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.