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When the Coastal Country Jam relaunched Sept. 16 at Marina Green Park in Long Beach, Calif., after a four-year absence, headliner Blake Shelton looked up before he took the stage and saw his name sparkling like a floating marquee in the sky.
Gwen Stefani and her kids cheered the moment, says Activated Events founder and event producer Steve Thacher, but they weren’t just seeing Shelton’s name in lights. They may have seen the future of country festivals. The Coastal Country Jam is one of at least four country gatherings that employed drone shows for the first time in 2023.
“We’re always looking for new, fun, wow factors to incorporate into our event,” Thacher says. “We thought this would be one of them.”
The drone show is a still-developing technology that had its biggest audience during the global broadcast of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony in 2022, when 1,800 drones were used to create a complex series of images suspended over the stadium. The technology has been utilized in a number of different events since then, including a coronation concert for the United Kingdom’s King Charles III in May and a New Year’s Eve celebration that Keith Urban witnessed in Australia.
Courtesy Southern Entertainment
“It’s surreal what they can do and how many of them can be synchronized or coordinated to do insane things,” says Urban. “It’s really amazing, like a modern version of skywriting.”
Activated Events debuted the drone show at the Coastal Jam after the company worked with several municipalities that were replacing fireworks displays with the new technology. Drones appeared before the headliner both nights during Coastal, presenting a series of images (an American flag, a whale, a surfer and the Queen Mary tourist attraction) before employing a “Next Up” announcement, leading into Shelton’s name on the first night and Tim McGraw’s on the second. The company presented a different version of the show during its Boots in the Park festival in Tempe, Ariz., Sept. 22-23, with Shelton, Sam Hunt and Brooks & Dunn.
Similarly, Southern Entertainment held a drone show one night each at two different East Coast festivals: the Carolina Country Music Fest in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on June 9 and the Barefoot Country Music Festival in Wildwood, N.J., on June 18. They employed their own images — including a patriotic red, white and blue eagle — ahead of the direct-support act, with several visuals that hinted at income-generating possibilities.
At the Carolina event, organizers used the drones to announce one of the 2024 headliners, Morgan Wallen. They also created an in-air QR code for sponsor Selfie.Live, a Lee Brice-affiliated company that enables consumers to get celebrity autographs on their own digital photos. Six thousand of the 35,000 ticket holders downloaded the QR code, a number that impressed Southern Entertainment co-founder Bob Durkin. The QR code holds other possibilities, including guiding fans to the festival website to buy tickets for the next year’s show.
Additionally, the Carolina drone show included two giant beer bottles with Coors emblazoned on their virtual labels. The display was not monetized in 2023, though it’s easy to see how it could evolve into a source of advertising revenue.
“It was sort of an added value for our sponsor,” Durkin says. “They got to see their brand portrayed in a different way, and the greatest part was [Molson Coors chairman] Pete Coors was at the Carolina Country Music Fest. He said, ‘I’ve seen it all, but I haven’t seen that.’”
Drone shows, which Durkin says can range from $25,000 to $100,000, require significant advance work. Both Activated Events and Southern Entertainment booked outside drone production companies roughly nine months ahead of their festivals, allowing time to design the presentation and program each drone. Promoters also have to navigate local regulations, which can vary widely. Drones pose security risks, as well as potential safety problems — imagine a flying object losing its charge and falling out of the sky on top of an unsuspecting patron. That complication is one reason that some promoters are reticent to get involved in the drone business. But three of the four country festivals were held in beach communities, allowing the light display to take place over the water and away from pedestrians.
There’s also a fair amount of give-and-take between the promoter and the drone companies. The concert promoters suggested messages and images they would like to see during the show, and once the production company came back with an initial presentation, the two sides tweaked the lineup and sequence and were able to time out the event. At Activated Events, DJ Luwiss Luxx built a playlist to go with the light show once the display was scheduled out.
The overall mix of sights and sounds won over a captive audience as it marked time between acts, and led to a positive social-media response.
“In every email or text message that I got, it was ‘Oh, my god, that drone show was epic,’ ” Thacher says. “I had random people reach out on LinkedIn, literally saying, ‘Hey, I never do this, but I just have to tell you, not only was the experience great, but that drone show was absolutely amazing.’”
Both Thacher and Durkin plan to do it again next year, and they may get more bang for their programming buck since continued advancements will likely make it possible to incorporate more material in the same time frame.
“I know there’s a few country festivals in 2024 you will definitely see use it,” Durkin predicts. “It’s not a great big industry, so we all kind of know each other. And they’re all like, ‘Holy cow.’ You know, everybody’s trying to one-up one another.”
