Billy Dean doesn't live on the Ponderosa.
His home is in a part of Nashville where tourist buses never run. His neighbors work nine to five, punch time clocks or manage blue-collar businesses. Like Billy, they take out their own trash, cook for their kids, and wash their own dishes. They all know each other by their first names.
It's not where you'd expect to find a Grammy winner, a rangy, handsome singer who charted so quickly and often that he could release a Greatest Hits collection as his fourth album. Yet there he is, a single dad, his bedroom literally two steps away from those of his two kids, his studio set up in a corner of his basement.
And there's no place he'd rather be.
"I've had the Ponderosa," he grins, leaning against his kitchen counter, a cup of coffee steaming in his hand. "In fact, I've still got it. Damn woodpeckers and worms are having a field day with it, but as far as I'm concerned, they can eat it. I'm here because this is where I want to be."
Billy Dean's journey runs against the currents that flow through his business -- yet it's brought him closer than most artists ever get to the heart of country music. Throughout his Curb debut, Let Them Be Little, he displays a humanity, tender and tough, that comes not from the spotlight's glare but from the trials of parenthood, the struggle to find a foothold in fast-changing times, and the light of love in his son's and daughter's eyes.
The story unfolds in the music: The dark side stands exposed in "I'll Race You to the Bottom," which slashes the veil and exposes the hidden, cynical face of fame. In this context, his exuberant cover of "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" takes on new meaning as a celebration of an innocence that had been nearly lost. On each track Billy sings with an appreciation for all that life has to offer, from the magic of childhood on "Let Them Be Little" to the awestruck eloquence of "I'm in Love With You," his passionate affirmation of what it means to touch and be touched, spiritually and physically.
Bottom line, Let Them Be Little is about a star that chose to come down from the sky and take every day at a time. It is, in other words, about redemption -- and a return to the soul of country music.
An overnight sensation after his victory on Star Search, Dean shot like a comet from a childhood marked by poverty and struggle in Florida to the height of celebrity. But as spotlights trained on his 6'4" frame, the young star saw only a kind of fog as he looked back from the stage. "I was having a great career," he remembers. "For four or five years everything I did went into the Top Five -- but it went against everything I was about. I was a simple country person and a new dad. I had no idea how to put it into perspective."
All this took its toll. The more sold-out shows Billy played, the more invitations he got to appear on TV shows like One Life to Live or Wings, the greater the gap grew between who he really was and what others wanted him to be. "I'd play these gigs where everything would feed back, and my voice was tired, and I'd smile through it all and go 'Screw it, I'm getting a $25,000 check for this,'" he remembers. "I felt like a hypocrite. Playing music was no longer fun. I almost had throat surgery. But I wanted the career, man. As a result, I got divorced and I nearly had a nervous breakdown until I realized that I had to define what was making me so unhappy."