State Champ Radio Country
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This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2003 Week concludes with a look at a turning point in country music, where two smash hits daydreaming about getting away from it all helped make the beach as essential a Nashville vista as the dusty plain or the open road.
On August 25, 2012, Kenny Chesney officially declared the sovereignty of No Shoes Nation during a show at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. A banner was eventually hung among those honoring all the Patriots’ titles to commemorate Chesney’s initial acknowledgement, though the actual origins of his fanbase’s name are shrouded in mystery (it was mentioned explicitly at least as early as a June 2012 Billboard feature on the singer).
“No Shoes Nation is more than a state of mind,” Chesney explained in the press release for his 2017 album, Live in No Shoes Nation. “It’s the place we all come together for the music, the fun and each other.”
Whether or not you accept the legal autonomy of his shoeless (or more often, flip-flopped) fans, the decades Chesney has spent entwining country music and a specific type of geographically hazy beach vacation have fundamentally changed the genre. The tipping point came just under 20 years ago, on August 16, 2003: the No. 1 song on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart was Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett‘s “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” and the No. 2 song on the chart was Kenny Chesney’s “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems.” Two weeks earlier, Uncle Kracker’s breezy cover of “Drift Away” (whose chorus is often misheard as “give me the Beach Boys“) reached No. 9 on the Hot 100.
America, or at least its country radio-listening contingent, needed a break — and it hasn’t put down its margaritas (or put on its shoes) since Chesney and Jackson spent one sweaty, sunburned summer compelling country listeners to trade back roads for sand bars. Etching a new country radio formula in stone and inspiring hundreds of imitators, they also ensured some of their songs’ questionable, touristic language and imagery stayed in the genre’s canon.
Before No Shoes Nation established its borders, of course, there was the little hamlet of Margaritaville. The early-’00s beach country renaissance arrived about a quarter-century after Buffett — having flopped pretty hard trying to ride the coattails of the Texas outlaws into Nashville — carved out what would become a billion-dollar niche romanticizing the then-untamed Key West waterfront. Buffett, having grown up on the less-scenic Gulf shores of Mobile, Alabama, had some claim to the island-time lifestyle that he would brand so effectively.
His conversion experience, though, came courtesy of singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, who Buffett had met while trying to make it in Nashville. Walker, who lived in Miami at the time, led a down-on-his-luck Buffett around south Florida in typical vagabond fashion. Buffett fell in love with Key West, and told Walker to leave him there when he headed back to Miami. “I’d been a teenager on Bourbon Street in college, I knew New Orleans from childhood, and Key West just had that magic,” Buffett later told Texas Monthly.
After “Margaritaville” hit No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977 — marking the singer-songwriter’s first, and still biggest, solo hit — Buffett was more than content to lean all the way into the light subversion of his beach-bum persona. With it, he was able to top the Adult Contemporary Airplay chart and reach No. 13 on Hot Country Songs, expanding his audience outside of Nashville by translating hippie nonchalance into a mode that even good hard-working folks could understand: a beach vacation.
There is an actual self-deprecating critique buried in “Margaritaville”: Buffett describes it as “wasting away,” after all, and a “lost” third verse observes tourists who “dream about weight loss” and “wish they could be their own boss” (tourists who sound a lot like most people listening to “Margaritaville”). But any reflection on what it might mean to actually escape the drudgery that makes frozen beverages so symbolic and seductive was clearly eclipsed by the fun of singing about margaritas.
Having forged a new sunny, breezy bridge between country music and pop — one that would eventually be coined “gulf and western” — Jimmy Buffett more or less played for the Parrotheads and explored different Margaritaville-themed ventures for the next 20 years. He never came close to the pop ubiquity he found with “Margaritaville” — until 2003, that is, when his unlikely compatriot Alan Jackson wondered, “What would Jimmy Buffett do?”
Jackson, who made his name through the ’90s as the most agreeable kind of neo-traditional country singer-songwriter, isn’t the kind of artist one would typically associate with “beach country” — even post-“Somewhere.” But the Georgia native claimed Buffett as an influence prior to their most familiar collaboration — his 1992 signature song “Chattahoochee” is about frolicking around a body of water, after all. “I’ve always been a big Jimmy Buffett fan,” Jackson wrote in the liner notes for his 1999 album Under The Influence, which included his first collaboration with Buffett on a cover of “Margaritaville.” “I like his music and the fact that he does what he wants to do.” (Billboard called the cover “a bit jarring.”)
In spite of the surprise that greeted his “Margaritaville” cover, Jackson went looking for another good duet option for him and Buffett — and came up with the most successful single of his career with “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.” “When I got the song it sounded like Buffett, so I called him up and asked him if he’d do it with me,” Jackson told the AP in 2003. “We cut the track in Nashville, then I flew to Key West and did the vocals [at Buffett’s Shrimp Boat Studio].” Buffett was not enormously invested in the song: he didn’t go to the video shoot (hence the live interlude), nor did he talk to the press at all about it as it skyrocketed up the charts — and it made no difference whatsoever. The song became not just one of the biggest of the year, spending eight weeks atop the country charts, but of the decade, a timeless drinking anthem that’s more about imagining a carefree beach vacation than actually getting to go on one.
