DAVE'S DIARY - 29/1/2018 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 8 - SERIES 34
KELSEA BALLERINI AND BRAD PAISLEY HEADLINE NU COUNTRY TV
Tennessee singer-songwriter Kelsea Ballerini and West Virginian guitar slinger Brad Paisley headline Nu Country TV on Channel 31/ Digital 44 this Saturday - February 3 - at 9 pm.
Kelsea, who wed young Newcastle star Morgan Evans in Mexico in December, returns here in March.
Veteran Texan outlaw Ray Wylie Hubbard performs in Behind Bars in the show repeated Monday at 3 pm.
Kentuckian Tyler Childers also appears live on the program filmed and edited by Laith Graham.
Ohio barn builder Richard Lynch and Melbourne singer-songwriter Andrew Swift also make their Nu Country debut this week.
Nu Country TV is a highlight of C 31 streaming list on Digital 44.
Further info - https://www.c31.org.au/
KELSEA CELEBRATES LEGENDS
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Knoxville girl Kelsea Ballerini performs on the edge of a scenic cliff in a tragic tale in the video for Legends from second album Unapologetically.
Kelsea, now 24, took a different plunge when she met Newcastle husband Morgan Evans, 32, when they judged the 2016 CMC Rocks Queensland music awards in Ipswich .
She was born in Mascot, raised in Knoxville and debuted with Jason Aldean, Florida Georgia Line, Lee Brice and more at CMC Rocks Queensland.
Kelsea and Morgan were engaged on Christmas Day, 2016, and married on December 2 last year in Cabo San Lucas , Mexico.
She wrote her album title track three weeks after meeting Morgan who moved to Nashville and released his second album after debut U.S. single Kiss Somebody in July and the recent apt - I Do.
"With our careers, we get to do what we love, then we get to find time to be with who we love. I think that makes for a really full life - when you can do everything that you want, and then share it with someone," Kelsea revealed.
"In the lead-up to a wedding, you ask a lot of your married friends - especially people that are in similar situations or similar age - 'does anything change or is it just the same but a little more awesome?' Everyone keeps telling us.” Evans added “Ah, it gets better. And so whatever that means, I'm looking forward to that, and it's gonna be fun."
Ballerini tweeted after their wedding "I'm gonna love you forever. Forever and Evans, Amen. Woke up to the hottest human I've ever seen wearing a ring and ate leftover wedding cake for breakfast hello marriage."
It's a far cry from Legends - one of 12 songs she wrote for her album.
“It's a chameleon. It's the first song that I've ever written that has changed meanings for me,” Kelsey said of the song she wrote with Hillary Lindsey and Forest Glen Whitehead during dark times.
“I wrote it from a breakup three years ago, because I had written a lot of Get Over Yourself, Miss Me More , Graveyard kind of songs - angst, dark, mad, sad. But I was so ready to be over it, and I think that to really be over it, you have to acknowledge the good. So that was my song of acknowledging the good, in a very bright way. And then when it was time to pick the single, this song kept raising its hand. And I was like, " Man. This isn't where I'm at anymore, and I don't know if I relate to it anymore like that." So I started listening to it, and it changed meanings for me. It's a love song to me now, about a love that you're nostalgic about, that doesn't necessarily have to end. So it's the last song on the record because, to me, it's kind of like that forever, which I think will open up to start the next chapter of whatever that looks like.”
Kelsea's debut single Love Me Like You Mean It on first album Second Time reached #1 on Billboard.
It made her first female country artist to score a #1 hit with her debut single since Carrie Underwood with Jesus, Take the Wheel in 2006 and eleventh to achieve the feat.
Further info - http://kelseaballerini.com/
BRAD PAISLEY HEAVEN SOUTH
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Brad Paisley rides into historic Tennessee Civil War town Franklin on a truck with his band in his video for Heaven South - latest single from his aptly named 11th album Love & War. There was more love than war when Brad and his band rode around Franklin - south of Nashville - that became a canine heaven for some locals. Brad, 45, and father of 2 sons, hosts the CMA Awards each year with Oklahoma oriole Carrie Underwood who broke her wrist and suffered horrific facial injuries in a fall at her Nashville home before Christmas. Paisley wrote the song - one of 26 on his album - with Brent Anderson and Chris DuBois. Brad's disc was released in April and was his ninth straight studio album to debut at #1 on Billboard. |
CLICK HERE for a Love & War CD feature in The Diary on June 5, 2017.
RAY WYLIE HUBBARD TAUNTS THE DEVIL
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Oklahoma born, long time Texan Ray Wylie Hubbard showcases a cinematic career collage in Tell The Devil I'm Getting There As Fast As I Can - title track of his 17th album. Ray Wylie, now 71, reaches back to his roots with help from son Lucas, fellow Texan Hayes Carll, Eric Church, Patty Griffin and Lucinda Williams. Church name dropped Hubbard in the title track of his sixth album Mr Misunderstood. " Tell the Devil is a rock & roll fable about hanging your life on a guitar, holding onto a dream no matter what or how long it takes, wagering your soul in a crooked game and falling in love with a badass tattooed woman, hmmm, maybe it isn't a fable,” Hubbard revealed from his home in Wimberley. “There's a definite beginning, middle, and end to this record. It starts with Genesis , and at the ending, there I am trying to plead my case before the court of heaven, hoping I've got a good lawyer.” |
Bright Light Social Hour appear on psychedelic song The Rebellious Sons.
