Space Monster: Destroy Nashville

Haven't posted in forever - I've been working on a project that literally has taken every available spare minute for two months now - but this five-minute monster mini-movie was just too good not to share.

The Monster Mash Up

I was going to go see August Rush tonight on the side of Ronnie Dunn's barn, but I'm thinking this might be an even better choice.



Thanks to my friend Tim Napalm for turning me on to this.

What you get when you cut deals with Wal-Mart

A friend of mine just told me about his experience buying the new Eagles album. I’ve omitted his name and the location of the store, but his story was too good not to share.

“On Tuesday, I went to the Sam’s across from our office. As much as I detest these exclusives with these big boxes, 27 years was as long as I could wait for a new Eagles album.

“The store opens at 8 in the morning. I went in there at 1 o’clock. I went to the music department, expecting to see an endcap full of it. There was nothing. I looked in the section – nothing. Okay, maybe they’ve got it in a big dump bin up front, like Garth Brooks had on the palettes. Nothing.

“I went and asked somebody. They said, ‘Eagles? I don’t know anything about it.’

“I said, ‘It’s your damn exclusive! What do you mean you don’t know anything about it?’

“‘Well, let me get the department manager.’

“So I wait, find out the department manager was off – she was sick that day. Ten minutes later, they finally find a piece in a case in the back that hadn’t even been opened. They didn’t even know the damn record was theirs.

“At this point, it was about 1:30 in the afternoon. I was the first person at that Sam’s Club to buy the new Eagles record, because they didn’t even know they had it in their back room.”

At this store at least, the Eagles’ exclusive deal with Wal-Mart has made the new album – of which Wal-Mart bought a fixed amount, with a guarantee of no returns – the retail equivalent of bananas. If the bananas don’t go out today, they can always go out tomorrow. Actually, the Eagles are a lower priority than bananas, because if you leave a new shipment of bananas in the back room all day, they might spoil.

SK6ERS in Nashville!

Going to see Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers Tuesday at 3rd & Lindsley (and tonight, at their in-store at the Borders in Brentwood. The SK6ERS' Glassjaw Boxer is one of my favorite albums this year. In no small part, that's because my 4-year-old daughter latched onto "Sweet Sophia" (Sophia is her middle name) as her favorite song. She can now recognize Kellogg's voice when she hears him sing another song, and she's also noticed the similarities in the arrangements of "Sweet Sophia" and Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" (not bad for a 4-year-old). The Springsteen comparison's pretty smart - songs like "Glassjaw Boxer" and "Big Easy" share that combination of romanticism and melodicism that Springsteen does so well.

I got to see the band play about five songs opening for O.A.R. in Long Island this summer, this summer, but Tuesday will give me my first chance to see them do their full set. For a pared-down taste of what I'm looking forward to, here's the band doing "Sweet Sophia" at another Borders a few nights ago:



And here's Kellogg solo, doing a bit that was also a highlight of the Long Island show I saw:

Ohrwurm

"Yesterday's Lie," The Questionnaires. A band that you almost surely haven't heard of if you're not familiar with the Nashville rock scene of the late '80s/early '90s, but their best stuff still holds up for me (maybe it's the memories, but I don't think it's only that). This one has a chorus that reminds me of the old MTV bumper music.



This isn't the song that's been stuck in my head this morning, but for a taste of the Questionnaires, check out this video for the title track of the band's Window to the World album.



And here's the group's cover of the Flamin' Groovies' "Teenage Head."

Steve Vai shreds

Steve Vai, expertly edited into full-on Nigel Tufnel mode.

Sara Evans Divorce Granted: Now We Can All Go Take a Shower

Just go this official word regarding the Sara Evans/Craig Schelske divorce, via a publicist at SonyBMG:

"The parties have agreed that it is in their best interests and those of their children to amicably resolve all issues in their pending divorce. Each wishes the other well in all future endeavors. Both parties are fully committed to raising their children in a cooperative and positive way. Both parties are loving and caring parents. They request that everyone respect the family’s privacy. The parties will have no further comment regarding any allegations of fault or misconduct alleged by either party in these divorce proceedings."

It came with a note saying "the statement filed in court today" would be "the only statement issued." To which I can only reply, "Thank goodness!" Since neither side in these proceedings seemed to have any compunctions about laying out their seamiest suspicions in front of the public before, it's about time they both learned to keep a lid on it. But the real kicker to me, is this sentence from the statement: "They request that everyone respect the family's privacy." You have to ask yourself: "Why in the world should anybody else respect their privacy when Sara and Craig clearly had so little respect for it themselves?"

