JoleneHOST: Thanks for taking the time out to talk with us. These are fan generated questions for a country website. We added some of our own questions in to fill things up.

Neal McCoy: No problem, make yourself at home, take it easy

JoleneHOST: You have a new album coming out?

Neal McCoy: We do.

JoleneHOST: Any thoughts on Luckiest Man in the World?

Neal McCoy: First of all, we don't know when it's coming out, it's one of those deals...record labels...you never know when it's coming out and we're keeping our fingers crossed. I took longer to make this album than any album I've ever done before, and I think this is my 10th album, really because we had time. It's my first project on Warner Brothers and it's my first album I've ever had that I think I like every song on it. You know in the past you do some albums you put some songs on them for whoever, but I think I like this one better than any we've got out so far. So anyway, we're hoping we have a couple of hits off of it and people have a chance to hear it.

JoleneHOST: So, did you do anything different other than having the time to take to do it?

Neal McCoy: No, no, just taking the time to do it made a big difference I think. As far as the production standpoint, we've got a new producer, Eric Silver. I think it's a little more progressive sound, a little more up to date, a little fresher. It's almost a little more acoustic than we've been in the past; but still not acoustic by any means. It's just got a real cool sound to it.

JoleneHOST: That's good, and four of your previous albums have been certified platinum?

Neal McCoy: Yeah, we've done all right I guess. *Laugh*

JoleneHOST: I hope this one does great for you as well.

Neal McCoy: Thanks, we hope so too.

JoleneHOST: Who were some of the people who influence you when you were starting out?

Neal McCoy: Well, believe it or not, you hate to say it, especially with all the press he's getting right now, but Michael Jackson. (Laughing) I was a major Michael Jackson fan. Looking back, with all the stuff going on right now (we're the same age), but when I was 8 and 9 and 10, I was watching him at my age and thinking "God, what a neat thing, you know? There he was singing "1, 2, 3 easy as ABC" and really dancing and singing great. So he was great. I was an easy listening kind of guy, so I liked The Carpenters, Boz Skaggs, Barry Manilow. I was into the Disco thing - Earth, Wind & Fire and all that stuff. And then I loved Big Band stuff. From a country standpoint, at that time, I loved Ronnie Milsap, Lee Greenwood and guys like that. And then obviously I had a chance to meet Charley Pride, and that is who kind of got me started in country music. So I really started paying attention to him and his music and he'd have to be my major influence. Only because he was the one who really took a chance on me and gave me a chance to get into this format, and we've done really well. I still am a big fan of his and he's a very good friend.

JoleneHOST: I noticed you covered one of Ronnie's songs in the last show of yours I went to.

Neal McCoy: Yeah... Which one did we do? I don't even remember.

JoleneHOST: "I'm A Stand By Your Woman Man"

Neal McCoy: We did...you know what, I forgot all about that song, we haven't done it in a while now. (Sings a chorus of the song.) We have to start doing that again, it's a really good song.

JoleneHOST: Obviously you had a lot of great influences. So what made you choose to do country? Why not pop or something else?

Neal McCoy: Well, I got a break in it. When you're young, and you're a singer..well, when you're any age, and you sing and you want to be a singer, you will sing anything. Whatever you can to get work, you'll sing it...weddings, funerals. You'll sing Disco, standards, country. So at that time, I'm 19 - 20 years old and I'm just singing whatever and wherever I can sing and I got my foot in the proverbial door by meeting Charlie Pride. And I was smart enough to say I'll take it and run with it and see what I can do.

JoleneHOST: And you've done very well with it!

Neal McCoy: *Laugh* Yeah, we've done all right, *Laugh*

JoleneHOST: Yeah, you did! *Laugh* One of your fans asked about ETAN. She follows your music fairly closely, goes to a lot of your shows and is familiar with it. I went to your website to check it out, and it is a charity that is very close to you.

Neal McCoy: Yes it is, we founded it - my wife and I.

JoleneHOST: So, for people that aren't familiar with it, I hadn't heard of it until I went to your website to do research for some of these questions, can you explain what it is and why you set it up?

Neal McCoy: Sure, the reason you probably haven't heard of it is because it is a local charity. It is for the East Texas area. It's called the East Texas Angel Network. It's a foundation my wife and I started over 8 years ago to help children in our East Texas area, our home area, with serious or life threatening illnesses. To help with what we consider secondary expenses. At the time they surely don't consider them. Most of the time, when a child is stricken with a disease and they have to have major medical - surgery or whatever, usually a parent has insurance that covers them. But where they really struggle is trying to make house bills. Things like car payments and electricity payments, because all that stuff kind of slips through the cracks. Or when dad can't go be with the child. The child has to have surgery and Dad can't go to Houston or Dallas or wherever the child is because he just flat can't afford to miss that paycheck, we'll pay the check and he can go be with his family where he needs to be. It's a really big deal for us. We've raised a lot of money and had a lot of help from a lot of people in the country music industry who volunteer their time and take part in an annual concert that we have.

