Charlie Daniels Releases Christmas Album

/by

Buffets, Inc. and Country icon Charlie Daniels have partnered to launch a new Christmas album called Hallelujah It’s Christmas Time Again, which is already in stores.

Available exclusively in Buffets, Inc. restaurants (Ryan’s, Old Country Buffet, HomeTown, and more) for $8.99, Hallelujah… includes a mix of holiday classics and originals including “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” “Hallelujah,” and more. Profits from the sale of the album will be donated to the Armed Services YMCA for Operation Outdoors, a camp program for the children of military personnel.

“The Buffets, Inc. brands are providing a way to celebrate Christmas through music and help the children of our military at the same time,” says Daniels. “It’s important to remember the reason for this season.”

Find restaurants here.

Craig Morgan on GAC ‘Origins’

/by

Craig Morgan is the subject of a new installment of GAC series Origins. Premiering Wed., Nov. 14, 9 p.m./CST, the show features interviews with his family, former Army commander, and manager.

Also on the show, Morgan will offer acoustic performances of his hits including “More Trucks Than Cars,” “Love Loves a Long Night,” “Redneck Yacht Club” and “This Ole Boy,” at his old stomping grounds, the Grand Ole Hatchery in Dickson, TN where he lives.

As a veteran, Morgan is avid supporter of the military and will serve as the national spokesperson for Operation Ride Home, a campaign led by the Jack Daniel Distillery to help service members and their families travel from bases to home this holiday season. Visit www.jdoperationridehome.com to contribute.

Albright & O’Malley Elevates Becky Brenner

/by

Country Radio veteran Becky Brenner has been elevated to full partner of consulting firm Albright & O’Malley, which she joined in January 2012. Following Brenner’s promotion, the company will now be renamed Albright & O’Malley & Brenner.

“We knew that this would be the perfect addition of yet another first team player to Albright & O’Malley’s arsenal of strategic and tactical weapons for our clients,” says partner Jaye Albright. “Becky has done everything including morning drive personality, promotions, marketing, programming, operations and new media manager, during her illustrious 35 year career at CBS Radio, ARS, EZ Communications, Broadcast Programming and Midwest Family.”

Brenner was previously the longtime Program Director/Digital Web Manager for KMPS-FM and the CBS Radio Seattle cluster, from 1982-1992 and 1995-2011. She was named as one of the top PDs in the country (all formats) for multiple years, and recognized as Country’s No. 1 programmer five times by Radio Ink.

Brenner will continue to be based out of her Seattle home office. Congratulate her here.

Faith Hill to Debut New Music Video

/by

Faith Hill

Faith Hill is set to premiere the official music video for her latest single, “American Heart” tomorrow (11/8) during a uStream event on FaithHill.com and Facebook at 9 pm ET.

The simulcast event is Hill’s first music video in nearly five years and will offer fans exclusive behind the scenes footage (preview below) from the shoot. The songstress filmed the video, which features 10-year-old T.J. Jones as a sidekick, in Nashville last month with director Trey Fanjoy.

“American Heart” was co-written by Jonathan Singleton and Jim Beavers, co-produced with Byron Gallimore and Hill and recorded at Nashville’s Blackbird Studios. “When I first heard this song I was brought to tears,” said Hill. “I not only knew I had to record it, but I almost immediately saw it visually.”

The single is currently available on iTunes as the singer plans to begin a headlining Las Vegas series at the Venetian Hotel and Casino through the spring of 2013 with husband Tim McGraw.

Benefit News (11/7/12)

/by

As our friends in the northeast begin the long recovery process from Hurricane Sandy, some talented people from down South are pitching in to help with the effort:

• Texas fave James McMurtry performed at Austin’s Continental Club dressed as Dorothy (from the Wizard of Oz) for Halloween, and is now auctioning off his ruby slippers to the Red Cross for hurricane relief. Bid on the shoes here.

• Closer to Nashville, the “Thursday Night Fishing Club” music series at Cafe Fontanella will benefit the areas on Long Island hardest hit by Sandy. Guests are asked to bring gift cards of $10 or greater value from Visa, MasterCard, Amex, or retailers such as Home Depot, Costco, etc. “I am from Long Island and have never seen this kind of devastation from a storm,” said Thursday Night Fishing Club founder Gary Shiebler. “The great thing about gift cards is that they give folks a small sense of control and normalcy in a world turned upside down, even if it means just buying a bottle of shampoo or a cup of coffee.”

