DAVE'S DIARY - 2 MARCH 2015 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 1 - SERIES 26
GOLDEN GUITARISTS THE MCCLYMONTS HEADLINE NU COUNTRY TV SERIES #26 PREMIERE
Grafton born Golden Guitarists The McClymonts headline the Nu Country TV Series #26 premiere in new time slot - 10.30 pm - Saturday March 7 on Channel 31, Digital 44.
The trio return in a mini-documentary after their latest triumph in the 43rd Tamworth Country Music Festival in January.
International March tourists the Zac Brown Band and Chris Young also return on the eve of their second Australian tour.
Voice judge, coach and singer Blake Shelton also appears on the show repeated Monday 5.30 am and 2.30 pm and Thursday 2.30 am.
Host chef Mid Pacific Bob Olson also discovers and feeds spiritual sustenance to former homeless busker Doug Seegers from the streets of Nashville in Behind Bars .
The Texan Josh Abbott Band also return Behind Bars in a show filmed and edited by Laith Graham.
Nu Country TV is a highlight of the C 31 streaming list on Digital 44.
Just follow this link on your computer or mobile phone - http://www.c31.org.au/program/view/program/nu-country-tv
MCCLYMONTS WEDDING SONG
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The McClymonts perform a wedding song on the majestic second floor balcony of a mansion and dance in pastures in their video of Forever Begins Tonight on their dual Golden Guitar winning fourth album Here's To You & I .
Sisters Mollie and Brooke McClymont wrote Forever Begins Tonight with sibling Samantha, 27, on the eve of her wedding to her pilot beau Ben Poxon.
They then performed their new tune at the couple's wedding at MONA in Van Diemen's Land in December.
“We were looking at all the songs we have and realised we didn't have a wedding song,” Mollie, 26, confessed.
“Sam getting married was huge and we didn't have a song for that. Everyone loves a wedding song, they're not going out of fashion any time soon.”
Producer Lindsay Rimes was the fourth co-writer on the song that scored airplay on Smooth-FM after the album was released in July.
It may boomerang at the wedding of Mollie and fiancé Aaron Young.
Brooke, 31, is married to musician-singer Adam Eckersley whose band tours with The McClymonts whose latest Golden Guitars were for best group and highest selling album of the year.
They play CMC Rocks Queensland at Ipswich next week before a Victorian tour in April.
CLICK HERE for a McClymonts story in The Diary on January 25, 2010.
CHRIS YOUNG BILLBOARD BOUND
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Tennessean Chris Young returns with a song he performs at the Billboard club in Russell Street next Wednesday with Big & Rich and Cowboy Troy live in concert . Who Am I With You is on Chris's 4th album A.M. Young, 29, also plays a Sydney concert and CMC Rocks Queensland festival at Ipswich next week on his second Australian tour. Chris was born in Murfreesboro - his grandfather, Richard Yates, was a performer on Louisiana Hayride. His second album, The Man I Want to Be released in September 2009, was produced by James Stroud and included covers of Waylon Jennings' Rose in Paradise as a duet with Willie Nelson and Tony Joe White's Rainy Night in Georgia. Young's single Tomorrow was his fourth straight #1 and first platinum single. Third album Neon , released in July 2011, included his fifth consecutive #1 hit You , title track, and I Can Take It from There. |
The AM first single Aw Naw peaked at #3 in November 2013, followed by Who I Am with You and Lonely Eyes .
CLICK HERE for a Young feature in the Diary on January 9, 2013.
CLICK HERE for a CD review in the Diary on October 2, 2013.
CLICK HERE to win a Chris Young CD on our membership page.
ZAC BROWN BAND LET IT RAIN
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Treble Grammy winners the Zac Brown Band perform Let It Rain from their Dave Grohl sessions on the eve of their second Australian tour that includes festivals at Byron Bay and Deniliquin.
The band recently released new single Homegrown from its sixth album on Republic and plays a sold out show at the historic St Kilda Palais on March 31 after debuting at the Myer Music Bowl in 2013 with the Jason Mraz Band.
Zac's band was joined in previous video by Dave Grohl, steel guitarist AJ Ghent and Allman Brothers bassist Oteil Burbridge.
