Near and Far on the Road

Like a number of his fellow country music artists, Tracy Lawrence tries to make it a point to chat with fans and sign autographs after his concerts.

But the singer--born in Atlanta, Texas, and raised in Foreman, Ark.--is finding it more and more difficult to play the role of the genial, after-show host. As his popularity soars with each of his chart-scaling albums, there simply isn’t enough time to accommodate all of his followers.

“It’s gotten too big,” Lawrence, 38, said with a sigh in a recent phone interview. “We now have 250 to 300 people a night [waiting after shows]. That makes it real hard to see everybody, because we’ve got to get to the next town.”

Lawrence arrived in Nashville six years ago behind the wheel of a 1980 Toyota with 250,000 miles on it and a bicycle inner tube for a fan belt.

Within seven months, he had landed a contract with Atlantic Records. By the end of 1991 he had released his first single, “Sticks and Stones,” his first in a string of No. 1 country hits.

Today the winner of the Academy of Country Music’s best new male vocalist award in 1992 is one of the hottest attractions in his field.

Lawrence’s first four albums have sold more than 5 million copies. His fifth and latest, “Time Marches On,” is doing brisk business after just four weeks.

Both the album and the current single, “If You Loved Me,” are in the Top 10 on Billboard’s country charts; more impressively, the album has reached as high as No. 31 on Billboard’s pop chart. Tonight he headlines at the Pond of Anaheim on a bill with Toby Keith and Rich McCready.

That Lawrence loves living the life of the itinerant country renegade undoubtedly has helped. In his relatively brief career, he’s probably logged more road miles than half a dozen truckers with white-line fever.

After the release of his first album in 1991, he played 282 dates in a year. This year, he figures, he’ll perform a more manageable, but still voluminous, 170 shows.

“Oh, man, do I love it,” he said. “You have no idea what it’s like on the road. That’s my world.”

Yet Lawrence said he’s not about to take any of his success for granted. “You have to make the hay while the sun is shining,” he said. “Eventually, [my career] will slow down. It always does.”

To that end, Lawrence already has begun to expand into other aspects of the music business. He’s formed his own management and production companies.

Lawrence co-produced his 1994 hit song “Renegades, Rebels and Rogues” (featured on the “Maverick” movie soundtrack). Last year he received co-production credit on his concert album, “Tracy Lawrence Live.”

“We’re growing,” he said. “We’re not running yet; we’re still walking. But when my singing career is over, I want something else to do, and I want to stay in this business. I just love it.”

Lawrence said his excursion into music management was born as much out of necessity as from a desire to find a career option.

“There’s nobody who is going to [manage me] like I do it. I know what’s good for me,” he said. “I’ve been real lucky to find the right people to put around me to see that it’s done correctly. You just have to get your hands in there and be a part of it. If you don’t, it’s going to catch up with you.”

During his swift rise, Lawrence has run up against obstacles. One incident could have claimed his life. In 1991, he was shot four times during a late-night robbery. The incident occurred as he was dropping off an out-of-town friend outside of her Nashville hotel. Luckily for him, no vital organs were damaged, and Lawrence said he now is fully recovered except for a knee that sometimes acts up during cold weather.

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In 1994, Lawrence and his brother had a run-in with a car-load of teenagers while they were driving along Interstate 40 in Tennessee.

The singer says that the kids made obscene gestures at him and may have fired a gun at his brother’s truck. Lawrence subsequently fired several shots into the air from a .357 magnum.

He was arrested and charged with aggravated assault and carrying an unregistered firearm. Charges were later dropped on the condition that he pay all court costs, surrender his pistol and undergo a year’s probation. In a public statement, he apologized for overreacting.

Now Lawrence is divorcing wife, Francis, whom he married in 1993.

All of this has taught the son of a deeply religious banker stepfather and homemaker mother about the importance of public relations.

“As far as the imaging part [of my career], I’ve had a few incidents where some damage control had to be done,” he said. “But we buckled up and got down to it and went to work. We’ve been very successful in doing that.”

Lawrence, who has performed numerous benefit concerts, says he’s never forgotten to put his fans first. He may not have the time to sign every autograph after his shows, but he is sometimes willing to sign them during his concerts.

“It’s not really [distracting],” he said. “You get used to it. Hell, I owe them so much. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them.”

* Tracy Lawrence, Toby Keith and Rich McCready perform tonight at the Pond of Anaheim, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim. 7:30 p.m. $25-$30. (714) 704-2500.