The Country Music Association announced that Bob McDill, Patty Loveless and Tanya Tucker will join the Country Music Hall of Fame.
McDill will be inducted in the Songwriter category, which is awarded every third year in rotation with Recording and/or Touring Musician and Non-Performer categories. Loveless will be inducted in the Modern Era Artist category and Tucker will be inducted in the Veterans Era Artist category.
Hall of Fame member Vince Gill hosted the press conference to announce the news, which was also streamed live on CMA’s YouTube channel.
“All three of this year’s inductees are truly one-of-a-kind storytellers,” says Sarah Trahern, CMA CEO. “Tanya, Patty and Bob each have a distinctive voice and an ability to share stories that precisely represent American life. While their impact is felt in very different ways, their songs are reflective of their generation and experience, vividly illustrating an authenticity that will last forever. We are honored to welcome these three very deserving inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame.”
“I am thrilled and honored to be included,” says McDill.
“I’m still trying to believe that I’m going to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame,” says Loveless. “I just feel so incredibly privileged to be invited into this incredible family. Having my name included in the museum’s Rotunda with so many legendary artists, musicians, songwriters and industry icons is such an honor!”
“I’m more than proud to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame,” says Tucker. “It was wonderful to have all three of my kids beside me when I got the news. The only way it could’ve been any better is if my parents Beau and Juanita Tucker could have been there too. They are the reason and the root of all my success in music. And the fans – they are everything! When I walk in that Hall they will all be with me.”
“Each of our three new inductees has left a deep and distinctive stamp on our genre,” says Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “Tanya Tucker, originally from Texas, is a force of nature who has been blazing her way into our hearts since she was a teenager. Patty Loveless, who hails from the coal-mining hills of Kentucky, sings with mountain soul and makes music that blends tradition with invention. And Bob McDill, from East Texas, has written some of the most enduring and artful songs in our genre. They have all profoundly shaped our music, and we are honored and delighted that their achievements will now forever be enshrined in the Country Music Hall of Fame.”
A formal induction ceremony for McDill, Loveless and Tucker will take place at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in the CMA Theater this fall.
Bios for the inductees are below.
Bob McDill. Photo: Courtesy of McDill
Songwriter Category – Bob McDill
Only a handful of Nashville songwriters write so distinctively that their name becomes its own brand of song — not because of their track record of success, though that often follows, but because their work possesses a recognizable style and soul that no one else can replicate. A Harlan Howard song. A Kris Kristofferson song. A Bobby Braddock song. A Dean Dillon song. A Bob McDill song.
For nearly 30 years, Bob McDill graced country music with songs full of rich imagery, a deep empathy for their characters, and a literary sensibility that set him apart from his peers. From the early 1970s until he retired in 2000, McDill had hundreds of cuts, placing more than 30 songs at the top of Billboard magazine’s country charts, among them classics like Don Williams’ “Good Ole Boys Like Me,” Keith Whitley’s “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” Alabama’s “Song Of The South,” and Alan Jackson’s “Gone Country.”
Born in Walden, TX, McDill grew up in the Gulf Coast region of the Lone Star state, where he began viola lessons in the fourth grade and started playing guitar at 14. He studied English Literature at Lamar State College of Technology, now Lamar University in nearby Beaumont. There, the night air carried the clear-channel sounds of “John R” Richbourg on 1510 WLAC-AM in Nashville, playing the latest in R&B. From the west, but practically next door on the radio dial at 1570, Wolfman Jack spun rock and roll on border station XERF-AM out of Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. Young McDill soaked it all in, especially once he fell in with Cowboy Jack Clement and Bill Hall, who had opened Gulf Coast Recording Studio behind the hotel bar where McDill and his folk group played. Dickey Lee and Allen Reynolds were part of that crew, too, and when McDill entered the Navy, Reynolds and Lee started pitching his songs, landing him cuts with Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs and Perry Como.
After his discharge from the Navy, McDill followed Lee and Reynolds to Memphis and then to Nashville. There, he had to learn to love Country Music before he could learn to write it. A key lesson occurred in the back of a Cadillac when George Jones’ recording of Jerry Chesnut’s “Good Year For The Roses” came on the radio. It was an epiphany.
“I started studying country music like a seminary student studies the gospels,” McDill said during a “Poets & Prophets” interview at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in 2008.
He recorded one album, Short Stories, for Clement’s JMI Records in 1972, but soon realized he didn’t want to be a performer. So, he focused on writing songs for other people. Johnny Russell gave him his first country successes, with “Catfish John” and then “Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer,” penned with Wayland Holyfield and Chuck Neese. Then the floodgates opened.
Don Williams released more than a dozen of McDill’s songs as singles, including chart-toppers “(Turn Out The Light And) Love Me Tonight,” “Say It Again,” “It Must Be Love,” and “If Hollywood Don’t Need You.” Bobby Bare had a hit with McDill’s “Put A Little Lovin’ On Me” in 1976, then recorded an entire album of his songs the following year.
One week in February 1985, McDill had songwriting credits on four of the top eight records on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, starting with Mel McDaniel’s “Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On.” Ed Bruce’s recording of “You Turn Me On (Like A Radio)” followed, as did Dan Seals’ “My Baby’s Got Good Timing” and Gus Hardin’s “All Tangled Up In Love.”
The Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) gave him their Songwriter of the Year award that year.
Three years later to the month, Alabama took his “Song Of The South” to No. 1. The following week, it was succeeded by Seals’ “Big Wheels In The Moonlight,” which McDill had co-written with Seals.
He took home the NSAI Songwriter of the Year award that year, too.
At various times, both ASCAP and BMI named him their Songwriter of the Year. BMI gave him so many awards that word around Music Row for years was that the acronym stood for “Bob McDill Incorporated.”
McDill kept office hours on Music Row, one of the city’s first songwriters known for doing so, viewing writing not as a business but as a profession, and writing his songs on 217 yellow legal pads that now reside at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Though he collaborated on songs with the likes of Reynolds, Holyfield, Seals and Paul Harrison, he most often wrote alone. He didn’t write quickly, describing his process as “blood, sweat and tears,” but he wrote thoughtfully.
His inspirations came from an array of sources. “Amanda,” a single for both Williams and Waylon Jennings, was triggered when a musician friend said he had apologized to his wife for not being able to give her a better life. “Good Ole Boys Like Me” was inspired by reading Robert Penn Warren’s “A Place to Come To.”
“It was kind of an attempt to show the world that everybody in the South wasn’t from the cast of Dukes of Hazzard,” he told Chicago Tribune’s Jack Hurst in 1989.
He wrote “Song Of The South” after reading “I’ll Take My Stand,” a defense of the old agrarian South written in the 1930s. “Don’t Close Your Eyes” began with an overheard line of dialogue spoken by Maggie Smith to Michael Caine in the 1978 film adaptation of Neil Simon’s “California Suite.” In some songs, he offered social commentary. To others — like McDaniel’s “Louisiana Saturday Night” or Shenandoah’s “If Bubba Can Dance (I Can Too),” he gave a deft, lighthearted tone.
Sometimes, he did both, as was the case with “Gone Country.”
“If country songwriters had to pick one of their own to represent that bridge between the traditional and the modern styles and sensibilities, they probably would turn to Bob McDill,” Ed Morris wrote in MusicRow in 1985, the year the NSAI inducted him into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
So, what do you do with a good ole boy like Bob McDill?
