© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

In 2005, Bob DiPiero was already a giant in Nashville’s songwriting community. The Youngstown, Ohio, native had received two CMA Triple Play Awards — in 1995, for Faith Hill’s “Take Me As I Am,” Reba McEntire’s “Till You Love Me” and Neal McCoy’s “Wink,” and in 1996 for George Strait’s “Blue Clear Sky,” Ricochet’s “Daddy’s Money” and Vince Gill’s “Worlds Apart.” Other honors had come his way as well, including recognition by the Nashville Music Awards in 1998 and Sony/ATV Music Publishing Nashville Songwriter of the Year in 2000.

Even so, a few questions kept nagging at him. “There was a while that I was thinking, ‘Why am I on the CMA Board?’” he remembered. “‘Am I just taking up space? What can I contribute?’”

The answers presented themselves quickly, as discussions began about moving the 2005 CMA Awards to Madison Square Garden in New York City. In reviewing plans for that historic decision, DiPiero noticed that something was missing. “There was no representation for the songwriter. So I picked up the sword for the songwriting community.”

Remembering that epiphany, DiPiero raised his fist heroically and, as he often does, broke into laughter. In fact, though, back in 2005 he did voice his concern to CMA Board Chairman Kix Brooks and President Victor Sansone. They responded swiftly, authorizing DiPiero to work with CMA Marketing Coordinator Kyle Quigley, now CMA Senior Manager of Event Programming and Special Events, to implement something suitable in tandem with the Awards. DiPiero came up with the idea of adapting the “songwriters in the round” format pioneered in Nashville at The Bluebird Café. Quigley, meanwhile, helped DiPiero confirm Tim Nichols, Jeffrey Steele and Craig Wiseman as participants and scouted Joe’s Pub as the venue for what would become the first of many New York installments of CMA Songwriters Series.

“We did two shows that first night,” DiPiero said. “The first was mostly industry people, so we were preaching to the choir. The second show was mostly civilians. And after we’d finished, these people started searching us out and going, ‘I don’t even like Country Music — but whatever this was, I like it!’ From that moment, CMA Songwriters Series started gaining momentum, to the point now where both of our shows in September, with Buddy Cannon, Jamey Johnson, Kendell Marvel and myself, sold out in an hour — and everybody in the audience knows every word to every song we do.”

This momentum carried CMA Songwriters Series to new markets last year, in September at the House of Blues in Los Angeles and two in Chicago during October, at Joe’s Bar and the Chicago Country Music Festival in Grant Park. Even more auspicious was its debut at Coolidge Auditorium in the Library of Congress, during the 2010 March CMA Board meetings in Washington, D.C.

DiPiero played his now established emcee role that night with Kix Brooks, Lorrie Morgan, John Rich, Randy Scruggs and Victoria Shaw participating. “There was a goodly amount of senators and members of Congress there. So where it can get a little smoky and blue when you get to the second show at Joe’s Pub,” he noted, with a laugh, “we were very respectful of where we were.

“But like all the other CMA Songwriters Series shows, it was totally unrehearsed,” he continued. “And personally, I love that. All we did was a soundcheck. I tell the performers, ‘We’ll go around four or five times, so be prepared for that. But I don’t care what you play. If you wrote it, play it.’ I might try and make sure the show is flowing and we don’t get bogged down in three Jack-and-Coke songs, but basically I say the least amount possible, which is very hard for me. I have no clue what’s going to happen, but as the song says, I hold on loosely.”

This spontaneity is appreciated both by writers who also perform as artists and by audiences seeking insight into the creative process. Even DiPiero admits to learning something at each show. “As a matter of fact, that happened just recently,” he said. “Right before Craig Wiseman sang ‘Live Like You Were Dying,’ he started talking about how he learned to play guitar at church camp — and then he sang a real simple church camp song. I guess it really hit me and I could see where ‘Live Like You Were Dying’ came from.”

As of today, DiPiero has cut three albums, won three dozen BMI Country and Million-Air honors and racked up his 15th No. 1 hit with Tim McGraw’s “Southern Voice.” Still, he values what he has achieved through CMA Songwriters Series and looks forward to its return Dec. 4 to Coolidge Auditorium with Brett James, Little Big Town and Lori McKenna (ticket information: www.loc.gov/concerts), as well as upcoming performances in New York City on Nov. 2 with Eric Church, Luke Laird and Carolyn Dawn Johnson, and Nashville at Limelight, Nov. 9 with Josh Kear, Brett James, Rivers Rutherford and Chris Young. The Nov. 2 show is sold out, but tickets are still available for Nov. 9 at www.LimelightNashville.com.

“We’ve reached a tipping point,” he mused. “The collective consciousness is ready to accept this kind of show. It’s totally unrehearsed and there’s no set list, but it’s real and very authentic. That’s why I’m just as much a fan as a performer at these shows.”

On the Web: www.BobDiPiero.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

It was three cheers on Thursday, Oct. 14 for three No. 1s at the annual CMA Songwriters Luncheon with the presentation of the CMA Triple Play Awards, which honor songwriters who pen three chart-topping hits in a 12 month period.

“This is an amazing accomplishment and we are very pleased to honor these talented songwriters, and songwriting artists, for their valued contribution to the format,” said Steve Moore, CMA Chief Executive Officer. “These songwriters captivate fans with stories that sum up the heart and humor of everyday life. They give voice and context to the challenges and triumphs we all face. They each have a rare talent that is a gift for all of us to enjoy.”

The Triple Play Awards were presented at the Second Annual CMA Songwriters Luncheon, which was held at the Pinnacle at Symphony Place in Nashville and attended by several artist/songwriters including Dierks Bentley, Alan Jackson, Brad Paisley, Darius Rucker, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, and Keith Urban in addition to hit tunesmiths from ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, as well as songwriter members of CMA, NSAI, and representatives of some of the most successful publishers in Music City.   

“As a trade organization, CMA represents every aspect of the Country Music industry and it’s important for us to regularly communicate and reach out to the songwriters with information about what CMA does on their behalf and why it’s important to be a member of the CMA,” said Victoria Shaw, a noted songwriter/producer and chair of the CMA Community Outreach and Education Committee.
 
Recognizing excellence in the format is at the foundation of CMA’s mission and there were several songwriters on hand to receive Triple Play Awards from CMA Board President Gary Overton, Sony Music Nashville Chairman and CEO, Moore, and Shaw. 

"It's ironic to say that our songwriters are sometimes our unsung heroes," Overton remarked, "but alongside the more familiar names of the writer/artists is an entire community of gifted tunesmiths whose life work is in creating the songs that define Country Music. Today, we're very proud to celebrate all of our Triple Play honorees."
 
In alphabetical order, the recipients of CMA’s Triple Play Award included:
• Rhett Akins: “Gimmie That Girl,” “All About Tonight,” “All Over Me”
• Casey Beathard: "Find Out Who Your Friends Are," "Don't Blink," "Ready, Set, Don't Go"
• Dierks Bentley: "Feel That Fire," "Sideways," “I Wanna Make You Close Your Eyes"
• Zac Brown: "Chicken Fried," "Whatever It Is," "Toes"
• Kristian Bush: "All I Want To Do," "Already Gone," "It Happens"
• Dallas Davidson: "That's How Country Boys Roll," "Gimmie That Girl," "Rain is a Good Thing"
• Tom Douglas: "I Run to You," "Southern Voice," "The House That Built Me"
• Chris DuBois: "It Won't Be Like This For Long," "Then," "Welcome to The Future"
• Wyatt Durrette: "Chicken Fried," "Whatever It Is," "Toes"
• Ashley Gorley: "All-American Girl," "You're Gonna Miss This," "Start a Band  2009"
• Ashley Gorley: "It Won't Be Like This For Long," "Then," "American Saturday Night"
• Ben Hayslip: "I'll Just Hold On," "Gimmie That Girl," "All About Tonight"
• Alan Jackson: "Small Town Southern Man," "Good Time," "Country Boy"
• Brett James: "It's America," "Out Last Night," "Summer Nights"
• Brett James: "Cowboy Casanova," "The Truth," "The Man I Want To Be"
• Luke Laird: "Hillbilly Bone," "Temporary Home," "Undo It"
• Hillary Lindsey: "So Small," "Last Name," "Just A Dream"
• Kelley Lovelace: "Online," "All-American Girl," "I'm Still A Guy"
• Jennifer Nettles: "Stay," "All I Want To Do," "Already Gone"
• Brad Paisley: "Online," "Letter to Me," "I'm Still A Guy"
• Brad Paisley: "Then," "Welcome To The Future," "American Saturday Night"
• Bobby Pinson: "All I Want To Do," "She Never Cried In Front Of Me," "Already Gone"
• Monty Powell: "Sweet Thing," "Kiss A Girl," "Til Summer Comes Around"
• Darius Rucker: "Don't Think I Don't Think About It," "It Won't Be Like This For Long," "Alright"
• Stephony Smith: "How Was I To Know," "It's Your Love," "Perfect Love"
• Jeffrey Steele: "Love Is A Beautiful Thing," "Everyday," "Here"
• Taylor Swift: "Should've Said No," "Love Story," "White Horse"
• Carrie Underwood: "Cowboy Casanova," "Temporary Home," "Undo It"
• Carrie Underwood: "So Small," "All-American Girl," "Last Name"
• Keith Urban: "Sweet Thing," "Kiss A Girl," "Til Summer Comes Around"

You would expect songwriters to have a lot to say. Here is a sample:

 “The first day I moved to this town, I was 19 years old. I had no problem finding where the bars were but I had no idea how to get a boot into this community or how to get started, or anything. I got a job interning at CMA to try to figure out how to even begin to get moving. So this is really cool. I don’t take for granted anything that involves CMA,” said Dierks Bentley.
 
 “I’ve been a fan and a student of Country Music since I was a kid. To be up here and be in this room is truly a blessing. I still can’t believe I get to do this for a living,” said Wyatt Durrette.

 “We get to wake up in the morning and write songs for a living. Is that the craziest thing in the world?” said Brett James.

“It’s great to be a part of Country Music. I appreciate you not kicking me out yet…I’d like to thank all the writers and artists in this room. I think I get as much inspiration currently from what’s on the radio as I did from old Country Music. I’m really proud to be a part of it these days,” said Brad Paisley.

“I got a ticket on the way here for running a red light. Three hundred yards after that, a car hit me. I actually had to get out of the car and run to this and leave Anna (Wilson, frequent collaborator) to deal with a wrecked car. So if this is a Triple Play, I hate to think of what the third thing is going to be because I have to fly in about two hours!” said Monty Powell.

“The song is what music is all about. Thank you guys for helping me write some pretty good ones,” said Darius Rucker.

“I absolutely live in awe of all the people in this room. I’ve had the time of my life knowing you over the years of writing with you. I think you guys just make other songwriters better. A lot of times I’ve gone back in my memories of when I started writing songs. I would sit there in my room and write a new song, and the first thing I would feel is, I’d feel proud of this new song. The next thing I would feel was fear because I was afraid that nobody would ever hear it. Then I was fortunate enough to meet people like Jody Williams, Troy Tomlinson, Scott Borchetta, and the team at Big Machine Records. Everyone at CMA has been so good to me. I’m very thankful that I don’t have to fear that no one is going to hear my songs anymore,” said Taylor Swift.

“To all the writers in this room, you guys have the hardest job. I can stand up there all day and sing – and I love that – but you create something out of air. And that is so amazing. I have so much respect for you. I love you guys. Thank you so much. Maybe someday I’ll consider myself one of you, but I’ve got a long way to go,” said Carrie Underwood.

“Thank you so much for this, CMA. I guess the new phrase should be ‘God bless the girls and the boys who make the noise down on 16th Avenue.’ Thank you very much,” said Keith Urban.
On the Web: www.CMAworld.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

CMA is donating all net proceeds – a record $2,924,936 – from 2010 CMA Music Festival to support music education and aid flood relief in Metro Nashville, CMA Board member Kix Brooks announced Wednesday, Oct. 6 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which sustained damage in the May floods.

“When we started this program several years ago, the success of the Music Festival itself and the opportunity to have an ongoing contribution to aid in the music programs of our local schools, was just a dream – today we have a reality that has far exceeded our imaginations,” Brooks said. “It’s working and I can’t thank my fellow artists and all the other CMA volunteers enough. Considering the year our community has had, the faithful support from the fans of Country Music could not have come at better time. Big time thanks to everyone!”

“Every cent of the net proceeds from CMA Music Festival is going right back into this community to support causes important to everyone in the industry – music education and aiding recovery in the aftermath of the floods,” said Steve Moore, CMA Chief Executive Officer. “We are thrilled to make a donation of this size and we have confidence that the funds will be put to immediate and good use reaching the hands of the people who need it most.”

The donation will be split evenly between CMA’s “Keep the Music Playing” campaign and The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.

“The CMA Music Festival went on as planned just a month after the devastating May flood, and it was the largest, most successful Festival to date. I think that’s a testament to the strength of Music City and the commitment CMA has to Nashville,” Mayor Karl Dean said. “CMA announced just days after the flood that, in addition to the festival proceeds that have historically been set aside for music education in Nashville, the rest of the money generated by the Festival would go to disaster recovery. This is a tremendously generous gift from CMA and the artists that perform at the Festival. On behalf of all the citizens of Nashville that will benefit from this donation, I give a sincere, heartfelt thank you.”

To date, CMA has contributed $4,774,521 to support music education in public schools. This money has been used to build music labs and purchase nearly 4,000 instruments in Metro Nashville Public Schools through a partnership with the Nashville Alliance for Public Education. The total also includes an annual endowment gift for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Words & Music program, which assists language arts and music teachers with classroom instruction in the basics of songwriting.

“Once again, the CMA performing artists have proven their generosity and commitment to ‘Keep the Music Playing’ in Nashville’s public schools,” said Pam Garrett, Executive Director of the Nashville Alliance for Public Education. “The impact of this program on the lives of hundreds of students is enormous. The academic results make this program an investment in the future quality of our city. CMA, we can never thank you enough. This is so huge!”

The Alliance was established in 2002 by a group of corporate and civic leaders with the goal of improving public education for Nashville’s nearly 78,000 school children. Working in tandem with the Metro Nashville Public School Board and the Director of Schools, the non-profit group identifies areas of need and channels private community resources toward those programs throughout Metro’s 139 public schools.

In 2009, the Words & Music program was showcased at the White House during First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Country Music Celebration,” part of a series celebrating American music. Over the next two years 74 Metro Nashville public elementary schools will participate in Words & Music. During the same period, partially facilitated by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the program will expand through video conferencing to more schools in Tennessee and across the country.

“We are so gratified to have the support of the CMA and our Country Music artists for this important teaching effort,” said Museum Director Kyle Young. “As we watch the program grow, more and more teachers are aided in the ongoing struggle to provide learning experiences that help our youth find their place in the world, see a pathway to achievement and find a route to the blessings that are the promise of America. This work has never been more important, and this endowment gift secures its future.”

Receiving a check on behalf of The Community Foundation was Ellen Lehman, President of The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.

"Thanks to the kindness of the CMA's fans, performers and the CMA itself, there is now additional money to help our neighbors rebuild their lives," Lehman said. "Through grants to local nonprofits which are counseling, rebuilding homes, and feeding, this gift will assist The Community Foundation and our nonprofit partners as we work toward restoring every corner of our community until the task is completed. Our sincerest thanks to the CMA and its performers and fans."

The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee activated its Metro Nashville Disaster Response Fund in partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management to support relief efforts in May.

Grants from the fund are made to nonprofits supporting relief and restoration in the Davidson County area. Millions of people have been affected by the disaster and while some have recovered quickly, others continue to struggle and may take months or years to rebuild their lives and homes. The Community Foundation’s disaster funds will strategically address needs as they emerge and evolve. 

CMA announced the donations during the quarterly Board of Directors meetings in Nashville. The presentation also featured Mayor Dean; Meredith Libbey, Assistant to the Director for Communications with Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools; and Duncan McPherson, a sophomore guitar soloist from Nashville Schools of the Arts.

Hundreds of artists perform at CMA Music Festival each year for free. To show its appreciation for their dedication and time, CMA began donating half the net proceeds from the event to charity on their behalf. When the program began in 2001, it was known as CMA’s “Cause for Celebration!” From 2001-2005, CMA contributed $800,000 to more than 100 worthy causes, which were selected by each participating artist.

In 2006, the CMA Artist Relations Committee decided to channel those financial resources into a single cause – music education – through CMA’s “Keep the Music Playing” campaign and established a partnership with the Nashville Alliance for Public Education to oversee distribution of the funds to the programs with the greatest need. Two years later, CMA announced a $1 million endowment gift spread over five years in $200,000 annual increments (2008-2012) to the Music Hall of Fame’s Words & Music program. 

Supporting music education provides Metro Nashville Public School students with valuable resources and opportunities, providing many of them a strong reason to remain in school. According to Metro schools statistics, students in arts programs have a higher graduation rate than students who don’t participate.

“An oboe in the hands of a child who wants to learn, can set a path to a full scholarship to college as a music major,” said Carol Crittenden, Metro Nashville Public Schools Coordinator of Performing Arts. “What is the cost? $2,295. What is the value to the student? Priceless! Of course, this can really be said about all of the band and orchestra instruments CMA provides. It is proven in our graduation rates among music students, which is always above 95 percent.”

“We could not ask for better support for our schools than we get from CMA,” said Metro Schools’ Libbey. “Music and arts education can be a great way to engage students, support graduation rates, and inspire a lifetime love of music. The artists who perform at the CMA Music Festival each year are putting instruments in the hands of our students. They sing for free so that nearly 800 kids got instruments this year alone.”

CMA Music Festival is an unparalleled music experience celebrating America’s music. The event brings the community together with fans from around the world. In June, the 2010 Festival attracted a record-setting 65,000 fans from all 50 states and 26 nations. For the first time, each night at LP Field for the star-packed nightly concerts sold out in advance. The impact on Nashville was undeniable. According to the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau, direct visitor spending generate by the Festival totaled more than $23 million.

Celebrating its 40th Anniversary next year, the dates for the 2011 CMA Music Festival are Thursday through Sunday, June 9-12.  Four-day ticket packages are on sale and fans can purchase tickets through Ticketmaster at Ticketmaster.com or 1-800-745-3000. Tickets can also be purchased through CMAfest.com or 1-800-CMA-FEST. Ticket prices are based on the level of seating at LP Field for the Nightly Concerts, and range from $115 to $325 plus handling fees. Since the 2010 CMA Music Festival sold out in advance, fans should order their tickets for next year now in order to guarantee their place at what USA Today named “the crown jewel of Country Music festivals.”      

For the latest information about tickets and artists appearing at 2011 CMA Music Festival, and more, visit www.CMAfest.com. Sign up for CMA Exclusive, the official eNewsletter of Country Music, where fans get connected to Country and receive exciting updates about your favorite artists, contests, free stuff, and more. Join the free CMA Mobile Community by texting CMAINFO to 66937 (standard text rates apply).

On the Web: www.CMAfest.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Record promoters see to it that an artist’s music gets played on radio. Booking agents keep the artist onstage. At the label, the creative staff completes the packaging and the marketing folks make sure the product makes its way successfully to retail. But most of the other ways of gaining visibility for performers are engineered by publicists. They secure TV appearances, jockey for print and online stories, reviews and photos, and publicize individual concert dates — a function called “tour press.” When things go haywire in an artist’s life, it’s also the publicist who steps up to handle damage control. It’s an around-the-clock job.

As independent publicists, Ronna Rubin and Jessie Schmidt have control over their own agencies. Rubin has worked with clients ranging from Keith Anderson and Jamey Johnson to GAC and The Recording Academy since establishing Rubin Media in 1992. Schmidt has headed Schmidt Relations since 1997 and counts Luke Bryan, the Grand Ole Opry, Brad Paisley, Rascal Flatts and Carrie Underwood among her clients. And as Senior Director, Media and Public Relations, Capitol Records Nashville, Lori Genes Christian helps represent the label’s roster, which includes Dierks Bentley, Luke Bryan, Eric Church, Walker Hayes, Lady Antebellum, Little Big Town, Jennette McCurdy, Kenny Rogers, Darius Rucker, Keith Urban and Emily West as well as EMI Records Nashville artist Troy Olsen and comedians.

Jessie and Ronna, as independent publicists, what criteria do you use for accepting a client?

SCHMIDT I want to listen to the music first because if I don’t love it, I can’t sell it. Often you don’t meet the client until after the manager hires you. But I much prefer meeting the artist first. You want to feel like they kind of dig you and that you like their personality, especially if it’s a new artist.

RUBIN There have been times when I realized that on a lot of other platforms (besides music), the potential client and I were so different, whether it was on political or religious beliefs, that I decided it was not really a good match. That’s happened on rare occasions. But basically, I agree. I have to like the music. Obviously, they’re hiring you as a cheerleader, and you’ve got to be sincere if you’re going to the mat for their music.

GENES CHRISTIAN I’ve always been one who could look at an artist and pick his or her best qualities. That’s kind of how I pitch the artist to media. If a song is not working at radio but this person has amazing depth, I’ll go down that path. I’ve always tried to look at what the whole package is because I don’t get to choose who I publicize.

How do you explain to new artists what publicity is supposed to achieve and how the process works?

GENES CHRISTIAN Capitol is really good about that. I’ve had meetings with all my artists, especially new artists, well in advance of them having music out. It’s more of a team environment; it’s not just me. It’s someone from every department, walking the artist through the process. I physically see my artists constantly.

RUBIN It also depends when you’re brought onboard. Sometimes with independent artists, you can be brought on after their album comes out and they have one of those “Oh!” moments: “Oh, I’m going to need a publicist!” If you’re brought on really early, shortly after the person’s been signed, there is time when you get to know them. You take them out for a meal and ask and further explain the role of publicity in their career.

Is there a minimum length of time you require an artist to contract for your services?

RUBIN After I became an indie publicist, I had one client for nine years, one for seven and another for six. Those were my first three anchor clients and I came to expect that they’d all be multiple-year relationships. But then the industry changed and I had to put my finger on the pulse of reality. First it was like three years was a good run. Then it was, “Oh, a year’s good.” Realistically, I have to entertain all prospects that come to me. But that’s not the best way to approach publicity, with a three-month plan.

SCHMIDT I don’t like accepting an artist with a timeline. I feel like it’s a relationship that has to grow. That’s not to say I haven’t accepted or won’t accept special projects. But usually the special projects aren’t artists. Actually, I’ve never been approached to work an artist who has a timeline, like, “We want you to work six months on this record.” It’s not worth it. You’re just really getting your feet wet at six months.

How do you deal with beginning artists’ unrealistic expectations, such as wanting to be on “The Late Show with David Letterman” or “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” as soon as they have a single out?

SCHMIDT Those expectations don’t just come from the artists but from managers too. It is a lovely thing when you’re all on the same page and you realize what you are up against. If you’re lucky enough to get a new artist that “Tonight Show” booking, you want to feel confident that they have the ammunition to back it up. You will experience artists or teams — label, artist and management — that have huge expectations. It’s daily pressure to produce. There’s almost more pressure these days to get quality print pieces than a national TV booking.

GENES CHRISTIAN It’s been really hard to try to reeducate the artists and their teams to the fact that they’re getting a lot of visibility online. If you do get a review on a Web site instead of in a print publication, you really are getting eyeballs — maybe even more than in print. It’s been a hard transition. People want to see the review or article and be able to hold it.

SCHMIDT Rolling Stone pieces are few and far between. It’s an educational process for everybody in the industry. Five or six years ago, we’d just roll our eyes at an online piece. Now you’ve got to think twice. If I have any gut feeling (about the worth of an online offer), I’m going to go to the new media person at the label and say, “What does this site get? How many hits? Speak to me in my language. Tell me this is worthy.”

GENES CHRISTIAN In the last two years, I’ve had several artists who served as online hosts for major Country Music awards shows. Those things are really, really important now. If your artist has the ability and personality to host, that’s something that can get their name out there and something that I wouldn’t have thought about even three years ago. There are hundreds of thousands of people watching online broadcasts now.

What frustrations do you face as publicists?

RUBIN Craig Campbell (publicist and Owner, Campbell Entertainment Group) and I have had a running joke for years. He says, ‘What do you do for a living?’ And I say, ‘I get rejected for a living!’ The list of outlets where we can pitch our artists has gotten so much smaller. I joke that Lady Antebellum and Lady Gaga are both going after the same slot. We’re competing for attention with all musical genres, unlike in radio, where you’re just competing amongst other Country artists.

SCHMIDT Waiting frustrates me. Sometimes I’ll sit in my office for five hours, waiting on one answer. When that one answer comes, I can do these 17 other things. But, no, I’m not going to get that answer until midnight tonight. It’s not that someone is holding out on you; it’s the domino effect. It’s a 24/7 job.

GENES CHRISTIAN It’s hard to schedule life. There are days when I’m late for everything because I’m constantly waiting for someone to send me an e-mail or respond to a call.

SCHMIDT And there is a high level of expectation that when that call or e-mail does come in, you will be there to get it and that it will be worked out. It does sidebar life, and that’s really hard. When I’m sitting in the pickup line at school and the cell phone reception is really bad, that’s when I finally get the call.

How do you approach damage control when a client has done something — or is accused of doing something — that puts them in a bad light?

SCHMIDT The most important thing is that everyone involved agrees on what you’re going to do. If ever there’s a time to listen to what a publicist has to say, this is the time.

RUBIN There’s got to be a component of honesty and ownership. In some cases, the publicist is told how it’s going to be handled. You can have your opinion and your professional way of doing it, but they’ll say, “No, this is how it’s going to happen.”

GENES CHRISTIAN Ultimately, there’s a certain place where you have to say “no comment” because the matter is just so personal and private that it really isn’t anyone else’s business. We’re that first line of defense for artists. We have to protect them as much as we can.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Gentle textures envelop the listener in the first seconds of “We Traveled So Far,” which opens The Age of Miracles, Mary Chapin Carpenter’s newest album, on Zoe Records, a part of the Rounder Records group. On this track, a guitar strums soothing waltz time, Dan Dugmore’s faraway steel guitar keens, and the melody rises and falls, floating on the vocal’s whispered breeze.

All 12 tracks on the album (as well as “All the Sad Songs,” a bonus track exclusively on the Barnes & Noble release) are written solely by Carpenter. Beautiful and reflective, they make it hard to grasp that just three years ago, Carpenter was struggling to beat a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. After touring behind her previous album, The Calling, she developed blood clots in her lungs and, while recovering at home, sank into what she has described as a painful depression.

“It was a terrible darkness,” she remembered. “At that time, I think it was as dark as it was because there was no guidebook and no one had said anything to me about how to prepare for it. I didn’t understand what was happening. And now, with the benefit of hindsight and the help and support and wisdom of other people, I realize that was a very natural response to that event.”

The fruits of that difficult harvest are the songs that fill The Age of Miracles, on which she confronts the shadows from which she emerged in a kind of therapeutic explosion. “When I started writing songs about six months after I got out of the hospital, I wasn’t writing really to make a new record,” she explained. “It was because I had always done it and it felt like the right thing to do. It felt natural to explore my feelings through song. I think of it as something as an act of faith to have been writing songs because I didn’t know at that time when or if I would ever put them on an album, when that record would ever come out, when I would go back to work. So the act of writing songs made me feel better, and it was just something I wanted to do without a sense of the destiny or the end result in sight.”

A spiritual element permeates the album and its title track, as suggested by their reference to miracles. Still, Carpenter cautioned, “I don’t mean it in a religious sense and I am not claiming that I believe in them. So often we look around and we say, ‘Oh, my God! Look at that iPad! How did those men land on the moon?’ We bandy that word about so loosely and freely, and a lot of people do take it very much to heart as something connected to formalized religion. For myself, I was just posing the idea that if we live in an age of miracles, are we lucky enough to regard our entire lives that way and to believe not so much in the supernatural but in twists of fate and extraordinary luck and sort of reinterpret them as miracles?”

For Matt Rollings, who co-produced Carpenter’s Between Here and Gone (2004) and The Calling (2007) and played keyboards on her sessions as far back as Shooting Straight in the Dark (1990), The Age of Miracles was a true collaboration between two like-minded individuals. “As co-producers, Mary Chapin and I have gotten to know each other more and more over the course of the last three records,” he said. “And I feel like we really hit our stride with The Age of Miracles. The combination of the amazing songs she brought, the band we were able to cast and her willingness to ‘show up’ so profoundly made the process feel somehow as if the record was making itself, like we were all just there to witness its birth.

“Working with Mary Chapin in any capacity, as a sideman or producer, has always been a tremendously satisfying and soulful experience,” he continued. “She’s one of those rare artists who is not content, ever, just to get things done. Instead, she insists on continuing to dig deeper, musically and emotionally, until the truth of it is found. Like all true artists, she doesn’t always know how to get there but she knows when she’s arrived.”

Arms loaded with songs, Carpenter entered Nashville’s Sound Stage Studios in late 2009 to begin work with the excitement of a child at Christmas. “It’s such a beautiful studio, and they had put flowers in the studio for me, and I hadn’t seen everybody in a long time, and I got teary,” she revealed. “It was really wonderful to be there. There was a lot of love in that room.”

Part of the affection shared by Carpenter and other participants in this session owed to the fact that she is only an occasional visitor in Music City. Far more often, she’s at home on her farm in Virginia with her husband Tim Smith and a multitude of pets. “I live here in my little corner of the world,” she said. “I sit at my desk and I write these songs. Years pass and it’s a very solitary endeavor. I have to work hard to be a part of the world.”

Still, coming “home” to the studio, reuniting with musicians and friends she had not seen in quite some time, proved especially pleasurable. “So here are these three years that pass and I have these songs,” Carpenter said. “I go to Nashville, I walk into the studio for a number of weeks, and every day I’m surrounded by these lovely people who are not only helping to create this wonderful project but are giving so freely of their friendship and fellowship. It felt like this balm, this soothing sense, to be in their company. It was as if I had been terribly thirsty and I had much to drink. I felt soothed by it and I felt grateful for it. It had been such a difficult time, and it felt great to be with these people and have this record come as a result.”

Several familiar voices join Carpenter’s on The Age of Miracles, her twelfth studio album. Alison Krauss appears on “I Was a Bird,” and former touring partner Vince Gill harmonizes on “I Put My Ring Back On.” Despite the years of friendship they’ve shared, Carpenter still had to be convinced it was no intrusion to call and ask Gill to sing on her album.

“I was literally in the midst of doing the vocals and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, Vince would be great for this song,’” she said. “But I am one of those people that just contort when they have to call someone and ask for a favor. I know how busy he is, and I just felt shy and I didn’t want to bother him. But Vince and I have a business manager in common, and she came in to give a listen to what we were doing. I played her that song, and she went, ‘Oh, my God! You should get Vince to sing on that song!’ I looked at her and said, ‘I can’t believe you said that. I was thinking the same thing.’ So we called him — but if she hadn’t said that, I don’t think I would have called him. I’m just too shy.”

Gill remembered being “flattered that she asked. That’s the best part about having friends, is they call you from time to time and say, ‘Hey, come and do this with me!’” He added with a laugh, “Once again, the dude gets the high part, reconfirming that I sing like a woman — just trying to keep that out there.”

The Country Music Hall of Fame member was involved with one unforgettable highlight of Carpenter’s career, on the 1994 CMA Awards. Carpenter, who had won Female Vocalist of the Year honors at the 1992 and 1993 CMA Awards, performed a hilarious version of her song “Shut Up and Kiss Me,” being interrupted repeatedly by knocks at a door on the stage set and opening it to reveal Awards host Gill, then Brooks & Dunn and ultimately Little Richard, with whom she smooched theatrically and left as the audience cheered and her band vamped. She had made a strong impact as well with her debut at the 1990 CMA Awards, where she delighted her peers with “Opening Act,” an account of the ignominious trials of having to open for unappreciative headliners.

“Two people come to mind immediately. One is Irving Waugh and the other is Walter Miller,” said Carpenter, looking back on that night and remembering that broadcast’s Executive Producer and Producer, respectively. “Irving and Walter created the opportunity for me to come out and sing ‘Opening Act,’ which was sort of my introduction to the CMAs and seemed to lead to so many other things. And subsequently, Walter would get with me and say, ‘OK, have you got any ideas?’ He was very collaborative. We had a great time coming up with thoughts and ideas of how we wanted to present a song. It wasn’t just ‘stand there and sing it.’ I feel like any chance I had to do something different or special, it was because of that collaboration and the willingness of Walter and certainly of Irving to give me those opportunities.”

Shifting back toward the present and looking toward the future, Carpenter ends The Age of Miracles with one of its more buoyant tracks, “The Way I Feel.” “It was important for me to end the album with that song because I do feel like albums are more than 12 or 13 songs thrown together,” she summed up. “Ultimately, I feel like it’s a record of strength and resilience, and I wanted the last song to reinforce that. It’s a song about how I acknowledge things are hard, things are tough, but I’m going forward. It’s not a perfect world and I’m not a perfect person, but I’m going forward.”

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

The Nashville Rising concert, held June 22 at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, owed much to the star-studded lineup of artists who donated their time and talent to raising money to fund recovery from the epic flooding of early May.

But for all their generosity, Tim McGraw brought a little something extra — food from Outback Steakhouse and other OSI Restaurant family members Bonefish Grill and Carrabbas, for everyone to enjoy backstage.

That was one outcome of the year-long partnership between McGraw and the Aussie-themed restaurant chain, along with charity events, VIP catering at McGraw concerts and Outback’s Rewards Program.

Their association began when Outback heard that McGraw’s camp was looking for a corporate partner for his “Southern Voice” tour, which launched Feb. 11 in Omaha, extended through more than 60 shows and ended Sept. 3 in Syracuse, N.Y.

