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Keith Urban



liveDaily Interview: Keith Urban

by Christina Fuoco
liveDaily Contributor
"My dad took me to see Tom T. Hall when I was 6. About a year later, Johnny Cash toured Australia. My dad took me to see him. Those were the first two concerts I ever saw," said Urban, who grew up in the farm town of Caboolture.

Urban, who moved to the United States 11 years ago, recently released his second solo album, "Golden Road," the follow-up to his self-titled debut, which garnered him the CMA's Horizon Award for best new artist, and yielded the hits "Where the Blacktop Ends," "But For the Grace of God" and "Your Everything." "Golden Road" has fared well, too, spawning the hits "Somebody Like You" and "Raining on Sunday."

Success has been a long time coming for Urban, who has been playing the guitar since he was 6 and joined a band when he was 12; he quit school at age 15 to tour--and hasn't stopped.

Urban talked to liveDaily about his latest album, his inspiration and his songwriting habits.

liveDaily: Tell me about the recording of "Golden Road." Was it recorded in the same fashion as "Keith Urban"?

Keith Urban: It was a little looser. That's a rough question. I'm not sure what the answer to that question is.

Did you use some of the same producers? Write material the same way?

It was very similar. You're always in a different headspace when you make each record, so hopefully they're all different. You just pick up things that you wish you hadn't done on the first one. I used a different co-producer, Dann Huff, for this record, and then I did half the record myself. I moved into that self-production area, a little more so than the first record.

What was it like to produce your own record?

I'm a little more comfortable in that role. I love being in the studio. It's something I've always loved doing. I'm not one of the artists who comes in and just does my bit. I'm there every second of every day. That's my hands-on situation.

Did you write the songs before you entered the studio or as you were recording?

They're mostly done before we went into the studio, although I do like writing in the studio. It can get a little costly if you try and leave it until then to write songs. But you're writing all the time. You're collecting songs. I've had songs that have been collected over a two-year period for my next record. It's not the case of turning in a bunch of songs and recording the next month. I think you're looking for songs all year long and you're writing all year long.

When do you expect to start recording your next album?

I'm hoping early next year.

In concert, you do a cover of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'." The audience's response clearly shows that there's a lot of cross-genre listening, more so than most radio programmers and record companies are willing to admit. Would you say so?

I think the industry is oblivious to the fact that most people listen to all kinds of stuff. I personally don't know of anyone who listens to only one genre of music. It's vanity because no one does. I don't know anybody who says, "I only listen to jazz. That's all I listen to." I'm sure it exists but I don't know anybody like that. [But] Petty falls into that organic, rootsy, acoustic-song mode anyway, like Mellencamp. Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, Bonnie Raitt--all those artists sort of fit in that country perimeter anyway.

You opened for Kenny Chesney this summer. Now that that tour is finished, what do you have planned?

We go to Australia with LeAnn Rimes for a couple of weeks in October. We have a lot of shows between now and the end of the year.

Is there much of a demand for country music in Australia?

It's growing. My father's record collection was all country. That's how I was exposed to it.

Who were his favorites?

Every Don Williams album. Ronnie Milsap. Charley Pride. Johnny Cash.

evel 2003 set to open
Riverfront construction brings change to festival site
Tim Greening / The Times
Posted on October 1, 2003

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/html/AB8B8C60-9551-463D-ACD9-C440DC5774F0.shtml

The festival opens Saturday with country troubadour Robert Earl Keen and 1980s funk rockers Morris Day and The Time, former Prince proteges and co-stars of the hit film Purple Rain.

The festival closes next weekend with one of its biggest headliners yet, country superstar and Sarepta native Trace Adkins. Holloway said booking Adkins was quite a coup for the festival, the result of fortunate timing.

Adkins was booked months before his August induction into the Grand Ole Opry and before his greatest hits album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's country album chart. It's still in the top 20 after four months.

The festival had similar good timing last year with an appearance by country heartthrob Keith Urban.

"Part of that is kind of luck," Holloway said. "At the time that we booked Keith Urban, that was just before he hit really, really big. And with Trace, we didn't know that he was going into the Grand Ole Opry at the time that we booked him."

Urban's popularity was middling when the Revel booked him. But just days after his appearance at the festival, his album Golden Road dropped in stores and made him a superstar. It went platinum and spawned several hits, including Somebody Like You, which topped Billboard's country singles chart for seven weeks and was featured on the How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days soundtrack.