JoleneHOST: That's a great charity. Because you're right, people don't think about that stuff, and it's very true.

Neal McCoy: It's a total non-profit organization. I don't know if you've been involved in any foundations or charities but usually a very small percentage of what you bring in goes back to the actual charity and we're proud to say that 88% of what we bring in goes to the children and their families.

JoleneHOST: Good, and it stays local which is what you want.

Neal McCoy: Yes, and I think if we could get more people to just take care of their local areas then we wouldn't need all the state stuff and federal stuff if everybody would just kind of watch out after their own.

JoleneHOST: You cut your hair off a few years ago.

Neal McCoy: Yeah, it didn't fall off, I cut it off. *Laugh* It was 5 years ago.

JoleneHOST: Wow, I guess it has been a while. That was part of your persona, your long hair. Pat wanted to know if you would consider growing it back and then cut your pony tail off to go towards ETAN, to auction off there?

Neal McCoy: That's actually what I did with the last one.

JoleneHOST: Did you?

Neal McCoy: Umm hummm, with the hair I had, we auctioned it off for profits for the East Texas Angel Network.

JoleneHOST: Now she's going to ask, so can I ask how much it brought?

Well, what we did was we braided it in three pieces. Total, I think we raised $4,000 or $5,000.

JoleneHOST: Great! That's awesome. Would you do it again?

Neal McCoy: Well, it would take too long to grow it, plus the older you get your hair quits growing. You don't know, you're young. *Laugh* But once you reach my age, your hair doesn't grow as fast as it used to, so it would take forever for me to grow it back.

JoleneHOST: This is true, it does slow down after a while. I'm afraid to cut mine anymore.

Neal McCoy: I understand.

JoleneHOST: It's said you don't do a set list for your concerts (no ma'am) you just kind of go onstage and "wing it" (yes ma'am). You have a certain time to sing, so obviously you have to kind of know in your head what you've got as far as time wise?

Neal McCoy: Yeah, my road manager actually lets me know, usually by hand signals, how much time we have according to contract and then we just kind of adjust from there.

JoleneHOST: So your band just has to know everything? Hope they know what you want to do? *Laugh*

Neal McCoy: Yeah, I'll turn around and holler at them and tell them what we're going to do, or usually there's a microphone up on stage that Loren, our bass player, can talk into, and usually toward the end of a song I'll either go over there and speak into it to where everyone can hear me because we're on ear monitors, and tell them what we're going to do next, or I'll turn around to Loren and mouth something and he'll go in there and tell them.

JoleneHOST: So, virtually no two shows are going to be the same?

Neal McCoy: No, no two shows I don't think have ever been the same in all the years that we've done it.

JoleneHOST: That's great!

Neal McCoy: It's great, and what it does, it keeps the band into it. It keeps our band and me into it. You have to keep thinking about a show. You can't just get into a grind and just go through it and not think about it.

JoleneHOST: I haven't heard any duets that you've done with anyone. Have you done any duets? (I haven't) Who would you like to do a duet with if you could choose?

Neal McCoy: Gosh, you know, I don't know. There are so many great singers. From a country standpoint, female - probably Martina McBride. I think she's magnificent. Pop, gosh I don't know, there's so many great singers. I don't even know. I wouldn't know where to start. If I had a chance to do a big band, I'm a big band nut, that's really where my heart is, I'd love to sing with Tony Bennett.

JoleneHOST: When you're off-road, what do you do with your time?

Neal McCoy: Well, I don't have that much off-road time. But when I'm home I try and just take care of errands because I'm on the road so much. And so much goes on while you're gone that when you get home, you usually have a lot of stuff you need to catch up on. And I have a motorcycle dealership, A Yamaha dealership, in our hometown; so I kind of watch over that a little bit and usually try and hang out with my wife and kids as much as I can.

JoleneHOST: How many shows a year to you do typically?

Neal McCoy: Well, we do about 130 to 140 shows, but that puts you on the road still over 200 days a year with the going to and coming from the shows.

JoleneHOST: That is a pretty heavy schedule.

Neal McCoy: Yes, that's real heavy.

JoleneHOST: Does any of your family ever travel with you?

