DAVE'S DIARY - 19 JUNE 2017 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 21 - SERIES 32
CHART-TOPPERS CHRIS AND BRAD HEADLINE NU COUNTRY TV
Kentucky coal-miner's son Chris Stapleton and West Virginian Brad Paisley headlines Nu Country TV Saturday June 24 at 9 pm on Channel 31/Digital 44.
Hank Williams Jr also returns to the show hosted by Mid Pacific Bob Olson and repeated Sunday 1 am and Monday 8 am.
Late Georgian comedian Tim Wilson appears in Behind Bars with a satirical double shot in the program filmed and edited by Laith Graham.
Texan Rodney Carrington also adds a dash of humour to the historic show.
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
Viewers can access new and previous Nu Country TV shows at the same link.
BRAD PAISLEY FIRES UP LOVE AND WAR
 |
Brad Paisley recruited little mates John Fogerty, Mick Jagger and Whispering Bill Anderson for his huge selling 11th album Love & War. Paisley, 44, reaches back to his youth with a healthy hybrid of joy and regret at not making the most of his life in his video for The Last Time For Everything. Nostalgia is a creative catalyst that Paisley exploits with cameos by famed actor David Hasselhoff in the famous KITT car from eighties' TV show Knight Rider. It also includes the original Ghostbusters mobile, his red vest in honor of Back to the Future's Marty McFly and footage of high school football games and tree fort with “no girls allowed” hand painted signage. Brad's actress wife Kimberly Williams-Paisley broke the ban by appearing in the video dressed as a 12-year-old girl. |
Paisley also honours Santa, late Grand Ole Opry icon and video guest Little Jimmy Dickens, Eagles star Glenn Frey, Texan George Strait and other important influences in his time travel.
All 15 songs on Love & War are available as streaming videos, designed as a mini-movie, split into five chapters.
Brad wrote the strident social comment title track with John Fogerty.
That video was shot around San Diego, California - a busy military hub - with some footage on the USS Midway.
Paisley used it to raise awareness about treatment that veterans receive and to offer respect to heroes who served the U.S.
Brad also pays homage to the late Johnny Cash with Gold All Over The Ground - a song resurrected from a poem by the man in black.
The video of the song - a tribute to the love story of Johnny and June Carter Cash - was filmed at the family's old log cabin and latter day Cash Cabin Studio operated by their son John Carter Cash.
Equally memorable is Paisley's collaboration with veteran singer-songwriter and Country Music Hall Of Famer - Whispering Bill Anderson, 79, on Dying To See Her.
Paisley recruited his mother for the One Beer Can video filmed at his parents' home.
It features a raucous high school party, complete with a donkey walking through the house and unceremonious spilling of an urn of Grandma's ashes.
He enlisted fans for his hilarious video for selfie#theinternetisforever in Franklin, a Civil War town south of Nashville.
Paisley also wrote Drive Of Shame with Matt Clifford and Mick Jagger after he opened for the Rolling Stones at their 2015 Nashville stadium concert.
CLICK HERE for a Brad CD feature in our Diary on June 5.
CHRIS STAPLETON LIVE FROM A ROOM
 |
Grammy winner Chris Stapleton - the biggest selling country artist of the last two years - returns with a live version of a new song.
I Was Wrong is on the 39-year-old's second album From A Room, Volume 1 that topped Billboard charts on debut.
Chris and singing spouse Morgane combined with acclaimed producer Dave Cobb to blaze new trails in hard core country.
Earlier Stapleton wrote a swag of hits for peers while playing guitar and singing with fellow Grammy winning bluegrass band The Steel Drivers.
But it wasn't until he and Justin Timberlake performed Linda Hargrove-Dean Dillon classic Tennessee Whiskey on the 2015 CMA Awards he topped the all genre Billboard Top 200 charts with debut solo album Traveller.
Their dynamic delivery of the song, previously a hit for former convict David Allan Coe and the late George Jones, kick-started album sales of more than 2 million.
Stapleton's three CMA Awards and two Grammys enabled it to enjoy a marathon chart reign.
Traveller included Fire Away - his powerful comment on the scourge of suicide, depression and mental illness - accompanied by the video in which Stapleton plays the barman.
