Monday night in Nashville, stars will gather for the ACM Honors awards. Ronnie Dunn will be there, performing, and Reba will receive the ACM Career Achievement Award. It's to recognize an artist who has consistently help promote country music through their work, though Reba admits that she was a little fuzzy about it at first. “They said, ‘Well you…’ As a matter of fact somebody congratulated me on it…oh, Melissa Peterman. She texted me and she said, ‘Congratulations!’ I said, ‘What for?’ And she said, ‘Well you got the Career Achievement Award.’ I said, ‘What’s that for?’ and she said, ‘Well I don’t know, but they’re all tweeting about it. And so I really didn’t understand what it was, except, I guess an achievement for my career, so that was great!” Also getting hardware are Garth Brooks, who will be given the Cliffie Stone Pioneer Award, and Taylor Swift, who earned the Jim Reeves International Award.
If you get an email or see an online ad inviting you to visit a website to see photos of Carrie Underwood or learn shocking information about her, don't click that link! Carrie Underwood is #51 on the list of the most dangerous celebrities on the internet. No, she's not doing anythng wrong - cyber-criminals use her name and image to lure people into infecting their own computers with malware, viruses and trojan software. Practice safe surfing - if you don't recognize the source, don't click the link.
Brad Paisley, author. His book, "Diary of a Player," hits the streets November first. He and Rolling Stones writer David Wild co-authored the book, which describes how guitar masters from all genres of music shaped Brad's love of guitar playing. In Brad's words, “Nothing has changed my life like the fact that my grandfather gave me a guitar when I was a kid. For me, it’s my release. It’s this thing that has become such an integral part of my life and who I am. I don’t know who I’d be without it.” Brad got that guitar at age 8, by 12 was writing songs and at the tender age of 13, he was opening for stars like George Jones and the Judds.
Taylor Swift played an appreciation concert at the Target sales meeting in Minneapolis Wednesday. She re-wrote the song "Smelly Cat," a tune made famous by "Phoebe" on the tv show "Friends." Some of the lyrics include “You sell lots of things from food to Spanx. You also sell albums, and I wanna say, ‘thanks.’ Red shirts, khaki pants. Red shirts, khaki pants.” Oprah Winfrey, Tony Bennett and Beyonce were all there for the event.
Eric Church is happy to have a lighter-themed song out, after "Homeboy." "Drink in My Hand" was written on his tour bus. The inspiration? The fans. Eric says, “We were out on tour – I think we were on tour with Miranda at the time – and I was on the bus with a couple of co-writers of mine, and we had just walked offstage and saw the crowd, saw our fans and saw ‘em put their beers in the air. You could just tell that they had worked all week, and this was their moment to let all that wash away. And, that was where the title was born from really. ‘Everything’s OK now, I’ve got a drink in my hand, and I’m relaxing and I’m chilling.’” Eric's out with Toby Keith on the "Locked and Loaded" tour.
There's a Facebook page aimed at getting Sugarland as the Superbowl 2012 entertainment. Put up by a group of fans, they hope to influence the NFL's decision for halftime entertainment. They started "a flood of phone calls" yesterday. No word so far on whether the NFL will pay attention, but if you're a Sugarland fan and want to help, go like the page.
This week, Mark Wills was given the Patriot Award while performing at Nashville's Hard Rock Cafe. Operation Troop Aid gave him the honor to recognize him as an "artist/entertainer who goes above and beyond to demonstrate his/her support of our troops via visits abroad or at U.S. bases and facilities, performing before them, being actively involved in fundraising initiatives to support charities, organizations and causes that directly benefit the military men and women and their families." Hope they didn't have to engrave all that on the award...that's a mouth-ful!
Lady Antebellum is on the Ellen DeGeneres show today and on the Tonight show later on.
Happy birthday to Sonny Lemaire of Exile, who turns 64 today. David Bellamy is 61 and Terry McBride is 51.
The tweet of the day is from Big Kenny Alphin: "'The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.' -- Thomas Paine"
