The past, present and future are bright for Dierks Bentley’s recent Black album.
In addition to debuting at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart in June, the album’s lead single, “Somewhere on a Beach,” hit No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot Country Songs and Billboard Country Airplay charts in April.
Dierks’ current single, “Different for Girls,” has followed suit, reaching No. 1 on this week’s Mediabase chart and Billboard Country Airplay chart to become his 15th career chart-topper. The breakup tune, which was penned by J.T. Harding and Shane McAnally, features bluesy rocker Elle King.
“I love this song,” says Dierks to Nash Country Daily. “It talks about how guys and girls handle heartbreak differently. Sometimes girls have an unfair double standard how they handle it. It’s kind of a heavier song, so I wanted a female voice on it. And it’s great having Elle on that track.”
Dierks and Elle’s duet recently received a CMA nomination for Musical Event of the Year. Dierks also picked up nominations for Male Vocalist, Album and Video of the Year.
No word yet on Dierk’s next single, but he’s got a handful of top choices to pick from, including “Light It Up,” “Freedom” and “I’ll Be the Moon,” which features Maren Morris.
More details are emerging from Chris Young about his upcoming holiday album, It Must Be Christmas, which is scheduled to drop on Oct. 14.
Chris revealed today (Sept. 19) that the 10-song offering features vocals from Alan Jackson (“There’s a New Kid in Town”), Brad Paisley (“The First Noel”) and R&B icons Boyz II Men (“Silent Night”). By the way, do you recall this Boyz II Men awesomeness from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?
Chis co-wrote two original Christmas songs for the project: “Under the Weather” and the title track, “It Must Be Christmas.”
“I’m really excited about the Christmas album,” said Chris to NCD. “It’s just such a cool thing for me. I’m Comin’ Over was my fifth album. With this Christmas album, this will be my sixth, which I can’t believe. I’ve gotten to do a lot of really cool things in my career, but I love Christmas music and I’ve only ever put out one Christmas song that was on a Sony collection album. To be able to have a full project to really put my hands on is unbelievable.”
Chris also mentioned that his favorite Christmas album as a child was Alan Jackson’s 1993 Honky Tonk Christmas.
“Yeah, definitely I have a favorite holiday album,” said Chris. “There’s a whole album to me, and I’ve referenced it a lot, but that Alan Jackson Christmas record to me was great—it was that and the Beach Boys’ Christmas album. Those two things had to be played or it wasn’t Christmastime at my house. That was it. I can tell you I did not cut this, but the one that always makes me laugh is Alan’s ‘Please Daddy, Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas.’ I was actually walking through a supermarket singing it at as a kid at one point. My mom was like, ‘You have to stop singing that. People are going to think there’s something wrong.'”
It Must Be Christmas Track List 1. “The Christmas Song”
2. “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”
3. “Under the Weather”
4. “There’s a New Kid in Town” (feat. Alan Jackson)
5. “Holly Jolly Christmas”
6. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
7. “The First Noel” (feat. Brad Paisley)
8. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”
9. “Silent Night” (feat. Boyz II Men)
10. “It Must Be Christmas”
In 2015, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson teamed up for the duets album Django and Jimmie, which featured the tune “It’s All Going to Pot.”
Their art is imitating life.
Willie introduced his new marijuana brand, Willie’s Reserve, earlier this year, and now Merle, who passed away in April 2016, will soon have his own line of cannabis, according to reports.
Before his death, Merle teamed with the Colorado Weed Co. to develop a connoisseur-grade marijuana strain. Now, Merle’s daughter, Jenessa Haggard-Bennet, and son-in-law, Brian Bennett, are spearheading the release of the ganja line that has been dubbed Merle’s Girls.
“[Merle] was out [performing] every two weeks. He was doing all that in his 70s,” said Jenessa to The Denver Westword. “He believed [marijuana] could cure a whole bunch of things.”
Although Merle became famous in part for his 1969 anti-hippie anthem “Okie From Muskogee”—which featured the verses We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee / We don’t take no trips on LSD / We don’t burn no draft cards down on Main Street / We like livin’ right and bein’ free—Jenessa says that her father smoked weed for more than 20 years.
Merle’s new strain has not hit the shelves yet but is expected to launch in the next few months in Colorado, Washington and Oregon.
The initial crop of Merle’s Girls will introduce four sativa-based hybrids. Individual strains will have names with references recognizable to fans of Merle’s music.
