By Mark Bennett
TERRE HAUTE — Like any child of the baby boom, Hobie Hubbard knew television.
But Hubbard didn’t comprehend its impact until he and his fellow bandmates won the TV talent show “Star Search” in 1984. Their five-man country music group, Sawyer Brown, received a $100,000 check from host Ed McMahon and a recording contract from Capitol Records’ Liberty label.
“I had no idea about the power of television,” Hubbard recalled by telephone last week from Nashville.
Suddenly, people recognized this 23-year-old guy who grew up in Apopka, Fla., “the indoor foliage capital of the world,” as Hubbard proudly stated.
Soon, Sawyer Brown began racking up a string of 21 Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart that lasted until 1998. “Star Search” only created an opportunity. Without talent, want-to and road time, the commercial success couldn’t have happened.
“It wasn’t like if we won, we could just sit back and let the phone ring,” Hubbard said.
In a quarter-century since then, idleness has never been their style. Though their last Top 40 hit — the faith-oriented “They Don’t Understand” — came in 2005, Sawyer Brown still tours, playing a long list of memorable favorites. They’ll make a stop in Terre Haute on May 29 as the headline act at the Fairbanks Park Arts and Music Festival, taking the amphitheater stage at 9 p.m.
The Fairbanks crowd should see plenty of stage energy from the band, especially lead singer and guitarist Mark Miller, predicted Eddie Bird, a longtime Sawyer Brown fan and the Terre Haute parks superintendent.
“He’s over-active on stage,” Bird said. “He runs around a lot. But I think, on this one, he might even give it a little more.”
Hubbard was working at a Pizza Hut in Apopka when Miller, a high school classmate, came in looking for a piano player. Miller had written some songs and recruited Hubbard. They wound up moving to Nashville, met other musicians and formed Sawyer Brown after serving as a backup band for another singer. They worked bars, Holiday Inns and clubs, night after night.
Then they made it on TV. Before there was a Simon Cowell and “American Idol,” there was Ed McMahon and “Star Search.”
The “American Idol” of today “is what we went through on ‘Star Search’ a thousand times over,” Hubbard said, modestly.
Such on-air talent contests are “like going through a serious boot camp,” he said.
Aside from a couple of lineup changes at lead guitar, the band remains intact. Even when their red-hot start cooled in 1986 as Sawyer Brown fell down the country charts, they held together. As Miller recalled in a CBN.com interview, “It took about a year and a half [after ‘Star Search’] for me to settle in and say this is my job, just like everyone checks in and goes to work.”
More than 20 years later, Miller, Hubbard, bassist Jim Scholten, drummer Joe Smyth and lead guitarist Shayne Hill are “like brothers,” Hubbard told the Tribune-Star.
“The fact that we have hung in there through personal ups and downs, that really means a lot to us,” he added.
Eventually, their Nashville success revived. Their early pop-country and novelty repertoire shifted toward deeper songwriting handled largely by Hubbard and Miller. “The Walk,” which hit No. 2 in 1991, typified their torch ballads and emotion-driven style. Its touching lyrics describe a son who often finds himself doing just what his father did before.
Now 48, Miller isn’t sure what to make of current Top 40 country radio, which Sawyer Brown hasn’t hit in four years. “I’ll admit to being clueless on that,” he said.
Instead, the band just keeps on touring and recording. They’ll finish a new album shortly after their Terre Haute gig, and that disc will avoid “cookie-cutterish stuff, because that doesn’t feel like us.”
Hubbard says the band keeps its fans in mind, especially during this harsh economic recession. They realize the purchase of a concert ticket, when incomes are down, is a big commitment for the average American.
“When people are willing to dig deep and pay to watch us,” Hubbard said, “we’ve got to play hard.”
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
On Stage
The lineup: National country recording act Sawyer Brown performs at 9 p.m. May 29 at the Fairbanks Park Arts and Music Festival, on the amphitheater stage. Don Morris and the Vagabondos open the show at 6 p.m., followed by up-and-coming country singer Corey Cox at 7.
Rain or shine: The show will go on, regardless of weather conditions. In the event of rain, the concert will move to the Indiana Theatre at 683 Ohio St.
Tickets: They cost $25 each and are available through the Terre Haute Parks and Recreation office in the lower level of the Girl Scout Building at Fairbanks Park, or at First Financial Bank locations in Terre Haute, West Terre Haute and Brazil.
History: The festival concert will be Sawyer Brown’s sixth in Terre Haute. The band’s previous shows were at Hulman Center in 1990 (with Charlie Daniels), 1991 (with Mary Chapin-Carpenter), 1992 (with Reba McEntire, and Brooks & Dunn), 1993 (with Tracy Lawrence and Chris Ladoux) and 1994 (with Toby Keith and David Ball).
Its current members include guitarist-singer Mark Miller, keyboardist Gregg “Hobie” Hubbard, guitarist Shayne Hill, bassist Jim Scholten and drummer Joe Smyth. It formed in 1981 in the band members’ hometown, Apopka, Fla. The name Sawyer Brown comes from a road near the band’s Nashville practice site.