Review: The Cheetah Girls' TCG

The Cheetah Girls, TCG
Destiny's Kid

Since their first Disney Channel movie came out four years ago, these three Cheetahs have prospered to the point where they can fill arenas with 8- to 14-year-old girls. TCG begins the effort to distinguish Adrienne Bailon, Sabrina Bryan and Kiely Williams from their characters. Irrepressibly poppy R&B tracks borrow from Lionel Richie’s All Night Long and Beethoven’s Ninth, and the songs address romantic relationships in addition to the standard Disney themes of friendship and self-empowerment. But it’s likely the Cheetahs’ target audience will completely miss the irony of Who We Are, in which a made-for-TV pop group with its own clothing line sings the lyrics “It doesn’t really matter what you wear” and “Tell me why my television’s filling me with lies.” (**)

>>Sample: So Bring It On
>>Skip: Do No Wrong

Review: Steve Earle's Washington Square Serenade

Steve Earle, Washington Square Serenade

New urban folk boom

There was a time when Steve Earle would have been expected to set every bridge ablaze behind him as he took the Hillbilly Highway out of Nashville. But on his first album since relocating to New York City, he doesn’t look back so much as look ahead — to life in his multiethnic city of dreams where the ghosts of Woody Guthrie and Joey Ramone still whisper their messages in dark corners. The shambling rhythms of Dust Brother John King’s production distinguish Serenade’s urban folk from its more country-minded predecessors, but Guy Clark and Hank Williams still hold as much sway in his songs as Eric Andersen and Pete Seeger do. It’s an outsider’s album, to be sure — from his arrival in the city to his reluctance to believe that his wife loves him as much as she seems to — but Earle has always relished that role and continues to do so. (* * *)

>>Sample: Days Aren’t Long Enough, a duet with wife Allison Moorer; City of Immigrants, with Brazilian neo-folk group Forro in the Dark
>>Skip: Come Home to Me

This Week's Playlist: This 'Magic' Moment

1. Bruce Springsteen, Magic (Columbia)
2. Steve Earle, Washington Square Serenade (New West)
3. Patti Scialfa, Play It As It Lays (Columbia)
4. Meshell Ndegeocello, The world has made me the man of my dreams (Decca)
5. Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, Playlist (Mercury)
6. Richard Hawley, Lady’s Bridge (Mute)
7. Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers, Glassjaw Boxer (Everfine)
8. Josh Turner, Firecracker (MCA)
9. Bettye LaVette, The Scene of the Crime (Anti-/Epitaph)
10. Emery, I’m Only a Man (Tooth & Nail)

Reba Rips the CMAs

Reba McEntire's up for the Country Music Association's Female Vocalist of the Year. She holds the record (tied with Martina McBride) for the most wins in that category, but she hasn't won the award in 20 years. Hasn't been nominated for it in three.

But Reba's miffed about her competition. Not who's nominated, but who's not. Specifically, Faith Hill.

“Why wasn’t Faith Hill nominated for Female?” she asked rhetorically during our recent interview for a USA Today piece. “She’s been out there in front of more people than anybody. I don’t get it. I don’t get the politics.”

Reba wasn’t real happy about the way the Entertainer of the Year nominees shook out, either. She believes that not only Faith but Martina McBride earned finalist spots in that category.

“It was wrong this year,” Reba said. “Martina’s really come a long way. She’s done a lot of great things for country music, and we should’ve supported her. Faith Hill, should’ve supported her. Faith Hill was in front of more people than anybody. Should’ve supported her. We should’ve put her as Entertainer of the Year and Female Vocalist – now, why wasn’t she either one?”

Personally, I can understand the logic of Faith not getting one of the Entertainer slots. Yes, her Soul2Soul tour with husband Tim McGraw was one of the year’s biggest – and any single headliner pulling those kind of numbers would have been a shoo-in for a final nomination. But, if you’re a CMA voter, how do you vote for one of those entertainers without voting for her/his spouse? If you vote for one, you split the vote – meaning Tim and Faith get half the votes an act of their stature would normally receive. And if you vote for both, you’re casting two votes for one tour. And was Soul2Soul really twice as big as tours from the other acts under consideration?

“It doesn’t matter,” Reba says. “They should’ve been nominated. They’re having the biggest tours out there. What is that called – Entertainers? What is this?

“No, they both should’ve been nominated as Entertainer of the Year.”

Okay, so let’s see what that would mean – and this is an area I couldn’t get Reba to bite on during the interview: If Faith, Tim and Martina all should’ve had Entertainer of the Year nominations, who shouldn't have gotten one?

Let’s assume you keep last year’s winner, Kenny Chesney. He is, after all, the only country act currently filling stadiums. It’s hard to argue with Rascal Flatts nomination. After all, they were the best-selling act in music last year – and this year, only Kanye West has beaten the first-week numbers for Me & My Gang.

That leaves Brad Paisley, George Strait and Keith Urban. Do you lose all three to get in Tim, Faith and Martina? Brad’s tour didn’t outsell Soul2Soul, but did Soul2Soul, with its two headliners, double the business that Brad did? And I don't have figures in front of me, but I’m pretty sure Brad put up bigger tour numbers that Martina. Keith’s CD sales have been a bit of a disappointment and the rehab stint put a serious drag on his momentum, so maybe you switch him out. And George – who’s one of the few artists to ever get an Entertainer of the Year nomination after going into the Country Music Hall of Fame – didn’t have a spectacular year, though he’s stronger at radio than he’s been in a while and he could’ve filled stadiums if he’d wanted to. But, really, it boils down to this: No matter how much you think Faith, Tim or Martina deserved an Entertainer of the Year nomination, do you really want to be the person who says George Strait didn’t?

