfortable with ‘Happy to Be Here,'" Adkins said, "is that I don't want to capitalize on the fact that I've had some near death experiences."

In "Let's Do That Again," country meets Al Green. In a rollicking country ditty, "Hauling One Thing," a truck driver is heading home to his wife after a long job, hauling, uh, just one thing.

In "Better Than I Thought," a man surrounded by pizza boxes (while a thick drum beat marches behind a banjo) reckons his post-breakup phase could be going a lot worse. In "Muddy Water," Adkins seems to reflect on his Southern gospel roots. And in a laugh-out-loud single, "Marry for Money," a Piedmont blues-esque intro segues into classic honky honk.

Meanwhile, in "All I Can Ask for Anymore," Adkins reflects on how his priorities have crystallized; all he cares about is the well-being of his wife (his third, Rhonda) and children.

They live on a farm near Nashville.

"I come out on the road to rest," he said, "because when I'm home I work myself to death. There's that satisfaction of a hard day's work — you're all dirty, full of stink and disgusting — and there's that instant gratification."

If you go

Trace Adkins will perform July 4 at Regency Furniture Stadium. Gates open at 6 p.m. John Luskey of North Beach will open the show, celebrating the release of a new CD, at 7 p.m. and Adkins will perform from 8:30 to 10 p.m. The stadium is at 11765 St. Linus Drive, Waldorf. Tickets range from $55 to $75. Call 301-638-9788. Go to www.somdbluecrabs.com.