Anthony Smith

Award winning singer-songwriter and critic’s favorite, Anthony Smith, is joining the ranks of artists like Big Kenny, Gretchen Wilson and Toby Keith by launching his own record label, Krankit Records, LLC.

With an established team of industry veterans to guide the label, Krankit Record’s first album release will be Smith’s Sunshine with the lead single and video “Love Is Love Is Love.”

“This is a special record and I want to put my own stamp on country music with its release. We are very proud of Krankit and what it stands for and feel strongly that this will be the first of many successes that the label enjoys,” Smith said.

Krankit Records, LLC is a joint venture with Artist Garage, LLC who distributes through Fontana which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Universal Music Group. Mike Regan will serve as the director of operations for the label while Larry Pareigis and Nine North are the radio promotions partners . Jules Wortman of Wortman Works Media and Marketing as well as Nicole Cochran of Nic of Time Communications will run public relations and media for the label.

“The first single, ‘Love Is Love Is Love’ is vintage Anthony Smith with creative lyrical content and his unique vocals that can be duplicated by no other,” says Larry Pareigis who is working the radio promotion. “I believe ‘Love is Love is Love’ has the unmistakable Anthony Smith sound and at the same time is the most commercial single he’s sent to Country radio,” said Pareigis. “Nine North is honored to be partnered in the launch of Anthony’s label Krankit Records.”

About Anthony Smith:
Anthony Smith has had over 200 songs recorded by other artists including “Run” and “Cowboys Like Us” by George Strait, “Kristofferson” by Tim McGraw, “Chrome” and “I’m Trying” by Trace Adkins and “Who Invented the Wheel” by Trisha Yearwood. This is Smith’s sophomore record, the first being That Ain’t Country for Mercury, which he calls a “songwriters record”. The eagerly anticipated follow-up, Sunshine is poised to be an extraordinary collection of music that in Smith’s words, “is not Nashville”.

Blake Shelton is slowly clawing his way onto the A List.  He’s started gaining real traction in the hit making department and has developed a long list of concert songs.  Plus with a few high profile TV stints he’s becoming a big name.

Just when he gets there it looks like they change the game.   His latest album isn’t really an album.  It’s a download collection of songs.  Packaged as a Six Pack and out 3/2/10.  It looks like the smaller packages of music are potentially more lucrative.   That’s surprising to most outside the music biz who don’t realize that the cost of printing physical disks and cases are not the big cost.  A substantial cost is publishing rights and royalties.

Expect to see more of this as the music biz shifts to an itunes-singles focused world.

Blake Shelton

In fact , Hillbilly Bone will drive a lotof the sales for Shelton’s SixPack, but there’s some other – mostly fun – stuff on the collection to make it worth your download.  From Can’t Afford To Love you to Kiss my Country Ass he continues to showcase his funny side.  In fact – after hearing several different versions of Kiss My Country Ass  – Shelton’s is the only one I’ve heard that really works.

You can see a preview and special performance via Walmart’s SOUNDCHECK – Click HERE

Overall Grade B+

Download – Everyone will be downloading the big hit HillbillyBone
Shop at the iTunes Music Store.

Kix and Ronnie took to a live stream on their website (and below) to make a special announcement Thursday.

The last stop on Brooks & Dunn’s Last Rodeo tour, their last concert ever, will be Aug. 10 at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.

Announced at Thursday’s (2/25) Country Radio’s Sony/Nashville Luncheon, the show will benefit the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s All For The Hall initiative. All tickets will be $25, go on sale Saturday (3/6) and will be available at livenation.com,

ticketmaster.com and brooks-dunn.com.

Keith Urban did a similar (notlast) show for the Hall in 2009 and webcast it live.

Live video by Ustream

Josh Thompson is not a hat act… but kinda sounds like he could be.   He’s the real deal and he writes too.  In Fact, he

New music now out...

had a hand in writing every track) on his new CD “Way Out Here” just released this week on Columbia/Sony Records Nashville.  The new CD - download on iTunes.-is a nice break from the pop country that’s starting to be back in vogue with the Nashville Country labels.