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This week’s batch of new music includes ERNEST’s bluegrass-tinged latest, a promising debut from Alexandra Kay, a heartfelt, timely song from Frank Ray and Shy Carter, as well as a pair of songs from Red Clay Strays and Shaboozey that are surging on streaming platforms.
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Also, Texas music mainstay Aaron Watson pairs with several female artists, including Kylie Frey and Jenna Paulette, to honor songs from women artists in various decades.
ERNEST, “Kiss of Death”
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On his breakthrough hit “Flower Shops,” the mononymed singer-songwriter drew upon traditional country influences, while his Flower Shops (The Album) was chock-full of twangy songs about heartbreak and alcohol. Here, ERNEST launches his “new era” by wrapping himself in bluegrass harmonies on “Kiss of Death,” with lyrics that find him willingly walking a fine line, willing to accept the inevitable heartbreak his “angel in a fire-red dress will bring,” if it means he gets a single evening of lust-fueled passion. “I think I like the pain/ And if it ends tonight, that’ll be okay,” he sings, on this track he co-wrote with Andy Albert and Ryan Vojtesak.
Alexandra Kay, “Everleave”
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Kay follows her breakthrough 2021 hit “That’s What Love Is” with the 11-song debut album All I’ve Ever Known — featuring this vulnerable, solo-penned ballad that traces a woman’s decade spent languishing in an unfulfilling relationship and honors the notion of her resolve to leave. “I can’t keep pouring from a cup so empty/ Then turn my back and try to sleep at night,” Kay sings with both stunning intimacy and verve, underscoring the portrait of someone always giving to a lover who refuses to reciprocate the same kindness. The glossy, piano-led “Everleave,” like the rest of the album, presents Kay as an adept, propitious singer-songwriter.
Aaron Watson, Cover Girl
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Texas music circuit mainstay Watson helps spotlight the mighty talents of numerous women artists on his latest project, Cover Girl, filled with duets on many female-fronted, classic country songs (and a pop song or two), spanning different decades. Watson and Jenna Paulette pair up on Rosanne Cash’s “Seven Year Ache,” while he teams with Kylie Frey for Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” Bri Bagwell for a take on Sheryl Crow’s “Can’t Cry Anymore,” Kimberly Kelly for “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” and with Morgan Myles for Lady Gaga’s “Million Reasons.” The album closes with a familial collaboration, with Watson teaming with his daughter Jolee Kate for a rendition of Taylor Swift’s “Never Grow Up.”
Frank Ray and Shy Carter, “Jesus at the Taco Truck”
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Shy Carter and Frank Ray posted a snippet of this song on TikTok last month and the song has quickly amassed over two million views, thanks to a vivid storyline. “Jesus at the Taco Truck” is heartfelt, timely and bridge-building. The lyrics detail meeting a man who made a harrowing journey, walking across the Rio Grande into Texas, and working long hours at a taco truck to help provide for family members still living in Mexico. Crafted by Ray, Carter, Ben Burgess and Nathan Chapman, this is a tender, compassionate tribute to the hardships so many face in a quest for freedom and a better life. This marks a crucial new release from Carter and Ray.
Red Clay Strays, “Wondering Why”
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Known for their soul-meets-southern rock stylings, The Red Clay Strays have been on the road over the past year opening shows for Eric Church and Elle King. The quintet’s soulful Alabama roots and fiery live performance style permeate this song. “Wondering Why” was included on the group’s 2022 debut album A Moment of Truth, but it has been surging on streaming platforms of late, landing on Spotify’s all-genre Viral 50 chart. Written by the group’s Brandon Coleman and Drew Nix with songwriter Dan Couch (Kip Moore, Cody Johnson), the song details a highbrow-meets-hardscrabble romance that, on paper, shouldn’t work–but does. Lead singer Coleman’s gruff, impassioned vocal shines here as always, bolstered by the group’s exemplary musicianship.
Shaboozey, “Let It Burn”
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“Grab the matches/ start a fire,” Shaboozey sings on this aptly-titled track, as it has been a red-hot track on streaming platforms as of late, appearing on Spotify’s all-genre Viral 50 chart. The song is a heady marriage of guitar-driven country, R&B and hip-hop elements, meshing into a distinct blend of pop melody and empowering message, as the singer-songwriter urges someone to leave bad memories and experiences behind and embrace the courage to seek a brighter future.
On March 2, 1983, a mother-daughter duo from Kentucky, Naomi and Wynonna Judd, auditioned for then-RCA Nashville label chief Joe Galante, in hopes of scoring a record deal. They had spent months working with producer-writer Brent Maher, finding and recording songs and crafting their twangy, harmony-driven sound.
