Opry Entertainment has announced the launch of Opry NextStage, a year-long collaboration with four rising country artists: Riley Green, Tegan Marie, Tenille Townes and Travis Denning. The collaboration will include live performances, strategic marketing support and short-form documentary style storytelling created by Opry Entertainment’s award-winning content team. Throughout the year, Opry Entertainment will work closely with artist teams to amplify their initiatives using assets from across the company’s brands, venues and channels.

Each Opry NextStage artist will perform on the Grand Ole Opry at Ryman Auditorium in December. Townes will perform both shows at Opry at the Ryman on Dec. 7. Tegan Marie is scheduled for Dec. 8. Green will make his Opry debut on Dec. 11, and Denning, who just made his Grand Ole Opry debut last week, will return to Opry at the Ryman on Dec. 15. More Opry appearances will be scheduled in 2019.

Opry NextStage will officially launch with a kickoff party and concert featuring performances by the inaugural class at Ole Red Nashville on Jan. 8, 2019.

Tickets for the Opry NextStage kickoff party and concert at Ole Red Nashville on Jan. 8 will go on sale Thursday, Nov. 29 at 10 am CT.

 

Dan+Shay will headline a benefit concert in Pittsburgh on Sunday, Dec. 2, aimed at helping Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue to rebuild and reopen following a mass shooting that left 11 people dead on Oct. 27, 2018.

Dan+Shay: A Concert For Unity To Rebuild And Reopen Tree Of Life Synagogue will also feature local Pittsburgh artists FRZY as well as The Andy Davis Band. All proceeds will go to Tree of Life Synagogue. Dan + Shay, FRZY, The Andy Davis Band, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and the Byham Theater are donating their services to support the benefit.

“Pittsburgh suffered an unfathomable tragedy on October 27,” said Michael Spacciapolli, Senior Vice President and Market Manager, Entercom Pittsburgh. “Our community has come together to support our neighbors in their time of need. Through the generosity of local Pittsburgh artists and partners like the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Byham Theater, A Concert for Unity will directly support rebuilding Tree of Life.”

“On behalf of our entire congregation, I wish to thank all who are involved in this amazing effort to support the rebuilding of our synagogue. We are so appreciative of A Concert for Unity for the Tree of Life’s benefit, just as we are humbled by this incredible show of support from all who are involved. This proves that love truly is stronger than hate,” said Samuel K. Schachner, Ph.D., President, Tree of Life Congregation.

Dan+Shay’s Dan Smyers was raised in Wexford, Pennsylvania, located approximately 30 minutes north of Pittsburgh. Dan+Shay have celebrated a career surge in 2018, spurred by their hit singles “Tequila” and “Speechless.” The duo was nominated for three honors at this year’s CMA Awards after the success of the Platinum-certified, multi-week No. 1 single “Tequila.”

Doors will open at 1 p.m. on Dec. 2, with the program beginning at 2 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at trustarts.com.

 

The Recording Academy has launched its 21st Annual Entertainment Law Initiative Writing Competition, co-sponsored by the American Bar Association Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries. Last year, the Entertainment Law Initiative Writing Competition was redesigned to focus greater attention on the winner and returned to the Recording Academy’s Membership & Industry Relations Department, where the program was initially created.

The Entertainment Law Initiative Writing Competition invites law students to write a 3,000-word paper on a compelling legal topic facing the music industry today. The contest is open to Juris Doctor (JD) or Master of Laws (LLM) candidates currently enrolled at an ABA accredited law school. Submissions must be received by Jan. 2, 2019 (1 p.m. ET). Winners will be announced Jan. 18, 2019.

A $10,000 scholarship will be awarded to the author of the winning paper, and a $2,500 scholarship will be awarded to the runner-up. In addition, the winner will receive airfare and hotel accommodations for two and two tickets to the 61st Annual GRAMMY Awards, which will be held at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 10.

The telecast will be broadcast live on CBS at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. The winner will also receive two tickets to other GRAMMY® Week activities, including the annual Entertainment Law Initiative Event & Scholarship Presentation on Feb. 8, where the winning student will be recognized; MusiCares® Person of the Year tribute honoring Dolly Parton on Feb. 8; and the GRAMMY Celebration®, the official GRAMMY Awards after-party.

Grayson Jones has joined the Music Row Law Office of Russell A. Jones Jr. as an Associate Attorney, where she will focus on entertainment and intellectual property law.

Jones is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, where she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. She minored in Music Industry studies at the USC Thornton School of Music.

A Nashville native, Jones is a 2018 graduate of Belmont University College of Law and a member of the Tennessee and the Nashville Bar Associations.

Between undergraduate and law school, she worked for three years in creative licensing and strategic marketing at Columbia Records’ Creative Agency in Los Angeles where she focused on creative collaborations between artists and brands, film, television, and video game licensing, and content integrations.

Grayson Jones can be reached at gjones@jonesshowlaw.com.