Review: Hard-Fi's "Once Upon a Time in the West"

Hard-Fi, Once Upon a Time in the West (* * * )

Cinematic Britrock

Following the massive success — at least in Britain — of their Stars of CCTV debut, Hard-Fi’s four ambitious suburbanites use the Clash’s reggae/dub tendencies as the foundation for building a more cinematically orchestrated pop music. But singer Richard Archer sounds as much like Mick Jagger as Joe Strummer, and the band works in bits of punk and electronic dance rock, as well as some American soul and string arrangements that would make Ennio Morricone proud. Perhaps that combination’s a bit too identifiably British to conquer the rest of the Western world, but Anglophiles far and wide should be willing to throw their hands up in surrender.

>>Sample: Suburban Knights, I Shall Overcome, Can’t Get Along (Without You)

Review: The Donnas' "Bitchin''"

The Donnas, Bitchin’ (* *)

Post-teenage runaways

Female punk quartet The Donnas take control of their own destiny, releasing their seventh album on their own Purple Feather label after two major-label discs. Too bad the hair-metal-heavy Bitchin’ spends so much time serving the sadomasochistic fantasies of the band’s male fans. “You can come ... here for the party,” they shout suggestively on one song, elsewhere proclaiming their addictive desire and animal lust for their partner’s sexual prowess. Maybe that’s what makes a great female rock band. And maybe The Donnas didn’t build this album’s best riff on the back of I Hate Myself for Loving You.

>>Sample: Don’t Wait Up for Me

>>Skip: Give Me What I Want

Review: Mae's "Singularity"

Mae, Singularity (* * * )

Brains and brawn

Having sold a quarter-million copies of their two indie-label releases, Virginia rock quintet Mae connects with Capitol Records to make a play for the big time. They may be too smart for their own good, but they make up for it with a fetching sense of melody and rhythmic shifts that recall Anberlin and Jimmy Eat World.

>>Sample: Sometimes I Can’t Make It Alone, Sic Semper Tyrannis

>>Skip: Release Me

This Week's Playlist: The 'Magic' of the Internet

Don’t know who leaked the new Bruce Springsteen album, but I’m sure glad they did. And, yes, I plan to buy it the day it comes out, too.

1. Bruce Springsteen, Magic (Columbia)
2. Hard Fi, Once Upon a Time in the West (Atlantic)
3. Reba McEntire, Reba Duets (MCA)
4. Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers, Glassjaw Boxer (Everfine)
5. Motion City Soundtrack, Even If It Kills Me (Epitaph)
6. Emery, I’m Only a Man (Tooth & Nail)
7. Mary Gauthier, Between Daylight and Dark (Lost Highway)
8. Kane Welch Kaplin, Kane Welch Kaplin (Dead Reckoning/Compass)
9. Bettye LaVette, The Scene of the Crime (Anti-/Epitaph)
10. Josh Turner, Firecracker (MCA)

Kenny Chesney — Just Who I Am: Poets and Pirates

Few country singers have made more out of memories than Kenny Chesney. To hear his singles tell the story, his life has progressed from a string of high school girlfriends to a series of rum-fueled Caribbean vacations. But banking on memories can mean mortgaging the future, and while Chesney sometimes has seemed determined to enjoy himself whatever the cost, he has rarely counted those costs.

He does so on Poets and Pirates, for himself and also, in the case of the single mother/stripper in Dancin’ for the Groceries, in the prices some people pay for others’ pleasure. “I’ve been blessed, I know, but at the end of the day I go home alone,” he sings in Wife and Kids, allowing himself a moment of self-pity in those unfulfilled dreams. But the song also comes as a remarkably vulnerable admission from a man whose one marriage fell apart so quickly and so publicly.

Elsewhere, Chesney sings that he’s “better as a memory.” Those who look forward to his latest for its island rhythms and guest spots from Joe Walsh and George Strait might agree, but the ones who come listening for the man may come away with more than they expected. (***)

>>Sample: Dancin' for the Groceries, Wife and Kids, Demons

This Week's Playlist: All the LaVette You Can Get

I can’t believe it’s been a week since I put anything up here. I certainly did a few things – had a great phone interview with Betty LaVette for one thing. I’m sure I’ll write about that at some point, and there’ll certainly be a piece in USA Today about it. I guess I just didn’t make the time to post.

But I’m determined to keep my playlist up to date. So here’s the new and recent stuff I’ve been listening to for the past week.