Chesney first publicly embraced Buffett a little earlier than Jackson, with the late 1998 release of his breakthrough hit “How Forever Feels.” The singer-songwriter, raised in a small town near Knoxville, had as solid of country music bona fides as anyone in Nashville. But they hadn’t helped him break away from the pack of nearly indistinguishable mid-’90s cowboy-hatted young men attempting to replicate Garth Brooks’ success. “How Forever Feels,” which spent six weeks atop the Hot Country Songs chart, was the reason people started to learn his name.
The song, which was written by Wendell Mobley and Tony Mullins, has a decidedly country aesthetic — fiddle, pedal steel and all — and is about a decidedly country topic (marriage). But it opens with a little tribute to Buffett: “Big orange ball, sinkin’ in the water/ Toes in the sand, couldn’t get much hotter…Now I know how Jimmy Buffett feels.” That, along with a video shot on a picturesque St. Thomas beach in which Chesney alternates between his Brooksian black cowboy hat and a backwards baseball hat and sunglasses, was enough to cement his brand as “beach guy.” As “Forever” climbed the Billboard charts, Chesney added a cover of “Margaritaville” to his own set, and started tossing beach balls into the crowd when he played his single. (Earlier in 1998, Garth himself also scored a Buffett-influenced hit of his own, with the land-weary “Two Pina Coladas.”)
It didn’t really matter that “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” and any number of other non-explicitly “beach” songs became hits for Chesney soon after — his fate was cast with his first mention of “oil tannin’ señoritas.” “Before I was just in a big bowl of guys,” Chesney told the AP in 2004. “You’ve got to find your avenue, your way to separate yourself. I think for the first time in my career I was able to pull myself out of that ditch and be known as more than just a country hat act who was singing the same old songs everybody else was singing.”
Seemingly disinterested in messing with success, Chesney and his team put out a greatest hits compilation in 2000 that featured the first of several iconic country-beach-kitsch album covers. Chesney, fully clothed in a black cowboy hat and white button-down shirt, is pictured emerging from the ocean — despite the fact that only one of the included songs even mentioned the beach (on the back, he was similarly submerged while wearing overalls). The album became his first to top the Country Albums chart, and has since gone platinum five times over.
Releasing No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems in 2002, then, was almost like playing with house money for the Chesney camp. The album followed a now-familiar formula: a couple overtly beachy tunes, combined with a slew of more familiar country radio sounds (and a Bruce Springsteen cover, lest anyone question his range, or right to integrate rock elements into his performances at bigger and bigger venues). The cover featured Chesney in a black tank top and seemingly impractical cowboy hat on the sand, so that you knew his latitude and attitude before even listening to the album.
Surprisingly, the title track — Chesney’s most overtly island-themed tune to date (note the ukulele) — was No Problems‘ final single. “The islands,” Chesney intones during the video’s opening monologue. “They’re the one place where you can truly be as you are — where it doesn’t matter what you’ve done or how you make your life, you’re just there, with the sun, the sand, the sea, and the locals.” In place of Buffett’s hazy pairing of self-indulgence and deprecation, Chesney offers a manifesto. (Chesney had actually passed “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” which was originally offered to him by writers Don Rollins and Jim “Moose” Brown before Jackson snapped it up.)
Together, “Somewhere” and “No Problems” distill how Chesney and Jackson helped retool Buffett’s beachy bohemia into a core element of contemporary country music — how they translated its hippie dropout energy into something that fit easily within the world of Nashville’s moralized conservatism.
“Beach bum” is not a lifestyle for either, but an escape from the unpleasant but necessary rigors of doing one’s job: “I’m gettin’ paid by the hour and older by the minute, my boss just pushed me over the limit,” Jackson sings, “I’d like to call him something; I think I’ll just call it a day.” In place of Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It,” we get an anthem for taking this job and swallowing it…in the form of a tasty frozen beverage. Chesney has been “working six days a week,” while Jackson hasn’t “had a day off now in over a year” — they’ve earned this indulgence, which could hardly be deemed anything close to “wastin’ away.”
The darker side of all three artists’ take on coastal escapes comes with a relentlessly casual attitude towards “locals,” as Chesney calls them in the aforementioned monologue, treating them like an unchanging, natural, impersonal force – akin to the sun, the sand and the sea. Most often, the beachy escapes imagined in “Somewhere,” “No Problems” and the dozens of copycats since are uninhabited except for sexy nameless “senoritas;” they have no issue, then, with somewhat hackneyed countrified takes on reggae and calypso.
In these songs, there is a clear sense that the intended audience is people who view Mexico or Jamaica as a place to vacation, not as their home — and those listeners seem to feel entitled to those beaches and margaritas, regardless of the potential consequences of their perpetual visits for their inhabitants. Margaritaville resorts stretch throughout the Caribbean and Central America and press uncomfortably up against the residents of those actual countries where people live all year long.
