Rich revisits country tradition with album

By John Gerome

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — John Rich plops into a chair, asks for two bottles of water and downs them both.

“I’m trying to recover from a trip I just made to Los Angeles that was insanity, 36 hours of absolute insanity,” he says, then goes into a story about drinking with actor Mickey Rourke, who appears with Kris Kristofferson in the video for Rich’s latest hit, “Shuttin’ Detroit Down.”

It’s no secret that Rich, half of the duo Big & Rich, likes to play hard and work hard. His latest project is a solo album, “Son of a Preacher Man,” which was released Tuesday.

“That’s who I am,” says Rich, who grew up a preacher’s kid in West Texas. “I’ve got a King James in one hand and a Crown and coke in the other. I think we all know Jesus didn’t turn the water into Dr Pepper.”

“Shuttin’ Detroit Down” may be the fastest-rising song of his career, currently No. 13 on Billboard’s country chart after seven weeks. It expresses his frustration with Washington’s bailout of Wall Street.

“I think it’s a way for people to vent,” Rich says. “It shows what they are thinking so clearly and accurately that they crank that volume knob.”

The idea came to him backstage at a concert with ZZ Top. He was thinking that fans — not the CEOs and politicians — are the ones who represent the real America.

“I turned to my friend right before I walked on and said, ‘Remember this line: In the real world they’re shutting Detroit down,’” he recalled.

The 35-year-old singer, who recently married his longtime girlfriend Joan Bush, has the coiled energy of the kid at school that you knew was going to get you into trouble, but you couldn’t stay away.

“John has a really unique personality. He has a way of talking about something and getting you excited about it,” said singer Jason Aldean, who worked with Rich as a songwriter at the same publishing company. “He’s done things that he’s taken a lot of heat for, and then turned around and done things that made him look like a genius.”

Indeed, Rich seems to court controversy. He offended gays by speaking out against gay marriage. He’s stumped for Republican candidates (in 2008 he released a song for Sen. John McCain called “Raisin’ McCain”). He scuffled with heavy-metal bassist Jerry Montano in a Los Angeles hotel room. He riled an entire Nashville neighborhood by building a huge, incongruous house dubbed the “Villa Rich.”

It doesn’t take long to find bashers if you Google his name and check the blogs.

He decided to do “Son of a Preacher Man” after his partner, “Big” Kenny Alphin, was sidelined for a year by neck surgery, the result of being hit by a drunken driver in 2001.

With the new disc, he revisits the traditional country he remembers growing up the eldest of four kids in a doublewide trailer in Amarillo, Texas — a twist since Big & Rich give traditionalists fits with their fusion of rap, rock, pop and country.

“What I bring to the Big & Rich equation is country, straight-ahead, hard-core country music. I wanted to make a record like that,” he said. “I had a lot of subjects I wanted to talk about that are personal to me that would never have found their way on a Big & Rich album.”

The record isn’t as old-school as Rich makes out. He closes with a quirky big-band nod to Frank Sinatra called “Drive Myself to Drink” about a guy who puts a bar in his car.

Rich has written hits for Faith Hill and Aldean, produced hits for Jewel and Gretchen Wilson, and sung hits with Big & Rich (“Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy,” “Lost in This Moment”).

Throw in his gigs as a judge on “Nashville Star” and host of Country Music Television’s “Gone Country,” and it can seem like he’s everywhere.

“John is an artist, so he’s eccentric. He’s a writer, so he’s going to be fiery and passionate and full of contradictions,” said Jewel, who co-produced her 2008 album, “Perfectly Clear,” with Rich and was a judge with him on “Nashville Star.” “I think writers, especially, tend to want to feel their emotions because that’s where they write from. He’s certainly that way.”