DAVE'S DIARY - 14/11/2016 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 9 - SERIES 31
SINGING ACTOR TRACE ADKINS AND MIRANDA LAMBERT HEADLINE NU COUNTRY TV
Singing actor Trace Adkins and Texan Miranda Lambert headline N u Country TV on Channel 31/Digital 44 on Saturday November 19 at 9.30 p.m.
Adkins and Lambert premiere new videos on the show that is repeated on Monday at 2.30 a.m.
Fellow Texan Jack Ingram also returns in Behind Bars in the program filmed and edited by Laith Graham.
Jim Arneman - third generation member of a famed Australian country music family - and partner Flora Smith front Melbourne band Small Town Romance in a trip to the Great Ocean Road in its Nu Country debut.
Sixth generation coal mining truck driver Gemma Louise Kirby returns and expatriate Kiwi Jason Walker debuts with duet partner Jules Crichton.
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
TRACE TORN BETWEEN JESUS AND JONES
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Louisiana born singing actor Trace Adkins drives home a Biblical message in his latest video that features a gospel choir.
Akins, now 54, eulogises two of his heroes - Jesus and late Texan country legend George Jones - in the title track of his 12th album on Broken Bow Records.
The Jesus and Jones video, shot outside Nashville, opens with Adkins and friends waking up after a boisterous Saturday night.
As they get their bearings, neighbours begin to gather for Sunday morning services.
Eventually, Adkins late-night crew arrives one by one to sing for salvation.
"If you just listen to the title of the song, Jesus and Jones , it means basically living somewhere between heaven and hell, I suppose," music video director, Peter Zavadil said.
"So where is someone in between heaven and hell? It's not the night before, it's the morning after. So it's that point where you're weighing, 'did I have good times or bad times' as you're on your way to church in the morning."
Bearing George Jones' name, the song about walking the line references the country legend's hit, White Lightning , in the lyric, "I wish I could find a gear between 'White Lightning' and John 3:16."
The video references Jones with footage of him and ironic scenes of Adkins' friends rolling into the church car park on lawnmowers.
Adkins re-creates Jones penchant for driving rider mowers to honky tonks and liquor stores when former singing spouse Tammy Wynette hid keys to his Cadillac and pick-up truck.
The song was written by Tyler Farr, Jim McCormick and Casey Beathard.
“That's where I am. I've always been in that place. I started out singing gospel music and then found myself singing George Jones songs in a beer joint,” Adkins revealed.
“So you have this kind of struggle there internally between those two things. Sometimes I'm a good boy, sometimes I'm not.”
“I've had plenty of time to document some of the trials that I've been through might as well sing about them,” Adkins says. “It seems to help a bit.”
Trace has plenty of experience to act out his roles in videos.
He played a bikie gang leader in the 2011 Lincoln Lawyer movie starring Texan Matthew McConaughey, Mom's Night Out and Wyatt Earp's Revenge .
Adkins appears with fellow singing actor Kris Kristofferson in new western Traded, filmed Stagecoach - the Texas Jack Story - with Judd Nelson and Don't Let Me Go in 2016.
CLICK HERE for a Trace Adkins CD review in The Diary on July 6, 2009.
MIRANDA LAMBERT VICE
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Miranda Lambert survived a car wreck by hitching a ride with a driver-less car in her video for her first single Vice from her seventh album The Weight of These Wings - a double disc.
Miranda wrote Vice with Josh Osborne and Shane McAnally who also penned new Dierks Bentley-Elle King hit Different for Girls.
Vice challenges that notion of dignified behavior for a woman emerging from the wreckage of a relationship.
The car wreck metaphor finds her dressing up to get drunk at home and crawling from a stranger's bed at 7 a.m. with shoes in hand.
“Sometimes when you're going through something in your life, you may run to some things you shouldn't and run from some things you shouldn't,” Lambert said of Vice .
“I think this song is an opportunity to just be honest and own it and say, ‘yeah, I have some imperfections, and I live a life, and here and there I might get in a pickle.' It's not about one thing or another. Everybody has a vice they run to when they need comfort, and I think that's what this song says.”
Miranda celebrated her 33rd birthday last week - 18 months after divorce from Oklahoma singer and Voice judge-mentor Blake Shelton - but says her disc is not divorce therapy.
“I'm never gonna have an album that's quote-unquote a heartbreak album,” Lambert says.
“Because everybody has bad moments, and then you come out of it, and you have a great moment, and then you have some sombre times. I want an emotional journey, because that's what life is, and I want to document that.”
The Weight of These Wings first disc is The Nerve and the second disc The Heart .
Lambert's co-writers on the 24 track album include new beau Anderson East, Brent Cobb, Natalie Hemby, Liz Rose, Mando Saenz, Ashley Monroe and fellow Texans Waylon Payne, Adam Hood, Jack Ingram and Jon Randall.
She also opened the Pink Pistol - a shopping boutique, in her Texas hometown Lindale on October 22.
CLICK HERE for a previous Miranda CD review in The Diary on June 23, 2014.
