DAVE'S DIARY - 26/9/2016 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 2 - SERIES 31
ERIC TAKES BLAKE AND BRAD TO CHURCH ON NU COUNTRY TV
Nouveau outlaw Eric Church enlivens Nu Country TV with his latest hit video on Channel 31/Digital 44 on Saturday October 1 at 9.30 pm.
Voice judge and mentor Blake Shelton returns to the show with a double shot of his songs from 12th album If I'm Honest in Behind Bars, repeated Monday at 2.30 am.
And West Virginia born guitar Brad Paisley recruited his latest duet partner Demi Lovato to adorn his new video on the show filmed and edited by Laith Graham.
Expat South Londoner Mark Lucas and his Sydney band The Dead Setters debut and Rowville singer-songwriter Rick Hart name checks late singing actor Levon Helm in his return.
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/series/487
ERIC CHURCH ENJOYS ANOTHER RECORD YEAR
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North Carolina born singer-songwriter Eric Church pays homage to his outlaw heroes who debuted on vinyl in their rise to the top.
Church, 39, swears on a stack of Bibles that vinyl is final in his seventh #1 hit Record Year - a highlight of his big selling sixth album Mr Misunderstood.
Eric recently revealed how important vinyl records are to him and what happens when you only listen to music digitally.
“There are a lot of people out there that forgot how good vinyl, or the way that it was recorded, sounds,” Church explained.
“We're so much in ear-buds and iPhones and all these ways we listen, we forget that music was more than just a backbeat or more than just 120 b.p.ms. It's emotional, dynamic. I think that vinyl is the best interpretation that we have.”
Church believes vinyl is about escapism and much different from 99-cent downloads many people listen to.
“I mean, we make music so rushed now. It's so frenetic. I never view music that way. I've always viewed it as a way to escape from what's going on,” Church added.
“For me, when you put a needle in vinyl, you're committed. You're in. You're in until that's done, and then you can either flip the record or try something else, but you're in.
“And I think that that escapism - that getting away from the world - is something that I think society is longing for.”
Church drove his message with a lyric about “slowly planning my survival in a 3-foot stack of vinyl.”
“I've done that where you take your records out and go, ‘OK by the time I get to the bottom of this stack, I'm gonna be better or worse, and this is where I'm heading. The great thing about music is, it can become a point of therapy and healing.”
CLICK HERE for a Church interview in The Diary on March 1, 2014.
CLICK HERE for our Membership page to win a Church CD.
BLAKE SHELTON HOT GOSPEL BEHIND BARS
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Oklahoma superstar Blake Shelton returns with a double shot from his 12th album If I'm Honest in Behind Bars.
Shelton, 40, rips up his back pages in She's Got Away With Words where he loses in love to former singing spouse - Texan Miranda Lambert, 32 - and poker.
Twice wed Blake boomeranged into the arms of an older woman - singer Gwen Stefani, 46 - one of his protégés in his role as judge and mentor on The Voice .
Blake and Gwen performed a duet on their joint composition Go Ahead And Break My Heart on The Voice and Billboard Music Awards on May 22.
Shelton harvested hay from heartbreak after divorce from Pistol Annies co-founder Miranda - they were engaged in May 2010 and wed on May 14, 2011 at Don Strange Ranch in Boerne, Texas.
On July 20, 2015, they announced their divorce after four years of marriage.
The Voice host also honoured another voice - his Savior's Shadow - in his gospel gallop.
Shelton sits on a stool with his acoustic guitar, and the black and white film makes it even more subdued.
While the video is serious, the lyrics dig deep into Shelton's emotions.
The song came to him via a dream in May 2015 after his divorce from Miranda.
“That's when it became apparent that, you know, things weren't going to work out with my marriage,” Shelton confessed.
“We both knew that it wasn't going to work out, and I was walking around, randomly singing that song to myself, and somehow it would make me feel better.”
Though Shelton had heard songs in dreams before, this was the first time he remembered it.
He sang the first verse into his voice memo but didn't really understand what it meant.
“At first I thought it was that I'm so sad and pitiful that even God feels sorry for me and He's crying for me.”
But as time went on, Shelton says, “and then I thought, ‘no, it's just that He's on this journey with me and He's walking with me.'”
He sent the memo to songwriter Jessi Alexander who shared it with her singing spouse Jon Randall - one of Nashville icon Lorrie Morgan's six husbands.
When Randall sent Shelton the finished song he listened to it three times and “cried as if someone I loved just died in front of me.”
