(taken from Tennessean.com, written by Cindy Watts)
For more than 20 years, Alan Jackson has worked to balance his wildly successful recording career and his home life with wife Denise and their three daughters.
Like any parent of teenagers — Mattie is 20, Alexandra is 17 and Dani recently turned 13 — Jackson is grappling with what his life looks like when they’re grown. He sold the family’s sprawling 19,000-square-foot estate several months ago for about $28 million.
It’s a far cry from the days when he worried about selling CDs. With more than 50 million albums sold, he’s now established himself as a modern-day country music icon. On Tuesday, Sept. 14, Jackson will be honored with ASCAP’s Founder’s Award during the performing rights organization’s 48th annual Country Music Awards.
The accolade is considered one of ASCAP’s most prestigious and is issued to those the organization feels are musical pioneers and innovators. Past recipients include Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, James Taylor and Garth Brooks.
“When you get (honored) as a writer, you feel like you’re getting honored for the most important part of the music,” Jackson said. “I really appreciate any kind of musical award that pays tribute to the songs, and that’s what this ASCAP thing is, songwriting.”
New songs, old hits
Songwriting and recording are still the part of his job that Jackson takes the most pleasure in doing.
“It’s still refreshing to go in and make new music,” said the singer. “Even if you don’t write a song, when you go in and make a record, you’re making something unique and that keeps it fresh a little bit.”
Jackson’s latest album of all new material, Freight Train, hit stores in April. He also has agreatest hits package, 34 Number Ones, scheduled to be in stores Nov. 23. He said fans should expect a common thread between the old and new songs. Jackson still uses the same producer and many of the same musicians who played on his first record. And his songs are still rich with the same themes that courted country music fans in the early 1990s.
“In a lot of ways, it’s just déjà vu every time we go in the studio,” he said. “I try and cover all of what’s country music to me, whether it’s a drinking song or a serious song or a heartbreak song or a song about family or working. It’s always bugged me if you get an album and all the songs are about heartbreak, so we try and spread it out.”
On Freight Train, Jackson sings about his oldest, Mattie, leaving for college in “After 17,” nods his hat to his blue collar roots in “Hard Hat and a Hammer” and sings about love in “It’s Just That Way,” “True Love Is a Golden Ring” and a handful of others.
Jackson’s latest presence on country radio, “As She’s Walking Away,” is a duet with Zac Brown Band that’s featured on 34 Number Ones. Jackson said he and Brown share a producer and that since he passed up the opportunity to record Brown’s first hit, “Chicken Fried,” he’s been open to working with the group on a project.
“I’ve been a fan of their writing and singing and the fact that they are a real band and real musicians and they play on their records,” Jackson said. “They’re just good guys, and we’re both from Georgia.”
Gary Overton, Jackson’s former manager and publisher who now oversees Jackson’s record label, Sony Music Nashville, said it’s Jackson’s down-home sincerity that has endeared him to country music fans, fellow artists and industry executives.
“He’s a very bright, focused man and he has that aura,” said Overton. “Whether he’s in what he calls his show clothes or just jeans and a flannel shirt, when he walks in a room, you feel it. You know he’s there, and I knew it in the beginning.”
That’s not likely to change now, and Jackson’s producer said he didn’t anticipate a change in the singer’s music anytime soon, either.
“You know what they say, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ ” quipped Keith Stegall, who has produced the bulk of Jackson’s records. “It’s really uncomplicated. What you see is what you get, and I think that’s what appeals to people most about him. There’s no pretension going on, and there’s no act going on. He’s always been who he is.”
Jackson said that’s exactly the way he writes his music — with no pretension or hidden agenda.
“I don’t sit around and contemplate sending out some elusive message,” Jackson said. “I just try to make music that’s appealing. I always looked at music as entertainment rather than medicine. I have written songs that touched people and helped them through hard times, but most of the time it is something out of my own life I was going through.”
Growing up pains
That said, Jackson admits his own life has had its share of dramatic moments lately that have lent themselves well to songs. It started a couple of years ago when Mattie left for college. They bought her what they felt were the essentials she would need in her dorm room and hauled it to her college on a trailer. When they arrived, Jackson said, the family realized they had made a mistake.
“It was tiny and looked like a jail cell,” he said of his daughter’s first dorm. “She had so much stuff it wouldn’t even fit in a room. We started carrying it in and the people that had lived in the dorm for a year or two were laughing, saying ‘What are you going to do with all of that?’ We had to take half of it home.
“Our girls have been well taken care of. They’ve never had to do a lot, and I always worry about them getting out in the real world and not knowing how to pump gas. But they just adapt so well. Mattie’s learned to cook. She just moved into an apartment and started cooking food and we had to buy her cooking utensils, and it’s like she’s a little adult now. It’s amazing.”
And with her gone, the family’s sprawling estate, which Jackson affectionately called Sweetbriar, seemed empty. He and Denise started thinking about where they wanted to live when all of their children moved away and decided Sweetbriar was too large for just the two of them. After being told that a property of that size would likely take several years to sell, the Jacksons put their home on the market.
“We felt like in the next few years, as the youngest one gets grown, we’re probably going to end up staying in Florida half the year, and we have a place up on Center Hill Lake that we’ve had for 20 years that we love,” Jackson said. “I don’t think either one of us expected it to sell (in one year) to be honest. It was a big place and a lot of money ($28 million).”
The family ended up buying another house, which they’re living in while a new home is under construction. Jackson feared the change would be hard on his daughters but said the teens are reveling in decorating their new bedrooms.
“I think that’s what I was so crushed about, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re going to sell the girls’ home place,’” Jackson said. “But, they were ready to go. They used to ride golf carts all over the property. They weren’t like boys who would have been out there fishing. But that’s what I was worried about. They’re all fired up about (designing their new rooms), so I don’t feel so bad about it now.”
In his down time, Jackson still enjoys tinkering with his classic cars and riding around on the lake in his antique wooden boats. But he’s also thinking about what he wants to do next, career-wise. He still wants to make a classic bluegrass record, is contemplating another gospel recording and thinks he might like to tackle an easy listening country project.
Whatever it is, Sony Music Nashville chairman and CEO Overton said he’s sure Jackson fans will receive it with open arms.
“He’s always written love songs and he’s always written about the working man because that’s what he was — he sold cars and worked at Kmart,” Overton said. “I think what separates Alan from a lot of artists is that he really came from a very humble beginning, and while he’s a very wealthy man now, I think he’s understood his audience all along.”
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