Early Sunday morning, Mark Chesnutt’s bus was rear-ended by a vehicle traveling 100-miles per hour! All About Country reports that Mark was not on board, but most of his band was on the bus when it departed for Nashville Saturday night after Mark’s performance at Billy Bob’s in Ft. Worth, Texas. Fortunately no one was injured in the crash. The young male driver’s car, however, was totaled, and he reportedly had been drinking and was driving without a license. Mark shares, “I’m really, really glad all the boys are alright. Thank God.” Even though Chesnutt flew home to Beaumont, he says he’d still rather drive than fly, noting, “I love the bus!”
[via AristoMedia]
Emerson Drive was announced today among the nominees for the 2008 CCMA Fans’ Choice Award. With a total of six CCMA awards under their belt to date, the band is both thrilled and honored to be nominated for an award voted on by the fans, whom they consider the cornerstone of their 12 year career.
Voting for the award begins Friday, July 25th and runs through September 7th at 11:59 pm EST. To cast their vote, fans need to visit www.CMT.ca. Emerson Drive are also on the list of performers for the 2008 CCMA Awards show, which will air live on CBC TV at 8:00 pm Central on September 8th from the CTS Centre in Winnipeg, MB. The show will re-air on CMT Canada
Vince Gill will unplug and hit the road for four months, beginning August 18 in Wellington, Virginia. His upcoming tour is being billed as A Special Acoustic Evening With Vince Gill, and will feature him with just a piano player and drummer. Why go acoustic? Vince shares, “Recently, I saw James Taylor on his tour. It was a kind of one-man band show, with just him, a piano player and all those great songs. I really enjoyed watching it and I knew I would enjoy performing in that setting as well. So I’m going to tour basically the same way - pared down and informal.”
Fans should expect to hear a mix of Gill’s most popular hits and new material, plus plenty of stories. Dates are scheduled through November.
Howard Stern recently announced on his radio show that Dixie Chick Natalie Maines will be singing a song at his upcoming wedding. The shock jock and his fiancé, model Beth Ostrovsky, have reportedly become close friends with Natalie and her hubby, actor Adrian Pasdar. In fact, they even vacationed together last month, totally by chance. Stern is keeping the date of his impending nuptials top secret.
“Johnny & June,” the lead single from Curb/Asylum recording artist Heidi Newfield’s forthcoming August 5th release, What Am I Waiting For, is meeting with enormous digital success as it approaches the Top 20 at country radio. This week, the single is up 69% over last week, landing it inside the top 100 of Soundscan’s all-genre digital chart. “Johnny & June” is also the #7 country song on Soundscan’s digital chart and the #4 country ringtone according to Ringscan.
Benson Curb, vice president of sales at Curb Records, states “The Heidi Newfield song ‘Johnny & June’ digital and ringtone sales are off to an unbelievable start. The sales indicators are telling us we have a big hit on our hands. The excitement for this artist coming out of retail and digital providers has been amazing.”
The country music community echoes this excitement. John Rich states, “I’ve been friends with Heidi for many years, and she has always impressed me with her passion for country music and her natural ability to rock the socks off of the crowd every time! She is a real honky tonker, and a truly loved artist by the fans. ‘Johnny and June’ slays me.”
Taylor Swift blogged about the song after this year’s ACM Awards, writing, “I got to see Heidi Newfield, who sings one of my FAVORITE songs out right now, ‘Johnny and June.’ I have a total song crush on that song. Brilliantly written.”
Big Kenny concurs. “Wow, Heidi sounds like a smash to me! I love how the chorus lifts so beautifully and I am truly inspired by a love story as classic as Johnny and June Cash. It’s real.”
As this excitement continues to build, Newfield has kicked into high gear to promote the album launch on August 5th. Her new video, “Johnny & June” has been added into Heavy rotation at CMT and is Turbo at GAC. The video is also available for viewing here (Quicktime) or here (Windows). Heidi will discuss the video and more on her GAC Nights appearance August 4th at 10:00pm.
