Tippin Still Riding High : Singer, Who Plays Coach House Tonight, Never Lost Faith in His Car or Music

It is not unusual for a singer/songwriter to draw inspiration from a woman, but Aaron Tippin--who sings at the Coach House tonight--is one of the few who has written love songs to a car.

A tender tone crept into his voice during a phone conversation last week when he spoke of Daisy, the 1975 Toyota Corolla that inspired his No. 1 country hit “There Ain’t Nothing Wrong With the Radio.” Daisy also appears as a character in another Tippin song, “I Wonder How Far Is Over You.”

“I’m never going to get rid of Daisy,” he said. “I love that car. She’s sitting in the garage right now. When I get back and get some time, I’m going to send her off and have her completely restored, just like new.”

A new lease on life for Daisy seems an appropriate reward, considering that “There Ain’t Nothing Wrong With the Radio” helped Tippin’s second album, “Read Between the Lines,” go gold for sales of more than 500,000, propelling him back to the top of the charts after the somewhat tepid showing of earlier follow-ups to his 1991 smash, “You’ve Got to Stand for Something.”

But through it all, Tippin said, he never lost faith in the basic integrity of his music. “We might not have gotten too much airplay with the other singles, (but) when I would do a concert and see people really roaring after I did those songs, I got the impression that they did like them.”

Why was radio less enthusiastic than the fans? “My music is pretty country,” he noted. “Some radio people didn’t think that was what they needed to be playing.”

Indeed, most of country’s successful “young traditionalists” only reach back as far as the ‘60s and ‘70s, especially to the sounds of Merle Haggard and George Jones. Tippin, along with a few others like Marty Brown and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, draws on the unfettered hillbilly sound of country’s founding fathers, like Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell, who Haggard and Jones were inspired by.

So far, Tippin has been the only one enjoying any commercial success with this kind of music, and he said he isn’t really sure why Brown and Gilmore haven’t done as well on the charts.

“I love both those guys,” Tippin says. “I think the world of their music. I might have hit with my songs a little bit more, but I deeply admire both of them. I guess it’s my turn at bat. I’ve had a couple of swings and got a couple of hits. We’re just three guys in there doing this. I just hope one of us breaks it open for all of us.”

Though Tippin said he loves rock ‘n’ roll as well as hillbilly music--and that signs of its influence may start showing up on his third album, which he starts recording next month--he insisted that won’t stray far from that pure country sound.

“I cannot hear my music without fiddle and steel all over it. (Still), I believe if Hank would have had drums back in his day, he’d have probably put them on his records.

“You can pick his vocals off his tracks, and it is still the most soulful music you ever put an ear to. That type of feel is what you’re always looking for. All we’ve got now is more technology. Sure, I’m going to apply some of that. But as for my music changing, let me tell you what Ray Baker, the great country producer, said about me.

“I did some pre-production stuff with him on my first session for RCA Records. I was cutting a song and I was worried about it being a little too pop for me. Ray said, ‘Aaron, if it gets to sounding a little too pop, we’ll just turn you up.’ I don’t think there is any way anyone could say that about me if I ain’t country.

“If I’ve got any long-term goals,” Tippin added, “and I hope this doesn’t sound too high hatty, I would tell everybody that when they finally throw that last shovel of Tennessee dirt over me, don’t ride by my house and see how big it is. Don’t see how many cows I’ve got in the pasture or cars in the driveway. You ease on down to the Hall of Fame. If my name is even scribbled on a wall down there somewhere, I’d have felt I’ve done something for this music. If you are out there just for yourself, you haven’t got a prayer.”

* Aaron Tippin sings tonight at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. $26.50. (714) 496-8930.