Josh Turner on Opry Live
Josh Turner is set to become the newest member of the Grand Ole Opry and showcase music from his upcoming CD EVERYTHING IS FINE on Opry Live on GAC: Great American Country Saturday, Oct. 27 at 8 pm ET. October is Opry Month on GAC.

EVERYTHING IS FINE
Artist: Josh Turner
CD: EVERYTHING IS FINE
Release date: Oct. 30
Label: MCA
CD: Country hit-maker Josh Turner’s latest CD is, he says, “a step above what I’ve done so far.” Turner’s two previous releases have each sold more than a million copies. EVERYTHING IS FINE includes “Firecracker,” the fastest-rising single of Turner’s career.
Website: Learn more about Josh Turner at joshturner.com. Check out photos of Turner on the Opry and more at opry.com.
Availability: Retail stores nationwide and online

ENTER TO WIN!
Visit opry.com throughout October to enter to win a one-of-a-kind guitar signed by Josh Turner and other country greats plus and exclusive Hatch Show Print from his Opry induction.

In A Fine, Fine Place

With the release of his third album and Opry membership on the horizon, Josh Turner is poised for superstardom 

PLEASE WELCOME JOSH TURNER

As the curtain went up on a performance of the Grand Ole Opry at the historic Ryman Auditorium on Friday night, December 21, 2001, no one holding a ticket to the show had ever heard of Josh Turner.

By the end of that chilly Nashville night, the young country singer was all anyone in the audience could talk about. Turner’s debut on country music’s most famous stage was an unforgettable musical moment and a harbinger of a bond to be developed between artist and Opry like few others in recent memory.

Turner was a new artist who’d been signed to a major record label but hadn’t yet had a song released to country radio. Standing on the side of the Opry stage waiting to face the crowd that night, he was acutely aware of his surroundings. He knew about the Opry’s rich history as a hit-making machine. He was well aware that the Opry stage contained proverbial dust from the boots of his idols. Names like Hank Williams. Johnny Cash. Randy Travis.

The unassuming, deep-voiced, then-24-year-old Turner had grown up in South Carolina singing in church on Sundays and educating himself on the Opry using his grandparents’ country music record collection as his study guide. He’d headed to Nashville to earn a degree in vocal performance from Belmont University and to pursue his dream of country music stardom. And now Josh Turner was about to play the Grand Ole Opry.

Opry member and Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Bill Anderson was to introduce the new artist to the Opry audience. “I’ve had the pleasure over the years of introducing folks for the first time on the Grand Ole Opry,” Anderson remembered on a later evening at the Opry, “and one of the first things I try to do is calm them down a little bit, because everybody that walks out on that stage for the first time has butterflies. So I spoke with Josh a few minutes before he went out on the stage and let him know we were glad that he was here. And never really having heard him sing and certainly never having seen him perform before that night, I really didn’t know what to expect.”

In fact, no one could have foreseen what happened next to the young man, as he sang the self-penned country/gospel song “Long Black Train” in front of a crowd who’d never heard of him.

“I walked over to the podium and watched as he sang the song about the long black train,” Anderson recalled. “He had Tommy White, the steel guitar player in the Opry band, playing the Dobro, and the audience just got almost eerily quiet. I mean it was one of those things where you knew they were really listening to this young kid who was making his first Opry appearance. Josh’s voice, and that song, and that Dobro-- the combination of those three things—was absolutely mesmerizing. .. This kid just absolutely had them in the palm of his hand.”

The eerie quiet Anderson described turned to thunderous applause and a standing ovation before Turner had even reached the second verse of “Train.” “Oh, man,” says Turner, “before and after the performance is a blur. But when I was out there on stage, that moment is forever engrained in my mind. I’ll never forget it. They were cheering for the music. They started clapping and stomping, and I kept thinking to myself, ‘don’t forget the words. Don’t forget the words.’ Then they started hollering and I thought, “’Lord, get me through this song.’”

