ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH VICTORIA SHAW'S RECENT UNDER THE COVERS CONCERT?
The multi-trillion selling singer/songwriter/producer once again brought a bevy of Nashville talent to our stage (left, by Stephen Sorokoff) , telling the stories behind the famous songs they’ve written, and singing spectacularly gorgeous acoustic renditions! Between Gary Burr, who wrote my all-time favorite Wynonna song, “To Be Loved By You,” Julie Gold, who performed a touching “From A Distance,” Mark Hudson, who did his best Steve Tyler on “Livin’ On The Edge,” and the extraordinary Bryan White who played and sang with great humor through an allergy attack - the show was a crazy hit. Of course, Ms. Shaw sang some new songs, along with her biggest hit, “The River.” We’re thrilled that she’s up for yet another ACM Award for her work on Lady Antebellum’s debut CD. The place was packed with music fans, including one Lance Bass, who knows a little something about selling records! (‘N Sync sold more than 56 million records worldwide!) The Under The Covers series has been one of our favorites for seven years, and you know Vic will make a return visit soon! Be there, or be all kinds of square!
On Monday, April 5, 2010, I had the distinct privilege of interviewing Award winning country music artist Bryan White after seeing him perform with Victoria Shaw and Gary Burr at New York City’s legendary jazz club Birdland as part of Jim Caruso’s Broadway at Birdland series. Right before I interviewed him, Bryan took the time to meet with fans, take pictures, and sign cds. Gracious, personable, and down to earth, Bryan White is proud of his success, but hasn’t forgotten where he came from. Since the age of 14, he has been entertaining audiences. He’s won a Grammy award, CMA Horizon Award, ACM Top Male Vocalist Award, had six #1 singles, two platinum records, two gold records and joined forces with Shania Twain for “From This Moment on” which they took to #4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart. Bryan just released his eighth studio album entitled “Dustbowl Dreams” and is currently touring the country. For tour dates and much more on Bryan, be sure to visit: http://www.bryanwhite.com.
Read more: Bryan helps close out CRS 2010 @ the Digital Rodeo's "Guilty Pleasures" show
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by Pat Gallagher
Bryan White, who has co-written hit songs for the likes of Diamond Rio ('Imagine That') and Sawyer Brown ('I Don't Believe in Goodbye'), has also charted 17 singles himself, including six No. 1's such as 'Someone Else's Star' and 'Rebecca Lynn.' The Boot caught up with Bryan at his home in Nashville to find out where he was when he heard his first record on the radio.
This would have been, I'm guessing, '95 ... and I was maybe all of 20 [years old] at the time. I was on an independent label, and we were on a real extensive radio tour on the west coast. We were on our way to Tucson to visit a radio station. On the way, I heard my single, which was a song called 'Eugene, You Genius.' It was an uptempo, fun kind of thing -- a tongue-in-cheek kind of song.
I heard it on the radio, and I freaked out so much so that I made the label rep find a convenience store to pull over because we didn't have cell phones then. We pulled over, and I got the number from my rep and went in and called the station from the pay phone, and they put me on the air. I was so jazzed, because that was literally the first time I had heard my voice on the airwaves. I thanked them and just told them how much I appreciated that. I made sure that they knew that was the literally the first time I heard myself just driving down the road! I wish I still had a copy of that audio of me calling in. That would be so special to have. I can visually see it. I can still see where I'm at, what the gas station looked like, and the rep who was with me was smiling.
Honestly, still today, it never gets old. I don't care how many hit records you have, when you hear your song on the radio or in the mall or in the grocery store, part of you is so excited, you want to go tap everybody on the shoulder [and say]: 'Do you know who that is?' [laughs]
2009 offered up a treasure trove of high quality country music, and we’ve compiled a list of the year’s 50 best country songs.
In order to a be considered for this list, a song must have appeared on an album released during the 2009 calendar year. Radio singles that appeared on 2008 albums but which were primarily promoted to radio in 2009 remained eligible so long as they did not appear on the previous year’s list.
