CMT Blog: 2009 December

Maybe a movie with Vince Vaughn? Or a new sitcom with Reba McEntire? Or an indie film in Nashville? The world is Lance Smith's oyster now that he has said his goodbyes at CMT, where he was the host of CMT's Top 20 Countdown for nearly a decade and what felt like forever. Entertainment Weekly got him to open up not just about his past (he cried on the final episode, he loved interviewing Blake Shelton and he recited one show entirely in Seussian rhymes) but also about what is next for him. "In January, my wife and I are packin' up the truck and movin' out West. Like the Beverly Hillbillies, I'm gonna have my grandmother on top of the car with a rocking chair, and we're gonna point at all the concrete ponds everybody has," he says. "I'm going to L.A. kinda as an unknown, but with a helluva resumé." We wish you all the luck in the world out there, Lance.

It's easy to refer to some country music as pop music. It is, after all, popular. And the hooks are catchy, the beats infectious and the appeal is broad. But it's not all that way. Plenty of music over the past decade kept country very, very country. For me, three new artists did a stellar job of keeping a lot of the traditional sounds and stories and Southern drawls alive: Jamey Johnson, Ashton Shepherd and Luke Bryan.

Johnson, because of the way he makes the steel guitar the backbone of almost every song, recorded and live. And for his relentless devotion to the meaningful music he grew up on, whether it meant radio love or not. His "High Cost of Living" didn't get a lot of spins on the radio, perhaps because of its mentions of drugs. But it's nominated for a couple of Grammy Awards, so what does that tell you?

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Uh oh. Time to clean out the music library. A new study from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine has found that teens who listen to music about pot are more likely to smoke it. So no more "Weed With Willie" by Toby Keith, "Forever Seventeen" by Tim McGraw or "'Fore She Was Mama" by Clay Walker in my house. And my father-in-law will have to stop singing Merle Haggard's "Okie From Muskogee" when he comes over with his guitar. Luckily those are some of the only songs I'll have to stop playing. While country music has a few mentions of marijuana here and there, the participants in this study heard about 40 marijuana references in music every day. 40. A. Day. So I am guessing that is some kind of rock, pop, metal and other un-country music they have on. Now if a study found that teens who listen to music about Jack Daniel's, moonshine, six-packs and Skoal are more likely to use them, I might have to boycott the genre altogether. At least when my teenager is home.

Photo credit: Gregory E. Peters

Since it's only out in limited release, I haven't seen Crazy Heart, the new film about a fictional country singer-songwriter starring Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall. But I'm pretty much counting the days until it comes to Nashville -- mostly for the music. Produced by T Bone Burnett, the soundtrack (available Jan. 19) features tunes written specially for the movie, along with songs from Buck Owens, the Louvin Brothers, Lightnin' Hopkins, Waylon Jennings, Townes Van Zandt, Billy Joe Shaver and Sam Phillips. After listening to an advance copy during my holiday drive, there are a lot of nice surprises -- like the singing voices of Bridges, Duvall and Collin Farrell -- but one song turned in by Ryan Bingham stands above and beyond the rest. It's the film's haunting theme song, "The Weary Kind," and it makes my skin crawl with delight every time I hear it. I can't wait to see how they present it on screen.

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I managed to find a last-minute ticket to Zac Brown Band's show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville last night (Dec. 28), the second of the easygoing ensemble's two-night stand at the Mother Church of Country Music. Part of the show's appeal was watching Brown beaming with pleasure throughout the entire set. He brought along some of his fledgling musical discoveries from Georgia, as well as his Nashville buddies Joey & Rory and Mac McAnally, and he couldn't keep from grinning as he jammed with them. Even though he stood front and center of the Ryman stage, Brown spent as much time admiring everybody's instrumental solos -- and, lo, there were many -- as he did engaging himself with the crowd. Not that we felt ignored. It could make an audience blush by how much he praised us, and thanked us, and gave free Koozies to us, and insisted that he couldn't care less about awards because he's too focused on us, making sure we were getting our money's worth. Gee whiz, Zac, that's awfully nice of you. In turn, we all enjoyed "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," "Chicken Fried" and especially "Toes," but if the solid new tunes like "Colder Weather" and "Falling in Love as She's Walking Away" are any indication, you may want to add a third night in 2010.