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“We had a three-song package that we auditioned for Joe and a few of his staff members,” Maher recalls to Billboard. “The three songs we played them were ‘Had a Dream (For the Heart),’ ‘Mama, He’s Crazy’ and ‘John Deere Tractor.’ When ‘John Deere’ finished, I mean to tell you, you could have heard a pin drop in that room. People were trying to start breathing again, because of that beautiful melodic structure and those harmonies.”
Galante ultimately signed The Judds to the RCA Nashville label roster, and the duo’s cover of the Elvis Presley tune “Had a Dream” became their debut single, reaching the top 20 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. The song’s follow-up, the tender “Mama, He’s Crazy,” became The Judds’ first No. 1 country hit, signaling the duo’s upward trajectory to stardom. In the five-year span between 1984-1989, The Judds earned 14 No. 1 Hot Country Songs hits, including “Young Love,” “Why Not Me” and “Turn It Loose.” They released six multi-platinum studio albums, were named the Country Music Association’s vocal duo or vocal group of the year seven times, won five Grammys and were ultimately inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2022. Maher produced all six of The Judds’ studio albums and worked with Wynonna on some of her solo projects.
Four decades after that fateful audition, and nearly 18 months after the death of The Judds’ matriarch Naomi in April 2022, nearly three dozen artists have come together for A Tribute to the Judds, out Oct. 27 on BMG, recognizing the duo’s significant influence by offering refreshed versions of 14 of the mother-daughter duo’s biggest hits.
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Galante, Maher and A&R executive Renee Bell spearheaded the new project, which welcomes veterans of the format to today’s chart-toppers, including Reba McEntire, Blake Shelton, Dolly Parton, Lainey Wilson, Trisha Yearwood, LeAnn Rimes, Ashley McBryde, Cody Johnson, Jelly Roll, bluegrassers Trey Hensley, Rob Ickes and Molly Tuttle, Sonya Isaacs (of southern gospel group The Isaacs), and O.N.E the Duo and Wendy Moten. Wilson and Parton perform “Mama, He’s Crazy,” Rimes sings “Have Mercy,” and Johnson and Isaacs offer up “Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Ole Days).” McEntire, Jennifer Nettles, Carly Pearce and Gabby Barrett helm “Girls Night Out.”
“It’s a bittersweet process to be going through all of this and be seeing things like this happening in the tributes coming in, and it’s just life moving forward,” Wynonna tells Billboard of the project, recalling hearing Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani performing “Love Is Alive.”
“I immediately reached out to Blake — my brother that I never wanted,” Wynonna says with a hint of a grin in her voice. “I still do that song every night onstage. It’s still very much a part of my process and musical journey, so hearing it was strange and wonderful at the same time. It’s like somebody else wearing your clothes or something. When you do a song, you make it your own, you breathe it in. The fact that it is mom’s and my song, makes it interesting to listen to somebody else’s voice on it.”
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A few weeks after Naomi’s passing, Bell lighted on the idea of making the tribute album. Maher recalls, “Renee said, ‘Naomi’s battle that she lost with mental illness, we cannot just let that fade away; there’s too much of it going on in the world and in our industry.’ She wanted to bring support and awareness to the issue.”
Toward that aim, the album will support National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI).
“I think we were all stunned when the revelation came out on what happened with Naomi,” Galante tells Billboard. “Being part of the [Country Music Association] board, we have been dealing with mental health in the music industry, as that has been on everybody’s mind since the pandemic. We are doing what we can to honor Naomi’s memory and honor this cause, to help people across the board.”
Maher tracked a number of the songs in the same Nashville studio where The Judds originally recorded many of their hits. Three of the musicians on the tribute album also played on The Judds’ records — drummer Eddie Bayers and pianist Bobby Ogdin and guitarist Don Potter.
“We didn’t want these songs to sound like karaoke tracks,” Maher says. “We wanted all the signature licks — the ‘Why Not Me’ lick or the ‘Grandpa’ lick, but we wanted every song to have a freshness and for the musicians to try new things.”
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Wynonna Judd herself sings on one track, a bluesy collaboration with Trisha Yearwood on “Cry Myself to Sleep,” produced by Judd’s husband and bandmate Cactus Moser. Yearwood joined Judd at a studio on her Nashville-area farm, marking the first time Judd and Yearwood had recorded together.
“We sat on the back porch and talked and laughed about life, and then we’d get up and go record together,” Judd recalls. “Nowadays that just doesn’t happen, with all the technology and the way things are flown in and sent over email — so to have her in the studio standing next to me was an absolute joy. At some points, I caught myself listening to the playback and going, ‘Wait, is that me or is that her?”
O.N.E the Duo and Wendy Moten collaborate on The Judds’ debut single, “Had a Dream (For the Heart).”
