Travis Tritt
b. c.1962, Marietta, Georgia, USA. He started writing songs and playing honky tonks and beer joints when he was about 14 years old. One of Tritt's songs is called, Son Of The New South, and his US country hit, Put Some Drive Into Your Country includes the lines, ‘I made myself a promise when I was just a kid/I'd mix Southern rock and country and that's just what I did.’ In other words, Tritt is where Merle Haggard meets Lynyrd Skynyrd. Although the title track of his debut album presented him as a honky tonk revivalist, Tritt's music reflects his childhood love for the classic country of George Jones and the southern rock of the Allman Brothers. He reached superstar status in 1991 with the first single from IT'S ALL ABOUT TO CHANGE—a wonderful bar-room ballad of love betrayed, Here's A Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares). The follow-up, Anymore, proved his credentials as a balladeer, while his acting in the award-winning video clip for the song won him several offers of film work. After two magnificent albums, T-R-O-U-B-L-E was something of a holding operation, though it contained at least one classic, the traditional-sounding Lord Have Mercy On The Working Man. Tritt further extended the boundaries of modern country with a nine-minute workout on Buddy Guy's blues standard, Leave My Woman Alone. He combined with Marty Stuart for two hit singles and a series of concerts playfully titled The No-Hats Tour in honour of the duo's full heads of hair. Only some outspoken criticism of Billy Ray Cyrus in the summer of 1992, and the decision to issue a sentimental album of Christmas favourites later in the year, threatened his relentless progress to the top. An accomplished songwriter and performer, with one of the most distinctive voices in country music, he is potentially a gigantic talent.