With a North American record-setting final tour stop sell-out at AT&T Stadium on his The Cowboy Rides Away Tour, 104,793 fans helped multiple ACM and CMA Entertainer of the Year George Strait bring one chapter of his inimitable touring career to a close, but the book is far from over.
In 2015, Strait revealed he would perform a series of exclusive worldwide engagements at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena that commenced last April and will continue through 2017, including last weekend’s sold-out dates with Kacey Musgraves. The two Texans closed the Strait To Vegas shows by playing for a capacity crowd of more than 33,000 people between February 17th and 18th.
During the closing weekend, Musgraves sat down with Strait to ask him fan-submitted questions via Facebook Live, where he shared things like his bucket list item of fishing in Cuba and his first memory of playing in Las Vegas. But the primary question on every fan’s mind was: “What is the future of his live concerts?”
Strait answered that question in November during a nearly two-hour pop-up show at Texas’ legendary Gruene Hall–where he first got his start with the Ace in the Hole Band. The reputable country star revealed that his exclusive performances in Las Vegas will continue — with a twist. Strait announced that he will shake things up with an unprecedented two nights of No. 1’s beginning with his April 7-8, 2017 shows. With an unmatched 60 singles hitting the top of the charts, the King of Country wanted to share these radio hits, plus several fan-favorites such as “Amarillo By Morning” and “Troubadour” that, surprisingly to many, never reached No.1. During Strait’s upcoming 2 Nights of Number 1’s, he will play 30 No. 1 hits Friday, April 7 and 30 No. 1 hits Saturday, April 8 in addition to those “can’t miss” classics.
“I think some fans would throw something at me if I didn’t play those,” Strait noted with his signature grin. “We’re going to try this out in April and change it up for those shows, then see how it goes. It’s important to me to hear what the fans think and take it from there.”
Strait elaborates, “We’re going to be rehearsing, I would say 25 songs that we haven’t played in years, so this should be fun!”
Speaking of hits, his Strait Out of the Box: Part 2 is available now. The impressive three-disc, 56-track collection features 36 hit singles – including 26 No. 1’s – plus two new songs co-written by Strait, along with 18 choice album cuts. Strait Out of the Box: Part 2 spans 20 years of Strait’s career from 1996 to 2016 and follows the highly successful, 8x Platinum-selling 1995 release, Strait Out of the Box.
Ticketing information is available at StraitToVegas.com.
News
GEORGE STRAIT SET TO MAKE HISTORY WITH NEXT CHAPTER.
LITTLE BIG TOWN MAKE HISTORY WITH SOLD OUT “LITTLE BIG TOWN AT THE MOTHER CHURCH” RYMAN RESIDENCY SHOWS.
Band members Karen Fairchild, Phillip Sweet, Kimberly Schlapman, and Jimi Westbrook’s took to the Ryman stage following support acts Brent Cobb (2/24) and Ashley Monroe (2/25) to debut their first, and only, live full-length album performances of The Breaker. After opening the show with the album’s “optimistic standout” (Sounds Like Nashville) “Happy People,” the band went on to perform every track on their new album from top to bottom– including their current chart-topping #1 song at country radio, “Better Man”–before later trading off lead vocals for several songs including “Beat Up Bible,” “When Someone Stops Loving You,” and the album’s title track, “The Breaker.”
DIERKS BENTLEY’S ‘BLACK’ TURNS GOLD.
LADY ANTEBELLUM HAS BACK-TO-BACK TV APPEARANCES.
DARIUS RUCKER PLAYS A BAD GUY ON THIS WEEK’S EPISODE OF ‘HAWAII FIVE-O.’
Darius Rucker appears on Friday’s episode of Hawaii Five-O, and he gets to play a bad guy.
“Playing Desmond Abati on Hawaii Five-O was amazing,” says Darius. “It was so much fun to go to Hawaii and play the bad guy. When I was asked what I wanted to do, I said I wanted to play the bad guy, and I definitely played the bad guy.”
“The plot of the episode is I’m a terrorist, a bombmaker, and they’re chasing me in, and I make my way to Hawaii, and they’re trying to find me, and I’m leaving a trail of dead bodies across Hawaii,” he laughs. “It was just fun being the villan, man, you know. I didn’t have to be the nice guy. That was good times.”
Catch Hawaii Five-O on Friday (February 24th) at 9pm ET on CBS.
Darius is making his way up the country charts with his latest single, “If I Told You.”
Audio / Darius Rucker talks about working on Friday’s episode of Hawaii Five-O.
