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Billy Ray Cyrus
To say that singer/songwriter Billy Ray Cyrus has just completed the most important album of his life might sound far-fetched considering that his 1992 debut, Some Gave All, sold nine million copies and topped the pop charts for a record-smashing 17 weeks. But the unpredictable Flatwoods, Kentucky-native is set to pleasantly surprise fans new and old with a deeply inspired tenth album of hard-hitting originals and pop standards titled Home At Last.

Cyrus, who has parlayed his innate charm and chiseled good looks into work as an actor of stage, the PAX sitcom Doc, the Disney Channel hit series Hannah Montana (starring his 14 year-old daughter Miley Cyrus) and the ABC competition Dancing with the Stars, was seriously considering quitting music altogether until Walt Disney Records offered him an opportunity to redeem his artistry with a project that spoke deeply to matters of the heart and family. In keeping with Cyrus' musical roots, it all started with a song.

"I've never been one to say, 'I'm gonna sit down and write a song today," Billy Ray begins. "In this case, the pilot for Hannah Montana had been picked up by Disney for 26 episodes and the family began a move to California. I had to stay back in Nashville and take care of some loose ends and watching the family drive down the driveway, pulling that U-Haul ...I thought I was ready for it until I actually saw them driving away. I walked back in the house with a broken heart, grabbed my guitar and poured my feelings into a song called "Ready, Set, Don't Go.'"

It was the demo for that song that sparked not only the enthusiasm of the directors to write an episode of Hannah based around the song, but also record producer Fred Mollin and Walt Disney Records to make it the cornerstone for an album based on sentiments every wife would want to hear her husband say, and every child would want to hear their father say.

Billy Ray's rejuvenating new album swings from thought-provoking musings on the passing of time ("Flying By") and pleading for his woman to stand by her man through good times and bad ("Don't Give Up On Me") to the heart-warmers "Can't Live Without Your Love" and "My Everything," the latter of which Billy Ray wrote the same week as "Ready, Set...Don't Go." "My favorite line is 'If someone would ask me, 'Son, what is your dream / I'd show them your picture and the smile that it brings.'" Cyrus can also surely relate to a contribution from the pen of undisputed hit maker Diane Warren titled "You Can't Lose Me" that has crossover smash written all over it and a special angel in the architecture: Miley singing background.

"The Buffalo" deals with the very American dilemma of major businesses moving operations to foreign lands or closing altogether, leaving entire towns devoid of steady jobs. "Where I come from in Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio, we've seen it happen for years in the steel mills and the coal mines," Billy Ray states. "People suddenly are forced to find a whole new way to make a living. I've had that song for about six years, but never the right album for it. It's about the fortitude a father needs to instill in his children to never give up."

Key to the conception of Home At Last is the inclusion of four pop classics as only Billy Ray could interpret them including a rousing rendition of Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl" (which he brought the house down with at the Country Music Association Festival), the James Taylor smash "You've Got a Friend" (featuring Hannah Montana co-star Emily Osment), and the family of man standard "Put a Little Love in You Heart." Billy Ray comments, "If ever there was a song in need of resurrecting, it's that one."

Most moving of the classics is Billy Ray's strings-kissed reading of the eternally hopeful "Over the Rainbow." "This was one of the first songs the folks at Disney strongly suggested I record," Billy Ray states. "The producer of Hannah Montana, Michael Poryes, heard me mulling it over and asked if I'd ever heard Eva Cassidy sing it. He burned me a copy and I fell in love with her right there. I was intrigued by her story -- a woman who stood staunchly behind the integrity of her craft to the very end. My version is a tribute to a great singer who left this world too soon."

Billy Ray achieved a magical synergy with the making of Home At Last by cutting half of the tracks in Nashville and the other half in Los Angeles. "One of my greatest pet peeves is when people introduce me as 'country music artist Billy Ray Cyrus'," the man states. "I am a country music artist, but I'm also a blues singer, a southern rock and roll singer, a bluegrass singer and a gospel singer! This album is a unique combination of musical styles through me, my producer and all of these world class musicians."

We couldn't recreate the way this album evolved," he continues. "It was a natural sequence of events from where we started and where we ended up. Part of that was because right in the middle of the album we took a four month break while I did Dancing with the Stars. If I had finished in January, we would never have even heard "The Beginning," which I discovered 3 days before we finished." "The Beginning" is the most overtly spiritual song of Home at Last and made its arrival via an unusual path. "That song came to me through my fan club," Billy Ray shares, "which was a first. It fit my album perfectly."

Beyond the music, Billy Ray Cyrus has cultivated an even broader fan base with good natured turn on ABC-TV's runaway hit Dancing with the Stars. "The minute I signed on, I realized I was in way over my head," he admits. "But you wouldn't believe how many emails and letters I've gotten from grown men thanking me for doing it. They say, 'My wife and I took up dance lessons and we're having so much fun.' That's been neat."

"My purpose in life is to reflect an image of meaning and inspiration," Billy Ray concludes, "and to make music that touches people in deep and lasting ways."