The 9513’s 50 Best Country Songs of 2009
50. “Devil’s Best Dress” – Corb Lund
49. “These Cowboys Born Out of Their Time” – Gretchen Peters and Tom Russell
48. “Midnight At The Movies” – Justin Townes Earle
47. “Circles Around Me” – Sam Bush
46. “Cattleman’s Gun” – Dean Brody
45. “A Long Time Ago” – Chuck Mead
44. “Give Me Jesus” – Sara Watkins
43. “Warm Kentucky Sunshine” – Adam Steffey and Allison Krauss
42. “Money, Compliments, Publicity (Song Number 10)” – Todd Snider
41. “Angels Like Her” – Trent Tomlinson
40. “Taste Of The Truth” – Gene Watson
39. “Anything Like Me” – Brad Paisley
38. “Without Jesus Here With Me” – Holly Williams
37. “Only Prettier” – Miranda Lambert
36. “Someday When I Stop Loving You” – Carrie Underwood
35. “American Saturday Night” – Brad Paisley
34. “Long After I’m Gone” – Big Kenny
33. “Fifteen” – Taylor Swift
32. “Rose in Paradise” – Chris Young and Willie Nelson
31. “The Guitar” – Guy Clark
30. “Tell My Mother I Miss Her So” – Ryan Bingham
29. “Seeing Stars” – Jack Ingram with Patty Griffin
28. “Dustbowl Dreams” – Bryan White
27. “I’ll Have What She’s Having” – Reba McEntire
26. “Sissy’s Song” – Alan Jackson
25. “Closer To The Bone” – Kris Kristofferson
24. “Promises in Pieces” – Jason Eady
23. “Mama” – Holly Williams
22. “Need You Now” – Lady Antebellum
21. “A Little Revival” – Radney Foster and The Confession
20. “Has Anybody Ever Told You” – Ashley Monroe
19. “Three Minutes At A Time” – Gene Watson
18. “Gettin’ You Home (The Black Dress Song)” – Chris Young
17. “Busted” – Patty Loveless
16. “Maggie Creek Road” – Reba McEntire
15. “Ellis County” – Buddy and Julie Miller
14. “Staying Together” – Gene Watson with Rhonda Vincent
13. “On The Other Side” – Dailey and Vincent
12. “Gasoline and Matches” – Buddy and Julie Miller
11. “White Liar” – Miranda Lambert
10. “Hemingway’s Whiskey” – Guy Clark
9. “Cry Pretty” – Jason Eady
8. “Arkansas Dave” – George Strait
7. “Pretty Flowers” – Steve Martin, Vince Gill and Dolly Parton
6. “My Way To you” – Jamey Johnson
5. “Mama’s Eyes” – Justin Townes Earle
4. “An Old Friend Of Mine” – Joe Nichols
3. “Reconsider” – Charlie Robison
2. “Hesitation Blues” – Asleep at the Wheel and Willie Nelson
1. “The House That Built Me” – Miranda Lambert
"Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother's house we go ..."
What could be better for a child than spending Christmas at grandma's house and the North Pole at the same time? Impossible you say? Not if your name is Bryan White.
"Hopefully you won't think I'm weird when I tell you this," Brian explains to The Boot, recalling a favorite childhood Christmas memory. "My grandparents had this huge house shaped like a horseshoe. There was this snow white carpet that my grandmother had in the living room where the Christmas tree was. She had one of those old trees that had the fake snow on it, and the tree was white. You remember those ... (and under it) it's like this stain glass plastic circle thing with different color shades. It was like a little gel in front of a light, and it went in circles, and it projected a colorful image onto your tree. It made this squeaky sound from this wheel turning.
"I remember one Christmas night I just felt this real warm, cozy feeling by the tree with that thing going. When everybody went to sleep, I would get up out of bed and go get under the tree with that little thing going, and I would just sleep under the tree. I know that's weird. But as a kid, I felt like I was at the North Pole. There was something neat about it.
"You might want to Google what that little thing is called – the little light crank."
Good news, Bryan. We did indeed look up the "stain glass plastic circle thing with different color shades" and here you go. It's called a Penetray Rotating Lighted Christmas Color Wheel. Sweet memories are made of this.
Bryan White just finished writing a Christmas song -- 'Finding Christmas' -- inspired by his sons Justin, 6 and Jackson, 4.
"The song is about becoming jaded as we get older and when we become adults, there's really no mystery any more," Bryan tells The Boot. "The element of surprise and mystery is gone and ... I'm finding it all again through their eyes. I feel like I am seeing it all again the second time around through them, and it's awesome. They've been really anticipating Christmas since October. As soon as Halloween was over, their Christmas questions were just being fired at me right after that."
Bryan's own childhood recollections of Christmas serve as a blueprint for the memories he wants his children to have.
"I remember when I was a kid [my parents] knew we were just bursting at the seams, so most of the time we got to open one gift on Christmas Eve just to kind of tide us over until the morning. We'll probably do that. We've had our tree up since Thanksgiving. That was a fun process, just getting the tree down and them helping us. They're old enough now that they want to have a purpose with everything, they want to be a part of it."
And before the kids go off to bed on Christmas Eve, they'll have one more task to complete.
