Billy Ray Cyrus
THE GOSPEL SIDE OF BILLY RAY CYRUS
The Country Rocker Sings One from His Achy-Breaky Heart
Country hunk, international star, achy-breaky heartthrob -- those are some of the nice things that have been said about Billy Ray Cyrus. Critics haven't always been so kind, of course, focusing on his choice of hairdo and recording material with equal acrimony. With his first-ever gospel record, The Other Side, recorded, one can imagine the poison pens sharpened in gleeful anticipation. So it's a relief to find Cyrus neither spouts saccharine Christian pap nor dredges up dolorous hymns for his gospel debut. Instead, his rocking-country-with-a-message seems a good reflection of Cyrus the family man, TV actor, and singer. Barnes & Noble.com's Lisa Zhito spoke with Cyrus about his new sense of priorities and life on The Other Side.
Barnes & Noble.com: You actually got your start singing in your dad's gospel quartet when you were a small child, and your grandfather Pap-Paw was a Pentecostal preacher. So I guess we shouldn't be surprised that you have released a gospel record.
Billy Ray Cyrus: Right, that's the history of my family, and that's my very earliest roots in music. So there is the reason right there [that I recorded The Other Side]. That is the foundation.
B&N.com: This is your first studio release in three years. Why release a gospel record now?
BRC: Well, the real question I ask myself is, Why have you waited this long? I always prayed that God would give me the wisdom and the vision to do the things on this earth that I was supposed to do to express His life and love and His will. That's the spiritual foundation of why I did this project, but as to whether it was this record or this time,all I can say is that this was a record that I had to make, sooner rather than later. I probably should have made this record before I made any other record!
B&N.com: There's a story circulating that both you and your producer on this project, Billy Joe Walker Jr., came up with the idea at the same time, in different cities, and completely independently of each other.
BRC: To be honest with you, it is one of the more -- if not the most -- bizarre things that has ever happened in my career. I was in Toronto, where I film [PAX-TV series] Doc, thinking about what I'm going to do for my next album. And this voice in my head said, You need to make the record that you've wanted to make your whole life, and that is a gospel record, an inspirational record. And within minutes my phone rings, and it's this legendary producer out of Nashville and he says, "How'd you like to cut an inspirational album?"
B&N.com: And I understand you didn't even have a label signed on for this project?
BRC: Right. "Amazing Grace" was the first thing me and Billy cut, and we did it before we actually had the record deal. We went in to do a session, we were going to cut some country songs. Well, we had just had a conversation with Word Records, so I said, "Hey, since we're doing a session, let's cut 'Amazing Grace' instead." The next day we played it for Word and they said, "We'd like you all to do a whole album."
B&N.com: Speaking of which, that's not your typical church-hymn version of that song! How did you come up with the rock 'n' roll arrangement?
BRC: Yeah, that song was written in the 1700s, and we did a different arrangement on it, as you can tell. Me and Billy came up with the arrangement. I'm really proud of it; I've sung that song since I've been able to sing, since I was a little teeny boy. Whenever I do it with my band, I play it in the blues style. I always felt it lended itself to being a great blues song. I've always played it at my shows, and it's always been one of the songs most requested by the fans.
B&N.com: You also wrote the project's title track. How did it come about?
BRC: The people at the record company had asked me if I could write a song about my life, my relationship with God, and where I'm from. Well, I can't write a song on purpose, my songs come in a moment of inspiration or desperation. Plus, I thought we had so many songs already, there was no sense in forcing a song to come out of me. We were looking at all these great songs, and it made me feel inadequate as a songwriter to even compete. Well, it was my last week in Toronto filming Doc, and I got on my knees and prayed. I said, God, if you want me to write a song for this album, you have to give it to me. And the song just came flowing out of me. I wrote it down and turned on my four-track to get the melody down.
B&N.com: You were something of a rebellious teenager. How did your faith play into that?
BRC: Well, I've never left my faith -- but have I made a lot of mistakes? Yeah. But was I fortunate that I was brought up in that Pentecostal church, where I heard about God's love and God's forgiveness? Yeah! There were about a million times that my faith was tested. There were times where I felt like giving up on the whole dream, I felt like quitting. But you know, the Bible says where the people have no vision they will perish, and faith without works is dead. Luckily some of those quotes from the Bible were instilled so deep inside me that no matter how far I would stray, I'd still hear that voice that said, You have a purpose, you have a reason you were put on this earth, you've got to be the person God wants you to be.
B&N.com: Wow, you sounded like a preacher for a moment there!
BRC: Well, whatever you say, I do hope that you say this: By no means because I put out this record am I proclaiming that I'm like this religious perfect person. I'm still the same. I am and always will be a sinner. But that's the beautiful thing about Jesus. I'll always try to be a better person in the eyes of God. But I'm not all of a sudden stepping up on a pedestal and saying I'm holier than thou, 'cause I'm not!
October, 2003
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