Barbara Mandrell has reimagined her hit “Sleeping Single In A Double Bed,” releasing a Dave Audé remix of the song. Written by Kye Fleming and Dennis Morgan, the song was first released on Aug. 1, 1978 as the first single from her album, Moods, and would later reach No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles Chart, the first of her six No. 1 singles. Check out the new remix here.

Producer Dave Audé, who earned a Grammy for remixing the Bruno Mars’ smash “Uptown Funk,” in addition to working with Katy Perry, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Madonna, U2, Sting, and more, has a fond admiration for Mandrell and her music. “I grew up as a kid on the West Coast watching the Barbara Mandrell Show and immediately became a fan. I am always humbled by the huge talent I’ve been able to work with throughout my career and Barbara is right there at the top. It’s been an honor to remix and re-imagine Barbara’s first Number One hit “Sleeping Single In A Double Bed” into something fresh and exciting,”Audé said.

Along with the dance-infused new remix, Mandrell has announced she will be releasing a greatest hits album on vinyl, After All These Years: A Collection, exclusively with Cracker Barrel. The album will be available July 10 at Cracker Barrel Old Country Store locations nationwide and online, marking Mandrell’s first release on vinyl in decades. Mandrell handpicked the songs that would be released in the new collection, making it particularly special to her.

“When I listen to the songs that were selected from different albums I recorded, I think about those of you that I recorded them for and those of you that are hearing them for the first time,” said Mandrell. “The greatest desire of my heart was to be an entertainer. My Heavenly Father — and you — gave me my 38-year career in show business. I’m deeply grateful and I hope that these selections from some of my albums entertain you.”

After All These Years: A Collection Track List For Vinyl:
Side A:
“Sleeping Single In A Double Bed” (K. Fleming, D. Morgan)
“Standing Room Only” (C. Silver, S. Manchester)
“In Times Like These” (K. Fleming, D. Morgan)
“Married, But Not To Each Other” (D. Lasalle, F. Miller)
“Wish You Were Here” (K. Fleming, D. Morgan)
“Crackers” (K. Fleming, D. Morgan)
“If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want To Be Right)” (H. Banks, R. Jackson, C. Hampton)

Side B:
“I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool” (K. Fleming, D. Morgan)
“Woman To Woman” (J. Banks, E. Marion, H. Thigpen)
“Till You’re Gone” (W. Aldridge, T. Brasfield)
“One Of A Kind Pair Of Fools” (R.C. Bannon, J. Bettis)
“Happy Birthday Dear Heartache” (M. David, A. Jordan)
“Fast Lanes And Country Roads” (R. Murrah, S. Dean)
“Years” (K. Fleming, D. Morgan)

Songwriter/producer/Creative Nation co-founder Luke Laird found a fun way to pass the time during quarantine by making a new album with his wife Beth (co-founder and CEO of Creative Nation) and two sons Jake and Mack, known as the family band The Cool Chips.

The new project is a pop, country and hip-hop infused album, written and recorded at home during the COVID-19 quarantine. Laird found inspiration for the new collection of songs spending time with his kids, doing what they enjoy as a family and reflecting on his own childhood. He leaned into his love of country and ’90s hip hop, and wrote songs about life at home and the day-to-day of parenting. From playing basketball in the driveway and taking nature walks outside to getting the kids to brush their teeth, it’s a window into their personal family life.

The fresh, relatable and playful collection features six tracks including “Rocks, Worms, Dirt,” “Shootin’ Hoops,” “I Don’t Wanna Brush My Teeth,” and a beatbox-backed performance of the classic “You are My Sunshine,” which is four-year old Mack’s favorite bedtime song. The album is being released on CN Records, the record division of Creative Nation, and is available now.