The band is now an octet - bassist Matt Mangano joined in 2014 before a tour with Grammy winning Texan Kacey Musgraves, making her Australian debut in March at CMC Rocks Queensland in Ipswich .
CLICK HERE for an exclusive Zac Brown feature in the Diary on November 2, 2011.
CLICK HERE for a Zac CD review on August 8, 2012.
CLICK HERE for another CD review on August 9, 2010.
BLAKE SHELTON BRINGS BACK THE SUNSHINE
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Oklahoma star Blake Shelton took a trip home to Ada for the video of the title track of his 11th album Bringing Back The Sunshine . Shelton , 38, won his fifth CMA male vocalist award on the 48th Awards show in November and his singing spouse Miranda Lambert performed her latest single Little Red Wagon on the Grammys in February. Blake also enlisted Miranda and the Pistol Annies to fire up a previous video for Boys Round Here from eighth album Based On a True Story . He also made a Valentine's Day video for Doing What She Likes featuring him talking on the phone to Miranda, 31, offering to make her dinner. They married on May 14, 2011, and live on their ranch at Tishomingo. Miranda opened her new no-kill animal Redemption Ranch shelter in Tishomingo. |
Her Mutt Nation Foundation charity and pet food company Pedigree Lambert took over the government-run dog shelter and turned it into a home for dogs to be adopted.
It holds up to 50 dogs in large kennels, and features new fencing, Airstream trailer office, and intensive care unit.
Lambert, who has seven rescue dogs and five rescue cats of her own, launched Mutt Nation Foundation in 2009, and raised more than $1.5 million for treatment, housing and adoption of homeless dogs.
This is Lambert's third business in Tishomingo - she also owns clothing and gift store Pink Pistol and bed and breakfast the Ladysmith .
CLICK HERE for a new Shelton CD review in the Diary on December 15.
CLICK HERE for another Shelton CD Review in The Diary on May 5, 2013.
CLICK HERE for a Shelton interview in The Diary on February 21, 2011.
CLICK HERE for an Ashley feature in The Diary on May 27, 2013.
CLICK HERE to win CDS by Blake and Ashley on our membership page.
DOUG HOMELESS NO MORE
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Homeless Nashville musician Doug Seegers rose from the streets to a major record deal after recording his video for Going Down To The River.
It proves why the New York born singer, now 63, is no longer homeless
Swedish country singers Jill Johnson and Magnus Carlson joined Doug who ascended from Nashville Rescue Mission shelter for hundreds of homeless men, women and children to headlining next door at upmarket City Winery in less than a year
Just a month after Seegers was sleeping in the mission last year, on the other side of the world in Sweden he became a media sensation for the same music he was playing on the streets back home.
He recently performed Miami Cayamo Cruise festival with John Prine, Lucinda Williams, Lyle Lovett, Richard Thompson and Kacey Musgraves.
Seegers retired from his 40-year career in woodworking and cabinet making to busk on the streets of Nashville.
"There's an art to being a professional street singer," Seegers revealed.
“Some of that art is technical - how to pick a spot that offers shelter plus acoustics, for example. Look for an awning as well as concrete so it's got a nice reverb to it.”
Seegers' original Going Down to the River began a remarkable career change.
The country-folk ballad depicts the age-old collision of sin and salvation in starkest terms.
“I've been running with the Devil, and I know he's not my friend/ I'm going down to the river, gonna wash my soul again."
Jill Johnson filmed Seegers in late 2013 for her TV show Jill's Veranda - to show overseas audiences what real country music looked and sounded like in its cradle.
Before then Seegers lived in homeless camps and shelters, battling addiction problems and skirmishes with the law.
The craft of his songs, street-honed magnetism as performer, and reedy power of singing convinced people including a waiter at The Old Spaghetti Factory to post clips of him on YouTube .
The Long Island native grew up loving Osborne Brothers , Hank Williams and Gram Parsons.
In the 1970s moved to Austin to start a band with friend Buddy Miller.
Seegers performed as Duke the Drifter - a combination of his mother's nickname for him and Hank Williams' alter ego Luke the Drifter .
He left the band and Texas , returned to New York and raised a family, supporting himself with woodworking.
