Terri Clark concert headlines Shasta fair

‘DIRTY GIRL’ TOUR:
County music star Terri Clark will headline the Shasta District Fair with an 8 p.m. concert on Friday, June 13. Tickets go on sale Thursday.

Women who enjoy four wheelin’ and working on cars, and the men who love ‘em, will want to purchase tickets for the Terri Clark concert during the 2008 Shasta District Fair June 11-15.

They’ll be the ones singing along to Clark’s recent hit, “Dirty Girl,” in which she extols “Four wheels churning up a fresh green pasture, throwing mud pies everywhere. I’m beside you yellin’ “Faster, faster.” Wind whippin’ through my tangled hair.”

Tickets for the 8 p.m. Friday, June 13, concert go on sale Thursday, May 1, at either the Shasta District Fair office or online at www.shastadistrictfair.com.

“We’re excited to have her here,” said Chris Workman, chief executive officer of the fair’s headline act. “She will be a good draw for us.”

Seating in the U.S. Bank Grandstands for the concert is free with paid fair admission. However, dress circle seating is $15, and tickets for that section are expected to sell out fast, Workman said.

Fair admission is $7 for adults, $5 for juniors (ages 6-12) and seniors (65 and older) and free for children 5 and younger. Parking is another $5 per vehicle, Workman said.

Canadian-born artist Terri Clark makes it obvious from the onset that a shimmering country melody is more important to her than a rhinestone suit. As with Patty Loveless, Clark’s warm, confident vocals perfectly complement her neo-traditional material.

A powerful singer, she can belt out a rocker as easily as she can soothe a listener with a ballad, one reviewer wrote on her self-titled debut album.

Born Terri Lynn Sauson on Aug. 5, 1968, in Montreal and raised in Medicine Hat, Alberta Province, Clark is a top female vocalist nominee in both the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music. She is also a Grand Ole Opry member. Every time she sings, she brings her own brand of smoldering good looks and excellent pipes to traditional country music.

But then, according to her official Web site biography, Terri Clark “has always been more about a broken-in pair of Justin Boots than the latest Jimmy Choo stilettos.” “This music,” she admits, laughing, “has way more horsepower, which is exciting… and the lyrics are more direct, more colorful. It really puts an awful lot of life right out there,” Clark said of her latest CD, “In My Next Life,” her debut album for Nashville-based BNA Records, a label group that shares ties with Arista Nashville and RCA Nashville from parent company RCA Records, which itself is a subsidiary of Sony BMG.

Not only did she switch record labels, she also got divorced and watched her mother go through aggressive treatments for cancer.

“I think ‘In My Next Life’ speaks more to my life and how I want to live it. ‘Dirty Girl’ goes a little deeper into who I am and how I live this life,” she said. “I think ‘I Just Wanna Be Mad’ is something we’ve all done, been there. It’s a moment, not necessarily a way of living or a philosophy about the bigger reality of life,” she told one biographer.

“In My Next Life” was made under perhaps the most difficult of circumstances Clark had ever faced in the studio. Many sessions had to be scheduled between her mother’s cancer treatments with Clark commuting back and forth uncertain of the outcome. “When I was doing the vocal for ‘Never Say No,’ I’d found out my mother had been diagnosed with cancer. I didn’t know if I could get through the song. You don’t know if the woman in the song makes it. I think she dies. But we didn’t know about my mom. It’s funny: there I was living inside this lyric, but then it’s times like these (when the) music really hits you, opens you up and takes all the things you can’t say. You put them in the singing, and suddenly you can say them,” Clark’s biography states.

“The last two years have made me focus on what’s important in my life, the things that really matter. When you lose somebody you’re incredibly close to and almost lose someone who’s so important to you…it changes your perspective in a way that’s not negotiable,” the biography continues to quote Clark.