Marty Stuart's Late Night Jam Lineup Announced

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Marty Stuart

Marty Stuart


Marty Stuart’s annual Late Night Jam will take place Wednesday, June 5 at the Ryman Auditorium, beginning at 10 p.m.
This year’s event features Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, Connie Smith & The Sundowners, The Oak Ridge Boys, Bobby Bare with Brandy Clark, Charlie Worsham, Sleepy Man Banjo Boy and of course, surprise guests. The Late Night Jam will benefit MusiCares and CMA’s Keep The Music Playing.
Tickets are available $29.50 and $39.50 at ryman.com.
 

Johnny Cash Boyhood Home On Track For 2014 Opening

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cashThe Johnny Cash Boyhood Home museum is expected to open in the spring of 2014 in Dyess, Arkansas. “We have made great progress on the actual restoration of the house and are now working with members of the Cash family on acquiring the appropriate furnishings, which are being carefully researched,” Dr. Ruth Hawkins, director of Arkansas Heritage Sites, recently explained in a statement. “Thanks to his siblings Joanne’s and Tommy’s great memories, it’s going to seem as if the Cash family has just stepped outside the door to head to church.”
Cash’s family moved to Dyess and took ownership of 40 acres of land as part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. The home is being renovated to look as it did when the Cash family moved there in 1935. The project by Arkansas State University also includes restoration of a nearby theater and the Dyess Colony administration building.
Helping fund the restoration is the annual Johnny Cash Music Festival at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. This year’s concert, set for August 17, stars Vince Gill, Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers, Jimmy Fortune of the Statler Brothers and Joanne Cash Yates, along with show host Tommy Cash. Proceeds from the event also support a scholarship fund established in the superstar’s name.
Details and tickets at www.johnnycashmusicfest.com.
As previously reported, a Johnny Cash Museum recently opened in Nashville.

MusicRowPics: Jared Ashley Artist Visit

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Yesterday (May 7), Jared Ashley stopped by MusicRow headquarters. The Georgia native wrote the majority of his upcoming album, some of which he shared with MusicRow staffers.
Ashley played “Cold Beer Drinker,” “Stained,” and “Just Like This,” which he calls a song about sweet-psychosis. “It’s all fun and games, until one person decides to leave and the other person goes a little bit crazy,” he explained.
He also played his current single, “Last Train to Memphis,” which is climbing the MusicRow chart.
For more information on Ashley, visit jaredashley.com.
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Opry Plans CMA Fest Plaza Party and Shows

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CMAGOOThe Grand Ole Opry will kick off its CMA Music Fest Week with two star-packed shows featuring Kellie Pickler, Rascal Flatts, Keith Urban, and Lennon and Maisy Stella from ABC’s Nashville on Tues., June 4.
Earlier in the afternoon on June 4, the Opry Plaza Party will feature a performance by Lee Brice and Tyler Farr.
Other Opry performances during the week include Friday, June 7, when Carrie Underwood takes the stage to celebrate her 5th anniversary as an Opry member.
Tickets and information are available at 800-SEE-OPRY and opry.com.

Industry Ink (5-8-13)

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ram jam logo1The Ram Truck brand and G7 Entertainment Marketing, an award-winning strategic entertainment marketing and talent booking agency, won the Event Marketer Magazine’s 2013 Ex Award for “Best Proprietary Property (Consumer).” The award recognized their work on the highly successful “Road to the Ram Jam” campaign, which helped extend the brand’s alignment with many of today’s top country music artists and their far-reaching fan bases by creating an innovative platform for promoting the artists’ music and connecting with their fans.
The annual Ex Award program recognize excellence in experiential event marketing, highlighting the best programs of the year selected from more than 800 entries and judged by a panel of brand-side marketers.

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The T.J. Martell Foundation hosted the Women of Influence awards in New York.

Pictured (L-R): Elle Varner, Joanne Camuti, Director American Airlines, Lori Stokes, Liz Smith, Marcie Allen, President, honoree Dr. Margaret I. Cuomo, Jenna Wolfe and Laura Heatherly.

Pictured (L-R): Elle Varner, Joanne Camuti, Lori Stokes, Liz Smith, Marcie Allen, Dr. Margaret I. Cuomo, Jenna Wolfe and Laura Heatherly.

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Jan Smith

Jan Smith

Vocal coach Jan Smith has teamed with Creaxion, one of the nation’s leading entertainment marketing agencies, to create and promote the new Mama Jan brand, which will include multiple entertainment projects, a line of vocal products and a stable of new recording artists.

