BARSTOOL BALLADEER : The Rams’ Michael Young Knows a Twang or Two About Country Music

Michael Young wants to know what happened to country music: God-fearing, twang-ridden, pickup-truck, faded-jeans, a six-pack-of-tall-boys country music. The kind of country music that makes tears well up in the corners of your eyes. The stuff that makes hound dogs wail in the night. Cowboy boots, Resistols, Western-cut shirts, honky-tonks. That kind of country music.

Michael Young isn’t interested in crossover artists . Or pseudo-C&W; singers who wear mousse and wouldn’t know sippin’ whiskey if Jack Daniels himself poured it down their throats. He can also do without city slicker imitators who’ve never heard the sweet, sultry sounds of a slide guitar or the gentle passion of a mandolin.

Writer Larry Sons once made a list:

“She’s So Ugly She Makes My Cat Bark.”

“I Caught Her Drinking Johnny Walker With Tom, Dick and Harry.”

“I Put My Heart in the Mail Last Night.”

Those are the kinds of songs Michael Young loves. Songs that tug at the sensibilities. Slice-of-America songs. Jaded innocence.

And who is Michael Young?

Los Angeles Rams, No. 88. You’ve probably seen him. Must have. An occasional spot on the Saturday or Sunday night sports highlights? Touchdown catches? The whole nine yards?

Young played football and baseball at UCLA. The El Toro resident was a second-team All-Pac 10 wide receiver during the fall and an outfielder during the spring. The Rams were kind enough to notice and selected Young in the sixth round of the 1985 National Football League draft. Last season, in limited appearances, Young caught a respectable 15 passes, three of which resulted in scores. Now that the persistent NFL player strike is finished, Young has resumed the season as a second-team wide receiver, behind former Pro Bowl selection Henry Ellard.

Young is a good-looking sort, with black, curly hair and a gentle voice. He’s 6 feet 1 and weighs about 190 pounds. The 25-year-old has the appearance of an athlete but the personality of someone you’d meet at a company picnic. He’s friendly, quick to offer a handshake or a smile. You’d trust him with your daughter or with the keys to your restored ’65 Mustang. Hardly a discouraging word ever is heard.

One day shortly before the start of his senior season at UCLA, Young received an invitation to a baseball party. Understand this much about college baseball players: sophisticated, they are not. In the past, a UCLA baseball bash had all the subtlety of a sucker punch: “Here’s your brew, dude. Pizza’s in the kitchen.” That sort of thing.

With this in mind, Young accepted the invitation and jotted down directions. The party was planned for Tory Lovullo’s house in Encino. Lovullo played second base for the Bruins. This is the same Tory Lovullo who earned All-America honors and now plays in the Detroit Tigers minor league system.

Anyway, Young and a friend drove to Lovullo’s parents’ house. They found themselves surrounded by sweeping palms, stately mansions, manicured yards. Young looked at his scribbled directions.

“We’re lost,” he said. “Obviously, we have the wrong address.”

No, the number, street and city jibed. And there--the driveway and adjacent curb space dotted with Mercedes-Benzes, Rolls-Royces, BMWs--was the Lovullo home. A valet jerked open the car door. This was not your average UCLA baseball party.

Young walked toward the entrance, his mind scrambling for answers.

“OK, maybe Tory’s folks invited a few of their friends.”

“OK, maybe our party is in the backyard.”

“OK, maybe I’m early.”

Young knocked on the front door and entered. The first person he saw was Kenny Rogers. Young’s jaw dropped. Over there were Buck Owens and his son, Buddy. And wasn’t that Merle Haggard?

This wasn’t a team get-together. This was a party of 350. Of country-Western stars. Someone had substituted a snazzy UCLA fund-raiser for the usual pizza-and-beer bash.

It turns out Tory Lovullo is Sam Lovullo’s kid. Sam, it turns out, produces “Hee Haw,” a nationally syndicated TV program that regularly features the best country-Western talent available. If you can strum a sad chord, pick a six-string or fake a drawl, you set your sights on “Hee-Haw.”

Ever since he was 13, singing songs with his childhood friend, Troy Korsgaden, at their junior high assemblies in Visalia, Young has wanted to become an entertainer. Back then, he imitated Elvis Presley. For an assembly one day, Korsgaden played the guitar while Young sang Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

“For a long time, I wanted to be a pop singer,” Young says. “I’ve never told anyone that. You don’t tell the other kids that when you’re 11, 12, 13. But I’ve always had that dream.”

Says Korsgaden: “He’d come over to the house, and we’d jam around. Whatever he felt like singing, it didn’t matter because I could play by ear. Singers . . . that’s the kind of thing we wanted to be. I guess we idolized those people.”

So here is Young, face to face with legends. Young never liked country music until he left for UCLA. Homesick, Young would listen to country stations because it reminded him of Visalia. Soon thereafter, he became an aficionado.

