happy father's day!

some great country songs about great dads. have a good one y'all!


didn't have to be. brad paisley.



just fishin'. trace adkins.


mr. mom. lonestar.

Lonestar - Mr. Mom (Official Music Video). Watch more top selected videos about: Lonestar

it won't be like this for long. darius rucker.


proud of the house we built. brooks & dunn.

thompson square, darius rucker, and lady a, oh my!

i promised the deets, and here they is! it was a magical night. one on which grimy downtown was transformed by an unrepresentative amount of blonde people in cowboy hats wandering down figueroa street. our own entrance into the staples center was magically serenaded by thompson square performing their hit, are you gonna kiss me or not? which was an exciting welcome, but not as exciting as the ushers waving us further and further down the arena until we were right up against the stage on the floor! by the time our glorious climb down to our wristband-necessitating area was complete, thompson square was waving goodbye ridiculously nearby and my panic at this unprecedented closeness to darius rucker began to set in. i was one of those people you hate standing behind at concerts because they won't stop moving and screaming and throwing their hands up in the air.

darius looked adorable in his john lennon "give peace a chance" t-shirt and silver alligator boots. "i'm just a little boy from south carolina playing at the staples center in los angeles, so i'm gonna have a little fun tonight!" he announced. pish-tosh, i said. you're not a little boy from SC, you're motherf*ckin' hootie!! he played all his hits and then some, including hootie and the blowfish favorites and prince's purple rain, which he dedicated to the lakers. i know i tweet-promised i'd touch him, but he wasn't too big on coming over and reaching down to us too often. he seemed kind of shy in that sense, which is what makes him so lovable. so i forgive him.

i had barely regathered my wits about me when the lights dimmed and lady antebellum images adorned the giant screens above the stage. the sold out crowd went wild as they opened with we own the night. can i just repeat for the millionth time how gorgeous lady antebellum is (are)? all 3 of them are ten times prettier in person than they already are on tv and in print. i couldn't believe it! charles is HOTTER THAN A STEAMY GEORGIA AFTERNOON IN JULY!! is that a thing? i've never been to georgia but i channeled my inner blanche devereaux for that one. i mean, just LOOK at them:

and here are charles and hillary doing their signature why-won't-they-just-kiss-already singing pose yet again:

they even brought ryan from one republic out to sing his disney theme song good life with them, which i thought was going to be the pinnacle of my aural excitement, but then they brought all the openers back out for a complete bluegrass session RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY FACE at the end of the catwalk! i tried to touch them all, i tell you! but they kept JUST missing my hand for some crazy fifty-year-old man's in front of me. if anyone was paying attention to me, i'd be pretty embarrassed at this barrage of country rejection, but alas, did i mention who all was up on stage at this moment!?

and so went my participation in the biggest night in country music to come to los angeles.  SO. EXCITING. hope you liked the pics, kiddies! for some more lady a love in the form of swooning over hillary scott's rockstar-chic ensemble, head on over to happy as annie.

lady antebellum sells out the staples center!

last night was AMAZING. just when i thought lady antebellum seriously screwed up having the amazing love of my life darius rucker open for them, they blew my mind just as hard. more details later, i promise!

COUNTRY PLAYLIST: irish whiskey jigs!

alright, i fibbed a little, but it was in the name of st. patrick's day. these songs aren't really irish jigs, but they're all about whiskey and they're all by white people, so that counts, right? okay, i lied again. darius rucker's in there too. BUT the garth brooks video is from a concert in ireland. so we're good? any hoot, with no further delay, your whiskey swiggin' (and designated driver findin'!) st. patrick's day weekend soundtrack!

*note: this wasn't an easy task. there are so many hauntingly gorgeous yet depressing as all hell songs about whiskey (whiskey lullaby by brad paisley and alison krauss and cheap whiskey by patty loveless to name a couple). leave it to country!

1. whiskey girl. toby keith.


2. whiskey under the bridge. brooks and dunn.

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3. rain is a good thing. luke bryan.

4. there's a place in the whiskey. gretchen wilson.

5. don't think i don't think about it. darius rucker.

6. drinkin' dark whiskey. gary allan.
 
7. friends in low places. garth brooks.

A Quick and Dirty Listen Back at 2011

We're approaching the very end of 2011, and there's no better time than now to examine what has survived as the soundtrack of our lives via checking what's still playing in our cars. This is as pertinent as any question posed to an Angeleno this time of year, and as we approach the end of 2011, my six-disc changer is still rotating between the following:

1. Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker

     2. Darius Rucker’s Learn to Live

  

3. Nellie McKay’s Normal as Blueberry Pie

4. Fiona Apple's When the Pawn... 

5. Pistol Annies' Hell on Heels

    6. The Secret Sisters (Self-titled)

      That’s at least 50% country, kiddies! (Ryan Adams’ penchant for collaborating with country queens like Emmylou Harris and Gillian Welch counts as the “at least” in that one).  Not too shabby for my first year as a country snob if I do say so myself! Country snob--now there's an oxymoron if I've ever written one. 
 
