Month: February 2022

Be on the lookout for a new song and music video from Chris Janson: He's teasing the release of “Cold Beer Truth,” which will come out Thursday morning at 10 a.m. CT.

Chris Stapleton brought home the trophy for Best Country Tour at the Pollstar Awards on Tuesday night. The latest iteration of his All-American Road Show returned in 2021 after a pandemic-induced break.

Miranda Lambert is a co-producer on the debut album to come out from Aaron Raitiere, an up-and-coming Americana act. The project is called Single Wide Dreamer; it'll be out May 6. Also co-producing the project is Anderson East, an Americana performer who Miranda previously dated. Miranda and Anderson called it quits in early 2018.

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Dolly Parton's signature Tennessee theme park and resort, Dollywood, has announced an exciting new program to help employees further their education.

The park's parent company, Herschland Enterprises, is piloting a program that will pay for 100 percent of tuition, fees and book costs for employees who decide to pursue higher education, according to Knoxville ABC affiliate station WATE.

Called the Grow U program, the new initiative launches later this month. It's expected to apply to employees at Dollywood, of course, but that's not all: Employees at other Herschland-owned attractions, including Kentucky Kingdom, Georgia's Wild Adventures and New Jersey's Adventure Aquarium will all be eligible.

It's one of several education-focused enterprises that Dolly has embarked on over the course of her career. Notably, she previously launched her Imagination Library, which provides free books to children under the age of five years old.

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Scotty McCreery's music video for his current single, “Damn Strait,” is a deep dive into the origins of one of his musical heroes, George Strait.

To film it, Scotty went to New Braunfels, Texas, and stopped by the state's famed Gruene Hall. That's where Strait got his start as a young artist playing with his Ace in the Hole Band, as he tried to land a record deal in Nashville.

After opening with some of Strait's biographical details, Scotty and his band launch into their performance on Gruene Hall's stage, interspersed with shots of black-and-white photographs of Strait hung up in the venue.

“Damn Strait” hit country radio last fall, and it's currently climbing the top 30. Later this month, the singer will wrap up his Same Truck Tour.

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Tim McGraw, Eric Church and Morgan Wallen are leading the lineup for the 2022 Faster Horses Festival, the largest country music event in the state of Michigan.

The three-day camping event will return in July, also featuring acts like Brothers Osborne, Jake Owen, Ashley McBryde, Chris Janson, Lauren Alaina and Cole Swindell. Tim, Eric and Morgan will each headline a day of the festival.

Faster Horses is one of many 2022 headlining festival appearances for Morgan, who stepped out of the spotlight for much of last year after video footage emerged of him yelling a racist slur. He apologized for the incident and completed a $500,000 donation pledge to Black-led organizations, and has steadily been mounting a comeback in recent months.

This year, Morgan's set for a massive tour in support of his Dangerous double album, which came out just a month before his scandal benched him from many aspects of the music industry.

Tim and Eric have been keeping busy, too. Eric is in the midst of his Gather Again Tour, and he just announced a brand-new Memorial Day Weekend stadium date in Milwaukee. Meanwhile, Tim is flexing his acting chops, starring opposite his country legend wife Faith Hill in 1883, the Paramount+ prequel to the TV series Yellowstone.

Tickets for Faster Horses go on sale beginning March 11 at 10 a.m. ET. The event will take place July 22-24 in Brooklyn, Michigan.

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In between stops on his Gather Again Tour, Eric Church is mounting a special Memorial Day Weekend event in Milwaukee.

The “Hell of a View” superstar will play the city's American Family Field, a stadium with seating capacity of over 40,000. To make the event even more special, he's bringing supporting acts Brothers Osborne and Parker McCollum along for the ride.

For Eric, the Milwaukee date is a homecoming of sorts: It dates back to a very early gig he played in the city, when he was a young artist performing for a crowd of less than 100 people by the volleyball courts at a bar called Kelly's Bleachers.

“Back in 2006, I think I was first-of-six booked at Country Thunder, but it was the big stage,” he recalls. “Sinners had just been released…and the next year I remember playing Kelly's Bleachers and half the room was there to see us play, the other half had no idea who we were. The next time we played, those 378 people brought friends…and that never really stopped. This time I'm bringing friends with me, too.”

Tickets go on sale February 18 at 10 a.m. CT.

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Keith Urban is celebrating his fellow superstar wife, Nicole Kidman, this week, following her Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance as Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos.

The country superstar took to social media to share his excitement, posting a screenshot from a FaceTime call he had with Nicole while she was on set and in costume.

“CONGRATS on your OSCAR nomination today babygirl!” he wrote. “SO proud of you & all that you poured into this dual role. Lucille AND Lucy. We REALLY lived through it with you on this one, & you gave it EVERYTHING. Here's me FaceTiming you on set back in April 2021. Loving you always.”

The megawatt pair have a long history of supporting each other: Nicole frequently shows up at country-centric awards shows where Keith is being honored, and the couple is known for lavishing each other with sweet social media posts celebrating birthdays and anniversaries.

When she heads to the 2022 Academy Awards next month, Nicole will go up against Best Actress competitors including Kristen Stewart, for her role in Spencer, and Jessica Chastain for her role in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. The latter production also stars Midland band mate Mark Wystrach.

There'll be another major representative from country music at the awards show: Reba McEntire's song, “Somehow You Do,” netted an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. The track, performed by Reba, appears in the film Four Good Days, and was written by Diane Warren.

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Scotty McCreery admits that ever since he and his wife Gabi got married in 2018, they’ve been faced with constant questions about starting a family. Now, the couple is considering the idea more than ever before.  

“All my uncles, it didn’t take them two minutes once we tied the knot to be asking those questions. I’m the last McCreery boy with the bloodline, so they’re all like ‘you got to carry on the name’ kind of thing,” the country singer shares. 

And while the couple wanted to give themselves time between the wedding and having children to travel, Scotty reveals that the conversation of starting a family is becoming more frequent in their household. 

“Those first few years, we were very much like, ‘we’re going to live our life, we’re going to travel, we’re going to do our thing.’ I think we’ve we’ve done a good amount of that now,” he describes. “So I think it’s a little less scary. It’s definitely a conversation that’s being had, I’ll say that.” 

While Scotty and Gabi plan their future family, the American Idol‘s future in country music looks bright as his current single, “Damn Strait,” is climbing the top 30 on country radio. He continues on his Same Truck Tour through February 19.

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