`TOTALLY COMMITTED' TO STAND-UP COMEDY; POST-SITCOM JEFF FOXWORTHY RETURNS WITH NEW ACT, HBO SPECIAL AND CD.

Byline: Keith Marder Daily News Television Writer

Jeff Foxworthy, author, artist, father, husband, restaurateur, stand-up comic is back at it again.

He is currently running around the country performing an entirely new act, which gave birth to an HBO special and a new compact disc, both called ``Totally Committed.'' The HBO hour debuts at 9:30 tonight, and the CD, on the Warner Bros. label, will be released Tuesday.

He wrote the material with veteran stand-up comic Ritch Shydner of Sherman Oaks and slowed down long enough during a weekend gig at Bally's in Las Vegas to talk to the Daily News.

Q: What is the origin of the title ``Totally Committed''?

A: It was one of those things that wasn't a big theme, necessarily. Ritch and I were writing, and those two words came out together and it was like, ``Whoa, that's a good title.'' At least half of the HBO special and the album is about 13 years of marriage.

Q: So, it isn't committed as in locked up?

A: It can go either way some days, about being locked up and about being totally committed to marriage. With marriage, if you want to be partially committed, you might as well just split everything you own down the middle. We started talking about what is partially committed, and we realized it was like the dead possum in the middle of the road. If you're not totally committed to getting across, that's the type of thing that will happen to you.

Q: How has the show been received?

A: I'm amazed by it. As a comedian, the real scary thing to do is to clear the plate and start over. The biggest tendency is to keep doing the bit we got big laughs with. But that's the decision we made when we decided to do the HBO special for a whole hour. Ritch was the real taskmaster with that. We would go down to the Comedy & Magic Club (in Hermosa Beach), and he would say, ``You can't do any old material.'' I was like, ``But they laugh at it.'' Thank God I had to answer to him. It's real easy to fall back into that. That's what made the new material work. We would go out and see what works and what didn't.

Q: You talk a lot in your act about your wife and in-laws. Have you encountered any domestic tension because of this?

A: Well you know, it's just kind of like picking the scab off the end of a wound, because I've always talked about them. I'm just doing new things. I'm always talking about my wife. In my old act I would ask why when women go into bed, their feet and butt drop 15 degrees. To this day, when we're in an airport, people invariably come up to her and say, ``Are you the one with the cold butt?'' She said, ``You do realize that when the money stops, you do stop talking about my butt.'' Her theory is, as sensitive as women are about their butts, how many have to have the nation thinking about it? And, maybe she has a point.

Q: What about your in-laws?

A: It makes them famous in their neighborhood. For a long time, I could talk about them a ton on ``The Tonight Show'' or ``Letterman,'' and I knew they wouldn't stay up. It's too late. But, people tape these HBO specials and give it to them. There's a lot of truth to that material, though.

Q: Don't they get HBO?

A: Of course not, it costs money for HBO.

Q: What does it mean to your position on the show-business food chain that your face finally decorates the $5 chip at Bally's Hotel and Casino?

A: It's weird to see your face in there. But it's even weirder to open the refrigerator and see my face on bottles of (the new Jeff Foxworthy brand) barbecue sauce. You open the refrigerator and see yourself on the second shelf looking back, ``Oooh, I'm Tangy Mustard today.''

The barbecue sauce just won a bunch of awards in a blind taste test in Texas. There were four categories and 1,000 entries in each. It won one, took second in another and top 20 in a third. We worked on these things for quite a while. If I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna try to make it good.

Q: That's right, you're also opening a chain of Foxworthy Backyard Barbecue restaurants.

A: I didn't know quite what to expect in the restaurant. It's a lot of fun. It's one of those things when you walk into it, you spend at least the first 10 minutes taking things in. The booths are made from the back seats of cars. If you sit in the seats against the wall, you're sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck. The lamps are made out of carburetors. You spend half your time eating and half your time looking around. The ceiling fans are made out of boat paddles or shovels. ... When you quit your job to go tell jokes for a living, you don't quite imagine your face on a bottle of barbecue sauce.

Q: Do you miss the ``You Might Be a Redneck'' bit?

A: I still do the calendar every year, the page-a-day calendar. I have a pad on the side of my desk, so when I see something I write it down. Every year, I don't think I can come up with 365 of these, and I do. I still do it as an encore. Thankfully, it's not like Chubby Checker doing ``The Twist.'' I do get to mix them up, and it's always been such a small part of my act. People always ask me if I am sick of it or hate it. I don't hate it. It's fun material to do. I have a lot more redneck stuff. My wife, Gregg, says, it's what brings people to you, not what brings them back. It may not be true, but I like that definition. It works for me.''

Q: Do you think you've outed all rednecks, or are there any rednecks out there who have gone undetected who we should know about?

A: The fun thing for me is that now, when I go through airports, I get people from Saudi Arabia coming up to me, saying ``I'm a redneck.'' If you use the definition I always use, ``It's a glorious absence of sophistication,'' it's kind of gotten to be all-inclusive, and that's what makes it fun. It's relatable. Just from the get-go, it was one of those bits that as much as it makes people laugh, it makes them point at each other. It's someone in your family. If you're not, your cousin is. People at book-signings always start, ``I'm not a redneck, but I have a friend who is.'' I don't even look up. I just say, ``Start reading.'' And, they say, ``I've done that.'' Ted Turner is a redneck. It has nothing to do with money, I realized that the first time I walked through Graceland. Elvis had millions of dollars, and he still had carpet on the ceiling. That was the first time I realized you cannot give rednecks money.

Q: You kind of got run through the network-television ringer during the two incarnations of your sitcom. Any interest in returning to television?

A: I might. Right now I'm really enjoying this, and I'm really proud of the HBO thing and the album. After the success of the first two albums, you're tentative about doing another.

Q: Now that you're back living in Atlanta, is there anything you miss about L.A.?

A: I don't know - the earthquakes, the riots, the floods, the traffic jams, the smog. The good ol' down-home country folks. I'm pretty happy right now. L.A., creatively, is such a great place to be. Atlanta is certainly a good place for us at this point of my life. I'm doing everything I did before except a TV show. It's really important to me that my kids have a normal life. That's not to say people in L.A. don't have a normal life - that's a normal life to them. I wanted them to have a place to play. It was real important family-wise for me. It was real important that I came home. My family's here. My wife's family is here. This is the right place for us to be.

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Photo: The ``You Might Be a Redneck'' bits are now part of the encore for Jeff Foxworthy, whose ``Totally Committed'' HBO special focuses on his 13 years of marriage.