Music Spanned Generations at 2008 CMA Music Festival
- Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood rolled through the hits at LP Field in Nashville on Friday night. Craig Shelburne has the highlights. Whitney Self tackled Saturday’s events, where Kenny Rogers closed the evening with some of his hits.
- Marc Hirsh says Jason Aldean performed an opening set for Tim McGraw’s recent concert at the Comcast Center that would have suited Matchbox 20. McGraw himself remained fairly low-key, opting instead to let his 10-man band play it big and dramatic.
- The Steeldrivers scored a date with the Conan O’Brien Show for July 18th.
- The line dance choreographer for Alan Jackson’s “Good Time” video, Jenny Cain, has a blog post detailing the making of the video.
- Keith Kaufman, the program director for WSIX-FM, Nashville, on Jessica Simpson’s latest single: “This is as good as any Carrie Underwood song.”
- David Cantwell calls Bill C. Malone’s 1968 book Country Music, U.S.A. the definitive history of the music–”the key volume on a very short shelf of country music books I’d call truly essential.”
Indeed, everyone and everything in the same vein that has followed — the genre’s key historians, including Richard Peterson and the late Charles Wolfe, from Country Music magazine writers like Patrick Carr and Nick Tosches and Bob Allen to those Rolling Stone critics like Chet Flippo and John Morthland who actually dared to champion country music when that wasn’t necessarily a cool move, on down to No Depression (where Malone himself has written on occasion) — descends from Country Music, U.S.A.
- Rodney Hayden finished recording a new album and says it’s by far the most country album he has recorded. Nice.
- Checkout the media section on Emmylou Harris‘ website for several videos where she talks about the songs she chose for her album All I Intended To Be.
- Watch Dwight Yoakam perform a medley of hits during his Saturday night Grand Ole Opry appearance, his first in 16 years:
- Everybody come on back for a live blog of tonight’s NBC premiere of Nashville Star.
If you enjoyed this article, be sure to subscribe to our feed or receive updates via email.
Popular Stuff
Sponsor
In this exclusive interview for The 9513, Little Big Town’s Jimi Westbrook talks about life with the band, as well as A Place to Land, the group’s current album, which has charted in the top 10 of Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart on two separate occasions
For the second episode of The 9513 Country Music Podcast, your host Kelly Dearmore caught up with two seemingly different artists in Sarah Borges and Trent Willmon. Take a listen.
In an attempt to discover and highlight the best music every month, We'll be publishing a list of the best songs released throughout that period. Here's Brady Vercher's picks for September.
Free Music Downloads: If you’ve only recently come to country music, or have never delved past the genre’s surface and it’s most famous names, you may not have heard of Tom Russell. That’s a shame, and The 9513’s Free Music series is here to help set you down the right path.
Martina McBride - “Ride” Catchy, but a little low on cogency–not to mention originality. And it essentially resolves into the same kind of positive “message song” that has defined so much of McBride’s recent work.
Richie McDonald - “How Do I Just Stop” So gloriously simple and unequivocally lackluster that people of every political persuasion should rejoice in the opportunity to come together and have a hearty laugh at its expense.
Donnie Vondra - “If I Didn’t Love You” Combinining a golden trifecta of country music—steel guitar, fiddle and a strong, twangy vocal—"If I Didn't Love You" pulls together a sweet, toe-tapping ditty reminiscent of Marty Raybon-era Shenandoah.
Lance Miller - “Bacon Frying” A charming country song that is beautiful for its simplicity, a musical remnant from a time when songwriters understood that often the best thing to do is just get out of the song’s way.
John Rich - “Another You” For a guy who is supposed to be a genius songwriter, John Rich sure does seem to be running out of ideas. 
George Ducas - “Walk Through This World” Ducas banks on the success of recent artists’ pleasantly bland lyrics and agreeable instrumentation for his first release with WhiteStar Nashville.
