RENO, Nevada (AP):
THEY ARE some of the brightest stars in country music, ranging from veterans LeAnn Rimes, Lila McCann and The Wilkinsons to relative newcomer Jessica Andrews. Yet no one is older than 18.
"I think it's wonderful that the whole teen genre's actually coming around right now. There are a lot of young artists out there," said Rimes, 17, who cut her first record when she was 11.
"My suggestion for them even though they're young -- is, 'don't let people push you around.' There are people in this business who tell you (that) you're too young and you don't know what you're doing. Put your opinion in there," she said in a telephone interview.
Rimes is suing her father Wilbur Rimes and another former co-manager, claiming they diverted $7 million from her earnings into their own pockets. Her parents divorced two years ago in a split so extensively publicised that Rimes no longer reads articles about herself.
"The first time that somebody wrote something bad about me, I cried. It was about Tanya Tucker and they saying that I couldn't stand her and all this bad stuff I never said. Right after that, I put up this wall that I was never, ever going to listen to my press again, good or bad," Rimes said. "Really, I don't care any more."
Amanda Wilkinson, 18, who sings with her father Steve and her 16-year-old brother Tyler, just finished her third Fan Fair in Nashville, Tenn. She said she had never seen so many young people, both on stage and off.
"I think there is that predisposition against young people. I think that is wrong," she said.
McCann, also 18, believes being young isn't the big deal it once was.
"I think people might have been shell-shocked at first, but now they're getting used to it," she said. "I've always been used to being young in the business. I didn't know it any other way, so it's pretty normal for me."
McCann, the only one in the group who isn't home-schooled, combined high school including cheerleading with a career.
She missed the prom when she was a sophomore, so McCann made sure her concert schedule didn't conflict with her senior prom and graduation in suburban Tacoma, Wash., this year.
"Went last year. Went twice this year. Got it covered," she said.
The Wilkinsons now live in Nashville, but Amanda is returning to Canada to graduate with her peers in Trenton, Ontario.
She said their second album, coming two years after the first, is more musically complex and the lyrics are a little more grown up, but not too much so.
"There's maturity steps that you take. It's not the right time, I don't think, for us to be singing songs like Make Me Feel Like a Woman," she said.
"LeAnn broke a lot of ground, I think, for the younger people," said 16-year-old Andrews. "When I first started my career, visiting radio and with my first single, they automatically assumed I was the next LeAnn Rimes. Now they know we're so totally different on style, our voices, our music, our stage presence."
Rimes almost didn't record the megahit that launched her career. When "Blue" composer Bill Mack heard her perform on a local radio program, he recalled the song he had sent to Patsy Cline just before she was killed in a plane crash in 1963. He dusted it off and sent it to her.
Although Rimes' father liked the powerful ballad, he believed the words were too mature for his daughter.
"Wilbur tossed it in the trash," Mack said. "LeAnn took it out."
Byron Gallimore was busy producing albums with country stars Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and Jo Dee Messina and didn't need to take on 11-year-old Andrews. But friends persuaded him to make the two-hour drive to her family's home.
"I was overwhelmed," he said. "I knew I had to be a part of her music."
Kasey Walker was reluctant to represent McCann, but changed her mind after hearing her sing.
"I said, 'N-o-o,' I'm not interested in managing a child,"' she recalled. "She walked up to the mike and opened her mouth to sing and I swear, I thought I was witnessing the Streisand of country music."
Tucker's meltdown from stardom at 13 into drugs and alcohol was a factor in Rimes' decision to take a yearlong break from touring and recording to rediscover herself, Rimes said.
"They build you up to tear you down, and I think she was built up so much, she just got into her own world and had to learn some things. She's a normal person like everyone else. Everyone else can make mistakes and they don't get condemned for it," she said.
Tucker, now 41, just released her 30th album.
Andrews, who is based in Nashville, said her parents and the people she travels with are the ones who help her cope with stardom.
"There are certain ways you gotta handle stress. You gotta have fun, too. I surround myself with goofy people. I take my career very seriously, but you can't take it too seriously," she said.
