DAVE'S DIARY - 8/2/2016 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 11 - SERIES 29
DON HENLEY AND GLENN FREY EAGLES TRIBUTE HEADLINE NU COUNTRY TV
Eagles co-founders Don Henley and late actor Glenn Frey headline Nu Country TV this Saturday February 13 on Channel 31/ Digital 44 at 9.30 pm in our tribute to Frey who died at 67 on January 19.
Fellow singing actor Tim McGraw also joins fellow recent Australian tourists Big & Rich on the show repeated Monday 2.30 pm, Wednesday 7.30 am and Thursday 3 am.
Florida Georgia Line return on the eve of their debut Australian tour on the program filmed and edited by Laith Graham.
Expat Aussie singer-songwriters Dianna Corcoran and Charlie Forster Anderson showcase videos from their new homes in Nashville and Brooklyn in New York City .
Nu Country TV is a highlight of 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
GLENN FREY FLASHBACK TO ACTING
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When Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey died on January 19 he left more than a rich catalogue of songs from legendary Eagles and successful solo career.
Frey, who turned 67 in November, underwent major surgery that month for long-standing intestinal issues - result of his early band days involving drugs and alcohol that he had battled since the early 1980s.
Frey died at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York City after suffering a bout of pneumonia, as well as complications from rheumatoid arthritis and acute ulcerative colitis.
He was born in Detroit on November 6, 1948, and grew up in suburban Royal Oak with his father - an auto factory worker - and his mother who baked pies at General Motors .
Glenn and Don Henley met in 1970 in Linda Rondstadt's band and teamed with Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner to form the Eagles in 1971.
Frey was also an accomplished actor who landed many songs in movies and TV shows.
The singer debuts in our Behind Bars with historic Smuggler's Blues that earned an episode of the same name in the first season of TV series Miami Vice that also featured his acting.
It hit #12 on Billboard and was also on Allnighter - second of his five solo albums after the Eagles split in 1980.
Frey performed You Belong to the City from Miami Vice whose soundtrack stayed on top of U.S. album charts for 11 weeks in 1985.
He had a starring role in the Dead Dog Arc of Wiseguy and South of Sunset that was cancelled after one episode.
In the late 1990s he guested on Nash Bridges as a policeman whose teenage daughter had run amok and gone on a crime spree with her sociopathic boyfriend.
In 2002 he appeared on HBO's Arli$$, playing a political candidate who double-crosses Arliss and must pay a high price for it.
Frey also had a major role with Robert Duvall and Gary Busey in Let's Get Harry - a 1986 movie about a group of plumbers who travel to Colombia to rescue a friend from a drug lord.
He had a smaller role in Cameron Crowe's third film, Jerry Maguire .
Frey played the frugal general manager of the Arizona Cardinals football team who, in the film's climax, finally agrees to pay Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character, wide receiver Rod Tidwell, a large professional contract.
In 1984 he recorded worldwide hit The Heat Is On - main theme from Eddie Murphy's action comedy film Beverly Hills Cop.
Frey also contributed his Flip City to the Ghostbusters II soundtrack and Part of Me, Part of You to the Thelma & Louise soundtrack.
During Frey's solo career he had 12 chart songs in the U.S. Top 100 - 11 co-written with Jack Tempchin who also penned Peaceful Easy Feeling .
Glenn and Henley co-wrote many Eagles hits including Hotel California, Desperado, On The Border, Tequila Sunrise, Best of My Love, Good Day in Hell, James Dean, Lying Eyes, After The Thrill Is Gone, One Of These Nights and New Kid In Town .
The band split in 1980, reformed 14 years later and landed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
The Eagles won six Grammys and sold more records than any other band in the 1970s with four consecutive No. 1 albums and five No. 1 singles.
They sold more than 150 million copies of their seven albums.
Further info - http://www.eagles.com/splash
DON HENLEY DREAMING WITH DOLLY
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Septuagenarian singing actor Dolly Parton joins young Don Henley, now 68, in their revamp of Louvin Brothers classic When I Stop Dreaming from his fifth solo album Cass County..
Henley returned to tiny Texas hometown Linden for the inspiration of his Cass County songs.
Co-produced with Stan Lynch, former drummer with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, the 16 song deluxe disc includes Billy Sherrill-penned classic Too Far Gone with harmonists Jamey Johnson and Alison Krauss and Jesse Lee Kincaid's She Sang Hymns Out of Tune.
He also featured new originals written with Lynch, including first single Take a Picture of This - saga of a failing relationship.
Henley released divorce fuelled single Words Can Break Your Heart , featuring Georgian Trisha Yearwood, in November.
Trisha also joins Henley on Praying For Rain - sibling of another agrarian song Train In The Distance .
Henley duets with Merle Haggard on Cost Of Living and kicks off with Tift Merritt's Bramble Rose with Miranda Lambert and Mick Jagger.