Chesney released “When The Sun Goes Down,” a beachy duet with Uncle Kracker, in 2004 — the first of many attempts to follow up “No Problems.” Buffett would lean into his way-belated Nashville success the following year with an album of country collaborations called License to Chill, often quipping about getting his first country No. 1 and his first award (the CMA for Vocal Event of the Year) long after becoming a household name. “I was thinking of doing a record like this for a long time,” Buffett told the Boston Globe at the time. “It certainly has not gone unnoticed by me that I was either getting mentioned as an influence or was included in song lyrics by a lot of country singers.”
“I think everybody’s a Jimmy Buffett wannabe,” Chesney said in an interview with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2005. “Deep down, Jimmy was always a country artist. His songs had a country soul to them.”
Now, it’s the rare country album that doesn’t have some sort of vacation-themed song or allusion to mix up the drinking tunes, whether it’s Dierks Bentley’s “Somewhere on a Beach,” Morgan Wallen’s “Sand In My Boots,” or Luke Combs going “deep sea señorita fishing down in Panama.” The Buffett aesthetic and ethos was, via Chesney and Jackson, turned into yet another familiar Music Row formula; a theme that allows for No Shoes Nation to treat a concert like a more affordable version of the kinds of vacations they’re singing along to songs about from the Sandbar (what Chesney tours call the pit).
“You can call him a Kmart Buffett all you want, but give Chesney credit,” as Sean Daly put it in the St. Petersburg Times. “He’s coupled boat-drink dreams with blue-collar reality, a simple formula with staggering 21st century pull.”
While Jackson, ever a traditionalist, hasn’t done much with his beachy cred, Chesney has maintained all along that his ever-growing vacation anthem oeuvre is about more than just him keeping a good thing going.
“The people who believe this is all an invention of clever marketing have missed the point,” he told Billboard in 2007. “Not that there hasn’t been some great marketing, but … we don’t put a check out there I can’t cash. When people talk about the tropical lifestyle, the beach, summer, friends, we absolutely put that out there…But we didn’t just pull it out of the air. That’s my life and how I live.” If the country charts of the past two decades are any indication, more and more country fans wish they could live that way too.
Atlantic Records has signed country singer-songwriter Tanner Usrey to its artist roster, with Usrey’s label debut single, “Give It Some Time,” releasing Friday (April 14).
Texas native Usrey was belting out Alan Jackson songs by age five, and counts artists including George Strait, the Rolling Stones and Tom Petty among his influences. Usrey quit his job as a skip tracer in 2019 and released his independent EP Medicine Man, with songs including “Beautiful Lies” earning millions of Spotify streams. In 2021, he followed with SÕL Sessions EP; a song from the project, “The Light,” soundtracked the finale of Yellowstone‘s fourth season.
“Give It Some Time,” was written by Usrey and producer Beau Bedford (Jonathan Tyler, The Texas Gentlemen).
“I started writing this song about a year and a half ago,” Usrey said via a statement. “It wasn’t one that came easy, by any means. I had the hook and a verse down when I went to start the record with Beau Bedford. And we finished the song in an hour and recorded it later that day. It’s an anthem about change, holding on to the person you love, and riding out the storm, because things will get better with time. This song means a lot to me, it’s one that I had to work at for a long time to write, and it’s our first single release with Atlantic, so I’m super excited about working together with this awesome team and seeing what we can accomplish together.”
“Tanner’s innate talent as a storyteller is evident in all of his music and we are incredibly excited to welcome him to the Atlantic family,” Ian Cripps, senior vp, A&R for Atlantic Records, added via a statement.
Last year, Usrey performed over 180 shows; in 2023, he is opening shows for artists including Elle King, Charles Wesley Godwin, and The Steel Woods.
Boycotting Budweiser is like swearing off Google for online searches: You could do it, but it’s pretty hard to go out for a drink and avoid Bud, Bud Light, Busch, Corona, Modelo, Natural Light, Stella Artois, Michelob or one of the many regional and international brands owned by parent company AB Inbev.
That hasn’t stopped Kid Rock, John Rich and Travis Tritt from lashing out at the world’s leading beer company after transgender TikTok star and social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney shared a video on April 1 of herself participating in Bud Light’s Easy Carry Contest for the end of the NCAA’s March Madness. In the clip, she revealed that the company helped her celebrate her “365th day of womanhood” with “possibly the best gift ever” — a commemorative can of Bud Light with Mulvaney’s face on the side.
The can, which was personalized for Mulvaney and is not available for commercial sale, was enough of an affront to the artists that Rock uploaded a video in which he attempted to obliterate 12-packs of Bud Light with a semi-automatic rifle, while yelling “f–k Bud Light, and f–kk Anheuser-Busch” into the camera. The “Devil Without a Cause” rapper-turned-country-rocker did not specifically call out Mulvaney (or mention the word trans), nor did he say that he was calling for a ban of AB products in his video.
On April 5, country singer Tritt announced that he would be “deleting all Anheuser-Busch products from my tour hospitality rider,” adding that there were “many other artists who are doing the same.” Later that day, Rich of country duo Big & Rich tweeted suggesting he would be pulling Bud Light from his Nashville restaurant/bar Redneck Riviera.
