DAVE'S DIARY - 18/1/11 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 7 - SERIES 15
COUNTRY STARS FLOOD RELIEF TV
It's no surprise
that country artists are first out of the chute when natural disasters
strike in the unlucky radio country.
And it's not just because they can cut it live without the aid of a phalanx
of backing musicians, ecstasy bunnies and tonsorial and make-up artists.
Lee Kernaghan, Kasey Chambers and Troy Cassar-Daley proved on the Nine
Network flood relief concert their songs connect with long suffering Australians
living beyond the neon.
So it's natural we feature altruistic artists on Nu Country TV this Saturday
- January 22 - at 9.30 p m on C 31.
Northern Territory born and Mackay raised Luke Austen, who played bass
with Cassar-Daley on the Nine show, performs his video She's So You from
debut solo disc Light Of Day.
Expatriate Colac and Wallington bred Adam Brand, who worked behind the
scenes at Kinglake and Whittlesea and fund raising benefits after the
Black Saturday bushfires, returns this week.
And fellow Geelong raised benefactor and bon vivant Adam Harvey also returns
on a show featuring Mt Waverley singer Twyce Daily.
Ironically Texan Jack Ingram, a headliner at CMC Rocks The Hunter, is
surrounded by water when he reprises his video for Barefoot & Crazy.
And Kansas born Jarrod Nieman and Nashville duo Steel Magnolia debut on
the show hosted by Beer Can Hill delta flood victim Mid Pacific Bob Olson,
and repeated Monday - 3.30 am - Tuesday 4.30 p m.
LUKE AUSTEN ON CRUISE CONTROL
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Luke
Austen is well qualified to understand rural hardship. The 2010 Starmaker winner's dad is a coalminer and truckie whose livelihood was dependent on subterranean elements. Austen learned the ropes as an outback roads scholar for four years with veteran bush balladeer Brian Young. Luke, now 29, then joined Young's protégée Troy Cassar-Daley's band for another seven years on bush and coastal treks. |
Austen, raised in latter day flood ravaged Mackay, sang of his dad's dual careers in Lonely Highway and Two Miles Down and a paternal discovery in Sacred Bones.
He also honoured
embryonic employer Young in Every Time He Travels Through Cloncurry
- a song penned by latter day Yackandandah singer Pete Denahy.
But his own paternal experiences fuelled the song and video for She's
So You on Saturday's show.
Austen performs in Tamworth this week and CMC Rocks The Hunter on March
5 and 6 to promote his Compass Brothers album Light Of Day.
Click Here
for a review from the Diary on November 25.
ADAM BRAND - FIRES AND FLOODS
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Adam
Brand is fast becoming an expert on natural disasters. When he moved to Nashville with third wife Jade Hatcher to reap hay from a major record deal his adoptive city suffered devastating floods in May. Now, on a tour of Australia, to promote prophetically titled 10th album It's Gonna Be OK it's déjà vu. "The floods that have hit parts of Australia are the worst some areas have had in history," Brand, 40, told American news sites. "Regional towns have been completely cut off and the military are dropping in food and supplies." After a show in Dubbo, Adam and his band woke up to the water rising. "By that afternoon, the town was cut off from all directions," Adam said. "We managed to get out with a couple of hours to spare to our next show that night." |
Brand is
no stranger to natural disasters and the victims - his work behind the
scenes after the Black Saturday bushfires is a good example.
"These towns are the places I tour and have a lot of good friends
who today are homeless," he said.
"But just like the people of Nashville, the folks out in these country
towns of Australia are tough. We will all band together and get through
this."
Brand is likely to perform at flood relief concerts.
Meanwhile the singing spouse of Dancing With The Stars diva Jade
performs the video for It's Gonna Be OK on Nu Country.
Click Here for a Brand
feature from the Diary on March 31, 2009.
ADAM HARVEY BRINGS THE FAMILY
Geelong born Adam Harvey, winner of seven Golden Guitars, has dealt with bigger natural disasters than his hometown only winning two of the last four premierships.
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The
latter day NSW Central Coast father of two is sure to raise a hand
and glass to help flood victims in this summer of discontent. It's
not clear if any of the trio will feature at the inaugural Terang
country music festival on March 9. |
Click
Here for an Adam Harvey interview in the Diary on November 5, 2009.