In addition to having the bejesus-take-the-wheel scared out of her by host Ellen DeGeneres on Friday (Sept. 16), Carrie Underwood also debuted her new single, “Dirty Laundry,” on Ellen.
Written by Zach Crowell, Ashley Gorley and Hillary Lindsey, “Dirty Laundry” is the fourth single from Carrie’s 2015 album, Storyteller, following Billboard No. 1 singles “Heartbeat” and “Church Bells.”
After dropping his debut Top 40 single, “Southern Boy,” earlier this year, Georgia native Jordan Rager is back on the country radio airwaves today (Sept. 19) with the release of his new single, “Now That I Know Your Name.”
Penned by Jeremy Stover, Chris Janson and Jason Gantt, “Now That I Know Your Name” is an upbeat jam that features Jordan’s smooth-talking baritone voice asking Are you a Ford or a Chevy girl / Tell me, does country music rock your world / Where’d ya get the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen / Wanna split baby right now what you think / I just gotta know everything, now that I know your name.
To coincide with the the song’s release to country radio today, Jordan is releasing his new lyric video for “Now That I Know Your Name” exclusively to NCD.
“We had a really good time shooting this one,” says Jordan. “It’s a fun song, fun idea, it’s romantic a little bit, which is different for me because I actually had to act a little. I think everybody’s going to like how it turns out.”
“There’s new music being made all the time that’s fascinating to me,” Keith said to NCD in May when the album dropped. “It’s sort of like being a chef I guess, you’re always looking for ingredients that could go together but haven’t been put together yet.”
One of the more traditional songs on Ripcord and the album’s fourth single release is the waltzy “Blue Ain’t Your Color,” a Don Williams-inspired tune written by Steven Lee Olsen, Hillary Lindsey and Clint Lagerberg.
“Blue” is basically a waltz with a doo-wop feel,” explains Keith. “Neither really felt right for me, but there was something in this song that I loved. So we programmed this really cool, simple, drum loop that became the rhythmic bones of the song, providing a yin and yang to the minimalist vocal that I wanted to feature.”
Check out Keith’s thoughts on the song and a behind-the-scenes look into its recording as well as the new music video that was released yesterday (Sept. 15)
If you believe that, good news: Loretta Lynn is set to release a new holiday album, White Christmas Blue, on Oct. 7. The 12-song offering will be Loretta’s first yuletide collection since 1966’s Country Christmas.
White Christmas Blue features 12 studio performances, including new versions of two original compositions—“Country Christmas” and “To Heck With Ole Santa Claus”—which first appeared on Country Christmas. The new album also boasts soulful interpretations of traditional carols “Away in a Manger,” “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Silent Night,” as well as seasonal pop standards “Winter Wonderland,” “Frosty the Snowman,” “Jingle Bells” “White Christmas” and the title track. The album concludes with Loretta’s heartfelt recitation of the seasonal story “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
White Christmas Blue, which is available for pre-order now, is the follow-up to Loretta’s 2015 album, Full Circle. Like its predecessor, White Christmas Blue was produced by Patsy Lynn Russell and John Carter Cash and recorded at Cash Cabin Studio in Hendersonville, Tenn.
White Christmas Blue Track List 1. “White Christmas Blue”
2. “Country Christmas”
3. “Winter Wonderland”
4. “Away in a Manger”
5. “Blue Christmas”
6. “To Heck With Ole Santa Claus”
7. “Frosty the Snowman”
8. “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful”
9. “Jingle Bells”
10. “White Christmas”
11. “Silent Night”
12. “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”
Does Dolly Parton ever slow down? The answer is no. If you’re waiting on Dolly, you’re backing up.
Not only did the petite songstress celebrated two milestones this year—she turned 70 years old and celebrated 50 years of marriage to husband Carl Dean—but she also embarked on her biggest tour in 25 years and released her 43rd solo album, Pure and Simple, which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart.
Today (Sept. 16), Dolly released the lyric video to “Head Over High Heels,” a new tune from Pure and Simple that name-drops pop artist Adele in the lyrics: I put on my tight dress / hair teased on my head / I painted my lips red and my eyes like Adele.
“I love [Adele’s] style, I love her voice, I love her songs, I just love the way she is,” said Dolly to NCD. “Someday I would love to write something with her, sing something, do something, because I like her.”
Check out the new lyric video for “Head Over High Heels” and be sure to catch Dolly on tour.
