Arizona Daily Star (July 20th 2006)

Country Sunday coming

Neotraditional country singer Blake Shelton has learned a thing or two in his five-year music career:

No. 1: Say goodbye to your personal life.

No. 2: Say hello to sleeping on a tour bus.

No. 3: Somewhere in between hello and goodbye, you really can go home again.

The just-turned-30 country singer has sold his Nashville digs and moved back to tiny Ada, Okla., population 15,840 according to a 2004 estimate.

Make that 15,841.

Ada has never been far removed from Shelton's consciousness. He goes home often, and he married his high school sweetheart; the two have since split up.

In May, he returned to Ada in a big way. He staged "Rain Dance," a concert and archery tournament, with his buddies Craig Morgan, Tracy Byrd, Keith Anderson and Andy Griggs to benefit efforts to rebuild after devastating wildfires in and around his hometown.

In early July, he presented Oklahoma's governor, Brad Henry, $108,000 to benefit Project Rebuild.

The impact of his generosity is not lost on Shelton, whose hits have included "Austin," "Goodbye Time" and "Some Beach."

"I was able to help change their lives in a big way. It was really cool," he said in a phone call from his bus last week.

But the nobility of his act takes a back seat to giving a concert in his hometown with artists he considers his friends. Shelton, who spends more than half the year living on a tour bus, already is planning ahead to next year's second annual Rain Dance.

By then, he will have a new album out. He's in the studio now and hopes to finish by early fall. In September, he'd like to see the first single released, but only if the album is finished. He wants to be able to capitalize, sales-wise, if the single takes off.

On his first three albums, he released singles before the records were finished. The singles took off, which usually pushes album sales. But with no albums in the stores, the success was wasted.

Which explains why Shelton has on the verge of platinum sales (1 million) on each of his three albums but hasn't quite made that leap.

"It's hard to complain," he said with a chuckle, noting that two of his albums have each sold about 850,000 copies. "It's also frustrating to see that next level just right there and you're reaching for it. . . . Platinum's not good enough. I want double-platinum. Triple-platinum."

Shelton is dreaming big, and these days he's realizing some of those dreams.

"I finally have gotten to where I realize how much fun this is, and that a lot of people don't get to do it," he said. "I've learned to sleep on the bus. It's who I am now."