What a difference a year makes.
In 1991, when country superstar Garth Brooks was out on tour, Martina McBride was part of his touring company - as a T-shirt hawker in the arena concession stands.Just last week Brooks started his 1992 tour in Denver, and McBride was again with the company - but this time as the opening act for what is, arguably, one of the hottest touring shows in the country.
One of the earliest dates in the tour (77 shows between May 30 and mid-December) is Saturday night in the Delta Center. Tickets have long been sold out.
In the past year (and just within the past couple of weeks), McBride has done the following:
- Signed a recording contract with RCA and released her first album, "The Time Has Come."
- Released her first single (the title cut, most recently listed as No. 29 on Billboard magazine's Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart and designated as a song that is "moving up the chart").
- Been featured on ABC's "Good Morning America" last week as part of its "Up and Country" segments about hot new country artists.
- Released her first video, based on her album's title song, and just recently finished taping her second, scheduled to be released in July along with a second cut from the album, "That's Me."
- Made her first appearance on Grand Old Opry on May 22.
- Been mentioned in USA To
See MCBRIDE on W3
day on May 27 as "a star emergent."
Interviewed two weeks ago via telephone from Nashville, McBride said that being part of Garth Brooks' tour "is real exciting. The first show isn't until the second, so I don't have any real `tour stories' to tell, but I feel real lucky. I don't know it it's quite sunk in yet."
McBride wasn't peddling T-shirts when Brooks came through Salt Lake City last year as part of the Judds' farewell tour. She was busy in Nashville recording the songs for her first RCA album.
She grew up in a musical family in a small Kansas town near the Oklahoma border. There were only 10 students in her high school graduating class. (During her recent Good Morning America appearance, it was noted that she could always say something on her resumes about being among the top 10 students in her class.)
McBride's father, Daryl Schiff, owns and operates a 500-acre wheat and cattle farm and also owns a store. There's also a family country band - The Schiffters - where Martina got her start as a performer.
She was part of the family band nearly every weekend from the time she was 8 or 9 until graduating from high school. Dad played guitar and handled some vocals, Mom worked the soundboard, her younger brother, Marty (who plays acoustic guitar in her new road band), played both steel and lead guitar, and Martina did vocals and keyboards.
But it's a big jump from playing Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion halls and rented high school gymnasiums with a family band to performing in giant arenas and stadiums across the country with Garth Brooks.
McBride will have the first 30 minutes of Brooks' show.
"I'll be mostly showcasing songs from the album," she said, adding that she may experiment with some new material later in the tour - songs that could go into her second album, which she'll begin recording in October.
Martina's husband, John McBride, is production manager for Brooks' tour - a situation she says had no bearing on her being selected as the opening act for the tour.
Brooks "is very supportive of country music and he likes to help people. I think he just saw that I was working hard and felt like giving me a shot. I really don't know why . . . it's hard for me to imagine, with all of the new and established talent around. I just feel real fortunate."
In the weeks preceding the start of the tour, McBride was busy putting together her own road band.
"We've got a bunch of great musicians," she said. The six-member band includes three from Texas, two from Kansas (her brother and a drummer she'd performed with on prior occasions), and Charlie Whitten, who played steel guitar for The Judds for eight years.
McBride is as careful in selecting her material as she is in choosing her musicians.
She hand-picked all of the tunes in her "The Time Has Come" recording.
"Some artists have their producers find their material, but it's such a personal thing for me. I pay a lot of attention to the lyrics," said McBride. "I have to feel like it's something I would say. There are some songs that I passed on that could've been big hits, but they didn't say enough; they were too fluffy or said something I didn't agree with morally.
"When I hear a song by an artist, I feel that's what they believe in. I only sing songs that portray messages that I want to say or have lessons or words that I agree with. I don't write myself, so it's quite a challenge."
McBride said she listened to about 2,000 songs before coming up with the nine on her "The Time Has Come" album for RCA.
(I told McBride that I had listened to her tape and that my first impression was that each of the songs relayed a significant message. I'm not surprised that the title cut is racing up the charts. McBride is an attractive young performer with a strong, beautiful voice. We'll be seeing more of her, I'm sure.)
McBride mentioned that she has written a few songs, "but some people are born writers and I feel that I was given a gift to sing. It's a lot of fun to go out and find the material. There are people who have that creative need to write, so I've never really taken the time to learn that craft. It's more fun to take something somebody else wrote and try to bring my own emotion to it and do it justice."
"The Time Has Come" is more than just the title of McBride's first album.
It could also refer to where her career is at this point - and that the huge country music industry is ready for a new star: Martina McBride.