Making your debut on the Grand Ole Opry stage is both a career-defining and nerve-racking moment for almost every artist who gets the honor. You can add Kiefer Sutherland’s name to that list. After Kiefer stepped onto the famed Grand Ole Opry circle to make his debut on May 31, the Emmy-winning actor, who has more than 90 acting credits to his name, admitted to feeling butterflies.
However, it didn’t take Kiefer long to get his feet under him and knockout his three-song set, which included two songs—“Not Enough Whiskey” and “Shirley Jean”—from his debut country album, Down in a Hole. Kiefer capped his performance with a salute to one of his musical heroes by covering Merle Haggard’s “The Bottle Let Me Down,” a tune that Hag took to No. 3 on the charts in 1966.
Check out Kiefer’s cover of “The Bottle Let Me Down” below, and tune in to ABC on Sept. 21 to see the premiere of Kiefer’s new series, Designated Survivor.
The ongoing debate about today’s country music not being “real country” continued this week when Aaron Lewis—lead singer of the rock group Staind and now country singer—stepped onto a Colorado stage and told the audience the inspiration behind his latest country single,”That Ain’t Country.”
“I’d like to thank Sam Hunt–oh, I know, he’s so pretty to look at,” said Aaron from the stage. “I’d like to thank Luke Bryan, for most of his stuff. He surprises me every once in a while. I would like to thank Dan + Shay. I’d like to thank Cole Swindell. And every other motherf***** that is just choking all the life out of country music.”
That’s when all hell broke loose and the Luke, Sam, Cole and Dan + Shay defenders took to social media to call out the rocker. NCD caught up with Aaron shortly after he made the remarks, for which he concedes that he’s sorry “that I might have offended you, but I don’t apologize for what I said.”
“It’s all taken out of context. I was playing at a motorcycle rally,” says Aaron. “I was playing to a whole bunch of people that appreciate the old country music. I was playing to that crowd. I said it in a manner that got a really, really good reaction from the crowd that I was playing to. It certainly is no sort of personal attack on any of the artists that I may have, in a moment of playing to the crowd that I was playing to, called out by name. It’s nothing personal. I’m not saying that they’re not good people. I’m not saying that the songs aren’t catchy songs—that if I hear them on the radio I’m not stuck singing myself. I’m just questioning where the connection is to what defined the genre. That’s all.
Photo by Nick Rau
“I’m sure that way more offensive things have been said over the years, through a microphone on stage in front of a certain crowd of people, than what I said. If you’re offended by what I have to say, you might want to question why. I don’t know what to tell you. Again, this is no personal attack on anybody. I’m sure that they are great, amazing people. In no way am I saying anything about them or their character. I’m just simply wondering where the connection is to the music from the past that defines the genre.”
And with that, a new song was born. Aaron’s latest single, “That Ain’t Country,” is the result of that wondering. A song that laments the fact that today’s country songs are filled with “tales of good times and happy endings” that aren’t realistic to everyday life. The song searches for the tunes that are “full of truth and consequences, all the things gone wrong.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFmINYbfhhQ
“I grew up on my grandfather’s country,” says Aaron. “That’s the country music that is kind of embedded into my soul. It was the soundtrack to my childhood, and is the soundtrack to so many memories that I hold onto dearly. I wrote the song because the landscape of country music these days is a little bit unrecognizable. I ponder and I question where the influences—aside from name drops here and there—where are the influences of what defined the genre of country? I don’t hear them. It’s merely my opinion and it’s merely just something that I noticed, and something that I chose to write a song about. I’m not saying what is country music right now isn’t creating number ones and it isn’t selling records. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just questioning where is the connection aside from name-dropping to the music?”
Aaron, who hails from Springfield, Mass., reached stardom as the frontman for the rock band Staind. He saw success with the seven studio albums the band released, including Dysfunction, Break the Cycle—which included the Top 10 hit “It’s Been a While”—and 14 Shades of Grey. But in 2012 the band took a hiatus and Aaron was able to return to the music he grew up on by putting out his first solo country album, The Road.
“I was force-fed [country] as a kid,” recalls Aaron. “Then when I was old enough to choose my own path of music listening, as most adolescent boys do, I rebelled against what was being force-fed to me prior. The first albums I ever owned, as my albums that I could go and listen to on my own, were given to me by my babysitter. It was Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, it was Kiss’s Alive 2 and Destroyer, AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds and TNT. That was my first ability and taste of being able to experience that music all by myself and it was my choice to listen to it. That really played a big part in the road that I went down as far as ending up in a rock band.
