Country Music Blog: Alan Jackson

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."That famous quote from Sigmund Freud cautions against forcing meaning into events or objects where there is none.

Most of the time, when recording artists put out positive uptempo songs, the point is to not think too deeply, just to simply breeze through the moment and try to embrace some bit of energy or happiness. That is pretty much the point of Alan Jackson's new single, "Good Time," in which a working man celebrates his weekend away from the grind.

Jackson drew a comparison a week ago between that song and some of his earlier uptempo numbers, including "Chattahoochee," which was released as a single 15 years ago this week (May 10). Jackson didn't expect much with the song, figuring it was about a river that was personal to him but unfamiliar to most people outside his home state of Georgia. Instead, the thing took off and became one of several signposts in his career.

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As if he hasn't broken enough records already, Alan Jackson is trying to do it again by creating the world's longest line dance in his "Good Time" video.
When Lee Ann Womack puts on a hat for the Kentucky Derby, she really puts on a hat.

Taylor Swift tells MTV how each one of her "firsts" felt.

Sara Evans is working with a wedding planner for her upcoming nuptials, but the actual date hasn't been planned yet. Or so they say.

Famed Nashville songwriter Bob McDill was recently recognized by the Country Music Hall of Fame at a rare public performance in the Poets and Prophets program.

Seventeen bucks says you can smell like bergamot, lavender, patchouli and aged whiskey. That's how Women's Wear Daily describes "McGraw," Tim McGraw's new fragrance which is priced for the mass market.

And $5 says you can play like a pro on a Web site devoted to teaching you how to play music along with Brad Paisley, Alison Krauss and Alan Jackson.

Did Sara Evans' CMT Music Awards dress make her butt look big? She thought so, and that's OK with her.

Bill O'Reilly weighs in on the racy pictures of Miley Cyrus.

Starbucks is moving its record label business to another record company to focus on serving up their over-the-top coffee concoctions.

Every week, I like to see who's at the top of the country sales chart, even though it's usually the same folks - Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift, etc. But this week I decided to start from the bottom up. You might be as surprised as I am at these low sales by familiar names.

Let's start with the hits compilations released late last year. Faith Hill's The Hits isn't even halfway to a half-million copies, so no gold album there. Back in 1999, Breathe sold more than seven million copies. Meanwhile, Trisha Yearwood's Greatest Hits hasn't cracked 90,000 copies yet. Songbook: A Collection of Hits, from 1997, sold more than four million copies. Both of these singers have released some amazing songs over the years, and they put on a good face for country music (even when that face is screaming out, "WHAT?!?!?) but I think they simply waited too long. Their careers have kind of cooled off in the last few years. Plus, in the digital age, if you already have the older albums on your computer or iPod, you can just add the new tracks for a few bucks.

I would imagine that Blake Shelton and Joe Nichols will release Greatest Hits albums in the next year or so, because their current albums simply aren't moving. Shelton's Pure B.S. is just under 265,000, after nearly a year on the chart. You can add about 11,000 copies to that total when you consider the additional sales of his Collector's Edition, which certainly includes repeat buyers. Nichols is being outsold by Jason Michael Carroll and Bucky Covington, although they're toward the bottom of the chart too.

And who's at the top? Alan Jackson, with Good Time, showing that there is still a place for longevity on the country sales chart - but not as much as you might think.

Trespassing is now allowed. Shania Twain’s New Zealand estate, all 61,000 acres of it, is now open for hikers, climbers, bikers and hunters as part of a $17.5 million public-access deal she had to make.

George Clooney’s newest role? The Godfather, to Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s baby.

Read about SXSW by the numbers, big and small. Big for the number of reviews written (763), small for the word count of each review (6).

If country music thrills you, then Six Flags wants to know about it. And if you can put that feeling into words, you could win Alan Jackson tickets and a trip to the ACMs.

The Houston Chronicle recently got Miranda Lambert to gush over Beyonce and reveal her not-so-hot-tempered side.

Dolly Parton dishes on little Miley Cyrus, crediting her success to her talent, adding that it ain’t all coming from Disney.

I've been reading Three Dog Nightmare: The Continuing Chuck Negron Story, a book about the tragic fall and personal resurrection of one of the lead voices from the pop band Three Dog Night. In it, Negron makes a claim that the band was one of the first to pack stadiums with a rock show.

The Beatles had done it before, at New York's Shea Stadium, and there were other bands that played stadiums, though many of them fell far short of filling them out. But I'll bet no one in the Fab Four's mid-‘60s era -- or in Three Dog Night's early-‘70s prime -- ever thought country music would be capable of that.

So this week's anniversary of the first George Strait stadium tour is one worth celebrating. Strait brought in 56,000 fans on March 14, 1998, to Sun Devil Stadium in Arizona for a lineup that featured Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, John Michael Montgomery, Lee Ann Womack and others. And Strait continued doing stadium tours with massive talent rosters for several more years before pulling back to his traditional in-the-round arena format.

What's now amazing is that while the stadium date is still a country rarity, it happens much more frequently than anyone could have predicted in the past. Kenny Chesney is playing 14 of those dates this summer, supported by a rotating list of acts that includes Keith Urban, LeAnn Rimes, Big & Rich, Gary Allan and Luke Bryan, among others. Toby Keith has offered a handful of stadium shows as well.

Strait could likely pick up and fill out stadiums again, if he chose, and you can imagine Keith Urban, Tim McGraw, Brooks & Dunn and Shania Twain (remember her?) doing the same thing. In fact, when the Gridiron Bash -- a strange, college-football-related fan competition -- lined up stadiums across the U.S. for April, a surprising number of country lineups were employed: Alan Jackson in Alabama, Dwight Yoakam in West Virginia, Dierks Bentley and Wynonna in Kentucky, Montgomery Gentry and Taylor Swift in Tennessee.

