Bentley Makes Music For “Esquire’s” New Issue

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Dierks Bentley, photo by Danny Clinch for "Esquire."

Dierks Bentley was part of a multi-faceted feature for the new music issue of stylish men’s lifestyle magazine Esquire. For the April issue, on newsstands today (3/23), Bentley traveled to Clarksdale, Mississippi’s Shack-Up Inn for a two-day fashion shoot with renowned photographer Danny Clinch. He joined an eclectic group of musicians for the feature, including fellow Nashvillian Griffin House, Charlie Mars, Bob Schneider, and Ben Kweller.

At the end of the trip, each songwriter was challenged to write, perform and record an original song that included the phrase “Somewhere in Mississippi.” The songs will be available for free download for one day only, and a full EP of all the songs will be available April 5 at esquire.com. Bentley’s song will be available for free on Mon., March 29. Until then, look below for behind-the-scenes clips or visit www.esquire.com/miss.

Another local highlighted in the new edition of Esquire is songstress Cortney Tidwell. Her track “17 Horses” is listed in the article “50 Songs Every Man Should Listen To.”

Award Shows Focus On Fans

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Bob Romeo

Connecting with fans has always been an important part of the music business, because the fans—and ultimately their pocketbooks —are what make or break a career. The rise of digital technology and social media has brought about changes in the ways artists reach out to fans, and affected the industry in a multitude of ways. The latest effect: shifts in awards shows.

Taking home a trophy from one of these glittering gloryfests is becoming less important and getting face time with fans—or a coveted performance slot—is the real objective. On the day after an awards show, industry insiders are more concerned with television ratings than who won the night’s top honor. The following week, sales execs sit on pins and needles waiting for SoundScan to show a post-awards bump. To keep up, awards show organizers are working harder than ever to engage fans, which in turn drives viewers and sales.

Adding Nominees…Changing Voting Methods
Sunday night’s (3/7) Academy Awards offered 10 nominees, doubling the number from last year, for the show’s Best Picture category. The Academy knew the show needed an update after its 2009 television ratings were the lowest in history. The purpose of adding more nominees for Best Picture was to make room for the box office blockbusters that are often snubbed by voters, and hopefully draw a larger audience, including younger viewers, which are preferred by marketers.

The Academy of Country Music has taken a similar approach to draw interest in its top prize, Entertainer of the Year, for the April 18 ACM Awards. There will be eight nominees, up from five the year before. ACM Executive Director Bob Romeo explains, “By allowing three more people to run it’s more inclusive for the format, and it gives us three more people to help promote the viewing of the show. I think if you want to remain viable today, you have to be engaging the fans and give them some buy-in to what you are doing.” This will be the third year that Entertainer will be selected by fans, another way the Academy is driving engagement. ACM professional members narrow down the Entertainer nominees to the final eight and fans vote for the overall winner.

“The first year we opened voting for Entertainer we were averaging 200 votes per minute. When you see these numbers, I don’t know how anybody can say that engaging the consumer is not what we have to do.”

In fact, the ACM also solicits fan votes for its three New Artist categories: Top New Solo Vocalist, Top New Vocal Duo and Top New Vocal Group. These winners go on to compete for the overall Top New Artist award, also fan-voted.

The race for the New Artist categories compels artists to hit the online campaign trail. Nominees Luke Bryan and Joey + Rory made videos and placed them on YouTube and other sites encouraging fans to vote for them for ACM Top New Solo Vocalist and Top New Duo, respectively, at www.VoteACM.com.

Romeo says, “In two days of voting for the New Artists this year, we have already outpaced the total votes we had for New Artist last year.”

Social Networking
Music historian Robert K. Oermann has seen awards shows grow and change. He says the rise of social networking has prompted organizers to offer fans an “active rather than passive experience.”

The ACM wants its show to be anything but passive; the organization has several consumer initiatives that haven’t been officially announced. Fans will take part in selecting the song Brooks & Dunn perform on the show, a new set design will allow fans onstage, there will be a live pre-show online, and a text voting component is in the works. Romeo says the ACM has been building its web presence for years. “On our web site four years ago, we had 10,000 people that we were engaging, we call them our ‘A-listers.’ Now we are up to 200,000. And last year when our web site went down during the awards show, the estimation was that we had over 1.6 million hits.”