Outback was drawn to McGraw for several reasons, including the fact that he was booked to play for the first time in his career in Australia, with five concerts in September. Beyond that, “we knew Outback customers listen to Country Music, and there was an opportunity to connect with this audience at a local and national level, so there were a lot reasons for us to partner,” said Kelly Parriott, Executive VP, Rally Marketing Group.

McGraw became a big part of the www.MyOutbackRewards.com customer loyalty program, which offered everything from concert tickets and music downloads to T-shirts as well as two all-expense paid trips for two to attend a McGraw concert in Australia during September. Outback held listening parties for the Southern Voice album at several restaurants, offered $5 off coupons at Outback in the first 1 million copies of the album and provided catering for the pre-show VIP experience throughout the tour. A Tim McGraw Southern Voice limited-edition gift card, offered by Outback at Wal-Mart, has accounted for about 45 percent of all the company’s gift card sales through that outlet since its introduction in June.

Outback and McGraw also offered a “Have Fun, Give Back” T-shirt for sale at the concerts, with proceeds going to Operation Homefront, which provides emergency assistance to soldiers and their families, and to Neighbors Keeper, a charity founded by McGraw and Faith Hill that focuses on giving back to communities in need with an emphasis on children’s initiatives. Throughout the tour, McGraw and Outback hosted members of our armed forces and their families at part of their military outreach efforts with Operation Homefront. To date, Outback has committed more than $1.5 million in donations as part of their outreach with McGraw.

“There are all the normal tour benefits of a sponsor, and they’ve gone over and above that, offsetting costs on charity events,” said Bruce Eskowitz, COO, Red Light Management, which represents McGraw. “They’ve been tremendous people to work with, and they’ve been supportive of everything we’re doing. They didn’t want to just put their name on it and walk away.”

Or, as Parriott summed up, “Everybody’s in it for all the right reasons.”

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

For as long as there’s been radio, there have been on-air personalities whose talents centered on keeping listeners tuned in long enough to connect with artists and advertisers. For performers seeking to build their fan base, this formula has worked for decades, especially when encouraged by radio tours, to visit with DJs in as many markets as possible and encourage them to play their new single.

But with media, roles, options and other elements in the business shifting around so quickly, some artists are looking to expand their choices for exposure. And one trend involves artists moving to the other side of the microphone, as hosts of their own radio programs.

In years past, it wasn’t unusual for a singer to hold down a gig at a local radio station before moving to Nashville. Tom T. Hall, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Charlie Walker did it — but Holly Dunn reversed the formula in 1997. Already a recording artist with a string of hits that included “Are You Ever Gonna Love Me” and “Daddy’s Hands,” she accepted a job that year as morning DJ at WWWW/Detroit. Dunn, who had majored in broadcasting at Abilene Christian University, averaged more than 300,000 listeners per day for a year before returning to Nashville.

Today, Kix Brooks is heard nationally as host of “American Country Countdown with Kix Brooks” over Citadel Media. Kenny Chesney has overseen his own online show, “No Shoes Radio,” since August 2009. And in March, three artists — Dierks Bentley, Jim Lauderdale and Pam Tillis — have launched their own weekly, hour-long shows on 650 WSM-AM/Nashville, each one beginning at 2 PM/CT. The shows can also be heard online at www.WSMonline.com or as podcasts via iTunes.

The idea was conceived by Joe Limardi, Operations Manager, WSM Radio. “We have so many artists in as guests,” he explained. “Some are so good and have such good stories to tell and a love for music that’s not their own, I thought, ‘Why not let them be creative on air and offer them the opportunity to do their own show?’”

The first person Limardi asked was Bentley. “When I was approached about doing the show, I jumped on it,” the singer recalled. “I love WSM, I love its history and I love the idea of having my voice broadcast on those airwaves.”

Bentley came up with the name for his show, which airs every Monday. It’s called “The Thread” because it embraces all of the music that has influenced Bentley. He spent a lot of time at the Station Inn after his arrival in Nashville; today, performances from that famous acoustic/bluegrass venue are often featured on his broadcasts. Other hours are dedicated to themes reflected in their titles, which include “Ray Price: Priceless” and “The Thing About Don Williams.” Every now and then something unexpected adds to the mix, including a visit by WSM DJ Eddie Stubbs one day as he was in the midst of taping his show.

“He is a hero of mine and I try to imitate him,” admitted Bentley, who added that while it was challenging to come up with a focus for each show and material to fit that focus, the process has become easier with time.

After “The Thread” started airing, Tillis got in touch with Limardi and expressed interest in doing a show as well. “Pam came up with the name ‘Lettin’ My Roots Show,’ and if you listen to it (on Tuesdays), the show does go back to her roots in music and the relationships she’s built in Nashville,” said Limardi. “She has a genuine appreciation for all styles of music.”

Having grown up in Country Music, Tillis enjoys sharing memories and stories from her childhood in Nashville and on the road with her father, Country Music Hall of Fame member Mel Tillis. Each of her shows also centers on one theme, ranging from Native American music to political Country and The Beatles’ impact on Country Music.

“My first reaction about doing the radio show was that it sounds like fun but I don’t know how I could fit one more thing into my life,” Tillis said. “It would have been easier to just randomly pull songs, but I really like the idea of themes, which is harder to do and takes more effort.”

Though she does most of this work, Tillis credits her radio producer, Shannon McCombs, for helping her pull it together. “Sometimes Shannon will go, ‘Please just let me run with it,’” she said. “But I’m real hands-on with everything I do. I get manic about it, but it’s been worth it to me.”

One of the singer’s favorite shows was about her family. Her brother Mel Jr., known as Sonny, and sister Carrie April had never been on radio before being featured on “Lettin’ My Roots Show.” “My brother wrote ‘When I Think About Angels,’” Tillis said, referring to the Jamie O’Neal No. 1 single that he wrote with O’Neal and Roxie Dean. “So I played some of his songs. And my baby sister is an amazing singer, so I played some of her work. I even found something with her and me in Branson. And I ran across this old audio clip of dad and me, when I was 17 and I was on ‘The Mike Douglas Show’ with him. I was sitting at the computer, programming this for my show, and I was crying because things like that are fun to share.”

Having established the model with Bentley and Tillis, WSM didn’t have to go too far when it decided to look for an artist to host an Americana show. “Jim Lauderdale hosts our weekly roots show (‘Music City Roots: Live from the Loveless Café’), and we thought he would be perfect for an Americana show,” Limardi said. “He has such eclectic taste in music, which you can hear on his show.”

Lauderdale had some background as a radio host as he launched “The Jim Lauderdale Show,” which airs every Wednesday. Along with that experience at a college radio station in South Carolina, he brings a selection of CDs from home for each show that he tapes, which he supplements by going through the WSM library.

“I have a general idea of what I might play, and Shannon (McCombs) is a big help with organizing and suggesting,” Lauderdale said. “I love WSM, and what I try to do on the show is play about two-thirds traditional Country and some bluegrass and then throw in some singer/songwriter stuff. I don’t want to get too way out. The music has to flow with the rest of the songs that day on the station.”

After the Nashville flood in May, Lauderdale tried something a little unusual on his show. “I had the urge to do the show live, which is something I really enjoy doing and will do again as my schedule allows,” he said. “The WSM studio out by Opryland was under water, so we had to go out to Brentwood, south of Nashville, to the studio at the big tower, which is just off of Interstate 65 South. My slot is right after Joe Limardi’s show, so he runs things for me technically. Shannon was there too, and we really had a great time. I hope that comes across on the air.”

Once he had these three artists in place, Limardi needed to fill the 2 PM slot on Thursday. As a result, Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show comes in the third Thursday of every month to play music from his personal collection of recordings from the 1920s and 1930s. The remaining Thursdays feature a rotating list of hosts, which have included Mark Chesnutt, Dailey & Vincent, Billy Dean, Jack Ingram, Jewel, Sammy Kershaw, Lorrie Morgan and Dana Williams of Diamond Rio.

“The coolest part of it all is that it started with the idea of one artist and snowballed, with all these great artists who come in and say they’d like to do a show,” Limardi said.

While all of these artists enjoy dabbling in radio, none is ready to trade the stage for the studio as their top professional priority. “I enjoy this but what I love is performing and touring and writing songs and making records,” Bentley insisted. “That occupies a lot of my time.”

“I love finding out the history of the music, turning up things I didn’t know,” Tillis said. “I’m learning, and I hope the audience is enjoying learning with me. I’ll come up with an idea and think, ‘How am I gonna do a show around this?’ And somehow I find it. I did a cowgirl show — who would think you could do that, but I did!”

On the Web: www.WSMonline.com
 

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

On an unusually competitive night of television programming, ABC achieved approximately the same strong statistical results with the seventh annual broadcast of “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” as it had in 2009.

Where figures compiled by Nielsen Media Research for the program in 2008 were 3.3/5, they rose in 2009 to 4.6/7 and reached 4.0/7 for this year’s special, which aired on Wednesday, Sept. 1, 8-11PM/CT. Measured against programming for the week, “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” placed at No. 18 for viewers overall as well as for the coveted Adults 18-49 category. The special was ABC’s third-best performer of the week in total viewers with 6 million.

Talent is the program’s heaviest artillery. Hosted by Tim McGraw, this year’s lineup included Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Billy Currington, Alan Jackson, Jamey Johnson, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, Justin Moore, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Rascal Flatts, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift, Josh Turner, Uncle Kracker, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban and Zac Brown Band.

More than 65,000 fans from 50 states and 26 nations streamed to Nashville in June to attend the four-day Festival. Nightly performances at LP Field and at select venues in town were filmed by Executive Producer Robert Deaton and his crew, who then tackled the formidable challenge of weaving these special moments into a one-night network TV experience. It began with reference to the flood that had inflicted significant damage throughout Nashville in early May — just over a month before the Festival began, followed by Urban’s tribute to the spirit of Music City as it recovered from the disaster.

“Quite frankly, we hadn’t planned on doing anything,” Deaton admitted. “But it was Keith’s idea to do ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ as a tribute to the people of Nashville. Then after his performance, I started thinking it was actually about more than the flood; it was about how people responded to it. And Keith’s performance became like an anthem, especially with the flood visuals. So even though we normally start the show big, with lots of tempo, I decided to open with this, because that spirit is what defines us this year.” The public responded. Nielsen SoundScan data reported that for the week ending Sept. 5, current album sales rocketed upward over numbers for the previous week for many of the artists it had featured, including McGraw (47%), Underwood (31%) and Moore (31%). Significant upticks were also measured for featured performers in digital singles of songs performed on the special, including McGraw’s “Southern Voice” (82%), Shelton’s “Hillbilly Bone” (50%), Underwood’s “Last Name” (63%), Moore’s “How I Got to Be This Way” (44%) and Rascal Flatts’ “Summer Nights” (40%).

Interest in the broadcast was kindled through a series of “All Access” Webisodes created by ABC Digital Media and posted on www.ABC.com and other Web sites in the weeks before the broadcast. These include a visit with McBride, who describes a special outreach to fans that she hosted in her studio; a trip with Julianne Hough to sign autographs at the Greased Lightning Fan Fair Hall; an onstage “rock, paper scissors” contest between Luke Bryan and Jake Owen to determine who plays next at a Downtown honky tonk; a bus tour conducted by Gloriana; and a sneak preview of Swift’s network premiere of her single “Mine” before an intimate gathering of fans. The complete All Access series can be seen at www.YouTube.com/CountryMusicAssoc.

And during the broadcast itself, viewers got involved in the second annual CMA Music Festival Tweet ‘n’ Greet. They could monitor Twitter commentaries and Facebook page updates from artists featured in the show (“Are you guys watching? I’m on, jamming out right now” — Urban;) (“Could watch Brad Paisley play guitar all night. Will hit Tivo and watch him again and again” — Dave Haywood, Lady Antebellum) or post their own thoughts (“Don’t bother me. I’m watching CMA Fest.” — @bree621). The Festival broadcast ranked Nos. 1, 2, 5 and 8 on Twitter’s Top 10 Trending Topics for the night.

CMA Music Festival is the ultimate destination for Country Music fans from around the globe, featuring nonstop concerts, autograph signings, celebrity events and more. In 2011, Nashville’s signature music event will celebrate 40 years of providing unique artist and fan interactions since starting as Fan Fair in 1972. Plans are underway for surprises and special events to commemorate the occasion.

2011 CMA Music Festival will run Thursday through Sunday, June 9-12. Four-day ticket packages went on sale in August. Purchase tickets at www.CMAfest.com, 1-800-CMA-FEST, www.Ticketmaster.com or 1-800-745-3000. Ticket prices are based on the level of seating at LP Field for the nightly concerts and range from $115 to $325 plus handling fees.

“We are excited to celebrate 40 years of CMA Music Festival and Fan Fair in 2011 and look forward to the fans joining us for all the fun,” said CMA CEO Steve Moore. “We were fortunate that the Festival sold out completely in 2010 for the first time. Due to this strong demand, we suggest that fans buy their tickets now rather than waiting until it is too late.”

“CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” directed by Gary Halvorson, will re-air on GAC at 7 PM/CT, Saturday, Oct. 16; 8 AM/CT, 4 PM/CT and 11 PM/CT, Sunday, Oct. 17; 8 PM/CT, Saturday, Nov. 6; and 12 AM/CT and 4PM/CT, Sunday, Nov. 7.

On the Web: www.CMAfest.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Fresh-cut flowers… chilled champagne in the fridge… turndown service with mints on the pillow…

If this sounds like room service in a five-star boutique hotel, think again. It’s just another day at home — when your home has wheels, a 200-gallon fuel tank and an oversized steering wheel. And for entertainers who spend much of their lives on the road, it’s service as usual, provided by the person who pilots them along highways and back roads.

But what does it take to be a celebrity bus driver? How do you get hired to drive for the Taylor Swifts, Carrie Underwoods and Keith Urbans of the world? Achieving these goals may have just become easier, thanks to the Celebrity Bus Drivers Academy, co-founded by Chip Huffman and Tandy Rice, President of the sales and marketing company and booking agency Top Billing.

“This type of training school has never been attempted,” said Huffman, Founder and former President of Nitetrain Coach Company. “We think the timing is great because Nashville is becoming such an entertainment hub. Approximately 80 percent of the buses that move entertainers — I’m talking about every genre of music — are based in Nashville or in close proximity. Also, a lot of veteran drivers who have served the industry so well for so many years are getting close to retirement age, and we want to be part of helping the next generation enter the business.”

From throughout the United States and Canada, 15 certified professional drivers came to the headquarters of Prevost, the well-known coach manufacturer, in Goodlettsville, near Nashville, to attend the Academy’s opening in June. Each met a specific set of criteria before being accepted. Each also had a sense of commitment — and $1,000 for enrollment.

“It’s always been my dream to drive an entertainer’s coach,” said Brian Greenlee of Victorville, Calif. “When I had my first bus, I really enjoyed keeping up the coach and keeping the people on it happy. I’ve raised my family now, and my wife and I have a strong enough relationship that I could be on the road and work with entertainers.”

“I’ve driven everything under the sun except for one of these buses,” said Crystal Schewire of Long Island, N.Y., the only female attendee. “I have been sending in my résumés for the last three years, but I never got an interview for a driver job. All of a sudden this came up and I said, ‘This is perfect. It’s a thousand dollars. I’m gonna do it.’”

Over the next three days, the drivers listened and learned from experts that included artist and tour managers, veteran celebrity drivers and representatives of various entertainment coach and trucking companies. Sessions were designed to provide insights into the industry as well as hands-on experience. “How Do You Become a Professional Driver?,” “Who Rides on the Bus? Why So Many People?,” “What Do You Look for When Hiring a Driver?” and “Paperwork: What’s Expected” were among the workshops in the curriculum. One session let participants train on a Prevost coach converted with equipment that might be found on a typical celebrity bus.

The amount and quality of information impressed even those enrollees who had experience as celebrity drivers. “I came for networking and skills upgrading,” said Ron Doucette of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, whose résumé already includes driving for Gordon Lightfoot and other artists. “This is the only school of its kind, so I couldn’t stay away. I plan to take the information and skills I learn back to my customers and offer a higher, better level of service than anyone else in Canada.”

Non-students, including expert panelists and observers from the tour bus industry, held similarly positive impressions. “A bus driver for an entertainer is like a landlord,” said Jeff Davis, who has produced and managed tours for Randy Travis and served as well as a part-time relief driver for the artist.

“There’s a whole lot more involved than just sitting in the seat and driving from Point A to Point B. You have to operate and maintain all the systems onboard, from the plumbing to the satellite TV to the Internet to the air conditioning. I think the Academy is going to give drivers a chance to learn what they need to know before they actually get out there and have to learn on the job.”

Even so, completion of this course by no means guarantees employment. “There are three or four thousand drivers and a thousand coaches in this industry,” said Neville Shende, Driver Relations and Safety Manager for Pioneer Coach and author of “The Entertainment Coach Driver: An Inside Look.” “It’s 1 percent of 1 percent of the professional driving industry. It’s majorly competitive, so these companies are going to hire only the best.”

Huffman and Rice believe they have this covered. Once drivers graduate from the Academy’s core training, they can file with its Top Billing Driver Placement Service. It’s a two-tiered operation, designed to give applicant drivers the roadworthiness they need to score a full-time position.

“The first phase is our apprentice program,” said Huffman. “Graduates of the Academy will be available to double-drive with veteran drivers that are in excess of DOT/HOS (Department of Transportation/Hours of Service) rules. They will be paid like a normal driver but at a slightly reduced rate to reflect their apprentice status until they get enough experience to step up to a full-time category.”

Once drivers accumulate enough experience, Top Billing will try to place them with one of many coach companies. Drivers who get placements through Top Billing will pay a percentage of their earnings to the agency, similar to the process at temporary staffing agencies.

“I’ve spent the last several months in contact with most all the bus companies, not just in Nashville but the ones located in outlying areas,” said Huffman. “I’ve not only been in e-mail and phone contact with them, but I’ve visited personally to tell them what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and why we’re doing it. The majority have bought in, absolutely.”

As for Rice, while acknowledging that his longtime high profile in the music industry contributes to establishing the Academy’s profile, he intends to actively apply his promotional and marketing skills to further its success.

“The story here isn’t so much what we’ve done but the fact that we’ve done it,” he insisted. “Hey, in today’s economy, when people have their backs up against the wall, they get real courageous and real ingenious. A lot of drivers are coming to us from big-rig truck driving and they’re just worn out. They’re beat up from all the hauling and loading and unloading freight. Most of them are mature gentlemen; they’ve been there, done that. Our job, as far as I’m concerned, is, instead of looking for a nightclub to book an artist to sing, we’re looking for a bus to book a driver to drive.”

The next Celebrity Bus Drivers Academy session is slated for Nov. 10-12. Visit www.Huffman-Rice.com for registration information.

Essential Advice for Celebrity Bus Drivers
Based on his experience with clients including Lynyrd Skynyrd, Reba McEntire, Bret Michaels, LeAnn Rimes and Dwight Yoakam, celebrity coach driver Eric Smith lists the skills he considers indispensible for completing tours successfully.

Provide Five-Star Service. “Just like at fine hotels, you are the ‘face at the front desk.’ Be the concierge if needed. Look up local restaurants and activities. Do a weather check. Stock the refrigerator. You’re also the maid, making beds, cleaning toilets and taking out endless amounts of garbage. Do it with a smile. Don’t ever make clients feel they’re imposing on you.”

Be Confident and Likable. “Trust in yourself and your skills, but don’t seem arrogant or overly confident.”

Be “Vanilla.” “Study your clients and find out how to best fit in with their personalities. Be a chameleon. Learn to be whatever the job requires you to be.”

Be Invisible. “The group or celebrity you’re hauling probably needs 99.9 percent of the bus. No matter how much they tell you they love you and you’re the best, this means ‘Driver, go away!’ Staying out of their way will win you points.”

Make Everyone Feel Safe. “Get the clients where they’re going without them realizing they ever moved. You want a reputation as a smooth driver. Do this and you’ll get asked back again and again.”

Park Closest to the Venue. “This only works if you’re the headliner, of course. If you’re the opening act, be prepared to move your bus quickly if asked.”

Be a Mechanical Genius. “Learn your equipment and how to operate every single device on the bus. Spend the day before you leave exploring the bus, organizing it, test-driving it and cleaning every square inch. Read the manuals or talk with a mechanic. Assume the worst: The satellite will go down. Be prepared so you don’t end up trying to fix things on the side of the road with the artist breathing down your neck.”

Adjust to Sleep Deprivation. “Sleep while everyone else is up and at the show. Don’t be tempted to hang out at the venue for fun. Get to the hotel — and sleep.”

Deal with Time Alone and Far from Home. “A driver’s schedule can ruin relationships because tours can keep you away for a long time. If possible, choose clients you feel you can spend months on the road with and still like each other at the end.”

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Keith Burns built his chops through club gigs in his hometown of Atlanta before starting a six-year run on bass with Joe Diffie. He then stepped into the spotlight in 1996 as co-founder of Trick Pony, with whom he recorded and performed all the way to the group’s breakup.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, and raised in Plantation, Fla., Michelle Poe learned the ropes as bassist in the family band, with her father on guitar, her mother on piano and a drum machine providing the beat. After high school graduation, she moved to Nashville and picked up band gigs on bass and harmony vocals with Dierks Bentley, Steve Holy and Hank Williams Jr.

Once introduced, they clicked as writing partners, to the extent that one or both were involved as writers on all but one of the tracks on their debut album. Produced by Burns & Poe and Mark Oliverius, released by Blue Steel Records, Burns & Poe shoots for the stars with a strong single, “Don’t Get No Better Than That.” Within that song, written by Burns and Oliverius, there’s a stomping beat, a chiming guitar riff and a tongue-tripping rap from Burns on the verses and full harmonies, sung over a handclap groove reminiscent of John Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good,” on the choruses. All of it celebrates the exhilaration of rolling the top down, pointing your car down the highway and being free to drive toward whatever lies beyond the horizon for no particular reason at all.

But for a clear picture of how their talents intersect, check out “It’s Always a Woman.” Written by Burns, Poe and Don Goodman, this ballad features Burns on the verses, recounting the story of a man’s life lost to drink; his husky baritone is answered by Poe’s pure contralto on the chorus, ruminating on the role of a woman in his downfall as well as the promise of his redemption. Each sings thoughtfully, never overdoing the lyric. Unlike their sad protagonist, these two seem to have found their perfect artistic match.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS Q&A

DREAM DUET PARTNER
BURNS: “Don Henley.”
POE: “Steve Wariner.”

WORD OR PHRASE YOU SAY OVER AND OVER
BURNS: “Can’t say — it’s ‘R’ rated.”
POE: “Keith, watch your language!”

LUCKY CHARM
BURNS: “A cross.”
POE: “My two dogs.”

FAVORITE FOOD ON THE ROAD
BOTH: “Beef jerky.”

SOMETHING WE’D NEVER GUESS ABOUT YOU
BURNS: “I eat and write with my left hand and throw a ball and play guitar right-handed.”
POE: “I’m a substitute elementary school teacher.”

On the Web: www.BurnsandPoe.com

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News that Vince Gill had joined The Time Jumpers spread rapidly when it was announced in February. Bu t in fact , the Country Music Hall of Fame member had actually been the group’s “fifth Beatle” since 2007, when he began sitting in with the Western swing ensemble on some of its regular Monday night gigs at Nashville’s Station Inn .

“I love what they do so much that when I had a Monday off, I would sneak down to the club to play a little guitar or mandolin with them,” said Gill. “Then they started calling me whenever one of their guitar players couldn’t make it. Now we’ve just kind of made it official.”

Gill became a full-time Jumper just as the group, long respected by musicians and beloved by a sizable local following, was receiving some long overdue national attention. Released in 2007 by the Crosswind Corporation, their CD/DVD set Jumpin’ Time earned two 2008 Grammy Awards nominations: The Mickey Newbury song “Sweet Memories,” a smoldering tour de force for vocalist Dawn Sears that channels the spirit of Patsy Cline, got a nod for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, and “Fidoodlin’,” a showcase for what was then their three-fiddle section, was in the running for Best Country Instrumental Performance.

Since then, The Time Jumpers’ Monday shows have been consistent sellouts. They’ve also been playing at festivals and inspiring fans to write in from around the globe. An edited version of The Station Inn concert on the Jumpin’ Time DVD was broadcast by 125 public television stations throughout the United States. The band has been featured as well on National Public Radio and on the Grand Ole Opry.

Not bad for a group that started a dozen years ago in a Nashville garage as a side project for a clutch of top session and touring side players as a way to blow off steam and get back to some of the roots of Country Music.

Their repertoire treats the jazz-influenced music that Bob Wills and Spade Cooley made in the 1930s and ’40s as a starting point on myriad musical journeys. Destinations can include almost anything from Gene Autry to Ray Price, Hank Locklin to Nat “King” Cole and brand new tunes by the group’s cast of ace musicians and songwriters. This diversity is hardly surprising, given that these players and singers have done sessions and shows for artists that range far beyond the borders of Country, from Megadeth to Barbra Streisand.

Their lineup has changed over the years but currently includes bassist Dennis Crouch, steel guitarist Paul Franklin, fiddler Larry Franklin, rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist “Ranger Doug” Green from Riders In The Sky, lead electric guitarist Andy Reiss, lead/harmony vocalist Dawn Sears, her husband Kenny Sears on fiddle and lead vocals, fiddler and harmony vocalist Joe Spivey, accordionist and harmony vocalist Jeff Taylor and drummer Rick Vanaugh.

“If you’d asked me if I’d ever join another band, I’d have said you’re crazy,” said Gill, an 18-time CMA Awards winner. “But what they do is so much fun. I grew up in Oklahoma, where Bob Wills was king, so the basis of their sound is in my blood. Really, it’s jazz with a Country accent, like Count Basie with fiddles and a steel guitar.

“In The Time Jumpers, I can play differently than on my own records, using a fatter-sounding hollow-body guitar instead of a (Fender) Telecaster and taking solos that are closer to bebop than the chicken pickin’ or string bending I might do on my own songs,” he elaborated. “Plus, being part of the band’s guitar lineup with Paul, Andy and Ranger Doug is just amazing.

“The bottom line is, it’s fun,” Gill continued. “Every single member of The Time Jumpers is a great player who can easily hold their own on any stage. And so many of them are my close friends that becoming a full-time member of the group was more like getting together with my family than joining a band.”

Gill does share a long history with several of his band mates. Dawn Sears has sung backup and toured with him for 12 years. Paul Franklin has also recorded and played live with Gill, as has another new member of the band, Texas fiddle whiz Larry Franklin — no relation to Paul.

But Gill’s strongest and oldest connection to The Time Jumpers was charter member John Hughey — like Paul Franklin, a member of the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame, and for a dozen years a member of Gill’s band before retiring from the road. “John really helped me define the sound of my music, including some big hits like ‘Look at Us,’” Gill said. “To tell the truth, my favorite instrument has always been the pedal steel, and sitting next to John and playing guitar while I watched him play at a little place like The Station Inn on a Monday night was an honor for me.”

Hughey was 73 when he died in 2007; a plaque bearing his photo now hangs on The Station Inn’s wall, to the right of the stage. On a Monday night in April, with that image over his shoulder, Gill sang lead as The Time Jumpers performed “Buttermilk John,” a tribute he’d recently written to his late friend.

Drawing on Dawn Sears’ powerful harmony and the beauty of his own clarion tenor, Gill sang the story of Hughey’s humble upbringing and the magical sounds the master of the “crying steel” style coaxed from his instrument’s assembly of wires, rods, pedals, levers and strings. With the fiddle section providing an angelic chorus, Paul Franklin gently rolled a bar over his own pedal steel and plucked, evoking Hughey’s graceful tones. Gill has recorded this tune with The Time Jumpers for his next solo album.

After an emotional hush followed by a round of robust applause, the band swung hard into Bob Wills’ “Roly Poly,” with Gill swapping licks and smiles with Paul Franklin and Reiss and burning out a fervid solo reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s fiery jazz.

“There are a lot of new musical possibilities for the band with Vince in the fold,” said Paul Franklin. “Besides having another great songwriter, Vince is a great harmony singer and guitar and mandolin player. So we can explore the tradition of the electric mandolin in Texas swing more. Johnny Gimble, who played with Bob Wills, used to swap his guitar for an electric mandolin. Andy, Vince and I are talking about working up three-part guitar harmonies, which I’ve done on sessions but you never really hear live. And between Vince, Dawn, Jeff Taylor, Ranger Doug and Kenny Sears, we can have five-part vocal harmonies if we want.”

Band manager Terry Choate, President of the Crosswind Corporation, said that Gill’s presence “will shine a bright light on the rest of The Time Jumpers, but they’re all capable of holding the spotlight on their own.”

Choate, a music industry veteran who has served as Director, A&R, Capitol Records Nashville, now produces albums and partners with Larry Gatlin as owners of The Magnet Music Group. He had put up his own money as Executive Producer to make 2007’s Jumpin’ Time.

Gill’s commitment is just as serious. “I absolutely plan to be back for every Monday at The Station Inn that I can and look forward to getting on the bus with the band,” he vowed. “I’m probably not the norm for people who have ‘made it,’ but I’ve always been pretty easy about spreading myself around to work on other people’s projects. And I’ve got so much musician in me that when the opportunity to play with great people like this every week came up, well, an opportunity like this is hard to turn down.”

On the Web: www.VinceGill.com; www.TheTimeJumpers.com

CMA created the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961 to recognize individuals for their outstanding contributions to the format with Country Music’s highest honor. Inductees are chosen by CMA’s Hall of Fame Panels of Electors, which consist of anonymous voters appointed by the CMA Board of Directors.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

The sound of Blackberry Smoke, as captured on the group’s BamaJam album, Little Piece of Dixie, taps into the pride, defiance, heartbreak and joy of deep-fried Country and Southern rock. That makes it all the more surprising that the group built its reputation as a killer live act in Wisconsin and Michigan before returning to its home ground in Atlanta.

That says a lot about the reach of their songs as well as their stage presence. Fronted by Alabama native Charlie Starr on lead vocals, guitar, pedal steel and banjo, guitarist and singer Paul Jackson from Florida, keyboardist Brandon Still from South Carolina and brothers Richard Turner on bass and vocals and Brit Turner on drums from Georgia, Blackberry Smoke echoes The Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd but also draws from the song craft and blues roots of The Rolling Stones, the star-dusted croon of Gram Parsons, bluegrass and Hank Williams.

Produced by Dann Huff and Justin Niebank, Little Piece of Dixie makes this clear from the top. The first single, “Good One Comin’ On,” written by David Lee Murphy, Gary Nicholson and Lee Roy Parnell, lays out a workin’ man’s plan for a rowdy weekend over a snaky slide guitar line and a drum groove that saunters and slams. Starr drawls through the lyric, with references to “two six-packs of Shiner, 99-cent butane lighter, Lucky Strikes” and other delights, all of them adding up to the promise of “a good one comin’ on.”

With Starr weighing whether to deal with bills or finish his beer, “Bottom of This,” written by Gene Kennedy and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Rickey Medlocke, broadcasts the central theme of these 12 tracks: Everyday concerns can be just as important as loftier issues. There are more reflective moments too, but these come up in the Willie Nelson tune “Yesterday’s Wine” — and as Starr shares the mic with Jamey Johnson and George Jones , those reflections carry the grit of wisdom learned through living with neither compromise nor regret.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS Q&A

DREAM DUET PARTNER
“Emmylou Harris.”

SONG YOU WISH YOU’D WRITTEN
“‘Song for You,’ by Leon Russell.”

FAVORITE FOOD ON THE ROAD
“Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.”

BOOK ON YOUR NIGHT STAND
“Ava’s Man, by Rick Bragg.”

SONG YOU SING IN THE SHOWER
“Any song my wife hates. And I try to sing ’em all like Michael McDonald.”

(ANSWERS BY CHARLIE STARR)

On the Web: www.BlackberrySmoke.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Born and raised in Columbia, Tenn., seasoned in the ways of doing business in the corridors of power that thread through Washington, D.C., Jim Free has proven himself to be invaluable as an advocate for a high-powered list of clients, which he serves as President/CEO of the influential lobbying firm The Smith-Free Group, co-founded in 1995 with Jim Smith.

His contributions to CMA specifically and to Country Music in general are perhaps even more impressive, given that he makes himself available to these constituencies at considerably below his normal rate — in other words, true to his name as well as his passion, for free.

“I serve on the CMA Board out of love,” the ex-officio CMA Board member insisted. “In the spirit of that great television series from years ago, working with the Board keeps me close to my ‘roots.’”

It’s hard to imagine anyone better situated to inform CMA’s Board on how Congress, the White House and the nation’s leaders see issues of importance to the music industry in general and Country in particular. Equally important, Free can draw from his extensive background in state and national politics to realistically assess the likelihood of legislation on those issues and offer suggestions on how each member can plan for and possibly influence its development. “I talk to CMA leadership frequently and report on the issues that affect all the players,” he explained. “And I try to provide advice to the Board on how to sometimes interact with different players in public policy.”

As an example, Free pointed to the CMA Board meeting held during March in Washington. Using his long-established contacts, he assembled a list of guest speakers that included administration officials and leaders of both parties in Congress, each equipped with insight into topics of concern to CMA members. “At lunch, we had a preliminary briefing from Julius Genachowski, the Chairman of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), on the national broadband plan, a week before he would address these issues before the public,” he noted. “We had Howard Berman (D-Calif.), Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives, talk to us about intellectual property rights worldwide — and then, in a broader discussion, he talked about Afghanistan and other hot spots. We also had Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), a younger member of the Senate who is becoming a leader in technology policy. You’ve got to keep learning, in any business you’re in.”