Neal McCoy: Yeah, in the summertime. When the kids are out of school. They usually come out in June and July with us.

JoleneHOST: That is good - I suppose you do the Theme Park thing when they're with you?

Neal McCoy: Yes, Theme Parks, festivals, fairs,

JoleneHOST: But I suppose they've been on the road so much that it is old stuff for them?

Neal McCoy: Yeah, it's old news to them. They've been doing it all their lives.

JoleneHOST: I guess we covered this question a little in the duets and favorite artists earlier, but do you have any current favorite CD's that you will pop in while you're on the road or waiting on the bus?

Neal McCoy: Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett. Standard stuff. There's a lot of people making great music right now, but if I had my choice, I'd still rather listen to the old stuff.

JoleneHOST: Considering how energetic your live shows are, have you ever considered doing a live DVD/CD project?

Neal McCoy: You know we have, and we have one live song on our new album which is a tribute to our fans. It's called "I'm Your Biggest Fan." We recorded that live. But yeah, we'd love to do a DVD if we could get the right people interested that would fund it and if we had a way to distribute it properly to at least make our money back because really that's how our fans see us. That's what they want to see and how they know us.

JoleneHOST: It seems to be the wave of the future, I know I've reviewed a couple that have been released lately.

Neal McCoy: Yeah, and we still would love to do it, because we really think we're taylor made for something like that.

JoleneHOST: Absolutely, yes!

Neal McCoy: So yes, we still want to do it if we can just figure it out with timing and all that.

JoleneHOST: Becky, one of our fans, sent in the comment that she enjoys listening to your music because your songs always seem to be upbeat and happy. Do you look for songs like that or is that just kind of what falls in your lap?

Neal McCoy: No, we look for them, because we get pitched everything. On the new album, there are a couple of songs on there that aren't as upbeat and positive and only because as a singer, like an actor, you want to take on different roles. Singing, you want to show that you think you can sing one of those tunes and sell one of those, so we have a couple of songs on there that one is sad, one is about leaving somebody. But the overall message of our albums is still good stuff.

JoleneHOST: How did you pick the name of your band - Justice?

Neal McCoy: I didn't pick it, they already had it when I hired them 12 years ago. *Laugh* And we don't even use it much. It really doesn't even come into play.

JoleneHOST: So they were a ready-made band when you started?

Neal McCoy: Yeah, they were a four-piece band when I hired them, and we still have three of those four that have been with me over 12 years.

JoleneHOST: That's great! And they already worked well with each other, so you were set to go there.

Neal McCoy: That's right.

JoleneHOST: You seem to like to climb on things during your shows...

Neal McCoy: Well, I don't LIKE to, I'm getting too old *laugh* but I've figured out our challenge is to be better than everybody else, to out-entertain everybody else. Sometimes we get there, and sometimes I'm sure we don't. But sometimes it just takes going the extra mile. And usually when I climb stuff, it is usually at these festival situations where there are major festivals and a ton of acts are going to be coming through in a three or four day period. We want people to talk about us.

JoleneHOST: Obviously it works.

Neal McCoy: It does, it really does. You know I only climb maybe two or three times a year.

JoleneHOST: Well, this question was from someone that saw you, and she wanted to know if it was scary looking down from a roof into thousands of faces looking up at you?

Neal McCoy: Yeah it is, but you know it just gets in you. You think, 'golly, what can I do? What can I do to rattle these people, shake them up?? I'll climb something'.

JoleneHOST: You went on a USO tour, and you said you were flying in planes that were coming in and going out with no lights.

Neal McCoy: That was in Afghanistan, yeah.

JoleneHOST: Can you share some thoughts that you had while you were on that tour? What it meant to you?

Neal McCoy: Well, I've been on three of them. I just came back from Kuwait and Bahrain this past Thanksgiving. Last year at Christmas I went to Afghanistan. A few weeks before that we went to Bosnia and Hungary and Italy.

JoleneHOST: All over.

Neal McCoy: Yeah. It's the neatest thing you can do.

JoleneHOST: And they probably appreciate not only you, but just the fact that you are somebody from home at that point.

Neal McCoy: I've been fortunate enough to go with Wayne Newton on all three of these tours and he and I have become very good friends. He is just a wonderful person. And you know, they do appreciate us coming over, but believe me, you get as much out of it and more than they get from you. It makes you feel good. It makes you feel good that these are the young kids that are protecting us around the world. It makes you feel good to be able to go out and see them and shake their hands and say hello to them, and just tell them thank you, because they are so young. We've been everywhere and played a lot of ships, and last Thanksgiving when we were over there in Bahrain and we went on one ship called the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. The average age of the troops on there is 20.

