•••The Big 98 Guitar-B-Que happens tomorrow night (10/6) in front of Losers Bar at the end of Music Row. The free end-of-summer bash will shut down Division St. for performances by Randy Rogers Band, Thompson Square, David Nail, Chris Young, Jake Owen and Uncle Kracker.

•••Also tomorrow, SOLID presents Writers in the Round at the Bluebird Cafe with Rhett Akins, Dallas Davidson, Phil O’Donnell, and Cary Barlowe. The 9 PM show benefits Sweet Sleep – Haiti. Reservations at www.bluebirdcafe.com.

•••Join NSAI for a Porch Party at their offices on Tuesday, Oct. 26, beginning at 4 PM. Refreshments will be served. Feel free to bring a friend. To attend, please RSVP to Debi Cochran at debi@nashvillesongwriters.com or 615-256-3354.

•••Songwriter/author Marshall Chapman will celebrate the release of her new book, They Came to Nashville (Vanderbilt University Press/Country Music Foundation Press), with a special performance and interview at the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum on Saturday, October 30. The book features Chapman’s conversations with fifteen artist-songwriters, including Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and Miranda Lambert, about their first forays to Music City. The program, which will take place at 1:30 p.m. in the Museum’s Ford Theater, is included with Museum admission and free to Museum members. It will also be streamed live on www.countrymusichalloffame.org.

•••Blackhawk will headline the Tricky Hoedown on Oct. 16 benefitting the TJ Martell Foundation for cancer and AIDS research. The party will be about 10 miles from downtown Nashville on Cato Road. General admission tickets are $25, and VIP tickets are $60. www.trickyhoedown.com.

•••Capitol Records Nashville artist and star of Nickelodeon’s iCarly Jennette McCurdy is set to perform at the inaugural Dunkin’ Donuts & Baskin Robbins Family Day on Oct. 31 from 1-4 PM. The exciting indoor carnival will be fun for kids of all ages and will take place at Belmont University’s Curb Event Center. Presented by Parallel Entertainment Los Angeles, the event benefits the T.J. Martell Foundation. General admission is $15.00 per person or $50.00 for a family of four, and children under the age of three are admitted free. Tickets can be purchased online at www.NashvilleFamilyDay.com.

Nancy Russell has re-launched her management and entertainment company as the co-op. Initial clients for the co-op include Alan Jackson and Loretta Lynn.

Joining the team are longtime publicist Judy McDonough (judy@co-opmailbox.com), Renee Aly (renee@co-opmailbox.com) and Jaimie Ellis (jaimie@co-opmailbox.com).

The company’s offices are at 1510 16^th Ave South, Nashville, TN 37212; the phone number for the co-op is 615-320-0800, the fax number is 615-320-0805.

[updated 1/21] Judy McDonough has since exited the co-op to relaunch her own JEMMedia.

Toronto based Sysomos, which describes itself as the leading provider of social media monitoring and analytics, powered by patent-pending technology, has released some interesting Twitter research about retweets and replies.

Sysomos examined a sample of 1.2 billion tweets to find out how many of them actually entice a reaction. According to the report, 29% of all tweets produce a reaction in the form of a reply or retweet; 6% were retweets and 23% replies.

Intuitively, 92.4% of all retweets happen within the first hour after being published. Only 1.63% happen in the second hour. As time goes on, a tweet falls further back in the real time conversation making it somewhat less relevant. Replies are similar, 96.9% happen within the first hour.

But what about an original tweet and the number of replies it garners? Of the 23% of tweets that get a first reply, 85% of those only get one reply. 10.7% get a reply to the original reply explained as a conversation 2 levels deep. Only a miniscule 1.53% get a third level response.

So if time is of the essence, then what about reposting your tweet in hopes it will gather more notice. Is that bad form? Sysmos’ Mark Evans describes tweets as “floats in a parade. Once they pass by,” he says “that’s it, you’re not going to see them again. If you turned around to buy some candy floss just as the super-cool float came and went, it’s your tough luck.”

Of course tweets have the option, unlike floats to come by a second or third time. According to Evans, “My take is reposting is completely acceptable as long as it’s not a blatant attempt to sell a product or service. If it’s spreading the word about an event, an interesting newspaper article or a new blog post, there’s nothing wrong with thrusting it into the spotlight again. After all, it’s not like the people who follow you are on Twitter all the time and reading all of your tweets. Sometimes, a good tweet slips through the cracks so it just makes sense to repost it.”

James Otto performed at the California’s AIDS Walk fundraiser on Sunday, September 26 at Los Angeles’ famed Greek Theatre. He played in a songwriter round with fellow Nashvillians Deana Carter and Billy Dean.

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Craig Campbell made his first music video recently. The video for his single, “Family Man,” was shot in Nashville by Shaun Silva and stars  Campbell’s daughters, Preslee and Kinni. Campbell makes his debut at the Grand Ole Opry on Friday and his first album will be released November 30.
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Last week Mel Tillis traveled to New York City for the first time in 22 years to promote his new comedy album, You Ain’t Gonna Believe This. The Country Music Hall of Fame member  visited Sirius-XM radio, where he ran into Hollywood movie legend and old friend Mickey Rooney, who was in-studio celebrating his 90th birthday.

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Rhonda & The Rage made several appearances in New York City to celebrate the release of Taken, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Bluegrass chart. On the release date, 9/21/2010, they performed in Times Square then made their way to the Empire State Building’s 86th floor for a CD release party with fans and press.