Leaving a band to go solo is always a risky move. Sometimes, you do just fine (see Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel); sometimes, not so well (see Steve Perry, David Lee Roth).
By 2006, country singer Heidi Newfield believed that honky-tonk act Trick Pony, which she helmed for a decade, had reached a dead end.
"We weren't evolving," she said last week in advance of her appearance at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park for Saturday's Kicks Country Jam, headlined by Gary Allan. "Even though I was proud of what we did together, I felt we had painted ourselves in a corner both musically and even personally. I wanted to step out and sing different songs and showcase my ability in different ways."
Her first solo single, "Johnny and June," is certainly not a Trick Pony song. Rather, it's a wistful mid-tempo tune that shows a more mature, refined Newfield. And she didn't just pluck Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash out of the annals of country music history as a gimmick; she actually worked with Johnny Cash on an early Trick Pony album and became friends with the couple.
"It's the type of relationship that made it through a lot of dark days, a magnolia and steel kind of love," she said. "It was written with total reverence to both of them."
Radio embraced the single, which recently peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard country chart.
"It's not only a great vocal performance, but it's a great love story," said Kicks 101.5 FM Program Director Mark Richards.
Newfield, 37, said she's found her own "Johnny and June" kind of relationship with her husband of four years, Bill Johnson, who owns an Atlanta-based sports management company. As a result, they split time between Nashville and Atlanta.
"Marriage," she said, "is a friendship and a building process. We live in such a throwaway world where we go through relationships so quickly. I really did wait for the right person."
Her album "What Am I Waiting For," which has sold more than 200,000 copies since it came out in August, does not feature a single carousing, Trick Pony-style barroom brawlin' song.
"I wanted to get a lot more personal," she said, "a lot more introspective. I wanted to introduce people to me with songs relatable to me and my life. There's a little more to life than living inside a barroom."
Although the next single is the hopeful "Cry Cry (Til the Sun Shines)," Newfield considers the title track "What Am I Waiting For" to be her anthem, a spirited call for freedom, to take risks and not bide your time.
"It's ironic that I co-wrote that with my former Trick Pony bandmates [Keith Burns and Ira Dean] and Jeffrey Steele. It was one of the last songs we penned together. In retrospect, it's extra special to me."
Newfield is frank about why Trick Pony, after some early success with songs such as "Pour Me" and "On a Night Like This," had trouble generating hits in its final years.
"We made very poor business decisions and song choices," she said. She even stopped writing songs near the end because she says the other members would dominate the songwriting decisions. So after one argument too many, she said she decided in 2006 to take the leap into the unknown and go solo.
But don't expect her set at Encore Park to be devoid of Trick Pony songs. "It will be a good meshing of the old and the new," she promised.
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