Pictured (L-R): Mike Kraski, D. Vincent Williams.

Nashville music industry executives Mike Kraski, D Vincent Williams, Danny Pool, Lori Maxwell, and Debbie Zavitson have teamed to create multi-service company M-Pact Music Group.

“In today’s music business environment, one needs to incorporate assets that support one another and create cost efficiencies and multiple revenue streams,” company president/CEO Kraski said. “That’s exactly what M-Pact does. We have built a dynamic company with subsidiaries that are both diversified and integrated.”

“In my professional history, I was always missing the person with the business expertise,” said Williams. “Mike would be the first to tell you that what he had always been missing was the creative counterpart. Having each other in this business is both inspiring and invigorating.”

The companies that fall under the M-Pact Music Group umbrella include M-Pact Music Publishing, M-Pact Management and Consulting, M-Pact Development Services, M-Pact Productions, Amuse Entertainment and Band Doctor.

M-Pact Management and Consulting (formerly Tenacity Management and Consulting) will be helmed by Kraski, and will include the division’s first signing, Austin Moody.

Songwriter/producer Williams will serve as EVP/Chief Creative Officer. Their partner is businessman Danny Pool, owner of Blue Guitar Publishing. Lori Maxwell will act as VP of Finance and Business/CFO.

Debbie Zavitson has been brought onboard to steer the publishing division as VP of Publishing Operations/Chief Operating Officer. Writers signed to the venture include Keesy Timmer, Williams and Moody.

M-Pact Productions will utilize the company’s new full-service studio, with full-time engineer Dallen Beck helping to develop artists and songwriters. Meanwhile, Band Doctor will provide one-stop shopping for all musicians’ needs, from rehearsals to an entire tour. All musicians are vetted by an internal staff of credentialed musicians.

M-Pact Music Group will be located at 2937 Berry Hill Dr. Nashville, TN 37204 effective March 1.

Carrie Underwood. Photo: Schmidt PR

“It feels so good to be back on the road,” Carrie Underwood told the crowd on Friday (Feb. 5) at Louisville, Kentucky’s KFC Yum! Center, home to the fourth stop on Underwood’s The Storyteller Tour-Stories in the Round. “I hope you are ready to party because we are.”

Judging by the crowd’s reaction, the feeling was more than mutual. It was clear that Underwood’s fans have been eagerly awaiting live music, following Underwood’s The Blown Away Tour in 2012-2013. Since then, Underwood has taken time off the road to release Greatest Hits: Decade #1, her fifth studio album Storyteller, and to give birth to her son Isaiah.

Underwood wedged 22 songs into her nearly two-hour performance, including eight tracks from Storyteller. For the majority of the show, Underwood played hit song after hit song, her voice strong, confident, and rejuvenated.

Appropriate for a tour named In The Round, three LED rings hung above center stage, emblazoned with imagery from The Storyteller Tour. The contraption descended, forming a towering stage. Garbed in a resplendent golden frock, country’s queen made her entrance atop the nearly 18-foot high center lift, and held court from the first bluesy notes of “Renegade Runaway,” a track from Storyteller.

The Storyteller Tour’s production more than complimented Underwood’s commanding voice and her songs’ dramatic storylines. The massive stage stretched across the entire arena, ensuring fans on every side of the arena got a great seat. The three LED rings hanging above center stage lowered, rose, and rotated at other moments during the concert to create a dramatic focal point. Four satellite stages and varying lifts offered a myriad of visual options that kept the audience engaged.

The intensity of the production might have overpowered a lesser artist, but Underwood, with her confident, engaging persona and clear, sharp soprano, remained the centerpiece of the evening.

Strutting from one end of the massive stage to the other, Underwood was sassy and playful as she powered through a set of rock- and pop-tinged country hits including “Last Name,” “Undo It,” and “Good Girl,” reminding the crowd that she also possesses possibly one of the best female rock voices in the business. Of course, Underwood didn’t have to do all the legwork; the center stage rotated 360 degrees during several songs throughout the evening.

Carrie Underwood on harmonica during “Choctaw County Affair.” Photo: Schmidt PR

Underwood was seven songs into her set before the paced slowed. Underwood’s backing band sank beneath the stage as a spotlight and disco ball punctuated a performance of her current single, “Heartbeat,” followed by her debut single from 2005, “Jesus, Take The Wheel.”

“This is still one of my favorite songs to sing,” Underwood told the crowd. The inspirational tune still wears well more than a decade later, eliciting one of the biggest crowd responses of the evening. More hits followed, including “Wasted,” “Two Black Cadillacs,” and an especially sterling rendition of “Blown Away.”

Having amassed plentiful No. 1 songs in her career (including many that she co-wrote), Underwood has reached the enviable career phase of having to select which chart-toppers to incorporate into shows. While Underwood did her best to showcase hits from all chapters of her career, songs such as “So Small,” “Just A Dream,” “Temporary Home,”  and “See You Again,” were absent from the set.

Underwood’s powerhouse voice wasn’t the only instrument she showcased throughout the evening. She played guitar on working person’s anthem “Smoke Break,” and held her own during a harmonica “battle” with a band member during another Storyteller track, the southern murder mystery “Choctaw County Affair.”

She gave the crowd a turn in the spotlight during “All-American Girl,” holding a “Carrie Cam” as she circled the stage’s perimeter.

Carrie Underwood closes the show with “Something In The Water.” Photo: Schmidt PR

While it has become expected for country artists these days to incorporate at least one Top 40 or rock ‘n’ roll cover tune in concert, Underwood bucked the trend, keeping her two cover tunes entrenched in classic country.