Anyway, what music did y'all play the hell out of this year?  And more importantly, what are we going to play the hell out of next year?  After all, as the Italian-Phrase-a-Day calendar Santa so kindly left in my stocking this year says for January 1st, "Anno nuovo, vita nuova!"  For the country bumpkins out there who don't happen to be as cosmopolitan and worldly as yours truly, that translates to “New year, new life!"

thankin my lucky stars.

i mentioned in my very first post ever in the history of annie git your gun that i turned to country music because it was uplifting, and people were singing about how happy they were even being stuck behind a god-fearin', hard-workin' combine driver, hoggin' up the road on his p-p-p-p-plower, (can't take credit for those lines. international harvester by craig morgan). and this morning i woke up singing me some tunes that reminded me of how thankful i am for this crazy life of an amazing family, loving friends, a cute little home of my own, and a boyfriend who got me tickets to see lady antebellum with darius rucker in march! holllaaahhh.
1. alright by darius rucker.

2. my front porch looking in by lonestar.


3. rain is a good thing by luke bryan (just in case it rains this weekend!)

4. and the ultimate thanskgiving song, the father of all thanksgiving songs, the one that made me tear up as i watched it in my living room this morning because i LOVE him, this by darius rucker.

TIME CAPSULE: charley pride.

we all know how much i love darius rucker. but we may not all know that in 2009, darius rucker became the first african american to win the cma for best new artist. he also was the first african american to reach #1 on billboard's country charts (for don't think i don't think about it in 2008) since 1983, when charley pride's night games topped the charts. in fact, after charley's huge success in the sixties and seventies, there was no black performer to get a cma award until darius rucker came around decades later! oh yeah, and night games was charley pride's 29th country chart-topper! so yeah, no big deal.

black country artists are hard to come by in such a predominantly white genre. in fact, when rca first signed charley in the 60s, they made sure not to release any photos of him since pre-civil rights jim crow was still rearing its ugly head in the south. but after something like a million hits, i guess good ol' dixie land decided to look past charley's tall, dark handsomeness and he became the first black artist to play at the grand ole opry. and in 1993, he became the first african-american country music hall of fame inductee. here i was going to say, "yee-haw! obama it up!" but clearly the correct phrase would be to say that obama is the one charley pridin' it up.

politics aside because that's not really my steez, below is charley performing his biggest hit, "kiss an angel good mornin" (1971), which won him cma's entertainer of the year AND top male vocalist. and perhaps most importantly of all, please tell me where i can get this red sweater. thanks.



{photo credit: lasvegascourierservice.com}

STAGECOACH ITINERARY: Day 1

i've come to terms with the fact that coachella (aka brochella) is pretty over. gone are the days when legitimate music fans would save up their money then agonize over pro/con lists to select which day of the festival to buy a ticket for. enter stagecoach, which is basically the country music coachella (coincidence that both names have "coach" in them? looking into it.). it also happens at the empire polo field in indio just a couple weeks after the coachella stank has melted away. i'm still coping with the fact that i can't go because of finals (law school begrudgingly leaving my life with a vengeance!), but now that set times have been announced, i can at least share my imaginary stage-hopping schedule here, then tune in to go country 105 all weekend to listen in live.

SATURDAY APRIL 30th.
2 pm: THE CLEVERLYS. nothing like some banjo and bluegrass straight out of the ozarks to start your day.
3 pm: LUKAS NELSON & promise of the real. they made it on to both leno and letterman, so that's good enough for me.
3:30 pm: STEALING ANGELS. let's just say the first line of one of their songs is "i texted him 21 times and still my phone don't ring," and the song is called "he better be dead."

4:05 pm: PHOSPHORESCENT. this band is the most indie rock/emo friendly of all the stagecoach performers. "wolves" makes me feel like i'm watching a particularly sentimental episode of scrubs.

EARLY DINNER BREAK.
5:15 pm: THE SECRET SISTERS. one of my new absolute favorites!!

6:15 pm: CHRIS YOUNG. his single "tomorrow" is one of the SEXIEST songs i've ever heard.

7:45 pm: DARIUS RUCKER (aka hootie of blowfish fame). he is my favorite male country artist. i love every single song of his i've heard and i would purchase a stagecoach ticket just to see him.
8:30 pm: KRIS KRISTOFFERSON. i will admit, the only thing this name meant to me was it was my nickname for my brother-in-law chris. but lo and behold, this man is responsible for writing "me and my bobby mcgee," my favorite janis joplin song. having kris kristofferson at stagecoach is like having leonard cohen at coachella, which i can say from personal experience was breathtaking.
9:30 pm: KENNY CHESNEY. to be honest with you, i'm not a big fan of "the boys of fall." i was a high school cheerleader and i attended both ucla and usc, so i GET how important football is to americans, but how did this single overshadow "live a little" so much? now THAT song is country music at its finest.