by Bob Allen

Despite what the TV commercials would have us believe, ain’t none of us really gets to “have it all”

Yet, these days, Martina McBride, who’s not only fresh off of hits like ^“Independence Day” and “My Baby Loves Me” from her million-selling second album, The Way I Am but is also a new mother, sure seems to come close.

One factor that enables this farmer’s daughter from Sharon, Kansas, to strike such an envi­ably healthy balance between ca­reer and family is undoubtedly the nature of her success. Since Martina made her 1992 major la­bel debut with The Time Has Come, a fine, tradition-flavored album (that unfortunately got lost in the shuffle), success for her has been a sort of quiet explo­sion. Martina has not been blessed - or cursed - with meteoric rise of a Trisha Yearwood, or the flasfhire popularity of a considerably more one-dimensional artist like Faith Hill. For her it’s been, in her own words, “a slow build.”

“I could come up with a lot of reasons,” she shrugs. “Like all the changes at my record label. But to be hon­est, I think it all comes down to the music. My music’s just better now.”

It’s fascinating that right when her marquee value as a singer began heating up with the above-men­tioned hits off her second album and a Number One video “My Baby Loves Me”), along with Grammy and Country Music Association Award nominations, Martina and her husband John were hit with yet an­other wonderful new complication in their lives. Their first child, a daughter named Delaney Katharine McBride, arrived late last December, just a few days before Christmas.

Thus it’s no surprise that when Martina’s traveling show comes through my part of the country, it’s very much a family affair. Her brother Marty is in her band. Her husband John, on leave from his regular job work­ing sound for Garth Brooks, is running her sound production. And baby Delaney Katharine is of course, along for the ride.

“Delaney travels wonderful,” the proud mother coos as she dandles her daughter inside her tour bus after a rousing show at the Tangier Sound Country Music Festival, an annual bayside ex­travaganza that brings two days of country music to the lower Delmarva Peninsula. Delaney in­deed loos placid as she chews on her pacifier and stares at a visitor with wide-eyed curiosity.

“You can see the bus, how we have it all fixed up for her,” Martina adds brightly. “She has a baby bed in there. She actually sleeps better on the bus than she does at home. She loves it. At this point she’s very adaptable. She’s not walking yet; she just wants to be with us, wherever we are. I don’t think she really knows the difference yet.”

After Martina has finished her spirited early evening show in the blistering heat, she wastes no time dressing down from the black suit and black heels she wore on stage to blue jeans, a blue work shirt and loafers. A few minutes later she’s mixing easily with the small local contingent from her fan club. These devotees have gathered quietly in the backstage parking area near her bus, while a Maryland state trooper, part of the ex­tensive backstage security, looks on. (Her fans seem like a polite, laid-back bunch of folks, but in this day and age you can never be too careful.) Martina just sort of blends in with the crowd, cracking jokes, making small talk and satisfying all autograph requests. John, standing inside the bus, proudly holds Delaney up to the win­dow for everyone to see.

Garth Brooks was, of course, a big factor in Martina’s early career. After John signed on as Big Brooksy’s sound production manager, Martina, then working as a waitress in Nashville and pitching demo tapes, took a job with Brooks” organization as a T-shirt vendor in order to be with John on the road. When Martina landed her own record deal with RCA, Garth “promoted” her from T-shirt saleslady to opening act. “It was such a great experience,” she recalls. “I got to play for over a million people. It really forced me to get my act together in terms of being an entertainer.” Garth, a Liberty (now Capitol) Records artist, very graciously took it upon himself to personally pay a visit to RCA, introduce himself to everybody there and let it be known that, “If there’s anything I can do...”

Now, ironically, Brooks has given Martina and John another big break by taking a year’s hiatus from the concert trail. “It’s a brilliant stroke of luck for John and me that Garth is off the road, and this entire year John has been able to come out on the road with me and run the house sound and be my production manager,” Martina smiles as she glances out the bus window at her husband. She is now back on board while he’s busy loading gear into the luggage compartment in prepara­tion for the all-night drive back to Nashville.

“Traye1ing together hasn’t been an adjustment for us at all,” adds the singer, who moved from south-cen­tral Kansas to Nashville with her husband in 1990 -  she to seek a record deal, he to start his now very successful sound company. “We’ve always made an effort to travel together to try and get together whenever we can. It’s always been a priority.... But eyen with the family out here, I’ve got to admit that after a couple of weeks, I do start to miss my own house,” she laughs softly. “My own washer and dryer.”

Looking back, Martina insists that those very first shows she opened for Brooks back in ‘92 were just about the hardest thing she’s ever done in her life. Despite years of working clubs back in Kansas - on her own and also with a family band headed by her fa­ther - she felt unschooled and awkward in front of crowds so huge. But, as her Tangier Sound Festival appearance before thousands demonstrates, she’s ob­viously grown into the role. Her performance is topnotch-tight, spirited, well-paced. She seems utterly poised and in control as she commands the stage with her lithe, fluid yet tightly controlled upper body move­ments which are more ethereal than sensual.

One of the real high points is when she launches into “Independence Day,” which ends with a small volley of fireworks and a rousing ovation from the immense crowd. “Independence Day” - both the hit song and the hit video - really helped define Martina as a singer and a public personality. The single was not a charttopper, by any means - the subject matter, spou­sal abuse, was a little bit too real and too timely for country radio, the arch-enforcer of musical blandness. (Really, who knows what their logic was for not wanting to play the song. Perhaps they didn’t want to alien­ate all the wife-beaters of the world.)