You put him in the Country Music Hall of Fame, of course.
Patty Loveless. Photo: Joseph Anthony Baker
Modern Era Artist Category – Patty Loveless
Patty Loveless has said she liked to imagine herself as a combination of Linda Ronstadt, Loretta Lynn, Ralph Stanley and Molly O’Day — singers who, depending on the dictates of the song, felt equally comfortable singing rock-edged roots music, straightforward traditional country, or high lonesome mountain music. No matter the song, no matter the style, Loveless approaches her music with such transparent honesty it once prompted TIME magazine to proclaim that she “sings the truth and serves it up raw.”
Born in Pikeville, KY, on Jan. 4, 1957, Patty Lee Ramey was the youngest daughter of John and Naomie Ramey’s seven children. She was raised a few miles southeast, near the Virginia state line in Elkhorn City, where John worked in the Federal Coal Mines.
The Ramey family loved music, regularly listening to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights, and Loveless and her brother, Roger, often played and sang together.
When Loveless was a teenager, she and her brother, Roger, traveled to Nashville going down to Music Row, hoping to play some of her songs for the Wilburn Brothers. They were out on the road, so Roger decided they should try Porter Wagoner’s office, which happened to be nearby. Wagoner happened to be in.
Not only did Wagoner encourage Loveless in her musical endeavors, he also introduced her to Dolly Parton, and the two singers invited the aspiring artist/songwriter to stay over in Nashville so she could accompany them to the Opry.
Loveless eventually connected with the Wilburns, too, joining their touring company at 16 and signing with their Sure-Fire Music publishing company — following in the footsteps of her distant cousin, Loretta Lynn. When not on the road she worked at a record store in downtown Nashville owned by Doyle Wilburn. Loveless eventually left the Wilburns and relocated to North Carolina playing in rock and country bands around the North Carolina area. With the urging and encouragement of her brother and first manager Roger, Loveless returned to Nashville in 1985 continuing to pursue a record deal.
With her return to Nashville, she recorded a five-song demo that Roger took to producer Tony Brown at MCA Records. With the support of Brown and her future husband, Emory Gordy Jr., Loveless was signed to MCA. She kept an alternate spelling of her first husband’s surname, Lovelace, for her MCA debut.
Loveless released her first MCA single, “Lonely Days, Lonely Nights” in 1985. It failed to crack the Top 40, as did four subsequent releases. She convinced the label to let her record and release a full album — and that’s when things started to change, starting with a cover of the George Jones hit “If My Heart Had Windows” that reached the Top 10 in 1988.
Quickly, Loveless was a regular presence near the top of the charts, releasing 34 Top 40 singles between 1988 and 2003. Loveless’ best records flirted with rockabilly, gospel and bluegrass, as well as country shuffles, and she had an ear for under-appreciated gems, especially when they possessed memorable melodic arcs. She had hits with songs written by Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Lucinda Williams and members of Lone Justice, NRBQ and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. She also recorded songs written by Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, Richard Thompson and Billy Joe Shaver, working in some Hank Williams and Carter Stanley on occasions.
The Grand Ole Opry welcomed her as a member during CMA’s Fan Fair in June 1988; the same month her first Top 5 single, a cover of Earle’s “A Little Bit In Love,” hit the charts.
The first of Loveless’ five Billboard No. 1 singles came with “Timber I’m Falling In Love” in 1989, just a few months after she married producer and bassist Gordy, who had co-produced her first two albums with Brown and would produce her for most of the rest of her career, especially after she left MCA for Epic Records in 1992.
Though Loveless had found frequent success with MCA, including a second chart-topper, “Chains,” in 1990, she found even more acclaim at Epic. Her first single for the label, a Harlan Howard/Kostas tune called “Blame It On Your Heart,” gave her a third No. 1, and BMI Song of the Year. Songs like “How Can I Help You Say Goodbye” and “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am,” tapped into the deepest emotions of human experience. “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am” was another No. 1 and one of four Top 10 singles from Loveless’ When Fallen Angels Fly, which won CMA’s Album of the Year award in 1995 — making her the first woman to take that category in more than a decade. In 1996, CMA awarded her its Female Vocalist of the Year.
Loveless hit No. 1 twice in 1996, first with “You Can Feel Bad,” then with “Lonely Too Long.” She won a CMA Vocal Event of the Year award in 1998 for “You Don’t Seem To Miss Me” with George Jones, her second win with the Possum in that category.
She won the CMA Vocal Event award again with Vince Gill for 1999’s “My Kind Of Woman/My Kind Of Man.” She and Gill have often appeared on each other’s records. She sings on Gill’s “When I Call Your Name,” “Pocket Full Of Gold,” and “Go Rest High On That Mountain,” among others.
Loveless made a career shift in 2001 with the release of Mountain Soul, an album that found her exploring her eastern Kentucky Appalachian roots. With songs like “Sounds Of Loneliness” — a song she had played for Wagoner as a teenager and one that had appeared on her debut album — with Darrell Scott’s harrowing coal-mining tale “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” Loveless found herself able to reconnect with memories of her father, who had died of black-lung disease in 1979. A sequel album, Mountain Soul II, earned Loveless a Grammy award for Best Bluegrass Album in 2011.
Tanya Tucker. Photo: Derrek Kupish
Veterans Era Artist Category – Tanya Tucker
“Hi, I’m Tanya Tucker,” read the cover of Rolling Stone dated Sept. 26, 1974, “I’m 15, You’re Gonna Hear From Me.”
By the time that rock and roll magazine hit newsstands, country music fans already had heard enough from the teenage singer from Seminole, TX, to know they liked what they heard.
Tucker was already an established country act with three No. 1 singles to her credit. Eventually, she would place 41 singles in the Top 10 of Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart, including 10 chart-toppers. She would earn a dozen Gold and Platinum albums.
Nearly 50 years later, Tucker still has plenty to say. She also has one of country music’s most expressive voices, once described by journalist Robert K. Oermann as “somewhere between healthy, outdoorsy cowgirl and cigarettes-and-whiskey barroom buddy.”
Born Oct. 10, 1958, Tucker spent her formative years traipsing around the Southwest — Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Utah — with parents Beau and Juanita Tucker and their other children. Beau managed Tanya’s career from its beginning until his death in 2006. Because of him, Tanya wrote in her 1997 autobiography “Nickel Dreams: My Life,” “I grew up believing I could do anything.”
Homemade demos her father cut of 9-year-old Tanya didn’t generate any interest in 1960s Nashville, but in Arizona she appeared on The Lew King Ranger Show, a long-running Phoenix-based television talent show that also provided early platforms for Marty Robbins, Wayne Newton and Lynda Carter. She landed an uncredited role in Robert Redford’s 1972 Western, Jeremiah Johnson. While living and performing in Nevada, another demo landed in the hands of a Las Vegas agent who brought it to the attention of producer Billy Sherrill.
This time, Nashville took note. Sherrill signed Tucker to Columbia Records and put her in the studio with credulous session musicians in March of 1972. Even at 13, Tucker didn’t lack for grit. “Well, I know my part, boys,” she announced. “Do you know yours?”
