First Published in Country Music International – January 1999

Balancing a love of and commitment to traditional country music with the commercial sheen necessary to the success country radio airplay can bring is no easy feat. But Nashville newcomer SARA EVANS may just have pulled it off with her new album, No Place That Far. "It's a little more contemporary," she tells Alan Cackett, "but we stuck to our guns. It's still country."

The toughest thing in the world for any budding country singer is seeing your first album make the critics' year-end Top Ten lists around the world, then watch helplessly as radio ignores one single after another as the album sits forlornly on the shelf, being passed over by a record buying public, who have been denied the opportunity to hear your music.

This is exactly what happened to Sara Evans who, despite being one of the most critically-acclaimed newcomers in Nashville, remains a household secret. Since her debut with THREE CHORDS AND THE TRUTH in the summer of 1997, Evans has sung on albums by Vince Gill and Martina McBride, was the youngest artist to be featured on the Tammy Wynette tribute album, and has also recorded a song for the film Clay Pigeons, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Janeane Garofalo and Vince Vaughan.

Very much an old-fashioned country girl with savvy, Evans knows what it takes to realise her dream of becoming a country music star. Though she is only 27, she has sung and performed in public for the past 23 years and is used to the ups-and-downs of the music business. When I spoke to her, she was in seventh heaven: her second album, NO PLACE THAT FAR, had just been released, and the title track single had just entered the Top 30 and looked set to go all the way into the Top Ten.

“I'm very excited,” she beams. “I'm on top of the world. We had to do a lot of planning and think about what kind of record we were going to make. We knew that in the United States it's not the same as where you guys are. It's not really country anymore, and if you're a real traditionalist you have a harder time getting on the radio. So we made a record that's more modern, a little bit more contemporary, but I think we stuck to our guns—it's still country.”

Producing a genuine country record was really important to Sara. Working with producers Buddy Cannon and Norro Wilson, she forged a sound that retains the heart of country music, but is also identifiable as the sound of the late 1990s.

A profilic writer, Sara co-wrote five of the songs including No Place That Far, a romantic, heartfelt piano ballad featuring Vince Gill on background vocals. One of the songs she is proudest of is one she didn't write, Time Won't Tell, written by Beth Nielsen Chapman and Harlan Howard. Initially, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood had planned to record the song for their long-anticipated duet album, but determined Sara pleaded with Howard for him to let her have it.

“I just asked Harlan for it”' she explains, “and reminded him that in the past he has always been known for giving his great songs to newer artists. Like I Fall To Pieces and things like that. Harlan has always been a big supporter of my stuff, and he said: ‘You know, you're right. You can have the song.’” So what about Garth and Trisha? “I don't care,” she laughs. “They have so many hit songs. They can spare one.”

Though recognised for her heartbreaking ballads, Sara can also kick-up her heels and have fun, as she shows with the album's butt-kicking opener, The Great Unknown. The song's production smokes, as does Sara's performance. “We start all our live shows with that song, and it's hard,” she says. “That's like right-out-of-the-barrel, I'm singing as high and as loud as I can. But it's fun.”

The new album not only features Vince Gill, but also Martina McBride, Alison Krauss and Sara's younger sisters, Ashley and Lesley, on background vocals. She explains that when she was writing the plaintive These Days with frequent collaborator Billy Yates, she could hear Alison Krauss harmonising with her to highlight the song's heartbreak.

“I'm a huge Alison Krauss fan,” she says. “Her husband and her brother played in my band for some shows, so that's how I met her. I was in such awe of her, she's just incredible. I was in the studio with her, but my vocals were already done. You pretty much have to do that, because it would take a really long time if we were trying to do it together. A lot of these artists are on a tight schedule. They're busy, so we just get my vocals done, then they come in and do their bit. But I'm always there.”

Close family ties are important to Sara. Although her parents were not musically inclined, her mother Pat's father was one of 11 children and they were all singers. Aunts, uncles and grandparents all grew up singing old-time gospel music. Sara particularly liked the annual family reunions were everybody was singing good old time mountain music with lots of great harmonies. “I learned a lot just listening to them and trying to sing as loud as they did.”

The bright lights of Music Row and the big-city life of Nashville are a long way from her childhood days on the family's remote tobacco farm in Missouri. “We raised corn, beans, cattle and hogs. Later we raised tobacco. We were a very poor farm family,” she says.

She agrees that she is ust an old-fashioned country girl. “I love make-up and glamour and all that stuff, the whole female aspect of being a country singer,” she says. “And so I try and be that. But in so many ways, especially when I'm home, I'm just like an ol' white trash farm kid. We strive to be a white trash family and are pretty god at it!”

She laughs, then recalls her mother's reaction when she told her last year that she would be travelling to Britain to co-host the British Country Music Awards Show on television. “My mother was bawling, she just couldn't believe it,” she says animatedly, “I was totally honoured. It was definitely worth the trip and all that. The whole time I was up there, I was thinking: ‘I cannot believe I'm doing this. I've got to get a tape of it to show my mom. She's going to die.’"

Almost as big a thrill as doing the awards show was meeting rock singer Bryan Adams at a London club night just a couple of days after the show. “We went to a club called The Bluebirds with some people from the record label,” she says. “We are going to give one of my CDs to Bryan and ask him to sign a second one and give it back to me, but he asked me to sign the one I was giving him. So I've got his autograph and also a picture of me sitting of his lap that I will treasure forever.”

Further proof of the high regard in which Sara is held in Nashville came when she was invited by Tony Brown to sing Almost New for the film Clay Pigeons. “He called the label and asked if they thought I'd be interested in doing that,” she explains. “He'd just heard the demo of the song and  thought it was perfect for me, so we went in and cut it. It's really different for me. It's like a 1950s pop song, really beautiful, and I sang it totally differently from how I normally would, real soft and kind of airy, not real big-mouth like I usually am. Everything about me fits that era,” she observes, “the 1950s and 1960s. People in the States are screaming for traditional, better-quality music. There are so many ditties out there.”

She accepts that radio will never go back to traditional country in any significant way, but states that she has no intention of jumping on the pop-country bandwagon; meanwhile, her immediate goal is to become established in the States. It will be an uphill battle, but she possesses the determination, grit and talent to succeed. Then she intends to turn her attention to Britain and Europe.

“I hope to go back with my band and play for something like two weeks,” she promises. “I loved it the last time I was there, but I only got to stay for four days. Next time I want to try and make it a really long visit, maybe make myself some vacation time as well, not just work. I'd never been anywhere overseas until then. Now I feel like an international star. I want to travel the rest of Europe, too. It's so beautiful over there.”