JoleneHOST: Oh my gosh!

Neal McCoy: So they're just kids. And a lot of them are scared and homesick. So it just gives you a good feeling to know that you are brightening their day.

JoleneHOST: So you would do another tour given the chance?

Neal McCoy: I'd do it all the time if I had the chance. Sometimes timing is really tough.

JoleneHOST: How many vehicles do you take with you on the road?

Neal McCoy: We have these two buses and a truck. And that's too many - too much to pay for. And we have a bunch of useless hands (joking - a band member walked on the bus just then). *much laughter*

JoleneHOST: Now you know this question had to be coming up...

Neal McCoy: Oh, oh.

JoleneHOST: How many pair of Wrangler jeans do you own?

Neal McCoy: You know I don't know, I own (only because I get them for free), we endorse Wrangler and they give us a bunch of them, I probably have 200.

JoleneHOST: Do you have your Wranglers custom made?

Neal McCoy: No, they're 30x44's .

JoleneHOST: Right of the rack...*laugh*

Neal McCoy: Yeah, but as a rule, not too many people buy 44 length. *Laugh*

JoleneHOST: No, that's pretty long.

Neal McCoy: Yeah, that's real long. And obviously my legs aren't near that long, but I wear them that long. It's just a style. So, I get them from Wrangler and I have a whole lot.

JoleneHOST: Country radio seems to be going in a direction these days,

Neal McCoy: I don't know what direction that is *Laugh* I can't get them to play me, so obviously I must be going in the opposite direction of country radio.

JoleneHOST: I think a lot of artists seem to be going in that direction

Neal McCoy: I really don't know. I don't think that they are aimed in a direction. Music might be putting them in a direction, but still I don't know that they are headed in a direction. Because you know on one hand you can hear Shania Twain who might be more contemporary, but then the next song can be from Alan Jackson or George Straight, so I don't know that it's actually headed in a direction. I just think it is kind of wide open. I wish I were lucky enough, or had the right music, maybe we don't have the right music to get played, but I'm not going to complain. I'd sure love to get played, but maybe we don't have the right kind of music. We'll just keep twinkling around and maybe we'll get played.

JoleneHOST: The really nice things about computers is that through websites like this, fans that may not hear your new music on the radio will hear about it online and want to find out more. What's been the greatest moment of your career so far?

Neal McCoy: Gosh, we've had some really good ones. Well, either the USO tours. That just puts you on such a high. Between that and winning Entertainer of the Year when we did because we really work hard at entertaining the people. And for people to stand up and say 'yes you do and we think you are as good as anybody else, at least this year' it makes you feel pretty good.

JoleneHOST: You definitely deserved that one. *Laugh* Can you tell I like your show??

Neal McCoy: *Laugh* That's right, we're fun!

JoleneHOST: What is your favorite food?

Neal McCoy: Cheeseburger.

JoleneHOST: That's it, plain?

Neal McCoy: With mayonnaise. I don't need anything else. I don't have to have lettuce or tomato or onions. If I can just get a good ole cooked cheeseburger with mayonnaise on it I can eat the rest of my life. I'll be content. I'll eat steak, but I'm surely not a vegetarian.

JoleneHOST: No tofu for you?

Neal McCoy: No, shoot no. Give me something to eat. Shoot, I can't live on all that stuff.

JoleneHOST: That was pretty much it. Thank you so much for agreeing to the interview. A lot of questions we had were duplicates. A lot of people just commented on the energy your shows give off and how upbeat they are.

Neal McCoy: I'm glad it worked out. From an energy standpoint, it's a vibe we give off from the stage. I move, and the band moves...we move, but we're not out there just running around. It's just a vibe we give off, even though in reality we're really not moving around a whole bunch. It's just our music and our personality.

(band member Scott entered the bus to sit down for awhile. Neal said to make it be known that Scott said hi to everyone reading the interview. He wasn't quite convinced for a minute we were taping)

JoleneHOST: Do you have anything you would like to add for the fan's reading this?

Neal McCoy: Thanks a lot for supporting us. We know we're not real hot anymore from a record standpoint, but we still feel we are as good as anybody at entertaining. That's the reason we continue to stay out here. It's how we make our living. We haven't been as fortunate as some of the acts to sell 100 million albums. We make our living by entertaining people. It's how we make a check and as long as we feel we're as good as anybody, we're gonna keep doing it. And we just ask that if we are around your neighborhood that you'll give us a chance to prove it and come see us. We think you'll have as much fun as you'll ever have.

JoleneHOST: Thank You Neal