"We'll write a note to Santa, and we get the cookies and milk and set that out," Bryan says. "Then the next morning, I'm up before them with the video camera. I got them last year really good coming down the stairs. They were still kind of half asleep, kind of wiping their eyes, but you could tell as soon as they walked in the living room and saw the gifts, they were just so excited. It was just awesome!"
Bryan and his wife, actress Erika Page ('One Life to Live'), also feel it's important to bring the 'real' meaning of Christmas to the forefront.
"I would say we probably spend more time devoted to Christ being born ... why we're celebrating, more than the Santa Claus. We sort of make sure they know -- we try to just let them know that Santa is just one of God's helpers."
Bryan's been busy chasing Donner and Blitzen on his radio tour for the last few months, promoting his latest studio album 'Dustbowl Dreams.' He plans to record his new Christmas song in 2010.
Last Updated: November 30, 2009 1:11 PM
After releasing five albums in the 1990s, Bryan White took a break from music to be with his family. In that time the singer became a much stronger songwriter and the proof of his growth is present on this album, the first release from Bryan since his Greatest Hits album from the year 2000. Dustbowl Dreams features a more thoughtful artist than when we last heard from him and this is evident on the album's lead single “The Little Things,” a song that finds Bryan ruminating on all the simple pleasures that get him through the day, singing: “It’s the little things that mean the world to me.” Melodically the song is firmly contemporary but the mandolin and fiddle are clearly in the mix as is the steel guitar. These production flourishes remind folks that Bryan White has been and always will be a country
“Get It Together” recalls the tempo-filled hits of songs like “So Much For Pretending” yet somehow this Derek George & Darryl Burgess-penned track feels extremely joyful and just plain fun. “When You Come Around” is a painful song to listen to and this song, perhaps more than any other track on Dustbowl Dreams showcases Bryan White’s songwriting more than anything. The song, with gentile piano, fiddle and mandolin notes guiding the melody, finds Bryan bearing his soul about the relationship he wishes he had with his alcoholic father. The pain in the lyric is evident while Bryan retains the same hopeful outlook that all children have for their parents. This is country music folks, bearing your soul for the entire world to hear in the hopes that this ‘cheap therapy’ can help heal a wound or two. It also shows that ‘stars’ aren’t immune to the same thoughts and feelings as the ‘every day person’ is.
The title track of the record is a sweet reminder of the power of home and where we grow up and how it has affects our life, even when we don’t know it. The song touches on Bryan’s fast success as a recording artist while also showcasing the strength that he gets from his home state and family. Bryan admired Steve Wariner for a long time and while they became fast friends in the 1990s, they haven’t recorded together before now, on the track “Hands of Time,” a song Steve first recorded a decade ago. The song not only is a duet but it also features Wariner on lead guitar. The song is a fun track that would sound great on the radio, if given the chance. “Beautiful Place” feels like something you might hear on a Kenny
While Bryan’s commercial (mainstream) career with Asylum/Warner Brothers Records was ending in 2000, his personal life was getting stronger and better. That personal life centered around his wife Erika Page, an actress. Their relationship has continued to grow has given the artist the confidence to return with this album. Bryan serenades his wife on “Erika’s Song.” The album ends with a co-write with one of my personal favorite songwriters, Marcus Hummon. The song is “On My Own (Hymn of the Road)” and it tells the story of a musician who leaves home to find stardom only to realize that you can go home again (before setting off again). It’s a fitting end for Dustbowl Dreams and a wonderful reminder that even after all these years, Bryan White has come back to country music and sounds recharged, refreshed and, if this record is any indication, ready to bring more great music to fans for years to come.
Bryan White co-wrote 8 of the 10 tracks on this album.
By: Cindy Watts
When the White family gets back, Bryan will once again get busy telling people about Dustbowl Dreams. The CD is Bryan's first of new material in about 10 years.
"In the last few years I've taken time off, and this is a result of all this time off," said the singer. "I think anyone who is a fan is going to hear something familiar on this CD, but it's a lot heavier subject matter. The struggles and the joys of life, that's what I wrote about and that's what this record is about."
The CD is available at www.bryanwhite.com and wherever digital music is sold.
The singer has two Nashville shows coming up. He'll play a handful of acoustic songs on Dec. 2 at Mercy Lounge as part of Compassion's Benefit For The Global Food Crisis (alongside Blaine Larsen, Julie Roberts and others; $10 tickets are available through TicketWeb.com), and he'll stop on Dec. 8 at Bluebird Cafe for a 9 p.m. benefit show with Micheal Peterson, Rick Barron and Jonathan Cain for the Mary Parrish Center.