EDMONTON, BC, Canada (Mercury Nashville Records) -
Terri Clark was batting .500 - or would that be .750? She may not have won Single of the Year where she had two nominations but the dark-eyed songstress picked up not only the Female Artist of the Year at the Canadian Country
Music Awards, but she notched her 5th Fan's Choice Entertainer of the Year Award! Aside from once again proving herself to be the fans' favorite, this year's win - her 4th consecutive - breaks k.d. lang's record for most CCMA Entertainer of the Year Awards.
"I'm just a girl from Medicine Hat who wanted to be Reba McEntire," an exuberant Clark told the capacity crowd. "And as long as you want me to play, I'll be out on that Opry stage with my walker!"
The fans were certainly a running thread in Clark's evening. After talking about the power of a dream to carry when nothing else could while accepting her first Female Artist of the Year Award since 1997, Clark admitted, "There will always be people who sell more records and people who will sing better. But they don't have MY fans - and I have the best fans in the world."
Recently becoming the only woman in the past 3 years to enjoy two No1s - a Radio & Records' Country chart-topper with "I Just Wanna Be Mad" last year and her latest Billboard No 1 "Girls Lie, Too" - Clark's ability to hit people's real life pulse points mainlines her into the fans' lives in a way that's non-negotiable. With her Greatest Hits 1994-2004 debuting at No 14 on the all-genre Billboard Top 200 with sales of over 63,000 - and a No 1 Canadian Country Album position - the woman who is also nominated for the Country Music Association's Female Vocalist of the Year is continuing to gain momentum.
"You're so caught up in what happens every day,you lose site of where you are," Clark said on the phone from backstage. "I don't think about where I've come or gone, just the faces in front of me... getting up and on the bus and on the stage... finding songs the fans are gonna respond to, too.
"Someone said I'd broken kd's record, which doesn't even seem possible. She's such an icon… I haven't met her after all these years, though I'm not sure at this point I'd know what to say. She amazes me, and I remember just being in awe of her, so telling me I broke her record doesn't quite compute."
Waist deep in Toby Keith's Big Throwdown Tour, Clark has been criss-crossing America - and enjoying everything that arena-sized audiences offer. If it means a slightly more raucous crowd, the hardest rocking girl in country music says, "Bring it on."
"Look, I think the fans come for a release," says the Fans' Choice unapologetically. "They either want to understand their life better, feel more understood or they wanna get wild. I figure if we do our job right, we can hit both notes and kick up a cloud of dust. That's my job - kick out the footlights."
Tonight in Canada, once again, the fans gave Clark her report card. And once again, she got Straight As! With a Sept 16th Cleveland show up next, the Entertainer of the Year is ready to swing for the bleachers… So batter up and let it fly!
