If you need a new “ugly” sweater for your next holiday party, you’re in luck.
Musicians On Call, a nonprofit that brings live and recorded music to the bedsides of patients in hospitals across the country, has launched its first Deck the Halls Campaign, which features holiday sweaters personally designed by Florida Georgia Line, Sam Hunt, Sara Evans and more. Fans can purchase the sweatersâ$35 and $40â here, with the proceeds supporting Musicians on Call’s initiatives.
âI love the holidaysâespecially in a cozy sweater with a glass of wineâso when I was approached to partner with Musicians On Call to design a sweater to help raise funds for such a great cause, I knew exactly what I wanted to design,â said Sara Evans. âThe holiday season is all about spreading the healing power of music so I am excited to help MOC do just that with the sale of my ‘ugly’ sweater. I hope everyone gets a kick out of the sweater and buys one âor three! Cheers all and happy holidays.â
In addition to the sweaters, Musicians On Call has launched a holiday gift auction on ebay for its Deck the Halls Campaign that features signed guitars and memorabilia. Running today (Nov. 28) through Dec. 8, the auction includes items from Reba McEntire, Sam Hunt, Lindsay Ell, Brad Paisley, Kelsea Ballerini, Martina McBride, Luke Bryan, Kelly Clarkson and more.
It was a cold day in New York City on Thanksgiving (Nov. 24) but nothing could stop country’s hottest young stars from bringing the heat to the 90th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Kelsea Ballerini, Brett Eldredge, Maddie & Tae and Easton Corbin livened up Turkey Day with performances throughout the morning. Kelsea performed her No. 1 hit, “Peter Pan,” on top of the Cookie Express float; Brett, dressed in a tuxedo, performed “Let It Snow” from his Christmas album, Glow; Maddie & Tae performed “Fly”; and Easton performed his song, “Let’s Ride,” atop the Col. Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken float.
Check out country’s finest in the Thanksgiving Day Parade photo gallery:
As part of CBS’ coverage of the Thanksgiving Day parade, Miranda Lambert stopped by CBS studios in New York to perform her song, “Highway Vagabond,” from her new album, The Weight of These Wings. Check it out below.
And, if you have two hours to spare, you can watch the 90th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in it’s entirety below.
With their current single, “Make You Mine,” currently sitting at No. 21 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart, High Valley is at the top of their game. Imports from La Crete, Canada, the brothersâBrad and Curtis Rempelâhave been touring the States with Martina McBride as part of her Love Unleashed Tour and are gearing up for their own headlining European Tour, kicking off on Feb. 4, 2017.
To top off their whirlwind year, the duo just released their album, Dear Life, on Nov. 18.
“Curtis and I never had diaries growing up, but we like to think this whole record and definitely the title track is like letting somebody read our diary,” Brad tells Nash Country Daily. “Dear life, here’s what’s going on. Here’s what I’m thankful for. By the way, this is what I’m scared of. Hey, could you chill out a little bit and slow down? It’s definitely like writing a diary and I love it.”
To help you get to know the genetically blessed brothers a little better, Nash Country Daily asked Brad and Curtis to play the superlative game, where we give them a superlative and they let us know who fits the mold.
Most athletic?
Curtis: Brad.
Brad: Sure.
Most affectionate?
Brad: I probably cry more often, but we’re both probably really affectionate.
Most unpredictable?
Brad: Curtis.
Curtis: Yeah.
Most likely to star on a reality TV show?
Brad: Curtis. Curtis can balance a banjo on his face. Unimaginable amounts of potential.
Curtis: I’m very dramatic.
Most stylish?
Brad: I always say our stylist because everything we wear, we’re just told to wear by somebody else.
Most likely to be late for an appointment?
Curtis: Me.
Brad: I don’t know. Curtis has actually been really on time. I’ve been running a little late lately. I feel embarrassed about it.
Curtis: We can call it a tie.
Most likely to get lost?
Brad: Definitely Curtis.
Curtis: Yeah, me.
Most likely to join a nudist colony?