DownloadDarius Rucker (Hawaii Five-O) 1 OC: …a heartbeat. :33
“Playing Desmond Abati on Hawaii Five-O was amazing. It was so much fun to go to Hawaii and play the bad guy. When I was asked what I wanted to do, I said I wanted to play the bad guy, and I definitely played the bad guy. It was fun to shoot that. And the people, the cast, was so, so helpful and so nice to me and so open-arms. Anything I needed, they were there, ready to help me. And the director became a great buddy of mine. We talk all the time now, and he’s such a great dude. Working on Hawaii Five-O was awesome, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Audio / Darius Rucker describes the plot of Friday’s episode of Hawaii Five-O.
DownloadDarius Rucker (Hawaii Five-O) 2 OC: …good times. :32
“The plot of the episode is I’m a terrorist, a bombmaker, and they’re chasing me in, and I make my way to Hawaii, and they’re trying to find me, and I’m leaving a trail of dead bodies across Hawaii. [laughs] But, the set on Hawaii was amazing. We shot on location most of the time. I got to go to really cool places and do some, see some things I wouldn’t have seen otherwise if I hadn’t been shooting Hawaii Five-O. It was just fun being the villan, man, you know. I didn’t have to be the nice guy. That was good times.”
ERIC CHURCH DOESN’T BACK DOWN ON HIS ‘HOLDIN’ MY OWN TOUR.’
After witnessing the three-hour, two-set marathon show at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center merely weeks ago, Rolling Stone professed, “Eric Church sets the bar.” The exchange in energy with the audience and passion that fuels the man behind the CMA’s Album of the Year is an earned one after years of putting his fans first. Whether it is the dozens in attendance at his first performance in Bethel, New York or the 15,842 in attendance for last month’s breezy night in Brooklyn, it is that unrivaled dedication to surpassing their expectations that is driving another mission: ensuring fans’ hard-earned money is spent fairly on face-value tickets at each and every stop on his 60-plus city Holdin’ My Own Tour.
As originally reported on yesterday (February 20th) by The Associated Press, throughout the Holdin’ My Own Tour, Eric and his team have systematically cancelled and released tickets back to the public that they identified as scalper tickets. Already on the tour, Eric’s management team used a proprietary program to release thousands of tickets back to the public and fans in markets like Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Toronto, Vancouver and Boston. On February 21st at noon local time, cancelled tickets for remaining markets will be released to the public via the venues’ official ticketing websites. In addition, tickets for Canadian dates were released Thursday, February 9th, and tickets for the Tacoma, Portland and Cincinnati shows will be released Monday, February 27th at noon local time.
“It’s not easy. It’s time consuming and labor intensive to comb through nearly 1 million tickets,” says Fielding Logan, one of Church’s managers at Q Prime South. “Yet, Eric is leading the charge, and our team is combatting these vultures, one cancellation at a time. Battling scalper efforts isn’t just identifying those individuals looming on street corners soliciting or hawking tickets anymore. It’s halting digital multi-million dollar enterprises that are sophisticated and aimed at taking advantage of the fan for profit.”
The efforts are resulting in an impassioned crowd, enthralled by the experience of seeing Church live for an unprecedented 38-song show. Tulsa World’s Jerry Wofford noted after witnessing the Holdin’ My Own Tour rock an at-capacity crowd at BOK Center, “What was remarkable to see was how Church made an arena feel tiny for a night. He built a genuine connection to the audience song after song.”
The Kansas City Star’s Timothy Finn raved, “[Church] knows how to stoke a crowd and keep it on the verge of frenzy… a man who has fashioned and earned his own reputation as a top-rate performer who can fill and rock an arena for more than three hours.”
When Church surprise-released 2015’s Mr. Misunderstood, he did so by direct mailing more than 80,000 fans the music first. After taking 2016 off, outside of a few festival appearances, the demand for Church’s tour was palpable with scalpers recognizing the opportunity to take advantage of his fans. In return, Church cautions: “You come at us, we’re going to go after you in return. You come after our fans? Well, let’s just say we see you, we know how you are, and we’re coming for you with 10x the vengeance.”
