First Published in Country Music International – February 1999

Since finding overnight fame in 1992 with Achy Breaky Heart, Billy Ray Cyrus has struggled to maintain his profile on country radio, eschewing trendy r&b for his bluegrass roots and finally delivering a radio-friendly album that nevertheless retains his musical integrity. Alan Cackett meets the one the Brazilians call The Crazy Man

"I'm just concentrating on being who I am and making my music," says Billy Ray Cyrus. "I'm very fortunate to get to do what I love for a living, and that's make music."

Six years after being catapulted to instant stardom with Achy Breaky Heart, Billy Ray Cyrus has come to terms with his role within country music and overcome the criticism that dubbed him a lightweight flash-in-the pan. Talking from his record label's Nashville offices, he was in buoyant mood, pleased as punch that this single, Busy Man, is scoring well on country radio, and enthusing about his SHOT FULL OF LOVE album, the fans in Brazil and Great Britian and his plans for 1999, which he hopes will include film work and a return to Europe in the summer.

Having thrown off his beef-cake image, Billy Ray is now very much a family man, and realises how easy it is to become wrapped up in your work at the expense of family and children. American singer-songwriter Harry Chapin captured that story perfectly in his 1974 American pop hit Cats In The Cradle, a song that is virtually unknown in Britain. Busy Man updates that theme, encapsulating the problems faced by so many hard-working husbands as they try to balance the pressures of work and raising kids.

"Here in the States, a lot of radio people are calling Busy Man the ‘Cats in the Cradle of the 1990s,’” he bubbles. "When I first heard it, it hit me, just like Cats in the Cradle, with such a positive message."

Family is very important to Billy Ray, who lives in a big plantation-style house on a 500-acre estate near Franklin, south of Nashville, with wife Tish and their two kids, son Braison Chance and daughter Destiny Hope. Another son, Christopher Cody, lives with his mother in South Carolina. Two other children, from Tish's previous marriage, son Trace and daughter Brandi, also live nearby with Tish's mother. "I enjoy playing with the kids," he says.

"We have all this land where they can run about and play. That can be great fun."

He reflects on the sometimes uncomfortable glare of the spotlight. Specifically, he laments how the press chose to depict him as a gyrating hunk, ignoring his more serious, sensitive, even religious side. "I come from a close-knit family and sometimes I feel I am one of the most misunderstood entertainers ever. The perception was really the complete opposite of who I am and where I come from,' he says matter-of-factly. "Heck, I am a guy from Eastern Kentucky whose dad was in a gospel quarter. My grandfather Papaw was a Pentecostal preacher; my mom played bluegrass."

Billy Ray was slammed for his fame, which seemed to have come too quickly and too easily. He topped the charts overnight, becoming a household name in America and around the world. That was the fun part, but when his follow-up records failed to consolidate the success of his debut, country radio all but deserted him, as the tabloids tore his personal life to shreds.

"It was crazy," he reminisces."It's been a very unuquie sequence of events, to hit and ride to the top of the mountain and then come back down under a barrage of negativity. But the Good Lord blessed me with enough intelligence to regroup my spirit, my heart, my mind, and at the same time keep doing what I love—making music."

He admits that he was very fortunate to have Achy Breaky Heart cross a lot of boundaries and take him to many places in the world that didn't even have country music formats. "I can go down to South America and play, or just about anywhere in the world," he says.

Billy Ray first toured Brazil in the summer of 1997. A duet with the multi-platinum selling Brazilian country duo Chitaozinho & Xororo of She's Not Crying Anymore became a hit single and was included on a Brazilian greatest hits album that sold several hundred thousand copies. "You know what was neat about Brazil?," he says. "They were extremely passionate and sang along with every song, even though they spoke Portuguese."

A week of performances and interviews in Brazil saw all his shows sold out, and he did a live TV benefit show for UNICEF that was broadcast to 70 million people. He left with a new nickname and slogan: "They have a saying down there 'Eo sou louco'—which means: ‘I am crazy’—that they were chanting at me at the concerts. At the end of benefit TV show, I held up my fist and hollered: 'Eu sou louco!' So everybody who stopped me for autographs would say 'Eu sou louco! Autograf!' I'm not sure if everybody knew who I was, but now I am ‘The crazy Man.’”

He talks further about Europe, specifically Great Britain, as the warm reception he received during his 1997 autumn tour has encouraged him to return before the end of this year. "I loved it," he says. "I've been to England three times before that. I didn't do concerts, just TV shows. But I've made it a rule: I'm never going to cross the pond again unless I'm coming to do concerts, because I love doing concerts. The fans over there are great and they take the music seriously. They are as passionate about it as I am."

If Billy Ray and the American press have sometimes had a less-than-rosy relationship, he deserves credit for taking the high road. A God-fearing southern boy, he was determined to prove that there was more to him than the press pundits would have the public believe. Each album has seen a growing maturity in both vocal skills and songwriting. "I just tried to keep on making music and doing my own thing," he says. "There wasn't really much else I could do. I'm proud that i kept my feet on the ground, stayed focused and that the music has kept growing." 

