It’s been another great year in country music…and as we get ready for 2009, we’re looking back at some of the highlights of 2008.
IN AUGUST…
• Brooks & Dunn received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. (AUDIO INFO BELOW)
• Keith Anderson released his sophomore CD, C’MON! –– which features his smash, “I Still Miss You.” (AUDIO INFO BELOW)
• Alan Jackson celebrated a new milestone -– total sales of 50-million albums over the course of his professional music career! That number represents combined sales tallies for all of his albums — 16 Gold, Platinum and multi-Platinum CDs (topped by his Greatest Hits Collection and Greatest Hits, Volume II packages, which are both certified six-times Platinum). (AUDIO INFO BELOW)
• Crystal Shawanda released her debut CD, Dawn of a New Day, which features the hit, “You Can Let Go,” and Crystal’s new single, “My Roots Are Showing.” (AUDIO INFO BELOW)
• The Lost Trailers released their CD, Holler Back, which includes the smash title track and their new single, “How ‘Bout You Don’t.” (AUDIO INFO BELOW)
008 HIGHLIGHTS: August" width="16" height="14" /> Speaking to the crowd that gathered for the unveiling of their star in Hollywood, Ronnie Dunn said it took more than him and Kix Brooks to create the career that earned them a place of the Walk of Fame. (:23)
“You know, our name I guess is going to be on saying ‘Ronnie Dunn & Kix Brooks’ or ‘Brooks & Dunn,’ but there are hundreds of people that should be in that stone with us…all the way from friends and family (SFX: car horn starts blowing somehwere nearby) to managers and guys in the band…to our record label…that guy blowing the horn.” (Crowd laughs)
008 HIGHLIGHTS: August" width="16" height="14" /> Keith Anderson opted for a simpler title for his second album. (:13)
“It was cool to go from maybe the longest title of an album — Three Chord Country and American Rock & Roll — of all time, to the shortest. It’s not even ‘come on,’ it’s ‘C’MON!‘ — C, apostrophe, M-O-N, exclamation point, too.”
008 HIGHLIGHTS: August" width="16" height="14" /> Alan Jackson explains how a “small town southern man” from Georgia can manage to sell 50 million albums. (:36)
“Country music has always been America’s music. It’s songs about what you do and what you are…your life…good and bad and happy and sad. And that’s why it’s still mass appealing. And that’s why 50 million of those things are out there. I still believe that. And if you come out to a show, you look at that parking lot out there, and you’ll see. That’s who they are. You know, they’re not all four-wheel drives with Dixie flags — they’re a lot of just regular people. Working people. And they like that music. It touches them, and they have fun with it, and that’s what’s kept all this together.”
008 HIGHLIGHTS: August" width="16" height="14" /> Crystal Shawanda is hoping that now that her debut CD is out, people will get her last name right — as it occasionally falls victim to the pronunciation-challenged. (:33)
“I thought it would get…my name would be massacred a lot more than it has, but I can remember before I got the release, before I had, you know, a record deal, I would go and do shows, and I’d get ‘She-wand-doe’ or ‘Shur-on-doe,’ or one time somebody actually introduced me on stage as ‘Crystal Rwanda.’ And then, like, I understand ‘She-wand-a,’ I understand even ‘Sha-nay-nay,’ but the name starts with an ‘S,’ not an ‘R’! (laughs) It’s like, ‘Do you know the alphabet? Would you like me to read it with you?’ (laughs)”
008 HIGHLIGHTS: August" width="16" height="14" /> The Lost Trailers’ Ryder Lee talks about the energy of the band’s new album, Holler Back. (:23)
“It’s got an energy to it that, you know, we sought to capture and we definitely heard it when we hit ‘Holler Back,’ but I think you definitely feel the energy. The whole project has an energy in the tracks, and that goes with ‘How ‘Bout You Don’t,’ as well. You know, it’s a different kind, and it shows a different side of us than ‘Holler Back’ does, but it’s definitely an album that we think defines us, and we hope we can get out and tour behind for a long time.”