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 Biography: Alabama presents: WHEN IT ALL GOES SOUTH This serving of music from Alabama comes to you "super-sized." Fifteen tunes long, a full year in the making and over budget, When It All Goes South is the biggest and most ambitious album that RCA's superstar band has ever created. In a career that has been characterized by superlatives, this collection stands out as a major accomplishment. "A lifetime went into this record," says Alabama's lead vocalist Randy Owen. "When we started making this CD, I met with the producers and the guys in the band and said, 'We want this to be a Grammy-quality project.' You never know whether something's going to be commercially successful or not, so we just approached this completely from the standpoint of creativity. And I'm totally happy with what we did." The result is a banquet of sounds. "I Write A Little" employs atmospheric sonic effects to tell its tale of a lonely soldier. The ballad "The Woman He Loves" features a soul-band brass section. The stone-country weeper "I Can't Love You Any Less" showcases steel guitar while "Clear Across America Tonight" cleverly incorporates a simulated radio-broadcast. Alabama tenor Teddy Gentry duets with pop celebrity Christopher Cross on "Love Remains." Randy teams up with Canadian star Jann Arden on the wedding ballad "Will You Marry Me" and lead guitarist Jeff Cook shines as a vocalist on the 'island groove' of the beach-music number "Wonderful Waste of Time." Randy calls "Down This Road" his autobiography, since it contains the scenes and sentiments of his boyhood. The album's most poignant message songs are perhaps "Start Living" and "You Only Paint the Picture Once." Both of them are reflections on how brief life is and are admonitions to travel the journey wisely. "Simple As That," on the other hand, is as wry and witty an observation on relationships as you'll find in 21st-century America. And speaking of modern life, you'll find the details of our everyday existence packed into the lyric of "Right Where I Am." Many of that song's audio production touches came from Alabama drummer Mark Herndon. The driving bopper "I Can't Hide My Heart" is one of several illustrations on the album of the band members' enduring abilities as songwriters. The group co-wrote seven of the set's 15 tunes. The pointed "Reinvent the Wheel" reflects Alabama's equally enduring quest for creative input from outside writers. The title track, "When It All Goes South," is simply one of the most creative and clever audio creations this amazing group has ever recorded. "While we were recording, we tested these songs out in concert," Randy reports. "People would propose in the audience when we'd do 'Will You Marry Me.' 'When It All Goes South' goes over great on stage. The first time we played it live was in Chattanooga, Tennessee at their river festival for thousands of fans. My oldest daughter was there and she said, 'Dad, there were eight guys standing in front of me. When you sang, "Some Day The South's Gonna Rise Again," they tore their shirts off!' That made me feel good." "The main goal is to keep pleasing those fans. That's why we keep reinventing ourselves. We tried to approach this whole album from that standpoint. A lot has changed since we came into Nashville 20 years ago. Everything is a lot more business-like now. And that will take a lot of your creative energy away if you let it. We refused to let that happen to this project." A good reason for Alabama's remarkable staying power is the fact that the band continues to experiment with its sound time and again. The band has never relied on one style of record making, so seven producers were enlisted in the making of When It All Goes South for a smorgasbord of creative input. In addition, Randy and Teddy produced "The Woman He Loves" themselves. "Alabama is like the ocean," observes RCA label group chairman Joe Galante. "You see the waves keep coming in. It may be a small wave or a big wave, but they always come back. These guys have reinvented themselves time and again." "When they came to me to talk about this record, Randy said, 'We need to do this for our souls.' This wasn't about just making another album. It wasn't about the money or the power or anything like that. It was about making a statement. They invested so much into this record. They live the music; and that's the key to Alabama." "When we taped the TV special in Las Vegas that saluted their 41 No. 1 hits, they actually cried. Despite all the hits and all the success, they've never changed. Alabama was the beginning of this label's big success in the 1980s. This is not about a record company and an artist anymore. This is family. I like to say that the 'A' in RCA stands for Alabama." It all began when Joe Galante came back to his office from the country radio convention's "New Faces" show in March of 1980 raving about a young band he'd seen. The label quickly signed the act and pressed its theme song "My Home's in Alabama" as a single. That May, RCA Records issued "Tennessee River" as the first No. 1 Alabama hit. A breathtaking abundance of others have followed. Alabama