I’m a big fan of Lee Ann Womack, as well as Old Crow Medicine Show, so naturally I’ve been eager to hear what they’ve been up to. The good news is, they both have new albums coming out in the next few months, and even better, both albums are solid. You just have to put your pre-conceived notions aside for a little bit. Let me explain …
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
“I’m sorry. You have the wrong number. Please hang up and try your call again” — and see if I care.
In this week’s CMT Music and Talent new video evaluation meeting, the panel watched four new submitted videos. Three veteran artists bring their latest and one newcomer shows up. The contestants are Brooks & Dunn, Little Big Town, Lee Ann Womack and Justin Moore. Let’s watch and listen in.
Artist: Brooks & Dunn
Video: “Put a Girl in It”
Director: Wes Edwards
Even after working in the music business all these years, I still get a little bit tingly whenever I walk into a recording studio. (Some people would kill to get on tour buses, some people prefer wandering around backstage - but give me a console and some headphones and you won’t hear a peep out of me.) So I’m excited to browse all the studio photos on a new Web site devoted to the making of Lee Ann Womack’s new album, Call Me Crazy.
Patience may be a virtue, but Taylor Swift fans don’t need to wait a minute longer to hear her newest banjo-laced tune “I Heart Question Mark.”
And while you’re at it, take a listen to Gretchen Wilson’s just-released sassy rocker “Don’t Do Me No Good.”
Even when Miley Cyrus is getting clean, some people think it’s a little dirty.
Jessica Simpson is just a country girl at heart. One who vacations in Lake Tahoe and hangs on yachts, but still.
She’s shopping, traveling, playing guitar and hanging with her son. Shania Twain sure makes single motherhood look easy.
Lee Ann Womack admits that the pull of needing to be home with her daughters kept her out of the studio. But she has a new album due out in the fall, and some think it’ll be an award winner.
You’re bound to add more friends if the Road Hammers welcome everyone to your MySpace page. Which they will, if you’re one of their lucky video contest winners.
Access Hollywood caught Maureen McCormick, Carnie Wilson and Bobby Brown in bed together at a place called Outsider’s Inn.
When the nation celebrates its birthday on Friday, Nashville will be one of many cities across America shooting off fireworks, with Phil Vassar and the Lost Trailers taking part in a celebration expected to draw 100,000 people to Riverfront Park.
Another anniversary is coming up on Sunday that has its own impact on Music City and its creative community. Bob Mulloy was born 75 years ago in Nashville. The name won’t mean much to a lot of readers, but he’s had a huge impact on who works on Music Row and who records there. Bob created a Music Business program at then-tiny Belmont College in 1972. The school is located near the end of 16th Avenue, literally 1.1 miles from the first recording studio on the Row, where Marty Robbins cut “El Paso” and Johnny Cash did “Ring Of Fire.”
The CMA Music Festival gets under way officially tomorrow (June 5) in Nashville, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that some memories will be made for many of the 30,000-plus fans who’ll be visiting for the event, whether it means seeing a once-in-a-lifetime onstage collaboration by two favorite stars or meeting a favorite artist for the first time.
People who’ve never attended the festival — or Fan Fair, as it was previously known — might not realize the heft of the event. But one way to understand how significant it is would be to simply look back at some of the highlights of Fan Fairs past.
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.
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.
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