Before the summer was out, Tucker had her first Top 10 single with “Delta Dawn.”
Tucker began her recording career with six consecutive Top 10s, three of which — “What’s Your Mama’s Name,” “Blood Red and Goin’ Down,” and “Would You Lay With Me (In a Field Of Stone)” — went to No. 1.
Tucker’s knack for picking hit material borders on the legendary, and back then her tastes leaned toward southern gothic — a spurned woman with a tenuous grasp on reality, an illegitimate daughter, a drunkard desperately searching for his estranged green-eyed daughter, a double murder, a love song that begins in a cemetery. Tucker came through country music like a Texas tornado with a “wild child” persona she sometimes lived up to. Her mature choices in material only added to her adolescent allure.
On her 16th birthday, Tucker signed to MCA Records where the hits continued with 1975’s “Lizzie And The Rainman” and “San Antonio Stroll,” and 1976’s “Here’s Some Love.”
She recorded with MCA for seven years, by which point the tales of her personal life, including a tumultuous, well-publicized relationship with Glen Campbell. Still, Tucker has said, “If I’d done half the things people say I do, I’d be dead.”
After recording briefly for Arista Records, Tucker brought her career back to life when she signed with Capitol Records in the mid-1980s. “Just Another Love” gave the singer her first No. 1 in a decade, and she followed that in short with three more chart-toppers: “I Won’t Take Less Than Your Love” with Paul Davis and Paul Overstreet, “If It Don’t Come Easy,” and “Strong Enough To Bend.”
In 1991, she won a CMA Award for Female Vocalist of the Year as she watched from a Nashville delivery room where she was giving birth to the second of her three children.
In 1994, she took home the CMA Award for Album of the Year for her contribution to the collaborative album, Common Thread: The Songs Of The Eagles.
During her career, Tucker has released singles written by Country Music Hall of Famers Bobby Braddock (“I Believe The South Is Gonna Rise Again”) and Don Schlitz (“I Won’t Take Less Than Your Love,” “Strong Enough To Bend,” “My Arms Stay Open All Night”).
In 2014, she was the subject of a Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum exhibition, “Tanya Tucker: Strong Enough to Bend.”
In 2019, she teamed with Brandi Carlile and Shooter Jennings to release her first album of original material in 17 years, While I’m Livin’. The album returned her to the spotlight, earning her the first Grammy awards of her career, for Best Country Album and Best Country Song (“Bring My Flowers Now,” which she wrote with Carlile, Tim Hanseroth, and Phil Hanseroth). Appearances at events like Bonnaroo and Stagecoach Music Festival raised her profile with a new generation of music fans. That comeback was documented in the 2022 film The Return of Tanya Tucker.
Tucker, of course, might counter that she’d never actually left. And now, as a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, she never has to. “People ask me, ‘How do you think you lasted so long?’” she told Billboard in 2022. “I won’t go away, so you’ll just have to put up with me.”
Kane Brown Illuminates Bridgestone During ‘Drunk Or Dreaming Tour’
/by Liza AndersonKane Brown performs during his sold-out headlining debut at Bridgestone Arena. Photo: John Shearer/Getty Images for Kane Brown
Kane Brown illuminated a sold-out crowd during his headlining debut at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Friday (March 31). The career milestone served as a stateside stop on his “Drunk or Dreaming Tour,” which commenced down under on Sept. 17 in Melbourne, Australia and made its way to America in mid-March.
LoCash took the Bridgestone stage for the very first time and got the night started with a high-energy rendition of Tim McGraw’s “Truck Yeah,” which the duo co-wrote, and other tunes. The country duo—made up of Preston Brust and Chris Lucas—also took a moment to acknowledge the tragedy that occurred at The Covenant School on Monday, March 27 before playing their latest single “Three Favorite Colors.”
“There’s no way of not talking about what happened [in Nashville] this week, and we hate it. We don’t even know what to say to make things better, but we can say that we’re in the great city of Nashville, Tennessee, and there isn’t one person in here who hasn’t looked up to God and said ‘Please be with those families, please be with those kids.’ We are at a loss for words, everyone in here is at a loss for words.
“This next song is about the United States of America. [The song] is one thing that can bring people together, because there’s ‘that side’ and there’s ‘that side’ and we’ve all got to come together. When America comes together, we always freaking win.”
As the song concluded, the pair gave a shout out to all troops, first responders, doctors, nurses and teachers. They then returned to upbeat covers, performing nostalgic hits such as Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69” and Fountains Of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom.”
“This next song changed our lives,” the duo noted as they prepped their newly Platinum-certified hit “I Love This Life,” which they wrote alongside Chris Janson and Danny Myrick. They then led everyone in a chant of, “There ain’t no party like a Kane Brown party, ’cause a Kane Brown party don’t stop,” and encouraged everyone in the crowd to turn their phone flashlights on, irradiating the arena.
Dustin Lynch was next on deck and started his set with the title track of his 2014 album, “Where It’s At.” He then moved straight into his 2022 Platinum smash “Ridin’ Roads” as well as another Where It’s At song “Mind Reader.” Lynch took a swig out of the red solo cup he had next to him as he prepared to sing “Tequila On A Boat (feat. Chris Lane).”
Kane Brown performs with wife Katelyn during his sold-out headlining debut at Bridgestone Arena. Photo: John Shearer/Getty Images for Kane Brown
The music gradually began to fade and the infamous intro notes of The Champs‘ “Tequila” filled the room. The artist stated that he needed some help drinking tonight and brought out three cowboy hats for three ladies he picked from the audience below on his right, as well as a beer helmet for a man on his left, who removed the hat already on his head to dawn the contraption. The selected guest started chugging as Lynch and his fellow music lovers cheered him on.
Grabbing his tequila, Lynch returned to the señoritas on the opposite side of the stage and declared “Tequila” to be “the easiest karaoke song on Earth,” leading the mass in a singalong of the chorus as he and the girls drank. He transitioned back to finish his own liquor-filled tune before flowing into his current single “Stars Like Confetti.” The stage ignited as he performed his Gold-certified “Momma’s House” and 2017 track “Small Town Boy.”
The fan-favorite, Platinum smash “Cowboys and Angels” was up next. Lynch shared that he wrote about his grandparents who’ve been married for 67 years, and that they plan on coming to watch him perform at the Grand Ole Opry on April 11 to celebrate their 68th anniversary on April 12.
“As we’ve played this song over the years, it has evolved from their love song into teaching me and [my band] lessons along the way. [One lesson] is that the journey of life is beautiful, the journey of life is exciting, and for whatever reason, all of our journeys brought us here tonight in this room together,” he stated.
“This song, for me, has evolved again, it has been a tough week for Nashville, but I’m proud of Nashville. I’m proud of the first responders. So because this song means something different tonight, I’m going to sing the rest of it for this city tonight. We love you guys,” Lynch continued as moved into the latter half of the hit. He shouted out his family and friends who were present and played “Good Girl,” noting that it is his mother’s favorite.
Lynch proceeded by bringing four fans up to play beer pong for a chance to win two 12-packs as he sang “Party Mode.” He announced the winners and took a “family photo” with all of the players as he finished the song. Sporting fun, patterned cowboy boots with black cut-off shorts and printed tank top, MacKenzie Porter joined Lynch on stage to conclude his set with their No. 1 duet “Thinking ‘Bout You,” which had the crowd singing and swaying along.
