The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Jan. 21st 2005)

Blake at the bar

Shelton orders up gritty drinking songs on latest album

Blake Shelton didn't like "Austin." The country ballad by David Kent and Kirsti Manna, about love lost and regained over a telephone answering machine, was offered on a demo as a sluggish piano tune. Shelton's record company practically insisted that he take it home and listen to it again, learn to play it on guitar and make it his own.

Shelton reluctantly took the advice and scored his first Top 10 country hit.

Previously the singer-songwriter had passed on "Ten Rounds with Jose Cuervo," which Tracy Byrd turned into a smash hit, and "I Just Want to Be Mad," which did pretty well for Terri Clark.

But Shelton isn't whining or wishing for second chances.

"Those songs just didn't connect with me," he says, in a recent phone interview. "I passed on a lot of songs. If I decided to go back, I still wouldn't sing them."

A solid songwriter in his own right, Shelton is getting the hang of playing Nashville's "name that tune," a painstakingly slow and deliberate game in which writers try to get their songs placed with the stars most likely to turn them into hits. Once an artist "names that tune" by claiming a "hold" on it, protocol demands that the song be considered off-limits for anybody else to record, whether or not the singer who laid claim promptly takes it into the studio.

After "Austin," Shelton moved to Warner Bros. and took a long hard look at his career.

"I brought in a wish list of songs I wished I would have been able to record," he says. "They were mostly Merle Haggard songs, John Anderson songs, Hank Williams Jr. songs ... songs that sounded like they could be played on a jukebox somewhere. We noticed that they were all drinking songs and realized that maybe this is something we need to do on the next album."

Welcome to "Blake Shelton's Bar & Grill," a honky-tonk joint off the beaten path where most everything on the menu comes with hot sauce, a shot and a beer. Savvy enough to realize that country radio prefers the musical equivalent of Zima, Shelton, in his old-school traditionalist way, says he'd rather pound tequila.

"I would say that radio isn't looking for the next big traditional country hit," he says. "A lot of what you hear on the radio today is because they don't want to offend anybody. We got to the point where Nashville is making records that they think radio will play instead of records that we want to play. Now we're beginning to hear a good mix of outlaws and hard-core country and pop stuff. I think Nashville is figuring out that radio will play a song wherever it comes from as long as it's a hit."

That's why on "Bar & Grill" he's not afraid to join in the stylish Jimmy Buffett island party with Paul Overstreet and Rory Feek's "Some Beach," revisit Conway Twitty's classic "Goodbye Time," and get gritty on Mary Gauthier's desolate "I Drink." Shelton throws in his own two cents on "Love Gets in the Way," and gets slightly raunchy on Overstreet's "Cotton Pickin' Time," in which a pair of skinny-dipping lovers find some afternoon delight.

"It's up tempo," he says, laughing, "and about as inbred, redneck country as you can get."

Shelton returns Saturday to the Pepsi-Cola Roadhouse with Warner Bros. recording artist Dusty Drake, who a decade ago was Monaca's Dean Buffalini of the local country cover band Silverado.