Lady Antebellum: CMA New Artist Award Winner
By Bob Doerschuk

© 2009 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

The young artists who comprise Lady Antebellum weren’t the first ever to race onto the stage, their faces radiating thrilled disbelief, and tell the world that they truly did not expect to hear their names called as winners at the 2008 CMA Awards.

That doesn’t change the fact that they really truly were stunned when presented with the CMA New Artist Award by Taylor Swift, who had preceded them in 2007 as winner of what was known then as the CMA Horizon Award.

Out in the audience, though, a few people were not surprised at all. Their mothers, to name three, all of whom sat together as guests of their kids. And then there was Mike Dungan, President/CEO of Lady Antebellum’s record label, Capitol Records Nashville.

“I told them afterwards that even if they had not won that Award, they won with just their performance. Just seeing them up there, I felt they connected so many dots. And,” he added candidly, “I cried. It was really recognition of how great this band is.”

Alexander Technique Workshop

Nationally known Alexander Technique teacher Ethan Kind will help individuals overcome physical pain and attain freer body movements during a seminar from 9:30 a.m.-noon on March 14 (Saturday) at the Nashville Center for Spiritual Living, 6705 Charlotte Pike in Nashville. The Alexander Technique workshop is $25 per person. Seating is limited. To make reservations or for more information, call (615) 356-0174. Workshop attendees will learn how to walk and sit down effortlessly, stand without tension, lift safely, and use a computer without strain. The Alexander Technique was developed by F. Matthias Alexander, a Shakespearean actor, who in the late 1800s found himself suffering from chronic vocal problems. Kind, who studied for three years at the American Center for Alexander Technique in New York, works to help others learn how to move with balanced, easy posture. The teacher says that people often mistakenly think that they have to tense up to be in control. "I teach them that they are being in control by being at ease," Kind said. "When a person moves in a way that's very natural, they don't lock up their body." A professor in the drama and music departments of Wake Forest University, Salem College, and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, he has published articles in the U.S., Great Britain and Australia. Originally a concert guitarist, it was the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome that led him to find an Alexander teacher, revise his own guitar technique, and eliminate wrist problems.

This may well be the ONLY (show) date he'll have in Nashville for the rest of the year. Come see why crowds from coast to coast CAN'T GET ENOUGH of this Cadillac man! He's definitely built for love and he'd love for you to join in on his famed lyrics and guitar-slinging skills. Buckle up! ***You ain't gotta be livin' large to pay the cover charge either: it's only $5!!!!!!!!

For directions and more: http://www.listeningroomcafe.com/

[link:] http://www.myspace.com/ericheatherly

The Look of Music: CD Design in the Digital Age
By Melissa Coker

© 2008 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Digital downloading has changed practically every aspect of making and marketing music, but what impact has it had on the more visually artistic types who make their mark through album cover design? On that long road from LP to CD to the virtual world, is their handiwork becoming literally a diminishing art?

“Design principles shouldn’t change,” insisted Wade Hunt, former Sony BMG Nashville VP Creative Services and current Associate Creative Director, Catapult Marketing, who has been at the forefront of album cover design for about 25 years. “Good design is good design. A good designer can make whatever format effective. But things do have to get ‘cleaner’ for online delivery, especially for album covers. The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper [Lonely Hearts Club Band] album cover, for example … it’s so complex that it doesn’t work well in today’s online market.”

The opposite principle — simplicity — seems to work best in today’s online market. “The resolution sometimes is smaller and therefore more delicate designs or smaller typefaces don’t translate well in the digital world,” said Astrid May, Creative Director, Sony BMG Nashville. “It affects the way I pick colors and fonts and photos. The overall quality suffers, in my view.”

Photos also “have to be more graphic for the online market — a cleaner look with a lot less details,” she added. “Head shots or simple concept ideas work better.”

CMA 50th Anniversary: The Middle Years 1979-1988
By Deborah Evans Price

© 2008 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Throughout its first two decades, the Country Music Association developed formidable skills in promoting Country Music to gatekeepers in the business community, politicians on Capitol Hill and a fan base that was growing throughout the world. Partly as a result, the number of Country radio stations increased dramatically, album sales soared, the CMA Awards added new categories and Fan Fair attendance exploded.

As the 1970s drew to a close, the Country Music industry had plenty to celebrate. Roy Clark, The Oak Ridge Boys and Don Williams performed at “Country Comes to Monaco,” the first Country Music concert held in Monte Carlo, staged to benefit Princess Caroline’s “Year of the Child” charity fund. Willie Nelson and Charley Pride presented President Jimmy Carter with CMA’s first Special Award to honor his support of Country Music.

Corporate America extended its embrace of Country Music in 1979 with “Kool Country on Tour,” a 15-city tour sponsored by Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation. Fan Fair drew a record number of 14,000 attendees in June; the Talent Buyers Seminar set a record as well, with 360 registrants in October. And 280 new Country radio stations opened for business in 1978-’79.

“It was the beginning of the Alabamas of the world,” said Joe Galante, Chairman, Sony BMG Nashville, and a CMA Board member from 1978 through 1990 and again from 1996 to the present, as well as its President in 1983 and Chairman in 1986. “Ronnie Milsap and Dolly [Parton] were having hits. People were seeing success with these Country crossover records and beginning to get into the format. A lot of guys said ‘I like the format. I like the sound of the music.’ They converted over, and CMA was good to enlist them immediately as part of the membership.”

To keep step with the needs of its constituency, CMA underwent a restructuring in 1979. “We engaged a firm out of Washington, D.C., to come and study the situation,” said Jo Walker-Meador, longtime Executive Director of CMA, who had been looking to hire someone to serve as associate executive director — a move that the Washington firm supported.

