Skaggs Is Still Cookin’--and It’s Still Family-Style : Music: Career seems back on the upswing for country star, even though he’s not changed a whit. Tour, with two of his childrenin tow, has a stop scheduled in Santa Ana tonight.

In 1981 Ricky Skaggs quietly exploded on the country scene, playing bluegrass-seeded music that flew counter to the crossover pap of the day, and, miraculously, sold in the sort of gold and platinum quantities that were then almost unknown in country. Between then and 1986 he racked up 16 Top 10 discs--with 10 of those going to No. 1--and collected Grammys and nearly every other international award to which a singing, guitar-banjo-mandolin-fiddle-playing country boy might aspire.

Then, it started to seem like his records weren’t being given much of a chance, as country radio turned to a new video-ready generation of stars, and Skaggs found himself getting shut out of the revived country market he helped create. For many artists this would be desperation time. Yet, when he talked to The Times four years ago--while hitting the summer county fair circuit, which he dubbed the “Corndogs across America tour”--he stated his intention to back off from the business to spend more time with his wife, singer Sharon White (of The Whites), and their four children.

That’s exactly what he’s done. Speaking by phone last Thursday from a tour stop in Medford, Ore., the 38-year-old Kentuckian--who plays tonight at the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana --said he and White have each cut their separate touring schedules back by some 30%.

“That means financial cutbacks as well,” he said. “But I’ve been able to spend a lot more time with my kids and Sharon (their two oldest children are currently accompanying Skaggs on tour). It’s really been great for all of us because we needed it and it’s something our hearts were crying for. You’re always going to be able to make a buck somewhere, but you won’t always have your family. I think that family really needs to be first. I feel so strongly in that; I’d encourage anybody to do the same.

“There’s the old Scripture, ‘No greater love has any man than one that would lay his life down for another.’ I think it’s a bit like that. We’ve grown up in a generation where kids really come in second or third, after our jobs and social life. But I think that when dads lay that stuff down, lay down some of the job, some of the golf game, the times out with the guys, and spend more time with their children, that’s laying their life down for another, laying the things they love down to sacrifice that for the family.

“I’m telling you the rewards are laid up for eternity when we do that, because it really does show our children by example. Those kids know we could be out doing this and that, and they may not say it, but they really do appreciate it, and they need it.”

*

Skaggs never has been at a loss for a message to get across, and has often used his songs and performances to express his Christian principles. He’s getting a broader chance to do that now, with an upcoming gospel album and a nationally syndicated radio show.

His last album, 1991’s “My Father’s Son,” was distributed in the Christian market by the Word label, so successfully that CBS has asked him to do a full gospel album. “I was supposed to do another secular album for them, and I couldn’t believe their asking for gospel because they’d given me such grief about even putting one gospel song on a country album. They fought me so hard about that kind of stuff. So when they asked me my jaw hit the floor.”

He expects to go into the studio soon to record it, and promises, “It will be a ‘Ricky Skaggs album’--full of the bluegrass, country, rockabilly we’ve always done, but with more spiritual type lyrics.

His weekly radio program, called “Simple Life,” debuted on 85 major-market country stations on Memorial Day weekend. It’s going so well, he says, that they’re projecting the show will be on 1,000 stations by year’s end, and may make a jump to TV.

Along with playing “positive, up” music about families and relationships, he said, “We have a theme running through this show: Simple life. It’s how to live a simple life in a not so simple time. It’s difficult, but you can. It’s spending time with your neighbors, doing something good for somebody, reaching out.

“It’s a principle of nature: If you keep all the seed from the harvest, and don’t resow it, you’re not going to have the harvest next year. So we encourage people to give something back, whether into the community, someone else’s family, even into your own family. Whatever you sow, you’re going to reap.”

Though he expects the widely distributed program won’t do his career any harm, he said, “We didn’t design this program to promote Ricky Skaggs. I’m out there to promote good morals, family, helping somebody, a good living style and the things I feel need to be promoted, and it ain’t Ricky Skaggs. I know if I take care of that part of life that I’m going to be taken care of. That’s the way I believe it, where my faith is. We can touch more people’s lives in one weekend than I could do getting my songs on country radio in five years. So I’m not worried about my airplay whatsoever.” Maybe not worried, but he is a bit peeved.

“It’s somewhat frustrating when you don’t hear your songs on the radio, and instead it’s all these artists of the last four or five years that are on. And most of them are artists I’ve never met, never even seen on TV. I hear their record once and suddenly its ‘Yeah, the No. 1 song this week from Jack Spratt on the bla bla label.’ “Personally I think the record labels are just saturating the market, and I think we’re all going to be sorry of it someday. I think they’re looking at one-to-three-hit, one-album deals, push the heck out of that one album, and if the artist makes it on the second album great, if he doesn’t make it, why, ‘Nice talking to ya, see you later. There’s a dozen like you in the wings.’ ”

He’s disturbed by the inflexibility of the Top 40 format that dominates country radio, and laughs at the short memory of the music industry.

“I was reading the other day in this new bio of Randy Travis, that they’re now crediting him for the new big neo-traditional movement in the ‘80s. That’s OK, but people ought to really know that it happened a few years before. When he was frying catfish and cleaning off tables at Nashville Palace, Emmylou and myself and George Strait and Reba were having No. 1 hits.”

*

If people don’t even look back that far, he worries, what about the true foundations of country music, such as his mentors Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley? Skaggs honed his craft as a member of banjo legend Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys when he was 15, and he was a mere 5 years old when he first performed with bluegrass innovator Monroe. The two are good friends today.

“People today might look at him and think that he’s just some old man, but he has given us all so much. You can even look at the Beatles: When I heard their singing, I thought ‘Golly, Paul and John sing like Phil and Don (Everly),’ and Phil and Don sound like Ira and Charlie Louvin, who sound like Ralph and Carter (Stanley), who sounded like Bill and Charlie (Monroe), so I trace this thing on back and say, ‘My God, Bill Monroe and Charlie Monroe was probably the root in the ground where this music started.’ You’ve got to trace it down the line. They were the first to do that duet-style harmony.”

Earlier this month Skaggs and the 81-year-old mandolinist performed together at Nashville’s Fan Fair. “We got out there and, boy, when me and Bill started singing ‘I’m Going Back to Old Kentucky’ I swear it sounded like Bill in the ‘40s. He sounded and played so good it was scary. His strength just keeps getting stronger. He’s one of the true fathers of this music. I’m so delighted to know him and call him one of my best friends.”

Friendship doesn’t keeps Skaggs from also regarding Monroe as a hero, and he’s conscious that some fans regard him in a similar light. He does his best not to disappoint them, and lately, he’s finding that pretty easy.

“Man, I’ve got the hottest band right now. There’s something new happening. About a month ago we were playing and this spark ignited some music in us. Something came out that was not there before, and almost every show now it’s been happening, this burst of energy and fun and joy and happiness and excitement in the music. We’ve played these same songs now for two or three years, but there’s something new happening, and boy, it’s spilling over into the crowd.”

*

Ricky Skaggs plays tonight at 7 and 10 at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 1580 Brookhollow Drive, Santa Ana. Tickets: $30. (714) 549-1512.