Though he has maintained a heavy touring schedule and been one of the Top Ten selling country acts of the 1990s, his record label still agonised over his lack of visibility on American country radio. When his third album, STORM IN THE HEARTLAND, failed to produce a Top ten single, panic set in at the Mercury Nashville offices. They scheduled a session for Billy Ray with producer Barry Beckett, a former Muscle Shoals player who had previously worked with Neal McCoy, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Hank Williams Jr. But just days before the sessions were to take place, Cyrus cancelled them. "He wanted me to record a bunch of songs that other people wrote, using the same musicians everybody in Nashville uses," he explains.

Instead, he retreated to the small home studio of his guitarist, Terry Shelton, to record some demons and show his label the direction he felt he should be taking, returning to his Kentucky roots, drawing on the wealth of music he had heard while growing up.

The 1996 album that resulted from those home-made demos, TRAIL OF TEARS, was a critical success. In fact, many of Billy Ray's earlier critics fell over themselves to lavish praise on the album. Few have approached the music business with more genuine honesty, kindness and integrity, and it was high time the much maligned Billy Ray was recognised for it. "I felt that it was important to get back to my roots," he says.

But the album still didn't bring him back to country radio. That came about while he was preparing COVER TO COVER, a greatest hits set with a difference. Keith Stegall, Mercury Nashville's head of A&R, produced three new tracks, and the summer of 1997 found Billy Ray back on the charts with his most successful single in years, It's All The Same To Me. Grateful to be back in the fold, Billy Ray was mystified by song's success.

"I'm not sure why it happened," he says. "I think it was the song and also Keith Stegall's production. A lot of it's the timing. Everything tends to go full circle in this business, and it just came around for me with that song. You can never take country radio for granted. It can be gone just like that. There's a lot of other things people can play. It's a real honour for me to be back on country radio."

Having made that all-important return, there was no way that either Billy Ray or his label were going to rock the boat. The election of Stegall as producer proved a providential manoeuvre, as he appeared to have an exact fix on exactly what Billy Ray and his material required for maximum effect. While it looked a most unlikely combination, it clicked perfectly into place, and the same team went in to cut the latest CYRUS album, SHOT FULL OF LOVE.

"That's a good way of putting it," he agrees. "It clicks into place, sounds right, the vibes were good. Keith is a great coach. He has years of experience, and with the success that he has, he's been a real influential man in country music. To work with Keith on this project was a really important part of the album, and a real growing experience for me."

For the first time in his career, Billy Ray took time out from his busy schedule to do a planned studio album. He called on the best writers in town, utilising songs, by Stegall, Bob DiPiero, Al Anderson, Bob McDill, Billy Falcon and Gary Harrison. "This is the first time I've used the A&R department in six albums," he admits.

Not all the songs came from the usual Music Row song search. McDill's Shot Full Of Love dates back almost 20 years, and has been cut by everyone from Don Williams and Juice Newton to The McCarters and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. It was the latter's version that Billy Ray recalled.

"We did it in such a different style than anybody who has ever recorded the song," he says. "I started playing Shot Full Of Love as early as 1982 or 1983. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band had the song out and I worked it up with my band and played it in the bar I was playing in Ironton, Ohio. We played the song every night, five nights a week, for a year-and-half until the club burnt down in 1984. I never played it again until I recorded this album."

Another song that Billy Ray brought to the sessions was Missing You. "It's not the Police song of the same title," he explains. "This one was previously recorded by Kenny Rogers and Steve Wariner. I started to record it back in 1994, then I found out it was on Steve's latest album. I just knew that was going to be a Number One record for Steve." Although Wariner included the song on his DRIVE album, Missing You was never released as a single.

Bob DiPiero's Give My Heart To You is a working man's theme that Billy Ray describes as a true-life song: "When I heard it I thought: ‘Gosh! This is my life,’” he enthuses. "It seems to be one of the leading candidates for the next single."

Another song that is a likely choice for a single is the Gary Harrison and Keith Stegall composition, The American Dream, which has been likened to a country American Pie. "I'm really proud that I was able to get that song," says Billy Ray. "It's very articulate about American's past, present and future. I would love it to be a single, even though it's more than four minutes long. Gary also wrote Strawberry Wine, so I think he knows what he's doing."

Singing with a new confidence and maturity showing in his voice, Billy Ray has come up with a different kind of album, and one which, for the first time, contains none of his own compositions. It's a complete turnaround from the bluegrass-flavoured TRAIL OF TEARS, full of radio-friendly tunes, yet each of the songs has something lyrically to say.

"We wanted to listen to the best songwriters in the world," he continues, “and find songs that were true to my life. I can't think a song, I have to have lived it. So we had to find songs that fitted me. I intentionally kept my songs out of the mix, because I knew that I'd want to use as many of my songs as I could."

It is a ploy that seems to have worked, with initial sales of the album being impressive following the radio breakthrough with Busy Man. Even the critics are coming around to liking his new music, so Billy Ray Cyrus has much to look forward to.

"We've had some pretty successful tours, and I think our 1999 tour is going to be the best yet," he says excitedly. "Our records seem to be taking off in all the continents that this music has been to before, including Australia and South America, and we've already got two confirmed dates for Europe in the summer of 1999. I'm looking forward to going out and seeing as many fans as we can. Also, I'm looking at a couple of film projects, so it looks like it's gonna be a busy year for a busy man."