Free’s commitment to CMA is fueled by his love for Country Music. “If you are my age and you grew up in Middle Tennessee, you had two radio stations you could listen to late at night. And now that I’m a grownup,” he said, with a laugh, “my two favorite forms of music are Country Music and rhythm and blues, which were what I could hear back then on WSM and WLAC.”

After earning his bachelor’s degree in Economics and Political Science and a master’s in Public Administration, both from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tenn., Free worked at his alma mater until accepting a position as Administrative Assistant to Speaker of the Tennessee House Ned McWherter, who later served two terms as governor, and then as Chief Clerk and Executive Officer of the Tennessee House of Representatives. As Southern Regional Coordinator in Gov. Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign in 1976, he earned an appointment in 1977 as Special Assistant to the President for Congressional Affairs, which in turn led indirectly to his first contact with CMA.

When Carter opened the door toward normalizing diplomatic relations with China, the Chinese sent Chai Zemin as their representative in Washington. Somehow word leaked back to the White House that the Ambassador was fond of Country Music, which cued the President to present Free with an unusual request: Could he arrange a trip for the Ambassador to Nashville? He could and he did, with help from former CMA Executive Director Jo Walker-Meador and former BMI President and CEO Frances Preston.

“The weekend ended with a brunch on Sunday, out at Dixie and Tom T. Hall’s farm,” Free remembered. “Some of our greatest legends were with us: Johnny and June Cash, Miss Minnie Pearl and the list goes on and on. We were getting ready for the meal, and this being Nashville, you gave a blessing. That was awkward for a second, but then from the back of the room Johnny and June started singing ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken.’ I still get goose bumps when I think about that.”

Cash’s instincts for diplomatic outreach to the Ambassador were instructive in Free’s subsequent work on behalf of CMA. “Nashville is such a harmonious town in the way its players get along,” he said. “A lot of that is because of the Country Music Association. We can’t ever lose that part of our mission, which is that the different commercial interests within the music industry leave their guns and swords at the door for the betterment of Country Music.”

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Strange as it seems, the seeds of CMA’s initiative to facilitate development of the Library of Congress’ Country Music archive were planted on an airplane that carried a Congressional delegation on a visit to the Soviet Union in 1979.

Among those accompanying these dignitaries were Jim Free, at the time President Jimmy Carter’s Special Assistant for Congressional Affairs, and Dr. James H. Billington, Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a distinguished expert in Russian history, culture and contemporary affairs.

During the flight, the two young Washingtonians began an acquaintance that would grow into a close friendship over the years to come. It wasn’t until 2009, though, that an area of common interest inspired them to begin an historic joint initiative.

Since 1987, Billington had been the Librarian of Congress, the 13th individual to hold that high office since it was established in 1800. Free, meanwhile, had co-founded The Smith-Free Group in 1995 and served as President and CEO of the influential lobbying firm. Additionally, he had long volunteered his services as an ex-officio member of the CMA Board of Directors, for which he played an invaluable role in educating and advising on issues of concern to the music industry.

When the Board resolved to hold its March 2010 meetings in Washington, D.C., Free began laying the groundwork, lining up speakers who were authorities in copyright law, radio regulations and other relevant issues. It was obviously important to make use of the resources at hand in the nation’s capital, and he delivered on that challenge by confirming the participation of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Marybeth Peters, Register of Copyrights at the Library of Congress, along with Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), .Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), John Thune (R-S.D.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Reps. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

Still, Free wondered whether something extra might be attempted. “I started thinking, ‘What is something that the Board has never done? What is something that would be unique to Washington?’” he recalled. “And it struck me that the Library of Congress, which of course is our national archive, didn’t have much pertaining to Country Music.”

Free called his longtime friend Billington and arranged a meeting. “I said, ‘You know, there are only two or three really indigenous American music forms,’” Free said. “‘One is the African-American art form — spirituals, rhythm and blues, jazz and so much of the music that we all love. And the other came into the Appalachian region from Scots/Irish immigrants and has developed into what we call Country Music. I think we have a great opportunity to involve the Library of Congress more fully with Country Music.’ Dr. Billington agreed, and we began to talk about whether, when the Board came up in March, we could get more involved with the Library and vice versa.”

A second meeting was arranged for October 2009, involving Billington, Free, CMA Senior VP Bobette Dudley and members of the Library’s Music Division staff and the CMA Board, including President-Elect Steve Buchanan, Senior VP of Media and Entertainment, Gaylord Entertainment. Over breakfast served in the Librarian’s ceremonial office, attendees looked at items from the Library’s archive, including copyright records for several classic Country songs. “That whetted our appetite,” Free said. “But other than sheet music, scores and some historic recorded material, they didn’t have much from our genre.”

On this point, there was agreement and a determination to apply the resources of CMA to address this need. As a result, at the March Board meeting in Washington, Billington and CMA Board Chairman Steve Moore, Senior VP, AEG Live!, announced a project called “Story Tellers and Story Keepers: Creating and Preserving Country Music,” dedicated to expanding the Library’s acquisition and preservation of music collections, online presentations and educational outreach with regard to Country Music. The partnership began with Moore’s presentation to the Library of a leather-bound DVD collection documenting four decades of CMA Awards broadcasts, anniversary television specials and CMA Music Festival broadcasts.

Additionally, Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn, Bob DiPiero, Lorrie Morgan, John Rich of Big & Rich, Randy Scruggs and Victoria Shaw demonstrated the magic of the CMA Songwriters Series through two hours of performance and reflection onstage at the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium, with a musical and symbolic peak moment provided as Billington joined them for a performance of the Webb Pierce classic, “There Stands the Glass.” Nearly 400 dignitaries attended the event, including legislative leaders, New Zealand Ambassador Roy Ferguson and many others. The program will return to the Coolidge Auditorium on Saturday, Dec. 4, for an audience of invited guests as well as members of the public.

Looking back at these events and forward toward the Library’s growth as a resource for research in Country Music, Free noted, “As I told Steve Moore, I am proud to be involved in the beginning of a relationship that will benefit Country Music and CMA for a long, long time.”

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

For CMA members, the annual Leadership Music Digital Summit in Nashville offers an excellent opportunity to learn about and stay ahead of emerging trends in the music industry.

This is especially true for this year’s Summit, which is partnering for the first time with the Next Big Nashville music festival and conference to add a live music component to the event. The schedule includes daytime panels, interviews, discussion and networking Sept. 29 and 30, with nightly artist performances at a variety of venues Sept. 30 through Oct. 2.

The daily events will be divided into three “buckets” — touring, recorded music and music publishing, each of which will include its own keynote address and examinations of issues related to the broader topic. Among the confirmed highlights is a panel, moderated by Mitch Bainwol, CEO and Chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America, with participants including representatives from Cisco, Verizon and Arts+Labs, a coalition of creative and telecommunications members dedicated to preventing the Internet from becoming “a viral distribution mechanism that will choke off the Internet for consumers and future innovators and creators alike.”

“The Digital Summit is a forward looking event” said Mark Montgomery, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Claritas Capital and a member of the Leadership Music Board of Directors. “We’re going to focus on what's working, and what's next. We’ll look at issues from a 100,000-foot level first, then look at the major segments of the business and the issues and opportunities inside each of them at a very practical level. Great minds telling great stories of the new music business.”

The Summit’s live performances will include two shows dedicated to new Country Music, both at the Hard Rock Cafe, Oct. 1 and 2.

CMA members are invited to purchase their discounted tickets by visiting www.NBNSummit.Eventbrite.com and entering the discount code CMA2010. Admission for CMA members to the conference, breaks, evening parties and nighttime shows is $179, as compared with the regular price of $250. Check www.NBNSummit.com for the latest news and schedule updates.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Raised in Liberal, Kan., Jerrod Niemann left for Levelland, Texas, after graduating from high school. At South Plains College he studied music for two years; later, in Fort Worth, he self-released an album, Long Hard Road, and learned to win over club crowds not known for being charitable to new artists.

Resettled to Nashville in 2000, Niemann made co-writer connections that led to his songs appearing on nearly 10 million albums sold by Garth Brooks, Jamey Johnson, Julie Roberts, Blake Shelton and other notables. However, a record label deal gone bad and a broken relationship sank Niemann into a depression, during which he lost his motivation as a songwriter.

Encouraged by his friend Johnson, Niemann emerged from nearly a year of inertia, regained his focus and came up with a blueprint unlike any recent Country album. Though packed with a pair of covers, nine co-writes and one solo-written song, Judge Jerrod & The Hung Jury presents each selection as an element in an ambitious 20-track package. A melodramatic “movie-voice” intro, a string of “deep thoughts” muttered through heavy reverb to simulate introspective profundity, a late-night telephone enticement to romantic adventure, an irresistible request for Robert Earl Keen’s “The Buckin’ Song” — these are just a few of the humorous segues that turn Niemann’s Sea Gayle/Arista Nashville release, produced by Niemann and Dave Brainard, into a reminder that albums remain a vital, creatively challenging format.

The real draw here, though, is Niemann. Whether kicking back in the tropics on “Down in Mexico,” which Niemann wrote with Richie Brown and J. R. McCoy, fading into a hazy lounge ambience on the Niemann, Johnson and Dallas Davidson ballad “They Should Have Named You Cocaine” or layering nine vocal parts onto the single, “Lover, Lover,” written by Dan Pritzker of Sonia Dada, Niemann proves he’s well past the hard times.

IN HIS OWN WORDS Q&A

MUSICAL HERO
“Lefty Frizzell.”

DREAM DUET PARTNER
“I would love to do something with Jamey Johnson and Randy Houser because we all started out together.”

FAVORITE MODE OF TRANSPORTATION
“I’d rather drive, or ride a skateboard or Segway, than get on another airplane.”

FAVORITE FOOD ON THE ROAD
“Being with a major label and having to take care of myself, I’d say I’m entitled to a carrot dangling over a treadmill.”

MOMENT YOU WISH YOU COULD RELIVE
“Being at Times Square with my parents and my family, watching Garth Brooks singing ‘Good Ride Cowboy’ at the CMA Awards.”

On the Web: www.JerrodNiemannOfficial.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

For most artists, finding a unique niche and an identifiable sound are the first hurdles toward establishing a career. For James Otto, it’s “mission accomplished” on both fronts.

Otto, who records for Warner Bros. Records, has carved a place for himself as a leading purveyor of “Country Soul.” He mined that sound with the No. 1 single “Just Got Started Lovin’ You,” from his Sunset Man album, which debuted at No. 3 on Billboard’s all-genre Top 200 album chart and was the most played Country single of 2008, according to Country Aircheck.

On his new album, Shake What God Gave Ya (set for release Sept. 14), Otto expands on that brand, not only as a singer but also as co-writer of a number of tracks including “Lover Man,” flavored by some Memphis-style funk guitar (written with Al Anderson and Jim Femino), as well as the slow gospel-flavored waltz “Let’s Just Let Go” (Femino, Arlos Smith), the dramatic testimony of “Solders & Jesus” (Otto, Chris Wallin) and the album’s first single, the easy-flowing yet sultry “Groovy Little Summer Song” (Anderson, Carson Chamberlain).

“I’m going to be unapologetic about it, certainly,” said Otto. “We’re definitely doing sexy love songs and sultry songs about one of many people’s favorite subjects. The girls that love ‘Just Got Started Lovin’ You’ are going to have a lot on this album to love because there’s a lot of groovy, feel-good, soulful songs on here.”

While that’s not all that Shake What God Gave Ya has to offer, that Country/soul connection runs deep here, not just in the sound but also in the history of some of this music. Otto actually used a guitar that once belonged to Otis Redding to write “Your Good Thing’s Gone Bad” years ago in Muscle Shoals, Ala. He was with co-writers James LeBlanc, Gary Nichols and Jon Nicholson at FAME Studios, in the office of studio co-founder and producer Rick Hall, when Otto spotted a guitar on the wall and a photo of Redding holding that same instrument. The legendary soul singer had played it on a demo of “You Left the Water Running,” which Hall had co-written with Oscar Franck and Dan Penn.

“Instruments have a soul and carry it with them,” Otto reflected. “Every guitar has a story to tell. I started playing that guitar part for ‘Your Good Thing’s Gone Bad’ while thinking about that kind of stuff because I was trying to capture that kind of mojo anyway.”

This song holds an honored place on Otto’s new album for another reason: When playing it live, he and his band would morph in the middle into Ronnie Milsap’s “Stranger in My House,” which has a similar feel. That mash-up gave Otto the idea for Milsap to guest on “Your Good Thing’s Gone Bad,” which appears on the album without any segues to other tunes.

According to Otto, that track “is one of the things I’m most proud of on the record. To get to work with one of my heroes and hear that voice come out of that man is just incredible. It was an opportunity I’ll always remember the rest of my life. I started listening again to some of the soulful influence of those Ronnie Milsap records and some of the sexier stuff by Conway Twitty.”

Otto describes his genre-jumping sound to “a blending of all the things I loved as a kid and that I’ve loved through my life into one kind of music. I draw from multiple places — rock ‘n’ roll and classic soul — to try to make a sound that is appealing to me and also appealing to my audience. If I could be a Country Music Al Green, that would be exactly where I want to be. I love singing those kinds of songs. I love playing them and writing them.”

That interplay of influences also shapes Otto’s songwriting. “All the people I loved always had more than one element to the music they were making, like the guy who actually made me want to play Country Music in the first place — Hank Williams Jr.,” he said. “He always talked about his daddy moaning the blues, but Hank Jr. specifically went further on to bring in R&B sounds and rock ‘n’ roll sounds and to incorporate real blues and boogie-woogie into Country Music. Those things influenced me very much.

“I look back on Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, a classic Ray Charles album, as a real primer for what I’m trying to do,” Otto elaborated. “And that’s to take the feel of some of those classic R&B songs and sing about things we all understand Country Music is — things from the heart, all the great Country themes of love and loss and heartache. If you can have pop Country and rock Country and all those things, you can certainly have Country Soul.”

Country radio has taken note of Otto’s distinct voice and presentation. Yet mixed with the support he has received from the on-air community, Otto is sometimes perceived as yet to reach his full creative stride. For instance, John Sebastian, PD, WWQM/Madison, Wis., described Otto’s songwriting as “clever and contagious and sometimes amazingly insightful. He’s unique because he really doesn’t sound like anyone else in Country Music.”

At the same time, Sebastian characterized Otto as “underdeveloped. He’s not broken through like he deserves to do. He’s one of the most talented of all our Country artists yet still waits for his big breakthrough.”

Peter Strickland, Senior VP of Brand Management and Sales, Warner Music Nashville, aims to change that perception by working toward more “consistency at radio” for Otto. “If you don’t have that, it’s hard to put him on that pedestal of superstardom.”

To put that process into gear, initial marketing for the new album included some unusual targeting of Country dance clubs for “Groovy Little Summer Song.” The idea, according to Strickland, was to “build a familiarity at the clubs, so hopefully it will connect the dots at radio.”

The record label also shifted its messaging around Otto from the previous “biggest voice in Country Music” to emphasizing the Country Soul concept. “We’re leaning that way because the music is trending that way,” Strickland noted. “That will be our strength in branding him.”

Otto credits co-producing Sunset Man with John Rich for preparing him to share production responsibilities on his new album, this time with Paul Worley. And he benefitted as a songwriter too, from the recognition he’d earned for co-writing the Jamey Johnson hit “In Color,” with Johnson and Lee Thomas Miller, cited as Song of the Year at the CMA Awards in 2009.

“Working with Paul Worley this time around was a huge thing,” Otto said. “He’s been involved in my career at a lot of different points. He helped me get my original record deal on Mercury Records Nashville, and when I left Mercury he signed me to Warner Bros. We’ve always wanted to work together, and this time around it was the perfect opportunity to reach out to him and ask him to be a part of it.

He’s the consummate musician. He’s also the consummate producer, so I can pick his brain. He also has trusted me to take the reins and gave me room to spread out a little bit and room to learn. It’s great to have that kind of ear to work with.”

“James is one of the best singers I’ve ever worked with, especially at delivering that soulful feeling,” said Worley, who met Otto when he executive-produced the singer’s debut, Days of Our Lives, in 2004. “So it made sense for us to gravitate toward that. James can sing anything, so he needed to find his focus. And that Country Soul focus spoke the most to him. I did push him a little outside of that, though, so at the end of the day we had an album with Country Soul at its core but other types of music that color that from out at the edges.”

In contrast to some new artists who have rocketed seemingly overnight to the top of the charts, Otto’s career has been a slower, steadier ascent. That suits him fine because, he insisted, it “keeps you more grounded. I feel like it’s made me more humble but also wanting it more and really digging in. It’s given me time to really focus in on who I think I am musically and try to deliver that every time. I might have had time to overthink it, but I keep hoping that it is going to work out for me and keep pushing forward and keep working.

What it has given me a chance to do, mostly, is write a lot of songs. I would never have had an ‘In Color’ had I been on the road all the time instead of writing songs. The songwriting has really given me more confidence in my abilities than anything else.”

And he appreciates what he calls “a lot of leeway” that Warner Bros. has given him to make the music he wants to make. “They just kind of handed the reins over and said, ‘We love what you’re doing. Keep doing it.’ So I feel like the overall project is very representative of where I’m at musically and what my live show is — and that’s just what I wanted.”

On the Web: www.JamesOtto.net

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Meghan Linsey came to Nashville from New Orleans, where by the time she was 15 she had already opened for Gary Allan, Brad Paisley, Blake Shelton and Travis Tritt, among other headliners. Her future partner Joshua Scott Jones had started writing and performing at 13 before leaving Charleston, Ill., for Los Angeles. He gigged at some of the city’s top alternative venues, though not enough to escape a borderline homeless lifestyle. Eventually, he wound up in Nashville too.

Then, during karaoke night at a club in Printer’s Alley in Downtown Nashville, they met and realized that their styles meshed. This was confirmed when they won top honors on the 2009 season of CMT’s “Can You Duet” as Steel Magnolia. Their prize included a deal with Big Machine Records, who released the duo’s debut five-song Steel Magnolia EP in February.

Written by Chris Stapleton and Trent Willmon, their first single, “Keep On Lovin’ You” peaked at No. 4 and became the highest-charting debut single from a male/female Country duet on the Billboard Hot Country Songs Chart. A catchy guitar lick kicks it off, but the payoff is in the vocals: Jones takes the first verse with an approachable, almost conversational delivery; Linsey sparkles on the second, rising quickly from a honeyed intimacy into an explosive, soulful chorus.

There, as in the lines they trade and thread together on “Ooh La La” and in the buildup from a laconically humorous opening to the emotional finale of “The Edge of Goodbye,” Jones and Linsey blend their vocals artfully without losing the characteristics that make each of them unique. Their writing shines too; in addition to penning these two songs, Jones and Linsey wrote or co-wrote seven of their debut album’s 12 tracks.

Produced by Dann Huff and scheduled for release Sept. 21, this self-titled debut proves that Steel Magnolia can duet — and do it memorably.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS Q&A

DREAM DUET PARTNER
JONES: “Cher.”
LINSEY: “Josh, of course — ha ha!”

SONG YOU’D LOVE TO COVER
JONES: “‘My Favorite Mistake,’ by Sheryl Crow.”
LINSEY: “’Girls Just Want to Have Fun,’ by Cyndi Lauper.”

PHRASE YOU SAY OVER AND OVER AGAIN
JONES: “Where are we going?”
LINSEY: “Where’s Josh?”

SOMETHING WE’D NEVER GUESS ABOUT YOU
JONES: “I have a huge appetite.”
LINSEY: “When I wake up, I look like a rooster. My hair literally sticks up in all directions. It’s pretty hilarious!”

On the Web: www.MySpace.com/SteelMagnoliaMusic

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

With all the technology at his disposal, meticulous preparations dating back to January and expertise marshaled by the roughly 50 members of his crew, for Executive Producer Robert Deaton emotion is the key to documenting this year’s CMA Music Festival.

All of the footage that ABC will unfurl 8-11 PM/ET on Wednesday, Sept. 1, in “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” was inspired by the fusion of audience and artists that happens at this annual event. This is why Deaton always looks for an opportunity to briefly leave his post in the video truck during the nightly concerts at LP Field and walk through the crowd.

“Normally I can’t do that until we’re on the last artist of the night and we’ve already got the song that we want,” he said. “But when and if I can, I’ll go out by the stage and watch the rest of the performance. It feels totally different than it does in the truck, and I want to be reminded of how awesome an experience it is to be out there.”

The goal of conveying that feeling to viewers took on a new dimension this year. Deaton understood that four months would separate the epic Nashville flood of early May and the ABC broadcast. Yet the story of recovery, unity and celebration would remain vital, which is why that theme surfaces right at the top of the show, with an opening that differs dramatically from those in previous Festival specials.

Without giving it away, Deaton noted, “I love that at the very end a woman is holding up a poster that says, ‘There is no flood that’s going to stop this party.’ That’s really the attitude of the musicians and the neighbors who gave back. That’s why we ended up with that opening.”

Immersion into the spirit of the Festival guided Deaton’s approach. Working for the second consecutive year with a time slot expanded from two to three hours, he was able to feature several artists doing consecutive songs rather than cutting from one artist to another in a more constricted time frame. “There’s more breathing room,” he explained. “And it just feels better to me. It feels like what it is. It’s CMA Music Festival.”

To deepen that feeling, Deaton’s crews went beyond the LP Field shows and into the heat of the action in Downtown Nashville. One spent a full day with Lady Antebellum, tracking activities that included an impulsive, unscheduled visit to the Greased Lightning Fan Fair Hall. There are “Nighttime Nashville” segments too, capturing two all-star performances before a jam-packed crowd at Fuel Bar & Nightclub. Also, “skits” feature artists riffing and ad libbing, often with sly humor. (Note to viewers: Despite what you’ll see in one sketch, Brad Paisley actually does know who Carrie Underwood is.)

To put a final unique stamp on the package, Tim McGraw was brought onboard to debut as host. “If you can get Tim, you get him,” Deaton explained. “It had been years since he played the Festival, so when I invited him to perform and he said yes, I got to thinking how cool it would be for him to host as well. He turned out to be incredibly quick and fast and completely awesome to work with.”

As Deaton’s crews roamed the Festival grounds, so did a five-person ABC Digital Media crew gathering material to produce about 30 one-to-two-minute viral segments to promote tune-in to the ABC on-air special. Beginning Aug. 9, these clips will post on www.ABC.com and other Disney Web sites as well as on Hulu, YouTube and other online destinations. Here, too, the goal is to evoke the Festival experience through a “you are there” perspective.

“There wasn’t a lot of pre-production in the sense of scripting and arranging schedules,” said David Beebe, Director of Video Production, Disney/ABC Television Digital Video Group. “A lot was shot on the fly. Most clips focus on single artists, but we’ve got some that put them in skits. We have one with Blake Shelton bringing his dogs and his mom over to Kellie Pickler’s bus and asking her to watch them while he goes onstage. We go to fan club parties with artists. We talk with Martina McBride at her Blackbird Studio. So there’s a wide range, from newcomers to bigger names, all of it with a feeling of exclusivity and intimacy.”

“CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” will also be promoted through multiple media channels, including TV spots on CMT, GAC, Hallmark, Outdoor, SOAPnet, TLC, TV Land and others; on national and local Country radio programs; via print ads in Country Weekly, Field & Stream and Outdoor Life; online through ads on Country Aircheck Consumer E-News, Facebook and YouTube and through targeted keyword searches on Google and Yahoo; through sweepstakes, promotions and ads on mobile platforms; and much more. Editorial coverage of the upcoming broadcast will be provided by print outlets including Entertainment Weekly, OK Magazine, People and TV Guide, and on television with Associated Press Television, “CMT Insider,” Fox News Channel, GAC’s “Headline Country,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” among many others. Also, Tribune Media will syndicate an interview with Keith Urban to more than 300 newspapers and Web sites.

Artists appearing on “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” include Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Billy Currington, Alan Jackson, Jamey Johnson, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Tim McGraw, Reba McEntire, Justin Moore, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Rascal Flatts, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Josh Turner, Uncle Kracker, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Zac Brown Band and surprise guests.

Directed by Gary Halvorson, “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” is filmed in high definition and broadcast in 720 Progressive (720P), ABC’s selected HDTV format, with 5.1 channel surround sound.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

The world can see what happens when each star featured on ABC’s “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” is in the spotlight. The music thunders, the stage lights blaze, fans dance in the aisles and high in the stands at LP Field.

But what do performers experience before hitting the stage? For the story on how they spend their time from arrival to departure on their night to shine at the stadium, there’s no better source than Carrie Paddock. As Talent Executive, she is involved integrally with scheduling performances, confirming which songs will be played, setting up times for soundchecks, and generally liaising between artists and Executive Producer Robert Deaton on anything that pertains to making sure everything runs smoothly all four nights.

It may sound simple, like putting a puzzle together. But it’s more like working with pieces that fit only at certain times and dates. “For example,” Paddock said, “Tim McGraw and Lady Antebellum were on tour this year together. They were available Thursday night only, and they had to get back on their buses right after they performed and get out of town. So often we can work with certain artists only at certain specific times.”

Even so, once the sets are confirmed, the process streamlines considerably. When it starts and ends depends on when the performance is scheduled, but otherwise the routine is more or less the same, thanks to meticulous planning and the precision of well-prepared volunteers and staff. Based on Paddock’s account, one regimen might run like this:

9 AM The artist’s crew arrives at LP Field to unload equipment for his set.

10:45 AM The artist arrives at LP Field, driving and parking his own car next to his tour bus and being driven to the stage in a golf cart. “Most everybody who performed his year lives in Nashville,” Paddock noted. “Carrie Underwood did arrive with her tour manager, who picked her up. Tim McGraw and Faith Hill drove themselves with their family. Jason Aldean drove himself. So did Kellie Pickler. They’re so self-sufficient.”

11 AM The crew finishes setting up the artist’s gear and begins a half-hour soundcheck with the artist’s band.

11:30 AM The artist takes to the stage, speaks briefly with Deaton and Director Gary Halvorson, and rehearses, with Deaton and his crew taking notes especially for any performances that involve special effects.

11:50 AM After wrapping up rehearsal, the artist leaves for any other events he may have scheduled that day, perhaps an autograph session at Greased Lightning Fan Fair Hall or a fan club party. (Artists whose soundchecks begin later in the day, perhaps from 3:30 PM onward to the last one ending just after 5 PM, will likely stay at LP Field until the shows begin.

5 PM The artist returns to the stadium to have some dinner, relax and hang out with friends who are slated to perform tonight as well.

6 PM Hair and makeup specialists start getting performers ready.

7 PM A golf cart carries the artist to an area designated for interviews. Deaton may conduct an interview with him to air on the ABC special. Escorts will also lead the artist to sit-downs with some of the approximately 10 reporters, from CMT, GAC, USA Today, People and other outlets, each one set up in a space marked off by black drapes on portable stands.

7:50 PM The interviews wrapped, the artist is driven to a private green room, from which he shortly passes through a door onto a small stage and fields questions from another group of reporters in a press conference setting.

8:00 PM A short ride carries the artist to another green room, behind the outdoor stage. Here, he changes clothes, gets a last-minute touch-up on hair and makeup, warms up his voice and hangs out with his crew and members of his band, who have donned their stage clothes on their tour bus.
8:15 PM A knock at the green room door alerts the artist to be ready in five minutes.

8:20 PM Another knock, and the artist and his group are driven to wings of the stage, where they put on wireless microphones and other last-minute essentials.

8:30 PM Show time!

Things wind down quickly after the performance, as each artist exits stage left. Some may choose to visit more with friends in the green room. Others might do a few more interviews or greet fans gathered near the tour bus parking lot. But our artist, like most, has another show to do tomorrow night, in some other town, so most likely he is already on his way before the fireworks explode over LP Field to signal the end of another unforgettable night at CMA Music Festival.

“CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” is a three-hour television special to air Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 8/7c on the ABC Television Network. Hosted by Tim McGraw, the “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” television special features performances by Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Billy Currington, Alan Jackson, Jamey Johnson, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, McGraw, Justin Moore, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Rascal Flatts, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift, Josh Turner, Carrie Underwood, Uncle Kracker, Keith Urban, and Zac Brown Band.

"CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is executive produced by Robert Deaton and directed by Gary Halvorson. The 2010 CMA Music Festival is organized and produced by the Country Music Association. "CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is filmed in high definition and broadcast in 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format, with 5.1 channel surround sound.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

For Robert Deaton, Executive Producer of ABC’s “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” the intricate preparation for months in advance of the epic LP Field shows and varied daytime activities, the meticulous execution needed for a 50-person crew to capture four days and nights of excitement and the editing required to boil that content down to one three-hour special are offset by two elements: his love for the music and the satisfaction of completing his mission.

Last year, “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” expanded from two hours to its present three-hour length. What did you learn from that transition that you were able to apply to your work this year?

I was worried last year, hoping we could sustain the show for three hours. This year, having done it once, I think the show is better at three hours. There are more performances but also more breathing room. We do have a full show, but by giving certain artists two performances back to back, it feels more like what it is – a concert. We can touch down and stay with Carrie Underwood or Rascal Flatts for a while; that gives us a feeling for who they are as artists and what it’s like to see them in concert.

When does work begin on the production?

I start working in January. The first stage involves booking the artists. Figuring out schedules and who is available when is not easy. By March, I have a good idea of who’s in. We start having the crew come over at the beginning of May – production staff, office staff. During that same six months, we’re designing the new set and picking songs. We do screen content for everybody who’s on the special. There are at least 18 screen content concepts that have to be generated from scratch.

You also executive-produce ABC’s live broadcast of the CMA Awards, which airs this year on Nov. 10. How do those two events differ in how they creatively challenge you?

The rush of the live aspect of the CMA Awards is exhilarating, and the Festival is like a family reunion. We try to put the pedal to the metal in the Festival. It’s a summer show. But there’s more drama involved with the Awards. You never know who’s going to win. You have anxiety leading to the Awards show because you’re live for three hours. But the Festival is just plain fun! You know, Brad Paisley came offstage at the Festival this year and said to me, “That was awesome! How great was that crowd?”

How often can you pull away from your work during the Festival and just enjoy the energy that’s going on during the LP Field concerts?

I try to go out once every night. It feels totally different out there than it does in the video truck. If we’re on the last artist of the night and we’ve already got their song, I’ll go out beside the stage and watch because I want to see the rest of the performance. I want to know what it feels like to be out there. And it’s awesome.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

It’s been a while since Tony Brown worked full-time as a touring and session-playing musician. In those days, whether laying keyboard tracks in Nashville studios or playing on the road with Elvis Presley, Emmylou Harris and other headliners, Brown saw the world mainly from a piano bench, his glory years as a legendary producer and record label executive still somewhere over the horizon.

This year, though, he was persuaded to step out from his headquarters at Tony Brown Enterprises and slip back into his musician guise for a couple of gigs. After all, even Brown would have trouble declining Keith Urban’s invitation to play with him, first on the May 11 broadcast of “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” and then a month later on the LP Field Stage during CMA Music Festival.

“I hadn’t played onstage in 25 years,” Brown said. “But he was going to do ‘Tumbling Dice’ on ‘Jimmy Fallon,’ and I think he called me because that’s an Elvis type of song, like ‘Mystery Train’ or ‘See See Rider.’ You just bang away on three chords, which is what I always did best; I always played in that Elton John/Billy Joel/Nicky Hopkins vein. So I went and did it.”

That appearance proved to be so much fun that Urban recruited some of the same players for his CMA Music Festival appearance a month later. (The repeat performers were his regular guitarist Brian Nutter, bassist Jerry Flowers and drummer Chris McHugh, with Karen Fairchild and Kimberly Roads of Little Big Town plus Sarah Buxton on backup vocals.) This time he picked the Beatles classic “With a Little Help from My Friends,” using the Joe Cocker version as the foundation for their own intense interpretation. Then the next day, they took it to the stage at LP Field.

Given his long hiatus from performing, Brown admitted to being a bit concerned over whether he would be able to find the pocket – his place within the groove. So he pared his monitor mix to the basics: kick drum, voices and his own piano. The result? “It was truly a thrill,” he recalled. “To play that particular song with Keith Urban in front of 50,000 people right after the flood in Nashville, that can only happen once in your lifetime.”

That was confirmed by the emotion of the audience’s response. So overwhelming was their reception that Brown joked with Urban as they left the stage, “We should have done ‘Tumbling Dice’ as an encore. After all, we have a two-song repertoire!”

Does this mean that Brown will be putting on his session-player hat again? “No, I couldn’t take the trauma,” he replied, laughing. “But if I can get my musician jones out three or four minutes at a pop every once in a while with Keith Urban, I’m there, man. You know, I became friends a long time ago with Don Was, who plays bass on a lot of the records he produces. He recently told me, ‘Man, you’ve got to play every once in a while. Promise me you’ll do it. It’ll remind you of why you do what you do.’

“I remembered him saying that as we were rehearsing this song,” Brown concluded, with a smile. “So when we’d finished playing, I called and left a message that I’d kept that promise.”

“CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” is a three-hour television special to air Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 8/7c on the ABC Television Network. Hosted by Tim McGraw, the “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” television special features performances by Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Billy Currington, Alan Jackson, Jamey Johnson, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, McGraw, Justin Moore, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Rascal Flatts, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift, Josh Turner, Carrie Underwood, Uncle Kracker, Keith Urban, and Zac Brown Band.

"CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is executive produced by Robert Deaton and directed by Gary Halvorson. The 2010 CMA Music Festival is organized and produced by the Country Music Association. "CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is filmed in high definition and broadcast in 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format, with 5.1 channel surround sound.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Fantasizing about stardom is a common pastime for many music fans. What music lover hasn’t occasionally dreamed of being famous? One interactive way to indulge that dream, and to practice singing, is to visit MySpace Karaoke at KSolo.MySpace.com. Launched in April 2008 as a channel within the overall MySpace site (www.MySpace.com), MySpace Karaoke now attracts more than 1 million visitors per month, and it has more than 5 million streams monthly.