“So I basically sat down with the intent to write this mythological, Holy Grail/Games of Thrones kind of thing,” Hubbard explained.
“I knew they'd be perfect for it.”
The album was recorded at The Zone in Dripping Springs Texas, with Lucas on lead guitar, touring drummer Kyle Schneider, Jeff Plankenhorn on dobro and mandolin, Bukka Allen on B3 organ, and studio owner Mike Morgan and engineer Pat Manskee on bass.
Hubbard nurtured Lucas in his band since he was 12 and has been writing and recording with fellow Texan Hayes Carll who toured here twice.
Lucas taught a Geelong Amateurs footballer how to throw his Texas Longhorns gridiron ball at Willie's July 3 picnic at Carl's Corner in 2006.
Ray Wylie and Carll wrote Drunken Poet's Dream - entrée song on Carll's 2008 album Trouble In Mind.
CLICK HERE for a Ray Wylie Hubbard feature in The Diary on July 7, 2012.
TYLER CHILDERS APPALACHIAN STROLL
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East Kentuckian singer-songwriter Tyler Childers returns to Behind Bars with a live version of Follow You To Virgie in Nashville.
Childers, born and raised in Lawrence County , Kentucky , performed Virgie on his Red Barn Radio EP.
Tyler 's second album Purgatory, produced by Sturgill Simpson and David Ferguson on Hickman Holler Records and released on August 4, followed 2011 debut Bottles & Bibles.
Childers scored exposure on Nu Country with his song Harlan Road performed by bluegrass state band Newtown and returned with Whitehouse Road that he wrote six years ago.
Tyler recorded Purgatory at Butcher Shoppe studio with Simpson on guitar and vocals, Miles Miller on drums and background vocals, fiddler Stuart Duncan and multi-instrumentalist Russ Paul.
"I'd already had two opportunities to record these songs on my own. So I stepped back and let it go where Sturgill thought it needed to," says Childers about working with Simpson.
"I didn't come into the studio with a lot of expectations: 'This is going to be this way, this is going to be that way.' I obviously wouldn't have needed him if I was going to be like that. On Whitehouse Road he suggested we slow it down and get it into this groovy pocket, and I said, 'Alright, let's see what it sounds like.'"
Purgatory is about navigating roads, and making choices that could just as easily lead to desolation and destruction as happiness and salvation.
"A lot of these songs were written in the time between leaving my mother and father's house and finding that middle ground," Childers explained.
"Getting into trouble and finding the way out of it, finding where you are supposed to be. Finding your place. Purgatory is hell, with hope. You have a fighting chance. I tend to write in little stories just because of my background and where I'm from. Storytelling is rich in Appalachian culture - sitting down and spinning yarns and telling tall tales and trying to one-up the guy who just told one. It's the people I grew up with, the experiences, the things I grew up doing. Just the lifestyle, the everyday grind, the hardships, the values.”
Further info - https://tylerchildersmusic.com/
ANDREW SWIFT RECKLESS DESIRES
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Melbourne singer-songwriter Andrew Swift took a break from his caravan park day job to film his video for new single Reckless Desires from second album Call Out For The Cavalry on Social Family Records.
The Toyota Starmaker grand finalist toured 22 caravan parks with Kiewa Valley raised singer Gretta Ziller en route to the 46 th Tamworth country festival in January.
Indie director Arlo Cook filmed the video at Swift's Seaford workplace and caravan park tour sponsor - Page Bros RV .
It features Ciume Lochner, drummer Tom Van Agtmaal, bassist Zac Watson, Swift and Cello - his Rhodesian Ridgeback .
“It captures the story of a guy losing himself to alcohol, the woman that tries to stand beside him through his troubles and does for as long as she could before leaving. He's then left along with his thoughts, reflecting on the good times and how things went wrong,” Swift revealed.
“There are songs that describe situations where help could be used from bad decisions in Runaway Train, Reckless Desires and Blood Moon High to uncontrollable circumstances like King Of The Sky and even where help was sought out and ignored in The Devil & His Sin .”
Swift has toured with Shane Nicholson, Catherine Britt, Amber Lawrence, Adam Eckersley and Lachlan Bryan.
Further info - https://www.andrewswift.com.au/
RICHARD LYNCH HOLDS HIS HORSES
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Ohio barn builder Richard Lynch rides rodeos with equine metaphors for love on the range in his video for Hold Your Horses from A Better Place - second of his three albums.
Lynch, 55, has long mixed music and farming in dual careers at his Lebanon ranch where he explored rodeos, love and music.
Although Lynch has played music for 30 years he didn't make his recording debut until Last of A Dying Breed in 2013.
He worked as a farmer and barn builder most of his life although music wasn't always on the front burner even if the passion burned inside.
But he has since delved deeper into his passion for quality songs and recordings and stories from his real life.
Quality and authenticity fuel his third album Mending Fences .
Mending Fences opens with Daddy's Words , includes In Over My Heart Again and social comment song Country Music Isn't Country Anymore and Back In Love Again - a duet with bluegrass queen Rhonda Vincent.
Further info - https://www.richardlynchband.com/
HOW TO KEEP NU COUNTRY ON AIR
We need your support as we celebrate Nu Country TV's 34th series with Australian record companies and artists teaming to ensure our survival.
We have 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, Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Gary Allan, Dierks Bentley, Eric Church and more.
CLICK HERE for our Membership Page for full details.