After a short intermission, the room went black, and the wristbands each attendee had accessorized with upon entering Bridgestone began to glow as light beams penetrated through the venue. Black, white and red images of Brown appeared on the two screens hanging above the stage. A bright light shone through the path in between the screens and Brown made his way on stage, greeted by screams as cheers. As he hit the ground running with “Lose It,” flames shot up around him.
Kane Brown performs with Dustin Lynch and LoCash during his sold-out headlining debut at Bridgestone Arena. Photo: John Shearer/Getty Images for Kane Brown
Programmed to the concert, the wristbands switched from blue to green as Brown performed “Grand,” a genre-mixing track off of his most recent album, Different Man. He thanked everyone for coming and asked that we all give it up for LoCash and Lynch before singing his No. 1 single “Like I Love Country Music,” which is also featured on Different Man. The beaming bracelets radiated yellow as he wrapped up the hit, but quickly changed to a pinkish-purple as he moved into he and Chris Young‘s “Famous Friends,” tossing T-shirts into the arena as he serenaded the mass.
Brown then asked if anyone struggled with depression or anxiety, and shared an empathetic message of hope and encouragement to those battling as he sang he and Blackbear‘s “Memory,” a song about coping with mental struggles. He danced back and forth from one side of the stage to the other, engaging with his spirited fans.
Blue bracelets brightened the stands once again as Brown checked in with crowd before acoustic guitar strums echoed the start of “Be Like That (feat. Swae Lee & Khalid).” Confetti shot into the air, eliciting screams of surprise and excitement.
An intergalactic array of beats beeped throughout the venue and the red laser beams returned for a short period. Blue beams then took over and the screens behind Brown depicting a watery image of a man floating in a pool as he sang his 2016 Chapter 1 EP track “Used to Love You Sober.”
The stage turned a fiery orange while he sweetly dedicated “Homesick” to “anyone that has ever fought for our country.” Brown kept the vibes soft and smooth as sat down in a chair, placed in the middle of the long platform extending into the audience, for “Heaven.” White lights sprinkled throughout every corner moved back and forth as arms waved calmly to the rhythm of the music and everyone sang along.
Hot pink flared from each wrist as an edgy-yet-relaxed energy engulfed the atmosphere with Brown’s newest single “Bury Me in Georgia.” Stomp vibrations shook ground underneath and fire sprayed from the stage with the tune’s fiddle-filled finish. Audience members sang along with smiles as he sang “One Thing Right,” which he recorded with DJ and producer Marshmello.
Kane Brown autographs mementos during his sold-out headlining debut at Bridgestone Arena. Photo: John Shearer/Getty Images for Kane Brown
He reminisced on the early days of his career and his time spent posting covers on Facebook, while delighting with Lynyrd Skynrd‘s “Simple Man” and Garth Brooks‘ “Friends In Low Places.” Expressing his gratitude for all the women in his life, he entertained a rendition of Shania Twain‘s “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!.”
Waves crashed onto the screens as Brown performed his first No. 1 “What Ifs (feat. Lauren Alaina).” His wife Katelyn dazzled in a purple two-piece set as she united with him for heartwarming performance of their Platinum-certified duet “Thank God.” The couple also performed the song during the CMT Music Awards last night (April 2), which Brown co-hosted, and took home Video of the Year for the song’s music video.
He asked the crowd to “give it up for [his] beautiful wife,” before bringing LoCash and Lynch back out for the finale of his No. 1 “One Mississippi.”
Multi-colored lights shined as the ensemble had everyone jumping, dancing and singing along with them as they moved to and from each side of the stage. The stars ended together on one elevated platform above the audience, earning an electric reaction. After the show concluded, Brown remained on stage for several minutes to interact with fans and autograph mementos, putting his love and appreciation on full display.
Brown, Lynch and LoCash will continue on the “Drunk or Dreaming Tour” next week.
Ashley Gorley Returns To MusicRow Top Songwriter Chart Pinnacle
/by LB CantrellAshley Gorley
With 16 songs on the country charts, Ashley Gorley switches places with Morgan Wallen to fill the No. 1 spot on the MusicRow Top Songwriter Chart.
In addition to 10 songs on Wallen’s One Thing At A Time album that are currently charting, Gorley is also a co-writer on Parmalee’s “Girl In Mine,” Russell Dickerson’s “God Gave Me A Girl,” Dierks Bentley’s “Gold,” Carly Pearce’s “What He Didn’t Do,” Brett Young’s “You Didn’t” and Chris Janson’s “All I Need Is You.”
Wallen shifts down one spot to No. 2 this week. He is a co-writer on Keith Urban’s “Brown Eyes Baby” and Corey Kent’s “Wild As Her” in addition to 11 of his currently charting tunes.
Ryan Vojtesak (No. 3), Zach Bryan (No. 4) and Ernest (No. 5) complete the top five on the MusicRow Top Songwriter Chart this week.
The weekly MusicRow Top Songwriter Chart uses algorithms based upon song activity according to airplay, digital download track sales and streams. This unique and exclusive addition to the MusicRow portfolio is the only songwriter chart of its kind.
Click here to view the full MusicRow Top Songwriter Chart.
Show Dog Nashville Disbands Promotion Department
/by LB CantrellShow Dog Nashville, the label home to Toby Keith, Clay Walker, Krystal Keith and Kimberly Kelly, has disbanded their promotion staff, MusicRow has confirmed. The news was first shared by Country Aircheck on Friday (March 31).
The eliminated promotion team members include: SVP, Promotion Rick Moxley; VP, Promotion Teddi Bonadies; Dir., Southwest Regional Promotion Greg Sax; Dir., Promotion & Streaming Blake Nixon; Dir., Midwest-Northeast Regional Promotion JC Coffey; Dir., West Coast Promotion Pat Surnegie; and Assistant Laurie Gore.
Show Dog was launched in 2005 by Toby Keith and manager T.K. Kimbrell. The company remains a stand-alone label distributed by Thirty Tigers.
Megan Kleinschmidt Joins Monument Records As Director, Regional Promotion
/by Lorie HollabaughMegan Kleinschmidt
Megan Kleinschmidt has joined Monument Records as Director, Regional Promotion.
Kleinschmidt comes to Monument from Universal Music Group (UMG) where she worked on the Capitol Nashville promotion team with artists including Carrie Underwood, Darius Rucker and Keith Urban. Prior to UMG, she worked for Live In The Vineyard and graduated from Colorado State University with a degree in marketing.
At Monument, Kleinschmidt will be responsible for the West Coast, where she will represent the full Monument roster including Walker Hayes, Caitlyn Smith and Tigirlily Gold.
“We are so thrilled to have Megan join the Monument family,” says Luke Jensen, VP of Promotion at Monument Records. “Her positivity, work ethic and desire to grow make her the perfect addition to our growing team.”
“I’m so excited to begin the next chapter of my career with Monument Records,” says Kleinschmidt. “I am very grateful for the opportunity to work with such an amazing artist roster and team.”
CMT Awards Offer Texas-Sized Slate Of Talent In Austin Show
/by Lorie HollabaughPictured (L-R): Carly Pearce and Gwen Stefani Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for CMT
The CMT Music Awards offered up plenty of sizzle, star power and spirit during Sunday night’s (April 2) talent-packed show at Austin’s Moody Center.