While Rock has already pulled AB titles from his Nashville Honky Tonk Rock & Roll Steakhouse and, according to a bartender during a visit on Thursday (April 13), Rich’s Redneck Riviera is in the process of pulling Bud Light, the artists will have a harder time implementing any kind of ban on tour.
According to Chris Bigelow, president of food and beverage consulting giant Bigelow Consulting, “the artist has no say” when it comes to demanding a venue remove AB Inbev products from taps and venue bars during their shows.
“Maybe if it was a bigger star that said, ‘I won’t play your building [if you don’t remove them]’ and everyone wanted that star to play then maybe you’d say, ‘let’s figure this out,’” says Bigelow, whose company has worked with stadiums, arenas and convention centers to stock their food and beverage for more than 40 years in North America and around the world. “But I don’t see Kid Rock at that level and if he’s already booked to play shows I don’t see anything changing…. “Now if it was Beyoncé or Taylor Swift they might consider changing the taps, but I’ve never heard of them doing that.”
Rock currently has a number of U.S. arena shows on the books for this summer at a variety of buildings that currently have AB products on tap. And while they may not accommodate his Bud-cott venue-wide, Bigelow adds, “He can ask for whatever he wants backstage.”
The artists’ call for a boycott — which has been amplified by conservative network Fox News — is likely to make noise, but not change drinking habits much according to Neil Reid, a professor of geography and planning at the University of Toledo who is also known as the “Beer Professor” for his deep knowledge and study of the suds industry, which he has lectured about across the world for more than 25 years.
“I would imagine that these venues [the artists play while on tour] already have contracts with distributors or outside vendors that run their food service and concessions and I’d be surprised if any of these artists could eliminate any particular beer from these venues,” Reid tells Billboard of the standard contracts in which the venue and/or concession company of record decide what brews to serve based on existing contracts with buildings and distributors.
Reid says AB Inbev is the world’s leading beer barreler, with more than 500 brands that make up eight of the top 10 best-selling beers in the United States and nearly 40% of the U.S. market as of 2021 figures and 30% of the global market. He noted that AB has long participated in outreach to the LGBTQ community, including sponsoring pride celebrations, and that calls for a boycott typically make for good headlines but little else.
“These boycotts are typically a strategy to get those 15 minutes of fame and this one has already gotten it, but the news cycle usually runs out and they disappear,” he says. “Because consumers are creatures of habit — one thing in AB Inbev’s favor — and because they own so many different brands, someone might think they’re not buying one of their products and they actually are. It’s about me as a consumer feeling good about taking action, but I don’t see this adding to any significant numbers that will impact AB Inbev.”
–Additional reporting by Jessica Nicholson
Just over two weeks after the Nashville community was shaken by a school shooting at The Covenant School that took the lives of three children and three school staff members, several from Nashville’s music community gathered for an evening of healing through music at “A Night of Joy: Celebrating The Covenant School”
Hosted by author Annie F. Downs, the event was held on Wednesday (April 12) at Belmont University’s The Fisher Center, with all proceeds benefitting The Covenant School’s staff, students and families.
Carrie Underwood was one of many artists who gathered that night to support and love The Covenant School community, and contributed a pitch-perfect rendition of her Grammy-winning hit “Something in the Water.”
“I’m Carrie and I had no idea what I was going to sing tonight, but it is a night of joy and I wanted [one of the] most joyful songs I had,” Underwood told the crowd. “If you know it, sing along, and if you don’t, sing something and make a joyful noise.”
Belmont University alumnus Tyler Hubbard performed “Real Life Heroes,” a song he had written three weeks ago, just days prior to the school shooting. The song is a tribute to all kinds of everyday heroes, from military members to farmers to teachers. As soon as Hubbard finished the first chorus with the line, “There are some real-life heroes in this town,” the crowd became fervent in its agreement.
Hubbard dedicated the song to “staff, teachers, first responders, parents, friends, family — anyone who has played a part in healing. There are a lot of heroes in this room tonight.”
Husband and wife duo The War and Treaty earned the first standing ovation of the evening. With only the accompaniment of a piano, Michael and Tanya Trotter wowed the crowd with their superb vocals on “Up Yonder,” while Tanya’s powerful, elegant rendering of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” ushered the crowd to their feet.
Another thunderous standing ovation quickly followed when Downs told the crowd that there were first responders in attendance.
During their performance, Caleb and Will Chapman of Nashville-based rock band Colony House revealed that they were both former students of the late Katherine Koonce, Covenant’s head of school who was one of the six victims killed in the shooting.
“She encouraged us to tell our story,” said lead singer Caleb, before introducing the song “Moving Forward.” “This was written during a heavy time for our family,” he said. He soon welcomed the brothers’ father, CCM luminary Steven Curtis Chapman, to the stage. As Chapman acknowledged the evening as “a night we wish was not happening,” he also spoke of Koonce’s kindness, courage and love, before performing his 1997 release, “Not Home Yet.”