Using state-of-the-art streaming and recording technology, MySpace Karaoke allows users to sing, record and play back personalized renditions of their favorite songs to share with friends. Country Music claims a big part of this vast catalog, with more than 1,500 titles ranging from classics including Hank Williams’ “Move It On Over” to dozens of current hits such as the Lady Antebellum chart topper “American Honey” and Miranda Lambert’s “The House That Built Me.” MySpace Karaoke is easy to use and the service is free. Its growing popularity isn’t surprising when one considers how it overlaps with several cultural trends. The channel appeals to a number of user demographics, including fans of karaoke events at nightclubs, online music entertainment, social networking sites, video-sharing sites and/or TV talent competitions such as “American Idol” and “America’s Got Talent.”

“Our channel has great content for everybody,” said Mari Bower, Executive Director of Business Development and GM, MySpace Karaoke. “Music is a universal language, and no matter who you are — or how old you are, or what you look like — if you have a favorite song and you want to sing it, then this platform is for you.”

According to the fourth-quarter 2009 follow-up data to CMA’s Country Music Consumer Segmentation Study, 78 percent of Country fans now have home Internet access, 40 percent of online fans visit YouTube to access Country content monthly and 18 percent visit MySpace each month. Trends point to continued growth in online engagement.

One of the primary ways that MySpace Karaoke attracts new users is through contests that encourage users to record and submit their own versions of songs. The grand prize package typically includes concert tickets, airfare to the show, hotel accommodations and the opportunity to participate in an artist meet-and-greet. Participants as varied as CMA Music Festival, Elvis Presley Enterprises, R&B superstar Alicia Keys and the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team have sponsored MySpace Karaoke contests, as have Country artists including Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Lady Antebellum, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire and Taylor Swift.

The Lady Antebellum contest launched in late May. “I think our fans will love MySpace Karaoke,” said vocalist Hillary Scott. “We already know how much fun they are! I can’t wait to see their versions of our songs and meet the winner.”

Scott, along with the other members of Lady Antebellum — Dave Haywood and Charles Kelley — announced the contest with a promotional video that was posted online. Users could click on a banner to view the promo clip and to record their own version of “American Honey,” “Need You Now” or “I Run to You.”

MySpace Karaoke’s contest with McBride ran for two weeks in March, and the singer personally selected the grand prize winner. Contestants had the option to record one of three songs from McBride’s latest album, Shine, as well as two of her past hits.

“It was fun to look through the entries and flattering that so many people took the time to enter and sing my songs,” said McBride. The grand prize winner, Jennifer Miera, 32, of Rio Rancho, N.M., who recorded a version of “I Just Call You Mine,” received travel and hotel accommodations, concert tickets and a meet-and-greet with McBride on May 1 at the Gwinnett Arena, just outside of Atlanta. “Martina has always been such an inspiration to me, and meeting her was a real dream come true,” said Miera. “We had such a wonderful time!”

For fans, the appeal of such contests is obvious. From the artist’s perspective, participation can result in a spike in sales, as Bower explained with regard to The Fray, a rock band that used MySpace Karaoke to spread the word about its new album.

“We did a promotion with the band when they were pushing their new album and their single ‘Syndicate,’” Bower said. “Everyone loves their older hits, like ‘How to Save a Life,’ but The Fray wanted people to get to know the new song, which they were trying to get up the charts. We structured our contest so that the only way you could win the grand prize — a trip to see The Fray live, opening up for U2 — was to sing the new song. Users really gravitated toward it, with 75 percent of the entries based on the new song. And through our partnership with iTunes, we added a link so that users could very easily click to buy that song,

‘Syndicate.’ They could listen to it and practice it before recording their own version. The contest was a great success, and it showed that people would sing a song that they didn’t know very well yet. The band was very pleased with the promotion and the engagement around that song.”

MySpace Karaoke contests generate thousands of “viral” videos that fans share with their friends. In addition to being an effective marketing tool, the videos are just plain fun. Bower said, “When we did our program with Dierks Bentley, he loved the first-prize video so much that he actually played it at several of his concerts, projecting it on a video screen for his entire audience.” 

Bower has gained insight into what makes a contest successful. “The more that the artist participates, the better the results we see at the end,” she explained. “For most of our contests, like the Reba McEntire one, we do video promotions where we get the artist to record a message for our users. Then we display that throughout the site. It’s a huge engagement factor because that makes it very personal for the users. The other key is picking a great selection of content. Having a good mix of old and new songs works well because if you just include new songs, it’s a little hard for some users. Also, you want to make sure the songs are melodic and relatively easy to sing, so that users will take them on and share them with their friends.”

The channel’s success is due in large part to its advanced technology and its user-friendly functions. All that a user needs is a computer, a microphone and a Webcam. Professional-quality audio can be achieved through various effects, such as echo and reverb. Users can change the key if they are unable to hit certain notes.

Another reason for MySpace Karaoke’s fast-spreading profile is a feature the company calls “Mikksu,” a playful reference to the Japanese pronunciation of the word “mix.” This allows a user to record a song and then pass it along to friends, who also perform the song. The resulting video is a multitrack recording with a split screen, showing two, three or four users singing simultaneously.

“We created the Mikksu for a promotion with the TV show ‘Glee,’ which is all about group singing,” Bower said. “The idea was to create an online glee club, so that you and your friends could do four-part harmony. But the amazing thing is that individual users started making these mini-movies, where one person sings all the different vocal parts. It’s something that we never even thought of. People will use props, dress up in costumes and choreograph their movements in time to the music. It’s phenomenal.”

Other MySpace Karaoke features include messaging, which allows users to leave feedback for others; ratings, so users can rate performances; fans/favorites, allowing users to add others as their favorites and be notified whenever a favorite performer records a new song; and a recommendation engine that recommends songs and recordings to users, based on what they record and listen to on the site.

More than 15,000 recordings are made each month at MySpace Karaoke, and the average user spends about 30 minutes on the site during a typical session. Country Music is tied with pop as the most popular genre on the channel.

As of April, MySpace had nearly 70 million total unique users in the United States. While many visitors to www.MySpace.com are males in the 14– 24 age range, the demographic data for MySpace Karaoke reflects a much more diverse audience that skews slightly more female than male.

“Our audience is very broad,” Bower noted. “We have junior-high students on MySpace Karaoke, and one of our favorite users is Sam, who is 78 years old and lives in a nursing home. He’s not a typical MySpacer by any stretch, but he’s very active. Our users can be stay-at-home moms, or people who act in community theater, or people who sing in their church choir. They just love to perform, and they use our product to do that. Then they can share it with anybody in the United States.”

One of those performers might be a future Country Music star, just waiting to be discovered. “Deepening fans’ loyalty is certainly one of the core things we do, and we’ve been very successful at it,” Bower said. “MySpace Karaoke is a place for artist-fan engagement, but we also see it as an exciting place for talent discovery.”

Dreamers who pose in front of a mirror while singing into a hairbrush now have the technology to feel like superstars, if only for a few glorious minutes. The pop music world currently has top-selling acts that were discovered via www.MySpace.com, so it’s only a matter of time before future Country Music sensations begin their quest for fame by recording a MySpace Karaoke video. Who knows? Maybe one day that clip will be shown in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. After all, some dreams do come true.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

It’s the year 2000. “Gladiator” is named Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Gas costs around $1.60 a gallon. The Tennessee Titans make it to the Super Bowl, only to lose to the St. Louis Rams by seven points. “Hanging chad” enters the political vernacular. Entertainer of the Year is among the honors extended to the Dixie Chicks at the CMA Awards. And a new group named Rascal Flatts, composed of Jay DeMarcus, Gary LeVox and Joe Don Rooney, releases its debut single, “Prayin’ for Daylight,” written by Steve Bogard and Rick Giles.

Fast-forward a decade. The trio has sold more than 20 million albums, with the latest, Unstoppable, certified Platinum and all the rest achieving multi-Platinum status. They had one of the top-grossing tours over the past few years and hit the top of the charts 11 times. Their six consecutive Vocal Group of the Year triumphs at the CMA Awards tie the record set by The Statler Brothers, who won nine times overall in that category. They have played 400 dates as a headline act, more than 700 since 2000, with a ticket tally of nearly six million. These shows have included three consecutive sold-out performances at Madison Square Garden and the first and only concert by a Country artist to sell out Wrigley Field.

They are also marking their 10th anniversary in the business with numerous celebrations, which included honoring their loyal fans at CMA Music Festival by signing autographs and performing a short acoustic set in the Greased Lightning Fan Fair Hall. Their scorching Festival set at LP Field was a practice run for their “JC Penney Presents Rascal Flatts Nothing Like This Tour.” On this trek, the guys take their fans on a musical journey, spanning their 10 years of hits, from that first single to their most recent smash, “Unstoppable.”

They also entertained attendees at Country Radio Seminar in February by showing somewhat amusing older band photographs and performing some of their hits. That same month they paid tribute to Blair Daly, Marcus Hummon, Wendell Mobley, Jeffrey Steele, Neil Thrasher and the rest of the more than 75 songwriters who have contributed to the band’s six studio albums with a festive event at the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.

“That was a lot of fun,” recalled Rooney. “They’ve been such supporters of ours for the past 10 years. It all starts with a hit song, a great song, so we thought it would be cool to give back to them. It was a wonderful evening, and they all got up and sang their songs that they wrote for us. It was really cool to hear them do their versions of so many great songs.”

There is no sure-fire way to achieve success in the music business, much less sustain that achievement for a decade. But for Rascal Flatts, the formula truly does begin with the music. “We just really concentrated and focused so hard on picking and writing and cutting the greatest songs that we could cut,” said LeVox. “I think our personalities have helped, but it all comes down to the music that we’ve cut and the lives that we’ve touched that way. Being fans of music first, we always, from Day One, put on a live show that we would want to go see. I think all those kinds of things combined really helped get us where we are. But I would say our music has probably been the No. 1 factor.”

Many of the band’s peers agree, especially those who have known them the longest. “The Flatts came to our fan club party with an acoustic guitar and three great voices,” said Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn of Brooks & Dunn in a written statement, recalling their first meeting. “Joe Don, Gary and Jay are all blessed with the gift of talent God gave. They can write, play, sing and entertain millions with an ease that is unmatched. … But most importantly, they are great guys who we are proud to call friends.”

Rascal Flatts traveled with Brooks & Dunn on the duo’s “Neon Circus and Wild West Show” in 2003; they also opened shows for Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith and Jo Dee Messina before they began headlining their own tours. Part of their success over the years stems from watching and learning from those acts who took them on the road.

“We got to steal a lot of their ideas when it came time to headline,” said DeMarcus, with a laugh, as Rooney added, “That’s actually a true statement.”

“It really puts you in a place, in all due respect to all of those acts, because they were certainly instrumental to us,” DeMarcus continued. “But it puts us in a place to learn what to do and what not to do, and you can learn a little bit of both by being out there with big headlining tours like that. And we learned how we wanted to run our crew, how we wanted to treat our people. They were very good tours. They treated their people very well, and they treated us as an opening act very well.”

According to Trey Turner, who co-manages Rascal Flatts with Doug Nichols under the auspices of Turner & Nichols and Associates, there is plenty for upcoming artists to learn from the example of this group in terms of staying successful and relevant. “I think it’s all due to the act,” he suggested. “They have to stay hungry. They have to want to keep going, because you get into making the money that they make, it’s not about where they were 10 years ago. It’s about what the next 10 years is going to be. They have to want it, and they have to want to go do it, because this is a very tough business and it’s so easy to say, ‘I’m gonna stay at the house this year, or two years or three years.’

“The other thing that is so important for a group is the bond between the people,” Turner continued. “It’s so easy for a group to not make it, just personality-wise. It’s like a second marriage, and they have to really be committed to each other, so that’s a big factor in a group. The other factor is the music. It’s not about who wrote what or who publishes what. It really gets down to every album they cut. They look at the best song and the best song wins.”

Summing up, Turner said, “To me, when you’ve got those three things going together, it’s a magical combination because then you’re going to be successful and you can go compete. The business is too hard to put out one bad song after another. So if you’ve got them wanting to be together and wanting to be a group and wanting to cut hit songs, and you still have that hunger to go fight and do what you need to do and get up and do radio and videos and press, now you’re talking about the next 10 years. That’s what they’ve rededicated themselves to do.”

The immediate future for Rascal Flatts includes a new album, Nothing Like This, scheduled to release Nov. 16 on their new label, Big Machine Records. According to DeMarcus, it will complete the 10-year saga by harking back to aspects of the band’s earlier sound. “The first couple of records we did with Dann (Huff, producer), Me and My Gang and Still Feels Good, we went down a path to where we really captured the high energy of our shows — a lot of big arena-rock sound and big massive ballads. It was a bit of a departure for us from Feels Like Today and Melt, which tended to be more rootsy and a little more Country and focused on our vocals more than our big-band presentation.”

“I feel we’ve recaptured a little bit of what the old Flatts records were about, both with being a little more Country and a little more focused on the vocals and not so much on the bigness of things,” Rooney concurred. “We’ve gone back to a little bit more of the heart and soul of what the older Flatts (albums) were about. It feels like a new beginning, like we’re evolving a little bit and showing some growth once again.”

With their former label, Lyric Street Records, shuttered, the group expressed its enthusiasm over joining the Big Machine family at a special media event in a vast open suite overlooking Downtown Nashville from the 22nd floor of The Pinnacle at Symphony Place. Following opening remarks from Scott Borchetta, President/CEO, Big Machine Label Group, Rascal Flatts emerged from behind black curtains at the back of the room to field questions.

The mood was upbeat, as Borchetta and the trio briefly improvised some dance steps as speakers pumped out the album’s debut single, "Why Wait," written by Neil Thrasher, Tom Shapiro and Jimmy Yeary. But consistent with the spirit of their anniversary year, they were thoughtful too.

“We feel like we’re just getting started,” DeMarcus mused. “We keep celebrating 10 years but we feel like there’s so much left to do. Not very many people who get into this industry are able to look back and say they’ve been able to do it for 10 years. That’s what we’re really thankful and grateful for.”

LeVox echoed this point. “When our day is done and it’s time for us to go home and our time on Earth has passed, one thing that we’ll never have to do is to ask ‘what if?’ Never — because we did it.”

“We all feel the same way,” Rooney affirmed. “I’ve learned that you can take chances and make things happen with a leap of faith, as simple as that sounds. If you can dream it, it can be accomplished.”

Rascal Flatts will appear on “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” a three-hour television special to air Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 8/7c on the ABC Television Network. Hosted by Tim McGraw, the “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” television special also features performances by Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Billy Currington, Alan Jackson, Jamey Johnson, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, McGraw, Justin Moore, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift, Josh Turner, Carrie Underwood, Uncle Kracker, Keith Urban, and Zac Brown Band.

Visit www.ABC.com to view a series of 20 online videos of behind-the-scenes action of the 2010 CMA Music Festival.

"CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is executive produced by Robert Deaton and directed by Gary Halvorson. The 2010 CMA Music Festival is organized and produced by the Country Music Association. "CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is filmed in high definition and broadcast in 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format, with 5.1 channel surround sound.

On the Web: www.RascalFlatts.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

For a while this year, you couldn’t turn on the TV without hearing Martina McBride sing the “Shine On” jingle for SunnyD. She appeared in national print, retail and digital ads, while SunnyD had photo booths, iPod giveaways loaded with McBride music, beach balls, glow sticks and free bottles of SunnyD at each of her shows during the “SunnyD Shine All Night Tour.” Branded trucks, tents and kiosks appeared at retail outlets, military commissaries and elsewhere, helping fans connect to the campaign. A contest, inviting visitors to “tell us how your kid shines,” drew thousands to the SunnyD Web site.

“In my two and a half years with the brand, this is the largest holistic marketing effort the brand has ever done,” said Mark Ozimek, Assistant Brand Manager, Sunny Delight.

“Shine” is the key word here. It was the title of McBride’s most recent album, which dovetailed with SunnyD’s launch of a “Time to Shine” “Kids’ Shining Moments” campaign to spotlight children’s accomplishments.

“SunnyD shares the same values as I do,” McBride insisted. “And the partnership made sense. The message and campaign is something I believe in, and as a mom I thought it was great that SunnyD was putting the spotlight on kids and rewarding them for working hard and succeeding at their individual talents.”

“Martina is a great fit,” Ozimek said, noting that SunnyD’s research identified many of its customers as Country fans. “First off, she’s a mother of three girls, and she clearly wants the best for her children. And her ensuring message about optimism matches the brand’s positioning.”

Through its “Kids’ Shining Moments” campaign, the company presented the grand prize winner with $10,000 and a VIP trip to see McBride perform at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. All who entered received gifts that included three-month membership in McBride’s fan club and access to exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from the “SunnyD Shine All Night Tour,” thus expanding the artist’s potential customer base. Monthly winners also received scholarships and/or other prizes to encourage kids to continue achieving.

Pictures and essays submitted for the contest were posted online at www.SunnyD.com/Martina-McBride-tour. They ranged from charming to deeply moving, such as one from the mother of a boy named Nathan: “My father became a quadriplegic three years ago in an accident. Nathan heard about the (YMCA) Kids Country Music Marathon the year after and asked if he could run for Papa, because ‘Papa can’t use his legs. I’ll run for him.’”

“Consumers came to our site to not only tell us about their kids, they also read through these stories of others. They spent time reading about other kids. Any brand loves to see people coming and actively engaging in the message we have,” said Ozimek, noting as well that his company’s partnership with McBride has extended to include a SunnyD Book Spree to deliver books to school libraries, beginning in August.

Martina McBride will appear on “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” a three-hour television special to air Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 8/7c on the ABC Television Network. Hosted by Tim McGraw, the “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” television special also features performances by Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Billy Currington, Alan Jackson, Jamey Johnson, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, McGraw, Justin Moore, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Rascal Flatts, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift, Josh Turner, Carrie Underwood, Uncle Kracker, Keith Urban, and Zac Brown Band.

Visit www.ABC.com to view a series of 20 online videos of behind-the-scenes action of the 2010 CMA Music Festival.

"CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is executive produced by Robert Deaton and directed by Gary Halvorson. The 2010 CMA Music Festival is organized and produced by the Country Music Association. "CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is filmed in high definition and broadcast in 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format, with 5.1 channel surround sound.

On the Web: www.SunnyD.com; www.MartinaMcBride.com
 

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

With thousands of fans filling the streets of Downtown Nashville during CMA Music Festival, it might have been easy to miss one five-person crew threading through the crowd, hustling video gear to LP Field and back, packing and driving with it to homes and studios around town for interview segments, basically covering an enormous amount of ground and then coming back to do it again the next day.

Their assignment was to repeat what they’d done in recent CMA Fests: Capture the energy, excitement, drama, humor and exhilaration of these four days, and then whittle the results down to a series of short reports or vignettes. Beginning Aug. 9, these have been posted on ABC.com, as well as other Disney Web sites, Hulu.com, YouTube.com and other destinations, to maximize awareness among visitors and motivate them to tune to ABC on Sept. 1, 8/7c, for “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock.”

David Beebe, Director of Video Production, Disney/ABC Television Video Group, has overseen every one of these online promotions since they began in 2007.

Did you approach shooting for the Web differently at this year’s Festival than in previous years?
BEEBE Rather than shoot very structured, sit-down EPK-style interviews, we used the relationships we’ve grown over these four years to shoot more behind the scenes, where there weren’t any other crews. We shot a lot on the artists’ tour buses or even in their homes. Each interview is a minute to two minutes and focused on a single artist, from newcomers to bigger names. We went to a lot of fan club parties with artists. We talked with Martina McBride at her Blackbird Studio. We did a lot with Darius Rucker. We have Jake Owen and Luke Bryan before a performance, talking. Some artists put together skits – for instance, Blake Shelton bringing his dogs over to Kellie Pickler’s bus and asking her to watch them while he goes onstage.

Were these vignettes scripted?
BEEBE We didn’t want to give people scripts. We just set up an hour before shooting and said, “Hey, we’d like to shoot something fun, that people will want to share virally.” A lot of it was done on the fly.

How much advance work was required?
BEEBE There wasn’t a lot of pre-production. We started planning our coverage about a month before the Festival, setting things up so that we could get what no one else was getting.

Do we see your interviewers on camera?
BEEBE They’re off camera, so there’s no one to distract. It’s all about the artist this year. We cover all the events, we get a lot of stuff on camera that we can put together – but all of it is focused on that artist.

What else is different this year?
BEEBE Rather than keep it exclusive to ABC.com and our partners, we’re handing out the footage everywhere we can. That’s our game plan: Shoot everywhere and share it wide.

To see the latest ABC Web promos for “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” visit www.ABC.com

“CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” is a three-hour television special to air Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 8/7c on the ABC Television Network. Hosted by Tim McGraw, the “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” television special features performances by Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Billy Currington, Alan Jackson, Jamey Johnson, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, McGraw, Justin Moore, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Rascal Flatts, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift, Josh Turner, Carrie Underwood, Uncle Kracker, Keith Urban, and Zac Brown Band.

"CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is executive produced by Robert Deaton and directed by Gary Halvorson. The 2010 CMA Music Festival is organized and produced by the Country Music Association. "CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is filmed in high definition and broadcast in 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format, with 5.1 channel surround sound.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Among its many other attractions, “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” airing Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 8/7c on ABC, is a cavalcade of amazing songs. But there’s more to a song than how it sounds, as you’ll see from this series of interviews with the writers who created the latest, hottest hits by today’s Country superstars.

“Southern Voice”
Recorded by Tim McGraw
Written by Tom Douglas and Bob DiPiero

Describe the birth of this tune.
DIPIERO This is one of those songs that just sprang to life pretty much from the moment the title was mentioned. It was a title that Tom had.

DOUGLAS Bob and I like to read. I particularly love some of the great Southern writers, like William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty, who seem to write with a unique and particular voice. I just jotted that down and mentioned it to Bob, and we were off to the races.

DIPIERO I had my guitar in my hand and I was playing some changes to this rhythm going on in my head. And we just started giving shout-outs to the South – the writers and musicians, the major people from the recent South and even the past. It came together quickly, the chorus especially. We really worked on the verses, having the right people in the right order. But with the chorus, it was like taking dictation.

DOUGLAS I went out to look something up on the computer because we were trying to list all these iconic Southern images, and when I came back Bob had formulated the structure of the song. I think we wrote it in a day and demoed it that afternoon. It was a joyful collaboration.

DIPIERO The thing I found fun was to turn everything into a verb: “Hank Williams sang it. Number 3 rode it. Chuck Berry twanged it. Will Faulkner wrote it.” There are tons of list songs out there, but this song just started coming out that way and we followed it.

DOUGLAS Bob came up with “Appalachicola.” I wouldn’t have thought of that word in a million years. That was really brilliant.

DIPIERO That’s a place in Florida that I love – and I always wanted to use that word in a song [laughs]. It’s what I call a juicy word. It just laid in there perfectly. The whole thing with the Allman Brothers T-shirt and the gold cross – I can see that guy in my mind. And Tom really refined the verse melody. The melody for the chorus was pretty much there. It was one of those songwriting days you hope for. If I get a couple of those a year, I feel blessed.

“CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” is a three-hour television special to air Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 8/7c on the ABC Television Network. Hosted by Tim McGraw, the “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” television special features performances by Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Billy Currington, Alan Jackson, Jamey Johnson, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, McGraw, Justin Moore, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Rascal Flatts, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift, Josh Turner, Carrie Underwood, Uncle Kracker, Keith Urban, and Zac Brown Band.

"CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is executive produced by Robert Deaton and directed by Gary Halvorson. The 2010 CMA Music Festival is organized and produced by the Country Music Association. "CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is filmed in high definition and broadcast in 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format, with 5.1 channel surround sound.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Among its many other attractions, “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” airing Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 8/7c on ABC, is a cavalcade of amazing songs. But there’s more to a song than how it sounds, as you’ll see from this series of interviews with the writers who created the latest, hottest hits by today’s Country superstars.

“Why Don’t We Just Dance”
Recorded by Josh Turner
Written by Jim Beavers, Jonathan Singleton and Darrell Brown

How did this song come together?
BEAVERS This was actually the first time that Jonathan, Darrell and I had written together, all three of us.

SINGLETON Jim and I had done a couple of tunes, and we were trying not to repeat the things we had done.

BROWN Jonathan and I had written together before, so when he asked me to sit down to write with Jim and himself, it was an easy thing to say yes to.

BEAVERS This was back in late 2008, when the economy was going bad. Everybody seemed to be down and depressed and worried. We didn’t have the title, but we were wishing we could write something that lightened everybody up a bit. I think I was the one who said, “Well, everything is basically going to Hell in a hand basket, so why don’t we just dance?” For some reason, that phrase stuck.

SINGLETON It was like, “Hey, let’s not think about all the things that are going bad. Let’s just go crazy for a second.”

BROWN We were all in the mood to write something fresh for ourselves. Somehow we started drumming this shuffle groove out on our knees and strumming chords. We kept throwing out different chords and melodies to each other until it all started to come together.

BEAVERS We all three kept hammering, starting up the wrong road and coming back. I think we ended up with six or seven pages of false starts until we found a way to do the lyrics. We knew we had something special when we figured out that little bridge that seems to come out of nowhere: “Down the hall, maybe straight up the stairs … “

SINGLETON I always try to write within a character, and I think I was closer to that than anybody else on this song because I was still brand new to Nashville. I still had a fresh view of how that Wendy’s 99-cent chili tasted when you couldn’t afford anything else [laughs].

BROWN Hey, I love Wendy’s 99-cent chili too [laughs].

BEAVERS I really knew we were going to have a song when we settled into that slow, slushy groove. It just felt really good and leant itself to the lyrics.

But it doesn’t have the quite verse/big chorus structure that so many hits have today.
SINGLETON We talked about that. You’re supposed to have that giant chorus, and on this one the chorus is the down section.

BROWN Yeah, but the structure of the song lends itself to Tin Pan Alley days. It’s more of a release or a bridge than a chorus.

It actually works well because of the humor and playfulness, especially in the chorus lyric.
SINGLETON We spent a lot of time on what would you actually say if you’re trying to convince the girl to move the couch with you and just dance. You wouldn’t say, “Let’s not go anywhere because we can’t afford it.” My favorite line in the whole song is “my two left feet and our two hearts beating.” That gives the guy a little character: He’s got a good sense of humor about himself. He knows he’s not going to be any good at dancing, but it doesn’t matter.

Did Turner change any key elements of the song?
BEAVERS Three or four times, he sings “the whole wide world has gone crazy.” And we had written it as “the whole damn world.”

SINGLETON My thing about “wide world” was that line from “Blazing Saddles”: “What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here [laughs]?” But I think Josh heard a little glimmer of hope in that song, with all the bad stuff that’s going on.

BEAVERS I actually predicted to Jonathan and Darrell, when we found out that Josh was interested, that he probably ought to change that line. I’ve never had a song recorded exactly the way it was on the demo. There’s usually something changed, and it’s usually something that makes the singer more comfortable with the song.

BROWN And Frank Rogers certainly did a great job of producing the record and letting the fun of the song shine through Josh’s vocal.

SINGLETON So Josh is probably right. It probably didn’t call for “damn” – but it sure felt good when we wrote it [laughs].

“CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” is a three-hour television special to air Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 8/7c on the ABC Television Network. Hosted by Tim McGraw, the “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” television special features performances by Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Billy Currington, Alan Jackson, Jamey Johnson, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, McGraw, Justin Moore, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Rascal Flatts, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift, Josh Turner, Carrie Underwood, Uncle Kracker, Keith Urban, and Zac Brown Band.

"CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is executive produced by Robert Deaton and directed by Gary Halvorson. The 2010 CMA Music Festival is organized and produced by the Country Music Association. "CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is filmed in high definition and broadcast in 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format, with 5.1 channel surround sound.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

On hearing the very first notes of the swampy riff that would become the title track of his new album, Up on the Ridge, Dierks Bentley knew that he and co-writer Angelo (Petraglia) were onto something that wouldn’t be encumbered by genre titles. And so the original plan of writing for two separate projects, one Country and one bluegrass, was shelved; instead of trying to serve two masters, they decided to just let the music come.

“When Angelo played me that riff, that was the turning point,” Bentley recalled. “I remember hearing that, going, ‘Well, that’s a Country thing. It’s definitely a bluegrassy vibe. I don’t know what this is exactly, but it has to be on the record I’m making.’”

Inspired to put together an album that reflects his love for bluegrass and acoustic music, Bentley approached his longtime friend Jon Randall Stewart to produce. “I kept thinking about who I would get to work on this,” Bentley said. “I know Tim O’Brien. I know Alison (Krauss). I know Sam Bush. They’re all friends. But I kept thinking about Jon Randall and how far back he goes. He’s like the Kevin Bacon of Nashville: He knows everybody, he’s played with everybody, he’s one of the most talented overall musicians in Nashville — he’s unbelievable!”

“We were sitting, having some whiskey, and he said he was thinking about making this record and would I help,” said Stewart. “I said, ‘Have you lost your mind? You’re on your seventh No. 1 and you want to make a bluegrass record with your buddy?’ But as we sat there talking, we realized bluegrass is like every other genre: The boundaries have stretched. Dierks and I grew up listening to New Grass Revival, The Seldom Scene, Alison Krauss and all those people, so for us it was, ‘Let’s use that as our template. Let’s incorporate it.’ And the very first thing we thought of, which should tell you how crazy all this is, was the idea of doing a U2 song (‘Pride (In the Name of Love)’) with Del McCoury.”

As they began recruiting a cast of bluegrass heavyweights and guests, it became clear to Stewart that the toughest part of the process involved coordinating schedules for Bentley, engineer Gary Paczosa, and Sam Bush, Vince Gill, Jamey Johnson, Alison Krauss, Kris Kristofferson, Miranda Lambert, Punch Brothers and Chris Thile, among other invited artists.

“The toughest thing about this record, when you have special guests and a smaller budget, is trying to get people in on the same day,” Stewart said. “It’s ridiculous! Scheduling was a nightmare because you’ve only got so many musicians that know how to play this kind of music. Then there are only so many guys if you step out of Flatt-and-Scruggs bluegrass. These aren’t your normal A-team, Country session guys, because it’s a whole other kind of music.”

From hatching the idea to laying tracks in the studio, Up on the Ridge took shape in ways that have little to do with business as usual along Music Row. Though radio and critics would eventually validate the album as the right project at the right time in Bentley’s career, Bentley did have a few initial concerns about changing things up and going acoustic at the top of his game. But he’s never been one to make his music according to trends or popular opinion — a characteristic that’s affirmed throughout this successful experiment of an album.

“I think the first thing I asked myself was, ‘Do you want to call this a side project and kind of have an out? Or do you believe in what you’re doing and want to stand up for it and act on faith and put your money where your mouth is when it comes to why you go into doing this?’” said Bentley, who co-wrote five tracks on the album. “You get known for a certain sound you’ve established — or you get known for having curly hair and you cut it off. People like to think of you as one thing, and Country is all about having a brand. But as a songwriter, it’s not just about winning the game all the time. It’s about trying to make great music that you will be excited about and taking a chance to veer left or right a little bit. I love playing for large audiences. I love what we’ve built. I don’t want to do anything to take away from that, and I don’t think I am. I think I’m just adding to it. Hopefully my fans that have been asking for me to do this for a long time, they know who I am. My records have always had a bluegrass song on there. This is just me reclaiming part of what makes me who I am.”

Bentley’s record label knows better than anyone what this artist is about, which is why they’ve treated Up on the Ridge exactly as they’ve treated each of his other four studio albums — except, perhaps, with even greater anticipation and excitement. “They totally have been behind it. I know how lucky I am to have (Mike) Dungan and the whole Capitol team. He’s kind of like the Herb Kelleher of Country Music,” Bentley said, referring to the Co-Founder and former Executive Chairman, President and CEO of Southwest Airlines. “He makes a team environment and gets excited and passionate about stuff, and he hires good people.”

As President and CEO of Capitol Records Nashville, Dungan has the insight and experience to know that veering into uncharted musical territory can be dicey. Yet if the artist has talent and vision, and the music is an organic, honest fit, that can more than mitigate the risk. “Mike Dungan was great. He just said, ‘Go make a record.’ Of course, Dierks has had seven No. 1s, and we’re going to make a bluegrass record … great! No pressure on me,” said Stewart, with a laugh.

“It’s always a risk to step out into a side project like this,” Dungan said. “However, the music is so good and this was such a natural fit for Dierks that we were pretty confident that no matter what, we would have quality at the end of the line. And that’s exactly what we got. This is a kid who moved from Phoenix and discovered that whole acoustic world at the Station Inn and became a regular down there, first in the audience and then getting up onstage and playing with anybody and everybody. This is so much a part of Dierks’ general makeup and I think he found this record easier to make than a regular Dierks record. It’s such a natural fit for him and he knows the genre and the players and the music so well.”

Despite the rootsy skew throughout Up on the Ridge, Dungan decided to stick with what has become Capitol Nashville’s established strategy for marketing Bentley’s work. “Everyone who heard the record was flipped out about it,” he explained. “So we just ended up marketing it the way we would a mainstream record with the addition of joining forces with Vanguard Records and leaning on their expertise in the bluegrass world to make sure we have all our bases covered in that area.

“The one thing that’s probably going to be the biggest driver of this is television,” Dungan continued. “The minute the TV bookers saw what this project was about and who the players were and the fact it was Dierks Bentley behind it, they jumped on it. In fact, in a lot of cases, they wanted him to come on the show probably before we would ordinarily want him to come on. We would like a lot of these appearances to hit around street date, but we’ve been doing them ahead of time because the bookers have been so anxious to get Dierks in place. TV bookers in general have an appreciation for things that are authentic, and I think that’s what they saw in this.”