Blake Shelton kicked off the show’s first-ever broadcast live from Texas with a honky tonk-filled performance of his hit “No Body,” and got the ball rolling for a night filled with collaborations and time traveling hits.
Jelly Roll
Jelly Roll had plenty to sing about as the night’s top CMTMA winner, taking home three of the trophies for Male Video of the Year, Breakthrough Male Video of the Year and Digital-First Performance. The grateful singer-songwriter took the crowd to church with his stirring, soulful rendition of his single “Need A Favor,” backed by the Huston-Tillotson University choir.
Kane Brown and wife Katelyn Brown made history during the evening as the first married couple to take home the night’s biggest award, marking Katelyn’s very first CMT win and Kane’s first Video of the Year trophy. The two world premiered their No. 1 duet “Thank God” from the Congress Avenue Stage during the show, making the night a true family affair and triumph.
Kane & Katelyn Brown take home Video of the Year at the CMT Music Awards. Photo: Courtesy of CMT
As the year’s most-nominated artist, Lainey Wilson brought plenty of her bell-bottomed spunk to the stage, firing up the night belting out her buoyant hit “Heart Like A Truck,” and later taking home the award for Female Video of the Year for that track in addition to Collaborative Video of the Year with Hardy.
Wilson also joined in the fiery Next Women of Country collaboration fun on Alanis Morissette‘s “You Outta Know,” along with Madeline Edwards, Ingrid Andress and Morgan Wade in celebration of 10 years of CMT’s NWOC initiative, providing some bite in the night.
Gwen Stefani and Carly Pearce kept the girl power coming full force when they took to the Moody Center stage to celebrate a world premiere and cross-genre collaboration of the No Doubt hit, “Just a Girl.” Pearce also offered up a soulful rendition of her No. 1 hit, “What He Didn’t Do,” during the telecast as well.
Darius Rucker and rockers The Black Crowes kept the ’90s vibes flowing with their duet of the band’s iconic hit “She Talks to Angels,” following their outdoor taping of an upcoming episode of CMT Crossroads earlier in the week.
(L-R) Ashley McBryde and Wynonna Judd perform during the 2023 CMT Music Awards. Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images for CMT
Wynonna and Ashley McBryde joined forces to perform a first-time duet of the hit Foreigner power ballad, “I Wanna Know What Love Is,” and co-host Kelsea Ballerini broke the news that “The Judds: Love Is Alive – The Final Concert” special event will premiere April 29 on CMT.
Lone star state favorite Cody Johnson struck a powerful chord in one of the quieter moments of the night with his moving performance of his biographical hit single “Human” for the home state crowd. In another nod to the Lone Star state, Austin native Gary Clark Jr. brought down the house with a grooving jam session tribute to Texas blues rock legend Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Shania Twain speaks during the 2023 CMT Music Awards. Photo by Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images for CMT
Crossover icon Shania Twain accepted the 2023 Equal Play Award for her boundary-shattering career and influence in elevating underrepresented voices. Twain delivered a heartfelt speech on how much Equal Play means to her and the importance of including everyone regardless of gender or age in country music. Texas native Megan Thee Stallion honored Twain with an inspiring tribute highlighting her career, advocacy, and impact.
Carrie Underwood, the most awarded artist in CMT history, set off fireworks during her electrifying performance of her fan-favorite single “Hate My Heart” in front of the iconic Texas Capitol building, and Keith Urban thrilled fans with a rousing rendition of “Brown Eyes Baby” from the streets of downtown Austin during the celeb-packed show. Ballerini also appeared in a confetti-filled performance of “If You Go Down (I’m Goin’ Down Too)” featuring four iconic queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race: Manila Luzon, Kennedy Davenport, Jan Sport and Olivia Lux.
The genre-bending night concluded with a smoking Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute to the late great, Gary Rossington, with Billy Gibbons, Chuck Leavell, Cody Johnson, Paul Rodgers, Slash, and Warren Haynes with LeAnn Rimes and Wynonna as honorary “Honkettes” on “Simple Man” and “Sweet Home Alabama.”
Slash, Billy Gibbons, LeAnn Rimes and Wynonna Judd perform during the 2023 CMT Music Awards Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images for CMT
Mark Your Calendar—April 2023
/by Liza AndersonSingle/Track Release Dates:
April 3
Billy Crum/Lakes, Boats, Cabins/Billy Crum Records
Kane Brown/Bury Me in Georgia/Sony Music Nashville/RCA Nashville
April 7
Mike Kuster/Front Porch Swing
Sam Grow/Red Lights/Average Joes Entertainment
April 10
Jimmie Allen/Be Alright (15 Edition)/Stoney Creek Records
Rebecca Moreland/Could Really Use A Friend/Kino Mas Entertainment
April 14
Mary-Heather Hickman/Small Town Saturday Night
Colt Ford/Must Be The Country/Average Joes Entertainment
Waylon Hanel/New Old Outlaws Rewind
Joe Noto/Daytona/AMG Records
Adam Mac & Jenna DeVries/Chapel
April 17
XOLEX/Ain’t Buyin’ It/XOLEX Music
April 20
Amy Jack/God Has His Little Ways
April 28
Austin Tolliver/Yeah/Average Joes Entertainment
Album/EP Release Dates:
Photo: Courtesy of Big Machine Records
April 7
Ruston Kelly/The Weakness/Rounder Records
Ian Munsick/White Buffalo/Warner Music Nashville
Jake Worthington/Jake Worthington/Big Loud
April 14
Jackson Dean/Live At The Ryman/Big Machine Records
Caitlyn Smith/High & Low/Monument Records
Donice Morace/This Life I Love/Bad Jeu Jeu CDX Records
Leah Marie Mason/Honeydew & Hennessy
April 21
Brantley Gilbert/So Help Me God (Deluxe Edition)/The Valory Music Co.
Tenille Townes/Train Track Worktapes/Columbia Nashville/Big Yellow Dog Music
Jordana Bryant/Jordana Bryant EP
April 28
Cole Swindell/Stereotype Broken/Warner Music Nashville
Kip Moore/Damn Love/MCA Nashville
Travis Tritt/Proud of the Country/Copperhill Records
Joy Oladokun/Proof of Life/Amigo Records/Verve Forecast/Republic Records
Alyssa Micaela/The Hard Way/Queue Records
Brett Kissel/East Album/Big Star Recordings Inc/ONErpm
Griffen Palmer/Unlearn/Big Loud Records
Brandon Davis/Jesus and Jesse James/Big Yellow Dog Music
Liddy Clark/Made Me Deluxe Album
Industry Events:
April 2
CMT Music Awards
April 5
2023 AIMP Nashville Country Awards
Lainey Wilson, Jelly Roll Among Top Winners At CMT Music Awards
/by Lorie HollabaughJelly Roll accepts the Male Video of the Year Award. Photo: Rick Kern/Getty Images for CMT
Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson were the big winners at Sunday night’s (April 2) CMT Awards from Austin, with each taking home multiple awards during the star-studded evening at the Moody Center.