made history as the first superstar band in country music. Until its advent, the field had been noted for solo vocalists, duets and occasional quartet harmonizers. Alabama changed all of that. Contemporary Nashville bands such as Lonestar all cite Alabama as their inspiration. Alabama was also among the first to court a youth market for country music. The style had been previously characterized by older consumers and mature concert audiences. With its vibrant stage energy and casual, working-class attire, the group presented a newly youthful image and thereby opened the door to the titanic sales that country music enjoyed in the 1990s. The group's longevity is one of the marvels of the music world. Today, Alabama has been on the charts longer than any other contemporary country act. The RIAA recently appointed them "Country Group Of The Century" and its success shows no sign of letting up in the new millennium. For The Record became a Double Platinum sales success in 1998 and spawned the band's 42nd No. 1 hit, "How Do You Fall In Love." The Twentieth Century collection yielded Alabama's hit collaboration with 'N Sync, "God Must Have Spent a Little More Time On You," the following year. At the climax of the BMI banquet in the fall of 2001 during Country Music Week, Alabama was presented with the organization's prestigious President's Award. Only three other artists have been given this sterling-silver loving cup, placing the group in the company of such figures as Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, Country Music Hall of Fame member Harlan Howard and noted TV composer Earle Hagen. The band's humble front man accepted the honor. "They really pulled one over on me at the BMI Awards," says Randy. "When they said it was going to be a secret, they meant it. They didn't tell anybody. I was looking across at Shania Twain and just thinking about how successful that little girl has been, and how sweet she has always been. My son went over there to meet her. She said, 'I would really like to meet your dad.' She came over and we had the greatest conversation. So I was thinking about her and the big awards she won -- when they announced our award, I was totally surprised. It was a great night." As the year 2001 begins, Alabama's career sales have topped 65 million records. This ranks it as one of the 10 biggest-selling bands in the annals of popular music and ahead of such rock greats as Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Queen, Pink Floyd and The Who. Alabama has more No. 1 records than any band in country-music history and has sold more concert tickets than any other country group. It has won more than 150 show-business awards. Seventeen of its prior albums are Platinum sellers. Mountain Music, released in 1982, is Quintuple Platinum, as is 1986's Greatest Hits. Roll On (1984), The Closer You Get (1983) and Feels So Right (1981) are all Quadruple Platinum. Christmas (1985), Greatest Hits III (1994), 40 Hour Week (1985) and the act's debut album, 1980's My Home's In Alabama, were joined by For the Record as Double Platinum sellers. Citing highlights among Alabama's 70-plus charted singles is tough, but the following illustrate its musical diversity and evolution. "Dixieland Delight" (1983) and "Mountain Music" (1982) showcased the group as cheerful Southern rockers. "Roll On" (1984) and "40 Hour Week" (1985) presented the boys as blue-collar heroes. The delightfully peppy "She and I" (1986), "Here We Are" (1991) and "I'm In a Hurry" (1992) proved the band's pop chops, yet "Jukebox in My Mind" (1990) and "Old Flame" (1981) are as stone-country as it gets. Hits such as "Song of the South" (1988), "High Cotton" (1989), "Pass It On Down" (1990), "The Cheap Seats" (1994) and "In Pictures" (1995) are demonstrations of Alabama's lifetime commitment to quality "message" lyrics. But the band can also have innocent fun with fare such as the summery "beach music" ditty "Dancin' Shaggin' on the Boulevard" (1997). They're separated by decades, but several songs are eloquent proof of Alabama's mastery of the love ballad -- from 1981's "Feels So Right" to 1990's "Forever's As Far As I'll Go" to 1998's "How Do You Fall In Love." All of those styles and more are represented on When It All Goes South. In sheer scope and ambition, this collection surpasses anything the band has attempted before. "It just about killed me," says Randy with a chuckle. "We've been working on this album since last January. I put so much into this thing that I could not sleep at night. But it was a good kind of not sleeping. I would keep on thinking of things I wanted to do, arrangements I wanted to hear." "We kept adding more and more songs. We really just got totally into these songs -- there was actually even another one that I wanted to do. I just hate to leave really good songs lying around. In the studio, I tried to make my vocals the best I possibly could, to make everything sound exactly the way I feel. I guess that's why we went so far over budget. But now that it's finished, I wouldn't have it any other way." *In Partnership with Dale Morris and Associates |
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