“One thing that I’ve always clung to very tightly is the purity and the sanctity of my writing,” adds Aaron. “The one thing that has stayed true through all those things and this country thing, is being pure to the creativity that’s coming out of me, and not allowing someone else’s opinion to sway what I’m doing. I always did that with Staind and I always have done that with this country thing.”
And the Massachusetts native is doing it again with his second solo studio album, Sinner—produced by Buddy Cannon (Kenny Chesney)—which includes Willie Nelson singing on the title track.
“Buddy Cannon picked up his cell phone and from memory, hand-dialed [Willie’s number] and 30 seconds later he hung up the phone and said, ‘Yeah, he’ll be in.’ The same thing that happened with George Jones and Charlie Daniels on ‘Country Boy’ (a single from Aaron’s 2011 EP, The Town).
Sinner Track Listing with songwriters:
“Sinner” (featuring Willie Nelson) | Aaron Lewis
“That Ain’t Country” | Aaron Lewis
“Whiskey And You” | Lee Thomas Miller, Chris Stapleton
“Northern Redneck” | Aaron Lewis
“Mama” | Aaron Lewis
“Sunday Every Saturday Night” | Aaron Lewis, Ira Dean
“Lost and Lonely” | Aaron Lewis
“Story of My Life” | Aaron Lewis
“Stuck in These Shoes” | Aaron Lewis
“I Lost It All” | Aaron Lewis
“Travelin’ Soldier” | Bruce Robison
“My goal [for the album] at the end of the day is to feel like I said too much in every song. That’s the only way it’s really a piece of me at the end of the day. That’s the only way it makes it so that I can really recall the emotions and the feelings that I was having when these songs were coming out of me—to be able to repeat them when I play them live, to be able to translate that emotion that was behind those lyrics in the live performance. It’s more about that at the end of the day than it is trying to convey a message or to have something specific to say.”
Recorded at Blackbird studios in Nashville, Sinner was created in less than a day. All 11-tracks were laid down in only 16 hours.
“What I basically turned in as my final product would have been the starting point of the recording process, normally. Even in my career previous to this with Staind—what I handed in was the starting point. Then one at a time, each band member would have three or four weeks to be able to replace the live take with take, after take, after take, after take so that they could then chop it all up into pieces and put it back together as perfection. That’s the process nowadays. That’s how I’ve made every Staind record too. It’s not something that I’m so opposed to—that I’ve never done before. I’ve always done it. But I wanted to do it the way that they had to do it back in the day, when there wasn’t a computer that could cut everything up into little pieces and put it all back together again perfectly. I wanted it to be real. I wanted it to be what it was. There’s no extra layering. There’s no extra anything. If it’s on the take, it was because somebody was playing it live right then at that moment.”
Sinner contains nine tracks written by Aaron, with two covers—”Whiskey and You,” a Chris Stapleton tune and “Travelin’ Soldier,” a Bruce Robison song that the Dixie Chicks covered. The latter includes a lead vocal appearance from Aaron’s daughter, Zoe Jane.
“She was 13 at the time. She has turned 14 since,” Aaron beams when the subject changes to his daughter. “I just wanted to make a memory with her that no one could ever take away, no matter what. That’s a big one. That was the first time she had ever heard herself come through a microphone and through a set of headphones into her ears. She doesn’t want anything to do with [the business] because she’s seen the other side. She’s 14 and she’s got an amazing head on her shoulders. She knows she’s not old enough yet. She wants to continue living her childhood and like I said, she has seen the other side. The side that has cost both of us many, many, many memories that I wasn’t there to make with her.”
As for Staind, the future is uncertain but the possibility of getting together for future projects is not one Aaron will turn away from. “I’m completely focused and completely content with the direction that I’m going in now,” says Aaron. “Do I think that somewhere in the future there could be room for a handful of Staind festival shows? Like radio festivals on the rock side of things—handful of those in the summertime? Why not? If I still can, why not? My focus and my home, as far as I’m concerned, is right where I’m at.”
The ongoing debate about today’s country music not being “real country” continued this week when Aaron Lewis—lead singer of the rock group Staind and now country singer—stepped onto a Colorado stage and told the audience the inspiration behind his latest country single,”That Ain’t Country.”