If authenticity does indeed open media doors, then Up on the Ridge, which premiered on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart at No. 65 in June, may achieve the goal Bentley has for bringing the sound and feel of bluegrass and traditional acoustic Country to new markets. “A lot of people who like bluegrass may hear this and go, ‘It’s not bluegrass. It’s got drums and electric bass,’” he reflected. “Then Country fans may hear it and go, ‘That’s hardcore bluegrass.’ Different people will hear different things. I just hope my Country audience gets excited about hearing these acoustic instruments and these songs, and I hope the bluegrass people will love what we’ve done with some of these songs like ‘Bad Angel’ or ‘Bottle to the Bottom.’ There’s a Country circle and a bluegrass circle, and I tried to lay them on top of each other and find common ground in the two worlds. And I think this record really does that.”

Dierks Bentley will appear on “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” a three-hour television special to air Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 8/7c on the ABC Television Network. Hosted by Tim McGraw, the “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” television special also features performances by Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Billy Currington, Alan Jackson, Jamey Johnson, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, McGraw, Justin Moore, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Rascal Flatts, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift, Josh Turner, Carrie Underwood, Uncle Kracker, Keith Urban, and Zac Brown Band.
 

Visit www.ABC.com to view a series of 20 online videos of behind-the-scenes action of the 2010 CMA Music Festival.

"CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is executive produced by Robert Deaton and directed by Gary Halvorson. The 2010 CMA Music Festival is organized and produced by the Country Music Association. "CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is filmed in high definition and broadcast in 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format, with 5.1 channel surround sound.

On the Web: www.DierksBentley.com
 

Sports lovers would call this a win-win proposition. And Darius Rucker is definitely a sports fan, so a plan that puts him at three major sports events with two household name brands is a slam dunk.

LongHorn Steakhouse, part of the Darden family of restaurants, and Coca-Cola partnered with Rucker and Capitol Records Nashville to create VIP experiences at the PGA Tour Championship, NCAA Men’s Final Four and Coke Zero 400.

This promotion came together under the umbrella of “Live at LongHorn,” an extension of the LongHorn brand that brings its guests and Country artists together. Using this platform, these three companies promoted products by bringing fans and Country Music stars together at top-notch sporting events. The high impact of Country helped seal the deal. “Country Music continues to grow in prominence and popularity,” noted Rich Jeffers, spokesperson for LongHorn Steakhouse.

“Darius has broader reach than the average Country artist,” added Laurie Birnbach, Director, National Sales, Coca-Cola North America Foodservice. “When we took Darius, LongHorn Steakhouse and Coke Zero, there was a match with the demographics and brand positioning of all three.”

The campaign began with the PGA Tour Championship in 2009, a natural for Rucker, who has appeared at dozens of celebrity pro-am tournaments. He began with a visit to a music class at East Lake Charter School and a private performance at The World of Coca-Cola at Pemberton Place. “I’m excited to have the PGA Tour involved, as my fans know I love the game of golf,” the 2009 CMA New Artist of the Year said.

LongHorn also launched a “Tee Off & Tunes” sweepstakes via scratch-off cards for customers who ordered any Coca-Cola beverage at its restaurants. Redeemable at www.MyCokeRewards.com, the winning card offered backstage access to a Rucker show as well as a VIP trip to Atlanta for the premier PGA event. Momentum continued in February and March 2010, as fans registered at LongHorn restaurants to become one of four winners of “An Exclusive Ticket” to the NCAA Men’s Final Four in Indianapolis and enjoy Rucker’s performance along with a VIP party and tickets to the Final Four at the “Coke Zero Countdown” concert.

The partnership intensified in July, at the 52nd Annual Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona, Fla. While Rucker took part in a half-hour Q&A with Kyle Petty, introduced six Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, sang the national anthem and delivered a pre-race concert, David Reutimann competed in his 00 Aaron’s Dream Machine Toyota Camry, whose “Come Back Song” decal referenced Rucker’s newest single — which TNT featured twice during its broadcast of the race.

These initiatives resonated strongly enough for the Coca-Cola Darden Account Team to win the prestigious William B. Darden Distinguished Supplier Award. Rucker’s record label also benefited. As noted by Dustin Eichten, Director of Marketing, Capitol Records Nashville, “Coke can take you places that a Country label or any label isn’t going to be able to do.”

Darius Rucker will appear on “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock,” a three-hour television special to air Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 8/7c on the ABC Television Network. Hosted by Tim McGraw, the “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” television special also features performances by Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Billy Currington, Alan Jackson, Jamey Johnson, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, McGraw, Justin Moore, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Rascal Flatts, Rucker, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift, Josh Turner, Carrie Underwood, Uncle Kracker, Keith Urban, and Zac Brown Band.

Visit www.ABC.com to view a series of 20 online videos of behind-the-scenes action of the 2010 CMA Music Festival.

"CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is executive produced by Robert Deaton and directed by Gary Halvorson. The 2010 CMA Music Festival is organized and produced by the Country Music Association. "CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" is filmed in high definition and broadcast in 720 Progressive (720P), ABC's selected HDTV format, with 5.1 channel surround sound.

On the Web: www.DariusRucker.com
 

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

With the music business evolving constantly, colleges and universities that offer a music industry curriculum are particularly challenged. Unlike just a few years ago, when standards and practices were somewhat steadfast and dependable, today’s market is like the Wild, Wild West — uncharted territory that is being explored and defined as we move through it.

Even so, several universities seem to have adapted and found ways to educate students about these rapid and sometimes volatile changes and arm them with tools to not only face them but also to thrive.

Belmont University, and its Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business, have long been known for their music industry programs, which offer bachelor’s degrees in audio engineering technology, entertainment industry studies and songwriting, as well as bachelor’s and master’s programs in music business. Graduates of these studies have distinguished themselves not just in offices along Music Row but also as artists, with Brad Paisley and Trisha Yearwood among the alumni.

“The music industry contraction has come primarily at the expense of major labels, publishers and large-format studios,” said Clyde Rolston, Chair and Associate Professor, Music Business, Belmont University. “There are still opportunities for growth, but that is coming from new, smaller businesses. So Belmont recently added an entrepreneurship class to the core of our bachelor’s business administration degree. Not only will this expose all BBA students to entrepreneurial thinking, but it also opens up the opportunity for them to take electives in the area and help prepare them for running their own business one day.”  

On the advice of its advisory board, Belmont has added a course on music business contracts to its core, the goal being to allow instructors to go into more depth on their individual areas of expertise. The school is also introducing a “new media” course that will equip students with the skills to place audio and video on the Internet, cell phones and future technologies, as well as classes in music merchandising and radio programming.

“Although you hear a lot about how terrestrial radio is dying and listenership is down, research indicates that the majority of people, including young people, are still exposed to new music for the first time on the radio,” said Rolston, corroborating similar findings reported in the most recent update of CMA’s Country Music Consumer Segmentation Study. “It reminds me of that quote from Mark Twain, ‘The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum is a newer and somewhat renegade program at the University of Georgia in Athens, operating in the heart of the city’s fabled alternative music community and headed by songwriter Bruce Burch, Director, Music Business Program. “Our program is very hands-on and real-world,” Burch explained. “Because we are in Athens, which has an incredible ‘do-it-yourself’ music scene, our students get to learn from those practicing the DIY method, which I believe is the future of the industry. It is a great time for indies and entrepreneurs, and Athens is an excellent environment for experimentation creatively as well as on the business side.”

Great speakers are a key part of the curriculum, according to Burch, who can recruit them from the deep resources available in Athens and Atlanta. “We bring in people in the industry to speak to our class who are part of the change and also those who are actively dealing with the change every day — folks like R.E.M.’s manager Bertis Downs and artists like Corey Smith, who has one of the most innovative and successful models in the ‘new music’ business. It helps keep it fresh when you bring in guys like John Bell of Widespread Panic: They were DIY way back in the ’80s and sort of followed the Grateful Dead model but have brought it into the current music industry model and been able to grow their business by building a ‘tribe’ and touring unrelentingly through the past couple of decades. They have built a phenomenal fan base and yet they have never had a true radio hit and haven’t sold millions of records. Yet they are one of the top touring acts in the country and sell tons of merchandise. That’s the new music industry.”

Music industry veteran, award-winning songwriter and CMA Board member Tim DuBois, who serves as VP and Managing Executive of the ASCAP Nashville Regional Office, brings a uniquely comprehensive perspective to his endeavors as Clinical Professor of Entertainment and Media Management at Vanderbilt University’s Owen School of Business Management, where he also teaches three classes on entrepreneurial opportunities. Like Burch, he sees guest lecturers as intrinsic to maintaining the currency of music industry instruction.

“I have the best guests in the world. I have more fun with the class because I get to invite my friends and people who are experts in their individual fields to come in — and then I get to play Larry King,” said DuBois, with a laugh.

DuBois helped develop the Owen School program, which examines the music industry’s business model from the past, how the digital age affects it and how it will look in the future. “The business model is in the middle of a really substantial transformation that started at the record company level, but it’s going to eventually resonate through the music industry,” he said. “The record companies have traditionally been the venture capitalists that drove the whole business in artist development. Publishing companies to an extent were in the same situation. Then as the digital revolution came along, everybody wanted to blame it on people stealing music. But it’s a much more complex problem than that. It had to do with consolidation at retail and radio and a change in the way people perceive and use music in their own lives. The very way people discover and purchase and use music has changed drastically as a result of the Internet.

“We’re still going through that change,” he continued. “So the courses we teach are about examining the old model — record companies, publishers, songwriters, artist managers, booking agencies and talent buyers. We break it into those six segments and examine each of those industries and look at how its business model worked in the past and how the model has been affected due to the digital age and what might be coming next.”

The rapid pace at which the industry continues to transform challenges DuBois and every other educator dedicated to examining it academically. “The classic example is, I’m getting ready to teach class and the textbook I’ve used the last two years came out in 2007,” he pointed out. “It was already dated by last year, and this year it’s completely out of date. The industry is evolving so quickly that you almost can’t keep up with it, especially on the record company side but also on the publishing side and songwriter side.”

DuBois and Burch are among the educators who address this problem by complementing texts with daily newsletters and feeds as well as the Internet for access to more current information. The picture that emerges is one of an industry that remains vital and yet is radically revising both the scale and the structures by which it operates.

“Because the digital rights flow is completely in flux right now, it has to be figured out,” DuBois said. “Businesses have to adjust to the fact that income streams are changing. Mechanicals, as we have known them in the past, are going way down. New kinds of digital royalty streams are developing and coming online all the time. We used to say publishing was a pennies business; now it is a micro-pennies business. It used to be about ownership; now it’s moving more toward access. It’s much more of a pull than a push. It used to be if you heard about a new record, you were at the mercy of the radio to play it and then go to the store and buy it. Now, in a matter of moments, you can hear about something, go into YouTube, listen to it, download it and buy it.”

It’s not easy for those who oversee music industry programs to keep up with all of this, much less move ahead and anticipate where events are leading. Nonetheless, thanks to these efforts, their students are at least equipped to pursue their goals with a realistic grasp of what awaits them as they begin their roller-coaster ride.

“It really is changing every day,” DuBois concluded. “And it is exciting be studying this as it happens. I tell my class it’s like having a front-row seat to history.”

A list of colleges and universities offering degrees and tracks in music industry education can be viewed at www.meiea.org/schools, on the Web site of the Music & Entertainment Industry Educators Association.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Tucson, Ariz., was home base for Mason Douglas, but an even broader American panorama opens up in his music. Not so much a regionalist, he paints universal pictures through accessible melodies and lyrics on the four self-penned, five co-written and the two remaining tunes that comprise My Wild Heart, his debut album on Rural Rhythm Records.

Maybe that’s because of the opportunities and trials he faced early in his life. Douglas’ first 11 years were an idyllic balance of social whirl, horseback rides and learning the basics of hard work and persistence. This phase came to an abrupt end when his father, a U.S. Air Force colonel and Vietnam vet, was stricken with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Douglas and his mother provided care during the six years of his decline.

This experience proved transformative in many ways. Douglas has become a strong supporter for the ALS Association and now targets performances for members of the armed services as one of his major ambitions. It affected him artistically too, by sparking the belief that one should enjoy the good times to the fullest as long as fortune will allow.

That message permeates My Wild Heart, produced by Greg Strizek. Over a rollicking groove, toughened by buzzing, edgy horn riffs, he issues a sly, playful warning to objects of his romantic attention on “Big Bad Wolf,” which he wrote with Cory Batten. The heat rises further and the climate turns tropical on “Trabajo Mañana (Fiesta Today!),” a hymn to ocean breezes and “extended vacation,” also written by Batten and Douglas.

But while still savoring the good times, he shows that he can look behind them for deeper messages on his first single, “Anything Can Happen.” Written solely by Douglas, it reminds us that there is more than “living it up down in Malibu” to bring meaning to life. That’s a lesson Douglas learned from his father in more than one way; his ability to communicate it on this well-crafted ballad belongs to him alone.

IN HIS OWN WORDS Q&A

MUSICAL HERO
“Garth Brooks, no question.”

DREAM DUET PARTNER
“Patty Griffin. There would be no greater honor.”

CD IN YOUR STEREO
“Pearl Jam's Binaural plus some songs by my buddy Ray Sisk.”

BOOK ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND
“Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story. I just finished up Island by Aldous Huxley and How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill.”

FAVORITE MODE OFTRANSPORTATION
“Anything with four wheels — I don’t have enough hair on my chest to get on a motorcycle.”

SONG YOU SING IN THE SHOWER
“Usually the song that I’m writing that’s stuck in my head and is missing something.”

PET PEEVE
“Peeved pets.”

OCCUPATION IF NOT AN ARTIST
“I love to cook – if I’m not singing or writing, I’m probably trying to think of something crazy for dinner.  I think that if the road hadn’t taken me towards music, it would’ve eventually led me to expressing some creativity in food.”

FIRST GIG
“My first gig was in high school at a place called McGraw’s Cantina in Tucson, Ariz.  My best friend, Brian, and I had formed an acoustic duo called Two Of Hearts and we set up on the patio of McGraw’s.  We played 90 minutes of covers through a teeny, tiny guitar amp and a $30 mixer from Radio Shack that my mom bought us.  It was so much fun looking back – terrifying at the time, but such a great experience to start out.”

On the Web: www.MasonDouglasMusic.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Country Music may still be about “three chords and the truth,” but writing about it has migrated from typewriters, notepads and Wite-Out to a newer world of hourly deadlines, blogs and video cameras. Each era has its hurdles and shortcuts, its perspective on how to best inform the public about the music it loves. And few representing three distinct periods in Country Music journalism are as equipped to share this knowledge as the trio assembled for this Generations feature.

Cindy Watts, 31, is a staff entertainment writer at Nashville’s hometown daily, The Tennessean. Brian Mansfield, 46, covers Nashville for the print and online editions of USA Today. And Hazel Smith, 75, has been a fixture in Music City since she began work in public relations at Glaser Sound Studios. Famous for coining the term “the Outlaws” in the 1970s, she now writes the “Hot Dish” column for CMT.com, contributes to Country Weekly and reports on Country Music for WFMS-FM/Indianapolis.

How has writing about Country Music changed?
SMITH When I started, I went to all the sessions. I walked in the studio; nobody kept me out. I walked in the offices; nobody kept me out. I knew the first name of every musician and every songwriter. The last issue of CMA Close Up had 45 pictures of artists. I knew two. Where are all these people coming from? I know what has changed the whole scene of the music business is “American Idol.” Carrie (Underwood) and Kellie (Pickler) are two good examples. They did their thing on the show and Nashville signed them and they just let them go out on the road. And more power to them. But there are others, like Sarah Buxton, who just got an album out and she’s waited five years. Josh Thompson is a great act. Are they going to happen? I don’t know. But we can’t write about people that we don’t know.

MANSFIELD The biggest difference I see is the places people get their information. When Hazel started, if you were a Country fan, you got your information from the records, the radio and a few very specific Country Music magazines. The national press wasn’t paying a lot of attention to it. My professional career really coincided with the big explosion of Country Music in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, so there were suddenly lots of places that needed stuff about Country Music. There were all sorts of music magazines. There was always Country Music Parade, Country Song Roundup and Country Music, but then you had Country Weekly, Country America and Country Music Today. You could go into a Kroger in Nashville and there would be six or seven magazines devoted to nothing but Country Music there. Suddenly it was bigger business. Stars were selling more records than they ever had. That’s the way I got work.

WATTS When I got started writing at the Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro, the only computers that had Internet were the computers that were against the wall. You had to wait in line to get to one of the computers that had Internet. If I wanted to call a record label, I couldn’t look it up in the phone book because it (the listing) wasn’t there. So little things like that — being able to look up Arista Nashville’s telephone number for the first time or being able to go online and pull up a bio of somebody you’re not sure about, having the ability at your fingertips to go and read something about them to help you make the decision as to whether or not this is somebody you want to devote your time to writing about, is a big difference.

What role do blogs and Twitter play in your work?
SMITH I don’t blog. I write my column for CMT online. To me, people that sit around and blog all the time ain’t got enough to do. I’ve got everything I can do. I do a TV show in my kitchen (“CMT’s Southern Fried Flicks with Hazel Smith”) and I also report the news daily to WFMS. And you have to tell them the truth because, just like with everybody else, when I say something, they’re going to check it out. But they know they can believe what I say because I’m pretty much right most of the time.

WATTS It’s a challenge to get your job done and learn all the new technology like Twitter and how to do the new Web updates and build photo shows and run all the links so that when somebody Googles Reba McEntire, The Tennessean story on her shows up near the top. The job at a newspaper now is not just about writing stories. It’s about making all those pieces of technology work together to make a product that we can sell.

MANSFIELD I was probably one of the first music journalists in Nashville that was using the online stuff on a regular basis. This was back in the ’90s. New Country was one of the first major Country Music publications to launch a Web site. Today I do a lot with Facebook and Twitter. I look at all of those as part of what I do, as part of my personal “brand,” for lack of a better term.

How much of being a success at what you do is based on writing and research skills, and how much is based on people skills?
MANSFIELD My people skills are not anywhere near as good as Hazel’s. I’m more of a music geek. And I’m a research fanatic. That’s one of the big differences in the ways Hazel and I approach things. She is coming from that love of people, where my approach is more cerebral. When I got into this, I noticed that there weren’t many people writing about Country Music that really understood it from the standpoint that its audience did. There was Hazel, and there was Bob (Oermann), and there was Ed Morris and people like that. But when you got outside of Nashville, you had rock critics who wrote about Country that didn’t really get why it worked for its audience.

WATTS The thing that Miss Hazel does best is that, when she sits down with people, the people she interviews can relate to her — and her readers can relate to her. When I sit down to interview somebody, that’s what I try to do. Country fans are smart people. They can tell when an artist is genuine and they can tell when the person writing a story is full of it.

Who would you consider to be your mentors?
SMITH There was a man named Roger Schutt — “Captain Midnight.” He was a great writer and he knew everything. He was kind of a hero of mine.

MANSFIELD I learned a lot about who the audience is from reading Hazel and watching how she dealt with artists and fans both. From Bob Oermann, I learned a lot about respecting the music form and the history of the music — and really knowing it, not just knowing who’s hot now but really understanding the broader picture. In Country Music, it’s important to know that history, to see the relationship it has with its audience and to see the relationship it has with the culture and how the stories that Country Music tells have changed as America has changed.

WATTS There is certainly more than one kind of music writing. There are two very clear sides. There are people like Brian who dive into it from the component of the music itself versus what Hazel does and what I like to do. I can do reviews and all that other stuff too, but I really want to tell stories. I want to tell Chris Young’s story or Josh Thompson’s story because I think people can relate to their stories. If Country Music fans don’t like the person singing, they’re not going to buy their CD.

Does that element of liking the artist ever keep you from being objective?
MANSFIELD Even if something is really bad, the reader doesn’t want you to go off on it, the way that rock critics have a habit of doing. They feel so protective of the artist. They identify so strongly with the artist that it’s really considered bad manners to just start heaving brickbats at them. That’s one of the challenges, to find that balance to say the things that need to be said in ways that the audience wants to hear. It gets back to your audience. There’s a difference in writing for The Tennessean or Billboard and writing for a fan-based magazine too.

WATTS The Tennessean builds our business on being objective. We have to be objective. But fans love those singers like they are their family members. They aren’t going to be mad at that singer if that singer cuts a bad song; they’re going to be mad at you for writing about it.

SMITH I really pull for people like Kellie Pickler. That young’un has just bought her a million-dollar house and she was raised in a single-wide trailer in North Carolina. I can’t hardly stand it, I’m so proud of her, so I can’t help but to write about her.

As the media in general and music specifically skew more toward digital formats, how has that affected your work?
MANSFIELD It’s still a matter of filtering, deciding what is worth writing about and who you need to talk to. When Country is selling better, it’s easier to get stories placed in bigger publications. That’s one of the things that I love about being a journalist — being able to stand just far enough removed from the industry and watch it go up and down. And reliable sources are as essential as ever for getting behind the story.

SMITH You’ve got to talk to the makeup people. They know everything!

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Matt Kennon has nothing against rock ‘n’ roll; in his younger days, he liked to crank up some Skynyrd as much as anyone. He was a member of his high school jazz band too. But being raised in Georgia with Lee Greenwood, Alan Jackson, Randy Travis and Travis Tritt on the family playlist, he knew early on that Country was his home.

Kennon learned as he grew to sing with spirit in church and later to dish up Southern rock and Country in Atlanta clubs. His voice, toughened through three years of band gigs, was sensitized to the nuances in lyric interpretation by coaching with songwriter and producer Chip Martin. After getting the seasoning he needed, Kennon moved to Nashville and picked up a day job at a Harley-Davidson dealer. A chance encounter with manager Gary Falcon on Music Row triggered a series of connections leading to James Stroud, who agreed to co-produce this self-titled debut with Kennon and Julian King for release on BamaJam Records.

Kennon’s history courses through these 12 tracks, eight of which he co-wrote. Some of his early rock heroes, from Slaughter and Survivor, make guest appearances, but the feel of the music stems from Kennon alone. His first single “The Call,” which he wrote with Jeremy Campbell and Noah Gordon, recounts several dramatic stories of how a single phone call can change or even save one’s life; Kennon’s deep drawl, gritty timbre and homiletic intensity convey the message like a sermon preached to a friend over a few whiskey shots. From the righteous growl of “Some People Piss Me Off,” written by Ben Hayslip and Jimmy Yeary, to the soar of the Gary Duffy and Ron Wallace song “Cry Like Memphis” on twin wings of gospel and blues, Kennon plants one foot in the choir loft, the other on the brass rail beneath a honky-tonk bar and keeps perfect balance.

IN HIS OWN WORDS Q&A

MUSICAL HERO
“Ronnie Van Zant.”

SONG YOU WISH YOU’D WRITTEN
“‘Live Like You Were Dying.’”

LUCKY CHARM
“I have a Cross necklace tattooed around my neck.”

FAVORITE FOOD ON THE ROAD
“Pizza.”

TITLE OF YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY
“God Don’t Make Mistakes.”

OCCUPATION IF NOT AN ARTIST
“A DJ on the radio.”

FAVORITE MODE OF TRANSPORTATION
“Harley-Davidson.”

PET PEEVE
“Double parking.”

BOOK ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND
“The Bible.”

SONG YOU’D SECRETLY LIKE TO COVER
“’Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room.’”

On the Web: www.MattKennon.com

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© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Kenny Chesney needn’t dive deeply into his personal history to recall the frustrations of Mark Heinrich, founder and drummer for Cheyenne, the Austin-based cover band said to be the favorite of Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Chesney remembers his hunger to step out from the shadows of Willie Nelson, Hank Williams Jr. and other barroom favorites. He had a satchel filled with songs he’d written. But reality held him back.

“The bar owners, they wanted to sell beer,” Chesney recalled. “So if I was singing ‘Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound,’ they were happy. If I did one of my own, they weren’t. They’re about moving drinks, not breaking artists.”

Heinrich can relate. He’s been banging the drum slowly or loudly — whatever it takes to keep the crowd happy — in Lone Star State frat houses and roadhouses for a decade and a half. But his hoped-for destination is far removed from the bridal shows, college parties and regional clubs that dot Cheyenne’s gig calendar.

“I want to come to Nashville as an artist,” said Heinrich, 41, an electronics and IT guru for the city of Austin by day and road dog on nights and weekends.

A major step on that journey would be to get crowds to listen to his songs: Perhaps the right ears would hear him and doors might open. On this night, for example, he’s playing a club in Marble Falls, Texas. His band might trot out an original or two, but mostly they’ll draw from well-worn and loved songs by Chesney, Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn and Merle Haggard.

Chesney would do exactly that too, during his cover-band apprenticeship. “I was writing my own songs at the time,” he explained. “I’d throw in one or two a night. You know you want to do your own songs, but you know too that nobody cares. You’re playing for the guys and girls who are there to have fun, so you want to make sure they do.”

To get to his show at Marble Falls, Heinrich tidies his desk at workday’s end in a city office building. He and his band then have about two hours to drag their gear up to the Sports Arena Bar & Laundromat, a wine cooler, beer and setups joint along Farm-to-Market Highway 1431 in Marble Falls. Heinrich views the show at this 3,000-square-foot, 171-capacity club as one more step toward stardom. “If I’m above ground, I’ve got a 100 percent chance of making it,” he said. “All it takes is one song.”

He even thinks he’s written that golden ticket. “It’s been in my head since my dad passed away. It’s called ‘Go the Distance.’ If the right person hears the song, it’s going to be a hit.” But folks in Marble Falls aren’t lining up for Cheyenne to hear introspective singer/songwriter fare. They want to wash away Texas dust by sucking on longnecks and listening to favorites like Chesney’s “How Forever Feels,” Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places” and anything by George Strait.

Brooks remembers exactly how it felt to be anonymous on a bandstand and know that his job was to recreate the songs made popular by stars of the day. “I was lucky enough to be in a band called Santa Fe,” he said. “We played honky tonks around Oklahoma. The time was 1985 and ’86. We all came to Nashville together in 1987. The band was made up of the Skinner Brothers, a freewheeling, play-anything-with-a-bad-ass-groove, three-part harmony group. I wanted to be George Strait and Randy Travis.”

These days, Brooks is still taking requests, though the crowds drawn to his stripped-down show at Wynn Las Vegas holler out for “The Thunder Rolls,” “Ain’t Going Down (‘Til the Sun Comes Up)” and others he wrote or co-wrote. But he remembers when audiences just wanted him to deliver Strait’s “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” or Travis’ “On the Other Hand.”

“We selected our songs by what would get the people on the dance floor,” Brooks said. “The more action on the floor, the more action everywhere in the club — the bar, pool tables, concessions, etc. The more action, the more the club owner was happy; the happier the club owner, the better the chance of getting invited back to play.”

Luke Bryan knows the house rules too. He began performing as a teenager around his family’s home turf in Leesburg, Ga., and then became a college-crowd sensation as the acrobatic and enthusiastic lead singer and acoustic guitarist with the cover band Neyami Road. Even after he’d moved to Nashville and started writing songs, those weren’t the tunes he played on weekends when he returned to the Georgia college circuit.

“We always did songs like ‘Fishin’ in the Dark’ (by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) and we did ‘Mountain Music,’ all your old Alabama tunes,” he said.

Bryan credits the exposure he gained on those gigs, heightened with his special EP releases tied to spring break, with helping to lift him toward his present success. But not every artist on the cover-band circuit wants to be the guy whose songs everybody else is singing.

Take Don Kelley, who continues his decades-long stint working five nights a week on Nashville’s Lower Broadway. Playing for tips and tipplers at Robert’s Western World is all the affable Kelley plans to do. His ever-evolving Don Kelley Band has included musicians who have helped flavor the works of Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard; other Kelley alums cash in as part of the Music Row session scene.

“I’ve been playing music since I was 15, and except for a few years in Vietnam, this is all I’ve ever done,” Kelley mused. “I’ve never had a real job. I’ve never wanted to be a singing star. I sing good enough to get the gig. I’ve never been out of work.”

One key to his durability is the care he takes in picking material. “The way I choose a song is, if I like it, I’ll work it up. If I play it, I go a lot by the audience: If they respond real well, then I’ll keep it. And, I stay with the ’60s and ’70s guys — Cash, Buck Owens, Haggard — because they always had those swingy guitar players.”

Brooks had a similar approach to building set lists during his days with Santa Fe. “We always kept the promise of never doing anything anyone in the group hated,” he said. “That made it very enjoyable to play. And any new stuff we had was upbeat. It was suicide trying to introduce slow stuff nobody had ever heard before in a dance hall.”

This helped Brooks develop his “melting pot of all music,” which helped draw new fans to Country Music in the 1990s. Even now, he nourishes his performances by drawing from work he admires by others. “I believe in my own music,” he said. “But this gig at the Wynn in Las Vegas is a road map through my life, playing the artists I was raised on and how those artists have influenced creating and performing the music I now call my own.”

Bryan sums up the benefit of playing covers more succinctly. “It just lets you see what kind of songs people want to hear and what are the songs that get people up and going,” he said. “Years of playing in front of people and playing covers make you more seasoned. It helps you grow and become a better entertainer and performer. You learn what people like and you go from there.”

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

During the last several decades of the last century, the demo producing and pitching process remained pretty much the same. Songwriters would emerge from a writing session with a “work tape” reference recording on cassette. They’d present the work tape to their publisher, who would provide feedback and determine when the song was ready for a full demo.

The publisher would then fund a demo session, which usually took place at an established studio on Music Row, using experienced, professional session players and singers. The publisher would use the resulting recording to pitch the song to potential end-users — mostly major-label producers, A&R reps and artists.

Over the past 10 years, this process has changed dramatically, driven by universal access to high-quality, low-cost technologies and greatly expanded song markets and marketing avenues. At the heart of these three phenomena are two vital tools: the personal computer and the Internet.

As a result, today’s process for producing and pitching demos looks like this:

Songwriters emerge from a writing session with an MP3 of a reference recording most likely recorded using GarageBand on one of the songwriters’ MacBook laptops. The GarageBand tracks might very well be the starting or “pre-production” tracks for the full demo.

The songwriters e-mail the MP3 to their publisher, but while awaiting feedback they start promoting the song themselves through e-mail and cell phone, social networking sites, online pitching services and myriad other outlets. Whether the publisher pays for it or not, the full demo will probably be tracked, overdubbed, mixed and mastered overtime by a variety of people in different locations, most likely starting with the songwriters’ home studios. In addition to producers, A&R reps and artists on Music Row, film and TV music supervisors, music libraries, small independent labels and countless other artists will likely also be pitched — not just in the United States, but all over the world — via the Internet.

Here’s a sampling of just some of the new demo-related resources that have become available to everyone, from DIY entities to the established, traditional music-industry giants.

Infrastructure and Communication
Laptops and the Internet are ubiquitous in most contemporary songwriting sessions. Nashville-based songwriter Victoria Banks, whose credits include Sara Evans’ “Saints & Angels” and Jessica Simpson’s “Come On Over” and “Remember That,” says that she and virtually every co-writer she works with brings an Apple MacBook to every writing appointment. If they happen to be in different cities while co-writing, they’ll run Skype’s free audio/video conferencing software to see and hear each other in real time. They also often use the Internet to access online rhyming dictionaries and thesauri. “I get really aggravated if there’s no Wi-Fi available,” Banks quipped.

Other writers use the MasterWriter program for near-rhymes, cultural idioms, basic recording and other songwriter-specific features. Some use apps on their smartphones, such as Sonoma Wire Works’ StudioTracks multi-track audio recording program, to capture musical ideas and create work versions.

To share larger, full-resolution audio files with her co-writers as well as recording studios and other parties, Banks uses Internet-based file-transfer services, including www.YouSendIt.com. Most of these services offer a free option that allows transfer of individual files up to 100MB and a limited number of downloads. Paid options allow for much larger files — for example, up to 2GB — as well as more downloads, longer storage time and file-delivery features.

In addition to e-mailing MP3s, many modern songwriters use multiple social networking sites to pitch their songs. Banks regularly uploads her demos to her Facebook and MySpace sites, which she refers to as “business cards that play music at you.” She finds them to be a convenient place to send potential clients because they can hear her songs instantly, in part because Banks uses iTunes to organize them by style, tempo, male/female vocal and other criteria.

Music Production
Nowhere is affordable, high-quality technology more readily available than in music recording and production. In addition to GarageBand, which is Mac-only, numerous recording programs that run on Mac, Windows and Linux, such as Audacity from www.SourceForge.net, are available for free. Today’s versions of Apple’s Logic, Cakewalk’s SONAR, MOTU’s Digital Performer and Steinberg’s Cubase provide unrivaled power and sound quality to home-demo recordists and professional studios alike.

In addition to loops and beats that facilitate both song creation and song recording, one of the biggest advancements in sonic quality in recent years has been among effects plug-ins and sampled “virtual instruments.” Besides pristine-sounding reverbs, pianos, organs, guitars, basses, horns and strings, users can access high-quality, real sounds of everything from banjos, didgeridoos and exotic Indian drums to full orchestras and choirs recorded in some of the most acoustically perfect spaces on the planet.

Remote Tracks
The Internet is also bursting with sites that specialize in providing remotely-recorded tracks from professional session players. Looking for a real string section to add to your demo? Just click on www.TimLorsch.com and check out samples from this Nashville-based musician. How about top-notch drums? Visit www.DrumsOnDemand.com or www.DrummerWavs.com. Need killer guitar tracks? Go to www.CustomGuitarTracks.com. What about a great demo singer in any musical style? Visit www.DemoSinger.com. And for a little bit of everything, there’s www.eSession.com. This type of collaborative tracking and overdubbing has become so popular that even the Nashville local of the American Federation of Musicians has bought into the idea by creating a very progressive, affordable, sliding-rate scale specifically for tracks recorded over the Internet. (This scale has been cleared for use nationwide as well as Nashville.)

