Tim McGraw to launch One Band Show tour

DETROIT, March 5 (UPI) -- Country music star Tim McGraw says he doesn't try to bust the rules. It just comes naturally to him.

Nevertheless, the singer, songwriter, performer and husband of fellow multi-platinum seller Faith Hill has managed to go against Nashville conventions during the past few months. He's one of the rare artists to record with his touring band, and his latest effort, "Tim McGraw & The Dancehall Doctors" -- released in November -- has sold more than 2 million copies and spawned a hit NBC special and a best-selling book.

And on Friday in Birmingham, Ala., McGraw -- who since 1993 has sold more than 27 million copies of his six albums and has scored 19 No. 1 country singles -- launches his One Band Show tour, which eschews the protocol of opening acts and instead will feature just McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors playing two and a half hour concerts.

"These are just my conventions and my traditions -- I don't feel like I'm breaking any rules or anything like that,'' McGraw, 35, said by telephone from his Nashville home, where he resides with Hill and their three young children. "I never think in those terms. I'm just trying to do my show and what's most comfortable to me and what satisfies me the most."

McGraw said he and his band view the One Band Show as "almost like a comeback tour for us" after taking most of 2002 off to make the album. He promises that the wait will be worth it, with 30-plus songs each night and staging that he helped to design.

"I wanted a huge stage that was unobstructed," explains McGraw, a Louisiana native whose father is former major league baseball pitcher Tug McGraw. "We've built a stage to get close to the audience and have the audience get close to us, and we've got unobstructed views and great video and a lot of surprises and stuff that's going to happen.

"I wanted to make it simple and clean but a really fantastic show, something that really has an intimacy to it but still feels like a rock 'n' roll show. It's going to be extreme."

Thanks to the album's success, One Band Show tickets have been selling well, including quick sell-outs in cities such as Detroit and Boston. The tour is currently booked through May and will likely run longer, McGraw said.

``You just can't take the bar band out of us,'' explained McGraw, who's nominated for two awards, including Top Male Vocalist, at the Academy of Country Music Awards on May 21 in Las Vegas. ``It seems like every time we do the normal tour and play and hour and a half, with two opening acts, when we come offstage we feel like we're just getting started and warmed up, like we left something on the table every time.

``This year we didn't want to feel that way. So we're going out there and playing as long as we want to play and just having as good a time as we can.''