1. Bettye LaVette, The Scene of the Crime (Anti/Epitaph)
2. Hard Fi, Once Upon a Time in the West (Atlantic)
3. Ike & Tina Turner, The Ike & Tina Story: 1960-1975 (Time Life)
4. Kane Welch Kaplin, Kane Welch Kaplin (Dead Reckoning/Compass)
5. Kenny Chesney, Just Who I Am: Poets and Pirates (BNA)
6. Dwight Yoakam, Dwight Sings Buck (New West)
7. Bruce Springsteen, “Radio Nowhere” (Columbia)
8. The Redwalls, The Redwalls (Mad Dragon)
9. David Crowder Band, Remedy (INO)
10. John Ralston, Sorry Vampire (Vagrant)

This Week's Playlist: Paramore and More

I’m determined to start putting enough stuff on this blog to make it worth visiting occasionally. Today begins what I hope will be a weekly entry of the albums and tracks I’m listening to lately. Mostly, it’ll be new stuff, some of which may not yet be available. Every once in a while, though, I get obsessed by something that’s been around a while – like the Britpop phase I went through a couple weeks ago – so you may see some of that stuff, too.

I’ll try to comment on the music every once in a while, but if you see something that gets you curious, post a comment, and I’ll go into further detail.

Paramore tops the list this week, because I just finished writing an article about them (see below) and 'cause they're local folks.

Here's what else is in the iPod/laptop/CD player lately:

1. Paramore, RIOT! (Fueled by Ramen/Atlantic). The more I listen to this, the more I realize how much better it is than All We Know Is Falling - and that generated a lot of buzz for this young band out of Franklin, Tenn. I'm also still listening even though my story on them has already run. That's always a good sign.
2. Dashboard Confessional, The Shade of Poison Trees (Vagrant)
3. John Fogerty, Revival (Fantasy)
4. Dwight Yoakam, Dwight Sings Buck (New West)
5. Betty Lavette, The Scene of the Crime (Anti/Epitaph) Co-produced by Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Tuckers and recorded at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, the place Aretha Franklin started cutting I Never Loved a Man The Way I Love You. Not that it's up to that level, of course, but I figure name-dropping Aretha and the DBTs ought to give you a pretty good idea of the sound they're going for.
6. The Redwalls, The Redwalls (Mad Dragon)
7. Will Hoge, Draw the Curtains (Rykodisc)
8. Brooks & Dunn, Cowboy Town (Arista Nashville)
9. Hard Fi, Once Upon a Time in the West (Atlantic)
10. Koop, Koop Islands (Atlantic)

Trisha Yearwood and Babyface

Went to the Trisha Yearwood/Babyface taping for CMT Crossroads at Belmont University's Curb Event Center. They did five of his songs (including a cover of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain," a song that will appear on Babyface's Playlist covers album, out Sept. 18) and five of hers. What's the connection? Garth Brooks - Trisha's married to him and Babyface worked on the Chris Gaines project. The show will be the premiere of Crossroads new season this fall - be sure not to miss their duet on "Change the World," which started out sounding like Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City" and then went places I only wish Eric Clapton had explored with his version.

Paramore: There's a RIOT! Going On

Talking to Hayley Williams and Josh Farro from Paramore, it’s sometimes hard to remember that they’re only 18 and 19, respectively, and it’s even harder to imagine that they’ve been together in some form since they were 13 and 14 (and since drummer Zac Farro was just 11).

Dig a little deeper, though, and you notice they possess an appealing combination of youthful enthusiasm and burgeoning professionalism. It’s one of the reasons, I think, that so many people get so excited about this band and start doing things like comparing Williams to Gwen Stefani (of course, there’s always the hair, which probably has something to do with it, too).

One telling moment that didn’t make it into my recent profile of the band for USA Today came when I asked Hayley and Josh about their defining moment as a band. Josh talked about being in Times Square for an MTV appearance and seeing two-story likenesses of the band covering the MTV windows, then seeing the band’s “Misery Business” video start to play on a giant screen across the street.

“You sort of want to jump up around like a kid, but you can’t,” he said.

Hayley’s defining moment, however, came when she was trying to write the song that became “For a Pessimist I’m Pretty Optimistic,” the lead track from the band’s second album, RIOT! Josh had written the music for the song moths before, but Hayley just couldn’t seem to find lyrics that fit.

“I was seriously on my hands and knees, like, ‘This sucks; I cannot write anymore,’” she recalls. Finally, just before the band went into the studio to start tracking songs, she determined to basically lock herself in a room and not leave until she had something. She came out with “For a Pessimist” and a good chunk of “Born for This.”

“So we go back to the studio the next day and show [producer David] Bendeth,” she says. “He’s, like, freaking out and stuff. Two weeks later we started tracking everything, and that was one of the first songs that I sang. To hear that song mixed for the first time and loud in the speakers at the studio, I was, like, ‘This took so much work, and it’s one of my favorite songs.’ It’s my favorite song to play live. And to think it almost never happened.

“That was a big moment for me.”

This Week's Reviews: Lyle Lovett, Ben Harper, Casting Crowns

I'm going to start running my USA Today reviews here each week, a day or so after they run in the paper. They won't always be my favorite albums from the week, or even things I necessarily like a lot; four other critics write reviews for the paper. If you want to see my reviews - along with the reviews from Edna Gundersen, Elysa Gardner, Steve Jones and Ken Barnes - the day they run, check out Ken's Listen Up blog on Tuesdays.

Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, It’s Not Big, It’s Large

* * *

Texas-sized Cowboy Jazz

As its title suggests, this isn’t quite a big-band album, though the opening instrumental by Lester Young sure starts it that way. But the always-versatile Lovett couldn’t possibly settle there, and he’s also got country shuffles and tunes of folk-like simplicity, along with songs that extol the joys of a South Texas girl and singing with Joe Ely, John Hiatt and Guy Clark. And, as if his own band weren’t large enough, he fleshes it out with some top-flight hired hands, including Clark, Jerry Douglas and Béla Fleck. — Mansfield

>>Download: South Texas Girl, All Downhill

>>Skip: The Alley Song

Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals, Lifeline

* * 1/2

Surfer Soul

Harper recorded his latest album in Paris. But with a band sharpened by nine months of steady touring, its spiritual location is 1320 South Lauderdale, the Memphis address of Hi Records, where Al Green and Otis Clay recorded their gospel-infused soul hits in the early ’70s. Lyrics such as “You can’t just say ‘I love you,’ you’ve got to live ‘I love you’ ” show that Harper may share Green’s heart and soul, but he doesn’t have his voice. Harper is always more expressive as a guitarist than as a singer, and it takes the occasionally electrifying slide solos or gorgeous instrumental to rescue this set.

>>Download: Fight Outta You, Paris Sunrise #7

>>Skip: Needed You Tonight

Casting Crowns, The Altar and the Door

* * 1/2

Sunday Rock for Monday Mornings

On this church-focused collection, these platinum-selling Christian rockers concern themselves with the space between the title’s two fixtures — that is, between intention and action, between doing good and getting in the way, or, as one song puts it, between “the God we want and the God who is.” That’s a space worth exploring, and the band’s motives may be the best, but their anthems are as predictable as a televangelist’s tears: start soft, build big, then cue the strings.

>>Download: Somewhere in the Middle, title track

>>Skip: I Know You’re There

Butterflies, Turtles and the Closing of the Weekly World News

On his Listen Up blog, Ken Barnes recently linked to a Washington Post article about the demise of the Weekly World News. That tremendously entertaining story revealed that Bob Lind, the '60s pop artist who had the 1966 hit "Elusive Butterfly," had spent a decade writing for the tabloid. Ken wondered what other hit-making musicians had life stories that took them far afield from their most famous incarnation.

I told Ken I'd see his Bob Lind and raise him a Tupper Saussy. Saussy, a Florida-born private-school teacher, ad exec, jazz pianist and songwriter, recorded three albums for Monument Records (jazz great Dave Brubeck wrote liner notes for one) before he and Don Gant hooked up in Nashville to form the Neon Philharmonic, and record the 1969 Top 20 pop hit “Morning Girl.”

Years later, Saussy ghostwrote the autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray. He also decided to quit paying his taxes, then lived underground under an assumed name for 10 years before the feds found him and sent him to prison for 14 months, during which time he worked on his conspiracy-rich book Rulers of Evil: Useful Knowledge About Governing Bodies, in which he wrote, “[T]he papacy really does run United States foreign policy, and always has.”

Later, he returned to Nashville, where he sold watercolors in a local art gallery and ran a blog called "Honest Things." He eventually recorded a new album, "The Chocolate Orchid Piano Bar," but died earlier this year shortly before its release.

Then I noticed something germane from the trade publication Music Row:

"Belmont University has hired Mark Volman, a founding member and lead singer of The Turtles (“Happy Together”) and Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, as Program Coordinator of Entertainment Industry Studies. Teaching at the college as an adjunct professor since 2004, he is also named an assistant professor in Belmont University’s Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business. He taught at his alma mater, Los Angeles’s Loyola Marymount University, from 1997 to 2003 and eventually moved to Belmont. After starting college at age 44, Volman completed an MFA in Screenwriting, graduated Magna Cum Laude, and was Valedictorian of his undergraduate class."

Not as odd as Bob Lind, but still interesting.

Also, I've heard stories about an engineer of many Elvis Presley records who got burned out and wound up working as a butcher in a Nashville-area grocery store. And Darlene Love starts her autobiography about her time, post-Crystals but before Lethal Weapon, working as a maid. She always had to park her old Mercedes off-site because she knew driving it to the house she was working would raise questions, and once she heard "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" playing down the hall of a house she was cleaning.

If you're having problems remembering "Elusive Butterfly," let this help.



Here's one for "Morning Girl." The video's not much, but it gives you the song.



And, finally, a clip of the Turtles doing "Happy Together" on the Smothers Brothers show in February 1967.

Lori McKenna's 'Unglamorous'

Finally, I get to profile singer-songwriter Lori McKenna in today’s USA Today. I say “finally” because I’d wanted to do a piece on the Stoughton, Mass., native back in 2005, after Faith Hill delayed her Fireflies album so she could put three of Lori’s songs – including “Fireflies” and “Stealing Kisses” – on it. Lori’s a mother of five (kids range in age from 3 to 18) married to a plumber, and until those royalty checks started rolling in, all seven of them lived in a 1,500-square-foot house that Lori and her husband, Gene, had bought when they were 19.