Remaining 2017 Holdin’ My Own Tour dates are as follows:
Thursday, February 23: Indianapolis, Ind. Bankers Life Fieldhouse
Friday, February 24: Cleveland, Ohio. Quicken Loans Arena
Saturday, February 25: Auburn Hills, Mich. The Palace of Auburn Hills
Tuesday, February 28: London, ONT Budweiser Gardens
Thursday, March 2: Toronto, ONT Air Canada Centre
Friday, March 3: Ottawa, ONT Canadian Tire Centre
Saturday, March 4: Montreal, QUE Bell Centre
Tuesday, March 7: Winnipeg, MB MTS Centre
Thursday, March 9: Saskatoon, SK SaskTel Centre
Friday, March 10: Edmonton, AB Northlands Coliseum
Saturday, March 11: Calgary, AB Scotiabank Saddledome
Tuesday, March 14: Vancouver, BC Rogers Arena
Thursday, March 16: Portland, Ore. Moda Center
Friday, March 17: Spokane, Wash. Spokane Arena
Saturday, March 18: Tacoma, Wash. Tacoma Dome
Wednesday, March 22: Bozeman, Mont. Brick Breeden Fieldhouse
Friday, March 24:Boise, Idaho. Taco Bell Arena
Saturday, March 25: Salt Lake City, Utah. Vivint Smart Home Arena
Tuesday, March 28: Phoenix, Ariz. Talking Stick Resort Arena
Thursday, March 30: Sacramento, Calif. Golden 1 Center
Friday, March 31: Los Angeles, Calif. STAPLES Center
Tuesday, April 4: Casper, Wyo. Casper Events Center
Wednesday, April 5: Denver, Colo. Pepsi Center
Friday, April 7: Wichita, Kan. INTRUST Bank Arena
Saturday, April 8: Omaha, Neb. CenturyLink Center Omaha
Wednesday, April 12: Moline, Ill. iWireless Center
Thursday, April 13: Rosemont, Ill. Allstate Arena
Friday, April 14: Milwaukee, Wis. BMO Harris Bradley Center
Thursday, April 20: Buffalo, N.Y. KeyBank Center
Friday, April 21: Pittsburgh, Pa. PPG Paints Arena
Saturday, April 22: Cincinnati, Ohio. U.S. Bank Arena
Thursday, April 27: Uncasville, Conn. Mohegan Sun Arena
Friday, April 28: Uncasville, Conn. Mohegan Sun Arena
Saturday, April 29: Manchester, N.H. SNHU Arena
Thursday, May 4: Tampa, Fla. Amalie Arena
Friday, May 5: Jacksonville, Fla. Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena
Saturday, May 6: Greenville, S.C. Bon Secours Wellness Arena
Thursday, May 11: Grand Rapids, Mich. Van Andel Arena
Friday, May 12: Peoria, Ill. Peoria Civic Center
Saturday, May 13: St. Louis, Mo. Scottrade Center
Thursday, May 18: Reading, Pa. Santander Arena
Friday, May 19: Washington, D.C. Verizon Center
Saturday, May 20: Greensboro, N.C. Greensboro Coliseum Complex
Thursday, May 25: Louisville, Ky. KFC Yum! Arena
Friday, May 26: Nashville, Tenn. Bridgestone Arena
Saturday, May 27: Nashville, Tenn. Bridgestone Arena
Visit www.ericchurch.com/events to purchase your tickets for the Holdin’ My Own Tour.
NEWS AND NOTES: Darius Rucker and Little Big Town
Darius Rucker will appear on NBC’s Today Show to perform “Love Do What It Do” with Robert Randolph on Tuesday (February 21st) in the 10am hour.
Darius Rucker will guest star as “Desmond Abati” on this week’s episode of Hawaii Five-O. Catch the show on Friday (February 24th) at 9pm ET/PT on CBS.
Little Big Town is taking their music to the small screen this week, including performances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (Thursday) and the Today Show on Friday.
Video /
ViewLITTLE BIG TOWN HITS THE TOP OF THE CHARTS WITH ‘BETTER MAN’ AND HITS THE TV CIRCUIT TO PROMOTE THEIR NEW ALBUM, ‘THE BREAKER.’
The Platinum-selling, GRAMMY Award-winning Little Big Town scored their latest No. 1 single, “Better Man,” which is also their fastest-rising radio single to date, on both the Billboard and MediaBase country airplay charts this week. The Taylor Swift-penned tune has over 35 million combined streams and nearly 500,000 digital downloads. Additionally, Little Big Town’s previous album Pain Killer, featuring the history-making “Girl Crush,” is now RIAA-certified Platinum.
The band releases its seventh studio album The Breaker this Friday, February 24th on Capitol Records Nashville.
The band kicks off a week of media appearances starting with performances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon this Thursday (2/23) and the TODAY Show this Friday (2/24) before returning to Nashville for the first of nine Ryman Auditorium residency dates – “Little Big Town at the Mother Church” –on Friday evening (2/24). The reigning CMA and ACM Vocal Group of the Year will also perform on Ellen Feb. 28 and will take their award-winning harmonies to The Talk, airing March 14.
Little Big Town, consisting of members Karen Fairchild, Phillip Sweet, Kimberly Schlapman and Jimi Westbrook, recently earned its 23rd career Academy of Country Music award nomination with a nod for Vocal Group of the Year. The group was awarded the same category last year along with Vocal Event of the Year and the ACM’s prestigious Crystal Milestone Award.
