When country star Martina McBride arrives for her Christmas show Sunday, she'll have her family in tow. And there's a reason for that.
By CHRIS TISCH
Published December 4, 2003
[Publicity photo]
One of country music’s most popular singers, Martina McBride schedules her holiday tour around her daughters’ schooling.
It's Monday afternoon, and country star Martina McBride can't talk long. She has to pick up her two daughters from school, then it's off to Target.
She performed the night before in Pittsburgh. Her daughters are part of the acting troupe in her show, so her tour bus had to leave the city that night. They made it home to Nashville just in time for school.
McBride likes to include her daughters - Delaney, 8, and Emma, 5 - in her show, but she won't yank them out of school to do it. So she schedules her concerts on the weekends and fairly close to home.
Family is that important to the three-time winner of the Country Music Association's female vocalist of the year prize.
"You just really have to make it a priority," McBride says of her family. "And you have to work everything around it."
Her 15-date, Christmas-themed tour arrives at the USF Sun Dome at 8 p.m. Sunday.
The theatrical show features children on stage, a visit from Santa, caroling with the audience, video screens, elaborate sets and McBride stepping into the crowd for a Q&A.
"It's a really good show for kids," McBride says. "It's a show for the whole family."
There are few stars who could pull it off like McBride; few who could swivel a tour around weekends so their children could participate; few who could shed popular radio smashes for O Holy Night; and few who could do all that and draw 7,200 people on the last night of a long holiday weekend to get into the Christmas spirit.
But McBride has, over the last decade, become one of country's most popular and endearing singers. Only Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn and Reba McEntire have as many CMA female vocalist of the year awards as McBride.
Most of the songs in the show are from White Christmas, her 1998 platinum album. She launched the Christmas show last year after months of writing and rehearsing. This year took two weeks of intense rehearsals.
Not only do her daughters have roles, but her husband, John, runs the house sound.
"So it's kind of a family affair," John McBride said. "It's my favorite tour of the year for sure. The shows are going great."
Martina, 37, said the show is a good way for the kids to learn how to work with others to make a show come together. "It makes no sense for me not to involve them in the show," she says. "They really love to be on stage."
To keep them from missing class this week, she'll pick them up after school Thursday, drive to Chattanooga, Tenn., for a show that night, then head back to Nashville so they can be at school Friday.
Then it's back on the road Friday afternoon to Birmingham, Ala., the next day to Atlanta, then Tampa and back again for school Monday morning.
"It limits what I can do," she says of her touring schedule. "I could be doing 200 dates a year and making hay while the sun shines . . . but I just don't think that's a good life for the kids, and I don't like to be gone that long."
Family issues have always been a theme of McBride's music, though sometimes in darker shades. Her 1994 hit Independence Day was a haunting story about domestic violence. Three years later, McBride's A Broken Wing told of a woman escaping emotional abuse.
But those songs aren't in her holiday show.
"It's really jam-packed with Christmas," she says. "To go from singing Independence Day to O Come, All Ye Faithful seems like a little bit of a stretch."
McBride grew up in a small Kansas town and graduated from a high school with a class of 10. She lived on a farm in the country, down the road from her grandparents.
"I've always loved Christmas," she says, "just the whole world stopping for that one day.
"We put a lot of people in the Christmas spirit," she says of her show. "It kind of reminds me of one of those old-time Christmas TV specials. It's got a lot of charm, and it's kind of corny and has a lot of nostalgia. It's really just an hour and a half of Christmas spirit from beginning to end. If it doesn't put you in the Christmas spirit, then there's really no hope for you."
PREVIEW: Martina McBride, 8 p.m. Sunday, USF Sun Dome, 4202 E Fowler Ave., Tampa. $29.50-$39.50. (813) 287-8844 or (727) 898-2100 or (813) 974-3002.