Lainey Wilson performs onstage during the 2023 CMT Music Awards. Photo: Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images for CMT
The awards, country music’s only entirely fan-voted show, were co-hosted by Kane Brown and Kelsea Ballerini and featured plenty of high-watt performances, first-ever collaborations, and world premieres.
Jelly Roll was at the podium numerous times throughout the evening as he jubilantly took home three of the coveted belt buckles during the night for Male Video of the Year, Breakthrough Male Video of the Year, and the CMT Digital-First Performance of the Year all for his smash for “Son Of A Sinner,” while Wilson won for Female Video of the Year for “Heart Like A Truck,” and shared the Collaborative Video of the Year nod with fellow first-time winner Hardy for “Wait In The Truck.”
The evening’s co-host Kane Brown and wife Katelyn Brown took home Video of the Year honors for their duet, “Thank God,” while Zac Brown Band scored Group/Duo Video of the Year for “Out In The Middle.”
Cody Johnson received the CMT Performance of the Year trophy for the riveting “‘Til You Can’t” from the 2022 CMT Music Awards, and Megan Moroney was a first-time winner for her hit “Tennessee Orange.”
Read MusicRow‘s full recap of the 2023 CMT Music Awards here. For those who missed it, CMT will air CMT Music Awards Extended Cut featuring an added 30 minutes of new performances and extra bonus content on April 6 at 7 p.m. on CMT.
Kimberly Perry Inks Solo Deal With Records Nashville
/by Lorie HollabaughKimberly Perry. Photo: Claire Schaper
Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and The Band Perry co-founder, Kimberly Perry, has signed a solo deal with Records Nashville/Columbia Records.
Perry co-founded The Band Perry with her brothers, achieving success with the Platinum-certified albums The Band Perry (2010) and Gold-selling Pioneer (2013), which catapulted to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on the Top Country Albums Chart.
The group served up massive anthems such as the 7x-platinum Hot 100 hit “If I Die Young,” double-Platinum “Better Dig Two,” Platinum “You Lie,” “All Your Life” and “Done,” and Gold “Postcard From Paris” and “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely.” Among their many accolades, the trio earned a Grammy for Best Country Duo/Group Performance.
“We’re so excited at Records Nashville to welcome Kimberly Perry as a solo artist with her return to country music,” says Records Founder and C.E.O. Barry Weiss.
“From the moment I met the team at Records, their appreciation for my journey and my vision for the future as a solo artist has been overwhelming,” shares Perry. “Everything came together so organically, and it felt right from the very start. I have wanted to live in Nashville since I was eight-years-old, but I only recently got to officially plant roots here. Being in this town of amazing, creative people for the past year brought me full circle to my original passions – country music and sharing meaningful stories. I am so lucky to have found such a wonderful and welcoming community here, and I feel equally lucky to have found the perfect partner in Records to get my new music out to the fans.”
Patty Loveless, Tanya Tucker, Bob McDill To Be Inducted Into Country Music Hall Of Fame
/by LB CantrellThe Country Music Association announced that Bob McDill, Patty Loveless and Tanya Tucker will join the Country Music Hall of Fame.
McDill will be inducted in the Songwriter category, which is awarded every third year in rotation with Recording and/or Touring Musician and Non-Performer categories. Loveless will be inducted in the Modern Era Artist category and Tucker will be inducted in the Veterans Era Artist category.
Hall of Fame member Vince Gill hosted the press conference to announce the news, which was also streamed live on CMA’s YouTube channel.
“All three of this year’s inductees are truly one-of-a-kind storytellers,” says Sarah Trahern, CMA CEO. “Tanya, Patty and Bob each have a distinctive voice and an ability to share stories that precisely represent American life. While their impact is felt in very different ways, their songs are reflective of their generation and experience, vividly illustrating an authenticity that will last forever. We are honored to welcome these three very deserving inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame.”
“I am thrilled and honored to be included,” says McDill.
“I’m still trying to believe that I’m going to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame,” says Loveless. “I just feel so incredibly privileged to be invited into this incredible family. Having my name included in the museum’s Rotunda with so many legendary artists, musicians, songwriters and industry icons is such an honor!”
“I’m more than proud to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame,” says Tucker. “It was wonderful to have all three of my kids beside me when I got the news. The only way it could’ve been any better is if my parents Beau and Juanita Tucker could have been there too. They are the reason and the root of all my success in music. And the fans – they are everything! When I walk in that Hall they will all be with me.”
“Each of our three new inductees has left a deep and distinctive stamp on our genre,” says Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “Tanya Tucker, originally from Texas, is a force of nature who has been blazing her way into our hearts since she was a teenager. Patty Loveless, who hails from the coal-mining hills of Kentucky, sings with mountain soul and makes music that blends tradition with invention. And Bob McDill, from East Texas, has written some of the most enduring and artful songs in our genre. They have all profoundly shaped our music, and we are honored and delighted that their achievements will now forever be enshrined in the Country Music Hall of Fame.”
A formal induction ceremony for McDill, Loveless and Tucker will take place at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in the CMA Theater this fall.
Bios for the inductees are below.
Bob McDill. Photo: Courtesy of McDill
Songwriter Category – Bob McDill
Only a handful of Nashville songwriters write so distinctively that their name becomes its own brand of song — not because of their track record of success, though that often follows, but because their work possesses a recognizable style and soul that no one else can replicate. A Harlan Howard song. A Kris Kristofferson song. A Bobby Braddock song. A Dean Dillon song. A Bob McDill song.
For nearly 30 years, Bob McDill graced country music with songs full of rich imagery, a deep empathy for their characters, and a literary sensibility that set him apart from his peers. From the early 1970s until he retired in 2000, McDill had hundreds of cuts, placing more than 30 songs at the top of Billboard magazine’s country charts, among them classics like Don Williams’ “Good Ole Boys Like Me,” Keith Whitley’s “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” Alabama’s “Song Of The South,” and Alan Jackson’s “Gone Country.”
Born in Walden, TX, McDill grew up in the Gulf Coast region of the Lone Star state, where he began viola lessons in the fourth grade and started playing guitar at 14. He studied English Literature at Lamar State College of Technology, now Lamar University in nearby Beaumont. There, the night air carried the clear-channel sounds of “John R” Richbourg on 1510 WLAC-AM in Nashville, playing the latest in R&B. From the west, but practically next door on the radio dial at 1570, Wolfman Jack spun rock and roll on border station XERF-AM out of Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. Young McDill soaked it all in, especially once he fell in with Cowboy Jack Clement and Bill Hall, who had opened Gulf Coast Recording Studio behind the hotel bar where McDill and his folk group played. Dickey Lee and Allen Reynolds were part of that crew, too, and when McDill entered the Navy, Reynolds and Lee started pitching his songs, landing him cuts with Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs and Perry Como.
After his discharge from the Navy, McDill followed Lee and Reynolds to Memphis and then to Nashville. There, he had to learn to love Country Music before he could learn to write it. A key lesson occurred in the back of a Cadillac when George Jones’ recording of Jerry Chesnut’s “Good Year For The Roses” came on the radio. It was an epiphany.
“I started studying country music like a seminary student studies the gospels,” McDill said during a “Poets & Prophets” interview at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in 2008.