On Friday (Nov. 30), singer-songwriter Tucker Beathard will release his debut full-length album, Nobody’s Everything. The album, the first of a double album project released via his own Mother Tucker Records, also marks his first independent release—and a creative resurgence following a lengthy struggle with his former label.

In September 2015, it was announced that Big Machine Label Group had signed Tucker Beathard to its (now defunct) Dot Records imprint. The son of hit songwriter Casey Beathard, Tucker was a singer and songwriter in his own right, a fact he was eager to share with country music fans.

His debut single, “Rock On,” was released the next year and nearly reached No. 1. His six-song EP, Fight Like Hell was released the same year, containing both “Rock On” and the follow up “Momma and Jesus.”

Ironically, the EP’s title would come to represent the next chapter of his career. As Beathard commenced work on his full-length project, his own vision for his music began to diverge from that of his label.

“Being in the situation I was in, it wasn’t as easy to put out music that I wanted,” Beathard tells MusicRow Magazine. “I understand [my music] was different from everything, and I understand why and how it can come across as scaring certain people. It’s a unique sound, and there are a lot of genres that make up the music that I want to make.”

Beathard did something few newcomer artists would do: he walked away from his record deal.

“It wasn’t a pride thing, but a passion thing,” he says. “I guess at the end of the day, I wanted to really feel like I could be myself and I knew it just wasn’t working out where I was. No hard feelings or anything, but I just felt like it wasn’t my place to be,” he says of his former label home.

While Beathard was undergoing a legal battle to extract himself from his label contract, some of his bandmates also jumped ship.

“It isn’t easy having people who aren’t seeing what you are seeing, creatively,” he says.

Tucker says he wasn’t certain of the next steps to take.

“I went through a tough emotional dark place in life and was just trying to have faith that it was all going to work out. It’s not a quick and easy process getting out of contracts and whatnot, and there was just a lot of hurt and built up emotions.”

That’s when Ryan Tyndell, a co-writer of Beathard’s, made an offer.

“Ryan said, ‘Once you are able to, let’s spend a week recording and see what happens.’ After that week when I got to go in and do that, it couldn’t have come at a better time for me. It was the best therapy ever.”

Beathard, along with Tyndell and Jordan Rigby, holed up in a barebones basement recording studio, working up new songs as well as re-tracking some older material, meshed with Beathard’s fresher, rawer sound.

This time, Beathard’s recordings were more off the cuff and gritty. On tracks like “Leave Me Alone,” “Brother,” “Hate It,” and “This Life,” Beathard’s voice is infused with all the hurt, pain and confusion he’s processed over the past few years.

“Everything we were making was such a step up from anything I had been able to do before,” he says. “It’s a whole new thing. Even if I had owned every master, I wouldn’t have used it. I still would have done it this way.”

At the end of the six-month process of recording, sifting through material and honing in on the tracks that best expressed Beathard’s vision, they found they had more than enough for an album—so they made the project a double album. Nobody’s Everything represents the first half of the project, and Beathard co-wrote every track.

“We looked back and realized it was 18 songs deep, so we figured we would break it up to make it a bit easier for people to process,” Beathard says. “It’s my way of trying to get people to understand who I am and it’s my way of relating to people. I made sure I’ve covered every side of me that I have in my catalog. Everything I needed to say, whether it is about being hurt, being in love, whatever it is.”

 

 

Beathard says the second half of the double album will represent “a kind of light at the end of the tunnel. There is a shift between the two, which is cool, but the whole album is cohesive.”

In August, Beathard inked a new publishing deal with Little Louder Music, and despite his newfound creative freedom, he is still open to working with a label.

“I think it definitely worked out and now I’ve learned a lot about myself as an artist and about the business. I have more of an understanding of what I’ll sign and what I won’t. At the end of the day I want the best way to reach out to as many people as possible. I know 100 percent the great things labels can offer, but I have more of an understanding as I go through these new offers to see if we can come to some agreement I feel comfortable with.”

Nobody’s Everything Track Listing

1. Ride On
(Tucker Beathard, Bob DiPiero, Jason Gantt, David Lee Murphy)

2. Leave Me Alone
(Tucker Beathard, Shane Minor, Lindsay Rimes)

3. Somethin’ to Say
(Tucker Beathard, Dan Isbell, Reid Isbell)

4. Picture to Prove It
(Tucker Beathard, Dan Isbell, Jason Gantt)

5. Brother
(Tucker Beathard, Dan Isbell, Jonathan Singleton)

6. Fight Like Hell
(Tucker Beathard, Casey Beathard, Dan Isbell, Jonathan Singleton)

7. Hate It
(Tucker Beathard, Casey Beathard, Dakota Moniot, Will King)

8. This Life
(Tucker Beathard, Michael Hardy, Angelo Petraglia)

9. How Gone Will I Go
(Tucker Beathard, Joe Whelan, Will Lamb)