In an AdAge article about the Oscars, social media blogger Joseph Jaffe simplified the goals of awards media initiatives like this: “One, to drive live tune-in; two, to enhance the experience; and three, continue the conversation afterward.” Oscars organizers took the hint from Jaffe and fans around the world, and streamed its nominations live online for the first time at Oscars.org and on Facebook, scoring more than 170,000 unique viewers. The Academy also debuted an Oscars iPhone app, and increased online offerings such as video, exclusive content from nominees, widgets and predictions.

Grammy Award organizers wanted fans to have a hand in its Jan. 31 show. According to Evan Greene, Chief Marketing Officer of The Recording Academy, “With the natural evolution of social media, fans have become a cultural force driving the power of music.” Consumers decided which Bon Jovi hit the band would perform on the show. The “We’re All Fans” ad campaign celebrated the connection between fans and artists, offering a first-of-its-kind interactive experience where portraits of Grammy-nominated artists were composed entirely from real-time, fan-generated YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook postings.

The CMA Awards gave a significant boost to its social networking offerings for the show in November 2009. There was a Twitter Viewing Party, with celeb and VIP tweets, as well as a “My Picks” widget that let fans share their choices for the top winners. ABC.com, the web site of the network which airs the CMAs, had daily behind the scenes Webisodes leading up to the show.

Ratings
All the effort paid off. The CMA Awards and Oscars both saw their highest ratings since 2005, and the Grammys had the biggest numbers since 2004. In the two years since the ACM started fan voting, its viewership for the awards show has almost doubled.

“Every day those fans vote. They vote when they buy a concert ticket, they vote when they tune in to watch a country music awards show, they vote when they buy a CD or a download,” says Romeo. “They are voting with their hardearned money. I don’t know why that should be any different than sharing a vote in our process.”

Jordyn Shellhart On iTunes; Luke Bryan On AOL Sessions

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Sony Music Nashville’s Jordyn Shellhart released her debut album, In A Room, to iTunes this week. The album was first available at Best Buy through the store’s “@15” initiative. It features fifteen tracks written or co-written by the Franklin teenager who will mark her 16th birthday with her Grand Ole Opry debut on March 27.

Among the songs on In A Room are the flirty “Infinite X’s and O’s,” the defiant “Gravity,” and “Heaven Knows,” about her brother who passed away from undiagnosed Type 1 Diabetes.

Shellhart attends Centennial High School in Franklin, TN, and plans to graduate before pursuing a full-fledged country music career.

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Capitol Records Nashville’s Luke Bryan has gone live with a new installment of the online performance series AOL Sessions. Included is a special performance of his recent No. 1 song “Do I,” featuring labelmates Lady Antebellum. The trio’s Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood co-wrote “Do I” with Bryan and play on the video below, while Hillary Scott offers backing vocals.

Bryan’s current and fastest rising single to date “Rain Is A Good Thing” is featured in the session, as well as his Top Ten hits “Country Man” and “All My Friends Say.”

He was recently voted ACM Top New Vocal Soloist, and is in the running for Top New Artist at the upcoming ACM Awards.

Bryan is busy on the road with Jason Aldean’s Wide Open Tour. He is touring in support of his second album, Doin’ My Thing, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Country Albums chart.

Kix, Gretchen At Lipscomb; Bluebird Hosts Tour Preview

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Kix Brooks

Kix Brooks, Charlie Daniels, Amy Grant, Gretchen Wilson and emcee Larry Gatlin will perform tonight (3/23) at 7 PM at Lipscomb University’s Allen Arena to raise awareness and funds for the college’s Yellow Ribbon Program which offers military veterans and their family members free or reduced tuition rates. David Corlew is acting as the show’s producer. A limited number of tickets for the evening event are on sale for $10 at the Lipscomb University box office and through Ticketmaster.

Prior to this evening’s concert, a daylong symposium will feature General Tommy Franks (Ret.), Major General Bob Dees (Ret.), General B.B. Bell (Ret.) and WebMD founder Jeff Arnold.

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The Bluebird Café will be a part of this summer’s Country Throwdown Tour, with a namesake tent featuring songwriter/artist performances. On March 24 and April 21, Nashvillians will get a tour preview at the legendary cafe. Ashley Ray, Brad Tursi, Dave Pahanish, Jedd Hughes, Sarah Buxton, Walker Hayes, Troy Olsen and Heather Morgan are scheduled for both dates.

