Tulsa World (Aug. 10th 2010)

Shelton releases second short album

Oklahoma native and country musician Blake Shelton has had a slow and steady gallop to fame over the past decade.

He has enough chart hits for an entire set of live music while on tour, he said, including six No. 1 hits.

He'll perform Friday night at the Downstream Casino & Resort in Quapaw.

This week, he released his second album of the year, "All About Tonight," a short-format "six-pak" of tunes available in digital and CD formats.

"It's a fickle business," he said of the music industry. But it's one he loves -- and he understands the risks he's taken as a musician.

"I've never played it safe on my own music," he admitted during a recent telephone interview with the Tulsa World. "What I do is what I like, if I'm not as famous as I'd like to be, I've done it to myself."

He can also take credit for his hits, too, especially over the past few years. All peaked in the Top 10 of Billboard charts.

His fans are a distinctive breed -- tried and true, fun-loving and no-nonsense. They've accepted him, in part, because of his unpredictably.

These days, he lives on his ranch in Milburn, three miles east of Tishomingo, with his fiancee, Miranda Lambert, a country music star in her own right.

Blake Tollison Shelton was born in 1976 in Ada. He moved to Nashville, Tenn., in his 20s to establish his career.

He has since returned to farming, having decided that doing things his "own way" has helped further define him as

a party- and fun-loving country boy with his ever-growing fan base.

Take that "six-pak," for example. It's the second successful release for Shelton this year, something few musicians can claim in this often faithless and flighty sales climate.

But it's worked for him. Well. In fact, he embraced the idea.

"All the record company had to tell me was that this format would allow me to cut records more often," he said of the versatility of the "six-pak" format. "That was all I needed to hear.

"I believe that albums are going away, probably in the next few years," he said. "Pretty soon, it's all going to be digital."

With this in mind, Shelton and his record label, Reprise, haven't planned much past the end of this year, he said. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have anything to do.

A greatest hits album is scheduled for release in September, and a live DVD and album release will follow shortly after it makes its debut Sept. 8 on "Great American Country."

"I will release new music immediately after that, but we just don't know how or if we'll even have a CD or a 'six-pak' release at all," Shelton said.

He's not quite as seat-of-the-pants as he might appear, he admits. He's not so rebellious that he'd throw away his career, but he's never been afraid to take chances and speak his mind -- or listen to advice, for that matter.

Sometimes, he finds music for his album through a process of elimination. Other times, the muse finds him.

Some tunes that ended up on "All About Tonight" reached into his heart, Shelton said. "Dragging the River" is one of those.

"The song kind of found us," Shelton recalled.

While lounging on his tour bus one afternoon, he decided to listen to a few tunes that had been recommended to him. His fiancee joined him as he listened to "Dragging the River," an upbeat ditty about a couple who elope.

"She said that if I didn't want to record the song that she would," he said, then laughed. "But she also said it would sound great as a duet. I listened to it again. Then again. ... She was right. Since then I'd never thought of it as anything but a duet. I can't even imagine it as a solo tune."

Lambert collaborated on two of the album's tracks. Their professional life together has blossomed along with their personal life, he said.

The couple met in 2005, put together by Country Music Television for a special, "CMT's Top 100 Greatest Duets." The prearranged project turned into the real deal after the pair passionately performed "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma," he said. They were engaged earlier this year and plan to wed next year in Texas, although no date has yet been set.

For Shelton, life is better now than it's ever been.

"This is a crazy-awesome year for me," he said. "If anyone would have told me 10 years ago that I would have major awards, hits and sold-out shows and a career that's still on fire, well, I would have thought someone was yanking my chain."