Universal Universal Music Group Nashville Pressroom

LINCOLN, Nebraska (May 21, 2015) — With a simple yet propitious promise that no two nights will ever be the same, Eric Church has fans repeatedly coming back for more. Last night’s The Outsiders World Tour stop at Lincoln, Nebraska’s Pinnacle Bank Arena further proved why the man Stereogum called “our greatest working rock star” has notched his fourth North America venue attendance record of 2015 with 15,823 present–a record previously held by Sir Elton John (November 23, 2014; attendance 14,368).

With his fervent band backing him the majority of the night, Church performed over two hours of original music with hits “Give Me Back My Hometown” and “Smoke A Little Smoke” interspersed by deeper album cuts like “Longer Gone” and “Livin’ Part of Life” emerging from his vast arsenal.

“I’m humbled by the success this tour has had,” Church adds. “The records it has set, by some of my muses and heroes, it’s [all] very surreal. As an avid music fan, I’m not sure it’s deserving in comparison to those I adore musically.  I can only say this happened because, in my opinion, our fans are second to none.”

The Outsiders World Tour topped Billboard’s Hot Tours last month after Church set a new attendance record at Chicago’s Allstate Arena on March 20 with over 18,626 present. Church also shattered Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena attendance on January 10 with an unprecedented 18,411 fans assembled for what has now become the first of three sold out shows in 2015 in Music City (Church is opening Nashville’s Ascend Amphitheater with two back-to-back sold out shows July 30 & 31). On April 7, he also broke the attendance record in North Dakota’s Ralph Engelstad Arena, which was previously set by Sir Elton John’s 2012 show. Since launching his tour in September of 2014, Church has performed to over 800,000 fans in more than 65 cities with nearly 20 stops continuing through September 2015.

The CMA and four-time ACM Award winner finished 2014 as country music’s top-selling artist, with the year’s highest debut and sales of any release in the format as the critical and commercial success The Outsiders reached Platinum status, marking more than one million albums sold. Debuting at No. 1 on both the Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart and Top Country Albums chart, The Outsiders garnered GRAMMY, CMA, and ACM Top Album nominations and features his No.1 hits “Give Me Back My Hometown” and “Talladega” as well as his current single “Like A Wrecking Ball.” The Outsiders is the follow-up to Church’s Platinum-certified Chief, (named the 2012 Album of the Year by both CMA and ACM, and GRAMMY-nominated for Best Country Album) which featured five Top 20 singles: “Homeboy” (certified Platinum for sales in excess of one million singles); the Top 10 “Like Jesus Does” and the Top 5 “Creepin’” (both certified Gold for sales in excess of 500,000 singles each); and two No. 1 hits “Drink in My Hand” (certified Platinum) and “Springsteen” (certified Double Platinum for sales in excess of two million singles). Church’s 2006 debut album, Sinners Like Me (2006) and his sophomore album Carolina (2009) are both RIAA Gold-certified. Carolina had three hit singles: the Top 10 “Hell on the Heart” as well as Top 20 hit “Smoke A Little Smoke” and Top 10 smash “Love Your Love The Most,” which were both certified Gold. Sinners Like Me spawned three Top 20 singles: “How ‘Bout You,” “Two Pink Lines,” and “Guys Like Me.”

For more information on Church, visit www.EricChurch.com.

Check out the ‘Baking’ of “Biscuits,” Kacey Musgraves new single below. It’s the first release from her forthcoming album, Pageant Material, which will be available June 23rd.

NASHVILLE, Tenn., – May 20, 2015 – Luke Bryan and the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum celebrated the soon-to-be opened summer exhibit, Luke Bryan: Dirt Road Diary presented by Citi, tonight with a special event held for the music industry, friends and family of the ACM/CMA Entertainer of the Year. The exhibit opens May 22nd and runs through November 8th. For the exhibit, Bryan has loaned the museum a wealth of artifacts to represent his life and career. Highlights include:

Little League baseball uniform and glove

Second grade school backpack and denim jacket

First guitar, which his parents gave him when he was fourteen

A script from his high school production of Annie Get Your Gun, in which he starred

Handwritten lyrics to his 2014 chart-topping single, “I See You”

Stage props from his Spring Break concerts

Tour posters

Stage clothes worn by Bryan at concerts and awards shows

Music awards, including trophies for his ACM and CMA Entertainer of the Year wins

Bow and arrows used by Bryan on the Outdoor Channel reality series Buck Commander: Protected by Under Armour.