Then they kick-off the Country Throwdown Tour on May 14, with daytime sets on the Bluebird stage and nightly sets during the main stage set changes.

Indie Success Story Colt Ford Plans New Album

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Colt Ford, the self-made artist with a flair for mixing hip-hop with honky tonk, is planning his sophomore release on Average Joes Entertainment. Chicken And Biscuits will be available Tuesday, April 20 and features guests Randy Houser, Joe Nichols, Josh Gracin, Darryl Worley, Ty Stone, James Otto, DMC, and Kevin Fowler. The album, produced by Jayson Chance and Shannon “Fatshan” Houchins, is the follow-up to Ford’s debut, Ride Through The Country, which sold over 150,000 units and 450,000 purchased downloads.

Ford says, “I pushed myself so hard in writing and finding the songs for the record, and I was blessed to write with some of the greatest songwriters in the world. To be able to make a second album that I feel is better than the first and still maintain who I am as an artist…wow!” He performed over 200 shows last year, including dates with Larry The Cable Guy and Jason Aldean.

Ford began developing his musical style when he noticed that country venues played urban and hip-hop music between sets of the live country band, and that fans responded by getting on the dance floor. So at his wife’s urging, he set out to make music with a similar sound that he says, “speaks to country folk about our way of life.”

Also new from Average Joes is country artist Brantley Gilbert’s sophomore album, Halfway To Heaven. Released March 16, the project reached No. 3 on iTunes Country Albums Chart. The first part of Halfway To Heaven is about Gilbert’s life prior to a nearly fatal car accident, and the latter half depicts his life since then. Gilbert co-wrote all twelve tracks with writers including Ford, Dallas Davidson, Rhett Akins, Ben Hayslip, and Mike Dekle. As a songwriter, Gilbert has a cut by Jason Aldean.

ACM Lines Up Awards Performers

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Leading nominee Lady Antebellum is among the performers set for the upcoming ACM Awards.

The Academy of Country Music announced today (3/23) that Jason Aldean, Brooks & Dunn, Kenny Chesney, Lady Antebellum, Reba McEntire, Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton & Trace Adkins, and Carrie Underwood, are scheduled to perform as part of its 45th annual Awards show on Sun., April 18. Reba McEntire will host the show at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, airing live at 7 PM/CT on CBS.

Heading into the ceremony Lady Antebellum lead this year’s nominations with seven nods, including Album of the Year and Top Vocal Group. In addition, the trio was nominated for Single, Song and Video for “Need You Now.” They were also nominated as a producer for Single Record of the Year and as a composer for Song of the Year.

Underwood is nominated for six awards, including Entertainer of Year. She is the reigning Entertainer of the Year, and, if she wins that category again, she will be the first female in Academy history to capture two Entertainer of the Year trophies. Underwood is also nominated as an artist and composer for Song of the Year for “Cowboy Casanova,” as well as Vocal Event of the Year for “I Told You So” with Randy Travis. In addition, Underwood is nominated for Top Female Vocalist and Album of the Year for Play On.

Chesney is nominated for four awards, including Entertainer of the Year and Top Male Vocalist. If he wins Entertainer, it will be his fifth win in the category. He is also nominated as an artist and producer for Vocal Event of the Year for “I’m Alive” with Dave Matthews.

Brooks & Dunn are in the running for Top Vocal Duo and will also receive the Academy’s Milestone Award during the tribute concert special, ACM Presents: Brooks & Dunn—The Last Rodeo, taping Monday, April 19 at Las Vegas’s MGM Grand Garden Arena, and airing Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 8:00 PM ET/PT on CBS.

McEntire, who is hosting the ACM Awards for a record twelfth time, is nominated for Top Female Vocalist of the Year. Blake Shelton and Trace Adkins are nominated for Vocal Event of the Year for “Hillbilly Bone.”

SOURCE Names 2010 Honorees

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The 2010 SOURCE Awards will honor veteran music businesswomen Celia Froehlig, Carol Phillips, Sherytha Scaife, Liz Thiels and Ruth White for their contributions to the industry. Also that evening, former BMI President and CEO Frances W. Preston will receive the esteemed “Jo Walker Meador Lifetime Achievement Award.”

The 2010 Source Awards will be held on Thursday, August 26 at the Noah Liff Opera Center in Nashville.

