Category: Go Country 105

CMA Country Christmas airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. Carly Pearce and Gabby Barrett host and perform, with additional performances by Carrie Underwood, Jimmie Allen, Pistol Annies, Lainey Wilson and more. 

Chris Stapleton has booked a series of dates in Canada in April and May 2022 on his All-American Road Show tour. Elle King will open for him. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. local time.

Lindsay Ell and ?American Idol ?winner Chayce Beckham have joined forces for a new duet, “Can't Do Without Me,” available now. Lindsay will co-host the 2021 Canadian Country Music Awards tonight where she is the most nominated female artist. 

Chris Janson has teased a song that he wrote with Eric Church that will be featured on his new album. Watch a clip of the song here.

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Mitchell Tenpenny is engaged. 

The hit singer popped the question to fellow country artist Meghan Patrick last week in Nashville. The “Drunk Me” singer got down on one knee at Losers Bar & Grill, the place where they first met.

Mitchell had an elaborate setup that included giant letters that spelled out “marry me,” and proposing in the center of a heart shaped out of rose petals lined with candles. 

“I met Meghan here so it was the perfect place – and hey, I got engaged ‘at the end of a bar!'” Mitchell tells ?People, ?referencing his collaboration with Chris Young, “At the End of a Bar.” “I had a whole speech planned and it disappeared [in the moment]. I wasn’t able to say everything I wanted to. I was nervous – and relieved. She was crying, I was crying. All I wanted was to hear her say yes!”

Meghan’s family flew in from Canada to be part of the special occasion, which tipped her off that the life-changing question may be coming.

“With my family coming into town this weekend I thought maybe, because we have talked about this for a while,” she says. “But I did not expect this! This is the most perfect engagement I could have ever imagined.” 

The couple met in 2017 and had their first date at a Nashville Predators hockey game. 

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year — and Thomas Rhett and family have already picked out a tree to celebrate!

Following the Thanksgiving holiday, Thomas shared a snap of him and his wife Lauren and their two eldest daughters, Willa, 6, and Ada, 4, bundled in their winter wear next to a bonfire in the midst of Christmas tree shopping.

“Favorite time of the year,” the singer captions the sweet picture as they stand in the middle of rows of trees. “You're a great family man. Merry Christmas to you and your beautiful family,” one fan comments, with many others leaving such remarks as “beautiful family” and “nice picture.” 

Noticeably absent were the couple’s two youngest daughters, one-year-old Lennon and two-week-old Lillie, the latter of whom was born on November 15.

Fans can also get into the holiday spirit with a pair of Thomas’ Christmas songs, the original “Christmas in the Country” and a cover of “The Christmas Song.”  

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Garth Brooks continues to outdo himself. 

Following the announcement that his Stadium Tour will conclude in 2022 with five shows at Croke Park in Dublin, Ireland, the country legend has sold more than 400,000 tickets to the shows. But this isn’t the first time he’s accomplished a feat of this magnitude.

This marks a full circle moment for the superstar, as he sold the same number of tickets when he was supposed to launch his Comeback Tour at Croke Park in 2014, but ended up having to cancel all five concerts when the Dublin City Council would not allow for more than three shows he had been granted licenses for.  

“I never dreamed we’d get the chance to try this again. I’m so grateful to all who made this happen,” Garth shares in a statement.

The “Unanswered Prayers” hitmaker was originally scheduled to play two shows at Croke Park next year, but more were added due to overwhelming demand. 

The Dublin shows will take place September 9, 10, 11, 16 and 17.  

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Welcome to Reba’s Place, a new bar, restaurant and live music venue curated in honor of the country legend herself, Reba McEntire. 

Housed inside a 100-year-old Masonic Temple in Reba’s home state of Oklahoma will be a two-story restaurant, bar, live music venue and retail store. Reba’s Place will regularly feature live music shows, along with a personalized menu that boasts a “Fancy” steak, named after her signature hit, her favorite dish, pinto beans and corn bread, along with street tacos, chicken fried steak and more.

The multi-purpose venue will also display memorabilia from her storied career and the decor will reflect her midwestern roots, in addition to a vintage bar that will serve beer, wine and craft cocktails.  

Reba made the announcement on Saturday during a performance in Atoka where the venue is located.

“We’re really tickled, we’re very excited about it,” Reba said onstage. “It’s going to have great food, family atmosphere, a bandstand in there where we can do a little pickin’ and grinnin’ and singin.'” 

The singer says they’re hoping to open in September 2022. Reba’s Place is created in partnership with Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the City of Atoka.

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Jimmie Allen‘s youngest daughter, Zara, is back home recovering after a serious health scare. 

Last week, Jimmie and his wife Alexis shared on social media that one-month-old Zara had to be rushed to the hospital after she contracted respiratory syncytial virus and stopped breathing. The couple initially brought her to a hospital in Tennessee where they say they were told to return home, but soon after, Zara stopped breathing and lost color and they rushed her to another hospital. 