Thompson is from Wisconsin and his debut album, out this week, is fun to hear.  I don’t know of many country stars that grew out of Wisconsin but I do know first hand there’s a lot of farmland to grow some country ”way out there”.    Maybe that’s why his traditional – but rocking – country sound comes across as fresh and not a remake of someone else’s stuff.    In fact there’s a lot of “country boy” themes in his new collection of songs… but Thompson’s found new ways to express it.    Not “redneck” or “hillbilly” but he sings about being from “Way Out Here.”

His  ”You Ain’t seen Country Yet” is worth a good laugh with a line about making love to the sounds of a Haggard casette (if you haven’t…”you ain’t SEEN country yet”).   Add in his rapid fire toungue twisting twang on radio hit “Beer On The Table” and you got a fun mix that defines what Thompson does.   As a bonus there’s a serious side painted in “Sinner”  that will resonate with the bible belt country fans too.

Thompson is currently playing to packed clubs with Eric Church on the Jagermeister Tour.

Listen for the nod to the legends with “Blame It On Waylon” and an ”old” Kenny Chesney flavor on the well-written “Back Around” that sounds like it could be a current radio hit anywhere in the country.

Overall Grade: A  surprise collection that proves traditional leaning country can still sound young and fresh.

Download:   Beer On The Table  although it may disappear from the radio top twenty soon it’s a song that should have hit.

Delete: None – this is one to listen to cover to cover.

Kenny Chesney On Tour

Doing a Greatest Hits – when you’ve had as many chart-toppersas Kenny Chesney – is never any easy thing.   But when you’re as musical and creative as the full-tilt songwriter/showman from Luttrell, Tennessee slowing down the creative process long enough to catch up can be harder.

So, with his well-documented love of college football yielding ESPN’s college football theme “This Is Our Moment” earlier this fall and the high-impact stadium concert experience “Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3-D” screaming out for a song to tie the 5-stadium, 6 night  and a whole lotta, in-between footage together yielding the driving ”Ain’t Back Yet,” Chesney needed a way to get the music into his fans hands.

Always one to color outside the lines, the man who played to over a
million fans for the 8th consecutive summer, decided that given the
immediacy of this music, it made more sense to do the unusual – and put
the two songs on his currently available Greatest Hits II. Working with
the team at his label to find a creative way to make this happen, the
result offers a few options to get one’s hands on “Ain’t Back Yet” and
“This Is Our Moment.”

“Those two songs are so much a moment,” says the man who played the New
Orleans’ Saints Super Bowl Victory Bash in Miami Sunday night. “You want
them when the moment is still fresh… and I won’t have a record out til
next fall. So with all the options that are available in today’s world,
I kinda felt like there has to be a way to get this music to people, to
be creative with it. I went back to my record company and asked them to
help me figure this out.”

Available digitally on March 2, the songs are also being stripped onto
physical copies of Chesney’s Greatest Hits II and should be in the marketplace
around the same date. As with anything that is outside the mold, which
is much of the way Chesney dreams, details are being sorted out as they
go. But for the man who grew up on the songs of Tom Petty, Van Halen,
Jackson Browne and Alabama, the most exciting part of this is the
ability to accelerate the process.

“It’s the possibilities that have always thrilled me,” Chesney says.
“Not what’s been done, but what could be… It’s what made me leave
Luttrell all those years ago… say ‘Why not stadiums…’ and then last
summer, ‘Why not 3-D?’ If you keep asking and dreaming, you can do
amazing things. And, you know, that’s what these two songs are about,
too: the work, the will, the desire – and what’s possible.”

“Ain’t Back Yet” isn’t going for radio airplay until early March, but it’s
already country’s radio’s most downloaded song.   The theme from “Kenny
Chesney: Summer in 3-D” captures the drive it takes to get to being one
of the guy who’s sold over a million tickets each of the past 8 summers.