Don also revives Jesse Winchester's Brand New Tennessee Waltz and teams with Martina McBride on That Old Flame.
Vince Gill duets with Henley on No, Thank You with harmonies by Lucinda Williams and Ashley Monroe.
Henley lives with his wife and three teenage children near Dallas but his retreat is a 200-acre farm outside Linden .
"Every time I go back there, I have a lot of mixed emotions. I see the things that I love about the place, but I also see the things that drove me away from it,” Henley says of his Cass County roots.
“So it's an ongoing conundrum. It's a paradox. I'm both attracted and repelled by it. I think small towns are a microcosm for America . That's how I feel about my country. I love my country. I'm loyal to my country. I want to help my country, but my country also really disappoints me and makes me angry and frustrated sometimes.”
Henley 's last solo album was Inside Job in 2000 and final album with the Eagles was Long Road Out Of Eden in 2007.
Further info - http://www.donhenley.com/
TIM MCGRAW SERVES UP BIG & RICH
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Singing actor Tim McGraw plays bartender in the latest video by Big & Rich who made their second Australian tour in 2015.
McGraw, 48, served drinks to a loser in love at a bar in Dickson - one time home of veteran outlaw David Allan Coe - south west of Nashville .
It's also near Fairview where Steve Earle lived with Teresa - one of his seven wives.
Tim wrote Loving Lately with Big Kenny and John Rich for their fifth album Gravity.
It's part two of four-part The Gravity Quadrilogy video.
Trey Fanjoy directed the video and three others - Look at You that appeared on Nu Country on January 1, 2014 - Brand New Buzz and Gravity that make up the 20-minute mini love story.
Fanjoy says this four-in-one project required her to take the four songs, “and weave a narrative thread that would somehow connect them all together in a way that made sense.”
But each song/chapter also had to stand alone.
“Tim plays the owner of the bar and offers some wise words of advice to Carter, the young man who has recently experienced his first heartbreak,” Fanjoy says.
“I loved working with Tim. He's a total pro and a natural. It's understandable why he is a much-sought-after actor for features. He brings such authenticity and laid-back charisma to every role.”
It features the Big & Rich song, live in Las Vegas , and McGraw's been-there-done-that talk with Carter.
“I've made so many mistakes in my past, I've spent most of my life wishing my knees bent the other way so I could kick my own ass,” McGraw says.
“Mistakes, man, they're just another word for experience. When you get the real thing, you'll know it.”
CLICK HERE for a Big & Rich concert review on March 11, 2015.
CLICK HERE for a Big & Rich CD review in the Diary on August 29, 2007.
CLICK HERE for another Big & Rich CD review in the Diary on July 18, 2006.
FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE
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Florida Georgia Line enjoyed a day out of the office with girls and dogs in a different way of telling their boss to take his job and shove it in their latest video.
Sun Daze is on their second album Anything Goes they promote as they join Georgian Jason Aldean at Margaret Court Arena on March 8.
Fellow Georgian Tyler Hubbard and FGL partner Brian Kelley perform with Aldean and other international acts including Chase Rice at CMC Rocks Queensland in Ipswich .
Florida born Rice thanks fellow Floridian Kelley for historic song-writing sessions that launched their careers and brings them here.
They penned Florida Georgia Line breakthrough hit Cruise and three songs on Rice's third album Ignite The Night released here on February 26.
“Brian and I grew up together, both born in Florida . We were buddies and also wrote together when we arrived in Nashville and all lived in the same house,” Rice, 29, told Nu Country TV in a phone call from Nashville as he finished his fourth album.
“When we started writing songs together we knew we had something special. After about a year we wrote Cruise. It changed both our lives. We loved writing a lot of songs together back in the day. We were just buddies, lived together and wrote all the time until we had success. We were just writing songs for fun, luckily it's turned into a pretty cool career for both of us.”
The Rice family moved to North Carolina where Chase went to college in Chapel Hill before heading to Nashville at 22.
He took a short hiatus for reality TV show Survivor: Nicaragua stint when working for NASCAR .
Kelley and Hubbard met as Nashville university church youth group worship leaders in 2008 before forming their band in 2010.
They precede all concerts with prayers.
Although Hubbard and Kelly are prolific songwriters, they won't insist on writing their entire third album.
“We've written most of them but we're never opposed to outside songs,” Hubbard says.
“We're always listening to songs. We always say, ‘better is better.' If a song comes in that we didn't write, but we feel like we would have wrote it, we'll cut it. We've fallen in love and singled songs that we haven't written several times. We try not to put ourselves in any kind of box and say, ‘We have to write the whole album,' but we definitely write the majority of it.”
