Some doubted, but the faithful have been rewarded as Jimmy Wayne’s 1,700 mile walk from Nashville to Phoenix, Arizona draws close to a successful completion. The country artist traveled through one of the coldest winters and hottest summers on record visiting states such as Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico along his pathway.

Wayne’s Meet Me Halfway campaign is designed to raise awareness of children who age out of the foster care system, and without any sort of support, can end up homeless. All along his 1700 mile path, Wayne has talked to individuals, media, and politicians to make them aware of this situation and discuss possible solutions. In May he was named National Celebrity Spokesperson of FosterClub of America, the only organization representing youth in foster care.

Wayne is now expected to reach finish his trek at month’s end. Plans are now being set for Wayne and his band to perform a July 31 free evening concert at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill. The next morning, Aug. 1, the artist will invite supporters to join him in walking the last mile of MMH to Homebase Youth Services, his final destination.

The Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum’s All for the Hall fundraiser will return to Los Angeles for a second consecutive year. The event, which will take place on Thursday, September 23 at Club Nokia, will again follow a “guitar pull” format featuring performances by Country Music Hall of Fame members Emmylou Harris and Kris Kristofferson, superstar Taylor Swift, and a very special fourth chair that must remain anonymous.

The evening offers a unique opportunity to see these acclaimed singer-songwriters interact with one another as they take turns swapping songs, stories and personal recollections. The “guitar pull” is a Nashville specialty; it originated in the homes of Nashville songwriters who gathered to try out new compositions for their peers. Nashville’s most storied guitar pulls were hosted by Johnny and June Carter Cash. The hallmarks of a great guitar pull are spontaneity and camaraderie.

The Museum launched All for the Hall, its first-ever non-bricks-and-mortar fundraising campaign, in 2005. The campaign addresses the Museum’s need for long-term financial security and will provide a safety net for the institution and its work. This is the fourth year the Museum has taken its “annual giving” event on the road, hosting previous All for the Hall events in New York in 2007 and 2008 and in Los Angeles in 2009.

“This year especially, the event will provide much needed support as Nashville works to recover from the devastating impact of a once-every-500-years flood,” said Director Kyle Young. “While our exhibits and collections are all on upper floors and never in danger, flood waters did reach ‘five feet high and rising’ in our ground-floor Ford Theater.”

Last year’s event, also held at Club Nokia, featured performances by Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, Dwight Yoakam and Melissa Etheridge; special guests included Chris Isaak, who also acted as host, Kara DioGuardi and Michael McDonald.

“Our All for the Hall Los Angeles debut gave us an opportunity to focus on West Coast country music history and remind our guests that these artists and executives and their songs are a part of the story we both preserve and teach at the Museum,” said Young. “By design, guitar-pull content is unplanned and unrehearsed. It was very exciting to see West Coast country spontaneously become the theme of the 2009 performances, which included musical salutes to Gram Parsons, Buck Owens and Cindy Walker, among others. We are grateful for our warm welcome last year and look forward to seeing old friends and making new ones in September.”

Describing last year’s event, Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Any visitor to the [Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum] realizes that music also can take the form of a joke, a nursery rhyme, a prayer, a come-on or a campfire tale…Harris, Yoakam, Melissa Etheridge and Vince Gill touched upon all those forms, showing the flexibility of ‘country’ as they did so…” (10/2/09).

Guests at the 2009 event included legendary producer (and former Elvis Presley and Emmylou Harris pianist) Tony Brown; recording artist and songwriter Sarah Buxton; Desperate Housewives actor James Denton; eclectic singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones; renowned western tailor Manuel; actress/writer/director Marianna Palka; actress Mary Kay Place, star of television’s Big Love; and actor Jason Ritter, son of the late actor John Ritter and grandson of Country Music Hall of Fame member Tex Ritter.

All for the Hall Los Angeles patrons are offered their choice of seating for 10 for $10,000, or seating for five for $5,000. Individual tickets are available at $1000 per seat. A cocktail reception and dinner will precede the guitar pull. To purchase tickets or for more information, patrons may contact Holly Lane at hlane@countrymusichalloffame.org or telephone (615) 416-2035 or (800) 852-6437.