At Your Service
Some people just aren’t comfortable with, or don’t want to bother with, the technical or logistical details of recording a demo. No problem. There are thousands of studios and music producers online, ranging from one-man-band operations to large, well-known commercial recording facilities, that specialize in managing high-quality, affordable song demo projects. In fact, if there’s any piece lacking in one’s arsenal of demo production resources, from custom beat creation through mixing and mastering, you can be sure it’s available remotely via the Internet for a very reasonable price.

Being There
One intriguing, technology-driven phenomenon in recent years is the shift from traditional “mail-in” demos to what Michael Laskow, CEO of the independent A&R service TAXI, refers to as “phone-in” demos. With the advent of cheap or free real-time audio and video conferencing over the Internet, demo clients can now be “present” at a demo session no matter where they’re located, hearing everything as it happens and providing immediate feedback to the demo producer and musicians.

Producer Cliff Goldmacher uses this kind of technology to produce demo sessions at his Nashville studio — in real time — from his second studio facility in New York City via his Web site www.NashvilleStudioLive.com. “I live in New York, but with this setup I can work with clients all over the world who write Country songs and want to demo them with the session musicians and singers who do this every day,” he explained.

It All Ends with the Song
So does universal access to these great tools result in better demos? Not necessarily, according to songwriter Sara Light. As a co-founder of www.SongU.com, a songwriting education site offering online courses, feedback, mentoring and pitching opportunities, she believes that while the sonic and production quality of demos — especially home-produced demos — continues to improve steadily, the rate of improvement in song quality and music business knowledge isn’t happening at the same pace. In her view, it’s a given that today’s demos must be “master” or “broadcast” quality, but no matter how much technology one throws at a demo, it won’t help if the song isn’t up to par or the person pitching the demo doesn’t know how the publishing business works.

Luckily, anyone who wants to learn to write, record and promote their songs more effectively can find that information online. “There’s no excuse anymore for anyone to say ‘I didn’t know, I didn’t understand,’ because you can find everything you need by sitting down in front of your computer to research and discover,” Light insisted.

“I think it’s still about the song,” Laskow of TAXI concurred. “If anything, we’ve now come full circle, where people have relied too much on the technology and the ready availability of A-list session players and thinking that that’s going to carry the song, when it really boils down to the same thing that it always has, which is that the song has to be great — ‘good’ isn’t good enough.”

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

For today’s Country artists, merchandise constitutes a revenue source of ever-increasing importance. Sales of T-shirts, hats, CDs and other items help cover the costs of the bus and road crews for emerging artists as they play smaller venues across the country. For established performers, merchandise can generate millions of dollars of annual income.

With so much on the (bottom) line, it’s no wonder that Country artists often hire professionals who understand the art and science of merchandising, from researching trends and analyzing sales statistics, to designing eye-catching products and knowing exactly where to place them at a show.

“The best-selling venue item continues to be the special photo T-shirt with a big picture of the artist, usually from a CD cover or a separate shoot,” said Bill Huntsman, Merchandise Manager for Brooks & Dunn. Josh Brown, Merchandising Manager for Dierks Bentley, agrees. “And it’s not just Country artists,” he added. “Nickelback, Metallica and Bruce Springsteen all have concert tour shirts.

Even when clients have logo-driven apparel that helps diversify their product lines, their merchandise companies know the fans want the concert T, and sales revenues back that up.”

“T-shirts are about 80 percent of all merchandise sales,” said Carl Gibbs, President, Music City Merchandise, which manages the merchandise needs for Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton, various rock bands and CMA, among other clients. “The top three colors for men are black, charcoal grey and medium blue. Pink, lavender and white are most popular for women. The brand of the shirt is also becoming increasingly important — American Apparel is especially in demand.”

While T-shirts with the artist’s image on front and tour cities on the back sell strong in every market, they rack up especially impressive numbers in smaller towns. “For example, Pocatello, Idaho, doesn’t get as many big shows as larger cities,” said Gibbs.

“You can bet Jason Aldean’s tour shirt with Pocatello on the back will sell really well. Shirts that play off big hits are also popular. At a Trace Adkins show, the ladies’ T that says ‘Can’t Blame Me for What My Mama Gave Me’ across the chest and ‘Honky Tonk Badonkadonk’ across the back usually sells out.”

After T-shirts, the next-best selling items are hats and CDs. “Headwear is becoming a great impulse buy at shows,” said Brown. “With the way hats are constructed today, almost any design is possible. If I have seven shirts for sale, my hats outsell at least three of my shirts, which tells me fans didn’t expect to see a hat with multiple design elements at the show. Frayed bills, acid washes, embroidery and screen printing all on the same hat add a lot of value to the product.”

CDs continue to sell briskly, especially among fans of older artists. “Fans are always looking for value. One way of doing this is bundling music with other products. A big seller for The Oak Ridge Boys last year around Christmas was a five-CD set with a Christmas ornament for $85,” said Terry Calonge, CEO, Richards and Southern, a merchandising firm whose clients include Reba McEntire, George Strait and Alabama, for whom the firm created its first bundle in 1984: T-shirt, cap, photo and key ring, all for $20.

Successful merchandisers strive to understand artists and their audiences in depth, as well as to study the selling trends of other performers who play to the same demographic. “We create multiple retail statements for each of our artists,” said Calonge. “For example, the first statement is usually built around the name of the album or tour. The second may focus on the personal side of the artist.”

The challenge, of course, is to design new images and artwork that are both fresh and appealing. Studying current fashion trends is essential to this process: What designs are working for a particular demographic? “My graphic artists do a great deal of in-depth research online,” said Gibbs. “Some of them also work in the rock world and can bring these elements into their Country designs. Today’s young generation listens to a variety of music. It might be metal on Friday night and Trace Adkins on Saturday. Putting a rock twist on Country merchandise works really well — skulls really do sell well in Country Music.”

Accurately predicting the makeup of the audience is one of the biggest responsibilities for merchandising managers. Having the right sizes of shirts, in the right amounts, for each venue is just as critical.

“We put together a merchandising plan for each location at each venue,” said Calonge. “We track sales every day so we know what is selling. This allows us to forecast sales by the number of tickets sold. For example, a factor of .09 means that 100 people have to buy a ticket in order to sell one T-shirt. These metrics tell us how much product we need to provide on a just-in-time basis. On average, we turn over our complete inventory every 3.3 days.” 

Season-appropriate clothing also drives merchandise sales. “Dierks’ song, ‘What Was I Thinkin’,” is about a girl in a little white tank top,” said Brown. “Our white tank top sells well every summer, but sales taper off during the colder months.”

Of course, when it’s 10 degrees outside, impulse buys of tank tops bottom out. But that’s when hoodie sales take off. “If you do an outdoor show where it’s chilly or rains, you can sell sweatshirts, long-sleeve shirts or ponchos as fast as you can get them out of your truck,” said Huntsman.

Fans expect to make their purchases quickly at concert venues. “In order to get large gross sales, a line has to turn quickly or sales will be left on the table,” advised Brown. “A 12-to-15-item product line can make more money than a 25-to-30-item product line because fans have fewer choices to consider and hence make up their minds faster, which means the next person in line doesn’t have to wait as long.”

Merchandise is not just a profit center. It’s also a powerful marketing tool that builds an artist’s brand. Good merchandise numbers, then, can also accelerate an artist’s rise toward better-paying gigs. “Merchandise sales are a good indicator of an artist’s popularity,” said Todd Cayce, Account Manager, Richards and Southern. “When headliners are looking for supporting acts on the road, they’ll always check out their merchandise numbers.”

Artists who pay close attention to their fans tend to sell the most merchandise. Some even get involved in the design process. “Justin Moore came to us in the beginning with the idea of branding himself with a rooster and using the double-O in his last name to look like a double-barreled shotgun,” said Cayce. “Our graphic art team took his idea and made it come to life. Justin’s rooster logo and shotgun barrel can be seen on his backdrop and on all of his merchandise.”

“I’m a hands-on guy in everything I do,” Moore confirmed. “Merchandise is a huge opportunity for emerging artists to build their brand. In the video for ‘Back That Thing Up,’ there’s a rooster crowing in the beginning. I was thinking, ‘How can I use that to be different?’ I’m also a big hunter, and the NRA is one of my sponsors, so the double-barreled shotgun makes a lot of sense.

“Merchandising is a huge opportunity for every artist,” Moore concluded. “It’s cool for the fans to know you designed the shirt or were personally involved in the creative process. Whatever your merchandise is, just be sure it reflects your personality and your music. You don’t want to be endorsing an image that’s not true to who you are.”

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

The art of selecting the sequence of cuts on an album may seem to be vanishing in an age when downloading singles is the rage. But just don’t tell that to Rory Feek or David Nail.

In 2009, each of the two singer/songwriters issued what many would group among the more intriguing Country albums of the year — not just because of their quality, but also because of the thought that went into placing each in the proper place to set the mood or tell a story.

Nail’s I’m About to Come Alive and The Life of a Song, which Feek recorded with wife Joey Martin as Joey + Rory, are both structured so that the music is contained between bookends. What happens in between enhances listening experiences that can be savored from start to finish.

Built around a theme of growing up and away from small-town life, Nail’s album opens with “Mississippi,” a wistful meditation on places left behind, written by Scooter Carusoe, Dan Colehour and Chuck Leavell, and closes with another ballad, Nail’s self-penned “Missouri,” on which the protagonist sings from home but with a different kind of heartache.

The Joey + Rory album uses “Play the Song,” by Feek, and “The Life of a Song,” by Patrick Jason Matthews and Rebecca Lynn Howard, to frame songs that evoke an older school of Country, with Bob Wills-flavored dancehall drivers, Emmylou-style heartbreakers, cowboy songs and a dash of sass.

This structure suited the concept of Carl Jackson, whose credits as producer include the Grammy Award-winning Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’: Songs of the Louvin Brothers as well as The Life of a Song. He began work with the duo by culling through song possibilities before settling on the bookend/song cycle concept. From that point, they arranged the cuts according to subject and tempo, with the goal of carrying the listener all the way through.

“There’s a couple of different ways to look at sequencing, but it’s still very important, as far as I’m concerned,” Jackson said. “I look at an album as an event. I like to listen to an album all the way through and be entertained. It starts with great songs and you try to put them in an order that’s very pleasing to the listener.”

Jackson’s approach is informed strongly by his history as a singer and master of the banjo. His résumé goes back to being hired at 14 by Jim and Jesse McReynolds, a brief foray in The Country Store, a bluegrass group with Keith Whitley, Jimmy Gaudreau and Bill Rawlings and a long run with Glen Campbell. Through these and other experiences he learned the importance of pacing, whether onstage or on albums.

“As much as I love ballads — ballads are my favorite things in the world and it wouldn’t bother me to have an album of nothing but ballads — you want to cut some up-tempo things and place them throughout the album,” Jackson said. “You don’t really want to have three or four ballads right in a row any more than you want three or four up-tempo things in a row.”

Mike Wrucke, who produced Nail’s album with Frank Liddell, also puts much thought into the track order. “You try to get a good flow from song to song,” he said, adding that “it’s cool when you are working with an artist who has a vision.”

A vision that appreciates the album format is perhaps rarer than it was just a few years ago. “Today, a lot of people are so single-driven — you know, release this song to iTunes for downloading,” Wrucke observed. Hastening to add that he doesn’t see anything wrong with that, the producer clarified that it just isn’t the way he prefers to work.

“I love albums,” he emphasized. On I’m About to Come Alive as well as Miranda Lambert’s catalog, all of which he also produced with Liddell, “I just wanted to make more of an album, rather than look for the perfect three-minute single that’s safe and easy for radio.”

One of the critical tracks on the Nail album, in Wrucke’s estimation, is “Missouri.” Running a full four minutes, it’s far from the bite-size, happily-ever-after tunes considered ideal for radio, a point Nail seems to underscore by singing the title with the pronunciation “misery.” But why take it even further by framing his album with two down tempo tunes? According to Nail, that idea guided him right from the start. “I had 10 or 15 different playlists with the songs in different order on my iPod,” he said, but those two always remained at the front and the back of the sequence.

To help him arrange the material between those two, Nail kept the album’s premise in mind. “It does take a theme of small-town kid who moves to the city,” he explained. “He couldn’t wait to get out of this small town, felt that small town was holding him back, but when he gets there he kind of struggles and he longs for that small-town way of life again.

“It was very much my story,” he added, noting that this yearning for small-town life has subsided somewhat since his marriage last June to Catherine Werne. “Now we want something in between.”

To document the tale he envisioned for I’m About to Come Alive, Nail assembled a list of songs that included the title track, recorded originally by the rock band Train, as well as his own co-writes with partners including Kenny Chesney and veteran session keyboardist Chuck Leavell, whose Georgia-woods flavored playing augmented the album’s mood.

And then Nail stepped back to reflect more generally on how he likes to listen to music. “I wanted to have it almost come across as a movie to the people listening,” he said. “I wanted it to kind of ease you in and ease you out, with some intense moments in the middle.

“I spent so many days of my life listening to records in cars,” he continued. “I always liked it when someone can put this record in for an hour and drive and get to the end and say, ‘I listened to it from top to bottom a couple of times and it seemed to move effortlessly.’ It always bothered me when people would cut three singles and the rest of the songs on the album were kind of average. I felt that especially in today’s time, if someone is going to spend $10 on a record, you should give them something.”

Nail wasn’t just using Country artists as his models when mulling over his song sequence. As he shuffled his playlists, he kept thinking back to albums from the ‘60s and ‘70s he listened to while riding around in the car with his father, a band director and music enthusiast. In particular, he recalled the work of The Beatles, Glen Campbell and Elton John, who fashioned the “real, authentic, unique, classic-sounding record” he aspired to make.

“I referenced that time period,” he explained. “If you are going to copy something, it might as well be the best.”

Similarly, Feek looked to the classic stylists and even particular albums while working on the song order for The Life of a Song. “I’m extremely Country,” he insisted. “But the album that stood out for me [while sequencing] is Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. I got to listen to that album a lot on reel-to-reel when I was stationed [with the U.S. Marine Corps] in Japan. I remember falling in love with it. The sequencing and the story line were huge to me.”

Though he wanted “those same kinds of messages and threads” running through his Joey + Rory debut, the stark Midwestern tale spun by the Boss wasn’t the kind of material Feek hoped to emulate. And so he broadened his reference to include another favorite album, The Best of Don Williams, Vol. 2. “You can remember 30 years later what was cut number four on the Don Williams album,” he said, adding that he and his wife “like the old albums and concept albums that you could listen to from beginning to end. So, we spent a lot of time in trying to make the best possible decisions for the record.”

With producer Jackson, they agreed that the sassy “Play the Song” and the to-the-point title track would work as bookends. “The message of the album is that at the end of the day it comes down to the songs, that the song is the most important thing here,” Feek noted. Once that was established, focus shifted to ensuring that the pacing and placing of the rest of the material worked well — in particular because the set included a dramatic rearrangement of a landmark song, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” Their decision was to not position it too close to the top.

“The thought process was that it’s a classic song that’s important to people,” Feek said. “When you are remaking something, it feels like it’s something you don’t want to insert early on. We needed to establish some credibility as singers and songwriters before we reached it.” And that credibility was confirmed big-time by positioning the catchy single, “Cheater Cheater,” by Feek, Martin, Kristy Osmunson and Wynn Varble, in the cleanup position at number four.

Looking back on The Life of a Song, Jackson reflected that technology has had an impact on sequencing strategies. Back when his father was a radio deejay, slapping vinyl on the turntable, singles were often the first and last cuts on each side of an album, making it easier to find and spin frequently enough to make them hits.

With CDs, though, Jackson noted that listeners have “instant access" — the ability to jump right to the hit or let the entire album play out. “I think sequencing is just as important now as it’s ever been,” he concluded, “but probably for different reasons.”

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

A gourmet, multicourse meal requires a great deal of toil. To someone who has no training in the culinary arts, however, that delicious meal might appear to be something that just popped right out of the oven.

The same is true for Zac Brown Band’s “overnight success.” Most fans probably hadn’t heard of the act until the release of “Chicken Fried,” the lead single off their major-label debut album, The Foundation. But Brown had been working toward stardom since the mid ’90s, when he was a high school student playing solo gigs. In fact, by the time Atlantic Records/Home Grown/BPG released The Foundation in November 2008, Brown had already logged more than 3,000 concerts.

Before assembling his namesake band, Brown attended college on a vocal scholarship and played professionally. The Georgia native also worked as a chef and restaurant manager, recorded a couple of independent albums and toured extensively before signing a recording contract a few years ago. Corporate upheavals eventually led that deal to dissolve, but then Atlantic picked up Zac Brown Band, which had already recorded The Foundation.

Brown fronts the band, singing lead vocals and playing a gut-string acoustic guitar. The other members are Coy Bowles on guitar and organ; Clay Cook on guitar, mandolin, organ, pedal steel and vocals; Jimmy De Martini on violin and vocals; Chris Fryar on drums; and John Driskell Hopkins on bass and vocals.

Upon signing the band, Craig Kallman, Chairman and CEO, Atlantic Records, hailed them as a “self-made American success story.” “They’ve built up a phenomenal grass-roots base with music that cuts across musical boundaries and walks of life to speak to the hearts of people everywhere,” he noted. “They are the perfect band for our times, with the songs, the musicianship and the power to become a major presence.”

Keith Stegall had reached the same conclusion after hearing Zac Brown Band early in 2007 at 3rd & Lindsley in Nashville. The four-time CMA Awards winner was well established as one of Music City’s top producers, with Platinum and multi-Platinum albums by Terri Clark, Alan Jackson and Randy Travis among his achievements. Yet even in this stellar catalog, nothing quite matched the opportunity and the challenge that Stegall imagined he would face in producing this new group.

“The biggest compliment Zac paid me was to let me do The Foundation,” Stegall said. “He could have said, ‘No, you’re part of that Nashville system. I don’t want my music to sound like that.’ But I guess he trusted me enough to let me take a crack at doing it.”

Sessions spread over eight months, with basics laid down at the studio of bassist Hopkins, in Atlanta; Brown’s solos and most of his vocals were tracked in Nashville, with additional vocals cut in Nassau, The Bahamas. From the start, Stegall and engineer John Kelton decided to emphasize the most obvious qualities that uniquely branded this group.

“We felt that one of the biggest hooks was Zac’s guitar playing,” Stegall explained. “Nobody had done that gut-string guitar since Willie Nelson, so you know immediately that it’s Zac Brown when you hear it on the radio. We just felt that if we could build the album around Zac’s voice and that gut-string guitar to the point that people would associate that sound with Zac Brown Band, it would only get bigger from there.” Stegall’s plan proved prophetic. The Foundation became the eighth major-label debut in the Nielsen SoundScan era to propel at least three singles to No. 1. (One of them, “Toes,” was written by Brown, Hopkins, Wyatt Durrette and Shawn Mullins; Brown and Durrette co-wrote the two other chart-topping singles, “Chicken Fried” and “Highway 20 Ride,” as well as “Whatever It Is,” which peaked at No. 2.)

Initially, some radio programmers were unsure about “Chicken Fried.” “There was a bit of early resistance because the song was so different,” explained Michael Powers, Partner/Co-Head of Promotion, Bigger Picture Group, whose clients include Gloriana, Alan Jackson, Tim McGraw and Uncle Kracker as well as Zac Brown Band. “And Zac doesn’t look like your typical Country star, with the wool cap and the fuzzy beard. Zac does things Zac’s way. It started out as, ‘Well, this guy’s really different,’ but that ended up being his calling card.”

Nowadays, of course, Country radio executives are hungry for material from the band. “We had already had four consecutive No. 1 songs (on the Mediabase 24/7 Country Chart),” Powers noted. “And yet I was getting phone calls from program directors who were telling me that ‘Free’ — the single we were just about to work — was their favorite song on the album. That makes you feel very confident about going five singles deep. Zac is making fans from all genres of music, and that proves there’s still an amazing amount of power in the Country radio format.”

Riding the momentum of the band’s Grammy Award for Best New Artist, The Foundation has been certified Double Platinum and generated sales of more than 4.6 million digital tracks, while “Chicken Fried” had sold more than 760,000 ringtones, as of April. In addition to appearances at Bonnaroo and LP Field during CMA Music Festival in June, Zac Brown Band will perform at several stadium shows with The Dave Matthews Band during the summer. Partnering with Sixthman, the band will also host and headline on the Sailing Southern Ground cruise, which travels from Tampa to Grand Cayman in early September.

On its own tours, Zac Brown Band offers one unique element through its Eat-and-Greet gathering, at which up to 75 fans are invited to join them for a cookout featuring Southern cuisine developed by Brown. The recipes incorporate his Southern Ground Grub spice rub and brown sauce. Both products are sold nationwide at Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores, along with Brown’s Southern Ground Cookbook and an exclusive version of The Foundation that features different cover artwork and three bonus live tracks.

“Obviously, we’re always working on our music, but with this tour we’re building an experience that involves all senses to ensure that it blows fans away every time,” said Brown, who launched his Southern Ground record label in 2009 and signed Atlanta-based artists Sonia Leigh, Levi Lowrey and Nic Cowan. “When people come to our show, we want them to smell the food cooking, taste our favorite recipes, watch our home videos of the road, listen to some great new artists and feel our excitement — a full five-sense experience.”

“If there’s a grill around, we’re going to light it up and throw something on it,” added Hopkins, with a chuckle. “It’s one of those things that makes us all feel comfortable and at home, no matter where we are.”

The band’s recent calendar includes more than live music and pre-concert meals with fans. In May, ZBB released Pass the Jar — Zac Brown Band and Friends Live from the Fabulous Fox Theatre in Atlanta on Southern Ground/Atlantic. This package includes a double album and DVD, shot in HD and directed by Darren Doane with 18 performances and appearances by Angie Aparo, Aslyn, Joey + Rory, Kid Rock, Little Big Town, Shawn Mullins and other guests. The concert, which took place October 2009, was a fundraiser for reconstruction of the historic Georgia Theatre in Athens, destroyed four months earlier by fire. The venue’s owner, Wilmot Greene, benefitted from a connection in high school to Hopkins.

“One of the first big gigs I ever played was at the Georgia Theatre,” the bassist recalled. “We feel like those two theaters, the Fox and the Georgia Theatre, have a kinship and a history in terms of being spectacular places to play.”

Pass the Jar features versions of some original songs, including “We’re Gonna Make This Day” and “Who Knows,” that will be offered on the band’s forthcoming studio album, slated for release later this year.

Apparently, the sky is the limit for Zac Brown Band and its tasty music. “This is just a dream come true,” said Hopkins, who met Brown 13 years ago. “We couldn’t have predicted any of this to go nearly as well and as big as it has. Two years ago, we were touring in an airport shuttle that pulled a trailer. We had gutted the shuttle and bolted captain’s chairs to the floor. We were rolling with seven to nine guys then. And now we’ve got four buses and two semi trucks. The growth has been smart, and the growth has been surprising. But it hasn’t been outrageous. I think we’re doing a good job of keeping our heads about us. We just can’t thank the Country fans enough for being so receptive to us and so gracious to us, and we look forward to pushing the envelope further every year.”

On the Web: www.ZacBrownBand.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Jamie Dailey doesn’t scare easily. Through his long run as lead singer and guitarist with Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, he learned to be comfortable playing in front of bluegrass fans equipped with discerning ears and high standards.

Still, standing on the Ford Theater stage in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, celebrating the release of Dailey & Vincent Sing the Statler Brothers in February with his colleagues, he was, by his own reckoning, about as nervous as he’d ever been in or out of the spotlight. “My knees were shaking,” he admitted.

The source for this rare onset of stage fright was the presence of The Statler Brothers, a group that had significantly influenced the guitarist and high-tenor singer as well as his partner, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Darrin Vincent, formerly with Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. More than that, they had been something of a lifeline for Dailey during difficulties he had weathered in his youth.

“My mom and dad divorced when I was 9,” Dailey recalled. “Earlier that year, my dad had bought me one of those new boom boxes that were popular at the time and a cassette tape of Statler Brothers music.

I think I was going crazy, running around the house like kids do. But when I heard ‘Elizabeth’ come on, when I heard that high harmony, I just stopped because I loved it so much. Then when my parents divorced, it was real tough. Every night I’d go to bed crying, but when I listened to The Statler Brothers it helped me a lot.”

That respect was the seed of a project Dailey & Vincent had in mind ever since they put the group together in 2007. They had, after all, already recorded Statlers material, including “More Than a Name on the Wall” on their self-titled debut in 2008 and, on Brothers from Different Mothers from 2009, “There Is You” and “Years Ago” as well as a guest appearance by Statler Brother Don Reid on “Head Hung Down.”

But even before sweeping the 2008 International Bluegrass Music Awards by winning seven trophies and becoming the first act in that organization’s history to win both Emerging Artist and Entertainer of the Year, they were determined to record a more comprehensive homage to the Statlers.

“Shortly after the first record was released, Jamie brought up the idea of doing a tribute to the Statlers,” said Ken Irwin, Co-Founder and Co-Owner, Rounder Records, which has issued all of the Dailey & Vincent catalog including, in April, the gospel collection Singing from the Heart.

“I thought that at the time it was premature to have their next regular release be a tribute to another group while Dailey & Vincent were establishing themselves. We needed to have the next record be more Dailey & Vincent and not take away from that branding. So when the idea came up to do it through Cracker Barrel, it seemed like a win/win situation.”

The artists agreed, especially because their fans seemed open to the idea. “They were almost demanding it,” said Vincent, with a chuckle.

“Just about every night, they would come up and ask for ‘Elizabeth,’ ‘Flowers on the Wall,’ ‘I’ll Go to My Grave Lovin’ You’ — on and on. They said, ‘If you had it out right now, I’d buy it.’ When you have demand like that, it doesn’t take long for your management and record label to say, ‘We’d better give it to them.’”

Since they were playing 140 shows a year and wrestling with the challenges of establishing and maintaining momentum as a new act, Dailey & Vincent didn’t bump it toward the top of their agenda until they’d heard from the Statlers themselves. “They showed up for one of our shows at Staunton, Va.,” said Dailey, noting the hometown for most of the members of the group. “They were sitting out there in lawn chairs, like everybody else. So we were quite taken aback when they came to the bus afterwards and talked with us.”

Finally, when the Statlers asked Daily & Vincent to perform at their induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in June 2008, work was underway. With Rounder wary of issuing a tribute album too early, arrangements were made to release it exclusively through Cracker Barrel.

“It was a little different than what we’ve done in the past,” admitted Peter Keiser, VP, Marketing, Cracker Barrel Old Country Store. “They’re a little bit earlier in their career than some of the other artists we’ve worked with. But bluegrass has a very strong emotional connection with our guests. And The Statler Brothers are both Country and gospel music icons. When you layer that on top of the fact that you’ve got brilliant artists like Jamie and Darrin, it was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.”

After confirming his instincts by polling customers on their feelings about Dailey & Vincent, Keiser negotiated approval from Rounder for exclusive rights to sell Dailey & Vincent Sing The Statler Brothers via CD, with logos for Cracker Barrel Old Country Store and Rounder on thecover. Rounder reserved creative responsibility for the artists; all other matters, including graphic design, photography, packaging and publicity, were handled jointly by the label and the restaurant/retail chain.

For Dailey & Vincent, there were two essential goals: to obtain the Statlers’ support and to choose and record the material with integrity. Toward the first point, they arranged a meeting in Staunton with the brothers Harold and Don Reid, from the Statlers, to present their plans face-to-face.

“We met at a restaurant here in town,” Don Reid said. “When they ran the idea past me, I said, ‘Do you think our music will relate to bluegrass?’ And Jamie said, ‘Anything we sing will be bluegrass when we’re through with it.’”

In fact, while their arrangements are built on the acoustic instrumentation of their previous albums, as opposed to the electrified pop-inflected settings of the Statlers, Dailey & Vincent strove to preserve the feeling of the original tracks.

“I’ve heard that you need to get away from what the other artists did and try to do your own thing on tribute records,” said Dailey. “In my opinion, no, you don’t. It’s just like doing a Bill Monroe song onstage and trying the same licks on the mandolin. We need to hit the same licks on our guitars as they did on ‘I’ll Go to My Grave Lovin’ You’ because that’s the identity of the song.”

Changes were kept minimal. Details of the vocals may differ, with Dailey’s straight-toned tenor contrasting slightly with the vibratos of the late Lew DeWitt and Jimmy Fortune on Statlers tracks. Two songs, “Flowers on the Wall” and “I’ll Go to My Grave Lovin’ You,” were transposed to other keys, to accommodate Dailey & Vincent’s vocal ranges. But the harmony parts, featuring Dailey, Vincent, guitarist Christian Davis, banjo and guitar player Joe Dean Jr., and mandolin and guitar player Jeff Parker, sweetened by Jesse Stockman’s fiddle, perfectly replicate those of the Statlers, down to some surprising details.

“They did certain things based on the way we sang it onstage and not necessarily the way we did it on records,” Don Reid said. “I’ll give you an example: On the third verse of ‘Do You Know You Are My Sunshine,’ they do a little jolt where they attack the third verse. We didn’t do that on the original record, but we used to do it onstage, kind of as a joke. So these guys didn’t just study the record; they studied everything!”

For all the risks, from the tribute concept to commercial potential, the 12-track album has paid off, peaking at the top of the Billboard Bluegrass chart. The artists have met audience members at their shows who first heard their music while shopping at Cracker Barrel. The Statlers picked up new visibility too, as Dailey & Vincent set aside a segment of their concerts to feature their material. But the sweetest moments came around Christmastime, when Don Reid, having heard the final mixes, called. Dailey remembers the conversation clearly.

“He said, ‘Guys, I’m sitting here listening to it, over and over. How did you do this? You still sound like you but you covered our music so thoroughly! I’m just amazed. I’m in tears!’”

“It was a bigger thing that we were expecting,” Don Reid confirmed. “It’s a salute to us, but they put themselves into it, so it’s a Dailey & Vincent album. That is a credit to them and to their talent.”

On the Web: www.DaileyVincent.MusicCityNetworks.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

The fifth of six children, Gokey grew up in a Milwaukee family that loved music and valued hard work. Drawn from the start to Country Music, he infused his singing with an element of soul distilled from performances in church. Though he paid the bills as a truck driver, Gokey dreamed of pursuing music, so when his wife Sophia encouraged him to try out for “American Idol” he agreed to give it a shot.

Immediately afterwards, two pivotal events rocked the young artist’s life: Sophia’s sudden and unexpected death in the midst of heart surgery, followed just a month later by his acceptance as an “American Idol” contestant. His ascension endeared him to viewers and impressed the program’s judges, including the notoriously difficult Simon Cowell, who described one of Gokey’s performances as “a vocal master class.”

Not surprisingly, when 19 Recordings/RCA Nashville released his debut album, My Best Days in March, the public pounced. More than 65,000 copies sold during its first week — the strongest sales for that period by any debuting male Country artist in 18 years, launching it at No. 3 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart and No. 4 on the Billboard 200.

On these 10 tracks, Gokey emerges as a unique stylist, combining emotion and craft, insightful and interpretive phrasing, and sensitivity balanced by raw, searing intensity. His first single, “My Best Days Are Ahead of Me,” written by Marv Green and Kent Blazy, opens the album assertively, with a lyric that nods toward past struggles, but affirms his determination to live fully through whatever awaits him — delivered, in contemporary Country fashion, over a power lick played on steel guitar.

Gospel elements add urgency to his delivery on each song, especially in the preaching cadences of “I Will Not Say Goodbye,” by Lari White, Chuck Cannon and Vicky McGehee. But even on this closing track, the spirit of modern Country prevails. Gokey’s best days may lie before him, but with this Mark Bright-produced album he moves toward them decisively.

IN HIS OWN WORDS Q&A

BOOK ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND
“Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, by Immaculee Ilibagiza.”

DREAM DUET PARTNER
“Gary LeVox or Brian McKnight.”

FAVORITE FOOD ON THE ROAD
“Whole Foods Market. I love eating healthy.”

MOMENT YOU’D LOVE TO RELIVE
“My wedding day.”

TITLE OF YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY
“Never Give Up.”

OCCUPATION YOU’D HAVE IF NOT AN ARTIST
“A business man and a philanthropist.”

PERSONAL TIME CAPSULE CONTENTS
“A diary of important lessons I learned about life and my CD.”

GREATEST PERFORMANCE TO DATE
“My home visit on 'American Idol!'  Around 26,000 people came out to see me perform.”

On the Web: www.DannyGokey.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

For all the outstanding talent showcased at Universal Music Group’s lunchtime event at the Ryman Auditorium during Country Radio Seminar in February, Josh Turner’s performance arguably stood out as the most surprising of all.

It wasn’t because of his voice, one of the most identifiable in the business. That tooth-rattling bass was as familiar as it was impressive, prompting Jennifer Nettles to quip during Sugarland’s appearance at that showcase, “I was sitting there thinking, ‘Is there a subway under the Ryman? No, that’s just Josh Turner warming up.’”

The surprise stemmed more from Turner’s stage presence. He had stepped into the national spotlight in 2001 with a stunning performance on the Grand Ole Opry of “Long Black Train,” a Turner composition whose serious, spiritual essence was reinforced by the chilling depth of his resonance and a tendency toward shyness in his early interviews.

But the Josh Turner onstage during CRS was anything but serious. He introduced his upcoming single, “All Over Me,” a summertime romp written by Rhett Akins, Dallas Davidson and Ben Hayslip, and spent as much time talking as he did singing and displaying a sense of humor with an impression of Ralph Stanley covering Nelly’s hip-hop hit “Hot in Herre.”