Over the weekend, Alexis shared that they were traveling on a tour bus from Nashville to Delaware to be closer to her husband when Zara had a 10-minute coughing fit and after all remedies to stop the coughing failed, the baby was unresponsive. 

“My baby was so so tired her muscles had given up on her,” Alexis describes.

Zara was brought to the University of Maryland Shore Regional Health & AI DuPont Children’s Hospital in an ambulance where they administered oxygen and she regained her color.

“To the 3 EMT's who saved my daughter’s life. I never got your names but I am so unbelievably thankful for you. To the nurses, respiratory therapist and doctors at U of M Shore Medical & AI DuPont – thank you for continuing to find answers and providing amazing care to my baby,” she praises alongside a gallery of photos that show Zara hooked up to tubing while she rests on Jimmie’s chest and another that shows him passed out in a chair beside his daughter. 

“?Jimmie thank you for showing up & being here for your children, ALWAYS. I truly don't know how you do it but you always find a way!” she adds. 

On Sunday, Alexis shared on her Instagram Stories that Zara had been discharged from the hospital and the family was going home.

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Fans tuning in to watch the CMA Country Christmas special tonight will get a treat from the Pistol Annies, as they perform their new original Christmas tune, “Snow Globe.”

The festive track, co-written by band mates Miranda Lambert, Angaleena Presley and Ashley Monroe, is a stand-out from their new Christmas album, Hell of a Holiday. But it almost didn't make it onto the track list, the band mates reveal. They wrote “Snow Globe” just under the wire, while already in the studio recording their Christmas project.

“I think it was the saxophone solo of Come on Christmas Time.' It started, and I started spinning, and I was like, I feel like I'm spinning around in a snow globe.' I said it to Miranda, and she said, Oh, we should have written Snow Globe,'” the band mates recall. “We were like, Well, it's not too late. Why can't we? We're still recording the record, technically.'”

They wrote the song right then and there, while their studio musicians were at lunch, and the songwriting process only took about 20 minutes, the Annies explain.

“We just wrote about all the things you would see in a snow globe,” they continue. “With the little white church, and the little red truck, and picking out a tree…”

Aside from those classic Christmas scenes, the Annies also took inspiration from something a little less traditional, too.

“Cracker Barrel! We talked about Cracker Barrel a lot while we were writing that song. We thought about how they deck it out for Christmas,” they add with a laugh.

CMA Country Christmas airs tonight at 8 p.m. EST on ABC.

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Tune in to the halftime show during CBS' “Dallas Cowboys & Las Vegas Raiders Thanksgiving Day NFL Football Game” to catch a performance from Luke Combs. The game starts at 3:30 p.m. ET.

Randy Travis is gearing up to share a new version of “There's a New Kid in Town” featuring up-and-comer Drew Parker this Friday. The song is one of his “From the Vault” tracks off his deluxe, remastered version of An Old Time Christmas, which he put out earlier this month.

The Pistol Annies will make a stop on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday night. Their appearance comes just hours after their performance on ABC's CMA Country Christmas special airs.

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Thomas Rhett's “Country Again” started out as a simple acoustic demo — and now it's earned him his fifth Grammy Awards nomination.

The Recording Academy shared its 2022 nominees on Tuesday, and among them was Thomas, who's up for Best Country Song thanks to “Country Again.” To celebrate the milestone, Thomas shared an early version of the tune, recorded right after it was written.

“Here's the first worktape of Country Again.' Me, Ashley Gorley and Zach Crowell wrote this song over Zoom in the dead center of 2020,” Thomas remembers. “This title has been in my phone since May of 2019. This week it was nominated for a [Grammy.] So grateful and blown away.”

The Grammy for Best Country Song is awarded to songwriters, making the work tape — and its connection to Thomas' co-writers — even more special.

If Thomas wins at the 2022 ceremony, it'll be his first-ever Grammy. He's not short on trophies from awards shows in general, though: Most recently, at the 2021 ACMs, he won Male Artist of the Year.

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A new, extended teaser for the Yellowstone prequel 1883 includes a romantic moment between co-stars and real-life husband and wife Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.

The clip shows Tim and Faith's characters in a bath together, sharing a passionate kiss. Both stars appear elsewhere in the clip, too, along with other co-stars like Sam Elliott, Billy Bob Thornton, Isabel May and LaMonica Garrett.

1883 is described as “a stark retelling of Western expansion” and will follow “the Dutton family as they embark on a journey west through the Great Plains toward the last bastion of untamed America…Montana.”

Tim and Faith play James and Margaret Dutton, the “patriarch and matriarch” of the Dutton family. When it was announced that the superstar couple were going to appear in the series, Tim described the role as a “dream job.”

“[Show creator] Taylor [Sheridan] has found a way of storytelling that brilliantly creates these epic dramas and family sagas with so much depth and creativity,” he noted. “The Duttons are tremendous characters and it's so thrilling to be able to bring them to life.”

Yellowstone follows the current generation of the Dutton family. 1883 premieres December 19 on Paramount+.

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