Tracy Lawrence Celebrates 30 Years In Music With Three-Album Collection
Pearls are the traditional gift for 30-year anniversaries, and Tracy Lawrence is offering his fans a collection of them as he celebrates 30 years in music.
First, Lawrence released Volume 1: Stairway to Heaven Highway to Hell on April 23, the first CD in a three-CD collection titled Hindsight 2020. The singer penned nine of the ten songs of all new material. Fans can expect to hear his signature sound, a traditional blend of contemporary and traditional country music that has given him the longevity for his 30-year career and an entertainer that new artists continue to admire. Fans are already familiar with some of the songs from this album as he has been releasing them through Instagram, including “You Only Get One,” “Lonely 101” and the title track.
On April 27, Lawrence will treat his fans to a livestream concert at The Warehouse, where he will perform some of the biggest hits of his career as well as new music from the Volume 1 album.
Volume 2 and 3 of Hindsight 2020 will be released throughout 2021. Each will have 10 songs (30 songs for 30 years of Lawrence and his music in this collection), some featuring new music and others including his well-known hits that began with the release of his first album, Sticks & Stones, in 1991. Lawrence has sold 13 million albums throughout his career and celebrated 18 number one songs.
After releasing the first album of 10 brand new songs, Lawrence plans to come back with five of his hits and five new songs on the second volume, including duets with Tracy Byrd and John Michael Montgomery. Standards on the second volume will be “If The World Had A Front Porch,” “Stars Over Texas,” “I See It Now,” “Somebody Paints The Wall” and “Find Out Who Your Friends Are.” The third album was still being completed at the time of this interview, but Lawrence anticipates it will include new songs as well as some tracks he will pull from his albums that he thought should have been singles.
“I’ve never tried to do three albums at one time,” Lawrence tells Sounds Like Nashville with a laugh. “It makes it interesting for people, to hear new songs and my older material. These will be very traditional country albums; I’ve been writing a ton over the last couple years.”
In addition to having hit records, Lawrence is well known for his charitable endeavors and his Honky Tonkin’ with Tracy Lawrence three-hour radio show, which now syndicates to 115 affiliate stations.
“I’m very proud of where we are right now,” Lawrence says of his Mission Impossible charity, which has raised $600,000 over the past 15 years for the Nashville Rescue Mission through golf tournaments and other events. “This last year everything went directly to the mission. We got a 501c3 company with a board and members and we are working as a team. We held our first golf tournament, and we will be able to do other things in Nashville outside of the Rescue Mission. This is what we’ve been trying to get to over the years. So much has happened in the last year that lets you know there are so many programs that need help these days, from being able to help musicians to the Second Harvest Food Bank. Hopefully we will make a difference. For me, when you get involved, you realize there is so much needed, but you do what you can.”
In addition to his efforts through Mission Impossible, Lawrence is a huge supporter of the U.S. military. “I’ve played a lot of military bases around this country and in Europe,” he says. “I have a great appreciation for the men and women who put their lives on the line. I think they are way too underappreciated, so if I can bring a little bit of home and put a smile on their face, I enjoy it. I think it is something that every entertainer should do.”
Honky Tonkin’ with Tracy Lawrence is in its eighth year, which Lawrence says he finds hard to believe. “You know when we started the radio show, we were going through a period in country music with bro country, and there was so much good music from the 90s that wasn’t being heard. The concept for the show was to bring some of that music back. I think the 90s was a great era of country music and the catalyst for everything we have now. It is an era people go back to all the time. It was a disservice to not play that music on radio.”
Lawrence says it was a little different for him to be on the side of the microphone asking questions instead of answering them. “The biggest thing is, I’ve spent 30 years answering questions about myself. It took me awhile to where I could navigate a conversation with a peer. That is something I had to study. I love doing the interviews, and over the last several years I’ve got to interview people who are not with us anymore like Charlie Daniels, Joe Diffie and Kenny Rogers.
“I’ve also had the opportunity to talk with Reba, TG Shepperd, John Anderson … It’s been an opportunity to learn anything I want to know about my peers. There are things I ask that I would never bring up just sitting around drinking a beer. One of the most interesting people I’ve interviewed is TG; what an interesting man. He ran away from home at 14, he got to know Elvis and ended up staying at Graceland.
“I’ve enjoyed it, it’s been a lot of fun, and now I’m trying to get everything together to do my own podcast. We pre-tape the radio show, so I can’t talk about anything current on it, and sometimes it might be three weeks before the show comes out after we tape it. I really feel like my hands are tied in lot of respects. I want to get to interview record producers, songwriters and other professionals in the industry. There are so many people I know that I think the public would find interesting.”
Lawrence has had some highs and lows in his career, from his number one records and starting his own record label just after recording his Sticks & Stones album to personal things such as he and his girlfriend being robbed in a Nashville restaurant parking lot to going through a couple divorces. All of the bad is behind him now and Lawrence says looking back, what he is most proud of is he always had a grasp for how the music industry worked.
“I knew how to market records and market an artist, I had a general grasp of the whole thing,” he explains. “When I got my team together and started my own label, Country Standard Time, and released ‘Find Out Who Your Friends Are,’ which went to number one, that was most gratifying because I proved to them (industry) I knew what I was doing. I validated and overcame everything I needed to do. I watched a lot of things change, but that will always be the proudest period of my professional career.”
One of the things that has changed in the industry is the use of social media. “Everything we do is social media, putting out new music all year long, keep our visibility up. We have a lot of stuff coming out constantly. Social media is probably the biggest one thing that has changed. Social media that we deal with every day is a huge part of my business model.”
While he has made some mistakes along the way, Lawrence doesn’t think he would make any changes. “I think anything bad or good that happened in my career kind of shaped me and I know a little bit more of who I am now,” he says. “I don’t live in the past and I don’t walk through life with regret… I feel pretty content about where I am.”
Lawrence constantly looks ahead and plans what will be a part of his life in the future. “You know I have found that I am happier when I am writing and being creative all the time, but I’m not going to work 11 months out of the year anymore. I plan to slow down but I’m not going to retire. My youngest daughter graduates from high school this year and my wife and I plan to travel.
“I plan on taking some acting classes, theatre stuff … I don’t know if that is where I’ll go, but I do know I want to do more intellectual things, talk to different people. I think I have more to say than the guy who makes records, but I think it’s appealing to me to have a different kind of voice out there for people to hear.”
