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Kenny Rogers Announces Dates for 30th Annual Christmas and Hits Tour
When you’ve been doing something as long as Kenny Rogers has been making music, the milestones are bound to pile up — and sure enough, this holiday season will mark an auspicious anniversary for the country legend.
When Rogers embarks on his annual Christmas and Hits tour this November 25, it’ll mark his 30th straight year of heading out on the road to bring holiday cheer to fans. Billy Dean will join Rogers for the 17-date run, which concludes December 23.
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Kenny Chesney Earns Platinum Record for ‘Hemingway’s Whiskey’
For one of country’s biggest stars, Kenny Chesney is building quite an impressive heavy metal collection.
Chesney’s latest album, ‘Hemingway’s Whiskey,’ was recently certified platinum for sales of one million copies by the RIAA, becoming the 10th of his 14 releases to reach one of the industry’s most esteemed sales milestones.
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Gloriana Describes the ‘Evolving Process’ Behind Their New Album, ‘A Thousand Miles Left Behind’
Losing a band member is almost always difficult and it’s got to be particularly tough to learn your bandmate is leaving via Twitter, as the members of Gloriana discovered a couple of months ago, when vocalist and mandolin player Cheyenne Kimball announced she was quitting.
They took the news in stride, however, and regrouped as a trio, getting down to work on their upcoming sophomore release, ‘A Thousand Miles Left Behind.’ In the process, they discovered the whole ordeal might have been a blessing in disguise.
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Brantley Gilbert Is Proud to Be a Mama’s Boy
Rick Diamond, Getty Images
For most country artists, moving to Nashville is a matter of course because it simply makes sense to be right there in the middle of Music Row.
But for Brantley Gilbert, there were other factors to consider when it came time to decide whether he’d be picking up stakes and leaving his Georgia home. Like, for instance, his mama.
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Dixie Chicks, Willie Nelson, and More Join October 17 Concert for Texas Fire Relief
Even as rescue workers continue to battle the wildfires that have raged through Texas throughout September, organizers are putting together a benefit to help pay for some of the more than $250 million worth of damage the fires have left behind.
Scheduled for October 17, ‘Fire Relief: The Concert for Central Texas’ has lined up an impressive array of artists and bands with roots in the Lone Star State, including the Dixie Chicks, Willie Nelson, and Lyle Lovett.
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Brantley Gilbert Shares the Story of the Dog He Rescued, Alley
Rick Diamond, Getty Images
The old line about country music is that it’s all about trucks, women, and dogs. And like most jokes, although it overstates the situation, it does include a nugget of truth.
Take, for instance, country newcomer Brantley Gilbert. His latest single, ‘Country Must Be Country Wide,’ is currently shooting up the charts, giving him his first hit — but that isn’t as important to him as his relationship with Alley, his pet pit bull.
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Jason Aldean Has Roughly ’20, 25 Songs’ in the Works for Next Album
Jason Aldean‘s latest album, the double-platinum ‘My Kinda Party,’ isn’t even a year old yet, but he isn’t wasting any time getting started on his next release. In fact, he’s planning on heading into the studio next month to start laying down tracks.
When Aldean’s crew convenes for the sessions for his fifth album, they’ll have no shortage of songs to choose from. In fact, it sounds like it’ll be a struggle to get the list of candidates down to a manageable length.
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Lady Antebellum’s ‘Own the Night’ Debuts at Number 1
In what might be the least surprising debut of the year, Lady Antebellum‘s new album has ended its first week at the top of the charts — pretty much all of them, in fact.
With sales of nearly 350,000 units, ‘Own the Night’ outpaced its competition by a wide margin, coming in at number one on the country charts, as well as Billboard’s overall Top 200 tally. As an added bonus, it also topped the album sales charts in Canada.
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Hunter Hayes Declines Lauren Alaina’s Prom Invitation
At the tender age of 16, Lauren Alaina already has a lot going for her, including a fast-rising career in music, millions of fans from her stint on ‘American Idol,’ and a debut album mere weeks from release.
What she doesn’t have, however, is a date to the prom with fellow young country star Hunter Hayes.
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Toby Keith Tops Forbes List of Country Music’s Highest-Paid Stars
Toby Keith has recently gone on record as saying that America’s wealthiest citizens should expect to shoulder their fair share of the country’s tax burden — and he knows a thing or two about what it’s like to write the IRS a check after having a successful year.
He might have to get set to write another one, too: According to Forbes’ latest list, he’s the highest-paid entertainer in country music.
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How Did Lady Antebellum Get Through Their ‘Really Hard’ Early Years?
Lady Antebellum struck platinum with their first album and they haven’t looked back, sending each of their first nine singles to the top 20 and selling more than five million albums in the U.S. since 2008. It’s a success story that plenty of bands would love to duplicate, to say the least.
But no matter how quickly they found their audience, or how tightly the trio might harmonize at the mic, things haven’t always been easy for Lady Antebellum behind the scenes. In fact, it wasn’t so long ago that they had to call in a third party to help them communicate.
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Miranda Lambert Urges Young Songwriters to ‘Know Who You Are’ [VIDEO]
If you want to make a living as a songwriter, Nashville is unquestionably the best place to be — even after a decade of dwindling record sales, it’s still home to a thriving publishing industry, as well as some of the most seasoned tunesmiths in the business.
But that doesn’t mean a good song is necessarily easy to find. In fact, Miranda Lambert found the experience so frustrating that she ended up learning how to play guitar just so she could write her own material.