TNS Video History- Ray Charles- "America, The Beautiful"

Happy 4th of July to all of our TNS readers- I hope that it's filled with friends and family.

New Music Video From Steel Magnolia- "Just by Being You (Halo and Wings)"

Former Lyric Street Artist And Songwriter Joshua Ragsdale Passes Away At 32

Former Lyric Street/Nashville artist and songwriter Joshua Ragsdale passed away yesterday (7/1) in a Nashville area hospital following a battle with leukemia. Ragsdale, who was a staff writer for Sony/ATV, was only 32.

This year, Joshua’s song “Ain’t Much Left Of Lovin’ You” became Mercury/Nashville artist Randy Montana’s debut single (currently in the Top 50) and Country Music Hall Of Famer Bill Anderson released “Papaw’s Sunday Boots,” a song he co-wrote with Anderson this last summer. He had also written songs for other artists including Trick Pony.

Ragsdale’s manager Bob Titely said: “I’ve never seen anybody that remains so positive and so concerned about others through such personal adversity. With every bit of bad news, he’ll react with three minutes of crying and praying, and then it’s back to this positive energy.”

Ragsdale inspired hundreds of people to be tested as potential bone marrow donors during his illness, after having a potential donor back out with no other matches available. Ragsdale had said that he knew five people who had been called and told they were matches for someone on the registry because of his encouragement. Visit www.marrow.org to find out more about joining the bone marrow registry.

In his bio he stated: “I had my back broken by a horse, my neck broken by a Dodge. Been bitten by three snakes including a copperhead and cottonmouth. I've played polo with the Atlanta Polo Club, trained with a swat team, caddied for Davis Love III, sang on the Grand Ole' Opry, hugged Andy Griffith, worn a bite suit for police k-9 training, was baptized in the Mississippi River, kissed Wynonna Judd and helped Little Jimmy Dickens take down his Christmas lights.”

Fresh Music Friday

That Nashville Soundbites- Uncle Kracker- Happy Hour: The South River Road Sessions

That Nashville Sound receives many different CD releases throughout the year from indie, bluegrass and artists just off the mainstream radar- or smaller projects like EPs- that we’re doing short mini CD reviews on. We call them That Nashville Soundbites- it’s a feature that will allow us to give some props to some albums and artists that deserve a spotlight on their work.

Release Date: June 2010
Music Label: Top Dog/Atlantic
The Skinny: A few years ago, Kenny Chesney and Uncle Kracker dueted together on the summertime anthem “When The Sun Goes Down.” He’s landed full on the country radar with the current near-top-ten first release off of this album, “Smile.” The top track of this EP is the Kid Rock duet “Good To Be Me” which seems like it will be a good light rolling rocking summertime follow-up to "Smile." Kid Rock (and then Jesse Lee on the third track) outshine Kracker vocally, but the songs are pleasant, if not the most memorable. The gravel-voiced Kracker pulls off kind of a Motor City country here. The most interesting song is “Livin The Dream.” As Kid Rock did with “Sweet Home Alabama” in his “All Summer Long”, Kracker borrows the chorus from hard rock’s Whitesnake’s 1980’s hit “Here I Go Again.” Being an adolescent rock fan back in the day, it’s a cool fiddle, steel and acoustic guitar take on a classic. Different. But interesting.
Sounds Like: Kid Rock singing Kenny Chesney music- with a hint of John Fogerty
Standout Tracks: Good To Be Me, Livin’ The Dream
The Verdict: Three stars out of five

Travis Tritt Tells Billboard He's Starting His Own Label

Twenty years after releasing his first album, Travis Tritt plans to take his recording career into his own hands.

The Georgia-based country star tells Billboard.com that before he releases his follow-up to 2007's "The Storm" he plans to open his own label - though unlike something like Toby Keith's Show Dog Nashville, Tritt says that "it's strictly for me to release my music on.

While the label does not have a name just yet, Travis says he's leaning toward calling it Post Oak Publishing. "[It's] in the process," he says. "[We're] working on putting together investors to be a part of it. We're getting very, very close to getting it off the ground."

As far as the creative end of the label, Travis plans to keep it to a minimum of who gets involved. "It's strictly going to be me," he states. "I feel like I've got enough experience over the years. I know what it takes to put a record together, so I'm not looking for people to come in and shape it."

Travis plans to start work on the new album soon, and he has been talking with James Otto and Lee Roy Parnell about collaborating on some songs for the project. "In the meantime, I've been writing on my own," he reports. "It's like Roger Miller used to say, 'Every now and then, like a dog having puppies, you have to crawl under the house and do it yourself.'"

John Mellencamp Schedules New Country-Folk Album No Better Than This For Aug 17 Release

Rounder Records will release No Better Than This, an album from John Mellencamp of all new original songs that was recorded at a variety of historically significant locations around the South. The album, set for release August 17, was produced by T Bone Burnett who earlier collaborated with Mellencamp on the much-lauded Life Death Love and Freedom. Time Magazine called that album “his best in a decade” and Rolling Stone ranked it #5 in its listing of the 50 best albums of the year. It is scheduled for release August 17, 2010.

No Better Than This was recorded over the course of a few break days afforded Mellencamp when he was on a tour of minor league ball parks last year, sharing the bill with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. The album was recorded on vintage equipment – a 55 year-old Ampex tape recorder with just one microphone -- in Savannah at the First African Baptist Church, in Memphis at Sun Studios and in San Antonio in room 414 of the Gunter Hotel.