When invited several weeks later to reflect on this more expanded persona, Turner replied, seriously, “If you ask a lot of my family, they will tell you that behind the scenes I am very withdrawn and kind of introverted and just real quiet and laid-back.”

Then, with a comic flair, he added, “Normally, it’s because I can’t get a word in!”

“But ever since I was a young boy,” he continued, “my way of expressing myself has been onstage. When I’m up there, I can speak freely. Nobody is interrupting me and it’s kind of a rhetorical conversation in a way.”

Turner’s upbeat side is featured more prominently than ever on his fourth studio album, Haywire. With five of its 11 songs written or co-written by Turner, it debuted in February at No. 2 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart and No. 5 on the Billboard 200. The first single, “Why Don’t We Just Dance,” by Jim Beavers, Darrell Brown and Jonathan Singleton, spent four weeks at No. 1 just as Haywire was released. The album gives plenty of exposure to the upbeat side of Turner’s personality through the chugging title track, a Turner composition, the work-and-love saga “Friday Paycheck,” penned by Turner and Mark Narmore and the tongue-in-cheek romp “Eye Candy,” which Turner wrote with Shawn Camp and Pat McLaughlin.

This move into a somewhat broader spotlight says as much about changing times as the artist’s newer directions. During the period he recorded Haywire, from the fall of 2008 through June 2009, much of America and in particular the Country Music fan base was struggling with multiple challenges: the mortgage meltdown, Wall Street’s near collapse, a contentious election and stubbornly unyielding unemployment figures. Turner had no intention of piling anything with as stern a message as “Long Black Train” into the mix during those uncertain times.

“I wasn’t in the mood to sing any sad songs,” he explained. “I wanted to lift people up. I wanted to get people out of their seats, get them to dance and move around and just forget about all the baggage and all the negativity that’s going on in the world. So that first single, ‘Why Don’t We Just Dance,’ was kind of the song that all the other songs centered around.”

This strategy also made Haywire a perfect candidate for one of UMG’s recently introduced deluxe-packaging albums. In addition to the 11-song standard version, the company’s MCA Nashville imprint simultaneously released a second version with four bonus songs, including live performances of “Long Black Train” and “Your Man,” plus the ability to download the “Why Don’t We Just Dance” video and an on-camera interview with Turner about making the album.

In part because of the shyness Turner exhibited during early stages of his career, the label believed that this bonus material would give fans a firmer grasp on him as a complete artist, much as the crowd at the Ryman experienced during CRS. Ken Robold, Executive VP and GM, Universal Music Group Nashville, felt the interview footage “would entice consumers to get more of a connection with him.”

The live bonus tracks targeted two goals, to cement Turner’s hitmaker status for fans who know his name but had not connected him with those previous singles and to demonstrate his personable, outgoing demeanor onstage.

“We felt there was a bit of a missing link with his live performance,” Robold observed. “Even though you can’t visually see him on these audio tracks, there is a lot of audience feedback on both of these tracks. You get the sense, even from an audio perspective, that he’s comfortable onstage and comfortable interacting with the audience.”

It took some work to achieve that comfort level. Turner was petrified the first time he performed in public, singing Randy Travis’ “Diggin’ Up Bones” at 14 when his mother signed him to perform at a church function. He also never toured the club circuit as a young performer, a proven vehicle for grooming entertainers, though he has certainly made up for that through headlining his own shows as well as opening for other artists, the most recent being Alan Jackson on his “Freight Train” tour.

Perhaps most significantly, Turner admits that he wasn’t necessarily born with an entertainer’s temperament. “I don’t like crowds,” he confessed. “I don’t like being in loud places. When I’m away from the stage and the business, I’m in a quiet place. I love my solitude. I love my alone time, whether it’s cutting grass or hunting or fishing  or whatever it may be. It just gets me closer to the Lord and to the Earth and to myself. It’s time for me to think and look for the inspiration for the next song and pray about things going on in my life.”

Fortunately, there’s a distinction between performing for and being immersed in a crowd, and Turner has learned to take some risks by exposing his lighter side in the one-way conversation that ensues in most concert settings.

“The real, true Country Music fan and the real American are waiting to see the true artist,” Turner said. “They’re wanting to see my art. They’re wanting to see my soul. They don’t want me to get up there and put on a façade and try to be something I’m not or try to be cool. I just try to be real and true and organic and brave.”

That approach certainly worked at his CRS appearance, where he showed off not only his funny bone but also his knowledge of R&B. Written by Shawn Camp, Billy Burnette and Brice Long, “No Rush,” from his 2006 album Your Man, earned him comparisons to Barry White. He collaborated with R&B singer Anthony Hamilton on “Nowhere Fast,” written by Hamilton and Kelvin Wooten and included on Everything Is Fine from 2007. Haywire revisits this territory on the old-school-flavored “Lovin’ You on My Mind,” by Tim James, Kendell Marvel and Chris Stapleton.

“My school system was 50 percent white and 50 percent African-American,” the South Carolina native recalled. “It wasn’t just the white culture I was exposed to growing up. I grew up loving traditional Country Music and bluegrass and gospel music. And then, when I got into middle school and high school, I started listening to all the current R&B sounds that all of my friends were listening to — and I loved it. I knew that it was a different style of music, but at the same time there was a lot of soul in that music too. It was just a different kind of soul.”

With all of these elements in the mix, Country audiences are experiencing insights into more varied elements of Turner’s soul. While the classic Country influences, conservative core values and richly-textured voice are as prevalent as ever, his unique humor, his growing ease in public and the subtle reminders of his appreciation for other types establish Haywire as a transitional milestone as well as a well-crafted and perfectly-timed landmark in his catalog.

On the Web: www.JoshTurner.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Concept albums are rare in Country Music, so from the get-go Achin’ and Shakin’, Laura Bell Bundy's major label debut release, is — as she writes and sings in “Homecoming Queen” — “a little left of the middle.”

But that’s to be expected from Bundy, who wrote that song with Jeff Cohen and 11 of the album's 12 tracks. But that’s not all: Where the usual pattern for Country Music hopefuls is to come straight to Nashville to try their luck, Bundy made the move only after gaining extensive performing experience in New York City.

She earned a Tony Award nomination for originating the role of Elle Woods in “Legally Blonde: The Musical.” She was already a veteran at that point, having appeared at 9 in Radio City Music Hall’s “Christmas Spectacular.” At 11, she won an outer critics award for her starring role in "Ruthless! The Musical.” She also starred in the Broadway musicals “Hairspray" and “Wicked.”

But Bundy’s ambition was to sing Country Music. Between theater shows, the Kentucky-born artist and her roommate Amber Rhodes gigged as a down-home duo in Manhattan. Eventually, trading Broadway for Lower Broad in Music City, Bundy signed with Mercury Nashville and worked with three producers on Achin’ and Shakin,’ released in April.

Why three producers? The first half of the album, produced by Nathan Chapman, offers heartbreak songs and wistful ballads. The second, with Kyle Kelso and Mike Shimshack at the helm, dishes up half a dozen up-tempo tunes, beginning with the first single,

“Giddy On Up.” Written by Bundy, Cohen and Shimshack, it captures her playful side as well as her broad musical background. Stax-style horns punch through a banjo-driven hoedown and foot-stomp, dance-floor beat while Bundy radiates confident vocal chops and infectious humor. A seasoned musical actress with a strong Country spirit — now, that’s a concept.

IN HER OWN WORDS Q&A

Who is your musical hero?
“I have a few...Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin.”

What CD is in your stereo? 
“Lee Ann Womack’s Call Me Crazy.”

What book is on your nightstand? 
“My headboard is actually a bookshelf so there are tons of books; I read about five at a time.  Currently, I’m reading, The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck and The Help by Kathryn Stocket.”

What song do you wish you had written?
“Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin'’ played at every bar in America at some point every night.”

What word or phrase do you find yourself saying over and over again? 
“’No, Norma Jean, you don’t poo poo there.’ Norma Jean is my new puppy.”
 
What mode of transportation do you prefer? 
“A convertible.”

What moment in your life would you relive if you could? 
“Taking walks with my dad in the fall when I was 5 yrs old and picking sour apples of the trees.”

Do you have a lucky charm? 
“Yes, my Horseshoe necklace and ring.”

If you wrote an autobiography, what would the title be? 
“Born To Entertain — The Life and Times of Laura Bell Bundy.” 

When they look back on your life in 50 years, what do you hope people say about you? 
“They’ll probably say, ‘That girl was CRAZY!’  I hope they say, ‘She was true to herself.’”

If you weren’t a musical artist, what would you be? 
“An Allergist or Nutritionist and I would help people that have food allergies like I do.”

What is your favorite food while on the road? 
“Lays Classic Potato Chips”

What can you tell us about yourself that we’d never guess about you?
“I won the Purdue University physics award as a junior in high school. Also I love 'Battlestar Gallactica.'”

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Feel like hearing some Country Music? Do what much of America has been doing lately: Turn on your TV.

As documented in the Vol. 1 2010 issue of CMA Close Up, in “The Year in Country Music” review, the list of TV shows that used Country songs or featured Country acts was long and diverse in 2009. Equally bright are the findings of the most recent updates to the CMA Country Music Consumer Segmentation Study, which note that in 2009 Country Music fans 18-24 access Country Music on television frequently, with 80 percent watching CMT regularly and 73 percent tuning into E! Entertainment Television, for example.

It's no surprise, then, that promotional spots on television can be effective at spreading a Country artist’s sound and latest work to a broad audience, particularly for those who are somewhat new to the game. Such was the case for Jypsi, whose “Girls Do It Better,” written by Dave Bassett and Catt Gravitt, pumped out a sassy and playful energy that proved a good fit for ABC’s “Desperate Housewives.”

“To have one of our songs chosen to promote ‘Desperate Housewives,’ one of the most popular shows on television, is so exciting,” said lead singer Lillie Mae Rische. “We’re genuinely thrilled and think the song is a great fit. We love it.”

For more established artists, opportunities to write and record music on assignment can be even more lucrative, as illustrated by Kenny Chesney, who cut “This Is Our Time” to add musical punch to ESPN’s “College GameDay” — whose opening theme, Big & Rich's "Coming to Your Town," packed a Country punch of its own.

Written by Chesney and Brett James, the song sprang from a dinner that Chesney had in Nashville with ESPN producer Bill Bonnell and sports broadcasters Kirk Herbstreit and Brent Musburger. “It was one of those moments of spontaneous inspiration,” Chesney recalled. “We were talking about how much goes into getting on that field, what it means to those guys out there, and Bill Bonnell turns to me and says, ‘You ought to write a song about it.’ I asked for a cocktail napkin and started writing the verses and the chorus.”

A few months later, after recording the song, Chesney stopped by the ESPN offices to let Bonnell hear it. The track was approved quickly for use in dozens of football broadcasts. “The song really captures not just the sacrifice and the full-tilt way these athletes play, but it draws a pretty incredible parallel to what it takes to make it as a musician too,” Bonnell observed. “They’re more similar than you’d guess — and equally intense.”

ESPN used the music of another Country act, Love And Theft, in two programs, “NASCAR Now” and “SportsCenter at the NASCAR Championship,” both of which aired on Nov. 22. Additionally, the trio was among the Country acts whose music was featured in promos for daytime dramas televised on ABC and the cable network SOAPnet. Also included were Sara Evans, Lady Antebellum and Sugarland.

In one promo shown on SOAPnet, Love And Theft’s “World Wide Open,” written by Eric Gunderson and Danny Orton, was remixed into a soundtrack for such attention-grabbing scenes as a character’s marriage proposal and a bedside visit to a hospital patient. In a high octane promo for “All My Children,” the chorus to “World Wide Open” played in the background as a woman in a bridal gown swerved her motorcycle off the road and into the air. The song was also used in promos for “One Life to Live.”

“It was neat to see how they used our music to capture the emotion of the scene,” said Stephen Barker Liles of Love And Theft. “They picked out parts of the chorus and different verses that matched up with what their show was about. It was pretty cool to see how they mixed it for TV with the clips. There’s an art form to doing that.”

For artists whose work is disseminated via programs and promotional items on ABC and its affiliated networks, the benefits don’t stop at the moment of broadcast. The ABC Music Lounge Web site supplements this exposure with biographies of acts whose music appears on ABC, exclusive “Live on the Lot” concert performances, a streaming radio station, interviews, interactive components and links that enable fans to hear and download tracks. Love And Theft is the first Country act to be treated to this online coverage.

“There are so many new outlets for discovering music,” said Liles. “Country radio is still the main one, but it’s also a big deal to get your songs on television. People have their iPhones and TiVo, and if they hear a song, they rewind it. This is what I do: If I hear a good song, I’ll pause it, rewind, stick my iPhone up to it and use a song-recognition app. I find out what song it was and then download it on iTunes. People have sent us e-mails telling us they heard our music on TV, went online and checked us out — and now they’re fans. So we feel very blessed to get those opportunities to have our music on TV.”

This exposure has helped Love And Theft expand its fan base, which gave them extra momentum to build it further as they began a 45-date tour in April as an opening act for Tim McGraw. Other Country acts now featured in the ABC Music Lounge include Brooks & Dunn, Gloriana, Emmylou Harris, Miranda Lambert, Loretta Lynn, Martina McBride, Rascal Flatts, Sugarland, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Zac Brown Band.

“Country Music has a huge audience,” said Peter DiCecco, Senior VP, Business and Legal Affairs, Music, Disney-ABC Television Group. “We know that the Country Music fan is a very loyal fan. What we try to do is to match that up with our fans. We know that 25 percent or more of our ABC Daytime viewers listen to Country Music on the radio. That’s why daytime is such a good fit for Country Music. We conduct these musical showcases from time to time, where we bring in new talent to introduce them to our music executives and our production executives. We’re seeking out Country artists because we recognize their appeal and we appreciate it.”

As far as placing songs on TV shows, some music supervisors hope for an “At This Moment” scenario. One of the biggest hits of the ’80s for singer/songwriter Billy Vera, “At This Moment,” became the title track to Neal McCoy’s 1990 debut album. The ballad has also been recorded by jazz crooner Michael Bublé, R&B singer Dimples, bluesman Little Milton, Las Vegas icon Wayne Newton and big-band leader Al Yankee. But perhaps none of this would have happened without the NBC sitcom “Family Ties.”

When Vera released the single originally with his band, Billy Vera & the Beaters, it only reached No. 79. However, when the track was used during the 1985-’86 season of “Family Ties” as a love theme for the characters Alex (Michael J. Fox) and Ellen (Tracy Pollan), viewer response exploded. NBC was flooded with phone calls and letters inquiring about the song. Re-released in 1986 by Vera as a solo artist, it topped the pop charts, lodged in the Top 40 for 15 weeks and peaked at No. 42 among Country singles by the following year.

Today, thanks to www.TuneFind.com, www.TunesOnTheTube.TV  and other Web sites, fans can easily find the artist and title for songs they’ve heard on television. According to Joe Fleischer, Chief Marketing Officer for BigChampagne Media Measurement, pairing an appropriate song with a powerful character or storyline elevates the potential for strong sales.

“The surest thing is to have the track be resonant within the show’s narrative,” Fleischer noted. “There’s a lot of historical support for that, going all the way back to the use of the Billy Vera song on ‘Family Ties.’ That was one of the first instances of a song appearing on a TV show and becoming a big hit out of nowhere. Since then, the trend extends all the way to the use of songs from bands like Snow Patrol in shows like ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ If the song really underscores the narrative in an emotional scene, there does seem to be a big rush for people to acquire it. The next step is just making sure that the song is readily available and for sale.”

“Placement of a song always comes down to the creative aspect,” DiCecco added. “We want something that’s not going to remove the viewer from the scene. We want something that can carry the action forward. Sometimes we want something that enhances the story, and Country Music does that very well because it’s very lyrical. What you’ll find is that when a Country song is used in a TV series, it’s because the lyrics are right on. They match the scene and the tone exactly.”

Fans were engaged in a different way when Lifetime Television reached out to the Country community in August with an online poll to determine “which Country singer should be on ‘Army Wives.’” Though Jack Ingram had appeared on the show’s Aug. 16 episode, nine other casting possibilities were posted on the network’s “Army Wives” blog (www.MyLifetime.com/On-TV-Shows/Army-Wives), including Willie Nelson as Frank’s dad and Tim McGraw as Chase’s new commander.

Participants in this non-binding poll chose Reba McEntire for the role of Pamela's aunt. (Country artists had already long proven themselves to be prize candidates for acting appearances, as shown recently by Carrie Underwood on “How I Met Your Mother,” Rascal Flatts and Taylor Swift on “CSI” and Wynonna on “Kath & Kim,” among others.)

With these appearances on the upswing, not to mention the growing musical contributions of artists to theme songs as exemplified by Jace Everett with HBO’s “True Blood,” the story grows more varied, the possibilities more intriguing, for Country Music and its practitioners to make themselves heard through the world of television. With a devoted fan base and a strong presence on radio and the Web, the future for creative and profitable engagement seems even brighter.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

If you’ve rented a car recently – even an economy model – you might have noticed a couple of new features: a USB connector and a 1/8-inch jack with a nearby label that says something like “iPod/MP3 player.”

Welcome to the world of newly equipped automobile music systems. Over the past couple of years, the methods for delivering music to the automobile have gone through some interesting changes, the most remarkable of which is the gradual disappearance of the car CD player.

Of course, change is constant throughout the music world, including the part that rolls on four wheels. When music playback devices first appeared in automobiles back in the 1940s and ’50s, they were referred to as “car radios” because that’s exactly what they were: monophonic, AM-only home radios that just happened to be installed in cars. For a very brief period, and only in very top-of-the-line models, one could find units that played vinyl 45s. (Elvis Presley famously used one of these gadgets to listen to his own hits in his car.)

In the 1960s, with the advent of stereo recordings and broadcasts, car radios began to be referred to as “car stereos.” The late ’60s and early ’70s brought FM radio, 8-track tapes (remember those?) and eventually cassette tapes, along with higher-quality, audiophile sound and car stereos became “auto hi-fi systems.” In-dash cassette slots were later supplemented, and eventually replaced, by in-dash slots for single CDs and trunk-mounted multi-CD changers.

From the early ’80s to the early 21st century, the standard car hifi system included AM/FM radio, a CD player and multiple speakers situated throughout the vehicle’s interior. Some units also included a 1/8-inch input for connecting a portable cassette player for those who still wanted to play cassettes in their cars. By 2001, these same 1/8-inch connectors were also connecting MP3 players, most notably the Apple iPod, allowing consumers to take thousands of their favorite songs with them in their cars without having to lug CDs around.

Also in 2001, satellite radio started broadcasting commercial-free music and a variety of new radio programming choices and hi-fi components that were originally added to and then integrated into existing playback systems. While the medium hasn’t replaced terrestrial radio, partly because of the costs of both satellite radio hardware and service subscriptions, Sirius XM built a subscriber base of nearly 19 million by the end of 2009 while offering fans as many as seven Country channels, including Willie’s Place, Prime Country, The Roadhouse and Outlaw Country.

Then came the Apple iPhone, followed quickly by numerous copycat devices. Introduced not that long ago, in June 2007, it launched the “smartphone” revolution whose impact on the delivery and playback of music as a whole has been tremendous — and not least in how we listen as we drive. The biggest reason for this is that these units not only have the music storage, organizing and playback capabilities of the iPod and other MP3 devices but also Internet connectivity, giving these devices and those who use them access to virtually any music, anytime, anywhere in the world. Who needs a CD player or an expensive satellite unit when you can access every song you own locally on your cell phone and every radio program (including satellite radio) and every song you don’t own remotely over the Internet through your cell phone?

As a result of this trend, we’re now seeing cars equipped with USB connectors for continuous iPod and iPhone power and battery recharging — formerly a big issue for portable music player and cell phone owners. We’re also seeing in-dash iPhone adapters taking the place formerly held by CD players. That’s right — the latest car stereos are coming to market without built-in CD players. Hard as it may be to imagine, CD players are quickly being relegated to the role of portable add-on devices that must plug into the little 1/8-inch connector to be heard.

Here’s an overview of some of the newer music delivery methods and playback features available in today’s automobiles. Longtime car hi-fi maker Alpine got the innovative ball rolling a couple of years ago with its iDA-X001 in-dash head unit, featuring a built-in AM/FM tuner, a slick iPod interface — and no CD player. Rather than use traditional FM modulation to emulate a radio station and broadcast through the system’s radio, the iPod interface uses a dedicated digital USB input to connect an iPod to the unit, to such a degree that the artist, song title and album artwork stored on the iPod are displayed directly on the head unit’s color screen. The in-dash display system was developed in conjunction with Apple, so it looks and works just like the iPod does.

When the iPod is connected and the car is running, the head unit also charges the iPod’s battery. Alpine now offers a number of iPod- and iPhone-enabled variations on the iDA-X001, featuring touch-screen interfaces (iXA-W404 and IVA-505), Bluetooth connectivity (eX-10) and integration with onboard navigation (INA-W900).

Fusion offers an even more physically integrated solution: the aftermarket CA-IP1500, with a docking port/slot that allows the user to plug an iPod directly into the head unit and use its controls to manipulate the iPod. The system also includes an AM/FM tuner with radio data and SRS Wow. A potential downside here is that if Apple happens to change the body shape of future iPods (which they’ve done more than once since the iPod’s introduction in 2001), they won’t fit into this unit.

To get around this potential problem, car maker Mitsubishi, an early innovator of in-dash iPod docking technology, off ers a docking port for the iPod Nano in its Play Edition system — but the port is an add-on that sits below the head unit on the dashboard, so it could presumably be replaced with other docking ports for different iPod models. The Play Edition is currently available only as a factory installed option on Mitsubishi’s iCar models in Japan, but it’s sure to make its way to the United States in due course.

Mitsubishi also offers an innovative way for consumers to store their music onboard with its Digital Music Server. This 40-gigabyte internal hard-drive-based navigation system automatically records any CD that the consumer plays in the car, meaning that the CD has to be physically used only once.

The system is also tied into the Gracenote online database of album, track and artist info, which it presents on its display. For those few among us who still don’t own an iPod or similar playback device, several car and audio gear manufacturers offer removable storage card interfaces that allow us to take our music from computer to car and play it back without a separate dedicated player. One simply downloads music onto an SD, MMC, Sony Memory Stick or similar card, which can then be plugged directly into the car audio system. Panasonic has been a leader in this trend for several years, as have Blaupunkt and Siemens.

Sirius XM’s contributions to these options include its XM SkyDock, a satellite radio controlled by an iPod touch or iPhone, playable through your vehicle audio system and connected via Sirius XM’s PowerConnect technology through the vehicle’s cigarette lighter. Sirius XM also offers a free app for users of iPod touch and select BlackBerry devices who want to hear satellite radio without satellite-radio equipped hardware. Because the app runs on the user’s smartphone, satellite radio is now available to any driver whose car audio system supports smartphone connectivity — no additional gear required. Music streaming apps are also available from AOL Radio, Pandora, Slacker and other terrestrial radio services.

So where is this automobile trip taking us? Although the ways in which music is delivered to passengers and drivers are changing, the “car stereo,” whose primary purpose is still to play music, isn’t going away anytime soon. With all the choices available in today’s market, one can only imagine what car audio and music delivery systems will offer in the second decade of the 21st century.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Just before going onstage at a festival in Denmark, Billy Yates received some strange news from the promoter. As he remembered it, she said, “‘I have to tell you — they have guns. They shoot them in the air if they like what you do.’ And I said, ‘Well, where do they shoot if they don’t like it?’”

Safe at his office near Nashville’s Music Row, Yates explained what was going on. “They weren’t real guns,” he said, with a smile. “They shot blanks. But some Country festivals in Europe do have saloons and Old West themes. I’ve seen a lot of people walking around them with holsters. And sure enough, when I did the first song, all this gunfire broke out. You wouldn’t get that here.”

Well, maybe in certain venues you would, but exuberant fusillades and rhythmic clapping are just two ways that some segments of the European fan base have shown their appreciation for Yates and other Country artists.

More striking than these differences are the similarities that Yates observes between audiences at home and abroad. That combination of common interests in the real-life content of Country Music, complemented by promises of unique experiences and positive, long-term financial impact, are why he has maintained between 40 and 50 European shows on his schedule every year since his first visit about seven years ago.

For Yates, the path to Europe began in Texas. He had gone through several record label deals with varying levels of success. As a writer, he had placed songs with Kenny Chesney, Sara Evans, George Strait and many others, most notably George Jones’ Grammy-winning “Choices” and “I Don’t Need Your Rockin’ Chair,” which was honored with a CMA Award for Vocal Event of the Year in 1993. But when he launched his own M.O.D. Records imprint, Yates decided to play to his strength as a traditional Country artist and market primarily to the Lone Star State. Results were what he had hoped for — chart position, radio play — but there was one unexpected byproduct.

“Unbeknownst to me, a lot of people in Europe were paying more attention to what was going on in Texas than in Nashville,” he said. “One of them was Cor Sanne, an agent in Holland who was responsible for a lot of Country Music tours. So I reached out to him, he came to Nashville and we met at the Cracker Barrel in White House, Tenn.”

Sanne asked Yates to perform at an event he was putting together in Amsterdam. Not only that, he invited promoters from throughout Europe to attend. Yates’ old-school sound, while not the hottest spin back home, fit perfectly with what audiences in the Old World wanted to hear, so bookings followed immediately.

“The people in Europe who love Country Music are very loyal,” he noted. “They don’t care how old, fat or bald you are; it’s about the music.”

It’s also not about formats. Though Country artists can build strong followings in Europe, the format itself doesn’t command a distinctive identity in the broader market. But that actually makes it easier for many artists to transform Europe into a solid source of income. As Yates sees it, that’s particularly true of those who don’t fi t easily into commercial trends back in the United States, as proven most recently when “Famous for Bein’ Your Fool,” from the Yates album Bill’s Barber Shop, lodged for nine weeks at No. 1 on the European Hotdisc chart.

“We’ve played for people who don’t know anything about Country Music,” Yates said. “There are lots of tattoos and piercings. At first they’re scratching their heads, but by the end of the show they’re buying your CDs and wanting your autograph because we present the music in a way that’s professional yet cool. My music is traditional and honky-tonk, and that allows me to put it in their faces a little bit, with a little attitude. And they love it.”

From Italy north to the United Kingdom, Spain to the former Eastern bloc, from house shows before 50 people to a performance in front of 40,000 new fans in Lithuania, Yates has built a career in Europe that may outlast and feed the bottom line beyond what he’s accomplished domestically. Equally important, he has broadened his personal horizons through experiences he could never have otherwise had, whether walking Omaha Beach in Normandy or revisiting the thrill he’d felt years before when breaking into the business.

“Going to Europe is like going back in time in a good way,” Yates reflected. “They’re civilized and modern, but in these small towns people don’t lock their doors and their kids walk to school. And they respond to Country Music because it’s all about life and love, good and bad — the exact same things I talk with them about after the shows. Plus, if you haven’t lost that fi re and the desire to perform, it can be like rebirth to roll up your sleeves and build from the ground up. When I started in Europe, they had no clue who I was — and now we sell out our shows. To do that again, later in life, is really great.”

On the Web: www.BillyYates.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Along with superstars and living legends, many fast-rising artists are given their moments to shine at CMA Music Festival. Meet four of the most promising among today’s young performers as they prepare to step into the spotlight and debut at this year’s Festival!

Easton Corbin
Label: Mercury Records Nashville
Web site: www.EastonCorbin.com
Performing: LP Field, Saturday, June 12

You can’t get more Country than Easton Corbin. The images that flow through his No. 1 hit, “A Little More Country Than That,” add up to a picture of the world he knew growing up in Gilchrist County, Fla. From working on his grandparents’ cattle farm to fishing from the banks of the Suwannee River, Corbin was raised with an appreciation for rural life, to the extent that a trip to the local Hardee’s was considered dining out – until the Hardee’s closed.

The same applied to music. Starting with the albums stored in his grandfather’s living room, Corbin developed a deep love for Country Music and with it an ambition to seek his fortunes as an artist. It proved a short journey from taking guitar lessons at 15 to opening local shows for Janie Fricke and Mel McDaniel, and from pocketing his degree from the University of Florida and moving with his bride, just a month after their wedding, to Nashville.

No stranger to hard work, Corbin worked his connections and nurtured his music to the point of achieving a major-label release with his self-titled debut album. Already he is recognized as a young champion of traditional Country, ready and able to carry on in the styles of George Jones, Merle Haggard, George Strait and Keith Whitley for new generations of fans.

How do you feel about performing at CMA Music Festival?
I’m really excited to play this year because I’ve never played in a stadium before. I’m glad CMA Fest is still going on, especially with everything Nashville has gone through in the past couple weeks with the floods.  And I’m proud to be a part of CMA Festival because 50 percent of the profits are going to help the victims of the floods.

How will you prepare for this performance?
I’m actually out on the road right now, playing as many shows as I can.  I will also be starting on the Brad Paisley Tour in a couple of weeks.  Hopefully being out with Brad, I can get a few pointers from him.

How will you pick which songs you’d like to do in your set?
It depends on how many songs we get to play, but I will definitely be playing my first two singles, “I’m A Little More Country Than That” and “Roll With It”.  And I will pull a few others from my debut album.

Have you ever attended Music Fest as a fan?
I got to go to some of the shows a couple years back, and it was great.  The one thing I remember was sitting at LP Field thinking how awesome it would be to play that stage one day, and now here I am.  As a new artist, it is such an honor to be asked to play the main stage.

Are there any shows or events at this year’s Festival you do not want to miss?
I’m actually jumping off the Paisley Tour to come play the CMA Fest Saturday night, so I won’t get to spend a lot of time here in Nashville.  But I am looking forward to watching all the other performers’ shows that night.

Danny Gokey
Label: 19 Recordings/RCA Nashville
Web site: www.DannyGokey.com
Performing: LP Field, Thursday, June 10

Danny Gokey debuts at CMA Music Festival with some powerful winds at his back. Raised by a tight family in Milwaukee, nourished by their eclectic musical tastes, he drew from his strong work ethic and sense of responsibility to provide for his wife Sophia as a truck driver while they imagined together that he would someday fulfill his dream becoming a successful musical artist.

Dreams can come true, though sometimes at a terrible price. Just one month before Gokey’s audition for “American Idol,” Sophia died during heart surgery. Devastated, Gokey dedicated his rise through the ranks of “Idol” contestants to her memory. By the time he’d finished in third place, millions of fans were rooting for him and waiting for him to launch his full-time music career.

Gokey did so explosively with My Best Days. Released in March, it sold 65,000 copies in its first week – more than any debut male Country artist had done since 1992 – and broke onto the Billboard chart at No. 3. From a high-profile tour opening for Sugarland to his celebration of his wife through the good works of his Sophia’s Heart Foundation, Gokey is a positive model for young artists and a singer whose talents guarantee long-term success.

How do you feel about performing at CMA Music Festival?
I think it’s such an honor and a privilege. It makes me feel very welcome.

How will you prepare for this performance?
For me, every performance is very important, and I mentally prepare myself to give 110 percent.

How will you pick which songs you’d like to do in your set?
That depends on the atmosphere and what kind of crowd it is. I know this is an upbeat crowd, so I’ll do the most blazing songs from my record.

Have you ever attended Music Fest as a fan?
No, but I watched it on TV.

Are there any shows or events at this year’s Festival you do not want to miss?
Time permiting, I’d like to be a part of as much as I can, because it is such a huge event.

Jaron and The Long Road to Love
Label: Universal Republic/Big Machine Records
Web site: www.MySpace.com/JaronandtheLongRoadtoLove; www.Facebook.com/JaronLowenstein
Performing: Chevy Music Stage, Thursday, June 10 at 12:30 PM

Fans will remember Jaron Lowenstein from his stint with Evan and Jaron. Sharing the spotlight as well as the name of the group with his identical twin brother, he achieved success in 2001 with three Top 40 hits, including “Crazy for This Girl,” which peaked at No. 4. Their music was also heard on soundtracks for “Runaway Bride,” starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, and “Serendipity,” starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. Jaron has won media attention as one of People’s 50 Most Beautiful People as well as a guest on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “Live with Regis and Kelly.”

Since then, this Georgia-born artist has returned to his Southern roots by settling in Nashville and launching a solo project, Jaron and The Long Road to Love. His music draws from traditional roots, including Appalachian music as well as Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. Yet his career is a thoroughly modern endeavor, making full use of social media, blogs and networking. His debut album, Getting Dressed in the Dark, is scheduled to drop on June 22; “Pray for You,” its first single, has already topped the Billboard Heatseekers Chart on its way up the charts.

How do you feel about performing at CMA Music Festival?
Privileged. I know this is a week of smiles for artists and fans alike and I'm happy to be able to add to some of that. To me, the two things that most define Country Music today are lyrics and fan appreciation.

How will you prepare for this performance?
I have no pre-show rituals and I don't really rehearse because it’s just me playing.

How will you pick which songs you’d like to do in your set?
I will go on Facebook and ask the fans who are coming to the show what they want to hear. I will compile the list and then make changes in real-time from the stage.

Have you ever attended Music Fest as a fan?
I attended last year. I had just moved back to Nashville and was taking it all in for the first time. I have been around the music business for a long time but have never quite seen anything like a "fan convention." It was moving and struck a chord with me because the spirit of the festival so closely aligned with my own reasons for coming back to music after a six year hiatus – the need to share and be shared with.

Are there any shows or events at this year’s Festival you do not want to miss?
I'm just hoping to be able to catch as many shows as I can and remain as coherent as possible throughout the week.

