Trick Pony article
Coop
By TOM ROLAND
For The Tennessean
LOS ANGELES -- ''We're basically a traveling frat party,'' Trick Pony
bass player Ira Dean says with a laugh.
Named for Paul Simon's 1980 movie and album, Trick Pony has emerged in
the past year as one of country music's most energetic acts. Its
self-titled debut has a raucous, live feel, and in three southern
California performances since December, the trio established itself as a
boisterous, irreverent and fast-moving bunch.
Ira Dean, Keith Burns and lead vocalist Heidi Newfield take up the raw,
mixed-gender, honky-tonk sound once owned exclusively by
California-based Highway 101. In 14 months, they've pulled in three hit
singles, a gold album and the American Music Award for favorite new
country artist.
They're double nominees in tomorrow's 37th annual Academy of Country
Music awards show (7 p.m. on CBS, WTVF-Channel 5).
Trick Pony certainly kicked into frat-party mode at the AMAs. Surprised
that his group beat out fellow newcomer Jamie O'Neal, Dean returned to
the hotel bar at the W and ''bought a round of shots for everybody.''
''I stayed there until they closed, and then I talked 'em out of a
bottle of whiskey and went up to my room and had a party in my room.''
That should come as no surprise. Trick Pony introduced itself to the
world with the opening line, ''Pour me, pour me, pour me, pour me
another shot of whiskey,'' and backed it with a stage show that finds
Newfield toying with her audience while Dean ends up riding and slapping
his chrome stand-up bass, rigged with working headlights.
''We don't want you to think about bein' behind on your bills or your
baby sitter or whatever,'' Dean insists. ''We just want you to forget
about your problems for an hour or two and just party.''
When Brooks & Dunn's Neon Circus & Wild West Show tour played San
Bernardino, Calif., last month, the Pony stood out as the most
rambunctious of the five acts on the bill.
''They are just havin' so much fun,'' Kix Brooks says. ''They're really
exciting on stage. They're good players, good musicians, and I really
like their deal a lot.''
The Pony members share a few common musical denominators: Johnny Cash,
Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, The Eagles and Fleetwood
Mac. From there, they veer in multiple directions. Burns is a diehard
Tom Petty fan; Newfield adheres to blues musicians such as Sonny Boy
Williamson, and big-voiced females, including Tina Turner; Dean is a
jazz fan, crediting Miles Davis and fusion band Weather Report among his
favorites.
In fact, when Trick Pony performed in Kansas City, Mo., Dean visited the
gravesite of sax legend Charlie ''Bird'' Parker, where he hoisted a
40-ounce beer in Bird's memory.
But Jennings' death in February hit much closer to home. Jennings and
Cash appeared as special guests on Trick Pony's album, in a remake of
Cash's Big River, on what proved to be the final recording of Jennings'
life.
Trick Pony worked a show after hearing of his death but didn't go to the
hotel after an encore. Instead, the group searched for the only open bar
it could find, which was playing karaoke.
Dean recalls the scene: ''Keith walked up to the guy hostin' the
karaoke, gave him $50 and said, 'Do me a favor and quit singin' karaoke
and just play Waylon songs all night.' So, the guy played Waylon all
night. We got on our cell phones, and I called Montgomery Gentry, and we
shared a shot over the phone, and I called Blake Shelton, and we shared
a shot over the phone.
''Me and Keith got really drunk, extremely drunk. We probably got way
too drunk, but we sang Waylon tunes, and by the end of the night, we had
the whole bar singin' Waylon with us.''
Trick Pony collaborations won't end with Jennings and Cash. The group
already has recorded Whiskey River with Nelson for its next album, due
later this year, and plans to find a legend to work with on every
successive release.
''You never know whether you're gonna get another record or not,'' Dean
muses, ''so you might as well sing with all your heroes while you've got
the opportunity.''
The threesome bonded in Nashville after migrating from other places.
Newfield came from California, where she met the Atlanta-born Burns, who
played in Joe Diffie's band. Dean was a member of Tanya Tucker's
ensemble at the time he met Burns, though the Pony trick never would
have happened were it not for some well-timed charity. Dean was set to
return to North Carolina about 12 years ago when a friend stopped him.
''I was playin' this little club for $30 a night and gettin' ready to
move home,'' Dean remembers. ''Johnny Cash's son, John Carter, says,
'No, you can stay with me. I'll feed you.' I was like the pet, and he
fed me, and I moved from room to room, and John and June didn't know I
was livin' there until one day they caught me havin' breakfast.''
Trick Pony came together in 1996, and the three developed their act the
old-fashioned way, touring endlessly with a trailer from club to club,
developing the tools required to sustain a crowd's attention. Sometimes
the crowd was a packed house, sometimes it was three or four
beer-drenched faces at a table.
On the Brooks & Dunn tour, however, they're regularly singing to 10,000
or more people, raising the emotional stakes in Trick Pony's itinerant
party.
''It definitely changes the way you feel inside when they take a chorus
or a verse, and you hear 12,000 people knowin' all the words to a song
you wrote six years before, (when you were) starvin' to death,'' Dean
says. ''It's amazin'. We do Pour Me, and you can stop and everybody's
singin' the chorus. It's hard. You gotta fight back the tears sometimes.''
Nola Daniell
> Trick Pony collaborations won't end with Jennings and Cash. The group
> already has recorded Whiskey River with Nelson for its next album, due
> later this year, and plans to find a legend to work with on every
> successive release.
>
> ''You never know whether you're gonna get another record or not,'' Dean
> muses, ''so you might as well sing with all your heroes while you've got
> the opportunity.
And therein, IMHO, lies the difference between the music of some of the new,
young acts like Trick Pony, Dixie Chicks, Daryle Singletary for example and a
lot of the new, young psuedo-pop acts of today. It's not enough to be hip and
happening and know where you're going, you have to know what came before you and
have respect for it.
Nola
The Rooster
Stan