COUNTRY: SUNDAY AT THE SHOW-ME-CENTER

NASHVILLE -- When country music aficionados talk about the best bands in the business today, the name Diamond Rio has to come up.

Diamond Rio is a pastiche of musicians from all over the country there's hardly a natural Southern twang among them who brought to the band virtuosity in various musical strains, including bluegrass, rock, folk, classical and jazz.

What they share is respect for each other's musical abilities and "good chemistry," says keyboardist Dan Truman.

In 1991, all that talent coalesced in a self-titled debut album that helped earn the band the Academy of Country Music's Top Vocal Group award.

Diamond Rio will perform Sunday at the Show Me Center along with supergroup Alabama and Michelle Wright. The concert begins at 7 p.m.

Truman is an example of how the band has made diversity its advantage. Hailing from Utah, he studied classical piano into his teens, switched to rock, and then to rhythm and blues and jazz.

After soaking up and playing the music of the Eagles and Southern rockers, he turned to country in the late '70s. "By the end of the '70s the music coming out of L.A. was a little too synthesized," he said.

He wound up in Nashville in 1984 in a band called The Tennessee River Boys, a group that would evolve into Diamond Rio.

Until that happened, they played conventions and charity gigs 4-8 times a month and held day jobs. A couple of them had a gardening business, and Truman gave piano lessons.

"Most of us had wives working to help support us and to the keep the dream going," Truman said.

"... We knew there was a lot of strength there, that if we had a chance we could really do something."

Their break underscores the adage about the importance of who you know: A producer who was lead singer's Marty Roe's college roommate turned out to know Tim DuBois, the new head of Arista Records.

DuBois listened and liked their music. He insisted, however, that they drop their distorted guitar sound, and that they take advantage of their soloing abilities.

They spent six months in the studio with DuBois refining their sound. It is a synthesis of abilities that include Gene Johnson's bluegrass-tinged mandolin and Jimmy Olander's rock-influenced lead guitar.

Roe also has one of the most distinctive voices in country music.

Thus The Tennessee River Boys became Diamond Rio, naming themselves for a brand of heavy-duty trucks.

Now they're highly regarded by Nashville's best musicians and have come to be viewed as heartthrobs by some of their fans.

"We get a lot of roses and notes, and people putting cookies on the stage," Truman conceded. "Once in awhile some panties or a bra."

The band's current single, "In a Week or Two," reached No. 3 on the Billboard chart before beginning to slide. It will be followed in a few weeks by a song titled "Oh Me Oh My Sweet Baby."

Both are on the band's second album, "Close to the Edge."

Alabama, which recorded 21 straight No. 1 singles from 1980-87, comes to town riding its most recent hit, "Once Upon a Lifetime," currently No. 3 on the Billboard chart.

Canadian-born Michelle Wright, the 1990 and 1991 Female Vocalist of the Year, has recorded such hits as "Take It Like a Man," "Now and Then," "One Time Around" and "He Would Be Sixteen."

Tickets are available at the Show Me Center Box Office, Schnucks, Disc Jockey Records in Cape Girardeau, Carbondale and Paducah, and Capital Banks main branch locations in Jackson, Poplar Bluff, Sikeston and Perryville.