It’s a Sawyer Brown Town

Shane Gammon

Friday, Feb. 27, 1998 | 10:45 a.m.

Once a lonely street in Nashville, Tenn., Sawyer Brown now shares its name with a renowned country band that will perform in the Stardust hotel-casino's showroom at 9:30 p.m. today, Saturday and Sunday.

"We liked the name. It was a name that nobody hated. You know when you get five guys together, that's a big thing," keyboardist Greg Hubbard said. "The original name of the band was Savanna, and there were like a hundred thousand other bands with that name. We thought we'd go for a name that hopefully nobody else had already picked."

The band formed in 1981 and its debut album arrived in 1984. The band members are so close, they almost consider themselves brothers. "Actually, we probably spend more time now with each other than probably just about anybody else," Hubbard said.

"Between the road and the stuff in the studios, it's the bulk of the year. Mark (Miller, lead singer) and I have known each other the longest, since eighth grade. It's a pretty cool thing to get to work with the person that's your best friend. ... In any band the focus, generally, is always the lead singer first, but with Mark there is no feeling that any one person is more important to the puzzle than anyone else is. I think from having grown up playing basketball all his life, that's where the team thing comes from."

Hubbard said the band's main concern is that the audience has a good time at Sawyer Brown concerts. "We kind of work within the framework of that," he said. "It's not like we have to play the same thing every night. We have a general list of songs we try to cover, but you have to feed on what the audience's energy is. It gets pretty loose up there."

Why does the band like performing in Las Vegas? "We get good audiences here," Hubbard said. "I think they are energetic. A big part of that is because a big bulk of the crowd is probably from out of town and they are here on vacation, they are here to have a good time. They're not here to not have a good time. So they're in there to loosen up from having either just won a lot or just lost a lot. Either way -- we'll take it!"

Tickets for the Sawyer Brown concerts start at $39.95 and can be purchased at the Stardust box office. For reservations or more information, call 732-6325.