Brad: Curtis!
Curtis: No way! Brad
Brad: I’m not going to say me [laughs].
Most likely to trip up the stairs?
Brad: Probably Curtis
Curtis: Yeah, probably me.
Most likely to be Prime Minister?
Brad: Me.
Curtis: Yeah, I don’t want that job.
Brad: I also do not want that job, but our Prime Minister was recently seen shirtless in a cave hiking so…
Curtis: Exactly. Nudist colony. You just walked right into that one man.
Miranda Lambert’s sixth studio album, The Weight of These Wings, which dropped on Nov. 18, soared to No. 1 on Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart this week with 122,000 units sold. The Weight of These Wings is Miranda’s sixth album to reach No. 1 on Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart, following Kerosene (2005), Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2007), Revolution (2009), Four the Record (2011) and Platinum (2014).
The new album also debuted at No. 3 on the all-genre Billboard Top 200 chart
Miranda wrote or co-wrote 20 of the 24 songs featured on the double-disc album. Other top songwriters featured include Natalie Hemby (10 cuts), Ashley Monroe (2 cuts), Shane McAnally (2 cuts), boyfriend Anderson East (2 cuts) and more.
Check out the song titles and songwriters below.
Disc 1: The Nerve
1. “Runnin’ Just in Case” (Miranda Lambert/Gwen Sebastian)
Many of our favorite country stars posted Twitter messages of gratitude on Thanksgiving (Nov. 24), and we thought we’d share some. Hope everyone had a nice break. Now, back to work!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Thankful for this amazing life, our fans, crew, band, & unbelievable wife & family! Thank you Lord đđŒđđŒđđŒ – BK
After wrapping his 58-city 2016 Kill the Lights Tour in October, Luke Bryan announced today (Nov. 28) that he will extend the tour into 2017 with 11 additional dates, including a stop at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on March 1. Luke will resume the tour on Feb. 16 in Huntington, W.Va., and cap it a little more than a month later on March 17 in Orange Beach, Ala.
Brett Eldredge will serve as the opener on all dates.
Check out the dates, cities and venues below.
Kill the Lights Tour 2017
Feb. 16 – Huntington, W.Va. – Big Sandy Superstore Arena
Feb. 17 – Bloomington, Ind. – Assembly Hall
Feb. 18 – Jonesboro, Ark. – ASU Convocation Center
Feb. 23 – Columbia, S.C. – Colonial Life Arena
Feb. 25 – Jacksonville, Fla. – Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena
March 1 – New York, N.Y – Madison Square Garden
March 3 – Manchester, N.H. – Verizon Wireless Arena
March 4 – Providence, R.I. – Dunkinâ Donuts Center
March 9 – Richmond, Va. – Richmond Coliseum
March 10 – Fayetteville, N.C. – Crown Coliseum
March 17 – Orange Beach, Ala. – The Wharf
With appearances in more than 30 feature films and television shows, including Panic Room, Wedding Crashers and Under the Dome, Dwight Yoakamâs acting chops are as lethal as his onstage dance moves. Speaking of lethal, Dwightâs performance as abusive boyfriend Doyle Hargraves in 1996âs Sling Blade, which was written and directed by Billy Bob Thornton, is still one for the ages.
As the movie celebrates the 20-year anniversary of its release on Nov. 27, 2016, Dwight was kind enough to speak to NCD [from an interview in 2015] about his role as Doyle and the effect it had on his career as an actor.
NCD: As a whole, can you talk about the experience of being part of the film?
Dwight: âIt will always remain a magical experience for me. I had done five movies at that point. After being on set a couple of days and shooting a couple of my scenes, I remember calling my manager on the phone and saying, âYou know what, I think Iâm in a real one here, something that will really have an impact. I think Billy [Bob Thornton] is doing something unique and lasting as a director and writer.â I was really proud to be a part of it, and I still am.â
Billy Bob won an Academy Award for Best Writing for Adapted Screenplay. The dialogue is so well-crafted, but I canât help but laugh throughout the movie with some of its absurdity, especially Doyleâs dialogue.