The Cool Chips Track List: 
1.     Rocks, Worms, Dirt (Laird)
2.     Shootin’ Hoops (Laird)
3.     I Don’t Wanna Brush My Teeth (Laird)
4.     Don’t Be Mean, Be Nice (Laird)
5.     Night, Night (Laird) 
6.     You are My Sunshine (Davis)

For the foreseeable future, drive-in theater concerts will continue popping up across the country, as artists including Keith Urban, Alan Jackson, Eli Young Band and more have either held or announced headlining shows as a way keeping live music going during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In June, two of Contemporary Christian Music’s top touring draws—TobyMac and Newsboys United— will bring 24 headlining concerts to drive-in theaters around the Southeast and Midwest, with each artist headlining 12 shows each.

Newsboys United—which includes sets led by both Newsboys co-founder Peter Furler as well as current Newsboys lead vocalist Michael Tait (who first shot to fame alongside TobyMac as a member of groundbreaking CCM group DC Talk in the ‘90s)—will launch the tour June 18 at Marshall, Arkansas’ Kenda Drive-In Theater.

“A few Saturday nights every summer my family and I head to a local drive in movie theater. We always love it” TobyMac said via a statement. “When we started discussing live shows in this quarantine season and the idea of playing drive-ins came up… I said, let’s gooooo! It feels like summer, safe for everybody, and we all get to enjoy live music again. We bout to make some memories.”
Among the venues on TobyMac’s route is a stop on June 25 at Watertown, Tennessee’s Stardust Drive-in Theater, which recently hosted a private concert from Keith Urban as a way to pay tribute to Vanderbilt Medical workers on the frontlines in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Franklin, Tennessee-based promotion company Awakening Events, which handles 300+ shows per year, including tours for Chris Tomlin, Steven Curtis Chapman, Newsboys and TobyMac, worked with First Company Management’s Dave Wagner.

“We saw where there was an artist in Denmark who did a one-off at a drive-in theater and thought that was cool,” says Awakening’s Principal Owner Dan Fife. “We were in the middle of rescheduling—we rescheduled 100 shows from spring to fall. Dave had worked with the band back in 2000-2004 or so, when the Newsboys did the Dome Tour. They carried around an inflatable dome, which could fit up to like 3,500 people, on the tour. They were creating this really cool planetarium vibe for fans. So Dave and Tony Johnsen at CAA were thinking about innovative ways to get artists back out to fans.”
Fife and his team started looking at the more than 300 drive-in theaters across the United States, ultimately landing on the nearly two dozen selected for the tour.

“At first we thought, drive-ins those are like a ‘60s and ‘70s type venue. How do we get the signal from our modern-day digital fiber optic cable connections to the screen? We quickly learned that most of these drive-ins already have digital projectors already. We are able to plug right in and those type of screens are stadium quality.”

The setup will include a mobile, covered hydraulic stage, as well as sound, lighting, and four IMAX digital cameras to be set up around the stage to project video images to the screens.
“It’s the equivalent of what we would use for a 3,000-4,000 seat theater,” Fife says.

Fife says each drive-in theater is meeting the Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention’s COVID-19 guidelines. Patrons will be allowed up to six people per vehicle, and social distancing restrictions will be in place between each vehicle, allowing for attendees to bring their lawn chairs and blankets to sit outside their cars for the concert. The majority of the drive-in theaters already use apps to allow customers to order concessions.

The tour marks the first full-fledged drive-in theater tour in the CCM market, and Fife says the CCM genre also brings an added assurance to drive-in owners.

“I think to these drive-in owners who are not concert venue people, we brought a comfort zone in the fact that we are a very family-oriented type event. I think they saw that their drive-ins were able to get a lot of exposure that they don’t normally get.”

Newsboys vocalist Tait acknowledges the experience of holding a concert at a drive-in theater will be a first for both fans and the artists, but he looks forward to bringing artists and fans together again.
“People don’t get to see the big shows sometimes,” he says. “I think backstage will be different. Usually you have a venue to go to, so the bus will be the hotel for the most part, since there’s no big setup for catering and the usual amenities you have, but it’s great to visit some smaller towns that don’t always get bands through there and just to bring some joy and light and sunshine in tough times. That’s what we like to do.”