Jimmy Chapin has been promoted to Big Machine Label Group Director, International. Chapin joined the label in 2011 and has served in several roles, most recently as Sr. Manager, International. In 2015, he played a key role within BMLG’s expansion into the UK, liaising with the London-based team and contributing to the worldwide success of artists like Thomas Rhett, The Cadillac Three and Maddie & Tae.

Chapin’s elevated duties will enable him to further develop album and tour campaigns in over 20 countries outside the US including Japan, Australia, UK, Ireland, Germany, Holland and China. During his tenure, BMLG’s International department has secured exclusive deluxe album releases in Japan for Cheap Trick and Steven Tyler, a Brazilian duet between Florida Georgia Line and Luan Santana as well as top-selling album releases for artists across the label group’s five imprints.

“Jimmy has a great understanding and know-how in our key ex-US territories and has truly become the glue for our global strategies,” said BMLG President/CEO Scott Borchetta.

“I couldn’t be more excited to continue furthering BMLG’s expansion outside of the US and to be part of such an innovative company,” shared Chapin. “It is a true honor to work with Scott, Andrew, and the amazing International team here at BMLG.”

Chapin is based in BMLG’s Nashville headquarters and can be reached at jimmy.chapin@bmlg.net and 615-324-7063.

The daily schedule for Bonnaroo 2017, slated for June 8-11 in Manchester, Tennessee, has been announced.

Over 100 artists will appear at the event, headlined by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Weeknd, and, in an exclusive, first-ever Bonnaroo headline performance, U2 performing a set that will include a 30th anniversary celebration of their career-defining 1987 album, The Joshua Tree.

Cam and Margo Price are set to perform on the Sunday shows at Great Stage Park, while Lukas Nelson & the Promise of the Real are part of the Saturday lineup and newcomer Luke Combs performs during the Thursday set. Other artists performing throughout the four-day event include Lorde, Chance The Rapper, Dua Lipa, and dozens more.

Tickets including General Admission, VIP, and the brand new Platinum Pass are on sale now exclusively via bonnaroo.com.

Pictured (L-R): Trisha Yearwood, Charlie Chase, Bob Kingsley, Lorianne Crook, Garth Brooks. Photo: Chris Hollo

“You guys made country music famous,” Garth Brooks told Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase, as Brooks and his fellow superstar entertainer and wife Trisha Yearwood stood onstage at the Grand Ole Opry.

Powerhouse duo Crook & Chase have helped promote country music via country music news, interviews and artist performances for 34 years, via television, radio and online formats.

Brooks and Yearwood were on hand to honor Crook & Chase with the Bob Kingsley Living Legend Award, during an event held on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry on Monday evening (Feb. 20).

“You can’t imagine having anything to do with this business and not walking through those doors,” Yearwood said. “You guys made us look cool. If you get to be on Crook & Chase, people see you. I don’t know how many homes we got to be in because of you guys.”

Legendary radio host Bob Kingsley earned the inaugural honor in 2014, then decided to make the honor an annual event for members of the industry to be honored on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. Joe Galante earned the honor in 2015, as did Jim Ed Norman in 2016.

Among the artists who participated in the evening with performances, appearances and taped messages were Trace Adkins, Moe Bandy, John Conlee, Billy Dean, Tareva Henderson, Tracy Lawrence, John Michael Montgomery, Jeannie Seely, Ricky Skaggs, T.G. Sheppard, Doug Stone, Tanya Tucker, The Whites and Mark Wills.

More congratulatory words came from music industry members including Steve Buchanan, Robert K. Oermann, Kip Kirby, Kathy Martingale, Chuck Long, Burt Dubrow, Katie Haas, Kelly Sutton, Terri Bumgarner, CMA CEO Sarah Trahern and more.

Video tributes were sent from Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Chris Young, Charlie Daniels, Blake Shelton, Clint Black, Toby Keith, Reba, Ricky Van Shelton, Darius Rucker, and Dolly Parton.

The evening benefitted the Opry Trust Fund, which has supported the Nashville music community for 50 years. Approximately 50 industry members are aided each year through the organization.

“We feel like we’ve grown up in the business with you guys,” Crook said. “Thank you for trusting us with your artists. It’s been a beautiful, life changing dance.”

Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase accept the Bob Kingsley Living Legend Award. Photo: Chris Hollo/Grand Ole Opry

In 1982, Crook was hosting her own show in Nashville, while Chase was also hosting his own show at another Nashville station, when producer Jim Owens saw them and put them together to form Crook & Chase in 1983. They began on the newly-founded network TNN (The Nashville Network) in 1983, under the banner This Week In Country Music. In 1986, the show became known as Crook & Chase, country music’s first national news and entertainment show, and ran until 1993, when it became known as Music City Tonight, when Crook & Chase replaced Ralph Emery’s Nashville Now.

CMA CEO Sarah Trahern noted that at one point, TNN had nearly 23 hours of Crook & Chase per week, on either TNN or in syndication. One year, seven of the Top 10 shows on TNN were attributed to Crook & Chase.

“Virtually every country star in the last 30 years has appeared on one of the many iterations of Crook & Chase on radio or on television,” Trahern said.

After 554 episodes, Music City Tonight signed off in 1995 at the height of country’s boom and the duo morphed Crook & Chase into a nationally syndicated talk show.

In the 2000s, Crook & Chase would return to television on RFD-TV. Lorianne hosted 180 episodes of Celebrity Kitchen on GAC-TV in 2003-2004.

Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase are members of the Country Radio Hall of Fame. Their radio show, The Crook & Chase Countdown, is now in its 27th year.

Chase brought his trademark humor in accepting the honor, saying, “The biggest reward about this award is it has Garth and Trisha’s fingerprints on it!”

T Bone Burnett

Singer/songwriter/producer T Bone Burnett leads several music industry members and organizations in calling for reforms to the DMCA notice-and-takedown process. Burnett submitted a video decrying the “broken” Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires search engines and video-sharing websites such as YouTube to take down music that has been posted without the approval of the appropriate copyright owners.

Additionally 15 major music industry organizations have joined to file new comments with the U.S. Copyright Office, which is directing a review of the safe harbor provisions contained in the DMCA.

Those organizations include the American Federation of Musicians; American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; Broadcast Music, Inc.; Content Creators Coalition; Global Music Rights; Living Legends Foundation; Music Managers Forum – United States; Nashville Songwriters Association International; National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences; National Music Publishers’ Association; Recording Industry Association of America; Rhythm and Blues Foundation; Screen Actors Guild –American Federation of Television and Radio Artists; SESAC Holdings, Inc.; and SoundExchange.

“Everyone with a stake in the Internet’s success and the health of our creative democracy must work together to make this right,” Burnett says in the video. “It’s time for Congress to close the loopholes in section 512 of the DMCA. Our culture is at stake.”

The newly-submitted comments describe what the organizations call key failings with the DMCA.

“In the context of search engines and the Section 512(d) safe harbor, the whack- a-mole problem takes a different form: links to infringing content are removed in response to a takedown notice, but then other links to infringements of the same work reappear in search results on the same service. In addition, Google’s search algorithm and search-term suggestion often promotes popular, infringing sites over authorized, legitimate sites for neutral searches for mp3s or downloads of music. Both of these issues are an enormous problem for copyright owner because search engines continue to be a key driver for music discovery and a significant tool that leads traffic to infringing sites.”

T Bone Burnett on the Broken DMCA Safe Harbors from Content Creators Coalition on Vimeo.

“This proceeding is focused on the legal safe harbors in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act – the law that was supposed to balance the Internet’s openness with creators’ ability to earn a living wage from their work,” Burnett stated in his submitted video. “Those safe harbors have failed. The problems are familiar – they are well described in the record of these proceedings from the broken Sisyphus climb of “notice and takedown” to the gunpoint negotiations and pittance wages forced upon creators by the Google monopoly. The Big Tech itopians can track us across dozens of networks, devices, and profiles to bombard us with micro targeted ads, but they can’t even identify unauthorized copies of our work and keep them off their own servers and systems. Or they won’t. The problem here isn’t technology – creators welcome the digital revolution and its power to connect, amplify, and inspire. A modern recording studio looks more like a cockpit than a honky tonk, and that’s just fine.

“The problem is business models – designed to scrape away value rather than fuel new creation, focused on taking rather than making. To restore technology’s place as the rightful partner of tomorrow’s creators, we need change. The safe harbors must be restored – so only responsible actors earn their protection, not those who actively profit from the abuse and exploitation of creators’ work. Technology must be enlisted to make the system work better, not to roadblock progress in a pointless arms race of whack a mole and digital deception. Creators must be given meaningful tools to earn a living from their art.”