For more information about the exhibit including photos and video, click here. Follow @countrymusichof on Twitter and join the conversation using #ThisIsLukeBryan.

Suggested Tweet: Luke Bryan: Dirt Road Diary opens May 22 @countrymusichof Step inside his story: http://bit.ly/1EGtmJ7  #ThisisLukeBryan

Photo credit:
Jason Davis/Getty Images for CMHOF

Keith Urban’s FUSE is one of the four-time Grammy Award winner’s most successful album releases to date.  It marked the only time in history that a male Country artist had captured the #1 all-genre album chart simultaneously in the U.S., Canada and Australia, spawned four #1 songs, including Urban’s 18^th #1 “Raise ‘Em Up,” extended his historic streak of Top 10 singles to thirty-three and garnered nearly two dozen Award nominations from around the globe.

“I wanna say a massive thank you to all of you that made FUSE the most extraordinary ride,” said Urban.  “As we toured around the last couple years, you guys always asked if we’d ever shoot a video for “Come Back To Me” and well, we did, and here it is…and it’s all yours!!!

“Come Back To Me” will debut exclusively with Keith Urban’s fan club, The ‘Ville, this Wednesday, May 20th at 9am ET at keithurban.net. The video will be made available wide on Thursday, May 21st at 9am ET and can be viewed here at that time: http://smarturl.it/comebackvid.  The video was shot last December in Nashville and was directed by Chris Hicky.  “Come Back To Me” was written by Shane McAnally, Brandy Clark and Trevor Rosen and was co-produced by Butch Walker and Urban.

Keith is also set to make a return to HSN on May 24th.

For more Keith Urban news and ticket information go to www.keithurban.net.

David Letterman ends his 33-year reign as nighttime’s premier talk show hosts on Wednesday (May 20th), and throughout the years, many of your favorite country artists have graced his stage performing their hits.

Lady Antebellum is one of those artists who performed on Letterman’s show a few times. Lady A’s Hillary Scott feels Letterman gave a chance to numerous musicians who might not have had a chance to be heard if not for him. “He’s not afraid to showcase a lot of up and coming artists and the one’s that are a little bit more grass roots a little more underground,” Hillary explains. “I think that’s an amazing thing about him he’s got a lot of variety to his musical tastes, and we’re sad to see him go.”

Lady A’s Charles Kelley remembers how cold it was in the studio. “That’s what I’ll remember from it, it is the coldest, he likes it really cold, so the entire building, I mean you have to wear like a winter jacket in there.”

Billy Currington is another artist who performed on the show, and it was because of a request of the host. In 2010, Billy appeared to sing his hit “People are Crazy,” reportedly one of Letterman’s favorite songs. (check out the clip of the show below – make sure to stay until the end.)

Letterman’s final show will air Wednesday on CBS at 11:30pm ET. Stephen Colbert will take over Letterman’s show this fall, with the first episode airing on September 8th.

NEW YORK – (May 20, 2015) – Country music superstar Scotty McCreery performed “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the Seventh Inning Stretch of the New York Mets vs. St. Louis Cardinals game at New York City’s Citi Field on May 19th.
This is sure to be one of the sports topics that the ACM and CMT Music Award winner will discuss when he appears live today (May 20th) on “SI Now,” the daily online Sports Illustrated news show broadcast at SI.com between 1:00-1:30 PM/ET.

The singer/songwriter, who has been in the studio recently working on new music, will also appear on the “Road Trip with Anna Kooiman” segment of “FOX and Friends” which will air on May 28 at 7:40 AM/ET on the FOX News Channel. Kooiman visited McCreery and his band during their soundcheck and performance in Fargo, North Dakota earlier this year to learn how to be his guitar tech. Viewers can see how well she handled the job when the segment airs next week.

McCreery will be the special guest on the upcoming Rascal Flatts RIOT Tour 2015 this summer, beginning May 30 in Noblesville, IN at the Klipsch Music Center. The tour will also feature opening act RaeLynn.

