Martina McBride

by Beverly Keel

Martina McBride well remembers the advice her mother gave her when she was attending high school in Sharon, Kan. (pop. 210), with nine other students in her class.

"My mom always said, ‘You need to watch out for your reputation. It is important,’" she recalls. "That stuck with me. Sometimes I think you have to balance it with the fact that you can’t worry about what everybody thinks. But at the same time, you have a responsibility to yourself, your family and your reputation."

McBride, 39, now has a reputation as a country superstar with more than 15 million records sold and shelves full of music awards. But she still adheres to the basic, down-home wisdom and traditional values instilled in her by her father, Daryl Schiff, a farmer who moonlighted as a carpenter, and her mother, Jeanne, a homemaker who raised four children about a mile down the road from their grandparents.

Living in the countryside just outside of Sharon, McBride and her siblings had few distractions, since shopping centers and fast-food restaurants weren’t nearby options and their television picked up only three channels. They went to town about once a week with their mother to buy groceries, and spent afternoons riding bikes down country roads and using their imaginations to fill the long days of summer. Each evening began with the family gathering around the kitchen table to share a meal and relate the day’s activities.

"Growing up in a small community like that, where everybody knows you, you have a real sense of accountability," she says. "Anything you do or say, everybody knows it. You have a sense that anything you do will reflect on your family, so you have to watch your p’s and q’s. I was raised with a really good sense of morals and values."

A house full of music

While there weren’t many neighborhood kids to play with, there always were musical instruments around the home. McBride’s father played guitar, and music from his band’s weekly rehearsals resonated in the house, so small that all four kids shared a single bedroom when they were young. Martina, who demonstrated an early knack for singing, joined her dad’s band at age 7, accompanied by her 5-year-old brother, Marty, who played guitar and still plays in his sister’s band to this day. The family band, called The Schiffters, played local gigs on the weekends.

Such closeness to her family and her community gave McBride a strong sense of place and identity. "When you grow up like that, you know who you are," she says. "There was never any putting on airs for people or trying to be something you’re not."

That quality, she says, has helped her immensely in the music business. "When you start out, so many people are trying to get you to do so many things," she explains. "You have to have a strong sense of self to say, ‘I will not do that; that is not me.’ You have to be strong enough to stand up and say no. I’ve done that a lot in my career. Growing up in a small town and knowing who I am has served me well."

It was this strong sense of self that gave her the determination to leave home in 1990 and move to Nashville, Tenn., to pursue her dreams of a career in country music. After selling T-shirts at Garth Brooks’ concerts in 1991 while her husband, John McBride, worked as Brooks’ production manager, she eventually landed her own deal with RCA Records and released her debut album in 1992. The hits started coming in 1993 and went on to include nearly 20 Top 10s, including "My Baby Loves Me," "Broken Wing," "Wild Angels" and "Blessed."

McBride, who tied Reba McEntire’s record of four Country Music Association awards for Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004, is considered one of the genre’s best singers for her impressive range and rich, pitch-perfect voice. She’s also known as a consummate, self-confident perfectionist who can’t easily be talked into doing anything she doesn’t want to do. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that she is best known for the song called "Independence Day."

Following her instincts

Her independent spirit recently found her bucking the conventional wisdom of the music industry with her latest album, Timeless. The CD is a collection of classic, traditional country songs—such as "Rose Garden," "I Can’t Stop Loving You" and "Make the World Go Away"—as opposed to more commercially contemporary tunes that her record company knew had always been her forte.

"I really wanted to make an album of just classic country," McBride says. "I just went for it." Her record company agreed to let her roll the dice, and her gamble paid off: Timeless was a No. 1 hit on Billboard’s country album charts last year and was certified platinum for sales of a million copies in less than two months, faster than any of her previous albums.

She realizes she might have been an even bigger star—or, at least, a bigger star faster—had she compliantly followed all the advice and suggestions dished out from managers, booking agents and other industry insiders. "On one hand, I might have had maybe a bigger career if I let somebody talk me into some things," she says. "But I know that I am a really happy person and a really content person with who I am."

First and foremost, she’s the mother of three daughters—Delaney, 11, Emma, 7, and Ava, 8 months—and the wife of John, 48, whom she married in 1988. "A lot of times, people don’t understand that I put my kids first," she says. For instance, McBride’s current tour, which runs through April, is scheduled mostly around weekend travel specifically so her kids can accompany her on the road without missing any school days.

"I look at my kids, and they are really well-adjusted and happy people," she says. "Just because I sing, I am not a big star in my house; I am Mom. That is important to me. You are shaping little people. It’s way more important than record sales or any awards or TV shows."

Although McBride’s current lifestyle—traveling on a high-tech tour bus and living in an 11,000-square-foot, antebellum-style mansion on five acres just minutes from downtown Nashville—is in marked contrast to her humble upbringings, she’s working hard to instill in her daughters the lessons she learned in the small Kansas house of her childhood.

"Even though I’m in a crazy business, I really want them to have the same kind of upbringing I had," she says. "It’s not going to be the same in a lot of circumstances, but the way I raise my kids, the things I teach them, the values I teach them, that sense of self I’m going to pass onto them, is the same.

"I am so grateful for the way that I was raised."

Beverly Keel is a Contributing Editor with American Profile.

first appeared: 2/19/2006