Shelton says his gospel song, released as a single to Christian radio in April, may shock some listeners.
“This is from a different place. I feel like that song helped save my life,” Shelton explained.
“I'm not trying to get a No. 1 song out of this. I just feel like it needs to be shared with everybody. I feel like people need to be aware of this song for whatever it might mean to them.
CLICK HERE for a feature on Blake's album If I'm Honest in the Diary on May 27.
CLICK HERE for our Membership page to win Blake's new CD.
BRAD PAISLEY TRIUMPHS WITHOUT A FIGHT
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West Virginian recruited singing actress Demo Lovato, a flaming guitar and a fall in his video for latest single Without A Fight from his 12th album.
“We cut a little song that came out a week ago," Paisley revealed on stage in California in May.
"We've never, ever performed this song live together in front of an audience. You guys are the first ones," New Mexico born Lovato, who has released five albums, told the audience.
Paisley also paid a compliment to Lovato, now 24 - "this is about the greatest singer you will ever hear. I am so thrilled to finally hear you through."
Lovato scored fame with Selena Gomez in Disney TV series Barney & Friends and Camp Rock as a child star.
At 43 Brad enjoys life with his actress wife Kimberley Williams and their two sons and finds time to frequent a Freemasons lodge in Civil War town Franklin, south of Nashville.
Paisley released his book Diary of a Player: How My Musical Heroes Made a Guitar Man Out of Me in 2011 for Howard Books.
He co-wrote it with author David Wild - contributing editor for Rolling Stone and Emmy nominated TV writer and producer.
The autobiography details Paisley's introduction to the music industry and how the events in his life helped to prepare him for what was up ahead.
It features topics such as the first guitar his grandfather gave him, his first band the C-notes, first song he wrote, and many more music/guitar related topics.
CLICK HERE for a Brad Paisley feature in The Diary on September 15, 2014.
CLICK HERE for our Membership page to win a Paisley CD.
MARK LUCAS SLIP OF THE TONGUE IN SIN CITY
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Expat former South Londoner busker Mark Lucas and his hot studio band The Dead Setters perform live in a sin city bar in his adoptive home north of the Murray Dixon line.
Slip Of The Tongue is on Mark's seventh album Continental Drift on Laughing Outlaw Records - operated by Van Diemen's Land refugee and author Stuart Coupe.
Lucas arrived on the mean streets of Sydney 25 years ago with just a Martin guitar and suitcase of clothes and songs.
He performed with the Parwills band and was entertainment booker from 2008 for the Petersham Bowling Club music venue where many artists got their break.
It was where he was opening act for fellow Englishman Albert Lee - guitarist in Emmylou Harris's famed Hot Band - who toured here in the eighties in a duo with Oklahoma born star Vince Gill.
And, of course, the legendary Danny O'Keefe - writer of Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues and many memorable songs covered by artists diverse as Elvis Presley, Charlie Rich, Willie Nelson, Mel Tormé, Dwight Yoakam, Jerry Lee Lewis, Cab Calloway, Leon Russell and Waylon Jennings.
Many of the songs by Lucas, who honed his craft as a teenage busker in London's underground subway after leaving school in 1974, are reality driven social comment tunes.
CLICK HERE for a Lucas interview in The Diary.
ROWVILLE RICK HART CHANNELS LEVON HELM
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Rowville singer-songwriter Rick Hart exercise clever use of a Levon Helm metaphor in his latest video for the title track of his new EP.
Rick Hart became Biblical in his angst anthem about a victim of the demon drink.
There were two victims there - singing actor Levon Helm seems the innocent party.
The late singing-drummer for the famed Bob Dylan discovery The Band also played Loretta Lynn's dad in the Coal-Miner's Daughter movie .
Hart previously appeared on Nu Country with his video for Hummingbirds shot at Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges.
Director James Daniel filmed the video and Spiral - title track of his debut EP - on the historic streets of Carlton and Fitzroy with landmarks such as a small post office in Carlton and alleys off Nicholson and Brunswick Streets in Fitzroy.
Further info - www.rickhartmusic.com
HOW TO KEEP NU COUNTRY ON AIR
We need your support as we celebrate Nu Country TV's 31st series with Australian record companies and artists teaming to ensure our survival.
Warner Brothers promo wizard Tony Midolo has given us Blake Shelton's CD If I'm Honest and Sony has donated the latest CD and DVD by Georgian star Jason Aldean.
We also have Angels And Alcohol - 20th album by fellow Georgian superstar Alan Jackson.
Also 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.
CLICK HERE for our Membership Page for full details.