Randy Travis finds inspiration  

"In this day and time, it's tough because there are so many records being released. The country industry has just gone nuts. I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate me saying this They've oversigned acts. If someone writes 20 songs and one is worth recording, that's a pretty good percentage...how do you find that many good songs? A lot of songs hitting the airwaves are bad."

"The blame lies everywhere. You've only got a handful of producers making (records) on those acts, so records musically sound alike. Music sounds alike. Bad songs. They're overproducing."

"There are a few people making good records still, but everybody is so locked into 'let's do more crossover sounding stuff, and let's sign more people.' I think they have come to the point 'let's sign everybody we can. Throw out as many pieces of product as we can, and something will stick.' It's that kind of mentality now. That's not smart. I can't tell you how many people I've talked with on the road who say I can't listen to country radio any more. I don't blame them. The business has been ruined. Where everybody goes back six, eight years, everyone was selling good (numbers of) records."

"And now you can count on one hand those people who can truly sell tickets and records, and you won't use all your fingers. What I don't understand is why people is who are at radio, running labels, signing acts, producing acts, the acts themselves (don't realize) that something is not working here. Maybe we need to try better quality songs - the music being about the songs. The music is not being about overproduced songs."

As for Travis, he is continuing his acting career and forging ahead with his musical career as well. He has done many television and theatre movies and may do a few more early in 2001.

He recorded a live album in Anaheim in mid-December for release on CD and DVD, though he is uncertain which company will do the releases.

Through good and bad, Travis seems to keep an even keel, figuring it will all work out.

"I think timing plays such a big part in what happens to people and careers. I think timing is what happened to me in country music. - I got turned down by every label for 10 years because I was too country, and then I got signed because I was country."