Josh Turner Partners With Cracker Barrel And Kenny Chesney Draws On Wide Array Of Songwriters

It seems like each weekend when we try to relax and take a break from blogging all the other country music blogs come alive. It sure leaves a lot of material to catch up on when we get back into the groove of things, so we’ll start off with links to some of our favorites.

• First of all, congrats to Country Universe for passing the 100,000 views mark. In the past they’ve reviewed all the latest singles releases and recently dove into full-on album reviews. Here’s their posted reviews from the past few days:
  • Todd Snider - Peace, Love, and Anarchy
  • Tim McGraw - Let It Go
  • Martina McBride - Waking Up Laughing

• Twang Nation swoops in with their review of the Chris Knight show at the The Knitting Factory in New York.
  

  The crowd was almost dead silent during the solo guitar accompanied songs (despite the loud rock band playing on the upstairs stage), but once the songs were over the crowd is clapping and whooping as much as any Mason Dixon dive (with better beer.)

• Still Is Still Moving continues the excellent Willie Nelson coverage by pointing us toward a review of the Willie show in Utah. In an earlier post Linda provides some Billy Joe Shaver news reported by The Statesman. According to the article, Papa Joe’s bar says that they would like to have Shaver back.
• Twangville draws our attention to a letter from Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers announcing the departure of Jason.
• We discovered a new music blog through our link backs that covers country, Take Country Back. As far as I can tell it was started a few days ago, but they’ve already got some great content. I particularly enjoyed an interview with Billy Joe Shaver from 2005 in which he talks about his writing.
• Kenny Chesney producing Willie Nelson. It doesn’t conjure images of grandeur, but some recent information provides a spark of hope that the project could be better than expected:
  

  Having honed his craft at Acuff-Rose as a staff writer, Kenny learned songwriting in the old-school sense, and it was something he took very seriously when looking for material for Willie. Drawing on Guy Clark, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Dave Matthews and Randy Newman, Kenny sought out songs as strong as Nelson’s singing.

• Martina McBride’s Waking Up Laughing (reviewed by Matt here) marks the introduction of McBride as a songwriter, although she admits it’s not her first calling. An article from the Associated Press mentions that throughout her career McBride has been drawn to songs about women’s lives which leads to a statistic that I found interesting, her record label estimates that 70% of the people buying McBride’s albums are females.
• A rumor that Nicole Kidman is pregnant with Keith Urban’s child has apparently been confirmed.
• Cracker Barrel is partnering with Josh Turner to sponsor his summer tour and to record a live album at the Grand Ole Opry on April 19th. Turner will be singing his hits and personal favorites that haven’t yet appeared on previous releases.
  

  “I am looking forward to working with Cracker Barrel on my first live album that will be recorded at the historic Ryman Auditorium,” said Turner. “This is definitely going to be one of the most memorable nights of my career. It’s gonna be fun.”

  Viva la Cracker Barrel…and Josh Turner, too.

• Jim Beal from Express-News wrote in his blog about a Joe Ely appearance at Borders Book & Music to “read and serve up songs.”
• Rick Tamble for The Tennessean reviewed the biography of Gene Autry.
• Today marks the birthdays of both Carl Perkins and Hal Ketchum.