Keith Stegall‘s Dreamlined Entertainment Group has added Blake Duncan as the company’s Director of Creative and A&R. Prior to joining Dreamlined, he interned for Broken Bow and Riser House Entertainment/Song Factory. Duncan will help oversee a label roster that includes Kevin Mac, James Leblanc, Outlaw Apostles, and Dan Smalley, and a publishing roster that also includes Mac, Leblanc, and Smalley, along with Brian Maher, Keith Stegall, Jen Stegall, and Margaret Valentine.

“I’m so excited to have Blake join our family. His enthusiasm and dedication to our writers and their songs is immeasurable,” said Stegall.

“I couldn’t be more pleased to welcome Blake Duncan to Dreamlined’s creative team,” added Ginny Johnson, Dreamlined’s Executive VP of Creative. “I have certainly been in this industry long enough to recognize exceptional talent when I see it, and Blake is the real deal!”

“I am grateful for the opportunity at Dreamlined Entertainment…There’s a high energy at Dreamlined that can’t be matched. I look forward to contributing to the team’s success by working with these great writers and artists each day,” said Duncan.
In 2015, Stegall launched Dreamlined Entertainment, a company specializing in artist development, publishing, and record label services.

On Friday evening (Sept. 4) Scotty McCreery picked up where he left off nearly six months ago—singing a mix of his own chart-topping songs and classic country gems onstage at the Ryman Auditorium. On March 11, McCreery had been the final artist to perform in front of a live audience at the Ryman, before mandates forced the closing of businesses and music venues that month, to help slow the spread of COVID-19.

“We sold it out tonight. It just looked a little different in March when we sold it out,” McCreery told the crowd Friday evening. The concert was part of the Ryman’s newly-minted Live at the Ryman series. Though the concert’s audience was limited to 125 attendees (just 5% of the Ryman’s capacity), many more tuned in via livestream, powered by Mandolin.

“It’s good to see clapping hands again,” he told the audience, later adding, “I’m three songs in and I can’t tell you how good it feels to back onstage, and to do it at the Ryman Auditorium…we were thinking on that day, did we think it would be six months before we played another show? We did not, but Lord have mercy if that ain’t true. I’ve been playing to my computer for six months. It’s nice just to hear a little applause, it really made me feel good. It’s been a heck of a year for all of us and a lot of things have changed.”

McCreery offered his own hits such as 2x multi-Platinum “Five More Minutes” and Platinum-certified “This Is It,” and peppered the show with fan favorites such as “Boys From Back Home,” “Seasons Change,” and the lighthearted yet smoldering “Barefootin’.”

“I never could have envisioned a world without live music. It’s all I’ve known, but it is special to be here tonight.”

Even with the diminished size and socially-distanced spacing of the audience inside the Ryman, McCreery’s performance felt easygoing and intimate.

“I keep wanting to throw picks out but that’s not COVID-friendly,” he quipped at one point.

“I’m also out of singing shape. I’m breathing hard up here,” he chuckled candidly, before sharing how he’s been spending time at home with his family in North Carolina.

“I’ve picked up my guitar more than ever and have been in the studio. I kind of found a love of it again, just playing different songs.”
He dedicated several songs throughout the evening to his longtime love and wife of two years, Gabi, a pediatric nurse.

“I write a lot of love songs and they are all inspired by her,” he said.

McCreery also introduced another song inspired by the relationship, his latest single, “You Time.” More new music followed, including the flirty “Fallin’ for a Stranger” and the heart-wrenching ballad, “Twice a Child,” penned by Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell and Shane Minor. McCreery shared with the audience how the song reminded him of his grandfather, who had been a highway patrolman, and related how difficult it had been to watch as the strong grandfather McCreery grew up idolizing began to slow down as he aged.

McCreery also offered his latest No. 1 hit, “In Between,” marking the first time he has played the song live since it topped the country radio charts in June.

Given the historic venue, McCreery also treated fans to a plethora of cover songs, from the Eagles’ “Take It Easy” to Josh Turner’s “Your Man” the song McCreery auditioned with on Season 10 of American Idol before going on to become that season’s winner.