JACK INGRAM MIDNIGHT MOTEL
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Fellow Texan Jack Ingram, who wrote Tin Man with Jon Randall and Miranda for her new album, returns with new single I'm Drinking Through It .
Ingram retreats from a romantic hotel tiff to a bar in his song - sibling of another new tune I Feel Like Drinking Tonight - from his eighth album Midnight Motel .
Ingram, 45, says Midnight Motel offers many lessons.
“I want to be out there providing the same emotional thing that music provided me as a fan and it provides me as an artist,” Jack revealed.
“I want to give people what I want to receive, as well. I want to make music that I'm proud of through and through whether it's a hit song or not. I want it to be a hit.
“But I don't want to be out there with that being the focus. I want it to be about believing me because I'm not going to bullshit you. What I found out from experience is, 90 % of authenticity is not authentic - 100% is what it has to be. I firmly believe that.”
Ingram also included Blaine's Ferris Wheel - a ballad about a famous bar owner named Blaine Martin.
For nearly a decade, he ran San Angelo, Texas, watering hole, Blaine's Pub.
The pub website describes him as part P.T. Barnum and part Waylon Jennings type of Texas eccentric.
To avoid jail time after his fourth DUI, Martin copped a plea deal with the judge, offering $10 Ferris wheel rides as his community service with all proceeds supporting a local food bank.
The judge accepted it, and Blaine apparently holds the Guinness World Record for longest continual Ferris wheel ride.
Ingram's mostly acoustic album features his homespun philosophy in the title track, It's Always Gonna Rain, Trying, Champion of the World, Can't Get Any Better Than This and All Over Again that he played at fellow Texan Guy Clark's wake.
Midnight Motel is Jack's first studio album since Big Dreams and High Hopes in 2009.
Jack has also released four live albums and a trio disc with fellow Texans Bruce and Charlie Robison.
He debuted live in Australia at CMC Rocks The Snowys in Thredbo in 2011.
CLICK HERE for an Ingram interview in the Diary on January 18, 2011.
SMALL TOWN ROMANCE IN COLAC AND AIREY'S INLET
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Melbourne band Small Town Romance headed south west to film their video for Timber & Stone from their self-titled debut disc.
They filmed scenes at a Colac motel en route to the Great Ocean Road at Airey's Inlet.
There were also cameos of a kangaroo fleeing into the forest and a Colac timber mill.
Small Town Romance singers Flora Smith and Jim Arneman mixed plentiful pathos and humour in their video
Jim is grandson of the late Slim Dusty and Joy McKean and son of Anne Kirkpatrick and Flora spent time living in Austin, Texas, where she learned accordion.
CLICK HERE for a Small Town Romance feature in The Diary.
GEMMA LOUISE KIRBY ICE WARNING
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Sixth generation miner's daughter Gemma Louise Kirby dug deep into her family psyche to source her video for topical third single Deceiving Eyes , released in September, on her debut album Semi Precious. The clip tells of a young girl exposed to ICE (Methamphetamine) while in high school, the decision process of trying the drug for the first time and allows viewers to choose their own ending to this story. It also incorporates the story of Gemma's younger sister who got caught up in the wrong circle of friends at 15 and made life altering decisions for her and her family. Kirby rescues the victim from a bath as she dries out in the arms of her beau. Gemma, 23, hails from Bunbury in our wild-west but works as a truck driver near Ralston in Central Queensland to fund her music. |
She said her album is about asserting herself and breaking conservative traditions of Australian country music - she scrapped another album that was too formulaic two years ago.
“I don't see myself as fitting in,” she said.
“We already have an image of what an Australian country artist should look like. It's very safe.
“Two years ago I was going into the studio with these beautiful songs that were very poetic, written with a lot of people.
“I realised it didn't represent anything about me and I can't be fraudulent to myself and go in and do what other people want me to do. This album is a true reflection of me.
“Although it's a little bit outrageous, I think it's safe enough for people to enjoy.”
Further info - http://gkofficial.com/
JASON WALKER SHEDS TEARS
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Blue Mountains singer Jason Walker debuts with Tears from his Shane Nicholson produced fourth CD All Night Ghost Town.
His invisible duet partner in the ruptured romance clip is Jules Crichton.
"This song was written 16 years ago, and the late Audrey Auld and I sang together on it,” recalled Jason who left New Zealand for Sydney at 18.
“It's a song whose time is here again, if you like. I didn't have a particular agenda for it but I wanted to write a duet song of the type that Bill Chambers and Audrey perfected all those years ago. Now it's Jules Crighton and I singing of love that's better off dead."
Katie Brianna also guests on entrée Poison on the disc featuring Jeff McCormack, Steve Fielding and Michael Carpenter.
Carpenter produced Jason's previous albums Ceiling Sun Letters, Ashes & Wine and debut album Stranger to Someone.
“Making music with Jason Walker is like dissecting all of my favourite albums and making a collage from the pieces,” says Nicholson.
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 12th 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.