Smith has worked with The Band Perry, Usher, Justin Bieber, Rob Thomas and others.
“It was important to me to find a marketing partner that was not only first-class in its work, but all class when it comes to ethics and honesty,” said Smith. “The entertainment industry can be cut-throat. I want a team that always has my back. I’ve found that team at Creaxion.”

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andersonCountry Music Hall of Famer and legendary singer/songwriter Whisperin’ Bill Anderson will serve as moderator of the inaugural Hank Williams Songwriting Workshop. The workshop will run Nov. 7-10 at the Hank Williams Museum, in Montgomery, Ala.
Core instructors include Bobby Tomberlin, Bradley Gaskin and Arty Hill. There will also be a Saturday night concert headlined by Anderson.

Weekly Register: Pirate Flags and A Bottle Of Rum

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chesGrid Talk On The Emerald Seas
Country’s sailor of the emerald seas, Kenny Chesney, pulled into Nielsen SoundScan harbor this week with almost 153,000 debut units in tow (43% digital) and No. 1 positions across both the Country and Top 200 album charts. Great news like that would surely be a reason to pour some Blue Chair Bay Rum to celebrate. Especially when the rum is named after your own label, Blue Chair Records. (KC’s previous release Welcome To The Fishbowl debuted the week ended 6/24/12 with 193k.)
Unfortunately, even the Chesney stimulus was not buoyant enough to keep country sales above water. YTD country album sales dipped from a meager +.4% last week to -.4% this week. Looking back to the same time in 2012, it’s easy to see why the numbers fell. During the week ended 5-6-12 there was a Carrie Underwood debut (Blown Away) with 267k units and Lionel Richie’s Tuskegee in release week 6, at No. 2 logging 64k units. This week’s No. 2 position, behind Chesney, was the affable Blake Shelton also in release week 6, but with a lighter load of about 35k in weekly scans. Therefore the YTD slipped.
But speaking about Shelton, the Voice coach performed a sizzling rendition of “Need You Now” with a very sultry Shakira on last night’s show. The video link is here. Is it my imagination or does Shelton seem to be sweating like crazy? Also send out a full-scale extreme star power alert: watch 16-year-old Danielle Bradbury sing “Maybe It Was Memphis.”
weeklygrid5-5-13The Randy Rogers Band also jumped in and out of bins this week with Trouble gathering a No. 3 position on the country chart with almost 26k units (62% digital).
Next week anxious fans will receive Lady A’s new Golden, plus Chesney’s wk 2 tally, which will strengthen country’s YTD stats. (Lady A’s last album scored a robust 347k units the week ended 9-18-11.) And there’s more! Watch for a new Pistol Annies and a solo effort form Natalie Maines.
Weekly Register, after a thorough analysis of the upcoming week and exhaustive comparison research now predicts with great certainty, it’s a lock that country YTD sales will float into positive territory next week.
weeklygrid4-28-13Tracking Our Progress
Chesney’s No. 1 album debut was also reflected, although to a lesser degree, on the tracks chart. The island pirate hoisted six tracks onto the country top 100 with the highest, “Pirate Flag” landing at no. 12 with almost 39k downloads. Eleven notches higher up the chart at No. 1 (again!) is the irrepressible duo named after something you can’t even see, Florida Georgia Line. FGL slugged out another combined 145k downloads of its massive multi-format hit “Cruise.” The song is now blessed with over 3.1 million downloads RTD. Actually the country version of the song registered almost 54k of the 145k this week with the remix featuring Nelly contributing the additional 95k.
fglnellyAlso deserving mention in slots No. 2 and 3 are Darius Rucker “Wagon Wheel” and Blake Shelton w/Pistol Annies “Boys Round Here” which sold 102k and 99k respectively. Rucker’s track is already Platinum and Shelton’s just turned Gold.
Country track sales are up a solid 7.4%, while all genre tracks are off, -2.6%. In actual numbers, YTD 2013 country track sales total 62.1 million units, comparing nicely with last year’s 57.8 million total.
There’s been a lot of great music hitting the streets this spring with more on the way, so make sure you’ve got some wrapped ’round your ears.
In the meantime, keep listening to the ringing of country’s Weekly Register…

Jerrod Niemann to Headline 'Classic Country Revival'

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niemannJerrod Niemann will headline the Third Annual YEP Presents Classic Country Revival, which will take place on Wednesday, May 29, at 3rd and Lindsley. Additional performers will include James Otto, Sarah Darling, Striking Matches, Brinley Addington, Westbound Rangers, Two Story Road and Ben Danaher, as well as special guests.
“The artists inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame created the foundation that our industry is built on,” said Marc Rucker, Crush Management Nashville and a member of the Board of Directors for the Young Entertainment Professionals Network (YEP). “We want to pay tribute to them and make sure their legacy is remembered and revered for generations to come. Accordingly, we’ll be donating the proceeds from this event to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.”
Doors open at 6 p.m. and the show begins at 7 p.m. Tickets went on sale yesterday (May 7). Tickets are $10 in advance at www.3rdandlindsley.com or $15 at the door. All proceeds will be donated to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

