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December, 2006
 
Holiday Shopping with Martina McBride
Shop to Benefit the YWCA by ICX There’s still time for music fans to bid on more than 100 items of country music memorabilia left from the record-breaking 2006 YW Celebrity Auction with Martina McBride. The 23rd annual Auction, held last June during the CMA Music Festival, earned more than $135,000 for YW programs. Items are available online at www.ywcanashville.cmarket.com and include Lee Ann Womack’s autographed cowboy hat, Josh Turner’s autographed Wrangler jeans, Dierks Bentley’s autographed Wrangler western shirt, a signed debut album of Alan Jackson, autographed photos of Carrie Underwood, Martina McBride framed/autographed poster, tour shirts and Timeless autographed CD insert, Sara Evans’ stage shirt worn at the 2004 Academy of Country Music Awards, Kenny Chesney’s autographed CDs and more. New items will be posted weekly until the auction ends at midnight on December 12. McBride’s continuous dedication to the YW helps raise dollars that fund vital programs to help women break multi-generational cycles of poverty and violence. Visit www.theyw.com. Rickie Lee Jones will release a new album, The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard, on February 7, her debut for New West Records. The CD is said to "rock harder" than her previous releases and follows a theme: All 13 songs are inspired by the words and ideas of Christ. Lee Cantelon originally conceived the project as a lo-fi, low budget undertaking, a spoken-word interpretation of The Words, his book of Christ's teachings. Cantelon created beds of music with guitarist Peter Atanasoff and his initial plan was to recruit friends and associates to do the talking. The project changed direction, though, when Jones improvised an entire song, "Nobody Knows My Name," to a track she had never heard. A two-disc deluxe edition of The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard will also be available with a 24-page booklet and six-panel Digipak, featuring additional art and photography from the recording sessions. The package will include an SACD with higher-resolution Stereo and 5.1 Surround mixes of the album and a DVD with over a dozen short film "chapters" documenting the recording sessions, Jones’ international tour performances and more. The DVD will also contain 256k MP3s of the entire album for higher-quality downloads to portable devices such as iPods. Following his own time in a rehab center in Canada, Three Days Grace lead singer Adam Gontier came up with a plan to offer support to others who were going through trying times by using what he knows best: his music. Gontier held a series of performances throughout North America at centers for addiction, mental health facilities, homes for boys with behavioral problems and homes for girls who were rescued from abusive families. The band recently embarked on a series of these special performances in their native Canada, culminating with a performance November 29 at the CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Queen Street facility) in Toronto, where Gontier checked himself in two years ago. CAMH is one of only four treatment centers in the world that is credited by the World Health Organization. One-X, the band’s follow-up to their 2003 self-titled debut, entered at No. 5 on the Billboard chart and its first single, "Animal I Have Become," was No. 1 on all rock formats (alternative, active and mainstream) and stayed No. 1 at Active for nine weeks. The track recently received a BDS Spin Award for outstanding radio airplay achievement (100,000 spin threshold) and the FMQB Award for No. 1 Rock Song of the Year. The album's new single, "Pain," is currently in the Top 10. Influence, the sophomore album by Shaw Blades—led by Styx/Damn Yankees guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw and Night Ranger/Damn Yankees bassist/vocalist Jack Blades—is set for release on February 20. The self-produced album was mixed by Noel Golden (Matchbox Twenty, Willie Nelson) and Great White keyboardist/guitarist Michael Lardie. The first single, "Your Move," will be serviced to radio in January. Influence is the duo’s first album since their recently re-released 1995 debut, Hallucination. Like its predecessor, it’s rooted in acoustic guitar and organic production, harvesting a decade of musical influences into 11 tracks, on which Blades and Shaw played all the music except for drums and the occasional keyboards. With classics from the 1960s and 1970s, including the Mamas and the Papas’ "California Dreamin’," Buffalo Springfield’s "For What It’s Worth" and Steely Dan’s "Dirty Work," Influence offers a track-by-track chronology of the musical era that helped define modern rock. One of the most prolific duos in the history of hard rock, Shaw and Blades have sold more than 50 million albums amongst their three bands, scored 12 Top 10 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, debuted 16 albums in the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart, and share joint songwriting credits for the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Aerosmith, Cher and Alice Cooper. A U.S. tour is currently in the works. |