Trisha Yearwood gets a bit nervous before taking the stage. She paints her nails without realizing it. She fiddles.
It’s hard to imagine the country star in a state of anxiety. She has sold millions of albums, sung with Luciano Pavarotti in Italy, and performed at the Academy Awards. She’s even dealt with the paparazzi, thanks to her 2005 marriage to Garth Brooks.
Still, before she takes the stage Sunday night at Tulalip Ampitheatre, she will in all likelihood be fidgeting.
“I get nervous if I’m waiting before I go on stage,” she said. “I try to be busy. I’ll be putting on the finishing touches of my makeup or clothes.”
While her weekend show in Snohomish County isn’t an outright rarity, Yearwood has played fewer dates than in years past. During her heyday in the 1990s, when she became the first female country singer to have a debut album go platinum, she would power through 250 dates a year.
Now, it’s more like 40.
“I just decided after 17 years of going pretty hard, I have a life and I have children now,” she said. “I’m a bonus mom with three teenagers (her stepchildren with Brooks). I don’t want to sacrifice my time with them.”
Still, she finds time for shows. During concerts, her set lists are made up largely of her biggest hits. She can’t imagine playing a show without performing “She’s in Love With the Boy” or “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl).” She thinks, if she were a fan, what songs would she like to hear?
“I want to hear songs I can sing along with,” she said.
Oddly enough, those songs might feel a bit more country than they did when she originally released them. In 1991, Yearwood was part of a wave of artists that continued moving Nashville closer to traditional pop. Now, country has inched even further in that direction, as groups like Sugarland blur the lines between the radio station dials.
So what is country music these days? Good question, Yearwood said.
“It’s getting to a place that you can’t always recognize if you’re on a country station when you’re flipping the stations,” she said. “… I miss the mix. I think it’s kind of become all one thing.”
Granted, Yearwood isn’t concerned only with music these days. Earlier this year, she put out “Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen.” She said she was originally asked to write an autobiography, but passed on that, instead pulling together recipes from her childhood in Georgia for a cookbook.
The book stresses that good food might result from culinary skills, but it also brews up a sense of companionship.
“It’s about sitting around the table together, and sometimes sitting there long after you finished eating and the food’s getting cold,” she said.
A blossoming cookbook career doesn’t mean she’s left recording behind. She put out an album of new material, “Heaven, Heartache and the Power of Love,” in 2007, and 2008 saw the release of at least her fourth greatest hits compilation, “Love Songs.”
Those releases have doubtlessly satisfied fans, but her marriage to Brooks begs a question: Will the two ever put out a duets album?
Yearwood said the couple has talked about it for about 10 years. They won’t record it until they can also tour together, however. Since they have a 12-year-old to care for at home, and Brooks remains in semi-retirement, they may not actually get to the project for years.
“When the youngest graduates, if there’s still a demand, maybe he and I will go out,” Yearwood said. “… That would be the time to put out a duet album.”
And until then, fans can enjoy the three-time Grammy winner in concert by herself.
Reporter Andy Rathbun: 425-339-3455 or e-mail arathbun@heraldnet.com.
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