Trisha Yearwood

She's probably unknown to most Beat readers despite having sold 10 million albums. And if she is known at all, it's possibly because she's married to Robert Reynolds, the bass player in hit paraders, The Mavericks. It would possibly cut little ice to suggest that Trisha's amazing voice and interpretative skills make her the Linda Ronstadt of her generation, and yet, when you consider that Ocean Colour Scene's Steve Cradock has just produced P.P. Arnold on a version of Michael Nesmith's Different Drum, a song that was first popularised by Linda Ronstadt, it might just be that Yearwood's time is at hand.

And before you're tempted to trash Trish consider this; anyone who has a tepee in the garden and keeps an iguana called Steve Earle can't be so run of the mill, can they?

I spoke to Trisha when she called into the UK to plug he excellent new album, Where Your Road Leads, en route to co starring with Pavarotti, Jon Bon Jovi and the Spice quartet in the War Child For Liberia benefit. I wondered how he felt being in a country where her old man had become a pop star.

"Oh yeah, and thank you for putting them on your cover! I'm really proud for him, it's been a long time coming and I think this (Trampoline) is the best album they've made. I'm glad the UK is getting it 'cos America hasn't caught on."

Yearwood has been a UK visitor for five years, five years in which then profile of country music has increased in the UK. I suggested to her that this could be, to borrow Mary Chapin Carpenter's dictum, because country is the last refuge of the song.

"I think there's a degree of truth in that. I think especially in the States country music is where great songwriting has ended up. A lot of pop is just about the feel, which is great, but a lot of the great story telling pop writers have gone to country music."

Now as I said in the intro, Trisha Yearwood is one of the very best interpretative singers around; she doesn't write. So given the demands for good songs from her contemporaries is it difficult finding good material?

"It can be but I'm lucky in that I'm commercially successful but a little left of centre in my song choices so the number of artists who share my taste is fewer."

And what about the Gnashville image, the musical sausage machine in which the singer is merely the vehicle for writers' and publishers' pension enhancement. Does she get any say in what she records?

"I absolutely choose my own songs. I agree that it is a bit like a factory and it's bigger now than when I signed to MCA seven years ago because business has changed an awful lot just in that short a time. When I signed I knew the kind of music I wanted to make, nobody sat in the boardroom deciding on an image. This is who I am. It's my job to find songs that reflect that."

It comes out in the conversation that, contrary to my belief, Trisha does write, though she hasn't yet recorded any of her songs. Did she feel overpowered by the great writers she gets to work with?

"When you find a song like This Song Remembers When or Bus To St. Cloud you kinda go, 'OK, I'll just sing', because if I could write a song like that I'd put it on my album. Songs have got to stand up to pretty high scrutiny to get on my record, and I've found that my own writing is not up to that standard. There's potential there but it's a real effort for me. It doesn't come naturally, whilst singing is like breathing to me. As long as I can find songs that feel like they're mine when I'm done with them then that is my form of expression."

We go on to agree that the art of the singer tends to get short shrift when compared to the singer songwriter and that such an attitude tends to overlook the brilliance of such masters as Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and Patsy Cline. After all, Trisha rightly reasons, "it's not as important who writes the song as it is how the song affects me".