“Itâs a tragically joyful movie [laughing]. Thereâs absurd humor in the tragic reality of that movie, for lack of a better way of putting it.”
Letâs talk about the most absurdly humorous scene, at least in my opinion, when Doyle goes on his drunken rampage and kicks his band out of Lindaâs house and the ensuing beat-down he gets at the hands of Lindaâs son, Frank.
“In a lot of ways, the argument Doyle has with Morris [actor Bruce Hampson] is what sent him into his tailspin, if you remember. It was Morrisâ own ego trying to claim ownership of the brilliance of his lyrics: baking the cookies of discontent, by the heat of the laundromat vent [laughing]. Doyle had pretty much had it with Morrisâ bullsh*t. Oh, my god [laughing]. It was an interesting film to be a party to.”
[warning: video below contains graphic language]
Doyle kicks everyone out of the house, including Terrance, played by singer/songwriter Vic Chestnut, who was partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair in real life.
“In memory of Vic Chestnut [who passed away in 2009], he refused to have a stunt double with that whole thing in the wheelchair. He actually hit the door. It was originally scripted that I was going to run him and the wheelchair through the screen door and off the porch. You were just going to hear him go [off the porch]. And then Billy [Bob Thornton] thought better of it and said, âNo, Iâm going to shut the door and youâre just going to run him into the door.â They went to Vic twice and tried to convince him to use a stunt double, and Vic said âNo. I want to do this. I want Doyle to take me and run me through it.’ I was like, âAw man, itâs awful.â But it was all of us wanting to do what was true. We really wanted that movie to be about the truth of human beingsâ failings and how theyâre able to interact. The character Doyle, to me and how I played it, was actually the most frightened guy in the room about losing everything. The character Linda tries to address that in her own way when she talks to her son at one point, âDoyleâs had a pretty messed up life.â Well, no kidding [laughing].”
Thatâs when Lindaâs son, Frank, played by Lucas Black gives you the beat-down.
“Lucas Black had run out of actual props to throw and he started throwing actual elementsâreal books, real encyclopedias [laughing]. Lucas was hurling that stuff. I actually did get hit pretty hard with a couple of the encyclopedias. The one hit me in the ribs and almost took the wind out of me completely.”
Any closing thought on the actual craft of acting and your role as Doyle?
âI know that the craft of acting is not something that happens by accident. It has to do with the rhythm of truth and how you say what you say as an actor. The old expression, âDoes something have the ring of truth to it?â To put it another way, âDoes it have the rhythm of truth to it? Itâs a performance of a scripted scenario of life. That fictional scripting, as with songwriting, is really addressing larger collective universal truths. Sling Blade is one of the seminal moments of my life as an artist of expressing myself artistically.”
Jewel Kilcher, better known to the music-loving world as singer/songwriter “Jewel,” returned to her Alaskan homestead for the first time in nearly seven years to take part in three episodes of Discovery’s Alaska: The Last Frontier, a reality program that documents the extended Kilcher family, including Jewel’s father, Atz, and brother, Atz Lee.
Jewel brought her 5-year-old son, Kase, on the trip, marking his first journey to the homestead to meet many members of his family.
Jewel, with son Kase, father Atz, and Atz’s wife, Bonnie
“Oh my gosh, I was overjoyed to get to go back, but having a son, I didn’t want to take him up there until he was old enough to remember it,” says Jewel to NCD. “I was really happy to take him up there and show him where I’m from. I’ve always been homesick for Alaska. I think how I was raised made me the kind of person I am and allowed me to stay grounded. I was raised knowing it was not money or material things that make us happy, it’s what kind of humans we are. Striving every day to be a good human was important to me. I was happy to try to share the land and nature and that type of lifestyle with my son.”
Highlights of Jewel’s visit include Atz building a wilderness fort for Kase, as well as a reunion potluck dinner the family cooked.
