Byrd will be in his element at the fair.

Byline: Carolyn Lamberson The Register-Guard

When Tracy Byrd was thinking about the cover art for "Greatest Hits, Volume II," he had mountains in mind.

So the country singer from Beaumont, Texas, conjured up an image of Oregon. And on a ranch outside Hood River, the cover shot was born.

"I wanted big landscapes and mountains and things and it ends up the cover doesn't have a mountain it,' Byrd said with a laugh, chatting via cell phone from Louisiana. "But it was such a good shot that we wanted to use it.

`I love Oregon, I love the beauty of it, and that's kind of what I had in mind for (the cover).'

Byrd - T-Byrd to his fans - will take in some of Oregon's beauty this weekend when he performs at the Lane County Fair. His show Saturday concludes the fair's slate of Main Stage performances.

"Volume II," which was released in February, covers the past six years of Byrd's career, since his jump from MCA Records to RCA imprint BNA Records. (He left BNA in April and is in the market for a new label.)

Volume I, called "Keepers: Greatest Hits," came out in 1999. The idea behind the new collection was to gather up the recent hits and revisit some of the older ones.

`About eight of the sides were hits I had over at RCA," Byrd said. "Then we recut `Keeper of the Stars,' and `I'm From the Country' and `Watermelon Crawl' just because they were such big hits from the first of my career."

A career studded with hits

It's been 12 years since the 38-year-old singer first hit the big time.

His self-titled debut, released in 1993, generated the No. 1 single, "Holding Heaven." His fol- low-up record, "No Ordinary Man," was a breakthrough. It went platinum and featured four Top 5 hits - `Watermelon Crawl," "The Keeper of the Stars," "The First Step" and "Lifestyles of the Not So Rich and Famous."

The albums "Love Lessons," "Big Love," "I'm From the Country," "It's About Time," "Ten Rounds" (featuring the No. 1 hit "Ten Rounds With Jose Cuervo') and 2003's "The Truth About Men" followed. They cemented Byrd's reputation as a neo-traditionalist who is at home with good-time party songs (`Jose Cuervo') as he is with heartfelt ballads (`Keeper of the Stars').

These days, Byrd is hunting around for the next batch of songs to record. As soon as he finds enough, he'll head into the studio with producer Keith Steagall, who produced "Tracy Byrd."

Finding good songs to sing doesn't sound like it would be tough, but Byrd said it's getting more difficult.

"I'm still a pretty traditional country act," he said. "You know, traditional's kind of taking a back seat to the pop-sounding kind of country stuff.

`It makes it harder on me for the style that I do, but we've managed to keep it going this long and we'll continue.'

So what does he look for in potential songs?

"Hits!" he said, laughing. "Obviously, they've got to fit my style, then we have to really feel like it's something that radio will jump on and play and that people will like. ...

`There's a lot of songs out there, and there's a lot of, in my opinion, great songs out there. But in today's climate, just because they're great songs doesn't mean they'll merit a lot of airplay.'

New songs will get an airing

When fans head to the fair on Saturday night, they can expect to hear a lot of the hits and a few new songs that Byrd has written that might appear on the new record. He and the band have been test-driving the tunes this summer to gauge fan reaction.

So far, Byrd said, "Response has been great."

Byrd, who lives in Beaumont with his wife and three children, is not primarily a song- writer.

He's recorded a dozen or so of his own songs during his career, and has written songs recorded by other artists. But he said he lacks the one thing a songwriter needs - time.

`It's hard for me to find the time to write. At home, I can't hardly write because when I'm home I try to leave that behind. Then when I get on the road, it's tough to write because of the hectic schedule and it's hard to find a quiet place to concen- trate.

"I try to get to Nashville when I can and sit down with my buddies who write. ... The new things that we have now come out of the few writing sessions I've done this year in Nashville.'

In addition to work on his new album, Byrd hopes to begin another project soon, an album of duets with his friend Mark Chestnutt, who also hails from Beaumont. He said the idea is to do something along the lines of the Merle Haggard/Willie Nelson collaboration "Lefty & Poncho," or Haggard and George Jones' "A Taste of Yesterday's Wine."

`He's been one of my friends for a long time, and I think he's the best country singer in the business,' Byrd said of Chest- nutt.

"We did one duet on my `Ten Rounds' album, but then we want to do a whole album's worth of that.'

You can reach Carolyn Lamberson at 338-2341 or clamberson @guardnet.com.

CONCERT PREVIEW

Tracy Byrd

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Main stage, Lane County Fair, 796 W. 13th Ave.

Tickets: $15.50, $10.50 and $7.50, available through TicketsWest; admission to the fair is not included

CAPTION(S):

Tracy Byrd is on the lookout for his next big hit, but finding good songs isn't easy. His traditional style, he says, has taken a back seat to "the pop-sounding kind of country stuff."