“You can feel the ghosts of country music past. To play on the stage where Hank Williams has played, George Jones has played, Dolly Parton has played…it’s cool to be a small part of the history here.”

He offered a medley of classic tunes, including Conway Twitty’s “Hello Darlin’,” Randy Travis’ “Forever and Ever, Amen,” Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” Alan Jackson’s “Chattahoochie,” and John Michael Montgomery’s “Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident).” Later in the evening he did a cover of Garth Brooks’ “If Tomorrow Never Comes.”

“God bless country music, y’all,” he said.

As hour-and-a-half set drew to a close, McCreery again expressed bewilderment that it has been approximately half a year since he played a show with fans in the seats instead of only viewing over Zoom.

“Sometimes it feels like just yesterday that we played our last show, and sometimes it feels like 20 years ago,” he said, before introducing “Home in my Mind,” and then closing out the set with songs including his 2013 hit “See You Tonight” and 2017’s “Five More Minutes.”

The show, which in many ways mimicked his set from March, proved full-circle for McCreery, and a heartwarming mix of hits and classics.

“I hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as we enjoyed being on the Ryman stage, playing country music,” he said.

 

Through writing No. 1 hits for Blake Shelton (“God’s Country”), Morgan Wallen (“Up Down”), Florida Georgia Line (“Simple”), “I Don’t Know About You” (Chris Lane), and most recently LOCASH (“One Big Country Song”), HARDY has quickly become one of Nashville’s most trusted songwriters in the past two years.

Along the way, he’s offered fans a taste of his own innately detailed, at times irreverent brand of music and pledged his allegiance to songs that celebrate the Mississippi native’s rural roots with songs like “Rednecker.” He proved his rising star status with his Hixtape Vol. 1 EP, featuring a staggering 17 collaborators, including Keith Urban, Thomas Rhett, Tracy Lawrence, and Lauren Alaina.

His current single, “One Beer,” featuring Alaina and Devin Dawson, is currently in the Top 20 on the Billboard Country Airplay Chart and at No. 1 on the MusicRow CountryBreakout Radio Chart; and he is currently nominated for Songwriter of the Year and Song of the Year (for “God’s Country”) at the upcoming Academy of Country Music Awards. Earlier this year, he took home the AIMP Songwriter of the Year honor.

But on his full-length album A ROCK, out today via Big Loud Records, HARDY expands on the narrative and his soundscape, both leaning into that “Rednecker” vibe on new songs such as “Unapologetically Country As Hell,” while adding a harder edge, pulsating percussion such as “Boots” and deepening lyrical craft with the somber “Give Heaven Some Hell.” Throughout, HARDY’s ability to convey evocative details with universal appeal through his lyrics bodes well for his longevity in the format.

HARDY spoke with MusicRow about crafting the new album during the COVID-19 pandemic, his evolution as a songwriter and artist, and his hopes to soon be able to play his music live for fans again.

MusicRow: When did this full-length project begin coming together?
HARDY: I wrote “Boyfriend” around a year ago and I would say that’s the first thing that I put on hold. I sent that song to everybody, and [HARDY’s manager and Co-Founding Partner/CEO, Big Loud] Seth England was like, “Hey, you need to hold this one. We are getting ready to do a record and you need to start being conscious of the songs you write and keeping them on hold.” We started recording around Christmas of this past year, cut four songs, and kind of during quarantine and maybe a little bit before, I just started writing and holding songs, recording them as we went.

What was it like recording this during quarantine?
You would have the recording files from making the demo and Joey [Moi, HARDY’s producer] would ask for the stems, the individual instrument recording, so he would get 20 different stems and just pick that apart. For a song like “So Close,” he might say, “Let’s take the drums out,” and send the drum-less recording to Jerry Roe and Jerry would play real drums on it. Joey would get it back and then take the guitars out and send them to Derek Wells and Derek would play guitar on it and send it back. It was just that process all the way through until it’s done. It’s just a matter of mixing and editing after the playing. But yeah, not a lot of it went down in the actual studio, which is crazy.

