Martina McBride making a new start, playing Thursday in Tulsa on George Strait’s tour
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Martina McBride makes a new start
After two decades in the music business, the country vocal powerhouse, who will open for George Strait Thursday at Tulsa’s BOK Center, has a new label, a new album and a new top 10 hit.
After two decades in the music business, Martina McBride is relishing her new beginnings.
The country vocal powerhouse has a new label, a new album and a new top 10 hit, plus she recently embarked on a new tour with living legend George Strait. The next stop on her trek with Strait is set for Thursday night at Tulsa’s BOK Center.
“We have a new album, so we’re gonna be putting quite a few songs from the new album in the show. And that’s always exciting for us to play new music,” McBride said in a phone interview from Nashville, Tenn., before the tour launched Jan. 28 in Lafayette, La.
In 2010, McBride, 45, exited RCA Records, which had been her label home since her 1992 debut album “The Time Has Come.” Like fellow big-voiced songstress Reba McEntire, she inked a deal with a branch of the Big Machine Records family, Republic Nashville.
With “Eleven,” her first album on Republic Nashville but the 11th studio effort of her career, she partnered for the first time with co-producer Byron Gallimore, known for his work with Sugarland, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. Through the record’s 11 tracks, they explored different musical styles, including Southern soul, retro-pop and island country.
“I definitely set out to try to create a new sound. That’s just one of the things I like to do artistically is try to push the boundaries a little bit. You don’t want to make the same record over and over again,” Just to keep it interesting for me as well as my fans … I set out to do that,” she said.
“And then I felt a lot of support from the label and management to just go in and really create, to spend the time on the record. I didn’t feel rushed and I didn’t feel pressured and I didn’t feel like I was fenced in to make any particular type of record. I felt a lot of freedom to be artistic, and it was just a great environment to work in.”
The Kansas native also wrote more for “Eleven” than her previous albums. She co-wrote six of the 11 tracks, making her latest album one of her most personal.
“It wasn’t really planned but I just did have more time and I made a decision really just to devote myself to it and see what became of it,” she said.
“I had really only written with the Warren Brothers, who wrote ‘Anyway’ and a couple of songs for (my) other albums, so they were sort of like my comfort zone. And I turned down a bunch of people that wanted to write; then I started thinking, ‘This is silly; I want to see what happens.’ And it turned out to be a great experience.”
But McBride reunited with Brett and Brad Warren to pen the album’s first single, “Teenage Daughters,” about the joys and angst of parenting. She and her husband, sound engineer John McBride, have three girls.
“We started writing about something else and then I just started talking about what a trip it is to have a teenage daughter, not in a bad way really. It’s nothing that she’s doing. It’s just, you know, you have to come to grips with the change in your relationship as far as her getting more independent and making her own decisions,” she said.
“Part of it was just me sort of going, ‘Oh my God … how’d this happen? How do I have a 17-year-old?’”
While she didn’t write it, her second single, “I’m Gonna Love You Through It,” also touches on familial themes. The uplifting anthem tells the story of a cancer patient who receives strong emotional support from her husband, family and friends, ultimately beating the illness. McBride earned a Grammy nomination for best country solo performance with the song, which also happens to be her 25th top 10 single.
“That song is really powerful and emotional, and I knew it would be. I mean, I thought it would be the kind of song that would make a difference to someone who is going through cancer or has known someone who has gone through cancer or has supported someone through cancer. And not only cancer, but “I’m hearing from a lot of people that it really fits. You know, that chorus fits a lot of life situations and challenges,” she said.
“Sometimes I sing songs about my life, but I mostly sing songs that I think people are going to be able to relate to. I sing songs for my fans and other people. So it’s been a really interesting ride with that song, hearing all the stories and the way that it’s meant so much to so many people.”
Along with her new music, McBride will play several of her past hits such as “My Baby Loves Me,” “This One’s for the Girls” and “Independence Day” when she opens for King George Thursday in Tulsa.
“It’s just exciting and an honor and flattering to be chosen to be part of that tour, of the all the acts that he could’ve chosen. I want to hold up my end of the deal and make him proud that he made a good decision,” she said. “I’m just gonna out there and have a great time.”
IN CONCERT
George Strait and Martina McBride
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Doors open at 6 p.m.
Where: BOK Center, 200 S Denver, Tulsa.
Information: (866) 726-5287 or www.bokcenter.com.
-BAM
Contemporary painter Julie Heffernan debuts first Oklahoma exhibition, “Infinite Work in Progress”
Julie Heffernan (American, b. 1956), "Budding Boy," 2010, oil on canvas.
Contemporary painter Julie Heffernan debuts first Oklahoma exhibition
The acclaimed artist’s “Infinite Work in Progress,” featuring 20 recent works, opens Wednesday evening at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
“That’s my version of giving myself as I’m painting a movie experience,” Heffernan said in a phone interview. “Movies tell the best stories in contemporary modern life. … It’s debatable but one could say that movies are the popular mode of delivering narrative. And I’m not a moviemaker, but I want to have the richness of that filmic experience. So I try to get it in layers.”
Oklahoma art lovers will get to study the layers of 20 recent paintings when the exhibition “Julie Heffernan: Infinite Work in Progress” opens Wednesday night at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. It is part of the museum’s ongoing “New Frontiers Series for Contemporary Art.”
“Anyone interested in painting should see this exhibition. Julie Heffernan’s show … is mesmerizing and provocative, and a testament to the fact that painting is alive and well in contemporary art,” said Glen Gentele, the museum’s president and CEO, in an email.
