Today's Country Tidbits

When the Brothers of the Sun tour hit Nashville this past weekend, it was one of the sisters in the show who stole the spotlight. Grace Potter’s 29th birthday was Wednesday of last week, but Kenny held off the celebration until Saturday night. Enlisting the help of the Brentwood High School marching band and 50,000 concert-goers, there was a rousing rendition of the Happy Birthday song, he brought her out a huge margarita and presented her with a cake in the shape of a Flying-V guitar. The video is very amateur, but bear with it – it does get right-side up and in focus for the good stuff!



As that same concert, Tim McGraw said that it’s tough to play in Nashville, because the audience is filled with family members, friends and people who work for him. According to Tim, “They know me. So, it’s hard to impress them.”

Sometimes it’s not good to look like a star. Also at the Nashville Tim and Kenny tour stop, a fan who looks a lot like Kenny Chesney was escorted out of the arena and invited to go home. Apparently audience members thought he looked so much like Kenny Chesney that a mini-ruckus kicked up while Tim McGraw was performing. Nathan Blankenship has been contacted by Kenny’s people, who knew nothing of the expulsion, and they’re going to make it up to him somehow. Kenny had this to say: “You don’t have to be famous to be a star, like it says in that song. You know, there’s a line in ‘Welcome to the Fishbowl,’ ‘You don’t have now, to be a star. Just get caught on video and there you are.”

Dierks Bentley and Thompson Square have made their love for Little Bit Town’s new song, “Pontoon,” public. As a matter of fact, Keifer Thompson is chomping at the bit to own his own! “[Keifer] The reason we haven’t bought one—I haven’t figured out which one I’m wanna get. I wanna ‘neck it out, like that man, I mean cheesy lights, slide—[Shawna] –‘neck it out? [Keifer] ‘Neck it out, man. [Shawna] –meaning? [Keifer] Redneck it out!”

Big & Rich capped the ACM Lifting Lives music camp week, performing with developmentally disabled but musically gifted teens. Check out the performance on the Grand Ole Opry stage…



The Republican National Convention will be rockin’ this year, as Trace Adkins, Kid Rock and Lynyrd Skynyrd will be the featured performers. Oh, yeah – and the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate will also be announced at the late-August event in Tampa, Florida.

Will you ever see Brantley Gilbert without his ball cap on? Probably not! “I actually leave it on sometimes in the shower on accident. We’ve got like 30 of them and sometimes I’ll go to sleep and wake up in the morning, and it’s still on. It’s like a piece of my body almost, it’s weird.”

Billy Ray Cyrus hits Broadway this winter, playing lawyer Billy Flynn in “Chicago.” The seven-week engagement will be at the Ambassador Theatre November 5th through December 23rd.

Congratulations to Luke Bryan, who tops the country charts this week with “Drunk On You.”

Kellie Pickler is on the Ellen DeGeneres Show today.

Happy birthday to Lorrie Morgan, who turns 53 today.