Last night at the ACM Honors show in Nashville, Kenny Chesney received the Crystal Milestone award, in recognition of his promotion of country music world-wide. Asked who his musical heroes are, Kenny cited Kix Brooks as a big influence: “Kix and I have been friends a long time and I really respect him a lot as a survivor in a business that’s hard to survive in and I think the reason that he’s done that is because his foundation is from the songwriting end of it and he treats people very well and he’s treated me great. And I look up to Kix a lot.”

Also last night at the Ryman, Luke Bryan had a very special night. He and Dallas Davidson hit Nashville in the early 2000’s, and both were songwriters. They struck up a grand friendship, co-wrote two of Luke’s #1 songs – “I Don’t Want This Night to End” and “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” and continue to pal around together all these years later. Dallas was honored at the show for winning ACM Songwriter of the Year earlier this year, and according to Luke, “The fact that Dallas and I are in this business together, we still, we’ll go fishing or hunting and shake our heads and giggle. The history between he and I is just so deep. It’s amazing, I mean, that I can have the opportunity to honor him on that night and do some of our songs, and the fact that, gosh, the fact that he and I have even written big hits is just borderline comical.”

Meanwhile, over at ABC, Taylor Swift has a gig for several weeks – she’s introducing a 30-second clip of new music from her “Red” album each Monday, and then Tuesday morning at 12:01, that song goes on sale at iTunes. About this week’s song, Taylor says, “This one is such a bold statement. It’s a bold sounding song and I think that’s why I ended up picking it. It’s a bold record in different ways – not in the same way as ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’ is. But, every song has its own boldness.” In case you missed yesterday’s announcement about the song, “Begin Again,” here’s a sample of it…



Jake Owen is extending summer with the release of his Endless Summer EP today. On it, you’ll find a cover version of Ben Harper’s hit, “Steal My Kisses.” How did Jake decide to record that one? “Believe it or not, I always loved that song and then I kind of forgot about it. Then I was in a T.J. Maxx, and through the speakers I heard, ‘Always got to steal my kisses from you.’ I caught myself singing along and I felt like, ‘Wow this is the perfect summertime feel kind of song.’ So we did a really cool version of it and put it on there – so hopefully people dig it.” The EP is out now – go get it from iTunes, Amazon.com or wherever you like to buy music.