Montgomery Gentry Leaves Label; Country Stars Donate Flood-Damaged Guitars; Warner Bros. to Release Songwriter Demos
- Montgomery Gentry has parted ways with its longtime label Columbia Records.
- Warner Brothers Nashville announced plans to release a double-disc collection titled Original Songwriter Demos, which is pretty self-explanatory, but some of the demos included are: “The Dance,” “The House That Built Me,” and “I Hope You Dance.”
- Gary Scruggs says his father is doing fine since his hospitalization Wednesday evening, but declined to give further details about any illness.
- In this week’s Nashville Skyline column, Chet Flippo profiles Marty Stuart‘s new album, Ghost Train:
This is the kind of album that no longer gets recorded in Nashville, and that’s a damn shame. Marty has had the glitter and the credibility to bridge the gap between trad country and Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood country, but he has somehow eluded crucial radio play in recent years. Perhaps he committed the ultimate sin of getting older.
- Texas Music Matters concluded its trip through the Cactus Cafe archives today with a performance of “The Wabash Cannonball” from Norman Blake.
- Kenny Chesney, Vince Gill, Brad Paisley, and Keith Urban are among a group of artists donating flood-damaged guitars and instruments to be auctioned for charity.
- Country California Fake News: Scientists Discover Drinkin’, Hillbilly Bones
- The Austin Chronicle‘s Margaret Moser on Horse Opera‘s recent release:
The easy two-step (“Save My Tears”) that kicks off Sounds of the Desert belongs more in neon honky-tonk than under a coyote moon. That’s okay, because Horse Opera’s country twang is designed to please dancers and pack dance floors. “3 to Closing,” “Devil You Love Best,” and “St. Cecilia” all wrap around Jimmy Deveney’s workingman delivery, the guy looking for fun and dance on Saturday night.
- CMT’s Craig Shelburne: 20 New Tunes for Adventurous Music Fans
- The Tennessean has video of Billy Currington talking about his favorite songs on his new album Enjoy Yourself.
- Dierks Bentley and Alison Krauss signed on to perform at the IMBA Awards, which already has a killer lineup of performers.
- Rosanne Cash listed her top ten songs about southern places for The Top 10 Blog.
- Craig Havighurst recapped Wednesday night’s Music City Roots program, which he says had a retro vibe with artists like Shotgun Party (MySpace), Andrew Combs (MySpace), Miss Tess and the Bon Ton Parade (MySpace), and Dale Watson (MySpace).
- Although the title track to Joey+Rory‘s album was co-written by Rory, it wasn’t originally intended for them:
Well the name comes from a song called “Album Number Two” that really talks about all the pressures put on artists when they have their sophomore release. The artist I originally wrote it for years ago never ended up recording the song, and Joey remembered it and said we should put it on our record – it worked and was a fun topic too.
In the liner notes of the album, Rory mentions that “Album Number Two” was written the same day as “A Little More Country Than That” — the song that launched Easton Corbin.
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It took some prodding, but Jessie Scott convinced Ray Wylie Hubbard to preform “Screw You, We’re From Texas” for Music Fog during last week’s filming session.
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10 Comments
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September 17, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Wow, that Songwriters’ Demos CD looks amazing, I want it!
September 17, 2010 at 1:21 pm
I agree SamB. I’ve heard several of those songs performed by the writers and would love to have these CDs.
September 17, 2010 at 1:26 pm
For anyone who missed it the first time around, the demo version of “The House That Built Me” was posted on The Wall Street Journal about a month ago.
September 17, 2010 at 3:08 pm
I’m also excited to hear this Songwriters’ demos album. A while back I was watching CMT 330 sessions, and Jeffrey Steele was performing “These Days.” Although I don’t care for the Rascal Flatts cut, I was impressed by his version and thought, “this is a good song. Too bad he couldn’t have sold it to someone else.” I hope this CD provides some enjoyable tracks that were originally cut by artists I don’t normally listen too.
September 17, 2010 at 3:11 pm
Rivers has several of his original demos on his website.
http://www.riversrutherford.com/music.html
September 17, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Certainly isn’t a lot of time given to an act after a couple of stalled singles. I wonder who else is hanging on by a thread. Sara Evans? Alan Jackson?
September 17, 2010 at 7:39 pm
I am not a Flippo fan by any stretch, but that is a good article on Marty Stuart.
Best wishes to Montgomery Gentry. An unusual duo act. You can actually hear BOTH sing!!!
September 17, 2010 at 9:22 pm
I really can’t find any songs on that Songwriter Demo disc that I’d go out of my way to hear. Well except for maybe Alissa Moreno’s version of “Every Day” and she used to feature that on her MySpace website so I’ve heard it before.
Marty Stuart’s “cardinal sin” as far as country radio goes is that he won’t create mediocre pop-rock crap that would fit in with so much of the standard Top 40 songs! Well that and his age, and the fact radio has ignored him for years, and…
Dierks Bentley performed at Fan Fair, recently at the Americana Festival (his new album is on the Americana airplay chart), and will be performing during the IBMA Festival as well! How many other Top 20 mainstream country stars can pull that off these days and still be credible in all three settings? Way to go Dierks, and I’m not even a big fan of his music.
The highlight by a Texas mile during Wednesday night’s Music City Roots show was Dale Watson as he crooned “Hey Brown Bottle”. The female lead singer from “Shotgun Party” was also entertaining and I would guess certifiably crazy! Yikes!
Its nice that they let Ray Wylie Hubbard out of his straitjacket for his performances these days.
September 17, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Ray Wylie Hubbard should be much better known. He is so much better than most people recording these days.
Funny thing, I saw him live recently and I was talking with him after the show and someone yelled “Screw You We’re From Texas”, he looked at me and said “The problem with irony is not everyone gets it.”
September 20, 2010 at 9:42 am
The problem with ALL douchbags like this from Texas…That run around telling everyone how they are from Texas…That think that Texas is the best F’in state in the country….
NO ONE ASKED YOU of GIVES A DAMN.
So screw you….STAY IN TEXAS!!!
I am happy to know the ones that escaped.