Further info - http://floridageorgialine.com/
DIANNA CORCORAN GOD DID GOOD
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Parkes raised singer Dianna Corcoran performs live at the Batman building in downtown Nashville in her video for God Did Good. Dianna, now 36, and her male lead created perfect paper partners for the clip of her first single from fifth album In America cut in Nashville . Dual Golden Guitarist Dianna moved there in 2011 and co-wrote God Did Good with Kristian Bush of Sugarland and Jeff Cohen and produced it herself. Corcoran co-wrote all 12 album's tracks and says that everything on the record is “real, 100-percent true.” |
“I don't have anything against recording somebody else's songs,” she said, “but I don't have many rules, but if I have one, it's to be authentic, and it's easiest to be authentic if I'm telling my own story.”
God Did Good is one of three songs on In America written by Bush, Cohen and Corcoran.
They penned it in the middle of the night during a writing session at Bush's home in Atlanta, Georgia, that also produced When These Wheels Hit Tennessee and Hold on Lover.
Dianna admitted she didn't know who Bush was until they'd almost finished their first song.
“ Sugarland weren't quite as big in Australia ,” she says, “but from the get-go Bush and Cohen gave me the impression that they were really, really good.”
Selecting God Did Good as first U.S. single was collaborative.
“What's close to my heart doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to translate to the audience,” Corcoran says, but something Bush told Corcoran during their writing session helped sway the decision.
Corcoran recalls Bush telling her after they finished the song “I think we just wrote a big ol' country hit.”
Another In America tune is Thank You for Cheating on Me - its second track.
“I have the ability to do the slow ballads and be incredibly serious, but then the upbeat version of me is quirky and completely off the rails,” Corcoran says.
“If you were to mash Taylor Swift's quirkiness with Shania Twain's production with Olivia Newton-John's voice, you would have me.”
Her vocal range spans nearly five octaves.
“I just wear really tight undies!” she says although she's never taken voice lessons or been trained.
In America‘s final track, A Better Me is a no-frills recording straight off of her iPhone, made as a work tape shortly after she wrote the song, and when it came time to record the album version, Corcoran felt she could do no better.
“It was really displaying what I was feeling at that time,” she explains.
“It legitimately felt like I was going to lose every bit of emotion, every authentic part of that song, if I was to re-record it.”
Corcoran spent months on radio tours to introduce herself to American audiences.
Most radio tours involve hotel stays and don't hit every market but Corcoran was different.
She logged around 40,000 miles driving herself - and every place she visits she camps and uses her YMCA membership to clean up each day though she's been using hotels during the winter months.
“I love getting to know America , I love traveling and I love driving,” Corcoran says.
She told her radio people that she wanted to meet everybody, and so “I'm trying my hardest to get at everybody.”
It's an unconventional method but doing her radio tour this way allows her to stretch her budget and see different places.
“Sometimes it's scary, sometimes it's fun,” Corcoran admits of the camping, “but whatever is going to get me to the people, that's the most important thing.”
Further info - www.diannacorcoran.com
CHARLIE FORSTER ANDERSON
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Charlie Forster Anderson blazes the mean streets of Brooklyn in New York City after growing up behind the famed Hopetown Hotel in inner Sydney suburb Surry Hills.
He debuts with his hot band on Let It Be Right, Let Her Be Mine from his album Long Story Short out on Banta Records in March.
The album was recorded old-school-style live to analogue tape at Linear Recording Studios with producer Nick Franklin.
He released a five-song EP Banter in 2014 to showcase his blend of rock, country and folk.
“I'm from Sydney , but I literally just moved to Williamsburg Brooklyn, New York City on Saturday,” Charlie told Nu Country late last year.
“I've moved over here to try and tackle the Americana market and hopefully use that to gain some momentum back home in booking tours and festivals.
“I've applied to a couple of festivals back home such as Bluesfest, Woodford and things like that but my album release might be a bit late this year to hit up those.
“I'm also trying to book an extensive tour of the states and Canada in June/July 2016 once this record is out and then hopefully a tour of the major cities in Australia off the back of that.”
The singer released another video Blue Anymore in January.
Further info - www.forsteranderson.com/
HOW TO KEEP NU COUNTRY ON AIR
We need your support as we celebrate the 29th series of Nu Country TV with Australian record companies and artists who teamed to ensure our survival.
Sony has given us the latest CD and DVD by Georgian star Jason Aldean on the eve of his debut Australian tour in March.
We also have Angels And Alcohol - 20th album by fellow Georgian superstar Alan Jackson and Adam Harvey's 12th album Harvey's Bar - The Backyard Sessions .
Also new CDS by major artists you can win by becoming a Nu Country TV member or renewing membership.
They include singing actors Willie Nelson, Tim McGraw and Toby Keith, Ashley Monroe, Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Gary Allan, Dierks Bentley, Eric Church, Charley Pride and more.