Ashland Craft is featured on “So Close.”
She opened some shows for me, and I love her personality. She’s a bad ass. She’s authentic and she’s gritty and she’s got a great voice. At first, “So Close” wasn’t even going to be a duet, at least not when we wrote it. That came after the fact. I just shot her a text and I said, “Look, I have this song and I’d love for you to sing it with me.” I wanted her on this record, and she crushed it.

Between “So Close,” and especially “One Beer,” which appeared on Hixtape Vol. 1, those feel very transitional from your last project to this one.
To be honest, the song is doing really well at radio right now, and I think it deserved a spot on this record because of that.

“Boots,” which you wrote with David Garcia and Hillary Lindsey, definitely features an edgier sound than fans are used to hearing from some of your earlier work.
I think that “Boots” at this point may never be a single or anything, but I think it’s a good flagship. If someone I never met said, “Play one song that describes your sound,” I think that’s the one I would play, because it’s the direction I’m going. Even when I did the demo, I told David [Garcia], “I want this thing to rock your face off.” And Joey just took it that much farther. The drums got heavier, the guitars got heavier. They made it sound one hundred times better.

The title track kind of goes back to that classic country triad of lyrics, where it progresses from childhood and ultimately through the end of a life. It just feels like such a great throwback in the way it’s structured.
You’re the first person I’ve heard compare it to old country and I think that’s really cool. It’s like “Don’t Take the Girl,” or “There Goes My Life.” It’s a life progression song.

I was driving down the road one day, and I thought, “Man, there are so many moments where a rock plays an important part in everything.” I saved the idea and later me and Smith Ahnquist and Jake Mitchell were out drinking at the bars and decided to go back to the house and write. I told them about the idea, and I was like, “I don’t really want to write a chorus, I just want to tell a cool story about the direction of life and I wonder if there is a way to do it without a chorus.” Thank God that they were two of my buddies that kind of trust me and some of my weird ideas.

“Hate Your Hometown” is a clever twist on a topic, and it’s one of your most personal songs.
That is the most true of any song on this entire record. That came from a real place. Caleigh is my girlfriend and we’ve been together for about two years. She’s from San Diego which, who could hate San Diego, right? She went to Ole Miss, but then she went back to San Diego for a few months and the plan was for her to move to Nashville. I didn’t say this to her, but I had the thought, “I really hope you go back, and I kind of hope that you hate it and you don’t fall back in love with your hometown, because if you do, I feel like I might get a phone call one day that says you’re staying.” And I would hate for that to happen. So it’s a really specific subject matter, but I wanted to write about it. It’s something that I was really going through, so I wanted write that hook exactly how I thought it. It was the last song I wrote for the record.

You still have some very country songs on this project, most obviously “Unapologetically Country As Hell.”
I know how much my fans love the redneck side of me and I would have cut the song anyway, but I did it for them. That song is still very much me, and I’m going to have a song like that on every piece of work I put out. I wrote that chorus in the deer stand, too. I was hunting.

That’s kind of a lane that’s wide open. I can’t remember the last time I heard a song in the “Country Boy Can Survive” kind of category, and that’s what I wanted to say. I’m proud of how I grew up and I just think that there are a lot of people out there that are true blue, they’re rednecks and I think that there’s a certain negative stigma that goes along with that sometimes. But I think as long as you’re a good person, if you’re a redneck, you should own it and be proud of it.

Like most artists, I’m sure you wish you could play your new songs in concert. Would you consider doing a drive-in show?
I would consider it, yeah. At the beginning, I didn’t think I would, but I’m just so fricking down to play a show that I would play for a bunch of three-year-olds right now.

I’ve seen concepts where it’s a big field and each group of people has a little pod they stay in or whatever. That looks like it could be a real thing. I just want to get out there and play shows and see faces. If anything, it’s making me more appreciative of everything. Because you can get burned out from anything. And there was a time where I was like, “I just want a break.” Now I want to do the opposite. If anything, it’s given me a little bit of perspective on how strong shows really are and how important it is to get out there and let your fans see you, and sing songs with you.