Fans can still pre-order The Breaker and instantly receive “Better Man” along with album tracks “Happy People,” “We Went to the Beach” and “When Someone Stops Loving You.” To pre-order The Breaker, visitHttp://umgn.us/LBTBREAKER .
For more information on Little Big Town, The Breaker and “Little Big Town at the Mother Church,” visit www.LittleBigTown.com.
Audio / Little Big Town’s Jimi Westbrook talks about “Better Man,” the first single from their new album, The Breaker.
DownloadLBT (Better Man) OC: …beautifully. :46
“This song, first of all, I love the melody. The chorus just kind of soars when it comes in and it feels like one of those classic country melodies on a chorus that we just fell in love from the first time we heard it. The message, I think everybody can identify with the sentiment of this song. A lot of times in life, there’s a lot of things you have to walk away from that don’t necessarily feel like the greatest decision to have to make in your life, but sometimes you just know that it’s time to move on and no matter how hard that is, you just know that down in your heart that it’s time to do that. Those are very difficult decisions that we face sometimes in our lives, and I think this song talks about that beautifully.”
LAUREN ALAINA CRACKS THE TOP 10 WITH HER SINGLE, ‘ROAD LESS TRAVELED.’
Lauren Alaina has hit the Top 10 – currently sitting at No. 8 on the Mediabase Country Chart – with her single, “Road Less Traveled.” The Georgia native co-wrote the song with Meghan Trainor and Jesse Frasure about how she was full of self-doubt a few years ago.
“‘Road Less Traveled’ is about what I was saying to myself, and what I was hearing other people say and how I was interpreting that and how I was letting that affect me. When I wrote this song, I wrote it a long time ago. It was one of the earlier ones that I wrote for the album,” says Lauren. “I was a broken 18 or 19-year-old girl when I wrote this song, and I needed to hear those lyrics. I was writing them, so I think deep down I knew that that’s how I needed to feel, but I did not feel that way when I wrote it. I wanted other people to feel the way I didn’t think was possible for me to feel, and that’s why I wrote it because I didn’t want other people to go through the feelings that I was going through at the time. It’s just like the pressures of being good enough, regardless of what that means for me. I didn’t feel thin enough. I didn’t feel blonde enough. I didn’t think I was pretty enough. I didn’t think I was this. I didn’t think I was that, because there were people online that made comments about my weight and comments about my hair color. When that started, I was 16 and it was hard. But it’s the same for a lot of people in school and in their work place, it’s like we all go through those insecurities and how we overcome them is our story.”
Lauren is out on the road with Martina McBride on her Love Unleashed Tour. The next stops on the trek are Thursday (February 23rd) in Carmel, Indiana, Friday (February 24th) in Atlanta, Georgia and Saturday (February 25th) in Hamlet, North Carolina.
Audio / Lauren Alaina explains how her single, "Road Less Traveled," is the result of her
DownloadLauren Alaina (Road Less Traveled – story) OC: …album for me. 1:21
“A lot of the songs on the album are about what happened with other people around me and how that affected me, but ‘Road Less Traveled’ is about what I was saying to myself, and what I was hearing other people say and how I was interpreting that and how I was letting that affect me. When I wrote this song, I wrote it a long time ago. It was one of the earlier ones that I wrote for the album. I was a broken 18 or 19-year-old girl when I wrote this song, and I needed to hear those lyrics. I was writing them, so I think deep down I knew that that’s how I needed to feel, but I did not feel that way when I wrote it. I wanted other people to feel the way I didn’t think was possible for me to feel, and that’s why I wrote it because I didn’t want other people to go through the feelings that I was going through at the time. It’s just like the pressures of being good enough, regardless of what that means for me. I didn’t feel thin enough. I didn’t feel blonde enough. I didn’t think I was pretty enough. I didn’t think I was this. I didn’t think I was that, because there were people online that made comments about my weight and comments about my hair color. When that started, I was 16 and it was hard. But it’s the same for a lot of people in school and in their work place, it’s like we all go through those insecurities and how we overcome them is our story.”
Audio / LINER Lauren Alaina (Road Less Traveled)
DownloadGO BEHIND-THE-SCENES OF KEITH URBAN’S LATEST MUSIC VIDEO.
Keith Urban takes fans behind-the-scenes of his latest music video, “The Fighter,” featuring Carrie Underwood.
“The original inspiration for the video came from an old photograph of the Mohammad Ali, Joe Frazier fight from the early ’70s,” explains director John Urbano, whom Urban has worked with on three other music videos. “[The photo] inspired the idea of light. So we’re hinting at a fight through lighting. I also had this idea to tell this story through dance interpretation…”
Keith earned seven ACM Award nominations, including Entertainer, Male Vocalist and Album of the Year for Ripcord.