Hospitalized Porter Wagoner Needs Your Prayers
- Porter Wagoner was admitted to a Nashville hospital on Monday and is currently in serious condition and asking for prayers.
- What won’t MTV owned CMT do for ratings? Talk about denigrating the country genre.
- This Is Texas Music has the lowdown on a new book from UT Press that’s due this fall, Women in Texas Music: Stories and Songs by Kathleen Hudson.
Along with [Emily] Robison and [Pauline] Reese, Hudson includes oral histories from Lee Ann Womack, Terri Hendrix, Carolyn Wonderland, Sara Hickman, Ruthie Foster, Lana and Bobbie Nelson, Tejano queen Lydia Mendoza, and another two dozen influential women.
- Linda has pictures from Willie Nelson’s first annual Bad Boy Lawn Mower Race and Jessica Simpson looks terrified on her pink Bad Boy–no pun intended.
- Mikael Wood writes that Shooter Jennings’ forthcoming album has more country and rock and it’s “free of both bark and bite, “The Wolf” is an unexpected charmer.” That should be interesting.
- The Gary Allan review isn’t too shabby either.
- Entertainment Weekly has their cover story Q&A with Carrie Underwood online. From her answers it seems like she genuinely wants to sing country music and be received as a country artist.
- Despite all her fame and fortune Nicole Kidman says she was lonely until she met Keith Urban. She also talks about having to lay down the law when her children wanted tattoos like their new stepfather.
- When the Americana Music Festival begins on Wednesday, October 31st it will “feature a special musical salute to Porter Wagoner with performances by Jim Lauderdale, Buddy Miller, Rodney Crowell, and some very special guests and friends of the Wagonmaster himself.”
- John Nova Lomax concludes his in-depth article on protest songs by writing, “Real life gets more like The Simpsons every day.”
- Carrie Underwood generated material for her sophomore album Carnival Ride by hosting a three-day retreat for Nashville’s top songwriters at the Ryman Auditorium.
Each morning at the Ryman, the songwriters broke up into groups of two or three to write in the venue’s dressing rooms. Underwood would team up with writing partners, but she would also roam from room to room throughout the day, acting as a sort of quality-control expert for works in progress.
“If you can catch somebody in the beginning stages of a song and say, ‘I don’t think I’d sing it that way,’ or ‘This isn’t a subject matter I really want to talk about,’ nobody wastes time,” she says.
In the evenings, the writers recorded demos of the day’s songs on the Ryman stage with Underwood’s producer, Mark Bright.
While Carrie emerged with enough material to fill several albums, only one, “Twisted,” made Carnival Ride. Still, it’s an awfully cool concept.
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October 19, 2007 at 8:41 am Permalink
Actually regarding the Carrie Underwood writers retreat all but 2 of the songs on “Carnival Ride” came from the retreat that she did in February. “Twisted” came from the first writers retreat they did for “Some Hearts” back in 2005. At least that is my understanding of the article.
October 19, 2007 at 9:13 am Permalink
Gaby, I don’t think that’s accurate. The USA Today article states “Although Underwood says she left February’s retreat with enough material to fill multiple CDs, only Twisted— written the first day by Laird and Jesus, Take the Wheel co-writers Hillary Lindsey and Brett James — made the final cut for Carnival Ride.” So it’s clear that “Twisted” was written during the February 2007 retreat.
The article goes on to say: “Still, the event served its larger purpose of better acquainting Underwood and the writers. The ones at the retreat account for 11 of the 13 songs on Carnival Ride.” In other words, 11 of the 13 songs on Carnival Ride are at least co-written by someone who attended this retreat. The only songs on the album that feature no writers from the retreat are “You Won’t Find This” (Cathy Dennis/Tom Shapiro) and the Randy Travis cover, “I Told You So.”
What the USA Today article doesn’t explicitly say but we know from Carrie’s own comments elsewhere is that she continued in songwriting sessions with these and other writers after the retreat after getting her feet wet at the retreat. It’s from those sessions that the songs Carrie co-wrote that actually made the album emerged.
My good thoughts and prayers to Porter Wagoner and his loved ones.
October 19, 2007 at 9:46 am Permalink
I think she was nervous about driving the mower, or maybe her insurance doesn’t allow her to drive farm equipment? Willie’s daughter Paula (also in pink, standing by her dad in the pic) acted as Jessica’s stunt double for the actual race.
Must have been such a fun day. Some friends went and had a blast.
October 19, 2007 at 10:22 am Permalink
dudley,thanks for the clarification, but if i remember correctly carrie said at some point she was with hilary and luke writing “so small”, and the next day they came back with “last name”….i assumed this was at the retreat, making it at least 3 songs from that time…i was just making assumptions though
October 19, 2007 at 12:03 pm Permalink
Man, I can’t believe she’d turn down that opportunity, insurance or not. If nothing else, the video should be quite amusing.
October 19, 2007 at 2:46 pm Permalink
Austin’s 8 news has a video of an interview they did with Willie at his ranch the day the video was made. It’s a good one; shows behind the scenes filming, etc. I really don’t know the reason Paula sat in for her. The song is really funny, ‘You don’t think I’m funny anymore’; Willie’s been singing it in concert, and it will be on his next album, which I think will come out before the Kenny Chesney produced album, set to be released late next month.
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