Lori would play out several nights a month, rarely venturing farther than she could drive overnight, since it was always important to be home by the time the kids woke up. “I’ve even driven home from Philly,” she says, “which is really dumb, but you get home in six hours when you have to.”

With a story like that – and with songs as good as hers (I can’t stress enough that you pick up her other albums once you have the new one, Unglamorous) – I really wanted to talk to her. For some reason, though, the publicist at Warner Bros., which had re-released her old albums, dragged her heels on putting us together. In retrospect, I suspect the folks at Oprah had insisted on some sort of exclusivity, since Lori and Faith showed up there not long after I started asking for an interview.

Anyway, I got to interview her over coffee recently at Fido in Nashville, and we hit it off immediately, not only because we both had driven Ford Windstars with 150,000 miles on them (though Lori has traded hers in for a Toyota Sienna), but because four of my kids are the same ages as four of her kids. And that’s really something, considering how they’re spaced – 15, 13, 5 and 3. As Lori said, “That’s so weird, because there’s that gap.” Lori says she gets the strangest questions about that gap. I know what she means: The most common one I get, if my wife’s not around, is “Are they all with the same wife?” (Yes, they are, thank you very much.)

So, anyway, enjoy the story. If you do, be sure to click the “recommended” button on the USA Today page. And leave a comment, too - here or there. That'd be great.

Oh, and did I say that Unglamorous is one of my favorite albums so far this year? 'Cause I should have.

Elvis and Me

I don't often get my byline on the front page of USA Today, but it's there today, with fellow reporter Marco R. della Cava, above a story about Elvis Presley in the 30 years since his death. (If Karl Rove hadn't quit, we'd have been above the fold.) Marco and I (well, mainly Marco, to be honest) look at how the Elvis legacy has changed over 30 years and what's in store (like a Cirque du Soleil production). One of my favorite parts is a sidebar on babies named Elvis. In 1935, there were 49 baby boys born in the United States named "Elvis." One of those, of course, was Elvis Aaron Presley. The named dropped off the Social Security Administration's list of top 1000 baby names in 1948, but it came roaring back in 1956, with 416 baby Elvises (Elvii?). The best year for little Elvises was 1957, with 595 of them (that's the year of "Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear," btw), and there was another spike following his death (364 in 1978). There was a similar spike for some reason in 1999 (360) and last year, there were 272 baby Elvis in the U.S. However, there were 935 girls named Presley - a naming trend that's been on the rise since making its first Top 1000 appearance in 1998.

My favorite quote that didn't make the story came from author Alanna Nash, who wrote the fantastic book The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley. She said: "[Robert F.X.] Sillerman [the majority owner of Elvis Presley Enterprises (and American Idol, for that matter)] is the new Tom Parker - he just has better taste."

Also, it's worth nothing that the most popular Elvis download isn't even an original recordings - it's Junkie XL's 2002 remix of "A Little Less Conversation." And if you're in the mood for having your Elvis filtered through more modern tastes, check out Ickmusic's collection of Elvis cover videos.

Nashville Cat-ty

The following email is making the rounds of Music City inboxes today. Any misspellings are the author's, not mine.

Why do I laugh every time I see Scott Borchetta's license plate?? Huh, DOMIN8R??
What in the hell is up with his hair? Halloween is the only day that the male perm should be pulled off.
How long are we going to hear that "The Storm is Coming!" before Category 5 records actually sells an album??
Why doesn't Universal South just shut the doors already? This is getting embarrassing.
Is it possible for one person to embarrass an entire industry?? Mindy will surely find out.
I saw Wynonna's husband in the mall the other day. I held my daughter tightly.
I believe that there are more Canadians in Nashville than Canada.
I heard that Kenny fell out of a chair at Southstreet a few weeks ago. He was trying to climb down.
Does Tracy L. even need to open his mouth when he sings?
Has Keith U. had the same song out for 18 months, or does it just seem like it...
Is Joe Nichols solely responsible for the spice in suicides?
Has he sold a record yet?
I heard they brought in a real live goat to hit some of the higher notes on Toby's last CD.
They may have to change Gary LeVox's hairstyle soon. His hairdresser can no longer get in close enough to style it.
When is Jennifer Nettles going to fire that guy that's in all her videos? Oh...he's part of Sugarland?!?!
Congrats to B&R for finally getting their first #1. Their flash in the pan is almost over.
Saw Ty Herndon at the YMCA in Green Hills last week. In the locker room. Define scared.

Brad Paisley in USA Today

Two weeks ago, I flew with Brad Paisley to a show at the Delaware State Fair. On the way there, we talked about the way he uses video in his current show. He does a lot of the video work himself, including the animation that goes along with his instrumental "Throttleneck." Brad's also been doing the video editing for an upcoming special on the making of his "Online" video for GAC. Now, I've spent some time in video-editing suites, and watching somebody edit video ... well, it's about like watching somebody play computer solitaire for hours on end. But Brad seems to love it, and it gives him something to do while traveling between tour stops. "It's one of those things that keeps you sane, keeps you from doing drugs," he says. I've got two stories on Brad in USA Today - one that talks about his interest in video and one that gives away his trade secrets.