Yet “Independence Day’s” undeniable power - its righteous anger and its morality play themes of em­powerment and retribution - proved irrepressible. Both the single and the video brought Martina, who up until then was just another pretty face with an even prettier voice, into sharp focus. The video, shot in black and white, features an almost severe-looking Martina, shorn of the long, lovely tresses she’d worn in publicity photos up till then. Its visceral power and un­abashed message - that abused women can fight back - gave her new credibility and connected her to a whole new audience. Martina can clearly recall the

first time she heard a demo of “Independence Day,” which was written by Gretchen Peters. Her own reaction was much the same as the one thousands of other listeners would eventually have when they got to hear her version of the song. Martina’s co-producer Paul Worley played it for her, and, as she recalls, “I was completely blown away! I just thought, ‘That’s my song! I wanna record that song!” It just really moved me. I knew that it would touch somebody’s life. I never really thought, ‘Will this be a big hit? Will this be a single?” I just recorded it because I wanted it to be part of my body of work.

“In the beginning there was certainly an element of ‘Wow, this is really heavy!’” she adds. “But I was just so committed to that song by then, and to making that statement, that it overrode any doubts or second thoughts.... But I would guess there’s a certain fear of put­ting a single out like that, because it’s a risky move. It doesn’t fit radio’s format. They don’t want to offend their listeners by playing a song that’s controversial, which ‘Independence Day’ certainly is.

“And some of them were not willing to take that risk,” she em­phasizes. “There were some stations that never played it, and a lot of others that didn’t play it at first. So you take the risk of being accepted or not accepted. But for me it was worth it. And I take pride that I stood up for what I believe in, that I didn’t necessarily play it safe.”

Despite the fact that it barely crawled into the Top Ten, “In­dependence Day” proved nonetheless to be what the industry calls an “impact song” for Martina. And it positioned her smack in the middle of a burning social issue and struck a resounding chord out in grassroots America. Her ultimate “award” was the slew of letters she received from around the nation. Like this one from Moscow, Idaho: I am an attorney... .I just finished a case where I was asked to represent a woman who was charged with murdering her husband as he slept. I learned that she and her family were subjected to horrible sadistic abuse for 16 years. They lived in terror of a man who beat them, whipped them with a bullwhip, chained one in a shed like some animal and caused them to suffer in ways you don’t want to know. Thankfully, a jury found her not guilty about a week ago. One comment from a juror was telling regarding their general feelings: “We agreed the deceased had declared war on his family, and in wartime you can sneak up on to enemy.” Your song “Independence Day” pro­vided great inspiration for me throughout this case. So in a very real way you had a part in finally setting this family free.

Martina admits that these kinds of reactions to the song from listeners made her far more aware of the issue of abuse and convinced her that, “I wanted to take it a step further and do something that would maybe help. That awareness in my heart really came through the song.”

In the months since “Independence Day’s” release, she has co-chaired a YMCA celebrity auction in Nashville that raised $3O,OOO for a shelter for abused women. Nowadays when she’s on the road, she’ll often visit local middle schools and talk to girls about “self-respect and self-es­teem, and about what they don’t deserve and do deserve, and how to look for a healthy relationship...

“You see,” she adds, “nobody sets out to fall in love with the school bully. I feel that a lot of times women are nurturers, and we have this ‘We can save them” kind of ap­proach. And it gets us into trouble sometimes. Especially when you’re a young girl. And some of these girls have never seen a healthy relationship. They come from a borne where there’s violence, and they don’t eyen know that there’ s any different way. So this is just a way to get them to stop and think before they find themselves in a situation they can’t gat out of.” Such fervent involvement may coma as n sur­prise to those who’ve never been able to see past Martina’s almost too perfect looks. As one writer, a woman, aptly put it in a recent profile “Martina McBride’s got a problem: she’s a beautiful woman. It may not sound like a problem, but it is. It gets in the way, and it may keep people from understanding what lies beneath her visage.”

Yet those who know Martina aren’t at all surprised by the ferocity of her commitments. Keep in mind, this is a singer who, when put­ting together The Time Has Come, her first al­bum, was determined to become “a female Alan Jackson,” and to avoid “stereotypical women’s songs.” Before set­ting foot in the studio she resolved to make a hard-core country album that her father, a Kansas farmer and devoted country fan and musician (who recently got the thrill of his life when he per­formed with his daughter on the Opry), would be proud of.

“Eyen back on the first album I was there for everything,” explains Martina who served as co-producer on both The Way That I Am  and the new Wild Angels. For me, it feels very un­natural to go in and sing the songs and have everybody else cre­ate all the music, and then go back in and say, “Well, lat me hear what you’ve done with my music.” From the beginning I’ve al­ways had my own ideas, and I’ve always had a sense of what I wanted to do with my music.

“It does take a lot of extra time in the studio when I could be on the road,” she admits. “But I’m in there for every piece of ev­erything that goes on that record - from my vocals, to the fiddle overdubs and background vocals, to the mixing and mastering. Everything. It’s the only way that works for me. Nobody else knows exactly what I want but me. With each album I’ve gotten more and more involved. And, as a result, I think Wild Angels is even more me than any of the others.

“This time around, the songs, a lot of them, are really positive songs, songs that fit my life,” she explains, glancing down at Delaney, who’s still chewing on her pacifier and seams to be drifting off to sleep.

“The songs before, like ‘Independence Day,’ ware often about characters. You know: people that I could feel compassion for,” Martina adds with a wistful smile as the bus engine roars to life and last-minute good-byes are said before her all-night ride back to Nashville and my three-hour drive back home. “But this time the songs are about my life.

“I’ve just put an incredible amount of myself into the new record,” she smiles softly as she shakes hands good-bye and goes off to put Delaney to bed. “And that’s why I’m really anxious to gat it out and see how people like it.” .