At last week's Country Radio Seminar, one booking agent noted that outside of such longstanding classic-rock icons as the Rolling Stones and U2, there's no stronger genre for live shows these days than country music.

Considering that a lot of country artists were happy to play high-school gymnasiums and small county fairs at the time Three Dog Night was playing those stadium dates, it's tough to find stronger support for the upward transformation that's taken place in country music.

A bad review for Alan Jackson’s new album? Say it ain’t so. Jackson’s publicist asked Tennesseans for their translation of the explicit Village Voice review.

Looks like the old Strait and switch. George Strait’s moving his 3/29 California show from an outdoor venue to an indoor one to accommodate his in-the-round stage.

Former bodybuilder Keith Anderson bared his guns at a CRS performance, wearing little more than a toga and an acoustic guitar.

Get Randy Travis’ new single, “Faith in You,” absolutely free. Yes, you’ll have to register. But that 15 seconds is a small price to pay for this sweet little download.

When he wasn’t feeling well enough to perform at a charity golf tournament last week, Tim McGraw asked Lonestar to take his place. Wonder how that made the crowd feel?

Kenny Chesney Gone Wild! Catch him tomorrow (3/12) at the Spinnaker Beach Club in Panama City Beach, Fla., where he’ll put on a little spring break show at 4 p.m.

In the spirit of the season, I have done some spring cleaning on my desk. But before I clear out some of these CDs, I wanted to offer my own spring mix. (And I don't mean the sack of salad at the grocery store, although I do love that stuff with balsamic vinaigrette.)

Most of these songs are new, but the Whiskeytown and Lynyrd Skynyrd selections are from the newly released Deluxe Editions. Folk and bluegrass fans will probably enjoy a lot of these songs, and I tell you, it sure is good to hear new music from Alan Jackson.

"Small Town Southern Man," Alan Jackson

"Buffalo," Kathleen Edwards

"Seven Dollars," Mando Saenz

"Hopes Too High," Tift Merritt

"Honeysuckle Honeypie," Jim Lauderdale

"Bring Love," Carlene Carter

"Country Boy/City Boy," Chatham County Line

"Leaves Don't Fall (They Just Let Go)," Carrie Newcomer

"Five Generations of Rock County Wilsons," Tim Hensley

"Climbing Mountains," Meg Hutchinson

"A Week From Today," Blue Highway

"Paper Gown," Caroline Herring

"Little White Lie," David Wilcox

"I'm Looking for Blue Eyes," Allison Moorer

"16 Days," Whiskeytown

"I Never Dreamed" (original version), Lynyrd Skynyrd

If Alan Jackson really was rockin' in his cradle to the crying of a steel guitar, as he claims in his 1990 hit "Chasin' That Neon Rainbow," then his mother must've known best. She must've known that Jackson, who will turn 50 in October, was destined for country icon status. And his new CD, Good Time, (out on Tuesday) stakes his claim to that upper echelon of Nashville heroes even more. This space isn't big enough for a proper review of the 17 tunes he penned himself. So I will try, desperately, to narrow it down to the top three reasons you should own this little slice of country music heaven:

One: A simple track called "I Still Like Bologna." It has a love it/hate it/love it message about the high-tech world we're in. But Jackson's bottom line is that bologna, a woman's love and a good cell phone are the keys to happiness. I'd like to add to that list the sound of the double bass you can hear in the background.

Two: "Good Time." Sounds cliché, I know. But this isn't just another let's-go-out-tonight song. It's a fast-talker, which gives Jackson a chance to show off the myriad talents he's got in his voice without a whole bunch of unnecessary instruments. But the sweet harmonica break towards the end does add to the infectious workin'-all-week anthem.

Three: Country music's good about taking a phrase and turning it around. That's what happens in the brilliantly written "Right Where I Want You," when Jackson sings, "You've got me right where I want you." Gentle vocals help him pull off this aching ballad about getting caught up in love. (This last one was a tie for third place with "Small Town Southern Man," the one on the radio right now. But the radio's already doing a good job pushing that one.)

It's obvious that Jackson takes his craft seriously. He sticks to relatable narratives without ever losing focus on who he is -- in life, and in country music.

If you've been waiting for new music from Lee Ann Womack, get comfortable because it's probably going to be a while. Last I heard, she wasn't happy with the album she turned in, so it was back to the drawing board. Luckily, I have never gotten tired of There's More Where That Came From, which won a CMA Award in 2005. But, as the title suggested, wasn't there supposed to be more where that came from? I do have a short-term fix - Some Things I Know, her outstanding 1998 album.

Ten years ago, the shy Texan was riding a wave of high-profile endorsements from George Strait and Alan Jackson, and was considered a torchbearer for traditional country music. I love the fiddles on the title track, which begins the album, and when Vince Gill comes in on harmony, it's bliss. Buddy and Julie Miller contributed harmony vocals on a song they wrote, "Don't Tell Me," and it's one of the saddest songs they've written. (With their incredible catalog, that's saying something.) Joe Diffie, ex-husband Jason Sellers, Ricky Skaggs and Sharon White lend their voices to the album too.

"I'll Think of a Reason Later" and "A Little Past Little Rock" did well at country radio, but after she scored a smash hit with "I Hope You Dance," she temporarily headed in a new direction. I liked the I Hope You Dance album, as well as "Blame It on Me" from the follow-up disc, but I really fell apart when I heard There's More Where That Came From for the first time. Seriously, I played it over and over at the office, and luckily my co-worker one desk over was just as obsessed as I was. We enthusiastically analyzed it inside out, and I still proudly display my vinyl copy above my desk. I can't wait to hear the new music, but at least I have a few albums to hold me over in the meantime.