Novocastrian Catherine Britt and Stapleton co-wrote Lonely - a highlight of her 2010 self-titled album that featured three collaborations with Tennessean Ashley Monroe.
Stapleton's five No. 1 hits as a songwriter include Never Wanted Nothing More by Kenny Chesney, George Strait's Love's Gonna Make it Alright and Luke Bryan's Drink A Beer .
He has penned over 170 songs recorded by Adele, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and Dierks Bentley, Vince Gill, Peter Frampton and Sheryl Crow.
CLICK HERE for a feature on Stapleton's Traveller CD in the Diary on December 21, 2015.
HANK WILLIAMS JR – A TRUE SURVIVOR
 |
Hank Williams Jr has long taken long trips down his dad's Lost Highway.
Thrice wed Bocephus, now 68, survived a fall off Ajax Mountain in Montana almost 42 years ago.
His recovery from multiple skull and facial fractures inspired the 1983 TV movie Living Proof.
This week he performs A Country Boy Can Survive that has graced several of his 50 plus albums.
Hank Jr appeared on Nu Country on February 11 with his vitriolic blue collar worker exploitation song Red & White Pink Slip Blues long before Donald Trump used the subject as a fear and redemption weapon in his presidential campaign.
The song, with its powerful video, was on his 51st album 127 Rose Avenue in 2010.
It's a similar theme to workers' woes in Australia - instead of our jobs being outsourced north to China and India they are sent south to Mexico from the U.S.
Hank Jr named his album after his childhood home in Georgiana, Alabama.
His long lost sister Jett Williams plays Geelong on her Aussie tour in October.
Bocephus is helping revive the U.S. economy with moonshine liquor - his Popcorn and White Whiskey distillery.
Popcorn Sutton manufactured the finest moonshine in Cocke County, East Tennessee, in the 1970s.
The Feds arrested him and he was sentenced to 18 months in a federal penitentiary and fined $5,000 for not paying taxes on his moonshine.
Jamie Grosser visited him in prison and asked him for the recipe to continue his legacy of making Tennessee white whiskey.
Popcorn told him, "Corn, sugar, water and yeast. And here's the recipe, but you have to promise to go on a mission and find Hank Williams Jr. because a country boy can survive. He'll know what to do."
But before Popcorn, 62 and suffering cancer, could find Hank he chose his own exit strategy - suicide.
He didn't have five grand and had no intention of being locked up inside prison away from sunshine, trees and outdoor life.
Grosser found Hank and used Popcorn's recipe to run the first Federal approved white whiskey distillery in Nashville.
Hank hosted a party and invited some rowdy friends over to launch Popcorn Sutton's Tennessee White Whiskey .
They included Jamey Johnson, Kid Rock, Josh Thompson, Travis Tritt, Colt Ford, Martina McBride, Rodney Atkins, Randy Houser, Zac Brown, Tanya Tucker, Little Texas , Dave Gibson, Lee Brice, Little Big Town , Eddie Montgomery, Kentucky Headhunters, Two-Foot Fred, the Roys , Heidi Newfield, Jaron Lowenstein with live music by The Grascals .
There are plans to turn the Popcorn Sutton saga into a movie with Hank Jr & The Grascals - Dolly Parton's bluegrass band - in major roles.
Popcorn's autobiography - Me and My Likker: The True Story of a Mountain Moonshiner - sources the movie.
Hank Jr.'s son, Hank III, mentions Popcorn in his song Moonshiner's Life on his Rebel Within CD.
Bocephus went on the road, aged eight, singing songs by famed father Hank Sr and was 17 when he starred in his first movie A Time To Sing .
Richard Thomas of Waltons' fame played Hank Jr in The Living Proof movie and George Hamilton played Hank Sr in 1964 film Your Cheating Heart .
Hank Jr was also in Roadie with Meatloaf, Roy Orbison, Alice Cooper, Joe Ely and Asleep At The Wheel .
Bocephus, father of recording artist daughters Holly and Hilary, and sister Jett recently approved a new movie on Hank Sr who died at 29 in 1953.