In the mid-'90s he gave Nashville a shot - by day making cabinets to subsidise his rounds at writers' nights and open mics.
But layoffs turned him to street singing and street living.
By 2013 he says "I was disgusted with the way I was living."
When Johnson's camera crew found him he resolved to change his life while licking his wounds from a bad breakup.
On a whim, he gave the performance seen on Swedish TV outside The Little Pantry That Could on Charlotte Street .
The episode featuring Seegers, aired in March 2014, and made him an instant celebrity in Scandinavia .
A speedy recording of Going Down to the River cut at Cash Cabin in Hendersonville , zoomed to No. 1 on Sweden 's iTunes chart.
The public clamour scored Seegers a Swedish tour and dates on festivals with Neil Young.
After that success Seegers went to Nashville 's Sound Emporium for a hastily arranged session with producer Will Kimbrough.
Kimbrough called someone he thought would want to hear this left-field discovery - Buddy Miller.
Miller, now music producer for the Nashville TV show, was en route to another gig when he got the call from Kimbrough.
At first the name Doug Seegers didn't ring a bell.
Then Kimbrough mentioned Miller might have known him under the name Duke .
"He turned the car right around, that's the truth," Seegers said.
"I'd been here all this time, with this other name, and he had no idea who I was!"
Miller ended up guesting on Going Down to the River (Rounder ) - a 12-song album featuring Miller on a cover of Hank Williams' There'll Be No Teardrops Tonight and Emmylou Harris duet on Gram Parsons classic She .
Seegers' originals include album entrée Angie's Song where he pledges to prove his love by springing his baby from jail: "Let me be the one who cries and moans to the hanging judge, 'Gotta give my baby some bail!' "
"People come up and tell me they love my music because it sounds old-school," Seegers says.
Seegers recently recorded duets album with Jill Johnson - originals and classics such as Emmylou's Gram tribute Boulder to Birmingham .
The project brings the past year full circle.
"What happened was a result of God being proud of me and happy for me," he says.
"I believe God sent Jill Johnson my way."
Further info - https://www.facebook.com/dougseegersofficial
JOSH ABBOTT BAND HANGING AROUND
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Josh Abbott returned to West Texas home town Lubbock to perform Hanging Around from major label EP Tuesday Night .
The band rocked roadhouses for a decade but Tuesday Night debuted at #12 on Billboard .
It helped cement the Lubbockian as a rising star in a country scene spanning Texas and Nashville.
“We really love so much of the country music coming out of Nashville . Eric Church, Zac Brown Band , Dierks Bentley, Lady Antebellum , Lee Brice and Jerrod Niemann,” Abbott revealed.
“Those are the ones making what we consider country music, and we like it all. Everyone else seems to want a crossover hit. And there's a tendency to stick to what sells. But any time you hear someone like Dierks, who hasn't given in to that bro-country movement, that's the kind of music we like.”
Abbott is following other bands that started in Texas then made it internationally - Dixie Chicks, Eli Young Band , Kacey Musgraves, Miranda Lambert and more.
“That's the goal, you know. We signed the deal so we could take the music to more people and succeed on a national level. On our own terms. We want to release a song that's not just a Texas No. 1 but a national No. 1,” Abbott added.
“Anybody can put together a band and learn a bunch of other people's songs, but what separates you from other people is if you write your own songs. In Texas , that's what weeds you out.
“We're not millionaires, but we make good money and have a great fan base. I always thought, ‘As long as I can make $50,000 a year doing music that beats an office job for sure.' Any night we get to do this it's all good.”
Further info - joshabbottband.com
HOW TO KEEP NU COUNTRY ON AIR
We need your support as we celebrate the 26th series of Nu Country TV.
Australian record companies and artists have joined forces to ensure our survival.
We have new CDS by major artists you can win by becoming a Nu Country TV member or renewing your membership.
They include singing actors Willie Nelson and Tim McGraw, Voice judge Blake Shelton, Ashley Monroe, Brad Paisley, Gary Allan, Toby Keith, Dierks Bentley, Eric Church, Chris Young, Charley Pride, Slim Dusty, Kacey Jones, Rosanne Cash and more.
We also have DVDS by Lady Antebellum.
CLICK HERE for our Membership Page for full details.