A few years ago, traditional country crooner Randy Travis scored one of the biggest hits of his career with a song about a farmer, a teacher, a hooker and a preacher finding redemption in the rubble of a crashed bus.
It was about a year after the horrors of 9/11, and the country was hungry for music that healed its wounds and soothed its aching soul. Along came Travis, and, in his homespun, heartwarming baritone, he offered comfort in the words "I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you/ It's what you leave behind you when you go."
"Three Wooden Crosses" swung open the doors for country music to return to its gospel roots. And while many thought it was just a fad, the trend appears to have cemented itself in the fabric of today's country music.
New artists like Carrie Underwood and Josh Turner introduced themselves with songs that boldly proclaimed their Christian faith. Established artists like Brooks & Dunn and Brad Paisley released singles that gave their careers even more juice. And an old favorite like Travis, who several years ago retreated to country gospel from mainstream country, found himself with a new audience open to hearing him sing as loudly about his faith in God as he sang about his ungodly heartbreaks.
"Country's always kind of embraced things about real life: kids, heartbreak, religion. The tremendous songwriters in Nashville have never lost sight of how things touch people," said KIIM (99.5-FM) program director Buzz Jackson. "You have your fun ditties, but the long-lasting hits are the ones that say something to people."
Underwood's debut single, "Jesus Take the Wheel" β combined with her high profile after winning last year's "American Idol" contest β propelled sales of her months-old first album, "Some Hearts," well beyond 3 million. It spent 15 weeks atop Billboard's country albums chart.
Underwood followed up that success with her recently released second single, the coming-of-age "Don't Forget to Remember Me." The song's heroine leaves home to seek her future and is reminded by her mother to remember her roots and her faith.
By the song's end, the girl finds herself "kneelin' by the bed to pray / I haven't done this in a while / So I don't know what to say but / Lord I feel so small sometimes in this big ol' place / Yeah I know there's more important things, but / Don't forget to remember me."
Turner, who opens for Paisley at Glendale Arena Friday, wrote his monster hit "Long Black Train" when he was in college at Nashville's Belmont University in the late 1990s. Truth be told, the 28-year-old South Carolina native, who honed his vocal skills as a kid in church choirs, likely would have jumped head-first into a music career had his parents not insisted he go to college.
"Long Black Train" was actually Turner's second single. The first, "She'll Go on You," came out just as his label, MCA Nashville, was undergoing its share of Music Row's corporate tumult. The song got lost in the undertow and barely blipped anyone's radar.
Turner said his label debated releasing "Long Black Train," with its message of getting your life right before that long black train pulls into the station to pick up your soul. He admits the timing was on the heels of Travis' success. In fact, many people were quick to compare Turner's rich baritone to Travis', and the idea that Turner was singing a gospel song added fuel to that comparison.
"But I had written that song in 1999. It had been in my repertoire for quite a few years before that trend started happening," Turner said in a cell-phone interview from his tour two weeks ago. "We put that song out there for me and me alone. It was very personal for me and very much my style. It gave me a great introduction."
The song created an image of Turner as a gospel singer, which he believes opened doors for him to "go and do something different afterwards and break from that stereotype."
His follow-up single was the subtly sexy title song for his second album, "Your Man," which debuted at No. 1 in early February and by month's end had sold more than 500,000 copies. The album also includes a duet with Ralph Stanley on the gospel "Me and God."
KIIM's Jackson said radio was initially hesitant to play "Long Black Train" because Turner was a newcomer.
"There's so many artists out there, and this is such an artist-driven format. Listeners want to hear the latest greatest from George Strait," he said.
But Jackson said listeners were drawn to Turner's polished, luxurious baritone, so radio took a chance.
"Gospel music and faith-based music has always been a big thread in country music," Turner said. "My faith and my beliefs fit right into that category. And in my personal life, that's the most important thing, and it governs everything I do in my career. That's a big part of who I am. The cool thing about country music is that it allows me to sing about that."
At Country Thunder USA in Florence last month, Underwood faced an audience of several thousand in the late afternoon, and hundreds of them crushed against a center-stage runway when she sang "Jesus Take the Wheel." They joined her in the chorus, and their voices carried on a gentle afternoon breeze in near-perfect harmony.
That same echo of fans singing along spilled out of Casino del Sol's AVA in late February when Ronnie Dunn sang his self-penned "I Believe."
In a phone interview before that show, Dunn's partner, Kix Brooks, said he always stands back in amazement at the audience's reaction to "I Believe."
Brooks said that, with the war in Iraq dragging on and natural disasters like last year's devastating hurricanes, Americans are looking for something to hold onto.
"We're all looking for answers when we find ourselves in these horrible trauma zones, especially as a nation," Brooks said. "We're all looking for a way to pull together, and I think God tends to come in our minds a lot especially when we're in times of distress."
β Brad Paisley brings his "Time Well Wasted 2006" tour to Glendale Arena, 9400 W. Maryland Ave., at 8 p.m. Friday. Sara Evans and Josh Turner open the show. Tickets are $39.50 through Ticketmaster, 321-1000.