“We met Wendy not too long after starting our journey as O.N.E the Duo and we are such big fans of her,” the duo’s Prana and Tekitha told Billboard in a statement. “When Brent told us we were gonna do the song with her, we were thrilled. And the fact that the song we did together was ‘Had a Dream,’ which was the Judds’ first single, felt like a really precious task was being handed to us.”
“I was overwhelmed,” Judd said of hearing the song. “Being really honest, my first knee-jerk reaction was ‘Oh my God, this is happening,’ just because of walking through this personal season of loss. That was our first song. I cried and I thought, ‘This is what they mean by a tribute, because we’re done. That chapter’s closed.’ So there was sadness, but also real joy in realizing that someone else is breathing new life into this music, so it is really cool. The most important thing on this project is honoring the legacy from mom and me.”
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One of the more curious recordings on the project is a rendition of The Judds’ 1989 hit “Let Me Tell You About Love,” with vocals from Raul Malo, as well as the late rock ‘n roll architect Carl Perkins, who originally wrote the song with Paul Kennerley and Maher.
“This was when Paul was married to Emmylou [Harris], and we wrote this at their house. We had some high-quality microphones and all that, a little analog eight-track machine, so we made the demo there,” Maher says. “Carl played electric guitar and sang on the demo.”
For the updated version, Glen Wharf plays upright bass, Bayers plays drums over the top of the drum machine from the demo and the guitar is Perkins’ original from the demo. “The thing sounds like it was cut yesterday, but everything other than the bass and drums was done the day we wrote it.”
Ella Langley teams with Jamey Johnson on “Young Love.”
“There are only a handful of phone calls you can receive in your artist career that fill your soul with such fulfillment and honor,” Langley told Billboard in a statement. “To record ‘Young Love (Strong Love)’ alongside Jamey Johnson and to be included on this record is an honor of a lifetime.”
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The album closes with Jelly Roll teaming with K. Michelle and the Fisk Jubilee Singers offering The Judds’ Grammy-winning, signature hit “Love Can Build a Bridge.” Maher recalls the recording session being one of the most special moments of the album-making process.
“We recorded his vocal on a Sunday afternoon,” Maher says. “He texted me and said, ‘I’m running about 20 minutes late,’ and when he got there, he said, ‘I’m not usually late, but I am so over the moon excited. My 13-year-old daughter just got baptized,’ and I said, ‘Well, I think we picked the right day for this song.’ His voice was so sincere, and that first verse and chorus is just him and a piano. It took my breath away. And he was just so excited to be performing with K. Michelle and The Fisk Jubilee Singers on the song.”
Looking ahead, Wynonna is currently embarking on her Back to Wy Tour, which focuses on her solo catalog of hits. She’s also working with Jelly Roll in the studio, and is looking into releasing a book, a new album and a cookbook.
“We’re just talking about ideas — I’m always cooking something, so 2024 will be one of my busiest years,” Wynonna says. “I was sitting in the car yesterday and Jelly Roll called and asked me to do something with him, so I’m going to his house to work on a song. Everywhere you go, there’s something there, and I’m still included. Right now, I’m just feeling real gratitude, that I’m still included.”
Just call her Country Star Barbie. To celebrate Halloween a few days early at her own costume party, Kelsea Ballerini dressed up as a perfect recreation of Margot Robbie’s title character in Barbie. Dressed in a cowboy hat, bandana kerchief, vest and hot pink bell bottoms, the musician headed out to her New York City […]
Jessi Colter hadn’t planned on making a new album, but then Americana luminary Margo Price came to town.
After attending one of Price’s shows in Phoenix, Colter was talking to Price’s husband and fellow musician Jeremy Ivey, who mentioned how he wished Colter would make another album.
“I didn’t think much more about it at the time, but then Margo came back through Phoenix and was playing at Fort McDowell Casino, which is about 15 minutes down the road from where I lived,” Colter recalls via a phone interview with Billboard (Colter now splits her time between Phoenix and Wyoming). “I picked her up and she visited at my house.”
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Artist-producer Shooter Jennings, son of Colter and her late husband, Country Music Hall of Famer Waylon Jennings, happened to be visiting Colter’s home, and the timing proved fortunate. “We talked about some songs I had written. Margo wanted to hear them, so I played a few I’d kind of tucked away,” Colter recalls.
Among those selections were two that ignited Price’s passion: “Angel in the Fire,” written as a tribute to Colter’s longtime friend Lisa Kristofferson (wife of singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson) and “Standing on the Edge of Forever.” Soon Colter found herself in a Nashville studio with Price, Jennings, Ivey and a close group of fellow musicians, with Colter playing piano, singing and recording live. Price produced and Jennings mixed the project. The result is Edge of Forever, out Friday (Oct. 27) on Appalachia Record Co., Colter’s first album in six years.
