Reba's Happy to Go on the Road Again

02/15/2004 9:10 AM, Reuters
Ray Waddell

Having conquered Broadway and TV, Reba McEntire will return to the vehicle that launched her to stardom: performing at rodeos, fairs and festivals coast to coast.

McEntire will launch her first tour in three years March 7 at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo. She will play primarily fairs and festivals, as well as scattered arenas, casinos and amphitheaters on the route. Linda Davis will open all dates.

This is a run the artist is looking forward to, even though she will have to intersperse concert dates with tapings for her WB TV show, "Reba."

"I love the live audience, I love the music and I love getting up and singing," she tells Billboard. "(But) after 25 years I kind of got burned out."

Following a stint on Broadway with "Annie Get Your Gun" and then starting the TV show more than two years ago, she recalls, "I didn't realize how much I missed until I got back into rehearsals with the band."

"Reba's going back to her roots," says Rod Essig, her agent at Creative Artists Agency. "She hasn't played a lot of these places in 10 years or more."

Essig says the tour will boast full production, a crack band of studio musicians and a set list of hits. He adds that today's fairs and festivals can handle almost any production requirements, and playing these dates makes sense in 2004.

Still, the show won't be the huge production McEntire was known for in the 1990s.

"There won't be any dancers, 15 costume changes or the huge stage that stretches across the whole arena," she says. "It's basically about getting back to the music and a bunch of great songs. I had forgotten until we got into rehearsals how much some of these songs had touched my heart in the first place."

TOUR ROUTE MAKES SENSE

Playing primarily fairs and festivals was a group decision. "Narvel (Blackstock, McEntire's husband and manager), Reba and I had dinner one night and talked about what she ought to do," Essig says.

He observes that McEntire will fill a need for headliners on this particular circuit.

"This year, a lot of the fairs can't afford to buy Tim McGraw or Shania, and Alan Jackson and Martina McBride are playing arenas," Essig points out. "There's a real need for headliners at fairs and festivals."

Since fairs and festivals appeal to a broad demographic, and McEntire's appeal is also extensive, the tour route is a logical one.

Early on-sales are promising. On July 22, McEntire will play two shows at Soaring Eagle Casino in Mt. Pleasant, Mich., a throwback to the days when country stars would routinely knock down two shows in one day. "They wanted another show, and they paid her the money she wanted," Essig notes.

McEntire last toured in 2001 on the Girls Night Out tour, with Martina McBride, Sara Evans , Jamie O'Neal and Carolyn Dawn Johnson , which grossed $7.8 million. Prior to that, McEntire played small auditoriums as a headliner.

She is one of country music's most successful touring artists of all time, routinely selling out amphitheaters in the 1990s. Her late-1990s co-headlining tours with Brooks & Dunn were also very successful, grossing more than $10 million from just 22 shows reported in 1998.

Dates are on the books through Sept. 25 at Qwest Center in Omaha, Neb. The tour will support McEntire's current MCA release, "Room to Breathe," her first studio album since 1999.

Reuters/Billboard