Superstar persona preceeds Lawrence’s Argosy show
If you ask the folks at the Argosy Casino, Tracy Lawrence is a “country superstar.”
The folks around these parts seem to agree. Lawrence’s performance at the downtown casino sold out over a week in advance of his performance this Friday.
“We haven’t got any more tickets for that,” said the phone operator at the casino’s designated ticket line Monday afternoon. “We’ve been sold out,” she continued as she clicked over to another disappointed caller mid-sentence.
With superstars the likes of Tracy Lawrence on the playbill, the Argosy has every right to harbor frustration towards Monday afternoon Johnny-come-latelies.
Lawrence has earned his place in the country music history books the hard way. After graduating from college, he moved to Nashville in 1990 aboard a beat-up, ten-year-old Toyota Corolla with a fan wired to the dash for A/C. The car “had about 250,000 miles on it, expired tags, no insurance and ran on three cylinders,” he told his biographer on his Web site, “Tracy Lawrence: The Official Internet Home Page.”
A country boy can survive. The fact that Lawrence now has an internet biographer on his Web site speaks for his success since those days.
After an appearance on a Kentucky radio station and a performance at Nashville’s fabled Bluebird Café in 1991, Lawrence landed a recording contract with Atlantic records. His debut album “Sticks and Stones” produced a number one single, the title cut, after he was shot four times in an attempted robbery in May of 1991.
Lawrence toured the country extensively, earning a reputation as one of country music’s best young entertainers. Billboard named him “Top New Male Vocalist” in 1992. His second release “Alibis” was anything but a sophomore slump. “Alibis” went gold in only 17 days, spawning four consecutive number one singles including the title cut, “Can’t Break It to My Heart,” “My Second Home,” and “If the Good Die Young.” “Alibis” went platinum shortly after its release, cementing Lawrence as one of country music’s finest performers of the 1990s.
Lawrence upped the ante with the platinum release “I See It Now” in 1994, followed by the irrepressible anthem “Time Marches On” in 1996.
“Sister cries out from her baby bed/ brother runs in, feathers on his head/ Momma’s in her room learning how to sew/ Daddy’s drinking beer, listening to the radio,” Lawrence croons. “Time marches on, time marches on.”
Exactly ten years after “Sticks and Stones” hit the charts; Lawrence released his self-titled ninth album in 2001. On it, Lawrence pays homage to country’s aging outlaws who paved the way for so many young hellions to earn their livings playing country songs.
“I’m not carrying a lot of bells and whistles when it comes to staging,” he said. “My attitude is just, ‘Light up the stage and let’s let the songs do the talking.’”
One lyric from “Tracy Lawrence” seems to tell the tale of the singer at this mellowing stage of his career: “It’s hard to be an outlaw when you’re not wanted anymore.”
Grant Widmer