15 June 2008
Summertime, Kid Rock style
Do I risk blowing any music cred I might have ever built up on the little blog by admitting that I think this is a pretty cool song?
Oh well, too bad. I think this is a pretty cool song.
It probably doesn't hurt that he plays off two pretty good songs in themselves.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/15/08 19:02 | Music | Technorati |
10 October 2007
The perfect Nashville tour
My friends R and Mr. Hutchison have come up with the PERFECT name for a music tour featuring Kenny Chesney and the Dixie Chicks.
Well done!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/10/07 09:30 | Music | Technorati |
14 September 2007
And one more, for good measure
Music inspires Kenny Chesney after difficult times (Nekesa Mumbi Moody, AP)
You could say that Kenny Chesney, with a top tour, hit after hit and another multiplatinum album, enjoyed an amazing last couple of years — but you'd be wrong. Yes, he accomplished all that. But, enjoy it? That's another matter.
2006 was another pinnacle [Nashville loves a leading man of multiple pinnacles!] in the seemingly unstoppable career of the country superstar, but it also may have been his most frustrating time as an artist — and a person.
Chesney was still reeling from his very public breakup of his brief marriage to Academy Award-winner Renee Zellweger (and the tabloid frenzy that followed), and felt particularly uninspired, even when it came to what he loved most — touring.
"I wasn't mentally ready to go on the road, after all the media stuff that happened with the breakup with Renee, I just mentally wasn't ready to go, so all last year, even though I had fun and the whole tour was amazing ... mentally I just wasn't 100 percent there," he admits. [shocking!]He was even reluctant to work on a follow-up to his multiplatinum 2005 album, The Road and the Radio, which featured such hits as Beer in Mexico.
"Last year at the CMA Awards ... he said to me, 'I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get this record done; I don't know what I want to say,'" Joe Galante, head of Sony Nashville, recalls Chesney saying. [Wow--he'd been SUCH an involved songwriter before! I mean, he wrote ONE WHOLE SONG on his 2005 album!]
Galante didn't want to push his superstar to make a record he wasn't ready to make. But he told him to take a crack at it, and see if something might give him inspiration. [like, oh, I don't know, other people's work?]
Just as Galante suspected, the inspiration did come [that's how the Nashville Musical Shite Factory operates -- labels push the pretty little faces to record other people's work, as quickly as possible, and call it "inspiration"] — though not from the usual sources. Chesney, who has written or co-written tunes for all of his previous albums [note that having at least one songwriting credit on an album is actually being touted as a big damn deal here], found the most personal and profound [when I think profound, I think Kenny Chesney!] songs for his new disc, Just Who I Am: Poets and Pirates, from the pens of others [that last clause is WAY too accurate!]. The album, on sale Tuesday, doesn't contain one song written by Chesney. Even so, he considers it perhaps the one that reveals his true emotions more than any other [He's free at last from having to pretend he's anything but a pretty face performing the music the Nashville suits put in front of him -- that must be liberating indeed!], especially with songs like "Wife and Kids," where he wistfully yearns [!?] for the perfect family life that now eludes him, and Better as a Memory, in which he lists his own shortcomings as a mate."This record opens me up a little bit more, and I'm letting that happen more and more, and that's tough for a guy like me, who's constantly got a wall up," says the congenial Chesney, relaxing at a Manhattan studio a few hours before a concert at Madison Square Garden.
"There's a piece of me in all of these songs, there's a whole lot of me in the majority of them," [the label probably focus-grouped them to make sure they matched! heh] he continues. "'Better as a Memory,' that's probably one of the most brutally honest songs that I've ever recorded about me [Not written, mind you -- recorded], and it's a letter that I've probably written to a lot of girls before." [Probably? He doesn't know?]
As Galante puts it: "I think he let people into the issues that are facing him." [Okee!]
That profile was just painful. I think I've helped it out considerably!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/14/07 21:28 | Music | Technorati |
28 July 2007
Catch Jack Saunders and Rick Poss Sunday
My friend and guitarist extraordinaire Rick Poss will be playing with Jack Saunders at tomorrow's Houston Press Music Awards Showcase.
They play at 6 pm at Slainte Sunday.
Saunders is an old accomplished hand as Houston's folk/acoustic/songwriter scene goes, but I'm really looking forward to hearing Rick play (it's been a while). He's as smooth and precise as they come on guitar.
Incidentally, Rick's just finished a solo project of his own. I'm looking forward to giving it a listen.
UPDATE (07-29-2007): Rick sounded as good as ever. And Houston live music attendees were in their usual form, talking over the performance. The more I travel, the more I'm convinced that Houstonians are some of the rudest, most ill-mannered people anywhere.
Also of note: Downtown was overrun with pushy vagrants, but I didn't see a single cop. That says a lot about the current state of affairs in the city, really.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 07/28/07 23:23 | Music | Technorati |
06 April 2007
Austin Collins at the Firehouse
A couple of my friends from the (sadly) defunct Dead End Angels are playing with Austin Collins now.
He's opening at the Firehouse tonight, so I'm planning on checking it out.
I haven't ever seen the guy live, and have only heard a few tracks off his CD (well before the revamped rhythm section). I haven't been seeing very many shows of late. I hope the smoke doesn't kill us. Blar.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/06/07 19:58 | Music | Technorati |
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