Mixed Martial Arts – A Growing Sport in Alabama
From TheBama.com

Mixed Martial Arts or MMA is the fastest growing professional sport in the world, and it’s finding a home here in Alabama. On August 8, 2008 that home will be the Von Braun Center Area in Huntsville where Extreme Combat will host its fifteenth competition featuring a Light Weight Title defense and twelve other matches.

MMA combines all the major fighting styles: boxing, wrestling, Brazilian jiu jitsu and more, allowing fighters to stand and strike it out; or take their opponent to the mat to attempt to make them submit. The sport of MMA can currently be seen on Showtime, CBS Saturday Night Fights and HDNet bringing it to a much larger audience than ever before.

Extreme Combat 15 is your chance to catch this exciting sport live and up close. VIP tickets are just under $100, but great seats are available for as little as $23. Come on out and watch some of the best athletes in the area compete in REAL physical competitions designed to test their bodies and minds!

For tickets: http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/200040E2CDFB0D64

More Information: http://www.extremecombat.org

TheBama will be there, sitting ringside; and we hope to be able to bring you great photos and a review of all the action shortly after the fights end!

NEW ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Drew Davis Band
By Bob Doerschuk
© 2008 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.
Neal McCoy isn't easily impressed. But when he heard the Drew Davis Band doing sound check before opening for him one night, the celebrated entertainer decided instantly that they were "the best live act ever."

They impress nearly as much on paper as onstage, with a lineup that includes frontman Drew Davis, who built his intense vocal style through gigs back home in Missouri that included opening for Roy Clark, Grammy-nominated keyboardist Roger Malinowski, Malibu-born and bluegrass-bred guitarist Loren Ellis and USC-music-professor-turned-groove-machine Mo Levone on bass.

Though they sound as if they have paid long dues on the road, the DDB rocketed to prominence just three months after coming together in L.A., when they took top honors in the Colgate Country Showdown. They have been seasoned since then, having warmed up the house for Brooks & Dunn, Dierks Bentley, Craig Morgan, Tanya Tucker, SHeDAISY and other headliners, while rocking countless clubs on their own and, eventually, recording Crossroads, their debut album on Lofton Creek Records.

Grand Ole Opry Trust Fund Serves Music Community
By Bob Doerschuk

© 2008 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Alan Mayor is one of the best-liked photographers in Nashville, known for the extensive catalog of candid photographs of Country Music artists he accumulated since moving to Music City in the mid-1970s.

Yet not long ago, others noticed something that had slipped his attention — and nearly cost him his life.

“I was in Key West, shooting the BMI Songwriter Fest in May 2006,” he recalled. “And in front of all my friends whose pictures I was taking, I collapsed. Everyone was going, ‘Alan? What’s happening?’”

What was happening was that Mayor’s liver was beginning to fail, the result by his own admission of a longtime drinking habit. He was hospitalized and later given extensive treatment at Metro General Hospital in Nashville and Fort Sanders Sevier Medical Center in Sevierville, Tenn., leading in November 2007 to a kidney transplant at Vanderbilt Medical Center.

The process, though ultimately successful in bringing him back from the precipice of death, was excruciating. His first six days of hospitalization added up to nearly $20,000 in medical bills. Eventually, he would face charges of more than $100,000 — all of which, as an uninsured patient, was his responsibility.

George Carlin 1937 - 2008

George Carlin uttered the "Seven Words" you can't say on television before I was born, and yet he managed to be relevant throughout my life. As a teen I loved his often profane vocabulary choices; and as an adult I admired his genius views on culture and politics. His comic insight was unmatched; and I always looked forward to hearing his take on current events. I consider myself fortunate to have seen Carlin perform live several times in recent years; and had hoped I would get to see him for years to come. He will be missed – by me – and by a world that so badly needs to laugh.

For full details, we quote the Associated Press story below.

Counterculture comedian Carlin dies at 71
By KEITH ST. CLAIR – 1 hour ago

LOS ANGELES (AP) — George Carlin, the dean of counterculture comedians whose biting insights on life and language were immortalized in his "Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV" routine, died of heart failure Sunday. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.

NEW ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Amanda Shaw
By Bob Doerschuk

© 2008 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association,® Inc.

Fiddler/singer/songwriter/actress Amanda Shaw’s New Orleans roots display proudly throughout her Rounder Records debut album, Pretty Runs Out, in her street-strut pas de deux with Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews on “Brick Wall,” the low-down jazzy blues of her solo on “What’s Wrong with You?” and the foot-stomp Cajun feel “French Jig” and “McGee’s Medley.”

Shaw wrote five of these 13 tracks and recorded all of them while in her mid teens. Now 17, she projects an appeal through her music that combines elements of humor and youthful verve with the precocity that earned her the distinction at age 7 of being the youngest artist to guest with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra.

Shaw was in elementary school when she made her national television debut on “The Rosie O’Donnell Show.” She was 14 when she won Best Female Entertainer honors at the annual Big Easy Entertainment Awards. In 2004, she and producer Scott Billington worked diligently on repertoire for Pretty Runs Out and recorded demos at the legendary Ultrasonic Studio, which was subsequently lost to Hurricane Katrina. They recorded Pretty Runs Out at the Piety Street Studio in the Upper Ninth Ward at the end of 2006.

Like her hometown, Shaw’s music covers a wide range — all the way to crunchy, guitar-amped rock on “Woulda Coulda Shoulda.” The Crescent City is all about roots, and the rock/Cajun/Irish blend of her “Reels: The Gaspé Reel/Sam’s Slammer/ Imogen’s Ridge” medley makes clear where Shaw’s heart is, no matter how far her explorations take her from this point — even onto the sprawling IMAX screen as star of “Hurricane on the Bayou.”