He recorded one album, Short Stories, for Clement’s JMI Records in 1972, but soon realized he didn’t want to be a performer. So, he focused on writing songs for other people. Johnny Russell gave him his first country successes, with “Catfish John” and then “Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer,” penned with Wayland Holyfield and Chuck Neese. Then the floodgates opened.
Don Williams released more than a dozen of McDill’s songs as singles, including chart-toppers “(Turn Out The Light And) Love Me Tonight,” “Say It Again,” “It Must Be Love,” and “If Hollywood Don’t Need You.” Bobby Bare had a hit with McDill’s “Put A Little Lovin’ On Me” in 1976, then recorded an entire album of his songs the following year.
One week in February 1985, McDill had songwriting credits on four of the top eight records on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, starting with Mel McDaniel’s “Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On.” Ed Bruce’s recording of “You Turn Me On (Like A Radio)” followed, as did Dan Seals’ “My Baby’s Got Good Timing” and Gus Hardin’s “All Tangled Up In Love.”
The Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) gave him their Songwriter of the Year award that year.
Three years later to the month, Alabama took his “Song Of The South” to No. 1. The following week, it was succeeded by Seals’ “Big Wheels In The Moonlight,” which McDill had co-written with Seals.
He took home the NSAI Songwriter of the Year award that year, too.
At various times, both ASCAP and BMI named him their Songwriter of the Year. BMI gave him so many awards that word around Music Row for years was that the acronym stood for “Bob McDill Incorporated.”
McDill kept office hours on Music Row, one of the city’s first songwriters known for doing so, viewing writing not as a business but as a profession, and writing his songs on 217 yellow legal pads that now reside at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Though he collaborated on songs with the likes of Reynolds, Holyfield, Seals and Paul Harrison, he most often wrote alone. He didn’t write quickly, describing his process as “blood, sweat and tears,” but he wrote thoughtfully.
His inspirations came from an array of sources. “Amanda,” a single for both Williams and Waylon Jennings, was triggered when a musician friend said he had apologized to his wife for not being able to give her a better life. “Good Ole Boys Like Me” was inspired by reading Robert Penn Warren’s “A Place to Come To.”
“It was kind of an attempt to show the world that everybody in the South wasn’t from the cast of Dukes of Hazzard,” he told Chicago Tribune’s Jack Hurst in 1989.
He wrote “Song Of The South” after reading “I’ll Take My Stand,” a defense of the old agrarian South written in the 1930s. “Don’t Close Your Eyes” began with an overheard line of dialogue spoken by Maggie Smith to Michael Caine in the 1978 film adaptation of Neil Simon’s “California Suite.” In some songs, he offered social commentary. To others — like McDaniel’s “Louisiana Saturday Night” or Shenandoah’s “If Bubba Can Dance (I Can Too),” he gave a deft, lighthearted tone.
Sometimes, he did both, as was the case with “Gone Country.”
“If country songwriters had to pick one of their own to represent that bridge between the traditional and the modern styles and sensibilities, they probably would turn to Bob McDill,” Ed Morris wrote in MusicRow in 1985, the year the NSAI inducted him into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
So, what do you do with a good ole boy like Bob McDill?
You put him in the Country Music Hall of Fame, of course.
Patty Loveless. Photo: Joseph Anthony Baker
Modern Era Artist Category – Patty Loveless
Patty Loveless has said she liked to imagine herself as a combination of Linda Ronstadt, Loretta Lynn, Ralph Stanley and Molly O’Day — singers who, depending on the dictates of the song, felt equally comfortable singing rock-edged roots music, straightforward traditional country, or high lonesome mountain music. No matter the song, no matter the style, Loveless approaches her music with such transparent honesty it once prompted TIME magazine to proclaim that she “sings the truth and serves it up raw.”
Born in Pikeville, KY, on Jan. 4, 1957, Patty Lee Ramey was the youngest daughter of John and Naomie Ramey’s seven children. She was raised a few miles southeast, near the Virginia state line in Elkhorn City, where John worked in the Federal Coal Mines.
The Ramey family loved music, regularly listening to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights, and Loveless and her brother, Roger, often played and sang together.
When Loveless was a teenager, she and her brother, Roger, traveled to Nashville going down to Music Row, hoping to play some of her songs for the Wilburn Brothers. They were out on the road, so Roger decided they should try Porter Wagoner’s office, which happened to be nearby. Wagoner happened to be in.
Not only did Wagoner encourage Loveless in her musical endeavors, he also introduced her to Dolly Parton, and the two singers invited the aspiring artist/songwriter to stay over in Nashville so she could accompany them to the Opry.
Loveless eventually connected with the Wilburns, too, joining their touring company at 16 and signing with their Sure-Fire Music publishing company — following in the footsteps of her distant cousin, Loretta Lynn. When not on the road she worked at a record store in downtown Nashville owned by Doyle Wilburn. Loveless eventually left the Wilburns and relocated to North Carolina playing in rock and country bands around the North Carolina area. With the urging and encouragement of her brother and first manager Roger, Loveless returned to Nashville in 1985 continuing to pursue a record deal.
With her return to Nashville, she recorded a five-song demo that Roger took to producer Tony Brown at MCA Records. With the support of Brown and her future husband, Emory Gordy Jr., Loveless was signed to MCA. She kept an alternate spelling of her first husband’s surname, Lovelace, for her MCA debut.
Loveless released her first MCA single, “Lonely Days, Lonely Nights” in 1985. It failed to crack the Top 40, as did four subsequent releases. She convinced the label to let her record and release a full album — and that’s when things started to change, starting with a cover of the George Jones hit “If My Heart Had Windows” that reached the Top 10 in 1988.
Quickly, Loveless was a regular presence near the top of the charts, releasing 34 Top 40 singles between 1988 and 2003. Loveless’ best records flirted with rockabilly, gospel and bluegrass, as well as country shuffles, and she had an ear for under-appreciated gems, especially when they possessed memorable melodic arcs. She had hits with songs written by Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Lucinda Williams and members of Lone Justice, NRBQ and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. She also recorded songs written by Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, Richard Thompson and Billy Joe Shaver, working in some Hank Williams and Carter Stanley on occasions.
The Grand Ole Opry welcomed her as a member during CMA’s Fan Fair in June 1988; the same month her first Top 5 single, a cover of Earle’s “A Little Bit In Love,” hit the charts.
The first of Loveless’ five Billboard No. 1 singles came with “Timber I’m Falling In Love” in 1989, just a few months after she married producer and bassist Gordy, who had co-produced her first two albums with Brown and would produce her for most of the rest of her career, especially after she left MCA for Epic Records in 1992.
Though Loveless had found frequent success with MCA, including a second chart-topper, “Chains,” in 1990, she found even more acclaim at Epic. Her first single for the label, a Harlan Howard/Kostas tune called “Blame It On Your Heart,” gave her a third No. 1, and BMI Song of the Year. Songs like “How Can I Help You Say Goodbye” and “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am,” tapped into the deepest emotions of human experience. “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am” was another No. 1 and one of four Top 10 singles from Loveless’ When Fallen Angels Fly, which won CMA’s Album of the Year award in 1995 — making her the first woman to take that category in more than a decade. In 1996, CMA awarded her its Female Vocalist of the Year.
Loveless hit No. 1 twice in 1996, first with “You Can Feel Bad,” then with “Lonely Too Long.” She won a CMA Vocal Event of the Year award in 1998 for “You Don’t Seem To Miss Me” with George Jones, her second win with the Possum in that category.