Molly and Dolly. Those are the names of two teacup Maltipoo sisters that Kenny Chesney and his girlfriend, Amy Colley, brought home from a breeder in Bardstown, Ky., earlier this month. The breeder, Cathy Adamson, had no idea who Chesney was, other than some guy with puppies crawling all over him licking his face. Adamson picked up the couple at the local airport and brought them back to her store/house to check out the pups. The original idea was for Chesney to buy Colley a puppy for Christmas, but when they got there, Chesney said, "Let's get two." Awww. The dogs are kind of a designer mix of Maltese and poodle but super, super tiny, as you can see by Adamson's photos. Right now, the pups are only about 23 ounces each (and since they went for around $2,500 a pup, these little fluff balls rang up close to $100 an ounce). Fully grown, these dogs will only get to be about four pounds, which will make them easy to have around the tour bus.

In 1973, Elvis Presley recorded a great song in Memphis called "Loving Arms," right around the same time the Dixie Chicks were little babies. About 25 years later, once the Dixie Chicks were all grown up and making country music, they laid down a whole lot of steel guitar and put that song on their 1998 album, Wide Open Spaces. Although it's included on a new Presley boxed set called Elvis 75: Good Rockin' Tonight, I never knew his version, but I have always loved the Chicks' rendition. "Loving Arms" was written by Tom Jans and recorded by a handful of artists over the years such as Kris Kristofferson, Olivia Newton-John and Rita Coolidge. But to me, the quiet acoustic Chicks one is the most moving. If you've been too long in the wind and too long in the rain, let us know whose loving arms you'd like to end up in.

This is one of those which-came-first things, the theme song or the movie idea? I'm going to go with theme song. Because when I saw this trailer last night for a new movie, Letters to Juliet, my first thought was that they literally made a movie out of Taylor Swift's "Love Story." Then the song started to play, almost in its entirety. The movie stars Amanda Seyfried (the girl who played Sophie in Mamma Mia!). In this movie, it looks like she plays a girl vacationing in Italy who tries to find the fictional Juliet's lovers based on a mysterious letter she finds. It's hard to know if the main love interest will fall to the ground and pull out a ring, but I have a feeling Swift's song will lay the groundwork for a very sweet story and a happy ending.

I have three bumper stickers on my car: one for marathons, another for triathlons and a small green square that just says "Will Hoge." The last one is pretty faded by now but I keep it on there because I still consider Hoge (which rhymes with "rogue") to be one of Nashville's most talented performing songwriters. Despite his roots in Nashville, he's been making a living on the rock scene for about a decade and I think he's been an excellent ambassador for the city while he's out there paying his dues. (Lots and lots and lots of dues.) We nearly lost him in a scooter accident last summer and a full recovery seemed unlikely. Thank God he staged a remarkable comeback, both physically and creatively -- his new album, The Wreckage, is the most rewarding album he's ever made, and definitely one of my favorites of 2009. During a rare break from the road, he brought by two members of his band to perform a few acoustic songs and we recorded this one - "Even if It Breaks Your Heart" -- for the CMT blog. It's about staying focused on your dreams, which sounds like a fine New Year's resolution to me.

Over the last few years, Eli Young Band earned a national fan base with singles like "When it Rains" and "Always the Love Songs." With a new year around the corner, the native Texans are prepared for the arrival of "Guinevere," a fan favorite and one of their best-selling songs. Alas, the video won't have its world premiere on CMT.com until Jan. 4, but you can catch an enticing trailer for it here.