DAVE'S DIARY - 23/1/13 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 7 - SERIES 19
MOONSHINER'S DAUGHTER HEADLINES NU COUNTRY TV
Moonshiner's
daughter Elizabeth Cook headlines Nu Country TV this Saturday January
26 on the eve of her Northcote Social Club debut.
Cook showcases her creative new video on the Channel 31 show at 10.30
p m.
The show, edited by Blaize Warden and filmed by Laith Graham, is repeated
on Monday at 2.30 pm and midnight.
Texans Kristen Kelly and Kevin Fowler also debut on the show featuring
Joey & Rory in our Behind Bars segment.
Perth born, Wallington and Colac raised singer-songwriter Adam Brand returns
with his video for I Was Here - his tribute to the Salvation Army's support
of the homeless.
COOK - WESTERN MOVIES AND WELDING
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Florida-born
Elizabeth Cook debuts with her video All The Time featuring scenes
from old Western movies.
Cook, 40, played the 41st Tamworth Country Music Festival with Jim Lauderdale
and follows Texan Hayes Carll into Northcote Social Club on February 1
to promote her fifth album Welder.
Elizabeth's octogenarian dad Tom wrote songs and learned upright bass
guitar, serving 10 years in jail for moonshining.
Tom, now 88, formed the Medicare duo with late wife Joyce after Elizabeth
- one of his 11 children - wed fellow singer Tim Carroll.
Cook's bassist is Bones Hillman of Midnight Oil.
Elizabeth collaborated with former Nu Country TV host and recording stage
star Melinda Schneider, now 40, to write the title track of her fourth
album Balls.
They both recorded their co-writes Some Times It Takes Balls To Be
A Woman and Rest Your Weary Mind on recent albums.
Elizabeth and Melinda co-wrote more than a dozen songs including I
Like Men in Trucks on Melinda's fourth album Stronger.
Melinda also wrote songs about late father - Sgt Keith Bean - a policeman.
Keith and Tom didn't meet at a still but Melinda's mum - famed yodeller
Mary Schneider - sang with Tom and Joyce backstage at the Grand Ole Opry
during one of Cook's many dates there.
CLICK
HERE for a Cook interview in the Diary on November 9, 2008.
CLICK
HERE for a Schneider interview in the Diary on August 9, 2006.
KEVIN FOWLER - BEER, BAIT & AMMO
"She pulled out that Red Headed Stranger/ I stood up and said, 'Don't touch my Willie/I don't know you that well/Help yourself to some Haggard or some Jones or anybody else/I don't know what you heard/I ain't that kind of guy/Yeah, so don't touch my Willie/We'll get along just fine.'" - Don't Touch My Willie - Kevin Fowler.
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Amarillo-born
Kevin Fowler puts his thirst on his bar - he recruited famous friends
from the honky tonks for his video of Hell Yeah, I Like Beer. Fowler recently released sardonic sibling Santa Got Busted By The Border Patrol with a Benson cameo. |
Kevin and
beer are synonymous - songs include The Lord Loves a Drinking Man,
Beer Season, Long Neckin' (Makes for Short Memories), Drinking Days, Ain't
Drinking No More, Beer Money, All The Tequila in Tijuana and Beer,
Bait & Ammo.
Louisiana gubernatorial candidate Sammy Kershaw and fellow Texans George
Jones and Mark Chesnutt recorded the latter song - the title track of
his 2000 album.
Chesnutt also cut Fowler song The Lord Loves A Drinking Man.
Fowler, 46 and father of three daughters, is excused for feeling jinxed
- his last three labels closed shortly after releasing his albums.
In 2010 when Kevin signed with Disney subsidiary Lyric Street Records
he was on a roll but eight weeks after release of his single Pound
Sign they folded.
Fowler broke the streak after signing to Colt Ford's label, Average Joe's
Entertainment.
He and Colt collaborated on the Ford hit Hip Hop In A Honky Tonk
for 2010 Ford album Chicken & Biscuits.
Fowler also wrote Long Line Of Losers for Montgomery Gentry and
earned some serious "mailbox money."
He also recorded a duet with The Possum - Me and the Boys - on
a previous album.
Fowler sources songs driving his pickup at his ranch near Junction where
he lives with his family.
Fowler calls these songs "presents from the song gods."
"Those seem to be the best ones," he said of songs including
Cheaper To Keep Her.
"My ranch is a really good place for me to write, somewhere where
you can really get into your head and forget everything going on around
you. I just think of a lot of stuff driving. I just sort of space out
and get into that little zone."
He also penned Ain't Dead Yet and Now You're Talkin' with
March tourist David Lee Murphy.
Others include I Pulled a Hank Last Night - a strong drinking-man's
anthem - and Honky Tonk Junkie is a clever tribute to genre icons.
"I get to Jonesin' for Jones/I got a hanker for Hank".
Fowler grew up on Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash but his diet included
AC/DC.
"I'm almost a heavy-metal fan," said Fowler, who joined hard
rocking Dangerous Toys in the early 1990s before founding Southern rockers
Thunderfoot and returning to country in the late 1990s.
Further info - www.kevinfowler.com
KRISTEN KELLY - EX OLD MAN FROM WACO
Waco wench Kristen Kelly disposed of her ex husband and his girlfriend in one hit in her new video for Ex Old Man.
Kristen, a college music graduate, threw back the ring and left town in an open top car.