Forgotten Artists: Cal Smith - When the Florida Sunshine Opry (Eustis, FL) booked its first “name” (non-local) act back in 1999, the act they chose was Cal Smith. No wonder, since Cal is an excellent singer, musician, storyteller and showman. | View more artists featured in Paul W. Dennis' recurring "Forgotten Artists" feature »
Tagged In This Article
Alan Jackson // Carrie Underwood // Dwight Yoakam // Emmylou Harris // Grand Ole Opry // Jason Aldean // Jessica Simpson // Keith Urban // Kenny Rogers // Rodney Hayden // The Steeldrivers // Tim McGraw
Current Discussion
- Brady Vercher: Rick: "In fact Randy should have given the uptempo songs to Ronnie Dunn and Trace Adkins..." I dunno, Dunn and Adkins ...
- Trailer: I'd give it about a 3. He's got great potential though. I was thinking this but couldn't put it into ...
- Paul W Dennis: The Time Jumpers are a terrific group but there are other groups working western swing. Try John England & The ...
- Vicki: :Yawn:...yeah Taylor is tops on the Billboard. No surprise there. She writes extremely well and knows how to ...
- scooter: I also listened to the clips and was also disappointed. I like the title track and thought this would be ...
- Rick: Wow, the article I have a link to above is even mentioned in Chet Flippo's brand new "Nashville Skyline" column ...
- CMW: This review pretty much confirms what I suspected from listening to the clips a few days ago: too many indistinct ...
- Razor X: Martina is capable of so much better than this. Her last album was a huge disappointment and based on this ...
- Trailer: I love the vocals and the band is pretty tight... it's the songs that are the liability to me. Nothing ...
- Hollerin' Ben: "The 90s were not the Utopia some of us might like to think they were..." seriously?
8 Comments
RSS for comments on this post | Trackback URI for this post
June 9, 2008 at 10:17 am Permalink
Speaking of Nashville Star, Paul King over at the Nashville Hype blog has been hyping The Hewitt Sisters for quite awhile now. He was so convincing I even bought their EP, which would be appreciated by Taylor Swift fans (me not so much). One of the sisters Ashlee Hewitt is a finalist on Nashville Star, so Paul wants everyone to vote for her! (lol) Since duos and groups are allowed this time its too bad sister Katrice won’t be part of the act. Oh well.. Here’s the link to read Paul’s Thoughts on this:
http://nashvillehype.com/
As for Fan Fair, I’m still waiting for someone to report on the Opry Plaza Party concert featuring The Wrights and Sunny Sweeney on Saturday afternoon. That would have been my # 1 must see concert event…
Dwight was definitely a highlight at Stagecoach and its glad to see him back at Fan Fair and the Opry after far too long of absence. Top 40 Airhead Country Radio may ignore him these days, but there are still a huge bunch of fans that love his music…
June 9, 2008 at 10:30 am Permalink
The comparison of “Come On Over” to the Carrie Underwood catalogue deserves a nomination for dumbest country music-related quote so far this year. And jeez, talk about a kick in the balls for Underwood’s writers. Chris Tompkins and Josh Kear are probably crying somewhere.
Love that Dwight medley.
June 9, 2008 at 10:52 am Permalink
I will watch Nashville Star if someone else is willing to buy the booze.
June 9, 2008 at 11:49 am Permalink
Strormy, I don’t think even pooling all our money will but that much booze.
June 9, 2008 at 1:17 pm Permalink
I was at all 4 CMA Festival concerts and just have this to add: Kenny Rogers lived up to his billing as a grade-A jerk. He also looked like death.
June 9, 2008 at 9:38 pm Permalink
Good for the Steeldrivers to get a big TV gig. I’ve been a fan of Tammy Rogers and Mike Henderson in their country/roots music careers, but I was surprised on how good this band is. Bluegrass with a definite soulful vibe, sort of like the Duhks with a male powerhouse singer.
I get the feeling that Keith Kaufman has a little more spending money since he started playing Jessica Simpson’s song on his station.
June 10, 2008 at 9:51 am Permalink
Sam: You have heard about The Duhks’ line up changes right?
June 10, 2008 at 1:38 pm Permalink
To Matt who is obviously the GRADE A jerk here.He performed for free and he is 70. Have you ever done ANYTHING to raise money for anything or ANYONE
Leave a Comment