Also among the performers were country trio Lady A (performing “I Run to You”), Matt Maher (“The Lord’s Prayer (It’s Yours)” and “Lord I Need You”), Thomas Rhett (“Be a Light”), Sixpence None the Richer (“Kiss Me”), Mat Kearney (“Nothing Left to Lose”), Ben Rector (“Thank You”), Dave Barnes (“God Gave Me You”), The Warren Brothers (a rendition of “Anyway,” a hit for Martina McBride) and Chris Tomlin (“Good, Good Father”). Also on the bill were songwriters Sandra McCracken, Luke Laird and Brett Taylor, as well as a performance from Dwan Hill, Jasmine Mullen and Sarah Kroger.
The audience also featured few surprise guests; rock singer Alice Cooper and his wife Sheryl took to the stage, offering their support to the Covenant School community, and introduced a performance from Thomas Rhett.
Before Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor performed the group’s 2004 hit “Wagon Wheel,” he told the crowd how Country Music Hall of Fame member Roy Acuff’s name was scratched into his violin. He told the crowd that after March 27, he took a pin and scratched in additional names—the names of the Covenant School shooting victims, including Evelyn Dieckhaus, Mike Hill, William Kinney, Koonce, Cynthia Peak and Hallie Scruggs. He then dedicated the song’s third verse to each of the victims and for a few moments, the crowd joined in with a lighthearted, wall-to-wall singalong inside The Fisher Center.
Drew Holcomb and Ellie Holcomb also performed “Family,” as Ellie offered “a reminder that the light is always stronger than the darkness.” Drew added, “We have all been so inspired by how much you love each other and let others into your grief and your story. I’ve never ben so proud to be from Nashville than the past two weeks.”
Singer-songwriter and The Highwomen member Natalie Hemby was joined by fellow singer-songwriter Trent Dabbs. Downs noted that Hemby was among those who organized the “A Night of Joy” event. “She was one of the first ones asking, ‘How can we help?’ Downs said.
Hemby, with Dabbs’ guitar accompaniment, performed a rendition of “Rainbow,” a song recorded by Kacey Musgraves, which Hemby co-wrote with Shane McAnally and Musgraves.
Meanwhile, Hemby spoke of her relationship with Peak, whom Hemby recalled had given her swimming lessons as a child and was also a math tutor. “Cynthia was such an amazing human being…I remember swimming with her and I did the backstroke more than the frontstroke, because I could look up at the sky. I remember her having her hand underneath me, guiding me along and I feel like she was that kind of person, always.”
Hemby added, “When we found out she was gone, I immediately felt sad. But I also felt this incredible peace, because I know where that woman is.”
Ryman Auditorium in Nashville unveiled the latest addition to its Icon Walk on Thursday (April 13) – a bronze statue honoring Charley Pride. Pride’s statue joins likenesses of Loretta Lynn, Bill Monroe and Little Jimmy Dickens.
All four artists are in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Monroe, often called the father of bluegrass music, has also been voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. In 1971, Pride became the first Black artist to win the CMA Award for entertainer of the year. The following year, Lynn became the first woman to win that top award.
The Icon Walk was created as a way to honor those who have made significant contributions to the historic venue and to Nashville.
Rozene Pride, the singer’s widow (they were married for more than 60 years), and their son Dion Pride attended the unveiling.
“He has often been called the Jackie Robinson of country music,” Rozene shared. “The only difference was Jackie Robinson was picked for the role. Pride picked country music because he loved it and that was his life.”
“He loved his fans – in fact, his fans drove him,” Dion added. “All of you drove him. You are the reason why he was the success he was. Everything he did was for you.”
“Charley Pride broke barriers and defied stereotypes, becoming one of the most successful and beloved country music artists of all time,” said Ryman Hospitality Properties executive chairman Colin Reed.
Visitors can find Pride’s statue at the northwest corner of the building next to the likenesses of Lynn and Monroe. Dickens’ statue stands atop the Ryman’s main steps, greeting ticket holders and tour-takers as they arrive. Artist Ben Watts, who created the three previous statues, also did the honors on Pride’s statue.
A general view of the bronze, life-sized Charley Pride statue at Ryman Auditorium on April 12, 2023 in Nashville.
Jason Davis/GI
Pride amassed 29 No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart (now called Hot Country Songs), from “All I Have to Offer You (Is Me)” in August 1969 to “Night Games” in September 1983. His longest-running No. 1 (five weeks) was 1971’s “Kiss an Angel Good Morning,” a crossover hit that helped Pride land back-to-back CMA Awards for male vocalist of the year in 1971 and 1972. Pride is also a three-time Grammy winner and a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.
Pride is credited with helping break color barriers by becoming country music’s first Black superstar. His influence was seen in the ACM Awards nominations, announced today, in which Kane Brown is nominated for entertainer of the year and male artist of the year, and the Americana duo The War & Treaty is nominated for duo of the year.
A member of the Grand Ole Opry, Pride received the CMA’s Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award in November 2020.
Barely a month later, on Dec. 12, 2020, Pride died at the age of 86 from complications due to COVID-19. In 2021, CMT celebrated his life and impact with CMT Giants: Charley Pride.