“Those were some great days that energized me, for sure,” Colter, 80, said. “Margo wanted my new songs, but we also threw in a few older ones. We pulled out what songs I had, things she really liked that I had done, and added new things.” Of Price and Jennings, she says, “They’re keeping the history and yet moving forward in a good way.”
Edge of Forever marks Colter’s first project since 2017’s The Psalms, produced by longtime Patti Smith collaborator Lenny Kaye. The soulful energy and confident air embedded in these recordings hark back to the music she crafted five decades ago when her song “I’m Not Lisa” became a crossover hit in 1975, topping Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, and garnering Grammy and CMA Awards nominations. The First Lady of Outlaw Music followed with the top 5 country hit “What’s Happened to Blue Eyes.”
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In 1976, Colter stood alongside her husband, Willie Nelson and Tompall Glaser on Wanted! The Outlaws, a compilation project that became country music’s first platinum-selling album and included the Grammy-nominated Colter-Jennings duet of the Elvis classic “Suspicious Minds.” Colter’s subsequent solo albums, including 1976’s Jessi and Diamond in the Rough, also reached the top 5 on Billboard‘s Country Albums chart.
Edge of Forever is a heady mix of new tunes, older compositions, revamped spirituals and a collaboration with her daughter, Jenni Eddy Jennings. Price sings with Colter on a trio of songs, “I Wanna Be With You,” “Maybe You Should” and “Lost Love Song,” a tune Colter became reacquainted with after discovering a demo recording in one of her late husband’s briefcases.
“He liked the song and he had played it for me,” she recalls, quoting lyrics from the song including “Treated me just like a prisoner, I never tried to escape/ ‘Cause one night with you made up for all my bad days.” “I love that song and kind of took it as mine.”
Long before her own musical success and her association with two music icons (she was married to Duane Eddy from 1961-1968 and then to Jennings from 1969 until his death in 2002), Colter was writing songs for other artists, including Hank Locklin and Dottie West. Beyond the originals, she contributed heavily to the writing for her new project, including rewriting lyrics to the classic spiritual “Can’t Nobody Do Me Like Jesus,” to reflect her own journey.
“I’ve wanted to do that song for a long time,” she says, recalling an Apostolic church she attended in Nashville for many years. “I was the only white person there for about 10 years. It was wonderful because I was raised worshipping together, and that’s been my experience. There were no racial barriers.”
The Psalms drew its lyrics from the Old Testament’s Book of Psalms, and that same practice spills over into one of the songs on Edge of Forever, “Secret Place,” which takes lyrics from Psalm 91 and features writing and a vocal assist from Colter’s daughter, Jenni Eddy Jennings. The pair created the song prior to Waylon’s death. “When he heard that, he said, ‘You’ve got to cut that.’ It was something we always had in mind,” Colter says. “Margo loved it, and Jennifer’s voice is so melodious.”
Given the caliber of the trio of artists working on the album, one can’t help but compare Edge of Forever with a recent project helmed by Jennings and another Americana stalwart for a country music icon: Tanya Tucker’s 2019 project While I’m Livin’, co-produced by Jennings and Brandi Carlile, which went on to win two Grammys.
Whether Edge of Forever ultimately garners awards recognition remains to be seen, but it is a testament to a new generation of artists showing respect for and craving the music of artists such as Tucker and Colter — as is another project Colter has been working on for the past few years. Shooter Jennings, Price and Charley Crockett are among the younger artists featured in They Called Us Outlaws: Cosmic Cowboys, Honky Tonk Heroes and the Rise of the Renegade Troubadours, a six-part documentary series executive produced by Colter, which also features Kris Kristofferson and Steve Earle. Colter says the project is slated to be released in 2024.
“It began with the difference between Austin and Nashville,” Colter recalls of the 1970s Outlaws era. “Nashville was such ‘old-guard’ recording, and Austin had been exposed to rock. The country music people were conservative — doctors, lawyers — but Austin was ready for something more progressive, which is what Waylon and Willie were doing. The Outlaw thing itself was a brand and Waylon didn’t ever like that, really — but it was something that marketed well, so the brand has been used ever since.
“The documentary is going to be a revelation to a lot of people,” she continues. “This is more underground, what was really going on. It’s exciting to see a lot of young people looking back to the past and getting turned on to that.”
Chris Stapleton is extending his All-American Road Show into 2024, adding a slate of new dates.
The trek will extend through the summer of 2024, including stops at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Bowl (June 26), Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena (Aug. 9), Seattle’s T-Mobile Park (July 27), San Diego’s Petco Park (March 2) and two shows at BankNH Pavilion in Gilford, N.H. (Aug. 1-2).
Stapleton will bring with him a top-shelf slate of openers on various dates, including Sheryl Crow, Elle King, Marcus King, Willie Nelson and Family, Marty Stuart, Turnpike Troubadours, The War and Treaty, and Lainey Wilson.
