Artist Updates: Jimmy Wayne, Clare Bowen, Austin Webb, Bobby Bones and the Raging Idiots

Jimmy Wayne Supports Musicians On Call

Jimmy Wayne celebrated Veterans Day with work for Musicians On Call, a non-profit that brings live and recorded music to the bedsides of patients in healthcare facilities. At the Nashville VA medical center, he serenaded veterans with songs including “Sara Smile” and his own “Do You Believe Me Now.”

The visit was the first in partnership with the Grand Ole Opry, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary, and its Circle Throwdown, which brings performances with Opry artists and a replica of the famed six-foot Opry Circle of wood symbolizing the oak center stage at the Opry House to new locations across the country.

Jimmy Wayne. Photo: Glenn Sweitzer / Fresh Films

Nashville‘s Clare Bowen Explains Her New Look

Clare Bowen. Photo: Joseph Llanes

Nashville actress Clare Bowen recently took to social media to explain why her character has a new look. Bowen, 31, cut off her signature long blonde hair in an effort to encourage others to look beyond physical appearance. She also did it to encourage children and adults undergoing cancer treatment.

Bowen shared her own childhood experience of being diagnosed with end stage nephroblastoma, a kidney cancer that is responsible for 95 percent of kidney and renal cancers in children under the age of 14.

“I was really inspired when I heard a story about a little girl who said she couldn’t be a princess because she didn’t have long hair, and I wanted her, and others like her, to know that’s not what makes a princess, or a warrior, or a superhero. It’s not what makes you beautiful either. It’s your insides that count…even if you happen to be missing half of them,” she wrote on Facebook. “Every scar tells a story, every baldhead, every dark circle, every prosthetic limb, and every reflection in a mirror that you might not recognize anymore. Look deeper than skin, hair, nails, and lips. You are who you are in your bones. That is where you have the potential to shine the brightest from. It is where your true beautiful self lives.”

Austin Webb Gets Engaged

Singer-songwriter Austin Webb has revealed that he proposed to his longtime girlfriend Melanie McFarlane Payne.

“I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life,” he shared via Instagram. “The most supportive, beautiful, smart, funny, great cooking, good lookin, kind hearted woman said yes #1111#shesaidyes”

The couple has not announced a wedding date.

Webb’s singles include 2013’s “Slip On By” and 2015’s “All Country on You.”

Bobby Bones and the Raging Idiots To Release Children’s EP

Comedy duo and Black River Entertainment recording artists Bobby Bones and the Raging Idiots will released the children’s EP The Raging Idiots Presents-The Raging Kidiots on Nov. 20. Beginning Nov. 13, fans can pre-order the EP on iTunes.

Photo: Robert Chavers
Courtesy of Black River Entertainment