Country Standard Time (January 2003)

Blake Shelton remains the dreamer

Blake Shelton relocated from Ada, Okla. to Nashville at the tender age of 17. This bold career move had more to do with blind faith, though, than with any kind of youthful confidence. "I think it was a combination of having confidence, but mostly (it) was just (about) being naive," remembers Shelton, who is releasing his second album, "The Dreamer," in February.

"At 17, you don't really know that much about the world, and I had no idea what I was getting into when I moved to Nashville. I just thought it'd be easy - that you go there, you meet the right person, get a record deal and be rich and famous in no time," Shelton recalls.

Shelton was originally signed to Giant Records, but that label closed down the very week his first single, "Austin," shipped to radio. The single's early airplay and chart activity, however, prompted Warner Brothers to sign Shelton quickly.

I was in complete shock over the early and quick success of "Austin," Shelton comments. "But mostly I was shocked over the power of a single song."

His genesis wasn't quite that easy, of course. But then again, it wasn't long before Shelton - who is still only in his mid-twenties - started to see success come his way. He certainly hasn't paid the kinds of dues many others have doled out before him, however. That's for sure.

Much of Shelton's initial confidence (guts? balls?) can be attributed to the kind words he received from Mae Boren Axton (the mother of Hoyt Axton and a writer of "Heartbreak Hotel") when he was introduced to her shortly before making his Music City trip.

"She told me that if I would move to Nashville one day, I might have a chance at getting a record deal. She was the only person (at the time) that I'd ever met who was in the music industry. And I think that little nudge gave me a lot of confidence," Shelton explains.

"She was just one of those people that would insist that you either have 'it' or you don't have 'it,'" he continues. "And nobody ever knows what that 'it' is. But she would tell me, 'You've got what 'it' takes."

In less promising situations, naivete can lead you directly to getting your butt kicked. But its blissfully ignorant nature can also move you to take chances you might not otherwise try, were you to wait for maturity to give you more wisdom about the world and its pitfalls.

In Shelton's case, he highly doubts he would have so boldly entered the lion's den that is Nashville, had he waited too much longer than he did.

"That's something that I think about a lot - especially now that we've had a little bit of success. I'm glad I moved when I did. I'm glad I made every decision that I did along the way. I wonder what might have happened if I'd of waited until now. What kind of a person would I be? What would I be doing? And I'd have to say that there'd be a good chance that I might have never moved to Nashville if I'd have waited until now - when I'm 26. Because I'd probably have my roots into doing something else and it'd be a lot bigger risk. I had nothing to give up by moving there when I was 17. Maybe if I'd have waited until now, I'd have had a family or something that it'd be impossible to get away from."

Shelton knew from an early age growing up in Oklahoma, that writing and playing music would be his first and foremost career choice. "It was always the first thing for me. I always thought about other things: my hobbies are hunting and fishing. But you know I was smart enough to know that there was no way of making a living doing that. The only other thing that I really really loved to do was make music. I did awful in school. I had an awful grade point average and just wasn't interested in school at all. I think music was what kept me out of trouble. I was always able to get along with everybody - including my teachers. Because I had music as the one thing I was most interested in, this was the reason why I pursued it the way I did."

Even with this love for creating country music, however, the astounding talent he soon found himself competing with in Music City opened Shelton's eyes wide to the harsh competition that rules that town.

"Before I moved there, I thought I was writing pretty good songs," he remembers. "But when I got there, and I went to a few writers nights and saw songs that people weren't getting cut that were the best songs that I'd heard in my life, that's when I started throwing everything that I'd written in the trash, and said, 'Man, I've really got to step up here'."

Before Shelton recorded his debut album, he had a publishing deal as a writer. And while he was never able to place any of his songs on other artists' albums, he now has a better understanding in retrospect on why he was not more successful.

"That was a thing that was real frustrating to me for a long time, because I was writing a lot of songs every year. And now looking back, listening to those songs, man, they weren't of a real broad type of music. It was a real narrow field in the type of songs I was writing. I feel like I was only writing songs that I (alone) would be interested in, and looking back, even I'm not interested in them now," he says, laughing.

"I'll probably never be a guy like Phil Vassar that can write a whole album for myself and then write three or four more hits for somebody else."

While his songwriting skills are what initially got Shelton's foot in the Nashville music business door, they are not his primary calling card these days.