• • • • •

Inspired by the message of “I’m Gonna Love You Through It,” Martina McBride’s fan club members have raised over $25,000 to fund cancer research. The club members formed Team Martina and dedicated the amount for a grant in McBride’s name at that Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville through the T.J. Martell Foundation.

• • • • •

Max's painting of Taylor Swift

The artwork of Peter Max will be on display and available for acquisition at the Rymer Gallery, starting with a special uncrating event Friday, November 9. A portion of the proceeds will go to benefit the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. Additionally, Max will be present at the gallery for receptions on Nov. 17 and 18. More info here.

• • • • •

Belmont University, along with Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins, will host Nashville Family Day on Sunday, Nov. 11, 1-4 pm at Curb Event Center. American Idol finalist Colton Dixon and Disney’s Coco Jones are scheduled to attend the event, which benefits the T.J. Martell Foundation. Tickets are $50 for a family of four, or $15 for an individual, and available here.

• • • • •

Larry Hoppen

Also Sunday, Nov. 11 is the “Orleans & Friends” show at the Mercy Lounge. The popular ‘70s band behind “Still the One” lost its lead-singer Larry Hoppen suddenly in July 2012, and the show will benefit his children through the Hoppen Family Benefit Fund. Guests include John Ford Coley, Henry Paul (Blackhawk), Jonell Mosser, Kathie Baillie & Michael Bonagura, Bill Lloyd, Alyssa Bonagura, and Pete Huttlinger. There is a $20 minimum donation, and tickets are available here.

• • • • •

Songwriters Spotlight will present a special concert featuring the talents of Even Stevens, Leslie Satcher, Tim Rushlow (Little Texas), Larry Stewart (Restless Heart) and Raven Cliff on Sunday, Nov. 11 at the Franklin Theatre. The event will benefit Landstuhl Hospital Care Project, the largest overseas US military hospital. Limited tickets are available here.

 

Shelton’s Christmas Special, Lambert’s New Store

/by

A week after Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton racked up at the CMA Awards, there’s more good news from the country couple. She’ll join him on Blake Shelton’s Not So Family Christmas, an NBC primetime special which also features Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson. It will air Mon., Dec. 3 at 9 p.m. CT and Fri., Dec. 7 at 7 p.m. CT.

Lambert is opening a store called the Pink Pistol in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. Set to debut on Black Friday, (Nov. 23), the shop will carry all of ‘Ran’s favorite things, from gifts and antiques to boots and jeans. She and Shelton live on a farm near Tishomingo. She will compete for favorite country female at the Nov. 18 American Music Awards, airing on ABC and then hit the road with Dierks Bently on the Locked & Reloaded tour Jan. 17.

 

Warner Nationwide Restructuring Unlikely to Affect Nashville

/by

A Warner Music Group reorganization is unlikely to affect local operations or lead to lay offs. According to multiple news outlets, WMG will be divided into the following three divisions in the U.S.:

• Recorded music—includes Warner Music Nashville, Atlantic Records and Warner Bros. Records.

• Music publishing and catalog development—will bring together Warner/Chappell and Rhino Entertainment under Warner Chappell CEO and chairman, Cameron Strang. This move is designed to spur catalog exploitation, which includes synch licensing. Rhino offers many music reissues, and has product by Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Travis Tritt, Randy Travis, Willie Nelson, Dwight Yoakam Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Smiths, Chicago, Foreigner, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, The Monkees, The Stooges, Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett, Tony Joe White and more.

• Label and artist services—home to distribution and other peripheral operations such as tour production, booking, artists services, event production and marketing, this includes WEA, ADA, 360° Operations and D2C. Matt Signore will lead the label and artist services division as general manager / CFO.

Billboard first broke the story, when it obtained an email from WMG CEO Steve Cooper to employees.

Weekly Register: Awards Bump Becomes A Minor Convexity

/by

As the dust settles on the post CMA Awards SoundScan numbers and one of the most contested Presidential elections in history, it’s hard to assign perspective. Fortunately, in this space we only have to deal with the former event and can leave the latter to pundits better suited to that pursuit.

The 46th CMA Awards reaped its lowest ever ratings last week due to events such as the power blackout in New York and New Jersey, the program’s move to Thursday night and perhaps somewhat due to the overall erosion of network TV audiences. Regardless, it still won the evening for ABC and creatively was extremely successful. But how did it reflect at the cash register?

The Awards were a major force in the week’s sales, but one also has to allow for the fact that Taylor Swift’s 1.2 million unit album launch happened the week before the show, (and luckily pre-hurricane Sandy). Swift’s 72% post-launch drop this week clouds our numbers giving the post-awards country album sales a highly unusual week over week drop of 40%. However, if we compare this post-awards week (1.165 million country albums) with two weeks ago (1.054 million) then country sales are up about 10.5%. Still tepid, especially when you consider Swift’s week two sales of 344k are in the post show numbers.