Taylor Swift To Take RED Tour To Australia, New Zealand

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swift52311Taylor Swift will bring her largely successful RED Tour to stadiums and arenas overseas in Australia and New Zealand this year. Swift will perform for fans in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Auckland.
Tour dates in Australia and New Zealand include:
Nov. 29—Auckland, New Zealand’s Vector Arena
Dec. 4—Sydney, Australia’s Allianz Stadium
Dec. 7—Brisbane, Australia’s Suncorp Stadium
Dec. 11—Perth, Australia’s NIB Stadium
Dec. 14—Melbourne, Australia’s Etihad Stadium

The Australia and New Zealand portion of The RED Tour is produced and promoted by The Frontier Touring Company. Tickets are priced at $85, and pre-sale tickets will be available from Tuesday, May 14 through Wednesday, May 15 at frontiertouring.com/taylorswift. General public tickets go on sale Tuesday, May 21.

Taylor made a video announcement of the new tour dates (see below):

DISClaimer: Don't Complain That Authentic Country Singers Can't Be Found

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DISCovery Winners: Lennon and Maisy

DISCovery Winners: Lennon and Maisy


The music on the TV soap Nashville is consistently better than most of what the “real” country-music industry produces in its namesake town. For one thing, the show spotlights the songwriting of the likes of David Olney, Lucinda Williams, Patty Griffin, Sarah Buxton, John Paul White, Kacey Musgraves and Georgia Middleman, rather than the parade of hacks who provide the bulk of the material you hear on country radio. For another thing, most of the tracks are produced by T Bone Burnett, who knows more about roots music than most Music Row producers even suspect.
That said, it gives me great pleasure to present a DISCovery Award to Lennon Stella & Maisy Stella for their delightful performance of The Lumineers’ “Ho Hey” from the show’s second soundtrack CD.
For those of you who complain that authentic country singers can no longer be found, I direct your attention to Chris Young. He is country, and he is great. He is also this week’s winner of the Disc of the Day prize.
Chris Young receives Disc of the Day for

Chris Young receives Disc of the Day for “Aw Naw.”