“My dad made my son an entire town in nature and made him this beautiful fort and threw him a little birthday party and that was beyond incredible,” says Jewel. “Just to see Kase be a part of that and getting to play on the homestead with his cousins was really incredible. My family threw a big reunion potluck for me. It was amazing and delicious. Homemade food tastes infinitely better than anything else, especially dad’s homemade bread.”
The first of Jewel’s three episodes, “The Prodigal Daughter Returns,” airs on Sunday, Nov. 27, followed by “The Monster Catch” on Dec. 4 and “When Cows Attack” on Dec. 11. Tune in to Discovery, Sundays, at 8 p.m. CT to catch all of the action.
Nash Country Daily had a chance to sit down with Travis after the Twitter battle to talk about his new album, A Man and His Guitar (more on that next week), his comments regarding the CMA show and the backlash.
But first, here are the comments that Travis made on Twitter.
“As part of the Class of â89âGarth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Clint Black and myselfâwe saw country music album sales increase by millions over what they had ever been before. We saw an ability by all country music artists to put more fannies in concert seats than we’d ever seen before. We sold a ton of product, drew in millions and millions of fans that had never listened to country music before. I think during that period of time we’ve certainly become strong enough to stand on our own two feet without the help from outside sources. I’ve been complaining about this for years, and it’s funny to me that it took complaining about this year’s performance, before anybody paid any attention to it.
“It’s very strange to me. I’ve had open discussions about this on social media for the last 10 days and the fact is that while there are a lot of people that try to twist this into being something different than what it isâbeing motivated by something different than what it’s motivated byâthe fact is that this is something that I’ve been very vocal about for a long time. Race has nothing to do with it. That’s what I’ve tried to make clear from the very beginning. We should be better than that. To make everything about raceâto meâit makes me sad to be honest.”
NCD: In the times that we are living in now, with race being such a dividing point, is that what you feel they turned your comments into, something racial?
“So many great country music artists that you can name that weren’t part of it because there is only so much timeâI get that, I understand that and everybody else does too. But when you take a portion of that precious time and give it to an artist outside of our industry, it makes no sense. It makes about as much sense to me as it would make sense to bring Eminem in on the Dove Awards. But you wouldn’t do that because it doesn’t fit the format. That’s my humble opinion.”
Country sweetheart Kelsea Ballerini has joined forces with critically acclaimed pianist Joey Alexander to release a collaboration of a classic tune, “My Favorite Things.”
The single, a hit from TheSound of Music, was also the title track of Joey’s debut jazz album in 2015. Kelsea adds her stirring vocals to Joey’s extraordinary piano playing, creating a collaboration for the ages that can be seen on CMA Country Christmas on Nov. 28.
“Putting out ‘Favorite Things’ with Joey has been one of my proudest and most exciting projects and moments so far,” said Kelsea in a statement. “He is so incredibly talented and, more so, so humble. Being in the studio and listening to him play so effortlessly over and over really challenged me to be my best. I’m so excited for people to hear this!”
âI got a good dose of that warm southern hospitality from the folks from Black River Records and the Nashville country music community, and performing with Kelsea Ballerini was amazing,â adds Joey. âIâm really proud of the work weâve done and excited to share our new holiday single with the world.â
“My Favorite Things” will be available digitally on Nov. 25 but you can catch the duo performing the classic on CMA Country Christmas, which airs Nov. 28, 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
For now, you can check out Kelsea and Joey talking about “My Favorite Things,” with a sneak peek of their performance.
![Florida Georgia Line, Sam Hunt, Sara Evans & More Design Ugly Sweaters for a Good Cause [Photo Gallery]](https://cdn.socast.io/6616/sites/602/2016/11/26152033/Sweater.jpg#aqua_resizer_image_not_local)
“Putting out ‘Favorite Things’ with Joey has been one of my proudest and most exciting projects and moments so far,” said Kelsea in a statement. “He is so incredibly talented and, more so, so humble. Being in the studio and listening to him play so effortlessly over and over really challenged me to be my best. I’m so excited for people to hear this!”