CLICK HERE for a Hank Jr CD feature in The Diary on February 16, 2010.
TIM WILSON DOUBLE SHOT BEHIND BARS
 |
Late Georgian singing comedian Tim Wilson performs a live double shot of his country classics in Behind Bars. Wilson released 17 albums before he died at 52 in 2014. In 2009 Tim and Roger Keiss wrote detective book Happy New Year Ted , about serial killer Ted Bundy. He also penned 1996 hit The Redneck 12 Days Of Christmas with fellow comic Jeff Foxworthy and is renowned for tunes diverse as Garth Brooks Has Ruined My Life and I Should Have Married My Father-in Law. |
This week he performs his hilarious First Baptist Bar & Grill and a tongue in cheek eulogy to Michelle Obama.
Wilson proves why a cleansing wine and waltz at the First Baptist Bar & Grill is good for the soul in his satiric swipe at religious hypocrisy from his 1999 album It's A Sorry World .
Wilson was born in Columbus where his parents were school teachers and attended Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina as an English major.
Baritone Tim is the source of the theme song of Wimmera born Presbyterian David Heard's long running popular show Acid Country on 3PBS-FM in Easey Street, Collingwood.
The former Columbus Ledger sports writer's 15 albums have fitting titles ranging from Church League Softball Fight in 2005 to 15th album Caffeine Wired, Nervous & Pale.
Wilson, a self-described libertarian, also wrote several parodies for 1980s comedy duo Pinkard & Bowden .
He began his recording career in Atlanta, Georgia on Southern Tracks label with music publisher Bill Lowery.
Atlanta Rhythm Section members played on many of his early recordings with band keyboardist Dean Daughtry producing.
Wilson later recorded with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section at their famed Alabama studio.
He produced Allnight Allstars with Muscle Shoals engineer Steve Melton with rock luminaries Jimmy Hall, Bobby Whitlock, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and the late Gregg Allman and Levon Helm.
Further info - http://www.timwilsonamerica.com/
RODNEY CARRINGTON DANCING WITH MEN
 |
Texan country comedian Rodney Carrington hails from Longview - same hometown as Miranda Lambert, Neal McCoy and Oscar winning actor Matthew McConaughey.
The 48 year-old father of three sons appeared with fellow Texan Willie Nelson and Oklahoma star Toby Keith in their 2008 movie Beer For my Horses.
This week Carrington, who performed at Crown Casino last year, performs a comedic classic from our radio era.
Dancing With A Man - a saga about two-stepping in the dark with a tall dark stranger - is on his 1998 debut album Hanging With Rodney.
The wanton waltz reached #73 on charts from the first of his nine albums.
It also included Letter To My Penis that did not score wide exposure for Rodney who now lives in Bixby - a suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
And, like Tim Wilson, he scored more exposure on The Bob And Tom TV and radio show.
He also appeared in 2004 TV sitcom Rodney - based on his life - on the U.S. ABC network for two seasons.
Carrington released second album Morning Wood in 2000 - his first Top 20 album featuring More of a Man that reached No. 71 on charts.
His album Live: C'mon Laugh You Bastards did not chart.
Carrington's fourth album Nut Sack in 2003 included Don't Look Now that reached 60 and prompted a 2004 Greatest Hits
His 2007 album King of the Mountains featured his second serious song Angel Friend - tribute to best friend Barry Martin who died suddenly in 2003.
El Niño Loco , his sixth Capitol album, was released in 2009.
Carrington later released Make It Christmas - his single Camouflage and Christmas Lights became his first Top 40 country hit in December 2009.
Further info - www.rodneycarrington.com
HOW TO KEEP NU COUNTRY ON AIR
We need your support as we celebrate Nu Country TV's 32nd series with Australian record companies and artists teaming to ensure our survival.
We have Kasey Chambers 11th CD Dragonfly and Blake Shelton's 12th CD If I'm Honest from Karen Black and Tony Midolo at Warner Music.
We also have other CDS by major artists you can win by becoming a Nu Country TV member or renewing membership.
They include singing actor Tim McGraw, Ashley Monroe, Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Gary Allan, Dierks Bentley, Eric Church and more.