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Life
imitated art for Kelly - she left her ex-husband in Waco when she
left for Nashville and cut her debut EP. "Personally, it was old news for me. I was writing with Paul Overstreet, and we were working on another song - I don't even remember which song. In passing, I mentioned that I had an ex-husband and an ex-best girlfriend and he said, 'Wait a minute! Tell me more about that.' So in telling him what happened, we ended up writing the song, it became the lead-off single and here I am." |
The song
from her debut Arista EP reached Top 30.
"Yeah! Life happens, and I believe when life gives you lemons, make
lemonade, add vodka and have a good time," Kelly said of another
song Feeling Nothing.
"It's one of those songs we wrote rather quickly. You know, it's
three chords and the truth.
I had a song idea that I had held onto for a couple of years. It was about
seeing my ex-husband for the first time and feeling nothing - and how
great that felt. We're both from the same small town, so every time I
would run into him after we got divorced, a little part of me would fall
apart all over again. So to finally reach a point where I could see him
and not fall apart was a really powerful moment for me. I had the lines:
"There stands a man I used to love/His hands, my skin, they used
to touch."
"So as I was telling Overstreet the experience of seeing my ex-husband
and feeling nothing, I'm walking around the room talking, and he's got
a Sharpie and a piece of paper. As the words were coming out of my mouth,
he was writing the same thing about how feeling nothing never felt so
good. We just looked at each other and knew it was one of those special
moments where we tapped into an emotion and an idea that would work.
Kelly was signed to Arista after playing Texas honky tonks with her band
Modern Day Drifters who released indie album The Highway Is My Home.
Kirsten, whose grandfather Sterling Kelly was a Texas singer-songwriter,
began writing songs in rural area Lorena near Waco.
Legendary honky tonk hero Billy Joe Shaver, now 73, hangs his hat in Waco
but was arrested for shooting Billy Bryant Coker outside Papa Joe's Texas
Saloon in Lorena on March 31, 2007.
The assault acquittal created his song Wacko from Waco - a co-write
with Shotgun Willie Nelson.
"Yeah, I started writing poetry in middle school and I guess it was
within the last 10 years that I started taking some of that poetry and
putting it to music and writing songs," Kelly recalled.
"I actually co-wrote a song in May 2004. I guess that was probably
the first song that I have co-written."
Further info - kristenkellymusic.com
JOEY & RORY BEHIND BARS
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Nashville
husband and wife duo Joey & Rory return to Nu Country in our Behind
Bars segment with a couple of hit videos.
They loosen up the audience in A Bible And A Belt in concert with
an older audience that includes famed singer songwriter Whispering Bill
Anderson.
The song is on their fourth album His & Hers.
The duo also performs the video for That's Important To Me from
second disc - Album No 2.
They washed their dog in the family bath and showcased some home cooking
in their own restaurant - Marcy Joes in Pottsville.
They drive their car with Cheater Number plates - named after early hit
Cheater, Cheater - down the road from their farm south of Nashville.
Former Marine Rory Lee Feek and Joey Martin scored a deal after finishing
third in 2008 TV show Can You Duet?
Rory, a prolific writer, is son of a country singing railroad man from
Atchison, Kansas,
Feek, 48, has written hits for Blake Shelton, Collin Raye, Clay Walker,
Kenny Chesney, Randy Travis, Reba McEntire, Terri Clark, Lorrie Morgan,
Jimmy Wayne and the late Waylon Jennings and Buck Owen.
Rory and Novocastrian Catherine Britt both recorded their co-write
Sweet Emmylou.
Joey, third of five children of a guitar slinging Vietnam veteran Jack
and gospel singing farm girl June, grew up in Alexandria, Indiana, cut
an ill-fated solo CD for Sony in 2001.
In 2005 she cut a solo CD Strong Enough To Cry, released in 2008
on Rory's Giantslayer label.
Their debut duets album The Life Of A Song featured satiric tune
Play The Song and Cheater, Cheater.
They have won two Academy Of Country Music Awards for new vocal duo in
2010 and best duo in 2011.
CLICK HERE for
a Joey & Rory feature in the Diary on August 30, 2009.
ADAM BRAND BATS FOR SALVOES
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Adam
Brand performs his new video for I Was Here from his ninth
album - There Will Be Love. The clip features Salvation Army volunteers at work on the mean streets of Australian cities. The Salvoes used Adam's heartfelt song about homeless and disadvantaged to promote their Xmas appeal. Adam also helped behind the scenes after Black Saturday bushfires and played benefits. Thrice wed Adam, now living in Nashville, plays CMC Rocks The Hunter in March with Chris Young, Rascal Flatts, The Band Perry, Big & Rich, Love & Theft, Billy Ray Cyrus, Jack Ingram, The Farm and David Lee Murphy. Adam turns 42 on January 27 after 41st Australian Country Music Awards in Tamworth while touring here to promote his new album released in August. |
The prolific
Golden Guitarist has made the finals of the best male vocal and album
of the year.
CLICK HERE for
an Adam Brand interview in the Diary on March 31, 2009.
LADY ANTEBELLUM DVD PRIZES
We have copies
of the hot new DVD by recent Grammy Award winners and Australian tourists
Lady Antebellum for new members and renewing members of Nu Country.
The 18-track Own The Night World Tour DVD has five bonus songs
with exclusive version of Black Water featuring Darius Rucker and
Thompson Square.
There's also intimate backstage footage of the band, road crew and fans
on a tour that included two concerts at the famed St Kilda Palais.
The 124-minute DVD features the band performing its many hits live in
Little Rock, Arkansas, and documentary footage of band members and song
sources.
Click Here for our membership page for
details of all prizes.