Her First Album Proved He Was Right And Her Second Proved Being Right And Getting Played Were Two Different Things
Harlan Howard heard Sara Evans sing one old country song and helped get her signed to RCA and then she made the country record she wanted and country radio barely played it
Being right is not always the same thing as being accepted at the right moment
Sara Evans was still trying to find her place in Nashville when she was hired to sing a demo of Iβve Got a Tiger by the Tail the Buck Owens hit Harlan Howard had co written decades earlier
Howard was there and Evans remembered walking out of the vocal booth and finding the legendary songwriter stunned by how country she sounded
He became one of her strongest supporters and helped put her in front of RCA Nashville president Joe Galante and Evans later recalled that Galante signed her the day she auditioned
At 24 she decided not to soften the thing that had gotten the attention of everyone and she chose Pete Anderson best known for producing Dwight Yoakam and went to California to make Three Chords and the Truth
The album leaned hard into traditional country with steel guitar and fiddle and old school arrangements and even songs associated with Buck Owens and Patsy Cline and Bill Anderson
Evans later described the idea as essentially making herself a female counterpart to Yoakam
The Critics Heard It And Radio Barely Played It
The Washington Post praised her vocal power and versatility and Radio and Records called Evans the real deal and Harlan Howard remained firmly in her corner
Country radio was another story and True Lies reached only No. 59 and the title track did better but stopped at No. 44 and Shame About That peaked at No. 48
Not one of the three singles of the album reached the country Top 40 and the album itself peaked at No. 56 on the country albums chart of Billboard
Evans was frustrated and years later she remembered visiting roughly 190 radio stations and repeatedly hearing variations of the same problem that programmers liked her but they were nervous about playing something that sounded so traditionally country
The Second Door Led To The Career
RCA could have stopped there and it did not and for her second album No Place That Far the production moved toward a more contemporary sound without removing the country identity of Evans
Billboard noted the contrast at the time that one of the most critically acclaimed newcomers of Nashville had received almost no meaningful radio acceptance but the second album appeared ready to change that
It did and the title track a duet with Vince Gill became the first No. 1 country single of Sara Evans in 1999
A year later Born to Fly pushed her career much further and eventually became one of the defining albums of her career
Before Sara Evans became a hitmaker she had already made the country record she came to Nashville to make
Sara Evans had entered Nashville because Harlan Howard heard something unusually country in her voice and the radio numbers were small but the identity was not