Rascal Flatts has signed a new record deal with Big Machine Records, home of Taylor Swift. Their new album, Nothing Like This, will be released on November 16th, and the first single off the album, “Why Wait,” was shipped to radio immediately after the press conference announcing their new home yesterday. Jay DeMarcus joked during the press conference, “I’m just thrilled that Taylor (Swift) let us on the label.” When talking about why they chose to sign with Big Machine, Joe Don said, “It just feels right. It’s a successful label. It’s a young label. It’s a hip label. They’ve had a lot of success, and it just felt like it was the perfect fit.” Rascal Flatts’ former label, Lyric Street Records, closed abruptly in April. “I was actually on my way to the studio when we found out that Lyric Street had shut down,” explains Gary LeVox. “We were so pumped and thrilled about the body of work on the ‘Nothing Like This’ album, and it just took the wind out of us because we had no idea. We knew the music that we created for this project was outstanding. So, our biggest fear was it would never be heard … your whole entire world had crumbled at that point.” Now as the guys celebrate the first ten years of their career they can’t help but be excited about the future. “The last 10 years have been amazing but we are even more excited about the next phase of our career,” says Jay. “Scott (Borchetta, the President and CEO of Big Machine) understands us, he knows what we’re about and it’s always a wonderful thing to have someone who believes in you and your music that much in your corner.”
Kenny Chesney’s new song “The Boys of Fall” is a tribute to the sensations, the moments and the memories of playing football, so it only makes sense that the video will make its world premiere on ESPN’s SportsCenter. The unique four-minute video features some of the biggest names in football including Sean Payton, coach of the Super Bowl champions New Orleans Saints and Kenny says, “Every day we see the world of sports come to life on ESPN, and I’m thrilled that ‘The Boys of Fall’ has found a home there.” After its premiere on ESPN on Monday, the video will be available at all outlets including CMT and GAC on August 3rd. There is also an eight minute version of the video that will be available on ESPN.com and ESPNRise.com beginning Monday. “The Boys of Fall” is the first release off of Kenny’s new album, Hemingway’s Whiskey, which will be in stores on September 28th.
Eric Church has said it may be a while before he’s ready to release a new album because he likes to take his time and do things on his own terms, and that includes how he chooses which songs to record. He doesn’t try to figure out if a song is a hit before he records it. “I do it different. I am old school,” Eric told the Arkansas Times. “I don’t know what the single is, I just want to make a record. Albums, I think that is where you make your fans that stay with you.” And he doesn’t think his album has to be the same old cookie cutter country music. Eric says his producer, Jay Joyce, “doesn’t even listen to country songs. He’s played in a punk band. We don’t ever go in thinking it’s gotta be this way and we have to put a steel guitar or fiddle here. We cut the record in his basement. He’s like a mad scientist.” But just to be clear, Eric loves country music and he’s proud to be a part of it. “It’s the coolest format on the planet,” he says. “We have Johnny Cash in our format and he’s the coolest guy ever. I think you see kids coming back around to country music today. Before you didn’t see kids in college wearing country T-shirts but today you see them wearing shirts with country artists. That is a change.”
Jay DeMarcus of Rascal Flatts has revealed the baby he and his wife Allison are expecting in January will be a little girl. They just found out this week that they will be having a daughter and Jay says, “We’re very excited about that. It’s just what I need … another girl in the house!” Gary LeVox jokingly suggested the name Garyetta Don in honor of him and the third member of Rascal Flatts, Joe Don Rooney. Jay’s band mates have also offered the first time father plenty of advice. Gary suggested, “try to stay married until the child comes,” while Joe Don advised, “stay out of the way as much as you can.” In all seriousness, Jay says Gary and Joe Don, who are already fathers, “told me that I need to hold on, because I’m in for the ride of my life. I’m just really excited. They have given me wonderful advice. I’m excited about being a father. I’ll try to do as well as these guys have done. I know that I’ll do better than Gary [laughs].”
Kellie Pickler is busy planning and preparing for her upcoming wedding, but she isn’t offering up too many details about her pending nuptials. All Kellie will say is that the wedding will happen before the end of the year. She has plenty of bridal magazines that she’s been poring over on her tour bus while she’s out on the road, but she says she hasn’t picked out a wedding dress yet.
Blake Shelton will host a live online chat this Sunday at 7:00pm EST / 6:00pm CT. You’ll be able to join the chat by logging onto CMT.com.
Trisha Yearwood has released two cookbooks so far, featuring old family recipes and recipes given to her by friends and acquaintances, but she’s not sure if there will be a third. “The first one was easier. It was mostly out of our shoeboxes of recipes, things we’d been making our entire lives,” she tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The second book, we had to extend the net. I talked to some successful cookbook authors, and one said, “You wrote all your recipes? You can’t continue to do that.” I guess these successful big-time authors hire people to develop recipes. Nobody has thousands of recipes in their shoeboxes. If we’d continue, I don’t know what we’d do. We’ll just have to see.” So far Trisha says the recipes that have received the biggest response are the Key Lime cake and Crockpot Macaroni and Cheese. The one recipe she wishes she could have published but wasn’t able to get was Mamie’s Tea Cakes. “Mamie was a lady named Mary, a family friend … Lived in our hometown,” she explains. “She made these amazing tea cakes, really big and soft. When she passed away, when I was in high school, that recipe went with her. We tried every tea cake recipe we could find, until we found one as close as we could get.”
Jimmy Wayne will wrap up his seven month walk from Nashville to Phoenix on Sunday morning. Jimmy began walking from Nashville on January 1st to the HomeBase Youth Services headquarters in Phoenix to help raise awareness for teen homelessness and teens who age out of the foster care system. Over the past seven months he has logged over 1,700 miles. Tomorrow he will perform at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill in Mesa, Arizona to celebrate his approach to the finish line. Then at 8am local time on Sunday he will begin the walk of the final two miles into Phoenix. You can learn more about Jimmy’s walk and follow his progress by logging onto meetmehalfway.jimmywayne.com.
This morning in Nashville Rascal Flatts held a press conference to announce that they have signed a new record deal with Big Machine Records, home of Taylor Swift. We’ll have more complete details later today, but we can tell you their first single, “Why Wait” was shipped to radio today and their new album, Nothing Like This will be in stores on November 16th.
If you’ve seen pictures of Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland lately then you may have noticed she’s sporting a much shorter hairdo these days. Some might assume she cut it off to be cooler for the summer, but Jennifer announced on stage at Country Jam in Eau Claire, WI, that Sugarland’s drummer just graduated from cosmetology school so she let him cut her hair. Travis McNabb is Sugarland’s drummer and he used to be the drummer for the rock group Better Than Ezra.