NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Once intent on scaling back her career to focus on family, country singer Trisha Yearwood now finds herself with two — platinum-selling musician with a new album on the way and emerging kitchen mogul.
“I kind of feel like Rocky in the first movie,” Yearwood said.
An apt description: Yearwood announced Tuesday she’s releasing a new album titled “PrizeFighter,” the title taken from a new track she found inspiring as she contemplated relaunching her music career at 49. It coincides with the looming comeback tour with her husband, Garth Brooks. She’s also launching cookware and cutlery lines, begins a new season of “Trisha’s Southern Kitchen” next week and has her third cookbook out next spring.
“I kind of feel like the odds are not in my favor, so the song is really motivating in that way because it’s just kind of like you’ve got to fight, you’ve got to fight for what you want,” Yearwood said.
She and Brooks begin their tour Sept. 4 in Chicago, where they’ll play 11 concerts — “We call it the freak show right now” — and she’ll be taping new episodes of her show’s fifth season between sets while on the road.
As the tour approached, she spent time in the studio tweaking her new album, which includes a hits package and six new songs. The music, she said, has been her priority amid all the other projects.
“I told the Food Network people, I love them, ‘You guys are awesome, but I’ve got to finish my record. I’ve got to make some music,’” Yearwood said.
Brooks and Yearwood chose to mostly shutter their careers after they married in 2005 and moved to Oklahoma, where they raised Brooks’ three daughters. Since then, Yearwood has sold 12 million albums but released very little music. The Grammy Award winner’s last album came out in 2007 and plans since were set aside when her mother was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.
She said she found things too quiet without music, though, and hopes the new music will empower young women, just as several other recent songs by female artists have done.
“I love those songs that make girls put their hands in the air and say, ‘Yeah, I can do that,’” she said. “Hopefully this song (‘PrizeFighter’) will do that.”
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