Julie Heffernan (American, b. 1956), "Why We Fight," 2010, oil on canvas.
Return trip
The members preview for the show is set for 5 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, while the public opening event will run from 6:30 to 8 p.m. The special exhibit “Princely Treasures: European Masterpieces 1600-1800 from the Victoria and Albert Museum” and the inaugural edition of projectscreen, a new monthly video art series, will open concurrently.
Heffernan, 55, will give a lecture about her work at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. The Brooklyn, N.Y.-based artist will discuss “how I think about narrative in a painting, which is a stilled medium, and kind of a different way to look at figurative painting., in terms that are less sort of straightforwardly iconographical. You know, the art historians’ way of looking at painting is to say, ‘Look at this, this means that and that means that,’ and this is a different way of approaching meaning in figurative art.”
On view through May 13, “Infinite Work in Progress” marks Heffernan’s first exhibit in Oklahoma, but not her first visit to the Sooner State. In 1981, the Illinois native worked for a restaurant design company that devised a high-end Oklahoma City concept restaurant called Crude McFly’s, which filed for bankruptcy about a year after she attended its opening.
“We went to cowboy bars and I learned to two-step and I had a blast,” she said with a laugh. “I loved it. I want to get a chance when I’m there to go two-step.”
Her stint with the restaurant design firm motivated her to go to graduate school and devote herself to painting. She earned her master of fine arts from the Yale School of Art. Her elaborate canvases incorporate elements of magical realism, surrealism and fairy tales.
Her 2010 painting “Budding Boy” sprawls with severed branches, roosting birds and mysterious ladders along with the nude youth of the title cradling a large orb of flora and fauna while perched in a towering tree.
“The thing that keeps me running to the studio every day is what’s gonna happen. … I’ll have an initial — I wouldn’t call it a vision ‘cause that sounds too hoity-toity — something that will pop into my head,” she said.
“I’ll sketch in the first incarnation of ‘guy in tree’ and then unspools over time — if I’m lucky — the reason he’s in the tree, what he’s doing in the tree, how he feels in the tree, what the tree is like, what the tree inhabits or what inhabits the tree. Just everything that is the story then happens, and I do the thing like a writer does, the visual equivalent of listening for the voices. You know, writers talk about that, and for me, the painting at a point will tell you what to do.”
Julie Heffernan (American, b. 1956), "Millennium Burial Mound," 2012, oil on canvas.
Contemporary concerns
Heffernan’s paintings make stylistic nods to Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo artwork. While the mother of two teenage sons incorporates those historical references, her works, especially the recent ones, address contemporary concerns.
“It’s very interesting to see the kind of films that filmmakers make once they have kids. They’ll often make art that is more socially conscious, and I think that’s kind of what’s going on,” she said.
“The older I get, the more concerned I get that we solve the problems of our world — environmental, political, war and all that — and all I can think is that it’s an infinite work in progress. And if we can at least keep our planet alive, maybe we have a chance of getting somewhere within this infinite work in progress.”
ON EXHIBIT
“Julie Heffernan: Infinite Work in Progress”
When: Through May 13.
Where: Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive.
Opening events: Members preview, 5 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday; artist lecture, 5:30 p.m. Wednesday; public opening, 6:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday.
Information: 236-3100 or www.okcmoa.com.
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What to do in Oklahoma on Feb. 15, 2012: Hear Laura Gibson and Breathe Owl Breathe at The Opolis
Laura Gibson
Today’s featured event:
NORMAN – Hear Oregon singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Laura Gibson with Michigan band Breathe Owl Breathe at 9 tonight at The Opolis, 113 N Crawford.
For more information, go to www.starlightmints.com/opolis.html.
For more events, go to www.wimgo.com.
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Glen Campbell bringing farewell tour to Tulsa
Glen Campbell performs during the 54th Annual Grammy Awards Sunday in Los Angeles. (AP)
Country Music Hall of Famer, who received a tunefully respectful tribute during Sunday night’s Grammy Awards, will bring his farewell tour to Tulsa’s Osage Casino next month.
He will play at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 27 at the casino’s event center. Tickets are on sale now. All tickets are general admission and priced at $35.
Campbell, who will turn 76 in April, revealed last year that he has Alzheimer’s disease. He released a goodbye album, “Ghost on the Canvas,” and embarked on a final tour. The farewell tour has dates scheduled through June 30, according to GlenCampbellMusic.com.
On Sunday night, Campbell received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys. Oklahoma country music star Blake Shelton and The Band Perry performed in his honor, and Campbell also sang one of his signature song, “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
For more information on his Tulsa show, go to www.osagecasinos.com/event-center.
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Video: Thompson Square’s “Glass”
Especially for Valentine’s Day, country music duo Thompson Square, which includes Miami, OK, native Keifer Thompson, premiered the music video for their new single “Glass” today.
Directed by Roman White in classic black and white cinematography, the artfully emotional video is a fitting tribute to couples everywhere this Valentine’s Day, from one of country music’s most celebrated new couples. The single, “Glass,” is available now on iTunes.
After nearly 15 years of struggling to make it in the business, the husband-and-wife team of Keifer and Shawna Thompson burst onto the country music scene about a year ago with their self-titled debut album, which has so far garnered a plethora of accolades, including 2011’s No. 1 Most Played Country Song, “Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not,” the follow-up Top 10 hit, “I Got You,” three 2011 American Country Awards and two 2012 Grammy nominations.
The duo will play a hometown show for Keifer Thompson at 9 p.m. Friday at Buffalo Run Casino in Miami. Information: (918) 542-7140 or www.buffaloruncasino.com.
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