Celia Froehlig currently works at Black River Music, Carol Phillips is with Horipro Entertainment Group, Sherytha Scaife is employed by Music Inc., Liz Thiels is a longtime staffer at the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum, and Ruth White is a musician, author, and publishing administrator for Porter Wagoner’s publishing company.

SOURCE, founded in 1991, is a nonprofit organization seeking to unify women executives and professionals that work in all facets of Nashville’s music industry. For company and individual sponsorship opportunities please contact Jill Napier at [email protected].

Urban Adds Summer Dates

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Keith Urban has announced a slew of summer tour dates. The run includes numerous music festivals, arenas, and stadiums, as well as a few previously announced shows alongside The Eagles and The Dixie Chicks.

The outing opens April 16 at the Country Thunder festival in Florence, Arizona. Dates are scheduled through Sept. 4 in Essex Junction, Vermont. More stops are expected to be added in the coming weeks.

Urban is stopping in many cities where his 2009 Escape Together World Tour did not appear, and in some markets for the very first time. The 2009 world tour played before sold-out crowds in the United States, Canada and Australia, in support of his latest album Defying Gravity.

Last year was a big year for Urban, who won his first American Music Award, and his first People’s Choice Award. He followed that in February with his third Grammy, winning Best Male Country Vocal Performance for “Sweet Thing.” He is nominated for Entertainer and Male Vocalist of the Year at the upcoming ACM Awards.

For tour dates and details go to www.keithurban.net.

Hall of Fame Names Pamela Johnson VP

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Leading cultural arts specialist Pamela Johnson has been named vice president of development at the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum, Director Kyle Young announced today (3/22). Johnson brings 37 years of executive experience when she begins the new position on Mon., April 5. Reporting directly to Young, Johnson will oversee the Museum’s membership program, annual and planned giving initiatives, and special fundraising events.

Most recently, Johnson served as director, university marketing-special initiatives at Nashville’s Belmont University where, among other responsibilities, she managed the 2008 Town Hall Presidential Debate between Barack Obama and John McCain.

Prior to joining the Belmont staff in 2005, the native Nashvillian spent three years in Los Angeles as vice president, communications and corporate relations for the J. Paul Getty Trust. She oversaw a staff of 32, and implemented the institution’s first corporate sponsorship program.

She spent six years heading the PR division of New York City ad agency Serino Coyne, and then launched her own publicity and marketing firm, working with clients such as Philip Morris, AT&T, and Chase Manhattan Bank. Johnson’s earlier career includes executive positions at the American Association of Museums, Smithsonian Institution, Rogers & Cowan, and Cheekwood.

She is president-elect of the Tennessee Repertory Theater board, vice president of the Exchange Club of Nashville, and a member of the W. O. Smith Nashville Community Music School Advisory Council. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama.

Marczewski Joins Nine North; EMI Looks At Leasing Back Catalogue

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Stan Marczewski

Larry Pareigis, President/Nine North Records, has hired Stan Marczewski as Director Of Promotion, NE/MW, effective Monday, March 29.

Most recently, Marczewski worked for Sony Music Nashville as Manager, Strategic Marketing where he created opportunities for artists such as Brooks & Dunn, Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson, Miranda Lambert, Montgomery Gentry, and Brad Paisley. He was also involved in the early years of Little Big Town’s career as their day-to-day manager in addition to working with other artists on the RLM and Mission Management rosters.

Marczewki’s new position at Nine North realigns him with Pareigis and VP/Promotion and Marketing Tom Moran, his mentors in radio promotion when he started with Columbia Records Nashville in 2005.

“Stan’s passion and experience in promotion, management and marketing uniquely qualify him for the entrepreunrial challenges and promise that this new future holds,” says Pareigis. “Tom and I can’t be more thrilled that Stan’s signed up for this mission with us.”

Reach Marczewski by e-mail: [email protected] or phone: 615-426-2260.

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London’s Times Online reports that EMI is interested in licensing its recorded music back catalogue to another major label because of its dire financial situation.

The news outlet reports that EMI’s owner Terra Firma is looking for a five-year licensing agreement for the North American back catalogue which includes music from cash cows like The Beatles and Blondie. Terra Firm hopes such an arrangement would draw £400m.

A June 14 deadline is looming for Terra Firma, because that is the day its creditor Citigroup could take control of EMI.