Mellencamp wrote the thirteen songs included on the album during a thirteen-day span last spring. “I was tightly focused,” he related, “I got up every day and wrote and wrote and wrote.” The songs reflect various American traditions including blues, folk, western, gospel, rockabilly and country and address such themes as the need for hope, the nature of relationship and narratives that recount extraordinary occurrences in everyday life.

As far as the recording locations are concerned, they were chosen based on cultural and music history, each providing a sense of place for the respective sessions. About the experience, Mellencamp remarked, “It was absolutely the most fun I’ve ever had making a record in my life. It was about making music – organic music made by real musicians – that’s heartfelt and written from the best place it can come from.”

The First African Baptist Church is the first Black church in North America dating to pre-revolutionary times. The original congregation and ministry were slaves; the church, in fact, provided sanctuary to runaways before emancipation. Mellencamp, who has a residence in the area, has long been familiar with the church and the role it played in the Savannah community. He and his wife Elaine were baptized there before the sessions commenced.

While Sun Studios actually is a working recording facility, its equipment has been updated since the days of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis so Mellencamp’s team used the Ampex machine and established a makeshift recording booth in a construction shed in a vacant lot next door. Mellencamp and his musicians did, dutifully, arrange themselves on the studio floor in accordance with markings that had been laid down by Sam Phillips many years before for optimal presence.

Room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio is where Robert Johnson first recorded for Brunswick Records in November of 1936; Mellencamp’s version of Johnson’s “Stones In My Pass Way” was the first track on Trouble No More, an album of blues and folk songs released in 2003. The room has been carpeted in the intervening years so a hardwood floor was placed over the carpet to better approximate the ambience heard on Johnson’s records. Mellencamp sang facing the corner of the room that Johnson had almost 74 years earlier.

After the sessions were completed, Burnett took the mono tapes back to Los Angeles and mastered them, per Mellencamp, “in a way that made them coherent.” Sequencing of the album was accomplished by Burnett in a moment that could be likened to an epiphany. Mellencamp was present when his producer recited the running order of all 13 songs in a moment of inspired spontaneity.

New Music Video From Colt Ford- "Chicken and Biscuits"

"Country rapper" Colt Ford parodies the vampire movie Twilight in his new music video that premiered this morning.

New Music Video From Montgomery Gentry- "While You're Still Young"

New Music Video From Steve Miller & Kenny Chesney- "The Joker"

Up & Coming New Nashville- Sunny Ledfurd

This week's Up & Coming New Nashville column will be a little different- we're letting the artist highlighted write their own reveal. Enjoy a little history on an artist named Sunny Ledfurd.

I'd like to welcome everyone to Sunny Ledfurd Greatest Hits 2003-2009. I know a lot of you may be saying, "Greatest Hits? I've never even heard of him." Well...while I haven't been a staple on radio or seen on MTV, CMT, or what have it, I have been making music for over a decade and will continue to do so until the clock runs out. As my shows around the country began to attract bigger and bigger audiences, I thought it would be cool for new listeners to have an opportunity to buy just one CD instead of five or six different ones. With that being said, let me tell you a little about myself to bring you up to date. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee and raised in Cramerton, North Carolina, I taught myself guitar at the age of fifteen. I knew then that was how I would make a living. Two things were for sure: I could pick a guitar and I knew a lot of songs. Never considering myself a singer, I said screw it and jumped right in. At age seventeen, I began to play in many of the local bars whenever I could. I learned to play all kinds of songs. I can now play songs for days, without repeating a single one. I don’t know how many days or songs, but it’s a lot. The bars taught me to appreciate a good song and good times. To me, until this day, the small bars are the best place to play and listen to live music. There may be smoke, but no smoke and mirrors. It’s just you, the guitar, and whoever is in there. I will always play in bars.

I grew up listening to my Mom's records, Glenn Campbell, Billy Joel, The Rolling Stones, The Carpenters, etc... As a teenager I graduated to Guns n Roses, Snoop Dog and David Allan Coe among many. I love to mix genres and push the envelope. I've always liked artists that you can tell they have something to say. They're not just singing some words 'cause it sounds cool. Every song I sing is about ninety percent autobiographical. I can write about partying and drinking because I do it. I write about beautiful women and bitches because I’ve dealt with them. After numerous rejections in the early 2000’s from every major label from Los Angeles to Nashville, I finally made the decision that if I was going to make it I would have to do it myself. All the labels kept telling me was that I couldn’t say this or that. I was like why not? Have you ever listened to David Allan Coe, Tupac, and Eminem? How the hell did they ever put anything out? It was like because I was white and played an acoustic guitar I was supposed to make some type of yuppie music. I wasn’t going to be a monkey on a string singing songs about falling in love,broken hearts and drinkin’ a six pack. I was chasing girls and getting hammered. I knew if I wanted to do what was really in my heart, where my head was at, I would have to go at it alone... but I wasn't alone as I would come to find out.

Using money from acoustic cover shows played in bars all over the Carolina’s, I built a home studio. I had to be able to record whenever I wanted…when the inspiration came. These songs you’re hearing, those are the actual first takes. They’re not the most professional recordings but the feeling and energy is there.

From 2003 to 2009, I released six albums in which I started to gain listeners from all walks of life and all over the country. It's the feedback I got during this time from people at shows and on the internet that have continued to inspire me to stay the course. There has been no middle man in these songs. They are straight from my garage to your ears. So once again, thanks for listening and I hope to see you soon in a bar, honky-tonk, or arena near you.

TNS Video History- Gary Allan- "Songs About Rain"