Keith Urban's "All For The Hall" benefit concert is back on - April 10th is the date, and tickets go on sale January 27th at 10am. For either $25 or $35, you'll see Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum, Rascal Flatts, The Band Perry, Alabama, Vince Gill, Little Big Town, Pistol Annies, Thompson Square, Alison Krauss & Union Station, Diamond Rio, Exile and Blue Sky Riders.
Lady Antebellum was just added to the CMA Music Festival concert line-up, and couldn't be more excited to be there. According to newlywed Hillary Scott, “The electricity every year for that is just...you can’t really beat it. I mean, it’s so much fun to be there and to have a stadium full of the most die-hard country fans you could ever imagine, from all over the world.” The festival happens in Nashville June 7th through 10th.
Hear Tim McGraw's "Emotional Traffic" album - the whole thing - before you can buy it. Curb Records and NPR have teamed up for NPR's "First Listen" series, so you can stream the whole thing now, before it hits stores next week.
Taylor Swift has landed on the cover of Vogue Magazine. Sporting a big hat and a little smile, she chats with the reporter about her life and new look. Be on the lookout for the feature - her issue should hit newsstands some time in February. In other Taylor news, she's the only country artist on the list of Top-Selling Digital Artists, according to Nielsen Soundscan. On the list of the most-downloaded artists of all time, Taylor checks in at #5 with nearly 42 million digital sales. She's behind Lady Gaga, Eminem, Black Eyed Peas and Rihanna, who tops the list with 47.5 digital sales.
Jake Owen has a date with an anesthesiologist today - and a surgeon. After breaking his collar bone last Friday, he goes in for some pins and a plate at 1:30 this afternoon.
Luke Bryan, heavy metal? Yep - his new song, "I Don't Want This Night to End," has just been certified gold, and his 2009 hit, "Do I," has just gone platinum. About his latest song, Luke explains: “The song is about a guy meeting a girl and kind of...them having this connection right off the bat, and getting lost with each other in the country and certainly, me being the singer, not wanting the night to come to an end, because when you feel like the night’s over, maybe this whole romance thing is over also.”
Kid Rock got himself into a bit of hot water last Friday in Detroit. He showed up to watch Travis Tritt in concert, and lit up a cigar in the smoke-free theatre. Some audience members complained, some left and Kid apologized, in typical Kid fashion: “My most sincere apologies to the patrons I may have offended, and a big middle finger in advance to all the haters and attorneys who will somehow try to find an easy paycheck in all this.”
Chris Young was on the Ellen DeGeneres Show yesterday, performing his new song, "You." He and Luke Laird co-wrote it, and Chris says it came together in an interesting way. “He actually started putting almost like a beat together. That’s really how we got the idea for the song is we wanted this kind of tempo groove that was a little bit different. And really when we went into to make the album—just the groove, not the melody, not the words, but—‘I’ll Take You There’ The old R&B songs. That was one of the easiest songs to do on the record start to finish.”
Happy birthday to Kid Rock, who turns 41 today.
The tweet of the day is from Jake Owen: "In the Dr. waiting on my sentence.. You know it's not good when he comes in and says "That break is worse than the football teams"
