Reba McEntire just has to get up on stage.

"I still love it. I like to hear the audience and see their faces," says this country-singing star of film, TV and recordings.

Mind you, she is not talking about "life on the road." She stays well above the road in her private jet, which will zoom into Hamilton International Airport mere hours before her concert with Brooks And Dunn on Sunday in Copps Coliseum.

Opening the 7:30 p.m. show will be Terri Clark and David Kersh.

"Then, after a 30-minute intermission, I come out with Brooks And Dunn and we flip-flop closing the show each night," she says.

Staying high above the road in a private jet is the ticket to her concert success.

"I have to sing a few more shows to keep the plane in the air," she laughs. "But if I was still on the bus, I'd maybe only be doing 18 to 20 shows a year, instead of 80 to 100."

The great thing, she says, is she can go home to Nashville between shows.

"We were doing shows in Pennsylvania and Albany, New York, " she says. "We'd set out for the show in Pennsylvania at 4:30 p.m. Friday and be home by midnight."

She and husband Narval spent Saturday with their son Shelby and set out in the afternoon again for Albany.

"My fiddle player Jennifer has just had a baby, who's a month old, and this was the first weekend she had been away from him. It was a 17-hour bus ride home, so I told her to hop on the plane and come home with me.

" Terri Clark did the same. I told them they'd be home a lot quicker."

This airborne generosity caused Reba a 45-minute delay after she flew into Hamilton last year as Canada Customs straightened out the papers of various band members not on the plane's manifest.

But, hey, she made it on stage just in time and that incident obviously hasn't changed the way she treats her people.

This is the fourth year in a row Reba has come to Copps.

Her first two shows were state-of-the-art extravaganzas that had her arriving on stage in a taxi and an airplane respectively.

Then she broke her leg in a skiing accident and some of the "extra" left the

"Vaganza." She travelled with genuine headliners Brooks And Dunn to take up the slack in what was, in effect, an ordinary strut-and-sing production.

"The leg is feeling fine now," she reports. "It only hurts when it rains." But, yes, it did slow her down.

"I went from 15 costume changes a show down to two.

"Well," she laughs, "I took my jacket off, so make that two-and-a-half."

She didn't mind, she says. "It let me focus more on the music."

But she does admit the fans had a mixed reaction. "Some liked it, some missed the razzle dazzle."

I put myself down with the those who liked the razzle dazzle, so Reba comforted me with the news that this year she does four costume changes: "Oh, and I take my jacket off again, so make that four-and-a-half," she laughs.

"It's a very fast paced-show," she reports, adding it has all the Reba production values.

She doesn't know how many tractor-trailers are needed to bring all the lights, smoke, scenery and sound to Copps.

"It's 17 or 18," she says vaguely.

"I really don't know anything about that.

"My secret of success is to surround myself with people who are all smarter than I am and then let them do their jobs . . . they've made me look good for 20 years."

It is a career that allows her to bring hit songs to this show that date from as far back as 1981 right up to Forever Love. That's the song from her September TV-movie of the same name that's making her latest CD, If You See Him, take off.

She has a special radar for what will succeed, which she calls passion.

"You have to be passionate about every project you do," she says.

"If you aren't, it'll be phoney, and that you can't hide."