Country Crusader: Naomi Judd takes break from various causes for short tour

Naomi Judd, right, considers herself a "miracle" for beating chronic hepatitis C. She reunites with daughter Wynonna for The Judds' Power to Change tour and a new four-song recording.

      Most fans don't have to ask Naomi Judd what she's been doing for the past nine years.
      But they might be surprised at just how far a "voyage of self-discovery" has taken the mother half of the mother-daughter duo since she suspended The Judds to battle chronic hepatitis C.
      Even casual fans know that she beat the disease, which made it possible for Naomi and daughter Wynonna to reunite for a concert tour that visits the MGM Grand Garden arena on Sunday.
      But Naomi also used her so-called downtime to write or co-author three books, travel on the lecture circuit, study psychotherapy, host a syndicated radio show and lobby the medical community for an "integrated medicine" that combines holistic and scientific principles.
      "I'm a medically documented miracle," says the 54-year-old singer, who may be the first ever to include a doctor's note in her press kit. The letter from Saint Louis University physician Bruce Bacon testifies that "Ms. Judd is in fact cured from her hepatitis C since she has had no recurrent evidence of virus for several years off treatment."
      Judd calls her victory "a spiritual rebirth," and says her new life's work is one that makes music a secondary priority.
      "My grand passion is finding a cure for this hideous hepatitis C (and) getting the word out. It's the most misunderstood and unacknowledged serious disease in America," she says. "I'm not going to rest until I find a cure for the disease. That's one reason why I can't go back on the road permanently."
      But, she acknowledged recently -- speaking by phone while waiting for a fresh coat of red hair coloring to set -- The Judds' music and the Judds' private lives are hopelessly entwined.
      "(People) looked to Wynonna and I as hope sellers," she says. "They relate to us. I think we're a mirror for people. I think they see themselves in us -- our struggles and our triumphs."
      There was plenty of material for one TV movie in the Judds' story so far. Naomi (born Dianna) was an 18-year-old mother who raised her two daughters -- Wynonna (born Christina) and movie star Ashley -- in rural Kentucky without telephone or television, singing along to radio broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry instead.
      The Judds eventually made it to Nashville and landed a record contract. "Mama He's Crazy" in 1984 launched a stream of six No. 1 hits that made the duo the top country act of the '80s. There was novelty in the mother-daughter pairing and a musical credibility in the sound.
      The Judds opened a Merle Haggard concert at Caesars Palace in 1985, then co-headlined with Jay Leno two years later.
      "Jay had to catch the commuter from L.A. to Vegas" after his "Tonight Show" guest-host duties, Naomi remembers. "Wynonna and I always had three or four extra songs in case his flight was late."
      But Naomi's hepatitis -- a liver inflammation likely caused by an accidental needle puncture during her days as a registered nurse -- sidelined the duo after their 1990 "Love Can Build a Bridge" album. Wynonna perfected her bluesy growl as a soloist, first to great interest during the "new country" boom, then to diminishing returns.
      During their years apart, Wynonna "got married and divorced, and is now a single working mom herself with two kids. Ha ha ha," says her mother. "Now she knows what it's like. It's really changed our relationship."
      The two chose the millennium excitement for their comeback, but -- wisely, as it turned out -- did their New Year's show in Phoenix and saved Las Vegas for the second date of the Power to Change tour.
      "Wynonna and I love tradition. We love rituals," Naomi explains. "I taught the girls to be very aware of their Appalachian heritage. ... One of the things that depresses me about today's kids is that I don't think they have a sense of their heritage."
      But a bout of stage fright before the big comeback concert surprised Naomi.
      "I was shockingly nervous. Wynonna said it really scattered her acorns because she always called me `the Queen of Serene.' ... In fact I bolted from our little reception beforehand and locked myself in my dressing room bathroom for about 10 minutes.
      "I looked in that bathroom mirror and said, `What is going on here? I know there's nothing different or special about me. All I am is a communicator. I just use whatever I've learned in my real life to connect with somebody else.' I live in everyday land, so I really was quite shaken to find myself in this condition."
      The she realized, "this is because I'm feeling a burden (after years of) being an advocate for people facing chronic or critical illnesses. ... I was feeling a very heavy responsibility for these people.
      "All of a sudden I realized this was ego creeping in. I was placing too much importance on myself and I really busted myself on it: `OK kiddo, don't try to be more than you are. Just free fall into God's love and be all that you are. The last nine years have brought you to this point. The best thing you can do is go out there and show people you're as radiantly healthy and goofy as ever. That will be your message.' "
      Then, she says, "I just felt this release. I just felt this fabulous lightness of being then. I was ready to party and twist and twirl."
      But this time, she says, she plans to party on her own terms. "I have discovered that 85 percent of all illnesses are stress-related," and "I've been able to add a new word to my vocabulary: `No.' Before my illness, I was a notorious perfectionist and a people-pleaser."
      The limited comeback of The Judds includes shorter tours and a creatively packaged recording: A four-song EP of new Judds' material, "Big Bang Boogie," is a second CD inside Wynonna's new album, "New Day Dawning."
      Naomi wrote the lyrics to "Big Bang Boogie," a Western swing single with Andrews Sisters-style harmonies. It's a light tune with serious intentions.
      "I wrote this song because I'd been hanging out with all these Nobel Prize-winning physicists," Naomi says. "We were talking about the obvious truth that there is intelligent life in the universe. When we do get verification of this it's going to change our narrow-minded prejudices." The song is "my way of combining different theories (of evolution) and saying they're not mutually exclusive."
      Kevin Bacon has a game and Web site connecting him to everyone in the known universe, but Naomi Judd is perhaps the only person who talks to both physicists and battered women.
      Her syndicated radio show "Heart to Heart" is broadcast live from her barn in Franklin, Tenn. (It's not carried in Las Vegas).
      "I'm in my pajamas in the dark with a lighted scented candle," she says. "People from all 50 states call in. ... We talk on the phone just like they were sitting right there with me. I cherish that. It is exquisite reality. I wouldn't go back on the road full time because I love doing the radio show so much."
      She's also "trying now to build a bridge between modern medicine and the oldest forms of healing, holistic medicine. You cannot just treat the physical issue without (considering) the impact that a person's spiritual beliefs and their emotions have.
      "I seem to spend my whole life building bridges," she says.
     
      Preview
     
      What: The Judds
      When: 7 p.m. Sunday
      Where: MGM Grand Garden, 3799 Las Vegas Blvd. South
      Tickets: $30-$65