CHRIS YOUNG/Aw Naw
Writer: Chris Young/Chris DeStefano/Ashley Gorley; Producer: James Stroud; Publisher: EMI Blackwood/Maple Kind/EMI April/Sugar Glider/External Combustion/Out of the Taperoom/Songs of Southside Independent, BMI/ASCAP; RCA
—This man is one helluva hoss of a country singer. In this righteous stomper, he’s a barroom boy trying to do the right thing and go home. But while electric guitars twang and percussion thumps, he gives in to temptation.
MORGAN FRAZIER/Yellow Brick Road
Writer: Morgan Frazier/Jim Brown/Steve Clark; Producer: Buddy Cannon; Publisher: Curb/Sweet Manic/House of Sea Gayle/Antlered One/Mom’s Place, ASCAP; Sidewalk
—Frazier, who records for the Curb imprint Sidewalk Records, has just been announced as the Grand Prize Winner of this year’s John Lennon Songwriter’s Competition. Her co-written single for Sidewalk is a cleverly penned bopper wherein she feels lost in a romance Land of Oz “where nothin’s real.” The icing on the cake is that she sings with fiery zeal.
LENNON STELLA & MAISEY STELLA/Ho Hey
Writer: Jeremy Fraites/Wesley Schultz; Producer: T Bone Burnett & Gabriel Wichter; Publisher: The Lumineers/Songs of Kobalt, BMI; Big Machine (track)
—These sisters play the daughters of “Rayna Jaymes” on the TV soap Nashville. On it, they introduced their charming take on The Lumineers’ breakthrough song a couple of weeks ago. Now it’s a single, and it sounds as lilting and lovely as it did on the small screen. Their harmonies are heavenly, and the crunchy backing track strums along splendidly.
CHANTAL KUEGLE/Now That I Get to Drive
Writer: Chantal Kuegle/Tami Hinesh; Producer: Kent Wells; Publisher: none listed, SOCAN/BMI; Go Time (track)
—She has a solid alto delivery that completely takes charge of the song. The track rocks, but is tastefully mixed so that it never overwhelms her.
JANA KRAMER/I Hope it Rains
Writer: Rachel Proctor/Kelley Lovelace/Jerry Flowers; Producer: Scott Hendricks; Publisher: EMI Apirl/Shadowcash/Didn’t Have to Be/EMI Blackwood/JFLO, ASCAP/BMI; Elektra
—I like this artist, but I’m still waiting for her to perform an undeniable song. In this case, the poppy, harmony-soaked choruses are ultra catchy, but the verses kinda just lay there.
BOBBY ARMSTRONG/Rodeo
Writer: Bobby Armstrong/Darrell Brown; Producer: Darrell Brown; Publisher: Bobby Armstrong/Grey Ink/Kobalt, ASCAP; BA
—The speedy, neo-rockabilly track cooks with gas. The song is loaded with hooks. There’s nothing particularly “country” about his vocal style. The single comes packaged with a dance-mix version.
SCOTTY McCREERY/See You Tonight
Writer: Scotty McCreery/Ashley Gorley/Zach Crowell; Producer: Frank Rogers; Publisher: Scotty McCreery/External Combustion/Out of the Taperoom/Songs of Southside Independent/Who Wants to Buy My Pub, BMI/ASCAP; Mercury/19 (CDX)
—Breezy and easy-going, this wafts along carried by its innocence, charm and earnestness. For the romantic young and the romantic young at heart.
CHRIS CAGLE/Dance Baby Dance
Writer: none listed; Producer: none listed; Publisher: none listed; Bigger Picture (ERG)
—Daddy watches his little girl grow up. Complete mush, but impossible to resist and beautifully melodic.
RANDY HOUSER/Runnin’ Outta Moonlight
Writer: none listed; Producer: none listed; Publisher: none listed; Stony Creek (ERG)
—Houser’s comeback does my heart good. He was born to sing, and this bouncy song is perfectly concocted for summertime listening. Eminently playable.
THE WESTERN SWING AUTHORITY/I’ve Got a Feeling
Writer: Shane Guse/Larry Wayne Clark; Producer: Jason Berry & The Western Swing Authority; Publisher: Brainchild, SOCAN; WSA (track)
—These folks are sort of the Canadian version of The Time Jumpers. Their new single is a bluesy, hold-her-tight, slow dance, buoyed by swaying fiddles, dreamy steel notes and deftly plucked guitar licks. Lead singer Stacey Lee Guse sounds like she just stepped out of a 1940s cabaret. Lush and fabulous. The album is called All Dolled Up. Seek it out.

All Access Names New Nashville Editor

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R.J. Curtis (top) and Jim Asker (bottom).

R.J. Curtis (top) and Jim Asker (bottom).


All Access/Nashville Editor Jim Asker has resigned from his post, with Country Aircheck VP/Country R.J. Curtis filling the vacated position beginning Monday, May 20. All Access’ online community covers the music and radio industry across various music genres, including country, contemporary Christian, alternative, rock, Top 40 and other genres.
Asker and Curtis will work together in a transitional role over the next four weeks.
All Access co-Founder, President & Publisher Joel Denver says, “I am truly sorry to see my dear friend and colleague Jim Asker move on after starting our Nashville office some 12 years ago. This began as a discussion several months back, and after chatting with several very qualified candidates, has culminated with choosing R.J. Curtis, who Jim and I both feel is the right person for this role as All Access/Nashville Editor as he has a terrific background in Country radio and the Country music industry.”
“12 years at All Access,” says Asker, “It’s really hard to wrap myself around that sometimes. I came to All Access after leaving radio and Joel and (co-Founder VP/CFO) Ria Denver didn’t have a Nashville office yet. Back then a good portion of the Nashville music community, did not have All Access on their ‘radar’ yet. I am proud of what we accomplished here and have really enjoyed working with Joel and Ria and the entire All Access staff. Joel and Ria have become like family to me, and we have been through a lot together. I’m going to really miss everyone.”
Curtis’ career includes time in radio at KZLA/Los Angeles,  KNIX/Phoenix and KKYX/San Antonio. He also served as the R&R Country Editor, a past CRS President, and the current CRS VP. Curtis worked as the Midwest Director of Promotion at Arista Nashville before joining radio publication Country Aircheck.
Curtis says, “I’m honored and flattered at the invitation from Joel and Ria to join the All Access family. My goal is to build on the already successful Country brand Jim Asker has created in the Nashville community, utilizing the experience and relationships established during my career in radio, records and trade publications. Radio still excites me every day and I will always draw inspiration from the music, artists and label partners in our format. I also need to express my appreciation to Lon Helton, Chuck Aly and the entire Country Aircheck team for allowing me to be part of their credible and respected industry publication for the past two-and-a-half years, which have been a period of professional discovery and growth that will forever benefit me.”
R.J. Curtis can be reached at [email protected].