Happily the Awards show did propel some artists to phat week/week percentage gains. But those numbers can also be misleading. For example, Eric Church jumped 121%, but actually gained only 12,371 units. Blake Shelton’s Red River Blue spiked 179% which equates to 5,389 additional sales units; Luke Bryan saw an 87% uptick on 11,233 additional sales. Considering the costs involved in putting an artist and band on the show, these increases are less joyous than the percentages would indicate. The Top 5 album gainers by percentage (all Awards performers) were Miranda Lambert +194%, Thompson Square +184%, Blake Shelton 179%, Brad Paisley +153% and Eric Church +121%.

Also noteworthy in the album department was a debut from Toby Keith (he did not appear on the Awards show) at No. 3 with over 48k units. (Keith’s last debut was around 69k.) And what’s that holiday “bundle” at No. 20 with almost 5k units? It’s a QVC two-album package from Scotty McCreery.

Keeping Track
Country tracks had some nice gains to report with a 25% overall week over week jump. Miranda Lambert/Blake Shelton Song of the Year winner “Over You” was downloaded over 38k times, racking up an impressive 974% gain. The Band Perry performed “Better Dig Two” causing it to debut on the country tracks at No. 2 with over 82k downloads. Swift led the country tracks with “We Are Never…” scanning over 87k units. Her performance of “Begin Again” placed that track at No. 11 with almost 40k units.

The Kelly Clarkson/Vince Gill duet, “Don’t Rush” performed on TV debuted at No. 10 with over 41k units and CMA Award winner Thompson Square’s “If I Didn’t Have You” debuted at No. 12 with almost 39k units.

There are now four Taylor Swift tracks charting on the Billboard/SoundScan all genre list that are purposely being withheld from the country tracks chart. Those four songs currently account for total sales of about 935k units that are not being credited in country coffers. Still no explanation from either Billboard or SoundScan. Perhaps it’s time for the CMA, country music’s trade organization to step in and request clarification.

Turning The Telescope
Eight weeks remain in the 2012 sales calendar. Country sales are currently ahead 2.3%. To end the year flat, we will need to average 1.17 million country album units each week. This week ended 11/4/12 we shifted 1.16 million units. Stay tuned…

Charlie Daniels Hosts “Soldier’s Story” Documentary

/by

d corlew films’ The Journey Home: A Soldier’s Story is set to make its national television premiere today (11/07), on Great American Country (GAC). Hosted and narrated by Charlie Daniels, the program includes exclusive interviews with friends and family of the returning veterans.

Directed and produced by David Corlew, the veteran filmmaker enlisted writer/co-producer Tim Weeks and editor/director of photography Nathan Shuppert to help bring the patriotic documentary to life. The film also features a special appearance by Major General Terry “Max” Haston, Adjutant General of the Tennessee National Guard.

“I am honored to team with GAC’s Sarah Trahern and Suzanne Gordon to tell the stories like these that need to be told,” said Corlew. “Through this process, we’re hoping to inspire our communities to reach out, and in some small way, to support the men and women who choose to serve and protect our nation.”

The compelling documentary follows the lives of several U.S. Army and Marine veterans as they return home from the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan to find a new set of challenges awaiting them: rehabilitation from lasting physical and emotional injuries and re-integration into civilian life as they search for a new future. Watch a trailer for the program here.

Snapshots (11/7/12)

/by

Mike Borchetta recently got to visit with the legendary Glen Campbell at a concert in Sarasota, Florida. Campbell and Borchetta originally worked together in 1961 when Borchetta worked for Irwin Zucker Promotions in Hollywood and promoted Campbell’s “Turn Around Look At Me” on Crest Records.

(L-R): Mike and Martha Borchetta; Campbell, his daughter Ashley, and wife Kim

• • • •

RareSpark Media Group, Inc. honored its newly-signed songwriters during its grand opening celebration prior to the CMA Awards.

(L-R): Jon McElroy, E Marlowe, Suzanne Strickland (Owner/CEO), Jim Reilley, Victoria Banks and Scot Sherrod (VP/GM). Photo: Jason Krupek

• • • •

Country singer Teea Goans was recently invited to open several shows for comedy icon Bob Newhart. The first of the shows took place Oct. 19 in Branson, MO. The next shows will take place Nov. 9 and 10.