Turner finished his tune and walked off the stage, he says, “because that’s what I thought I was supposed to do.” He headed for his dressing room and had made it several yards from the side of the stage when someone—he’s not sure who—grabbed him and said, “you’ve got to go back out there.”

Back on stage, Anderson said, “Hey, Josh, how about making that train a little longer?” Though Turner says he did forget some of the words during his encore, the audience rewarded him with another standing ovation. “I was fighting back the tears out there,” Turner says. “I couldn’t think straight. I was tore up.”

Opry superstar Brad Paisley was on hand that night and posed a theory about the Turner phenomenon he witnessed. “Man, I was so overwhelmed by the response,” Paisley remembered not long after Turner’s debut.

“I think in our industry sometimes we get real jaded about what it takes to get a crowd to go nuts,” Paisley says. “You know, we associate things like jumping around and cheerleading and all those things that happen out there on the stage as the kind of things that make the crowd get whipped into a frenzy. And all of a sudden, here comes Josh. …  I’m standing on the side of the stage, and he walks out and he sings this gospel song with his bass voice. He’s so unassuming, and he was so humble out there. And the next thing you know, the crowd, I think, associated themselves with him in a way that they hadn’t associated themselves with anybody all night. They saw a real guy out there singing a real song.”

REAL SUCCESS

Fast forward nearly six years, and that same “real guy” has become a husband to wife Jennifer, a father to one-year-old son Hampton, and a genuine country music sensation. Two of his songs-- “Your Man” and “Would You Go With Me”-- have become number one hit singles, and his albums LONG BLACK TRAIN and YOUR MAN have together sold more than three million copies. Next month, he’s a first-time nominee in the Country Music Association Awards’ prestigious male vocalist category alongside Kenny Chesney, Paisley, George Strait, and Keith Urban—country stalwarts who have together reached the top of the country charts more than 75 times. 

And on Oct. 27, Turner will again step out on the Grand Ole Opry stage—a stage he’s played nearly 100 times since that first performance—in front of a crowd that not only knows his name but is also intensely familiar with his music, this time to become an official member of the Opry family. While the title “Opry member” will be a new and exciting one for him, Turner says he’s felt like a fit for the Opry since that first nerve-wracking night a half a dozen years ago. “Everyone at the Opry has been great to me,” Turner says. “They’re a family of sorts, and the Opry is like a second home.” The Opry, he says, has allowed him to connect with three generations of fans and with the artists who inspired him to make music and move to Nashville. “It’s incredible,” he says. “It is absolutely great for me to be around these people.”

EVERYTHING IS FINE

Sandwiched between Turner’s Opry induction night and his CMA Awards appearance as a Male Vocalist nominee is the October 30 release of the lauded singer’s third album, EVERYTHING IS FINE. As with YOUR MAN early last year, Turner says the new record showcases both his musical growth and the best of his unique style. “This one’s a step above what I’ve done so far.”

The first tune from the new album to hit the radio is the infectious “Firecracker,” a tune  Turner co-wrote in which he extols the steamy virtues of his female companion: “…When it comes to love
she ain’t no slacker
My little darlin’ is a firecracker …”

Turner says the song exemplifies to him how traditional country music can be fun and positive. “I want to make this music exciting for new generations of fans,” he says. “I’m always driven to see where I can take traditional country music.”

With so much going right for him, the new album’s title cut could very well be his mantra this fall. “Everything Is Fine,” the hit-maker says, shares that “life isn’t perfect, but everything is fine.”

Can he ever relate. In the “not always perfect” department for Turner: time away from home and family and lots of hard work. But from the far larger “everything is fine” department: the glory of an incredible Opry debut, record sales in the millions, a male vocalist nomination putting him in the company of artists he’s held on a pedestal for years, Opry membership, and a young family.

Turner says, “I’ve already accomplished a lot of what I wanted to do.” Still, “there’s a lot more I want do,” and he’s poised this fall to make strides toward his lifelong dream. “My goal has always been to become a legend in this business just like the legends that have come before me on that Opry stage. I have some big shoes to fill!”

--by Dan Rogers