All for the Hall Los Angeles is chaired by AEG Live Chairman Tim Leiweke and produced by CAA’s Rod Essig and Vector Management’s Ken Levitan. The event is made possible by the generosity of AEG Live and Club Nokia LA Live. The 2010 host committee for All for the Hall Los Angeles includes Orly Adelson (dick clark productions), Thomas Carroll (SunTrust Bank), Jay Faires (Lionsgate), John Frankenheimer (Loeb & Loeb LLP), Gary Haber (Haber Corporation), Henry Juszkiewicz (Gibson Guitar Corporation), Levitan, Cameron Strang (New West Records) and Jody Williams (BMI).

All for the Hall Los Angeles’s supporting sponsor is Greenberg Traurig LLP.

The Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum will honor one of American music’s most indelible stars, Tammy Wynette, in Tammy Wynette: First Lady of Country Music, Presented by Great American Country Television Network, a biographical exhibit opening Friday, August 20 for a 10-month run in the Museum’s East Gallery. The exhibit will run through June 12, 2011.

Opening weekend festivities will include an exhibit introduction and talk by a Museum curator; a panel discussion featuring friends and associates of Wynette and illustrated with photos, film footage and recordings from the Museum’s Frist Library and Archive; and a screening of the 1987 documentary Stand by Your Dream.

“Tammy Wynette was a true steel magnolia, a daughter of the South whose ladylike appearance and slight physical stature belied the magnitude of her grit, determination and talent,” said Museum Director Kyle Young. “Throughout her career, her personal and professional lives were indistinguishably interwoven, resulting in achingly honest recordings and performances to which fans could relate. She helped redefine what it means to be a female country singer. Her death at age 55 came far too soon, but Tammy left behind a musical canon that is among the strongest and most influential in American music history.

“Accordingly, we are thrilled to have Faith Hill play a prominent role in our exhibit,” Young continued. “Faith, who herself is a superstar and role model for many of her contemporaries, sat down with our curators for an exclusive on-camera interview and talked at length about Tammy’s influence. The resulting video, which is woven throughout the exhibit’s narrative, provides an artist’s unique context and insight. We are grateful to Tammy’s family and friends for sharing their mementos and memories and allowing us to tell this extraordinary story.”

Notable artifacts featured in the exhibit include the following:

* Several of Wynette’s childhood possessions, including a petite hand-painted wooden chair with rush seat; and an ecru embroidered cotton and lace baby bonnet

* Recipe box and numerous recipes in Wynette’s own hand, including directions for fried green tomatoes and ice box lemon pie, which Tammy noted as “my children’s favorite”

* A lead-crystal vase filled with cotton hand-picked by Wynette, which was long a fixture on the singer’s coffee table

* A black, leather-bound appointment book for 1977, given to Wynette by Billy Sherrill, which details her activities during the year. The journal-like entries note both career events and personal, sometimes humorous anecdotes, e.g. “August 10, 1977 – Maxine & Cliff went to Gov. mansion with us. Gov. Blanton took me to kitchen and made me drink 8 oz. glass of cabbage juice.”

* A peek into Wynette’s glam closet will feature an array of elaborate beaded gowns, many created by Wynette’s long-time designer, Jeff Billings, as well as casual and dressy designer separates, including a teal and russet brocade jacket designed by Oscar de la Renta, embellished with faux leopard fur, embroidery and bold enamel buttons.

* Numerous awards, including Wynette’s 1968-70 Country Music Association awards for Female Vocalist of the Year; her 1967 and 1969 Best Female Country Vocal Performance Grammy awards (for “I Don’t Wanna Play House” and “Stand by Your Man,” respectively); and her 2000 Academy of Country Music Pioneer Award

Taylor Swift’s third studio album Speak Now will be released Oct. 25 via Big Machine. Fans will get the first taste of the project when lead single “Mine” debuts on August 16. The superstar revealed these details and more during a live web chat this afternoon (7/20).

Known for writing or co-writing her own material, Swift said she spent about two years writing for the new project, basically since the release of Fearless. The title, she said, “pertains to the album as a concept, and as an entire theme of the record, more than I can even tell you.”

“Thankfully, in the past two years I’ve experienced a lot of things that I’ve been dying to write about,” she explained. “A lot of things that I’ve wanted to say in the moment that I didn’t… Track by track, each song is a different confession to a different person.”

Starting on August 20th, Speak Now will be available for special pre-sale on the site www.SpeakNow13.com.

Swift reunited with longtime producer Nathan Chapman for the album.