"The songwriter part of me is maybe the smallest part of my overall career. But even though I know I can write a song, in my lifetime, I can't write that many hit songs. I think that there are so many (great) songs out there that it would be foolish for me not to go out and find the best possible songs I can find. If hadn't of done that on my first album, I wouldn't have had 'Austin' (which spent 5 weeks at number 1 in April 2001) or 'Ol' Red.' Now with the second album, it's 'The Baby.' I can't imagine passing on those songs, just to have a song that I have writing credit on, on the album."

In Shelton's mind, there are two distinct kinds of songs: There are those songs that make for mindless radio entertainment, and then there are those that demand a life-changing emotional response.

"It's not hard to write a song that gets a lot of air play on the radio because it's in the middle, and it doesn't offend anybody. It's just down the middle of the road, and those songs are easy to write. But it's hard to write songs that move people emotionally and speak to them in a way that just might, perhaps, offend another person. But those are the types of songs that sell albums, and those are the songs (that) go on to become standards and mean something in the long run, and those are the types of songs I'm most interested in."

The first single from "The Dreamer" is a song simply titled "The Baby." Shelton knew right from the start that this was one of those special songs.

"That's about the only song that I'd ever heard in my life that I knew from the moment I heard it that I wanted to record it. The other one being 'Ol' Red.' It was one of those moments probably lot of people had when they first heard 'The Baby,' which was: if you're not crying, you're trying not to. I just knew in my mind, wow, that's not only something everybody's going to have to go through at some point (watching a son or daughter leave home for good), but a lot of people already have, and that's going to speak to them. I recorded the thing immediately because I didn't want anybody else to get their hands on it before I did."

Shelton wrote two of the songs - the title cut, "The Dreamer," and "My Neck Of The Woods" and both reflect some of Shelton's recent experiences.

"My Neck Of The Woods," for example, speaks of his relatively new home. "I live on a farm in the middle of Tennessee, which is in the middle of nowhere. It (the song) is kind of reminiscent of that area and the people I've met since I've been there."

He's really starting to take to this life on the farm. "I bought a tractor, and I'm enjoying trying to plant some things - oats and wheat. That 's kind of a hobby of mine - to dabble in farming a little bit."

Private moments, such as working on his farm, are privileges Shelton dearly treasures. But success can sometimes rob a man of simple pleasures.

The song "The Dreamer," for example, dishes out a harsh dosage of reality about the illusions that many times accompany entertainment success stories. "I thought I needed fortune/I thought I needed fame."

"It has its ups and downs," Shelton says of fame and fortune. "You've got to give up a lot to do what I do. And the first thing is pretty much every bit of your personal life. And that was the hardest thing for me. On the one hand, you get everything you've been hoping for, which includes hearing your song on the radio. You see the dream come true a little bit. But on the other hand, you lose some things that you already had that were important to you."

One of the people helping Shelton keep his sanity during this, his quick assent to the top of the music business, is his producer Bobby Braddock. Braddock's credentials as an artist are exemplary, to say the least, having written "He Stopped Loving Her Today," "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and "I Wanna Talk About Me." And his 'take charge' attitude has helped to remove some of the guesswork out of the whole studio experience.

"It's never come down to us arguing in the studio because I've learned just to shut my mouth and listen to him or just stay out of his way. Because normally when he's there and he's brainstorming, and he tries to explain something to me, it at first sounds weird to me, and it scares me. And man, I'll think, 'he can't do that. It'll suck'. So, I've learned just to stay out of his way, and if I'll let him just try some things, normally he'll come up with something that works."

Shelton has also learned to trust this master songwriter's well-developed instincts about good songs, when it comes to choosing what to record.

"Bobby and I, to my knowledge, have never recorded a song that we weren't both over the top excited about. And that's the way I want to continue to do it. To have somebody as brilliant as Bobby Braddock to work with you on an album, it would just be a waste not to have strong input from him as far as song selection goes."

Shelton tries to present an honest picture of himself with his albums and performances, and nothing warms his heart more than to hear from fans who pick up accurately on just who this artist really is: a performer you just can't ignore.

"My favorite letters that I get are from people who see me as I want to be seen, and hear me in the same way that I want to be heard. Like when somebody says: 'I was driving today and I heard your song 'The Baby' on the radio, and I had to pull over and call my mom.' And then they go on to say, 'The kinds of songs you sing matter. They mean something to people. It's not just background music.'"