JACK INGRAM ROCKS THE HUNTER
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Texan
country rocker Jack Ingram returns here for his second tour in two
years. The singing actor is a headliner at CMC Rocks The Hunter on March 5 and 6 after debuting last year at CMC Rocks The Snowys at Thredbo. Jack is the latest in a long line of Texans to hire expat South Australian Jedd Hughes for his guitar playing and songwriting. Energetic axeman Hughes sang and played on Ingram's 13th album Big Dreams & High Hopes. That was after Hughes wrote and performed with Texas born Rodney Crowell who toured here with Will Kimbrough. Ingram, 39, performs the video for Barefoot & Crazy on famed Lake Travis near Texas capital Austin. |
The singer's interview with Nu Country in 2009 was part of a Guinness World Records breaking interview marathon.
It was shortly
after Hughes joined Ingram's choir on his revamp of the 1999 Todd Snider-Ingram
song Barbie Doll.
Arizona born Australian tourist Dierks Bentley was Jack's duet partner
and Little Big Town, Lost Trailers, Randy Houser, James Otto, Hughes and
songwriter Bruce Sanders filled the redneck choir.
Ingram appeared in TV soapie Army Wives and also movies diverse
as Abilene, with Ernest Borgnine, and Hope Floats.
Click Here for a Jack
Ingram interview in the Diary on August 30, 2009.
Click Here for a new
Jack Ingram interview in the Diary.
JERROD NIEMANN NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE
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Kansas
born singer-songwriter Jerrod Niemann is not the first artist lured
to an old Nashville mansion by a young blonde. But he's probably first to have fellow singer Rachel Bradshaw - daughter of former NFL quarterback Terry Bradshaw - as his video bait. Rachel sang on Niemann's debut album Judge Jerrod and the Hung Jury and also appears in the video for What Do You Want? It was filmed at the Two Rivers Mansion near Nashville - also used by The Band Perry for their #1 hit If I Die Young. "It's a black-and-white video, and it was shot real vintage and sort of abstract," says Niemann whose hometown is quaintly named Liberal. |
"I didn't
want it to be so focused on one particular story because it's their the
viewer's imagination, and I didn't want to take away from that."
The theme entrée is akin to famed Clint Eastwood movie Play
Misty For Me where the nocturnal DJ is lured to a rendezvous by a
phone call.
"I always like twists," Niemann, now 31 said.
"I know they're videos, and I doubt anybody's ever gonna see our
video and be like, 'Ah, I never saw that coming!' But I still liked it."
Niemann flirted with fame more than a decade ago when he co-wrote the
Garth Brooks hit Good Ride Cowboy - a tribute to late rodeo rider
country star Chris LeDoux.
He recorded a pair of independent albums before signing a development
deal with a major label.
When that deal fell through he signed with Category 5 Records and charted
with single I Love Women (My Momma Can't Stand).
The label folded after the single release and album hit the cutting room
floor.
After a second record deal failed, Niemann broke up with his girlfriend,
gained 60 pounds and dealt with a serious bout of depression.
But he bounced back by focusing on Judge Jerrod, cut without a
label.
Upon completion his publisher Sea Gayle Music, founded in 1999 by Brad
Paisley, Chris DuBois and Frank Rogers, shopped it to Arista who released
it fully intact.
It includes the humorous Jamey Johnson penned ballad They Should Have
Named You Cocaine.
Jerrod's mates Johnson and Randy Houser appeared in his video for first
hit Lover, Lover - a remake of Sonia Dada's 1992 summertime smash
You Don't Treat Me No Good.
Further info - www.jerrodniemannofficial.com
STEEL MAGOLIA BLOOM
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Steel Magnolia
emerged from the same reality TV show - Can You Duet - as expat
Australians O'Shea and Joey & Rory.
That was after Texas born and Illinois raised born Joshua Scott Jones
and Louisiana lass Megan Lindsay toiled for five years as a duo after
meeting at a Nashville karaoke bar.
The duo performs the video for second single Just By Being You
on this week's show.
They wrote seven of the 12 tracks on their self-titled debut, produced
by Dan Huff and released this month on Taylor Swift's label Big Machine.
The last track, Glass Houses, is a song Josh penned solo.
"It could be something that Merle Haggard would sing, which is very
cool," Josh, 28 and a former radio station sales rep, says of the
classic-sounding tune.
"We were very glad that that song got a chance to be on the record."