Midway through the party, members of the “Hee Haw” cast made their way to a spacious game room. A band played. Soon, Buck Owens stepped onto the improvised stage and sang a song. Then Buddy Owens sang one. Young thumped his foot on the floor.

“Hey, Young!” shouted a UCLA teammate. “Why don’t you get up there?”

Good question. Young often sang in the outfield, at batting practice, in the shower, even at his own wedding. But never in front of people who did this sort of thing for a living.

“What the heck,” thought Young, his sensibilities dulled by several beers.

He stepped to the stage and turned to his old reliable Elvis number, “Hound Dog.” He followed that with Hank Williams’ “If Heaven Ain’t Got a Lot Like Dixie.”

“He got a standing ovation,” Sam Lovullo says. “He did well and had the guts to get up there with total professionals. They admired him for it.”

Afterward, the senior Lovullo took Young aside.

“You ever done this before?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“Well, you’ve got a decent voice, a good look. If you want to pursue it, it might be worth trying.”

Nowadays, Sam Lovullo, who should know, goes a step further: “I think if Mike weren’t involved in football, someone certainly would get hold of him and pursue his singing career.

“He’s a sleeper in our business.”

And there’s the rub: How do you play professional football and become a country singer at the same time? You don’t. Instead, you compromise.

Young decided that football was his first priority, his livelihood. In an indirect way, football is also his calling card for country music. How much easier it is to be noticed if “L.A. Rams” follows your name. Young, no dummy, understands.

“I don’t want to walk in and say, ‘I’m from the Los Angeles Rams and I want to be a country music singer,’ ” Young says. “I don’t think that would work.

“I have to go through what other people have to go through. I need to learn stage presence, learn about the music, learn how to play guitar. The only thing I have going for me is football. I think it is going to open a few doors that would otherwise be closed.”

Lovullo suggested that Young sing original music rather than familiar tunes. Learn the business. Arrange a gig or two at some local country music nightclubs. Polish and buff.

Young did as he was told. First, he and Korsgaden recorded a demo tape. Korsgaden, whose musical tastes lean more toward Elvis Costello than Elvis Presley, “countrified” a song he had written titled “The Tears and the Promises.” With that done, Young made an impromptu appearance at the White Horse Inn, a Visalia country-music club. He sang two songs and never heard a boo.

And that was that, he thought. Training camp was about to start, so Young directed his attention to football. But there is a ritual in football, where rookies must do as they are told. And every year, rookies are told to produce their own variety show. It is an excuse for revelry, a chance for the rookies to ridicule the veterans and coaches with impunity. As part of the program, Young was told to sing.

“They made us get up there,” he says. “Guys were singing who couldn’t sing. I figured, ‘Well, while I’m up here, let’s see if I get away without being booed off the stage.’ ”

He did. He sang several Willie Nelson songs and then his favorite, “Amarillo by Morning” by George Strait.

“The guys at first were sort of laughing,” he says. “Then, afterward, they came up and said, ‘Hey, you can sing pretty well.’ They got a kick out of it.”

And Young got the itch again.

Already, he has visited Lovullo in Nashville, toured the Grand Ole Opry, watched a taping of “Hee Haw.” Whenever possible, Young and his wife, Jill, attend local country music shows, often at the Crazy Horse Steak House & Theater in Santa Ana.

“Every time I go to a concert or watch somebody perform, I think about what it must be like to be up there,” he says. “I just dream about being up there. That’s what keeps this drive going.”

During the recent off-season, Young negotiated his own contract with the Rams. He worked out daily. He prepared himself for the new balanced offense the team plans. Country music waited--again.

But then came the strike and Young, with plenty of free time available, returned to Visalia to record more demo tapes. “We were supposed to do it during the off-season, but we never had time,” he said.

Young arranged a recording session at a Visalia studio. He hired several musicians. In two days’ time, Young and his makeshift band completed four songs. Cost: $600. “That $600 wasn’t coming easy at that time,” Young said.

But now, as he sits in his red BMW listening to a copy of the newest demo tape, Young figures it was worth the expense. “I was happy with the way it turned out,” he said.

During the season, Young said he finds his schedule more predictable. This time he really is going to learn to play that guitar. He’s going to find time to visit a honky-tonk or two and revive “The Tears and the Promises.” Those demo tapes will be distributed to record executives. An agent is a possibility, too.

“If he pursued (country music), I’d say he’d have a great chance,” says Korsgaden, who has recorded an album of his own. “He knows the right kind of people; he has a good voice. He needs to be trained to be in front of a crowd, but he’s got those natural instincts. He’s not afraid of people. He enjoys the thrill.”

Says Young: “I really have no idea what it takes. I don’t know if I’m going to be a country-Western singer because I haven’t been in jail, I haven’t cheated on my wife. And I’m not an alcoholic. About the worst thing I do is dip Copenhagen.”