Singer-songwriter-actor Tim McGraw is expanding his business ventures with a new entertainment, media and marketing company called Down Home. The Nashville-based firm is a collaborative effort between McGraw, his management company EM.Co and social content studio Shareability.
EM.Co’s Brian Kaplan, also a co-founder of Down Home, will serve as chief strategy officer, while Shareability founder and Down Home co-founder Tim Staples will serve as CEO. The venture is aimed at connecting McGraw’s country music audience with Hollywood and brands by producing film, TV and digital media “that focuses on relatable stories that capture the essence and spirit of everyday Americans,” according to a press release.
Down Home has secured a private investment deal with Nashville-based TriScore Entertainment and The Laurel Group, a boutique merchant bank that continues to advise the company.
At launch, Down Home has an investment and first-look deal in place with Skydance Media. Under the agreement, Skydance will develop film and television projects with Down Home, in addition to channeling IP and other material to the company. Down Home currently has two scripted series in development with Skydance, with plans for additional features and animation. Skydance founder/CEO David Ellison will serve on the Down Home board.
Down Home additionally plans to establish a social content studio to nurture Nashville’s emerging talent, fostering connections across music, sports, entertainment and brands.
“Country music has always been about storytelling,” McGraw said in a statement. “Our stories are honest vignettes of life and family and community. I think there’s a longing for that. For me, that’s Down Home. That’s how I grew up, those are the stories I like to tell, and that’s what I want our company to be about.”
Ellison added, “Tim McGraw is an outstanding artist and entertainer. He is truly gifted at telling stories across mediums that deeply connect with the audience and has built an unmatched community of fans around the world. We are thrilled to partner with him, Tim Staples, Brian Kaplan, and everyone at Down Home as they have created a dedicated infrastructure to tell stories across film, TV, and music, to fulfill a massive demand for authentic, inspiring stories.”
“From 1883 to Friday Night Lights, or songs like ‘Humble and Kind’, Tim McGraw knows how to connect with this audience in a way that can be really powerful for both Hollywood and brands,” said Staples.
“We’re thrilled to be a part of the next chapter in Nashville’s evolution in empowering artists and visionaries to create a new hub for storytelling that combines talent, passion, and innovation,” Kaplan added.
McGraw was represented in the transaction by EM.Co’s Scott Siman and Kelly Clague. He continues his long-time affiliation with CAA.
Tension abounds: Josh Mirenda’s current Average Joes single, “Wind Up,” is a perfect storm of excited angst — dramatic outbursts of percussion, nearly unresolved chord progressions, grainy confidence and a plot with a fair amount of mystery. An amped-up couple surges toward heated physicality, though their destination remains unknown. The singer leaves his soul precariously exposed, and all of the requisite emotional peril is felt in the mix of hard-edged music and suspenseful storyline as “Wind Up” moves into a moment of expected passion.
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“There’s some danger with love,” Mirenda says. “You meet somebody or something, you got to let that guard down if you’re willing to actually fall in love with somebody. It can be a dangerous, nervous kind of feeling to be vulnerable that way.”
Waiting for love — or to express it — can often build tension, and waiting is a key element of “Wind Up.” Mirenda wrote the song with Will Weatherly (“Thinking ’Bout You,” “Lose It”) and Michael Tyler (“Blame It On You,” “Somewhere on a Beach”) around 2019, with Jason Aldean squarely in their creative crosshairs. They didn’t have a specific title or hook in mind, though when one of the guys landed on a forward-leaning electric guitar groove, it gave them an energetic core to work from.
“We just kind of started messing with an electric and those chords,” recalls Weatherly. It’s “that dark, driving thing. It’s just never bad to aim uptempo.”
The chords are simple: grounded in the key of G, “Wind Up” spends the bulk of its time in C and D chords that beg for resolution and an E-minor that serves as a murky shadow of the tonic. It does eventually arrive at the G, but it only stays there for a mere beat before flicking back to its inherent tension. The sense of mystery had the writers completely engaged, even if they didn’t know where it was headed. They only knew the words had to match the musical undercurrent to work fully.
“As you’re moving forward in a write, you know, the music can drive the lyric, and then the lyrics can continue to drive the music and they can keep working off each other,” Weatherly says. “At the end of the day, you want it to feel like the emotion that you’re saying. You want to believe the singer.”
They developed a chorus first, focused on a couple who is bored with a club. The pair sneaks out to its ride, hitting the blacktop for some intense alone time, though its destination is unclear. That hazy journey matched the essence of the day’s writing process.
“Ironically, it’s called ‘Wind Up’ — the whole premise of the song is like, ‘Hey, let’s just swing for the fences here and see where we wind up,’ ” says Mirenda. “What we did in the room with the idea, it just kind of fit.”
Mirenda and Tyler had primary control of the song’s melody, centering on specific notes that begged for resolution, much like the underlying chords. As they unwound those phrases, Weatherly worked up the track, kicking out a good portion of it before the appointment was done. He focused particularly on the percussion, casting the chorus in half-time rhythms to vary the texture between that section and the verses.
“I love playing with rhythm, so it could be 120 [beats per minute], and it turns into 60 perceptively in the chorus,” Weatherly notes. “Then you go to the second verse and you’ve got the four-on-the-floor [kick drum]; it’s back to 120, like DJ land.”
