"Nichols truest to country music of all New Faces performances"

Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 06:54:50 -0500
Newsgroups: rec.music.country.western
Size: 3,436 bytes

Nichols truest to country music of all New Faces performances
By CRAIG HAVIGHURST
Staff Writer
Since it began in 1970, Country Radio Seminar's New Faces show has played
host to performances by superstars-to-be such as Randy Travis, the Dixie
Chicks and Martina McBride, as well as plenty of where-are-they-now
curiosities such as The Shooters and Archer Park.
The event marks the end to the annual business convention, and the four-song
sets represent a coveted chance for artists who have a few hits on their
resume to play live (and gush gratefully) before the gatekeepers of the
medium that makes them or breaks them.
Friday night's edition, featuring Steve Azar, Kellie Coffey, Emerson Drive,
Joe Nichols and Tammy Cochran showed off a wide range of ways to make
''country'' music, from the shallow heartthrob pop of band Emerson Drive to
the commanding and emotional baritone of Joe Nichols, who looked, indeed,
like a star being born in an otherwise cloudy nebula.
Mississippi Delta-reared Steve Azar wasn't far behind, however, with the
night's most polished and fastest moving set. The Mercury recording artist
dug hard into his own song, The Underdog, that started the evening's music,
and his voice, a sorghum-thick take on Jackson Browne, sounded rich and
passionate. One Good Reason Why had a cool Cajun chorus, and his hits
Waitin' on Joe and I Don't Have To Be Me ('Til Monday) came off with flair.
Kellie Coffey, new to BNA Records, is fond of the power ballads that have
made country radio sound like adult contemporary banality in recent years.
Whatever It Takes merited a call to the cliché police for its ''swim every
ocean'' lyrics and its climactic key-change. With a voice and presence that
blends the merits of Reba McEntire and Kathy Mattea, Coffey has impressive
range and power, but for now she's lolling in the middle of the road.
If anybody came off as tomorrow's footnote, it was Emerson Drive of
DreamWorks. With featherweight songs and sanitized hip-hop rhythms, Fall
Into Me and I Should Be Sleeping, sounded like Chely Wright tracks with dull
new lyrics. Lead singer Brad Mates has the grimaces and fist clutching moves
down pat. A competent but inexplicable cover of The Devil Went Down To
Georgia wowed the crowd but never conjured Charlie Daniels' boggy blues.
What a relief, then, to hear Nichols, of Universal South, launch into
Brokenheartsville, a warm and melodic honky-tonk song. His cool came from
his calm and his prepossessing half-smile. His voice wraps around a lyric in
the George Jones/Randy Travis tradition, and while his biggest hit, The
Impossible, is way too sappy, his potent and beautifully paced cover of Gene
Watson's hit Farewell Party was the evening's high note for true country
music. ''I'm probably breaking the rules, but I'm going to do something I
love,'' he said before starting the song, offering a glimpse of the trouble
and tension between music and radio in 2003.
Finally, Tammy Cochran of Sony, who has had more than a few hits and misses
at country radio, ended the evening with a nice set in front of a huge band.
She's a fabulous vocalist in search of songs that do more than just tug the
heartstrings like her hit Angels In Waiting. She thanked ''radio'' profusely
and coursed through fine tunes such as I Cry and Life Happened, but it
remains to be seen whether she, or any other New Faces, upped their stature
on the airwaves in any fundamental way.