The Mercury Nashville / 19 / Interscope Records recording artist scored two consecutive Top 10 hits (“See You Tonight” and “Feelin’ It”) from his sophomore album See You Tonight, which debuted at No. 1 on theBillboard Country Albums chart.  That album’s title song, co-written by the singer, was one of three singles from the “American Idol” champion that were certified Platinum by the RIAA in the same week (the other two being “The Trouble with Girls” and “I Love You This Big” from his Platinum-certified first album Clear as Day, which debuted at No. 1 on the BillboardTop 200 Albums chart).  For more information and tour dates, visit www.ScottyMcCreery.com.

Jon Pardi turns 30 on Wednesday (May 20th), and he’s celebrating by heading over to South Africa on a special hunting trip with his father, who’s been to the country a few times. The trip will also be featured on the Sportsman Channel TV series, Safari Hunter’s Journal.

Jon’s a little wary about the misconceptions of hunting in South Africa, saying he doesn’t want to shoot what he calls “Disney characters,” making reference to The Lion King, but he will go to this 55,000 acre preserve to hunt the plains animals, which number in the millions. Everything they kill will go to feed undernourished folks.

“There’s so much good stuff you can do in South Africa. And then when I got the chance to go on a TV show and go there, it was like, ‘Hey! Come here. There’s a game preservation and we’ve got all kinds of animals and we’ll go hunt the plains game.’ I was always like, ‘Well, I can’t be shooting Disney characters and stuff. Let’s just keep it to the herd animals where we get to go feed people with ‘em.’ So, we planned it out, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun,” says Jon. “We’re gonna really talk about [how] people don’t really understand hunting and how it helps them manage. I don’t know everything about it, but I’m gonna learn so much about what they do and how they keep it. This place I’m going to has put more animals in South Africa through hunting and management, so now there’s more African animals in this whole preserve than there was in the 1800s. They just have so much care for what they’re doing.”

Jon just released a new EP this week, The B-Sides, 2011-2014, featuring six previously unreleased songs.

NASHVILLE, TN – (May 19, 2015)  – Reigning CMA and ACM Entertainer of the Year Luke Bryan appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show today and announced the news his next album, KILL THE LIGHTS, is set for release on Friday, August 7th.  Luke also performed the first single from the album, “Kick The Dust Up,” which debuted at country radio today and is available now at digital retailers. Tonight he will perform the single on the season finale of The Voice.

“We’ve been performing the new song on tour this spring, using it to open the shows,” shares Luke. “We love the crowd reaction to it and I cannot wait to be able to share more new music this summer.  It’s been two years since we’ve had a new album and I don’t think I’ve been this eager yet to get it out to the fans.”

Luke will perform on Good Morning America on album release day, August 7th, as part of their 2015 Summer Concert Series at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park, home of the SummerStage.

The eagerly anticipated KILL THE LIGHTS album is the follow up to Luke’s most successful project to date, CRASH MY PARTY, which contains six consecutive No. 1 singles, is certified Double Platinum and has currently sold over two million copies with eight million digital downloads.

Since the debut of his first album in 2007, Luke Bryan has placed 12 singles at No. 1 and sold nearly seven million albums with 27 million digital tracks from his four studio albums.  He has been named Entertainer of the Year by both the Academy of Country Music (twice) and the Country Music Association.  In 2014, Luke achieved the best touring year of his career with 1.7 million fans attending his concerts.  In early 2015, Luke played his first-ever shows in Europe and this Friday, The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum will launch a summer exhibit, “Luke Bryan: Dirt Road Diary.”

Luke’s new concert tour, “Kick The Dust Up Tour,” will continue through October and includes seven stadium dates.

Visit www.LukeBryan.com or follow Luke on Twitter @LukeBryanOnline, Instagram and Facebook.

Luke Bryan will perform his brand new single, “Kickin’ the Dust Up,” on both the Ellen DeGeneres Show and on NBC’s The Voice on Tuesday (May 19th).

Keith Urban will participate in NBC’s star-studded event, Red Nose Day, Thursday (May 21st). The three-hour special, airing at 8pm ET, will raise money and help fight childhood poverty (among other children’s charities), while entertaining the masses. Keith will partner with John Mellencamp to perform “Pink Houses” on the show. Blake Shelton, Jimmy Fallon, Will Ferrell, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Garner, Reese Witherspoon, Jodie Foster, Robert Pattinson, Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Christina Aguilera, Pharrell, Adam Levine, Paul Rudd, Anna Kendrick, One Direction, Richard Gere and many others are also schedule to appear.