Weatherly finished the demo that night, and when he sent it to his co-writers, Mirenda forwarded it directly to Aldean, who in turn put it on hold. He held it for a while, though he ultimately decided against recording it. “That happens as a writer,” says Mirenda. “It is what it is.”
But Mirenda couldn’t let go of “Wind Up.” He played the demo frequently and made the song his concert opener. Invariably, fans asked about it after his shows, so Mirenda put it in the mix when he headed into Starstruck Studios last fall with producer-engineer Nick Gibbens (C.J. Solar, Marty Stuart), who used Weatherly’s demo as a road map.
They operated with the same “See where we wind up” ideal as the song. Gibbens told the band, particularly drummer Evan Hutchings and guitarist Sol Philcox-Littlefield, to cut loose on the rocking foundation that Weatherly set, not knowing quite how they would proceed.
“Half the fun to doing any of this is watching dudes that are tiers above anything I could ever play or Josh could ever play, taking our ideas and going three steps further with it,” Gibbens says.
Hutchings applied some wickedly propulsive fills in key sections, while Philcox-Littlefield sculpted a flashy, intricate solo that elevated the energy and tension. It gave them a track that could easily fit between Puddle of Mudd and 3 Doors Down on turn-of-the-century rock radio.
“For all the energy that’s in it, it’s pushing midtempo — it’s not blazing,” notes Gibbens, dissecting Hutchings’ drum part. “We tried to stay on top of the beat with as much subdivision as we can get and just tried to treat it like an early-2000s rock track, like what Josh and I were listening to in high school: the Warped Tour every summer, a lot of guyliner, a lot of angst in there.”
To provide stylistic balance, Mike Johnson slipped in atmospheric steel guitar riffs that mimic the pedal tone in Brooks & Dunn’s “Ain’t Nothing ’Bout You.”
“That is my favorite country song of all time,” Mirenda says. “Brooks & Dunn is my favorite country artist/act/duo/band -— whatever you want to call it, Brooks & Dunn is my favorite. I play it every night in my live show. I do a little ’90s country acoustic medley, and I cannot wait to play that every night.”Mirenda and crew cut six songs that day, and at the end, they toasted their efforts with shots of Black Sheep Tequila. Mirenda later knocked out the final vocals, managing to deliver a grainy sound and believable phrasing while staying true to the notes.
“There’s not a lot of people that can do that,” enthuses Gibbens. “Cool always beats perfection to me, and he’s able to do both, where he is really accurate with his pitches and his phrasing, but he still puts character on it. And that’s what’s way more important than being perfectly on pitch.”
Average Joes released “Wind Up” to country radio via PlayMPE on March 1, and Mirenda has heard a few spins, thanks in part to some radio friends who have given him a heads-up when it’s scheduled to air on their stations.
“It’s a special moment. It kind of makes me tear up a little bit, even though it’s a rockin’ song,” Mirenda says. “Knowing all the stuff that I had to go through personally and that my family had to go through to get to this point, it’s worth it.”
Wherever the journey winds up.
Congratulations are in order for Kimberly Perry and her husband, Johnny Costello, as the singer announced that they are expecting their first child together. The country singer, formerly of The Band Perry, shared the news via Instagram on Thursday (April 13).
The 39-year-old posted a maternity photoshoot with Costello taken for People on her Instagram feed and captioned the post, “The best news of all the good news lately: I’m OVERFLOWING WITH JOY to share that Johnny and I are expecting our first baby in late August!! We’re absolutely beside ourselves with happiness and in awe of the Creator’s plan.”
“Building my own family is something I’ve dreamed about for as long as I can remember. As a woman and as an artist, I’ve always felt like I had to make a choice between growing my career and growing life. But YALL – I’m doin’ em both at the SAME TIME!! Here we go!” the country singer added, noting that she will keep fans updated on all news regarding “BB Costello.”
Costello also updated his Instagram followers with the news, writing, “Yall!!!!! We’ve got some fun fun fun family news!!! WE ARE HAVING A BABY IN AUGUST!! We are so excited to be parents and can’t wait for little Harper Lee to have a sibling!!!”
The Band Perry singer additionally expressed her excitement at becoming a mother for the first time in a statement to People. “Johnny and I are overflowing with joy to announce this beautiful bundle of love,” she told the outlet. “This is a brand new season for us — new love, new life, new baby, nothing better!”
Perry and Costello’s baby news comes on the heels of their second wedding anniversary; the pair quietly tied the knot in June 2021 and revealed their marriage in a six-month anniversary post that December. The baby announcement also arrives after The Band Perry announced its hiatus in March, and the singer’s recent signing to RECORDS Nashville/Columbia as a solo artist.
See Perry’s pregnancy announcement below:
Reigning CMA entertainer of the year winner Luke Combs and Ryman Hospitality Properties’ Opry Entertainment Group have joined forces to reimagine Nashville’s Wildhorse Saloon, located at 120 2nd Ave. N., as a Combs-inspired multi-level entertainment venue; it’s set to open in 2024.