Sugarland's "Irreplaceable"

Sugarland has been performing Beyoncé's "Irreplaceable" on tour this year. Let's go to the video:

A Look Inside Alan Jackson's House

A few weeks ago, I got to spend a morning on Alan and Denise Jackson's estate, just south of Nashville. It's a gigantic white house on 140 acres, like something out of Gone With the Wind. "Ever since I was a kid, I loved that movie," Alan told me. "I always wanted a big plantation." Of course, Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara never had a garage with 14 cars in it.

The house, which has three floors and 19,000 square feet (and another 7,500 square feet of porch space) is big enough to get lost in, even with a fancy security system.

The Jacksons have a home-automation system – state of the art in 1995, when the house was completed – that controls the lights, the family entertainment center and security cameras. It came in handy when one of the Jacksons' three girls, as a toddler, climbed out of her crib and wandered off.

“I looked on the kitchen monitor, and she was not in her bed,” Denise recalls. “We had a nanny and a couple other people here. We immediately each took a stairway and found her toddling down the hall. I guess that’s the only time we’ve actually lost a child in the house.

“Adults get lost in it, though.”

Find out more about the house - and Alan's first love - by reading my piece in USA Today.

Lyle Lovett's "It's Not Big It's Large" Track Listing

We're guessing Lyle's referring to the name of his band with his new album, due Aug. 28. Here's the track listing, with writer credits in parentheses if it's not Lyle:

1. Tickle Toe (Lester Young)
2. I Will Rise Up
3. All Downhill
4. Don't Cry A Tear
5. South Texas Girl
6. This Traveling Around
7. Up In Indiana
8. The Alley Song
9. No Big Deal
10. Make It Happy
11. Ain't No More Cane (Traditional)
12. Up In Indiana—Acoustic

A deluxe version of the collection, released simultaneously, includes footage taken in the studio during the recording of six of the songs.

Mindy McCready Busted Again

Mindy McCready adds another page to her ever-lengthening rap sheet, this time for violating probation in Nashville's neighboring Williamson County. And to think I once almost let this woman talk me into get my navel pierced.

Boys Like Girls in USA Today

Check out my piece on Boys Like Girls in USA Today. Among other things, lead singer Martin Johnson talks about the first time the group heard "The Great Escape" on the radio. The article has only part of his quote on that, so here's the long version:

"The first time we heard ourselves on the radio was in the van at about 3 a.m. We were all in the van. i was driving. The van's usually pretty spooked out when I'm driving, because I'm a pretty bad driver. They had finally gotten to sleep when the song came on the radio. I started screaming at the top of my lungs for everybody to wake up. They thought I was about to crash the van. It took them two minutes to realize the song was on the radio. We were all screaming and jumping - it was a very That Thing You Do moment.

"It was also really special because we were in the middle of hte desert, either New Mexico or Arizona. We were so far from home, so far from Boston. To hear your song in a place so far away and to be next to your best friends when you get that moment, that's pretty special."

Wreckers' Jessica Harp Engaged

Word is that the Wrecker's Jessica Harp got engaged to the band's fiddle player, Jason Mowery, Sunday night. Apparently, fellow Wrecker Michelle Branch announced the news Monday during the duo's show at New York's Bowery Ballroom.

Brad Paisley's 'Online' Video Contest

Think you can make a better video for 'Online' than the one Brad Paisley made? Here's your chance. Brad's running an amateur-video contest through July 25, and the winner will get to fly to a show on Brad's Bonfires & Amplifiers tour and watch his or her creation live. Brad lays down the ground rules at YouTube, so check it out!

Paisley's 'Gear' Sticks in Fourth

Brad Paisley holds on to the top spot of the Nielsen SoundScan charts this week with 39,203 in sales, beating Taylor Swift's debut by barely 5,000 units. Paisley's album has sold more than 377,000 units total.

Tracy Lawrence had the week's best country debut with The Very Best of Tracy Lawrence (#29, 4,600 units). Also debuting this week: Cole Deggs & the Lonesome (#42, 3,200) and Jason Meadow's 100% Cowboy (#59, 1,600).

An appearance on the CBS Early Show was good for Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby, bringing their album of collaborations back onto the country chart for the first time since May. That album more than doubled its sales from the previous week and was one of only a handful of country albums that increased sales from the previous week. Others that got a sales bump: Tim McGraw's Let It Go (+4%) and Vol. 2-Greatest Hits (+7%), Trent Tomlinson's Country Is My Rock (+2%), Craig Morgan's Little Bit of Life. Big & Rich's Comin' to Your City and Montgomery Gentry's Something to Be Proud Of each sold three more copies than they had the week before, while Gary Allan did one better for his Greatest Hits album than he had the previous week.