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Over the next few weeks, Stapleton will release his upcoming album, Higher, on Nov. 10 and will vie for the CMA Awards’ entertainer of the year honor (along the two other awards nominations) on Nov. 8, when the awards ceremony airs live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. The 14-song Higher was produced by Stapleton alongside his wife, Morgane Stapleton, and his mainstay collaborator Dave Cobb.
Stapleton’s current radio single, “White Horse,” is at No. 16 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart. He’s also previewed the album through the tracks “Think I’m in Love With You” and “It Takes a Woman.”
Tickets for the new dates will go on-sale next Friday, Nov. 3, at 10 a.m. local time. Citi is the official card of Chris Stapleton’s All-American Road Show. Citi cardmembers will have access to pre-sale tickets beginning Tuesday, Oct. 31, at 10 a.m. local time until Thursday, Nov. 2, at 10 p.m. local time through the Citi Entertainment program.
See his announcement and the newly added dates in his Instagram post below:
Academy of Country Music Triple Crown winner Miranda Lambert‘s MuttNation Foundation has awarded 48 Tennessee organizations more than $175,000 in grants as part of the foundation’s It Takes Balls campaign. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The It Takes Balls campaign launched earlier this year to raise […]
Garth Brooks’ first studio album of new material since 2020’s Fun will come out in mid-November as part of a seven-disc boxed set available exclusively through Bass Pro Shops.
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Time Traveler, Brooks’ 14th studio album, will be housed in a limited series collection that include his three most recent studio sets since he came out of retirement — 2014’s Man Against Machine, 2016’s Gunslinger and Fun — as well as the three-disc Triple Live concert set.
“There are a lot of different eras on this album, thus the name,” Brooks said in a statement. “ Country music’s core is sincerity. After that, you can dress it up a thousand different ways. I am so lucky to live under the flag of country music.”
The Limited Series will be available in Bass Pro Shops starting Nov. 7. Fans can pre-order The Limited Series now and orders purchased through Bass Pro Shops online store will ship mid-November. Purchase price is $29.95, but fans approved for a Bass Pro Shows Club credit card receive a $20 credit good toward purchase, knocking the price down to $9.95 for the entire bundle. There are 177 Bass Pro Shops in the U.S., including 82 Cabela’s.
This is not the first time that Brooks has released new material through a boxed set. Gunslinger was initially available only as part of a Target-exclusive 10-CD box set, The Ultimate Collection. In addition to the new album, the career-spanning box included nine discs of tunes from Brooks’ catalog. The title moved 134,000 copies in its first week, according to Brooks’ representatives. Gunslinger was then released as a standalone album a week later to all physical retailers, as well as available for streaming through Amazon.
Fun was released the same day as three-disc live album Triple Live Deluxe, but both were available individually through Amazon, Walmart, Target and Talk Shop Live.
Unlike Gunslinger and Fun, a representative for Brooks says Time Traveler will not be released as an individual offering and will not be available for streaming on Amazon. No word on when a first single will be released from the Brooks-produced set, although the country star has been playing a new song, “Pleasure in the Pain,” during his two-year Las Vegas residency, which started earlier this year.
November’s The Limited Series is the third and final release in Brooks’ The Limited Series offerings. The first The Limited Series came out 25 years ago in 1998, and was followed by a second The Limited Series with different content in 2005. The second edition was available exclusively through Walmart.
The Limited Series will be available two weeks before Brooks plays a show to open his long-awaited Nashville bar, Friends in Low Places Bar & Honky Tonk, on Nov. 24. Fan can win tickets to the concert only via Brooks’ The Big 615 station on streaming platform TuneIn. The bar, on Lower Broadway, will open for that night and then will open for good in 2024.
Kelsea Ballerini has no regrets, especially where Chase Stokes is concerned. In her new cover story with Nylon, the country star opened up about how she slid into her now boyfriend’s DMs late last year, not long after divorcing songwriter Morgan Evans.
“I was at a bar in Nashville with some friends from Charleston, and they were like, ‘What about Chase?’” Ballerini recalled in the story published Tuesday (Oct. 24).
For context, Charleston is where Stokes shoots his hit Netflix show Outer Banks. After her friends suggested him, Ballerini followed the actor on Instagram — and he quickly followed her back. “I was just like, ‘Why am I waiting for this guy to reach out to me? This is 2022,’” she added.
The “This Feeling” singer ended up sending him a flirty message at 1:07 a.m., something she now laughs about. “Bro, I know,” she told the publication. “Listen, I was living my best life. I have no shame in that game.”
“I really did [know] as soon as I met him,” she continued. “And maybe that sounds like I’ve learned zero things, but I’ve always been a heart-first girl … and the truth is it’s never led me astray. I’ve always been where I needed to be while I needed to be there.”
