CMT Blog: John Michael Montgomery

Musicians on Call is on a mission. They are the ones who bring the music to the bedsides of people in the hospital. (If you aren't familiar with M.O.C., watch country artist Mark Wills bringing smiles to the faces of folks at Vanderbilt Medical Center last year. He visited about 12 patients that day, singing with his bittersweet "Don't Laugh at Me.") The organization has made more than 125,000 patients feel a little better with all kinds of music from all kinds of artists. And now they're doing some fundraising, country-style. You can bid on tickets and backstage passes for Rascal Flatts, backstage barbecue experiences with Keith Urban and autographed guitars and such from LeAnn Rimes, Taylor Swift, Brooks & Dunn, Miranda Lambert, John Michael Montgomery and Blake Shelton. Knowing how much joy this program would bring me if I was stuck in the hospital makes it easy to push the bidding up a little higher. Auctions close March 5.

If you want to hear what's possibly the worst cover of John Michael Montgomery's "I Swear," listen to this. It is Big D, who's part of the Big D & Bubba syndicated radio show, and he's out to show that pitch-correction programs like Auto-Tune do not really correct a bad voice. And if you can handle listening to him sing both versions (with and without Auto-Tune), you will hear how right he is. His hypothesis is that you have to have a good voice to begin with if a computer is going to make you better. I'd say he has proven his point without a doubt.

For the past couple months, I've had a one-track mind. I was consumed with listening to all the music from 2008 to come up with my list of the best albums of the year. I even solicited help from readers. And I came up with what I thought was a really strong list of the music I loved all year long.

But then yesterday (Dec. 8), my list was published along with the lists of the music writers I admire most: Chet Flippo, Ed Morris and Craig Shelburne. I knew we'd have some crossover, but for the most part, all of our Top 10 lists are vastly different. So I spent last night and this morning opening my mind to the music they've been loving. Read more...

With Time Flies, John Michael Montgomery offers up a country record that is reminiscent of his work in the early ‘90s. In fact, it's a lot like Life's a Dance with its powerful love songs and a few lighthearted ones sprinkled in to break things up. The lighthearted songs give some texture to the album, and I like "What Did I Do." Others, however, seem like they are trying pretty hard to be funny. I think I like him better as a soulful singer, like on "Let's Get Lost" and "If You Ever Went Away," and there are plenty of songs like that on Time Flies. I won't argue with his steady voice, though. For a limited time, you can listen to all the tracks from John Michael Montgomery's Time Flies for free on CMT.com.

John Michael Montgomery is back and looking very healthy in this reflective video for "If You Ever Went Away." Most of us have at least thought about what life would be like without our boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife and here Montgomery is no different. He contemplates drinking, fishing and hanging with his buddies but knows deep down that he would still feel incomplete. Check out the girl in the video. She may look familiar. That's Amanda Salinas, NBC's Age of Love winner.

Three fresh new music videos awaited the CMT music video evaluation team as they scampered into the big viewing suite high atop downtown Nashville this week. New George Strait! New Carrie Underwood! And, after an absence, new John Michael Montgomery. Let the videos roll on.

Artist: Carrie Underwood:
Video: "Just A Dream"
Director: Roman White

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A friend who is not a country fan recently heard Josh Gracin's "Nothin' to Lose" and announced that Gracin was mimicking Barenaked Ladies' "One Week."

Without a country background, that assumption makes sense, but if anything, the song is more akin to "Ain't Going Down (Til the Sun Comes Up)," a landmark single by one of Gracin's sonic mentors, Garth Brooks. Gracin, to be clear, says he was not trying to emulate Brooks with that single, but they're connected nonetheless.

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Maybe the best way to eradicate a prejudice is to confront it publicly. So here goes: I have an almost physical revulsion to grown men who go by two diminutive first names-especially those in the entertainment business whose works I generally admire. You know, people like Billy Joe Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker and Billy Bob Thornton. Why would any adult tolerate such an infantile handle?

From birth through high school, I was Murrell Morris. I winced at the very sound of "Murrell." Few could spell or pronounce it correctly, and most thought it was a girl's name. I got volumes of junk mail addressed to "Miss Murrell Morris." Imagine what that did to my sexual confidence. So the instant I entered college, I seized upon my middle name-Edward-as a journalist seizes a free drink. Sure it's a dull name that's entirely bereft of personality, but, by God, it knows its gender.

I have no quarrel with men who use both their first and middle name-as long as each is spelled out and pronounced in full. John Michael Montgomery, Michael Martin Murphey, Earl Thomas Conley. There's dignity there. But Johnny Mike Montgomery? It sounds so re- . . . so backward. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that in spite of inflicting themselves with baby names, the men I've cited absolutely tower over me. And you're right. Mr. Shaver and Mr. Walker have written songs to which I can't even aspire. And Mr. Thornton has had Angelina Jolie (to whom I aspire like you wouldn't believe). Their achievements are magnificent. But let me tell you this: Better to die obscure, unfulfilled and with spittle pooling in the corners of my mouth than go through life with a name like Murly Ed.

Here's a very rare opportunity to own a piece of country music history: a handwritten three-page letter from Patsy Cline to her fan club president back in 1956. It'll be worth every penny it goes for.

Like Waylon Jennings and Steve Earle before him, Dierks Bentley will be the one and only country act to grace the stages of Chicago's alt-rock festival Lollapalooza.

John Michael Montgomery's "Mad Cowboy Disease," the drunken-cowboy-meets-barroom-beauty tale, is now streaming on his MySpace page.

Taylor Swift is positively bubbly about making music with Colbie Caillat. She says Colbie's cool and the song is cool, so everything's very cool.

While Def Leppard's guitarist thinks that most collaborations are crap, he does think their recent effort with Tim McGraw turned out quite well.

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.