Q&A; : Straight Talk From Country’s Renegade

Travis Tritt is a study in contradictions.

Wearing rock-star leather and fringe, he’ll roar onto his elaborate concert stage astride his Harley-Davidson and play a brand of country that’s dosed with R&B; and Southern rock. Then he’ll tell you he’s a country purist, steeped in vintage Haggard and Jones.

Tritt, who’ll be 32 this month, may have acquired the image of country’s brash outsider, but his ambitions as an actor (recent credits include the theatrical film “The Cowboy Way” and HBO’s “Tales From the Crypt”) and a TV personality (hosting VH1’s weekly “Country Music Countdown”) suggest a performer eager to ingratiate himself with the public.

So far, the Marietta, Ga., native--whose music echoes the rambunctious “outlaw” tradition of Hank Williams Jr., Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson--seems to be balancing it all quite well. His four Warner Bros. albums have averaged more than a million sales each.

On the eve of his benefit concert for the United Friends of the Children organization on Friday at the Universal Amphitheatre, Tritt spoke about all these contradictions and the current health of country music.

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Question: How ambitious are you with your acting? How far do you want to take it?

A nswer: Just as far as it’ll go. I would never want to go out and do acting if I couldn’t at least pull off a character. . . . There’s a lot of people out there who have gone to acting schools for years who are busing tables in Los Angeles or New York that have got a lot more experience than I do. And if I get up on the screen and make a complete idiot of myself, it’s not fair to those people. . . .

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Q: How does it fit in your career plans?

A: I hope to be around for a long time strictly on the music. . . . However, in every long career you look at, from George Jones to Johnny Cash to Waylon Jennings to whoever . . . they’ve all had peaks and valleys in them. And during those times when your brand of music doesn’t necessarily line up with the current trend, it’s important to have some vehicle to be able to stay in front of the audience, to keep your name and face out there. That’s what acting does.

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Q: Your kind of renegade country has never been the most popular style of country music. Why do you think you’ve succeeded?

A: I was able to provide a type of music that’s not being done by virtually anybody else right now and hasn’t been done by anybody else since Hank Williams Jr., basically. I’ve sort of got my own little patent on that thing right now, but I’m able to take it one step further because I do a lot of softer stuff and tender ballads that Hank Jr. and a lot of the other guys would never attempt.

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Q: Despite your success, you’re still excluded from the Nashville inner circle--at least if the annual award show nominations are any indication.

A: People have a tendency to like people that they can control, people who don’t rock the boat. The powers that be in Nashville are no different. They like people that are humble and have an “aw, shucks” kind of attitude toward the business. I have that to a certain extent, but I also know that I worked my butt off for a lot of years, as I’m sure all these other guys have done. I worked a lot of rough places and worked on my music and got fired from a lot of jobs and ate Vienna sausage sandwiches for six months at a time cause that’s all you could afford.

I did that for a lot of years, and to sit back and say, “Well golly gosh, I’m just so glad that I’ve been given this opportunity and I really don’t deserve this” would be a lie. I feel like I have deserved the things that I’ve worked for. I’ve put a lot into this. I’ve put my whole life on it. And that is an attitude that the awards show people and a lot of the powers that be don’t particularly care for.

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Q: What’s your opinion on the current health of country music?

A: I think we’re walking on very dangerous territory. You look at the people labels are signing, you look at the success of a lot of these dance-type records that are targeted toward a very young, 18-to-25 audience--that shuts a whole lot of people out. It doesn’t create something that’s going to be around for a long time and really hold its values.

These songs don’t really talk about love and the acquisition of it or the loss of it, or what’s going on in people’s lives. Because kids 18 to 25 haven’t lived that. . . . Sooner or later country music has to come back to what country music has always come back to, and that is songs that are the soundtrack of the everyday ordinary working person, songs that mean something to people.

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Q: What was the golden age of country for you?

A: I would probably say the late ‘50s to early ‘60s, at a time when people like George Jones, Merle Haggard and those guys were in their heyday. Tremendous music came out of that era: Hank Snow, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Porter Wagoner. These were the things that I grew up on.

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Q: Does anybody today come close to that quality?

A: The song Clint Black wrote with Merle Haggard last year was a great tune, I thought. Alan Jackson had some things. Vince Gill is capable of writing that type of material. But very few. I don’t think we’ve had a Kris Kristofferson in the ranks in a long, long time.

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Q: Some people might nominate your signature song, “Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares),” to go in that company. Was that inspired by one of your two divorces?

A: Yes, it was. When you write from experience like I do, relationships are some of the greatest things that can happen to you as far as creating material. I just went through another breakup of a relationship. As hard as that was to take, I’ve written some great songs in the last few weeks as a result. It’s a great thing, I guess, to be able to take something that’s so devastatingly bad and pull some good out of it.

* Travis Tritt and comedian Jeff Foxworthy play on Friday at the Universal Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, 8:15 p.m. $23.25, $55 and $75. (818) 980-9421.