“We are both very much so golden-retriever energy most of the time, but we both have a little bite in us, and we’re both incredibly driven,” Ballerini added of her beau. “He is the first person I’ve been in a relationship with that I feel like is not my complete opposite.”
As happy in love as Ballerini is now, the musician is still making sense of her tumultuous past couple of years, which have been marked by her publicly tense divorce from Evans. The pair was married for nearly five years before calling it quits in 2022, a breakup that inspired Ballerini’s heartbreaking EP Rolling Up the Welcome Mat.
According to her, the divorce made “a lot of conservative Karens very upset” and turned her into a target for social media comments about how she hadn’t tried hard enough to be a good wife. She told Nylon, “That scared me.”
Four years after he finished work on the final big-screen adaptation of the zeitgeist-y Hunger Games book trilogy, director Francis Lawrence got a phone call from producer Nina Jacobson, another veteran of the series. And she wasn’t looking to reminisce.
Suzanna Collins – the mind and pen behind the dystopian sci-fi series – had just rung up Jacobson with some news: “Hey, surprise! I’m almost finished with a new book.” Lawrence sums up their reaction: “Wow…. Okay!”
The Hunger Games scribe didn’t offer much information about her forthcoming novel, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, other than that it was a prequel — and it incorporated “a big musical element,” Lawrence recalls.
After reading the book in early 2020, not long before it arrived on shelves, Lawrence was officially in. “I love a villain origin story,” he says of Songbirds, which tracks the rise of trilogy antagonist Coriolanus Snow. The same went for Jacobson. “Suzanne trusting me with this series, we’ve had an incredible rapport and bond,” she says. “I was all in.”
Returning to the director’s chair for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes – which hits theaters Nov. 17 – served as a dual homecoming for Lawrence. Not only was he returning to the Hunger Games arena, but to the task of pairing songs with distinctive visuals. After all, he first cut his chops as a music video director, helming clips for Destiny’s Child (“Independent Women Part I”), Shakira (“Whenever, Wherever/Suerta”), Justin Timberlake (“Cry Me a River”), Britney Spears (“I’m a Slave 4 U”) and Beyoncé (“Run the World (Girls)”), even winning the best music video Grammy for directing Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.” An impressive resume to be sure, but not an exact match for the musical milieu Collins imagined for this story.
Songbirds introduces us to Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), an itinerant folk singer thrown into the titular kill-or-be-killed battle – as well as an unlikely romance with Snow (Tom Blyth). “[Collins] told me about the history of Appalachian music of the ‘20s and ‘30s and how often they were based on songs or ballads or poems that had been passed down for generations and collected over time,” Lawrence says of the music that inspired the character of Baird. Collins advised the director to check out Ken Burns’ 16-hour documentary Country Music (“this was during the pandemic, so I had time,” he adds) for context, but both of them realized that finding the right musical collaborator for the film – someone who lived and breathed this music — would be essential to making sure Baird felt like a dusty, jagged diamond in the rough.
Enter Dave Cobb. A Nashville mainstay who’s produced albums for Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson (i.e., country singers who value grit over studio polish), Cobb’s contributions for 2018’s A Star Is Born and 2022’s Elvis proved he could work within the Hollywood system without sacrificing his musical ethos.
When his name came up during pre-production, the team got on the phone to feel out his interest level. The connection was immediate.
“Talking to him, he’s an incredible historian of music and has such a passion that rivals Suzanne’s for the origins of what we think of as American music,” Jacobson recalls of their initial conversation. Lawrence agrees: “It was his resume but also just the chat. He’s such a great, smart guy and has such knowledge of the country music genre; he fit the family and is supremely talented.”
Dave Cobb
Becky Fluke
As for the nine-time Grammy winner, Cobb tells Billboard that Collins’ vast knowledge of history – music, political and otherwise – made him excited to hop on board and write songs to accompany her lyrics from the book.
“One of the things that was so attractive about working on this film [is that] I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a more intelligent person in my life than Suzanne Collins. She’s an absolute genius, by any measure,” Cobb says. “Suzanne telling me the impetus of the story had me captivated. I’m a history buff, and everything in this film — everything she’s written for Hunger Games — is derived from real history.”
That, however, presented an additional challenge: “I had to make [the songs] feel like turn-of-the-century, timeless classics. That’s a very hard thing to do,” Cobb admits with a laugh. But it wasn’t entirely outside his sphere of experience, either. “My grandmother was a Pentecostal minister, so I grew up with hymnals my whole life,” he says. “I’m very familiar with this sound growing up in the South and it was really fun to exercise that muscle of things I’d heard growing up, and put it into melodies.”
