Pam Loe Has Changed Her Tune for a Career in Country Music

Pam Loe has abandoned her musical roots--rock and folk--to launch a career as a country-Western performer.

She has no regrets.

“I started singing country music, and this is where I will stay,” said Loe, 32, of Northridge who, for the second straight year, was recently named Female Entertainer of the Year by the California Country Music Assn. “I kind of fell into it and I love it.”

Loe fell into it when she met her husband at a country-Western bar 11 years ago. He belonged to a country band, and soon they married. For the first five years of marriage, she worked in retail management, too shy to pursue her hidden musical aspirations. Then, suddenly, she burst out of her cocoon. “My husband and kids brought me out,” Loe said.

She performed with her husband, David, one night at a North Hollywood country bar. When he left to go on tour, she was asked to take over as the club’s singer. She established her own band, learned about 25 songs, and hasn’t slowed down since.

These days, she’s putting the final touches on her yet-unnamed album, which she hopes will land her on the country-Western musical map. Although she hasn’t secured a record contract yet, the album is being produced by Eddie King, who has mixed some of Bruce Hornsby’s material. Loe is optimistic.

“We wanted to wait until we got everything done,” she said. “I’ve been to Nashville and met some people, and they said they are very interested. You just have to play the game.”

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Paul Cotton played the game for almost two decades. For 16 years, he played guitar for the country rock band Poco. And now he is going solo.

“I was more than ready for this,” said Cotton, of Encino, who recently released his first post-Poco effort, “Changing Horses.” “I need to grow a bit. My R & B roots needed to get out.”

So far, Cotton said, the album has only attained moderate success, but he hopes the released single, “Heart of the Night,” a remake of the Poco tune that landed in the Top 20 of the country-Western chart, will pump up sales.

Cotton said he has no regrets about his Poco tenure, which included the successful album “Legend.” The band found some new members, and is still around.

“We couldn’t get a record deal, and then they wanted me to be the lead singer,” he said, but finally, the deal did not materialize. “Meanwhile, I was always writing, honing my craft toward harder music.”

Cotton is scheduled to play the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Oct. 18, and the following night in Ventura. The rest of his touring depends on how the album does.

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The recently released three-record package of Jack Kerouac recordings has convinced James Austin, Rhino Records artist and recording president, that the market for spoken-word albums is hotter than ever.

Austin said the Kerouac release is “doing far better than we expected,” and that, as a result, a boxed set of recordings from the Beat Generation artists is being planned. He said the set, to be released in February or March, will include a Kerouac interview that Austin found after it was too late to include it in the original package.