The yet-to-be-named complex will total 69,000 square feet, including an outdoor-indoor capacity of nearly 3,200 people, and will reflect Combs’ passions for music, songwriting, whiskey and sports. Specifically, the venue will take inspiration from Combs’ debut hit “Hurricane,” which went 8x multi-Platinum and spent two weeks at the pinnacle of Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart in 2017.
Speaking with Billboard at the Wildhorse Saloon in downtown Nashville, Combs said that watching Opry Entertainment’s work on Blake Shelton’s Ole Red venues was inspiring.
“I’ve had other offers for venues, but I always thought if I had the chance one day to do a venue, I would want to work with them. Working in hospitality the way they do, they bring something unique to the table.”
Combs added, “I talked with Blake about it this January, when we were talking about working with the Opry folks. He had so many great things to say about them and was like, ‘You should absolutely do this,’ and he was excited for me. It was great to get that affirmation.”
The entertainment complex will include a 1,500-person capacity concert venue for ticketed events. Meanwhile, a proposed rooftop bar (720-person capacity) with views of the Cumberland River and Nissan Stadium will add 9,000 square feet of entertainment space to the existing 60,000-square-foot venue.
The three interior levels will convey Combs’ songs, lifestyle and connection to his Bootlegger fans.
Colin Reed, Ryman Hospitality Properties’ executive chairman, told Billboard that he estimates the project will cost in the “tens of millions,” though he declined to offer specific financials.
Reed described the venue as containing a “250-seater honky-tonk at the front that can open up into the concert hall behind it.” He adds that the concert hall will include a “Beautiful Crazy” area designed for groups and bachelorette parties, as well as a bourbon bar and an area dedicated and inspired by Combs’ Bootleggers fanclub.
“We’ve definitely tried to prove over the years that we always think about the fans first,” Combs told Billboard. “I wanted to continue to do that with this spot, too. I didn’t just want to slap y name on something and wash my hands of it. I’ve been very hands-on with this. I wanted it to be something where my fans felt like they could come to. Obviously, if they are in the fanclub, there will be special things and special places for them to come to and unique opportunities.”
“With the honky-tonk, when I say 250 people, it will be two stories,” Reed tells Billboard. “It will be a small, intimate 250-capacity, where people will be on the second floor, looking down onto a stage and on the ground floor it will have a great bar behind it.”
Reed adds that the third floor is include a “new-generation sorts bar, to provide people who come to Nashville, who want not only to drink good bourbon, good beer, but also listen to music and watch their favorite sports team play.”
In the meantime, the venue will continue to operate as the Wildhorse Saloon until the new venue opens in 2024.
The Wildhorse Saloon opened in downtown Nashville in 1994 and has since been home to more than 4,000 television show episodes and tapings, as well as a destination for corporate events. The venue previously hosted The Wildhorse Saloon Dance Show on The Nashville Network in the 1990s and served as a base for the CMT show Can You Duet.
Combs says fans can absolutely expect to see some surprise appearances and performances from him at the venue.
“Any opportunity or any time I do something in town, I can do it here, because this is a spot that is large and versatile. It will be a really unique spot,” Combs says.
Combs is currently on his world tour, will will visit Nashville this weekend, for two shows at Nissan Stadium.
Songwriter Ashley Gorley has three ACM Awards nominations for song of the year. He’s only the third songwriter to achieve that feat in the show’s 58-year history. (The category was introduced in the show’s second year.)
Gorley co-wrote Chris Stapleton’s “You Should Probably Leave” with Stapleton and Chris DuBois; Cole Swindell’s “She Had Me at Heads Carolina” with Swindell, Jesse Frasure, Mark D. Sanders, Thomas Rhett and Tim Nichols; and Morgan Wallen’s “Sand in My Boots” with Josh Osborne and Michael Hardy.
The only other songwriters to notch three nominations in one year are Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson, each more than 50 years ago.
Hag was the sole writer of all three of his 1968 nominees – “The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde,” “Mama Tried” and “I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am.” He was also the artist on all three songs. The first two reached No. 1 on Hot Country Singles – now called Hot Country Songs. “I Take a Lot of Pride” peaked at No. 3. Jimmy Webb won the award that year for writing the Glen Campbell classic “Wichita Lineman.”
Kristofferson was the sole writer of all three of his 1970 nominees – “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” a No. 1 hit for Sammi Smith; “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” a No. 1 hit for Johnny Cash; and “For the Good Times,” a No. 1 hit for Ray Price. (All three chart references are to Hot Country Singles.) Kristofferson won the award for the sublime “For the Good Times.”
Hag, who died in 2016 at age 79, and Kristofferson, 86, have long been country music royalty.
Haggard was voted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994. He received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2006 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2010.
Kristofferson was voted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985 and received that organization’s highest honor, the Johnny Mercer Award, in 2006. He was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004 and received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2006.
Gorley, 45, has written hits for a raft of country artists, as well as such non-country artists as Bon Jovi and Jason Derulo. He has topped Billboard’s Country Songwriters chart for 33 weeks and has headed Hot 100 Songwriters for three weeks.