She won the CMA Vocal Event award again with Vince Gill for 1999’s “My Kind Of Woman/My Kind Of Man.” She and Gill have often appeared on each other’s records. She sings on Gill’s “When I Call Your Name,” “Pocket Full Of Gold,” and “Go Rest High On That Mountain,” among others.
Loveless made a career shift in 2001 with the release of Mountain Soul, an album that found her exploring her eastern Kentucky Appalachian roots. With songs like “Sounds Of Loneliness” — a song she had played for Wagoner as a teenager and one that had appeared on her debut album — with Darrell Scott’s harrowing coal-mining tale “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” Loveless found herself able to reconnect with memories of her father, who had died of black-lung disease in 1979. A sequel album, Mountain Soul II, earned Loveless a Grammy award for Best Bluegrass Album in 2011.
Tanya Tucker. Photo: Derrek Kupish
Veterans Era Artist Category – Tanya Tucker
“Hi, I’m Tanya Tucker,” read the cover of Rolling Stone dated Sept. 26, 1974, “I’m 15, You’re Gonna Hear From Me.”
By the time that rock and roll magazine hit newsstands, country music fans already had heard enough from the teenage singer from Seminole, TX, to know they liked what they heard.
Tucker was already an established country act with three No. 1 singles to her credit. Eventually, she would place 41 singles in the Top 10 of Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart, including 10 chart-toppers. She would earn a dozen Gold and Platinum albums.
Nearly 50 years later, Tucker still has plenty to say. She also has one of country music’s most expressive voices, once described by journalist Robert K. Oermann as “somewhere between healthy, outdoorsy cowgirl and cigarettes-and-whiskey barroom buddy.”
Born Oct. 10, 1958, Tucker spent her formative years traipsing around the Southwest — Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Utah — with parents Beau and Juanita Tucker and their other children. Beau managed Tanya’s career from its beginning until his death in 2006. Because of him, Tanya wrote in her 1997 autobiography “Nickel Dreams: My Life,” “I grew up believing I could do anything.”
Homemade demos her father cut of 9-year-old Tanya didn’t generate any interest in 1960s Nashville, but in Arizona she appeared on The Lew King Ranger Show, a long-running Phoenix-based television talent show that also provided early platforms for Marty Robbins, Wayne Newton and Lynda Carter. She landed an uncredited role in Robert Redford’s 1972 Western, Jeremiah Johnson. While living and performing in Nevada, another demo landed in the hands of a Las Vegas agent who brought it to the attention of producer Billy Sherrill.
This time, Nashville took note. Sherrill signed Tucker to Columbia Records and put her in the studio with credulous session musicians in March of 1972. Even at 13, Tucker didn’t lack for grit. “Well, I know my part, boys,” she announced. “Do you know yours?”
Before the summer was out, Tucker had her first Top 10 single with “Delta Dawn.”
Tucker began her recording career with six consecutive Top 10s, three of which — “What’s Your Mama’s Name,” “Blood Red and Goin’ Down,” and “Would You Lay With Me (In a Field Of Stone)” — went to No. 1.
Tucker’s knack for picking hit material borders on the legendary, and back then her tastes leaned toward southern gothic — a spurned woman with a tenuous grasp on reality, an illegitimate daughter, a drunkard desperately searching for his estranged green-eyed daughter, a double murder, a love song that begins in a cemetery. Tucker came through country music like a Texas tornado with a “wild child” persona she sometimes lived up to. Her mature choices in material only added to her adolescent allure.
On her 16th birthday, Tucker signed to MCA Records where the hits continued with 1975’s “Lizzie And The Rainman” and “San Antonio Stroll,” and 1976’s “Here’s Some Love.”
She recorded with MCA for seven years, by which point the tales of her personal life, including a tumultuous, well-publicized relationship with Glen Campbell. Still, Tucker has said, “If I’d done half the things people say I do, I’d be dead.”
After recording briefly for Arista Records, Tucker brought her career back to life when she signed with Capitol Records in the mid-1980s. “Just Another Love” gave the singer her first No. 1 in a decade, and she followed that in short with three more chart-toppers: “I Won’t Take Less Than Your Love” with Paul Davis and Paul Overstreet, “If It Don’t Come Easy,” and “Strong Enough To Bend.”
In 1991, she won a CMA Award for Female Vocalist of the Year as she watched from a Nashville delivery room where she was giving birth to the second of her three children.
In 1994, she took home the CMA Award for Album of the Year for her contribution to the collaborative album, Common Thread: The Songs Of The Eagles.
During her career, Tucker has released singles written by Country Music Hall of Famers Bobby Braddock (“I Believe The South Is Gonna Rise Again”) and Don Schlitz (“I Won’t Take Less Than Your Love,” “Strong Enough To Bend,” “My Arms Stay Open All Night”).
In 2014, she was the subject of a Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum exhibition, “Tanya Tucker: Strong Enough to Bend.”
In 2019, she teamed with Brandi Carlile and Shooter Jennings to release her first album of original material in 17 years, While I’m Livin’. The album returned her to the spotlight, earning her the first Grammy awards of her career, for Best Country Album and Best Country Song (“Bring My Flowers Now,” which she wrote with Carlile, Tim Hanseroth, and Phil Hanseroth). Appearances at events like Bonnaroo and Stagecoach Music Festival raised her profile with a new generation of music fans. That comeback was documented in the 2022 film The Return of Tanya Tucker.
Tucker, of course, might counter that she’d never actually left. And now, as a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, she never has to. “People ask me, ‘How do you think you lasted so long?’” she told Billboard in 2022. “I won’t go away, so you’ll just have to put up with me.”
Cindy Mabe Officially Begins Reign As Chair & CEO Of UMG Nashville
/by LB CantrellCindy Mabe. Photo: Kevin Wimpy
On April 1, Cindy Mabe officially started her role as Chair & CEO of Universal Music Group Nashville. She steps into the position Mike Dungan held for more than a decade until he retired at the end of March.
On her first day as Chair & CEO, Mabe sent a memo to her UMG Nashville team, outlining her vision for the future of the company. In the memo obtained by MusicRow, Mabe laid out four of her goals: continuing to sign outstanding country music artists, dramatically expanding partnerships with independent labels and entrepreneurs, broadening UMG Nashville’s scope to include film and TV and collaborating closely with label colleagues around the world. Mabe’s full memo is below.
During her tenure at UMG, Mabe has helped guide and grow the careers of some of country music’s biggest stars, including Luke Bryan, Eric Church, Jordan Davis, Mickey Guyton, Sam Hunt, Alan Jackson, Parker McCollum, Reba McEntire, Kacey Musgraves, Jon Pardi, Chris Stapleton, George Strait, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Brothers Osborne and Little Big Town, among countless others. She has earned multiple honors, including the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Louise Scruggs Memorial Forum Award and the SOURCE Hall of Fame Award.
She is one of Music Row’s most esteemed executives. Mabe became Nashville’s highest-ranking woman label executive in 2014 when she was appointed as UMG Nashville President, and she makes history again by becoming the first woman to serve as Chair & CEO of a Nashville-based major label group.
Read Mabe’s memo to UMG Nashville below.