Neal McCoy's Fans Are Ready For The TNN/ MCN Awards

06/11/1999 4:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Lisa Zhito

(6/11/99, 1 a.m. PDT) - In spite of lagging ticket sales, the International Country Music Fan Fair is still a very big deal to a lot of country music fans. Some 20,000, in fact, are expected to descend on Nashville next week for concerts, fanclub parties, autograph-signing sessions, and record label events.

The week kicks off, appropriately enough, with a fan-voted awards show, the TNN/ Music City News Awards set for June 14. Since this is one awards show largely devoid of the industry politics that plague so many similar events, it naturally has many artists and fans excited.

A case in point is Atlantic Records act Neal McCoy. McCoy has legions of fans. His fanbase is so big that he was named entertainer of the year at last year's TNN/ MCN contest, over better-known country stars such as George Strait, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, and Billy Ray Cyrus.

This year, McCoy's fans are once again actively lobbying for their favorite star. "There's a girl up north who goes to shows, and next time we're up there, she'll have pamphlets all printed out: 'Vote for Neal McCoy, entertainer of the year,'" McCoy tells LAUNCH. "She'll have the phone number and mailing address, and she'll put them in every seat at the whole concert."

Other fans hand out flyers at shows, drive around with "Vote For Neal!" banners in their car windows, and make phone calls. "It's really incredible the networking they do on their own--we don't even really direct that," McCoy notes.

We'll have to wait until June 14 to find out if such campaigning will work a second time. For his part, McCoy notes, "If I didn't think I deserved it, I wouldn't pander nearly as much."

A complete list of nominees is available at www.country.com/tnn/tnn-mcn99.html.

To read a Garth Brooks feature, click here.

-- Lisa Zhito, Nashville

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