This week, Heidi was shot with the all-new Chevrolet Traverse for the 2009 Chevy Country Music Calendar, and she made her televised Grand Ole Opry debut on Saturday, July 12th on GAC’s Opry Live. Also watch for Heidi in upcoming issues of Billboard, Blender, Country Weekly, People Magazine’s Country Special Issue, and more. She continues to tour with Brooks & Dunn, while heading to the West Coast next week for select solo dates. On Tuesday, July 22nd the Healdsburg, CA native will make her first home turf appearance since launching her solo career at the Sonoma County Fair before heading on to San Jose and Bakersfield.
Lee Ann Womack recently found out that she speaks a different language than the folks in New York City! She was recently in the Big Apple to film the video for her new single, “Last Call.” According to Lee Ann, they filmed part of the clip on a rooftop and walked down Houston Street to film another part. But there was one problem! Womack shares, “Being from Texas, I would pronounce this Hyu-ston. For some reason, in NYC, it is pronounced How-ston. I just didn’t have the energy to explain to them how wrong they were. So I suppose they’re going to pronounce it that way from now on.” Womack adds that she still thinks the video turned out “pretty cool.”
[via Aristomedia]
Earlier this week they announced that the Broadway musical version of 9 to 5 will play the Great White Way later this year. Dolly Parton, who starred in the original 1980 Oscar nominated film, wrote the songs for the production. She says, “When they asked me to write the music for it, I didn’t even know that I could do it ’cause I don’t even go to Broadway shows that much, but they decided after all these years, which has been 25, 26 years I guess, that 9 to 5 was out, that they were gonna make it a Broadway [show].”
As for the content of some of her new original songs, Dolly reveals, “I’ve written songs for the boss, I’ve written songs fo Roz, you know, the company spy, she’s the one that’s in love with the boss. I wrote a fun little thing for her called ‘Red Hot Mama’ [and] of course I wrote songs for the whole office to sing.”
Montage Music Group’s Andy Griggs made his sponsor DoylesRoom.net proud as the first-ever country artist to participate in the 2008 World Series of Poker, held in Las Vegas last week. Griggs began the tournament with $20,000 in chips and was advised by his trainers that he would be doing well if he ended the first day with $10,000-$15,000. By the end of the day, he had more than doubled his money, with $51,050 in chips!
By the third day of play, Griggs was the only celebrity left in the tournament, and lasted three rounds until he went all in with a pair of 5’s and the other player bested him with a pair of 6’s on the flop. Impressively, he finished in the top 12 percent of players in the world renowned tournament.
Griggs received a tremendous amount of media coverage during the event, and fans can check out the tournament on ESPN as it airs every Tuesday beginning July 22nd. He kicked off Day Two of the tournament with a performance of the National Anthem, and also performed a track, the fitting, “It’s All About The Money,” from his new Montage Music Group album THE GOOD LIFE, on July 5th.
Billy Ray Cyrus is back at country radio today with a new single called “Somebody Said A Prayer.” Billy Ray says of the song, “[It’s] such a great song. It moved me from the first time I heard the demo. It’s powerful and a great message about hope and faith. And the writers, Neil Thrasher and Craig Wiseman, have an amazing track record of writing songs that speak from the heart.” Billy Ray’s new CD, Back To Tennessee, is expected to release later this year. Billy Ray co-wrote two of the tracks on the project.
You don’t have to be a “Gambler” to own Kenny Rogers‘ Georgia mansion, but winning the lottery couldn’t hurt. Kenny is selling his current home in Atlanta for just under eight million bucks! According to U.S. News & World Report, the nine-thousand-square-foot house sits on one-and-a-half acres, has six bedrooms and six baths, and comes furnished. Plus, it includes a pool and a gym and features an Italian-style decor. So where will Kenny live? He’s actually moving to a 150-acre ranch, where he’s in the process of building a three-thousand-square-foot home.
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