Steel Magnolia
Label: Big Machine Records
Web site: www.MySpace.com/SteelMagnoliaMusic
Performing: Riverfront Park Daytime Stages, Sunday, June 13, 11:30 AM

They captured America’s attention last year as winners of CMT’s “Can You Duet” competition. Their first single, “Keep On Lovin’ You,” featured on the soundtrack for “Valentine’s Day,” made history by charting higher than any other debut by a male/female twosome in the 66-year history of the Billboard Country chart. They’ve been on the road with Brad Paisley’s “H2O World Tour.” Their first album is wrapped and ready to release.

Hard to believe that it wasn’t that long ago that fate brought Joshua Scott Jones and Meghan Linsey together when each jumped onstage in a Nashville club for a karaoke romp through Air Supply’s “All Out of Love.” Each had come to Nashville in search of a solo career, Linsey having already opened at 15 for Paisley, Toby Keith and other headliners at shows near her hometown of Ponchatoula, La., and Jones having trekked from Charleston, Ill., to Los Angeles to try his luck in rock before making his way to Music City.

Their voices are complementary; Linsey sings in a soulful, sometimes simmering style, and Jones has an inviting, sometimes humorous way with a lyric. They’ve already proven on television that they can “duet.” They’ll make that clear again, with all the excitement of live performance, at their CMA Music Festival.

How do you feel about performing at CMA Music Festival?
JONES: We are really excited about the show because it is one of the only shows in Nashville where it is all about the fans coming into town to show their love for the music.

LINSEY: It feels great! It’s an amazing opportunity to get out there and meet fans and play some of our new songs! We’re so excited!

How will you prepare for this performance?
JONES: We will prep with a good amount of talking-through our stage show and then hopefully getting ample rehearsal time in with the band to execute.

LINSEY: Just a lot of rehearsal. We just recently put our band together. We’ve been playing acoustically for 10 months, so we can’t wait to start playing full band shows!

How will you pick which songs you’d like to do in your set?
JONES: We’ll choose songs that fans relate to and throw in a few that everyone loves and put them in an order that will hopefully create a fun ride for our audience.

LINSEY: Well, it is an outdoor event, so we definitely want to keep it upbeat and rockin’! We’ll definitely play some stuff from our new record that will be out in September too.

Have you ever attended Music Fest as a fan?
JONES: Last year we sat in the nosebleed section and just wanted to be up onstage as a performer! We loved the show – Miranda Lambert walked out and rocked “Kerosene,” head banging and all!

LINSEY: Oh, yeah – all the time when I was a kid. I actually attended in 2004 right before I moved to town, and I just remember sitting in LP Field watching Martina McBride play and dreaming about doing that one day.

Are there any shows or events at this year’s Festival you do not want to miss?
LINSEY: We always try to make it to some of the big stage shows in LP Field. They’re always full of great artists!

CMA Music Festival is an unparalleled music experience celebrating America’s music. The event brings the community together with fans from around the world. Now in its 39th year, CMA Music Festival will be held Thursday through Sunday, June 10-13, in Downtown Nashville. Dubbed the “crown jewel of Country Music Festivals” by USA Today and winner of the International Entertainment Buyers Association’s 2004, 2006, and 2008 LIVE! Award for Festival of the Year, the event features four jam-packed days of music with concerts, autograph signings, family activities, and more. CMA will be donating ALL proceeds from this year’s CMA Music Festival to charity to benefit music education in Metro Nashville Public Schools and flood relief for victims of the recent devastation. For up-to-the-minute information about four-day ticket packages, single night tickets to the Nightly Concerts at LP Field, travel information, schedules, artist appearances and more, visit www.CMAfest.com to sign up for CMA Exclusive e-news and join the CMA MOB mobile community.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

For five years, fans who didn’t want to wait for Thursday morning have begun the CMA Music Festival party one day early. The Festival’s Kick-Off Parade does that and more, with veteran and fast-rising new artists riding classic Chevy vehicles through the streets of Downtown Nashville.

This year, though, visitors can enjoy fresh perspectives on the action along a new route. From the corner of Second Avenue North and Church Street, the all-star procession winds two blocks past the restaurants and businesses that line Second Avenue and then turns right. From there, it rolls down Broadway toward an afternoon of great – and FREE – music at the Chevy Music Stage on the Bridgestone Arena Plaza.

Following right behind a huge inflatable musical note, signifying the start of the Parade, Country Music Hall of Fame member Brenda Lee leads the way as Grand Marshal. Dozens of artists follow in an array of vehicles supplied by Chevrolet and members of the Nashville Corvette Club. The lineup this year includes Lynn Anderson, Katie Armiger, Rodney Atkins, Sherrié Austin, Frankie Ballard, The Band Perry, Bo Bice, Ash Bowers, Carter Twins, Diana DeGarmo, Whitney Duncan, Edens Edge, Fast Ryde, Gloriana, Josh Gracin, The Grascals, The Harters, Buddy Jewell, KingBilly, Jesse Lee, LoCash Cowboys, Lonestar, Danielle Peck, Point of Grace, Marty Raybon, Jordyn Shallhart, Stealing Angels, Pam Tillis, Trent Tomlinson, James Wesley and Chuck Wicks (artists participating subject to change).

Many favorites from past parades are back this year, from the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts to the Nashville Sounds, Nashville Predators and Tennessee Titans mascots. But new participants will join the fun too, among them the Pryme Tyme Athletics cheerleaders, young members of the Nashville Children’s Theater, the Color Guard and Honor Guard from the Metro Nashville Police Department and more. In total, this year’s Parade is more than 10 units larger than in 2009, according to Parade Coordinator Dell Courtney.

“Then we added elements to make the parade a little different – for example, we have a very strong patriotic element this year – without taking away from what the fans come to see, the artists in Corvettes and Silverado trucks,” said Courtney, who owns VisionWorks, a Louisville-based company that specializes in planning major events such as parades, festivals and trade shows.

The Chevy vehicles, the Big Kenny, Luke Bryan and Wrangler/George Strait trucks, the Music City Drum & Bugle Corps, the rowdy Nashville Rollergirls and ever-civilized Geico Gecko and all their parade-mates hit the road at 11:30 AM on Thursday, June 9.

CMA Music Festival is an unparalleled music experience celebrating America’s music. The event brings the community together with fans from around the world. Now in its 39th year, CMA Music Festival will be held Thursday through Sunday, June 10-13, in Downtown Nashville. Dubbed the “crown jewel of Country Music Festivals” by USA Today and winner of the International Entertainment Buyers Association’s 2004, 2006, and 2008 LIVE! Award for Festival of the Year, the event features four jam-packed days of music with concerts, autograph signings, family activities, and more. CMA will be donating ALL proceeds from this year’s CMA Music Festival to charity to benefit music education in Metro Nashville Public Schools and flood relief for victims of the recent devastation. For up-to-the-minute information about four-day ticket packages, single night tickets to the Nightly Concerts at LP Field, travel information, schedules, artist appearances and more, visit www.CMAfest.com to sign up for CMA Exclusive e-news and join the CMA MOB mobile community.
 

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

It’s been eight years since Patty Loveless has performed at CMA Music Festival. Her return this year is reason to celebrate – but the five-time CMA Award winner wants to make sure it’s also a reason to benefit from what she has learned about a killer disease.

Loveless grew up in a musical family – Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle are among her cousins – but her main inspiration and role model was her older sister Dottie. “The first time I heard her sing, I was 6 or 7 years old,” Loveless recalled. “My brother was stationed at Fort Knox, and we went to the camp. While we were there, Dottie got up and sang with the band in the officers’ club. She had an amazing voice; to me, she sounded a little bit like a combination of Patsy Cline, Connie Smith and Brenda Lee.  It was just unbelievable how she moved the solders in there, and I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do someday. I want to make people feel through music.’”

She would achieve that goal, but along the way Loveless would suffer the blow of her sister’s death in 1996, at the age of 48. She was a victim of emphysema, which like chronic bronchitis is categorized as a Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). That experience has led Loveless to lend her name and talent to supporting DRIVE4COPD, a movement dedicated to spreading awareness of the nation’s fourth leading cause of death.

The campaign’s hard-rockin’ theme song, “Drive,” was written by Loveless and her husband Emory Gordy Jr. Her performance is available as a free download to everyone who visits www.DRIVE4COPD.com to take a brief, five-question screener designed to help them see whether they are at risk for the disease.

“I wanted ‘Drive’ to pick people up, put them in the driver’s seat and take that wheel of life,” Loveless explained. “I was a little more shy than Dottie was; she was very energetic, so this gives me an opportunity to share with the people about her and at the same time to encourage them to get back in control and look where they’re heading.”

On Friday, June 11, Loveless will perform on the Riverfront Park Daytime Stage at 11:45 AM and appear at the Sports Zone Main Stage at 4 PM. But she’ll also be speaking one-and-one with fans, signing autographs and encouraging them to take the COPD test. Those who do can enter for a chance to win a trip to the CMA Awards in November or to a NASCAR weekend in Daytona in February 2011.

“Throughout this COPD campaign I’ve been very talkative with fans, even about their health situations,” Loveless said. “To hear them share with me about a family member, or themselves, suffering with some form of COPD, I feel that if I had been educated about it, my sister might have seen a doctor sooner. That’s why I want everyone to take this five-question screener. It takes a few minutes of your time, but that’s nothing compared to a lifetime.”

CMA Music Festival is an unparalleled music experience celebrating America’s music. The event brings the community together with fans from around the world. Now in its 39th year, CMA Music Festival will be held Thursday through Sunday, June 10-13, in Downtown Nashville. Dubbed the “crown jewel of Country Music Festivals” by USA Today and winner of the International Entertainment Buyers Association’s 2004, 2006, and 2008 LIVE! Award for Festival of the Year, the event features four jam-packed days of music with concerts, autograph signings, family activities, and more. CMA will be donating ALL proceeds from this year’s CMA Music Festival to charity to benefit music education in Metro Nashville Public Schools and flood relief for victims of the recent devastation. For up-to-the-minute information about four-day ticket packages, single night tickets to the Nightly Concerts at LP Field, travel information, schedules, artist appearances and more, visit www.CMAfest.com to sign up for CMA Exclusive e-news and join the CMA MOB mobile community.
 

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Jo Dee Messina is a runner. Every day, she covers four to six miles. She’s run marathons in Boston, Chicago, Phoenix and elsewhere. Even during her pregnancy she kept up a modified regimen.

So it’s no surprise that as the St. Jude Music Fest Road Race debuts this year as an official CMA Music Festival activity, this CMA Horizon Award winner would be in the thick of it all, as both host and participant.

This is actually a two-part event on Saturday, June 12, beginning at Nashville Public Square, Second Avenue North at Union Street, with a one-mile “fun run” at 7:30AM. Then, at 8AM, the 5K begins. Prizes including $300 for the overall winner, will be awarded at 9:30AM, also at Public Square.

Registration is available online at www.MusicFestRoadRace.org  at $25 per participant through June 11. On race day, beginning at 6AM on Public Square, registration will be $30. All proceeds will be donated toward research and treatment conducted at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn.

Participants can become St. Jude Heroes by inviting donations to support their performance in the race. The first 250 Heroes to bring in $250 will win two free tickets to the LP Field nightly concert on Saturday, June 12 – and all who reach the $500 mark will receive a free brunch with Messina. Her fan club is already involved in this effort, having formed a special “Team Messina” to encourage donations together.

“St. Jude is grateful for more than 20 years of support from the Nashville community and Country Music fans and artists,” said Richard C. Shadyac, Jr., CEO, ALSAC/St.Jude, the fundraising organization of St. Jude. “Participation in the St. Jude Music Fest Road Race is a new way for Country Music fans to support children at St. Jude fighting cancer.”

“Jo Dee Messina has supported St. Jude over the years through our annual Country Cares for St. Jude Kids fundraising program,” added Teri Watson, Senior Director of Radio Marketing, ALSAC/St. Jude. “Now, we are so grateful for her support of our new St. Jude Music Fest Road Race. Jo Dee has volunteered to be our honorary host for the race and she will join Country Music fans from around the country who are running in honor of thousands of kids being treated at St. Jude.”

The event has special meaning for Messina, whose nephew battled cancer. But in the spirit of CMA Music Festival, she also sees it as another way to connect directly with fans. “I’ll probably hang out and yap with people at the starting line for the 5k,” she said.

As an experienced runner, what advice does Messina have for first-time racers? “Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!” she answered, laughing. “Don’t wear new shoes – never wear new shoes on the day of a run. And don’t drink too much the night before!”

CMA Music Festival is an unparalleled music experience celebrating America’s music. The event brings the community together with fans from around the world. Now in its 39th year, CMA Music Festival will be held Thursday through Sunday, June 10-13, in Downtown Nashville. Dubbed the “crown jewel of Country Music Festivals” by USA Today and winner of the International Entertainment Buyers Association’s 2004, 2006, and 2008 LIVE! Award for Festival of the Year, the event features four jam-packed days of music with concerts, autograph signings, family activities, and more. CMA will be donating ALL proceeds from this year’s CMA Music Festival to charity to benefit music education in Metro Nashville Public Schools and flood relief for victims of the recent devastation. For up-to-the-minute information about four-day ticket packages, single night tickets to the Nightly Concerts at LP Field, travel information, schedules, artist appearances and more, visit www.CMAfest.com to sign up for CMA Exclusive e-news and join the CMA MOB mobile community.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

In 2006, CMA launched its “Keep the Music Playing” initiative with a promise to donate half of all profits generated by CMA Music Festival to music education in the Metro Nashville Public Schools.

That promise has grown into an ongoing process of fostering talent and helping kids enjoy the experience of making music. To date, CMA has donated more than $3.3 million to this endeavor.

At 11:45 AM Thursday, June 10, the fruits of that investment will be on display on the Family Zone Stage at CMA Music Festival, as five students from the Nashville School of the Arts (NSA) perform at a special concert not just to entertain but also to express thanks for the support they’ve received through this program.

 “We have certainly learned in this district that students in performing arts graduate at a rate of 98 percent,” said Pam Garrett, Executive Director, Nashville Alliance for Public Education. “So this is a great investment. Hopefully, others who attend this performance will realize that as well.”

The young musicians – Eli Bishop (senior) on fiddle, Evan Bundy (junior) on bass, Sam Hunter (junior) on vocals and guitar, Luke Munday (junior) on banjo and Austin Valentine (sophomore) on drums – will also participate in the CMA Music Festival Kick-Off Parade on Wednesday, June 10. While each does own his instrument, they generally use equipment acquired through Keep the Music Playing when they appear as a group.

“And typically we move that equipment in a truck donated through Keep the Music Playing,” said Dr. James Satterwhite, Director of Guitar Studies, NSA. “You can’t imagine how much use we get out of this equipment, whether rehearsing, moving it out to shows or taking it to studios to record. Each instrument is played five or six hours a day during school hours. So this has been huge. Honestly, I’ve been here for 25 years and I couldn’t dream that I would have this much facility without CMA.”

CMA Music Festival is an unparalleled music experience celebrating America’s music. The event brings the community together with fans from around the world. Now in its 39th year, CMA Music Festival will be held Thursday through Sunday, June 10-13, in Downtown Nashville. Dubbed the “crown jewel of Country Music Festivals” by USA Today and winner of the International Entertainment Buyers Association’s 2004, 2006, and 2008 LIVE! Award for Festival of the Year, the event features four jam-packed days of music with concerts, autograph signings, family activities, and more. CMA will be donating ALL proceeds from this year’s CMA Music Festival to charity to benefit music education in Metro Nashville Public Schools and flood relief for victims of the recent devastation. For up-to-the-minute information about four-day ticket packages, single night tickets to the Nightly Concerts at LP Field, travel information, schedules, artist appearances and more, visit www.CMAfest.com to sign up for CMA Exclusive e-news and join the CMA MOB mobile community.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

When Country fans talk, artists listen. So when fans kept asking Blake Shelton when he was going to put out a new album, their hopeful refrain kept hammering away at him. After all, he hadn’t released anything new since Startin’ Fires in November 2008. Before that, there’d been a three year lag between Pure BS and Blake Shelton’s Barn & Grill. If things continued at this rate, Shelton half-joked, he might be eligible for Social Security before he’d get many more albums out.

At the same time, Shelton’s producer Scott Hendricks was thinking along similar lines. With singles taking significantly longer to climb the charts (often the better part of an entire year) and album projects being delayed as a result, the Warner Music Nashville Senior VP of A&R wondered: What if there was a better way to market the music? What if there was a way to shorten the time between album releases and get new product into fans’ hands faster? What if artists could release an abbreviated CD each time they came out with a new single? He believed Shelton’s strength with radio and popularity with fans made him the perfect candidate to explore these ideas.

“I remember Scott first talking to me about the idea of an album with only six songs on it when he fi rst came over to Warner Bros. as head of A&R,” Shelton recalled. “He thought we could sell it for $5 or $6. He continued talking about it with me as album sales kept falling and singles were taking longer and longer at radio. I began to see the disconnect and the idea became more appealing. I realized, man, I could release a new album every time I put out a new single. I could constantly have new music out there and not wait. Finally I just said, hey, if it makes sense, let’s do it.”

Shelton’s management team at Starstruck Entertainment saw the value of the gamble and opted in, as did his label, Warner Bros./Reprise Records. With the players in place, the stage was set for Hillbilly Bone, which is slated to be the first of two “Six Paks” Shelton will release in 2010, each hopefully fueled by a hit single at radio.

From an artist’s viewpoint, said Shelton, “There’s nothing worse than cutting an album and knowing it’s gonna be another year and a half or two before you get to record again. By then, maybe you’re singing better or people’s mood is different, or you’ve written stronger songs or you’ve grown as an artist. But you can’t go back and record — you have to live with your current album for the next 18 months. This way, publishers and songwriters can pitch me songs all the time. And a couple of months later I could have them out on a new CD. I wouldn’t have to tie up songs on hold for eight months or longer.”

Written by Luke Laird and Craig Wiseman and released the first week in November, Hillbilly Bone’s title single was an immediate smash at radio, becoming Shelton’s fastest-breaking career single and his sixth to peak at No. 1. The album scored too; spanning an emotional range from the cocky bravado of “Kiss My Country Ass,” written by Rhett Akins, Dallas Davidson and Jon Stone, to the sentimental romanticism of Lee Brice’s, Jerrod Niemann’s and Stone’s “You’ll Always Be Beautiful” in just a half-dozen tracks, it debuted at No. 3 on Billboard’s Top 200, making it Shelton's highest chart debut to date, and No. 2 on its Top Country Albums chart.

Adding Trace Adkins to the song and the video was a no-brainer. “Trace and I have talked about recording together for years,” Shelton said. “When I heard this song, it sounded a lot like something Trace would have done on one of his own albums, like ‘Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.’ First we just had him do the harmony part, but then the more we listened, the more we thought that was kind of stupid, that the song had a lot more potential as a duet than with just me singing on it. I don’t know how well you know Trace, but when I called and asked him if he’d come back in the studio, he said in that deep voice of his, ‘Well, hell, man. I’ve already been down there once — you know, you’re getting on my nerves . . . OK, I’ll come back.’ It really made the record. ”

With a hit single on the charts, the next big question was how to position, publicize and promote the Six Pak. It was crucial that Shelton’s fan base perceive Hillbilly Bone as a complete CD, his sixth studio album, with another following behind it by year’s end.

Peter Strickland, Senior VP, Brand Management, Warner Music Nashville, and his team approached digital retailers individually, explaining the concept and asking for support and visibility. With brick-and-mortar accounts, they requested dedicated rack space for the Six Pak. The label also made sure that the CD’s packaging and artwork featured the Six Pak logo and front stickering helped identify it to consumers. The game plan also called for holding back the single from online digital sites so the label could boost video sales first.

“Typically, we like to make our music available to consumers the minute they hear it on a TV show or on radio,” Strickland noted. “We want them to have the ability to go to any of our digital partners and purchase it immediately. In this case, though, we held the single back and released the video first. Based on the music and the guest star in the video, we thought we might get the opportunity to sell through some videos, which usually isn’t a strong point with any digital partner. Videos don’t typically sell all that well. Only a handful do, and they usually aren’t Country unless you’re Taylor Swift. We released the ‘Hillbilly Bone’ video the same week in November that the single went to radio. It worked extremely well. It put us in the Top 5 videos of all genres, which then got us on the main page at iTunes and is Blake's top-selling video to date. We gained visibility where we wouldn’t normally have had any.”

The record company let the video sell all the way up to the Tuesday before Christmas before releasing the digital single just in time to cash in on gift card purchases. The plan worked beyond all expectations, according to Strickland.

“Blake got great visibility across the board with all our digital partners, and his single debuted with more than 71,000 units the very first week. If we’d done it the traditional way, we might have seen 2,000 or 3,000 a week until radio momentum eventually kicked in. But by holding the single off for six or seven weeks and coming with the video first, we saw huge impact. It could have taken an extra five to 10 weeks to get the same results if we’d done it the traditional way.”

By the time the Hillbilly Bone Six Pak was released March 2, Shelton’s single had already cracked the Top 5. The artist had been personally talking up the project with his fans for months through social networking sites, Twitter and his own Web site. In mid-February, www.BlakeShelton.com  offered fans a limited window of opportunity to preorder the Six Pak with bonus perks. They could purchase the “BSer Hillbilly Bone Premiere Pak” with a one-year fan club membership, exclusive T-shirt and autographed Six Pak CD ($34.99); the “BSer Hillbilly Bone” package with one-year fan club membership and autographed copy of the Six Pak ($24.99); or the “Tee Pak” version which came with an autographed CD and a T-shirt ($18.99).

Nashville record labels have released six-track EPs in the past, but Hillbilly Bone is competing with full length albums and listing on Nielsen SoundScan as a regular Shelton album. “We may be the first ones in the market to try this,” WMN’s Strickland observed, “but other people are watching our effort closely. There are a lot of eyes on this project to see how it works.”

Hendricks likens the Six Pak to giving fans a “Value Meal,” where price is lowered to entice people to purchase more items, more often. “Fans are a lot more apt to let go of $5 or $6 than $10 or $11,” he reasoned. “We’re hoping that rather than only buying the single, they might say, ‘Hey, for a couple more dollars, I can get a value here’ and buy the CD. Even if they’re not already a Blake Shelton fan, for just $3 or $4 more they get to test out this artist and see if they like him. And if they do like what they hear, we can engage them again with another CD in just a few months.”

“The goal here is to sell more albums,” Strickland noted. “If we find we’re selling the same amount of Six Paks as we would a full-priced album, then it becomes a matter of half the music at half the cost. So then we have to sell twice as many to generate the same revenue. The good thing is, we have a lot of flexibility built in — if consumers don’t react right away, we can come out with another Six Pak. Or we could combine both Six Paks and put them out as a full album.”

Meanwhile, no one is more excited — or more focused on success for his Six Pak — than Shelton himself. “I think this could completely change the business model of how we release Country Music and how we sell it,” he said. “This is a way to put out new product continuously and keep it fresh. Publishers are gonna love it. Songwriters are gonna love it. Fans should love it because by the end of a year, they could have three of my albums, which is 18 new songs. I can’t imagine it not working.”

On the Web: www.BlakeShelton.com

Blake Shelton will be performing on Sunday, June 13 at the LP Field Concert Stage during the 2010 CMA Music Festival, which takes place Thursday through Sunday, June 10-13 in Downtown Nashville.

Artists currently scheduled to appear at LP Field include (in alphabetical order):

Thursday, June 10: Jason Aldean, Danny Gokey, Alan Jackson, Lady Antebellum, Tim McGraw, and Carrie Underwood.

Friday, June 11:  Julianne Hough, Miranda Lambert, Reba McEntire, Josh Turner, Keith Urban and more.

Saturday, June 12: Easton Corbin, Billy Currington, Randy Houser, Martina McBride, Rascal Flatts, and Zac Brown Band.

Sunday, June 13: Trace Adkins, Justin Moore, Brad Paisley, Kellie Pickler, Darius Rucker, and Blake Shelton.

Four-day, upper level general admission tickets are still available for $110. All other levels are SOLD OUT. Single night tickets to the individual Nightly Concerts at LP Field are on sale for $30 for upper level general admission. To order tickets, call 1-800- CMA -FEST (262-3378); visit www.Ticketmaster.com to buy online or charge-by-phone at 1-800-745-3000. Tickets are also available at any Ticketmaster outlet. Prices do not include applicable handling fees. Ticket prices are subject to change without notice. All sales are final and non-refundable. Artists appearing subject to change.

For up-to-the-minute information about tickets, travel information, schedules, artist appearances and more, visit www.CMAfest.com. Fans can visit the “Connect” page to sign up for CMA Exclusive e-news and join the CMA MOB mobile community, plus link through to CMA’s Facebook (www.Facebook.com/CountryMusicAssociation), Twitter (www.Twitter.com/CountryMusic), MySpace (www.MySpace.com/CMAMusicFestival), and YouTube (www.YouTube.com/CountryMusicAssoc) pages.

CMA Music Festival is organized and produced by the Country Music Association. Premiere Radio Networks is the official radio broadcaster. Partners include Barnes & Noble; Bicycle Playing Cards; Blue Bell Creameries; Carl Black Chevrolet; Chevy™: The Official Ride of Country Music; CMT; COMBOS® Snacks; Dr Pepper®; DRIVE4COPD™; Durango Boots®; Farm Boy® & Farm Girl® Brands; Field & Stream®; GEICO; General Cigar Co., Inc.; Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee; Greased Lightning® Cleaning Products; Jack Daniel’s®; Mahindra USA, Inc.; McDonalds®; Ocean Spray®; PEDIGREE® Food for Dogs; Random House Children’s Books; Roper™ Apparel & Footwear; Southern Belle Glamour; Super 8®; Texas on Tour; The Country Network;

United States Marine Corps; VELVEETA® Shells & Cheese; Votre Vu; World Vision®; Wrangler®.

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Brantley Gilbert grew up in Jefferson, Ga. within earshot of Athens, home of R.E.M., the B-52s and other alternative rockers. Gilbert never lost his love for music with an edgy spirit, yet as he started exploring his capacity for writing and performing, an ability to document the pleasures and pains, frustrations and triumphs of life asserted itself as well and nudged him closer to Country’s truth-telling tradition.

After surviving a potentially fatal automobile accident, Gilbert resolved to follow his muse into music. He began as a solo act, but as his rock ‘n’ roll side started getting restless, he beefed up his presentation and began pumping out his songs over a bed of slamming drums and snarling electric guitar.

The momentum stirred by his shows bore Gilbert to Nashville, where he signed with Warner/Chappell Music Publishing, scored several cuts with other artists and ultimately inked his own record deal with Average Joe’s Entertainment. The result is Halfway to Heaven, produced by Gilbert, The Atom Brothers, Jonathan Waggoner and Jess Franklin. Each of these dozen songs was co-written by Gilbert and most, including the ballads, delivered with a confident bravado powered by his fusion of Country narrative lyricism and willingness to rock the house hard.

On the album’s debut single, “Kick It in the Sticks,” which Gilbert wrote with Rhett Akins and Ben Hayslip, this combination rings loud and true. After a barely audible chuckle, Gilbert cranks the ignition and we’re off into a landscape where AC/DC and George Strait share space on the radio dial, moonshine whiskey pours near barbed wire fences, “jacked up trucks” are “covered in mud,” and “the hippies and the hicks” party with “jocks and bikers.” It’s not exactly a pastoral vision, but as a portrait of what Gilbert dubs “the dirty, dirty South,” it is both exhilarating and totally believable.

IN HIS OWN WORDS Q&A

DREAM DUET PARTNER

“Wynonna Judd.”

CD IN YOUR STEREO

“Slipknot.”

SONG YOU SING IN THE SHOWER

“‘I’m Too Sexy,’ by Right Said Fred.”

LUCKY CHARM

“Spur on my left boot.”

PET PEEVE

“Ferrets.”

On the Web: www.BrantleyGilbert.com

© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association, Inc.

When Lady Antebellum sat down with songwriter Josh Kear in February 2009 to write a song about a sexually-charged, late-night phone call to an ex, the trio encountered a dilemma centered on a lyric for the second chorus, in which Charles Kelley confessed, “It’s a quarter after one, I’m a little drunk and I need you now.”

They all loved the line but they weren’t sure how it would be perceived by others with a stake in their success. “We were like, ‘Is our label going to get mad?’” Kelley recalled. It’s not like either the alcohol or the desire alluded to in the words was particularly problematic. But outside of Lee Ann Womack’s “I May Hate Myself in the Morning” and “Last Call,” both of which met resistance among crucial radio programmers, it’s tough to find many successful songs that mix love and liquor so blatantly.

Still, it didn’t take much to persuade Lady Antebellum and Kear to agree that the line belonged in the song. “It was just honest to us,” said Dave Haywood. “I mean, who hasn’t been there? It’s late at night and you’ve had a drink or two and you miss somebody. We didn’t over think it more than that. We were like, ‘You know what? Let’s just write what’s honest and what’s true to us.’ And in reality, we’ve been there and so we put it in there.”

It’s clear that they made the right decision. The executives at Capitol Records Nashville surprised the band when they not only gave a thumbs-up to the song but decided to make it the first single and title track from the album, Need You Now. It spent a whopping four weeks at No. 1 on the Country Aircheck singles chart, lodged at the top of the Billboard chart for five consecutive weeks and earned Platinum digital single sales status just before Christmas — all of which set the stage for a spectacular album release in January, when Need You Now premiered at the top of the charts with 480,922 in sales, more than twice the number for the various-artist Help for Haiti and well ahead of runners-up Lady Gaga, Susan Boyle and Barry Manilow. By holding on to the top slot in the Billboard Top 200 in its second week, the group became the first Country act since the Dixie Chicks in 2006 to achieve that cross-format distinction — and only the sixth artist in the previous year to do so, along with Susan Boyle, Eminem, Jay-Z and a few others.

Obviously radio and the public responded to the song — its message as well as its catchy chorus hook and the powerful vocals laid down by Kelley, Haywood and Hillary Scott. In fact, radio programmer Charlie Cook, VP of Country, McVay Media, uses “Need You Now,” including the “I’m a little drunk” line, as his ringtone and as on-hold music for callers to his mobile phone.

“Quarter after one in the morning, the guy’s sitting there, pining for his girlfriend, and he’s had a couple of drinks,” Cook mused. “Pretty good fodder for Country Music, as far as I’m concerned.” Expanding on the impression made by Lady Antebellum with this track, Cook observed, “They’re true to their principles. They’re sensitive because of the audience, not because of their experience, and so they said, ‘You know, we just have to go with what we believe in.’ And that worked. That hooked up with the audience
very comfortably.”

“Comfortable” might not be the best word to describe the life of Lady Antebellum these days. “Hectic” is probably closer to the mark, and that’s exactly how they want it. Following their selection as CMA New Artist of the Year in 2008 with victories in the Vocal Group and Single categories at the 2009 CMA Awards, they went into heavy promotion for January’s release of Need You Now, earned a high-profile live performance on the Grammy Awards and then headed out in February to open on Tim McGraw’s “Southern Voice” tour. It’s no wonder that when they announced their first headlining date at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, tickets were snapped up so quickly that the band added a second date — both of which were sold out in less than half an hour.

Lady Antebellum built this impressive momentum carefully, through lessons gleaned in particular about interaction with fans over the two years since the release of their self-titled debut Platinum album. Much of 2009 was spent on Kenny Chesney’s “Sun City Carnival” tour, with more than 10 stadiums sprinkled into the schedule. On those mega-shows, they performed in conditions far from typical for gigs — a midday slot in sunlight and sweat-inducing temperatures, for example. The fans reacted positively, though the band did take note and learn from the occasional lulls between songs in the languor of a hot afternoon.

That inspired them to join with Monty Powell to write “Stars Tonight,” a bright, fast-paced song on Need You Now that celebrates the interaction between stage performers and their audiences. “You have to have songs that make people in the absolute back row of the stadium feel like they’re part of that experience,” Haywood said, addressing the intention behind the sing-along chorus, tribal “hey-hey!” chant and promise that “we’re all stars tonight.”

From the start, Lady Antebellum has been conscientious about building and nurturing their fan base, especially via online social channels. Scott first became aware of Kelley and Haywood through MySpace; once they committed to becoming a trio, their Web experience empowered them to build and maintain a community of listeners by simply reaching out. Like many other Country artists particularly of their generation, they’ve become heavy users of Twitter. And they’ve maintained their commitment to upload new Webisodes to their site each week on Wednesday, making the event appointment viewing for many followers.

A strong personal connection to their fans is one byproduct of these efforts. Sometimes it’s perhaps a little too personal — “People wait outside the bathroom stall to shake my hand,” Scott confirmed — but it’s also helped build their community in places they barely even imagined when they were starting out.

The reach of their brand became particularly apparent in September, when they opened for Kenny Rogers at Gstaad, Switzerland, in their first European booking. Mostly locals attended the Friday night performance, but on Saturday ticket buyers arrived from countries throughout the continent. The band was particularly surprised to discover that they weren’t just an unknown opening act; some of those fans were intent on seeing them and were singing every word to their music.

“That was an eye-opener,” Kelley said. “We don’t have distribution over there, but through the Internet they found a way to either listen to the album or have it find its way over to them, the physical CD. To know that your music can have that much reach is pretty wild.”

Far beyond American shores, Lady Antebellum has reaped the benefits of a plan whose key components include connecting online and presenting material that’s as honest as it is accessible.

That’s one reason why “American Honey” was chosen as the album’s second single. Written by Cary Barlowe, Hillary Lindsey and Shane Stevens, it’s a laid-back romantic reverie, whose acoustic textures and down-home fiddle create a sound more traditional than one often hears on today’s Country charts.

“We like to keep people on their toes and continue to try to show different sides of us with what singles we put out,” Scott explained. “It’s pretty conscious that we don’t want anything to sound like the one before it.”

“They were trying to make music that people will talk about 30 years from now,” elaborated Paul Worley,