“There are so many amazing artists that I got to grow up listening to and I respect so much,” Underwood told the crowd. “I feel like I would be just wrong if I didn’t mention one person that so many of us in my generation of country music idolize…that person that has meant so much to us is Dolly Parton. She’s the person we all aspire to have her career. She’s one of the nicest and most humble people I’ve met in my entire life,” she said, before quieting the crowd with an a cappella intro (later tastefully backed by a lone acoustic guitar) of Parton’s signature “I Will Always Love You.”

Two songs later, Underwood welcomed show openers The Swon Brothers and Easton Corbin back to the stage for a fun romp of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Fishin’ In The Dark.”

Another highlight of the evening came with the closing track from Storyteller, “What I Never Knew I Always Wanted.” Underwood sang from atop a piano as personal photos and videos of Underwood with husband Mike Fisher and their nearly one-year-old son Isaiah scrolled on video screens around the arena, giving fans a peek at Underwood’s life beyond the music and touring.

Underwood closed the show from center stage, her voice soaring and inspired on her Grammy-winning track “Something In The Water.” Blue lasers were employed to make “rain” fall across the entire stage. The effect was a dramatic and potent reminder of why this multi-talented performer is a seven-time Grammy winner and a two-time ACM Entertainer of the Year.

The event further landed on a high note for Underwood; during an after-show celebration, Underwood was presented with a plaque celebrating more than 20 million albums sold for her albums Some Hearts, Carnival Ride, Play On, Blown Away, Greatest Hits: Decade #1 and Storyteller.

Pictured (L-R): Sony Music Nashville Marketing Director Rachel Fontenot, Sales VP Caryl Healey, Promotion & Artist Development EVP Steve Hodges, and Chairman & CEO Randy Goodman; Carrie Underwood; Sony Music Nashville EVP/COO Ken Robold; Ann Edelblute, Carrie Underwood’s manager (The HQ); and Sony Music Nashville Marketing Sr. VP Paul Barnabee, Marketing & Media Mgr Bob Foglia, and Digital Strategy VP Sarah Westbrook. Photo: Jeff Johnson

SET LIST:

1. “Renegade Runaway”
2. “Last Name”/“Something Bad” (chorus)
3. “Undo It”
4. “Good Girl”
5. “Church Bells”
6. “Cowboy Cassanova”
7. “Heartbeat”
8. “Jesus, Take The Wheel”
9. “Wasted”
10. “Blown Away”
11. “Two Black Cadillacs”
12. “Dirty Laundry”
13. “Choctaw County Affair”
14. “I Will Always Love You”
15. “What I Never Knew I Always Wanted”
16. “Fishin’ In The Dark”
17. “Clock Don’t Stop”
18. “All-American Girl”
19. “Little Toy Guns”
20. “Before He Cheats”
21. “Smoke Break”
22. “Something In The Water”

LANco

Arista Nashville held an event at Jay Joyce‘s East Nashville studio, Neon Cross, Thursday afternoon (Feb. 4) to give the industry its first look at the newly-signed band LANco.

The five-person group was introduced by Sony Music Nashville Chairman and CEO Randy Goodman, who spoke about A&R VP Jim Catino‘s staunch support, which became infectious among the staff. An offer to sign the band after Joyce helped tune a studio sound came when Goodman witnessed the energy of the stage show.

The story goes: LANco lead singer Brandon Lancaster was wrapping up a shift selling hot dogs at Bridgestone Arena when he spotted Joyce, introduced himself and shared some music. Joyce soon began developing the act, which showcased six songs at the producer’s church-turned-studio. Eric Church and Little Big Town have famously recorded at Neon Cross, which comes complete with dim mood lighting, laminate paneling, and wooden cross behind the stage.

With enough on-stage energy to fill a stadium, Lancaster—alongside bandmates Tripp Howell, Eric Steedly, Jared Hampton, and Chandler Baldwin—surfaced a style that seemed to combine the moves of Luke Bryan with the cadence of Sam Hunt or Old Dominion, melded with the musical framework of Coldplay or Imagine Dragons.

A pulsing, larger-than-life “Long Live Tonight” is now at country radio. In addition to the debut single, the 20-somethings played through a series of songs on banjo, electric organ and slide electric guitar. The group strummed through an electric and echoey “American Love Story,” energetic “Troublemaker,” and a cool “Singing at the Stars,” as well as “Win You Over” and “We Do.”

Hailing from Kentucky, Georgia and the Nashville area, the band shared memories of hitting the road in their RV and playing to college crowds on Friday nights.

“We were here a year ago playing for our friends, the same place we cut our record,” said Lancaster before he jumped around the audience, beating a floor tom with a drum stick. “Thank you to Jay for letting us be in your studio. Our lives have been incredible these past few years and we could not thank you enough.”

Appropriately, hot dogs were on the menu, catered by Riffs food truck.

Mark Herndon, the former drummer for the band Alabama, has written a memoir titled The High Road: Memories from a Long Trip. It will be available on April 1 via Fresh Ink Group in Roanoke, Texas.

Herndon will be promoting the book at Country Radio Seminar next week. Although he is no longer a member of the band, Herndon was included when Alabama was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005.

“I began writing this book as a collection of my life memories to share with my daughter. I had longingly wished that my dad shared his stories with me, and I didn’t want my daughter to live with that same regret,” Herndon said. “Sure enough, after putting pen to paper, recollections flowed and I had enough copy to make a manuscript. I became confident enough in my story and with positive encouragement and inquiry from loyal fans, I decided to share the story of my life on written page.”

According to press materials, the book “offers recollections and insight into Mark’s childhood as a military brat, parental bonds, his romantic and marital relationships, travels around the world as an aviator and entertainer, and everything in between.”