"It would probably be a lot harder to get him now," Holloway said.

http://tennessean.com/celebrities/archives/03/10/40413351.shtml?Element_ID=40413351

Keith Urban: It's Australian for 'stud'

OK, it's quite clear that you ladies are BANANAS for Keith Urban. Keith stopped by the Richard Marx fund-raiser show Thursday night at the Ryman, and the ladies went APE! Keith's CMT Most Wanted Live taping at the Wildhorse this week was jam packed.

Is it the sensitive songs? The Australian accent? The size 2 women's jeans he wears? That boy's got it going on, I tell ya.

Well, tonight you've got the chance to sop up all the Keith Urban you can stand. He's host of a dinner-show fund-raiser to battle bacterial meningitis, and it's quite a show.

Keith will be joined by Lee Ann Womack, Richard Marx, Radney Foster, Carolyn Dawn Johnson, Victoria Shaw and others at 6 p.m. at Rocketown, 401 Sixth Ave. S., just down from the arena.

By the way, there are TWO HUGE STARS who also will play a couple of songs each. Can't say who, but it's a guy and a girl.

Just show up with $110 each for tickets. You might get a discount if you ask for the tickets with an Aussie accent. But I doubt it, mate

TIM GREENING: Of all the identities to steal, why mine?
Tim Greening / The Times
Posted on November 22, 2003
When I got to work Monday morning - a couple minutes before noon, technically still morning - I was greeted by a message from Discover Card security.

I knew that purchase of Showgirls would come back to haunt me.

But then I realized I hadn't used that card in months. This can't be good news.

It wasn't. There had been some "suspicious and uncharacteristic activity" on my card.

Suspicious and uncharacteristic ... someone must have tried to use it at a gym. Or a health food store. Or Olive Garden.

Turns out some clown was running around New York with a counterfeit copy of my card, charging like a bull in a china shop. Actually, I think the only place he didn't try to use it was a china shop - Walgreen's, Lowe's, the Sharper Image.

I won't be held responsible for the bogus charges, but it's still disturbing. I've now joined the growing ranks of victims of identity theft.

But this isn't the first time someone boosted my identity to try to get free stuff. Just last year, on a Saturday morning, I got a message to call a woman from the Hickory Stick who said we got disconnected during a telephone interview. Which was odd; the only conversation I'd had at that point in the day was with the ceiling. And it wasn't about barbecue, it was about sawing logs.

So I returned her call. Someone using my name had phoned the restaurant and said he was working on a story about barbecue. (Lesson No. 1 in pretending to be me: I rarely, if ever, work on a Saturday morning. In fact, I rarely, if ever, am awake on a Saturday morning.)

She asked the person to wait while she moved to a phone in the office, where it was quieter, and put him on hold. He got cold feet and hung up before she got there, so we don't know what his scam was. While I'd love to believe he was a kind soul who really wanted to do a barbecue story to lighten my workload, my guess is that he wanted free food.

These incidents raise many questions. Like, who in their right mind would want to be me? You'd think the odor alone would be a deterrent.

If you're gonna be somebody else, be someone good. Country singer Keith Urban has that song Who Wouldn't Want to Be Me? Handsome, rich, famous, Australian - now him, you want to be. Not me, I'm like the opposite of Keith Urban. (Keith Rural?)

Most puzzling is, why would you want my credit cards? Half the time, they don't work for me.

So trust me, you don't want to be me. The pay stinks and the hours are bad. I should know because I'm me 24-7. Well, except Tuesday nights, when I'm Esmerelda, the Princess of the Sugarplum Fairy Ball.

But that's another identity issue entirely.

By Kellie B. Gormly
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, November 30, 2003

November has been a whirlwind of country news, especially with the Country Music Association Awards in Nashville, Tenn.
I was thrilled that Martina McBride earned Female Vocalist of the Year, and I expected she would. However, it was a shocker that Toby Keith pulled in seven nominations yet didn't receive one award. Not that I thought any award recipient wasn't deserving, but I was upset to see the Nashville bigwigs pass over Keith. Perhaps the posthumous awards to Johnny Cash inhibited Keith's success this year.

When I was at the fabulous Lonestar concert a few weeks ago and chatting with fans, I asked them who they thought should have earned top honors but didn't. Some said Kenny Chesney, while others voted for Keith Urban. One woman said Alan Jackson didn't deserve the Entertainer of the Year Award, because he is not particularly effervescent live onstage. A radio disc jockey I know says Toby Keith's bad fortune indicates that the folks in Nashville are not minding their fans.

Of course, it's all quite subjective. What do you think?