Check Out Today's USA Today

Today, it was my turn to write the weekly Playlist. It's not very country - unless you count the Avett Brothers and Social Distortion as country - but there's a lot of my favorite recent rock stuff, including new tracks from Buffalo Tom and the Mission U.K., as well as the Plain White T's and Boys Like Girls. Caveat: I mis-identified Bremerton, Washington's MxPx as being from California. Sorry, guys.

Also, today's paper has my reviews of the new Kim Richey, Minnie Driver and Yellowcard albums.

Carrie Underwood Sets Sophomore Release Date

Carrie Underwood's still-untitled sophomore album has been scheduled for an Oct. 23 release date. Underwood's follow-up to the six-times-platinum Some Hearts was produced by Mark Bright, who co-produced her debut. It will also feature additional songwriting from Underwood, who co-wrote "I Ain't in Checotah Anymore" for Some Hearts.

Some Hearts, by the way, has sold nearly 1,095,000 copies this year, making it 2007's best-selling country album so far.

Getting Church-ed

My feature on Eric Church ran Friday in USA Today. If you read it, feel free to leave a comment there (or here) and be sure to click "Recommend."

Here's one bit that didn't make the article: Eric says he's been running into lots of people with Eric Church tattoos lately, including two girls who had the melody to "How 'Bout You" inked around their ankles.

"I don't know any other new country artist who's run into as many tattoos as we have," Eric says. "We're up to double digits now - people tattooing the album title on themselves or tattooing my name. Yeah, you get Johnny Cash tattooed, but to be the age I am and having 21-year-old kids out there saying, 'You're my guy, and, here, i'm going to show you you're my guy by getting a tattoo,' that's just not normal."

I think he kind of likes it, though.

Tim McGraw on Top, Too

Tim McGraw's camp says he was country's top-selling act during the first half of 2007. According to Nielsen Soundscan, McGraw has sold a 1.4 million albums total. His new Let It Go accounts for two-thirds of that total, having sold 900,000 units all by itself. Additionally, McGraw's Greatest Hits album currently sits on top of Billboard magazine's Top Country Catalog Albums chart, and the second-volume Greatest Hits is a Top 20 title on the Current Country Albums chart.

Paisley Still in High 'Gear'

Brad Paisley's 5th Gear remains the top country album in the nation for the third consecutive week. According to SoundScan, 5th Gear sold 59,451 copies, a 27% slide from the previous week. (It's the only country album in the overall Top 10, placing seventh, between Kelly Rowland and Amy Winehouse.)

Paisley didn't have any serious competition from new albums this week. The only three country chart debuts came in at the bottom: Charlie Daniels' Live From Iraq (1,126 copies, in a tie for #72), Vince Gill's Millennium Collection (1,085, #74) and Bill Engvall's 15º Off Cool (1,012, #75).

Only a handful of country albums increased sales last week. Eric Church was the big percentage gainer, with Sinners LIke Me moving up 9% to 4,826 units (back in January, there were weeks Eric barely was selling 1,000 a week.) Keith Urban's Love, Pain & the whole crazy thing picked up 7% to sell 9,635. Tim McGraw's Vol. 2-Greatest Hits was up 3%, at 7,254. Kelly Willis' Translated From Love took the country chart's big fall in its second week out, dropping from a debut of 2,838 to 1,684, a 41% drop, which, percentage-wise, isn't horrible for a second week.

Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats" continues to be country's most-downloaded track, with 34,435 downloads for a total of 1,591, 047.

People Always Ask Me ...

People always ask me what great new music I've found, and I never have good answers for them, since I'm already looking for the next great thing. In case you're one of those people - and so I can have an easy place to keep track of them - here are some of my personal recent favorites. Not necessarily the best so far this year, just stuff I really, really love.

Miranda Lambert, "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" - Hands-down, this year's best country album so far.

Richard Shindell, "South of Delia" - In a year full of covers albums, this is maybe my favorite, with remakes of Bruce Springsteen ("Born in the USA"), Peter Gabriel ("Mercy Street"), Woody Guthrie (Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos))" and the Carter Family ("The Storms Are on the Ocean," which just might be my favorite of all them). Richard Thompson plays guitar on three (I think) cuts. If you know me, trust me - this is a good one.

Derek Webb, "The Ringing Bell" - Starts off slow, but the last three-quarters of this includes some of the best "Revolver"-inspired power-pop I've heard in ages. Don't miss "A Savior on Capitol Hill," which sounds like the sort of thing John Lennon might've written if he'd ever made the equivalent of "Slow Train Coming."

Relient K, "Five Score and Seven Years Ago" - These guys just keep getting better and better. Highlights include the ultra-catchy "Must Have Done Something Right" and "Forgiven," as well as the 11-minute album closer "Deathbed," which I'll stack up against the Who's "A Quick One, While He's Away" any day of the week.

Stephen Kellogg & The Sixers, "Glassjaw Boxer" - It's always exciting to hear a band get it right, and this one does, from the piano intro of the very first song. My new band that I'm dying to see live.