Collins’ musical acumen was an asset, too. “Dave had long conversations with Suzanne, and she’d give him the history of where the song came from,” Lawrence says, adding that Collins even “had some time signatures in mind” for certain songs before Cobb began writing.
“They have a shared love of the same music and the history of music,” Jacobson says. “She was present virtually for a lot of the recordings and had a lot of conversations with Dave, but gave him latitude, too. She always gives artists an enormous amount of freedom to interpret her work.” Lawrence seconds that: “He wrote the full songs, and we barely did changes.”
When it came time to hash out those songs with a band, Cobb intuitively knew a recording studio wouldn’t cut it.
“The big thing for me was to get the ability to be completely unorthodox,” he says. “We had this crazy idea to come down to my hometown of Savannah, Georgia, and rent an old mansion and record in that.” Using the seminal recordings of 20th century folk archivist Alan Lomax as a guiding light, Cobb found a “200-plus-year-old house” and brought along a few ringers — including bluegrass wonder Molly Tuttle — to record the guide tracks.
“With all the creaks in the walls, you can hear the history in the recording — it wasn’t like a clinical studio,” Cobb says. “The old microphones we used looked like they’d been under a bed for 75 years. Molly Tuttle played a big part – she played the guitar of Lucy Gray, and I found this old ’30s Gibson that she played on. It wasn’t just a regular acoustic guitar – it has character.
“That was a big part of making this come to life. There’s bleed between the bass going into the fiddle going into the banjo — it’s just absolute chaos in a way that makes things dangerous.”
Making it sound dangerous was only half of the equation, however. Ironically, to find a real-life location that looked Appalachian, the film crew decamped to Duisburg, Germany, filming a pivotal scene at an abandoned factory to evoke District 12’s black market district. “It’s something they would never do in the States – they turned [the factory] into a publicly accessible park and let nature take over,” Jacobson says. “There’s all these places where you can go into gritty, grubby basements with the equipment still there.”
With that as the backdrop, Zegler delivers one of the film’s finest musical moments, forcing our emotional investment in her romantic relationship with a character we know grows up to be a monster – all while singing the hell out of a breathtaking song that could pass for a long-lost Carter Family classic.
“Rachel is such an incredible talent that she ended up singing everything live [on set],” Cobb says of Zegler. “She’s so naturally gifted – it was effortless for her.”
Rachel Zegler and Tom Blyth in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
Murray Close
Despite being one of the first people in talks for the role (and a fan of the franchise), Zegler initially wasn’t able to do the film because of hectic scheduling issues. As the search for Lucy Gray Baird dragged on, Jacobson grew concerned. “We auditioned a zillion people and there are a lot of wildly talented people out there, but this is such a specific character. When she sings, it has to be jaw-dropping; anything short of that won’t deliver.”
Kismet came to the rescue, however, when Josh Andrés Rivera (who worked with Zegler on West Side Story) landed the role of Sejanus, Snow’s best friend. “He had this amazing audition,” says Jacobson. “I didn’t realize he was Rachel’s boyfriend – I just thought he was the guy who came in and gave us a great audition.” With Rivera set for a lengthy lockdown stay in Europe while filming the movie, Zegler and her team reconsidered the scheduling conflicts. “We got the call [from her team]: ‘Is it too late?’”
A chemistry test between Zegler and Blyth sealed the deal – even over Zoom, it was palpable. “We all wanted to be mindful of her musical theater background and make sure we got that authenticity in her singing,” Lawrence says. “As soon as she came on the Zoom test with her and Tom, I had her sing an a cappella version of ‘Wildwood Flower’ to Tom. And she just nailed it. It was slow, emotional and she had a little dialect happening. It was so, so good.”
“Rachel has this beautiful, almost ‘30s American pure voice,” Cobb muses. “She can sing anything.”
Her performance is equally revelatory. In Songbirds, Zegler believably portrays a tough, charismatic survivor who carefully guards her inner life and moral code; as we watch her become vulnerable with a character “people have already decided they hate,” as Jacobson says of Snow, it’s impossible to resist getting caught up in this suspenseful, engrossing rush of a film. While Collins’ evocative lyrics and Cobb’s familiar yet fresh melodies do a lot of heavy lifting, it’s hard to imagine anyone but Zegler pulling off the balancing act demanded by the story.
“We knew it would be a challenge to adapt this book,” Jacobson admits. “But it’s also a sort of homecoming, having made so many of these with Francis and this creative team. It’s a rare gift.”
“[Collins] writes from a thematic foundation that gives [Songbirds] relevance and importance,” Lawrence says. And though he has no insight into whether the series ends here, he’s certainly up for another one. “If she came up with another book — whether a direct sequel or a standalone or a new series in this world — I would be really into doing it again.”