Rimes Gets Back on the Bus

LeAnn Rimes made her career choice before first grade and was on the way toward achieving it a year later. Before she got her driver’s license, she had done it, then took a year off.

Now, the 17-year-old is doing it all over again with a limited tour and her fifth album, “LeAnn Rimes.”

“I was getting burned out as far as touring goes. In the past three years I think I did over 400 shows. I was touring day after day, interview after interview, and it was driving me insane. I was living on a bus forever. It seemed like I was on a moving house,” she says.

“A lot of people in this business, they want to push you and push you. They think you’re going to disappear on the spur of the moment. I needed to become something besides the star everybody had built me up to be.”

Rimes says that people always try to pigeonhole her but she doesn’t let anyone push her around. “I am a businesswoman first and I am my business. Nobody is pushing me except myself.”

“I’ve always had very good instincts when it comes to myself, and I think that’s the best thing,” she says.

Rimes won her first talent contest when she was 5 and persuaded her parents to move from Mississippi to the Dallas area so she could pursue a singing career. She appeared on Ed McMahon’s “Star Search” at 8 and won twice, but was edged out in her final appearance.

*

By then, her performances on a local country music show had caught the ear of Fort Worth disc jockey Bill Mack.

He had a song he had offered to Patsy Cline, who died in a 1963 plane crash before she could record it. Three decades later, he sent “Blue” to the little kid from Garland, Texas, with the great big voice so reminiscent of Cline’s.

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” he says. “At that time, she was 10 years old, 11 maybe. I was amazed. And I been in this business for a long, long time.”

The original version of “Blue” appeared on an album Rime’s father, Wilbur, produced that was released regionally.

“When Wilbur got the tape, he tossed it in the trash,” Mack says. “LeAnn told her dad she wanted to do that song. He said he didn’t think it was her styling. But she did it.”

It was the title song of her first nationally released album, which won two Grammy Awards and has sold close to 7 million copies.

“Unchained Melody” and “You Light Up My Life” followed in 1997, and “Sittin’ on Top of the World” in 1998 also went platinum and put her total sales past 21 million, establishing her as a top crossover artist in country, pop, adult and contemporary Christian music.

She likes the sales figures but doesn’t put much stock in the word “crossover.”

“There used to be a very thin line,” she says. “I don’t think there is a line anymore. I think all music is crossing over into each other. It’s all forming into one, and I think it’s wonderful. It’s giving artists the chance to really show their talent and branch out.”

At home, she’s as likely to have Aerosmith or Prince on the stereo as Reba or Wynonna. She included the Artist’s “Purple Rain” on one CD.

There’s also a mix on her new album with echoes of a country Hank Williams and a bluesy Ray Charles in “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” a gritty Kris Kristofferson or Janis Joplin in “Me and Bobby McGee” and the lone song written this year --or even this decade--the rocking “Big Deal,” the CD’s initial single.

The album soared to No. 1 on the country chart its first week out.

“The reason I decided to do this was to bring great music back to my generation, a new generation that’s never really heard it before,” she says. “I went back and I got to do a lot of my favorite songs that I’d listened to growing up.”

Those include Williams, Marty Robbins and a Bob Willis standard, “Faded Love,” that was recorded by Cline. Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” and “Crazy” also are on the album.

*

“When I did ‘Crazy,’ I listened to her record and I didn’t want to vary it very much,” Rimes says. “When you’re dealing with such an amazing song by such an amazing artist, there’s nothing you could really do to the song. It’s just got a different voice on it.”

Mack, a country traditionalist, cheers the young singer’s retreat from the pop sounds of her past albums. “I’m glad to see it because she’s going back to what she never should have gotten away from,” he says.

An album of classics was just the latest risk taken since the perky 5-year-old beat out the big kids with her version of “Getting to Know You,” then endured jealous peers who pulled her ponytail or egged their famous classmate’s locker. Now she’s getting a high school degree after three years of home schooling through Texas Tech University.

A year ago, she took the chance of her career by stepping back from an exhausting tour and four albums to revisit being a teenager for a change.

“I’ve changed physically and mentally,” she says. “I didn’t really plan on it, but it happened, and I went from 15 to 17. I really grew.”

In an interview, she fidgets, says “cool” and “like” a lot, giggles about guys and runs her words together in teen staccato-talk. Onstage, she’s poised.

“If you hung around me for a while, I’m sure I’d goof off a little bit and you’d see the 17-year-old come out. But when I’m in the public eye, it’s very hard to let that slip because I’ve been, I guess, on my guard all my life.

“It’s like putting up a wall when you’re out there, and then all of a sudden you break it down when you’re in your own house. That’s why I took off a year--to make sure I learned about myself as a person and grew outside the fame that I have,” she says.

The year off also gave her a chance to renew old friendships and start new ones, including a guarded romantic relationship.

“I do have someone in my life, but I want to keep it private,” she says. “I’m sure it’ll always come out, but I’d rather not be the one talking about it. Everyone knows so much about me, it’ll add a little mystery to myself.”

Well, a couple of clues: He’s 20, his name is Andrew and he’s not in the band.

“This is what I wanted to do and I did it,” she says. “I’m very lucky. A very lucky girl. Well, it took a lot of hard work too.”