They also recorded the historic Keith Urban & The Ranch song Homespun
Love.
"That was actually brought to us by Big Machine VP of A&R Allison
Jones," says Josh. "We didn't know we had a void on the record
until we recorded that song and realized we needed some of that boogie
woogie in there, and it's so cool that Keith Urban wrote it."
Though it wasn't written as a duet, Steel Magnolia put their stamp on
it. "Lyrically when you first hear it, you don't really think that
it could be a duet," says Meghan, now 25 and a former karaoke bar
manager.
"But we put our spin on it. It is so sassy. It's one of my favourite
tracks on the record. It's one that you can jam out in the car to."
Steel Magnolia's newest single is Last Night Again accompanied
by a Grease-inspired video filmed in a Nashville bowling alley.
Further info - www.myspace.com/steelmagnoliamusic
TWYCE DAILY NEVER ENOUGH
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Mt
Waverley singer-songwriter John Williams needed to distinguish himself
from other country artists who share his birth name. So the singer, who grew up in Para Hills near Adelaide, called himself Twyce Daily for his recording and video career. No chance of being mistaken for the former Echuca dairy farmer who calls himself J R Williams whose duet partners include Renee Stewart and Kasey Chambers. |
JR recently collaborated with Bill Chambers on the duet for Truck Stop Girl - also accompanied by a video.
But we don't
have that video - instead we have a pair by suburban John Williams, aka,
Twyce Daily.
Williams, 56, played in Diddy Coy with Jaq Ravens, Christine Pratico,
Janelle Kitchen and Rod Wilson before morphing into Twyce Daily.
We'll run a snippet of Twyce Daily's video for Gypsy In My Heart
that features images of his travels to Mt Isa rodeo, Mildura, Melbourne
and the Northern Territory.
He wrote the song after seeing a TV interview in which the late Slim Dusty
talked of the gypsy in his heart and his love for Australia.
Twyce Daily used his original song as theme for a string of outback DVD
documentaries he filmed and edited for Roadworx Pictures in Victoria.
JACKSON
AND LAMBERT PRIZES FOR TOURS
There's great
news for fans of Georgian born superstar Alan Jackson and quadruple CMA
Award winning Texan star Miranda Lambert.
We have the March tourists latest CDS as prizes for viewers who renew
Nu Country TV memberships or become members.
Sony-BMG promotions chief Emma Smith has also given us Miranda's new DVD
- Revolution: Live By Candlelight.
Alan's 34 Number Ones features his biggest hits including his duet
with Zac Brown Band - As She's Walking Away.
The bonus tracks also include his version of the late June Carter Cash-Merle
Kilgore written Johnny Cash hit Ring Of Fire and the rare track
Look At Me.
Emma also donated Miranda's huge selling 4th CD Revolution.
And as a bonus there is Miranda's brand new DVD featuring rare acoustic
performances of six songs White Liar, The House That Built Me, Love
Song, Heart Like Mine, Love Is Looking At You and Rolling Stones country
classic Dead Flowers.
Jackson and Lambert perform their hits at Rod Laver Arena on Friday March
4 before headlining CMC Rocks The Hunter on March 5 and 6.
WIN KEITH URBAN CDS ALSO
Expatriate
Australasian superstar Keith Urban returns for a triumphant tour with
chart-topping mates Lady Antebellum in April.
And Keith's long time record company EMI-Capitol has great news for Nu
Country TV viewers.
Promotions ace Bianca O'Neill has donated autographed copies of his huge
selling ninth album Get Closer to You.
All you have to do to win the Jackson, Lambert and Urban CDS of the Lambert
DVD is become a member of Nu Country TV or renew your membership.
It costs just $20.
Please send a cheque or money order made out to Nu Country Music to us
at P O Box 625 - Northcote - 3070.
We also now have electronic banking for membership payment and renewal.
But email us first at music@nucountry.com.au
as stocks are limited.
Other prizes
on offer include -
Taylor Swift - 2ND CD Fearless.
Tim McGraw Southern Voice Tour CD with 11-bonus video clips.
Dierks Bentley - Feel The Fire. CD
Felicity - Landing Lights
Slim Dusty Sittin' On 80 Boxed Set
Steve Forde - Guns & Guitars
Catherine Britt - Little Wildflowers.
Mike Brady - Country To Country.
A variety of compilation CDS.