Arts and Entertainment

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (OSBORNE) -- Nashville based Getty Music gets its 2019 “Sing!” Conference for Christian worship leaders underway Monday at Opryland.

Conference hosts Keith and Kristyn Getty’s say they’re expecting 13,000 people to attend. Keith Getty’s says he’s looking forward to the night the entire conference will sing a challenging work together.

ELIZABETHTON, Tenn. (AP) — Dale Earnhardt Jr. will take the weekend off from broadcasting to be with his wife and daughter after the three were in a plane crash landing Thursday near Bristol Motor Speedway.

The 44-year-old television analyst and retired driver was taken to a hospital for evaluation after the crash in east Tennessee. Earnhardt was with wife Amy, 15-month-old daughter Isla, a dog and two pilots.

"I'm from San Benito, TX down a dirty dusty road," sings Charley Crockett on the title track of his upcoming album The Valley. As he goes on, we learn of an absentee father, a hard-working mamma, dangerous gambles, gun barrels and "trouble everywhere I turned." There's not an untrue or embellished line in the song. Yet as literal as it is, the narrative sounds more like something from Woody Guthrie's time than 21st century America. Crockett's country blues is neither appropriated nor contrived.

The NAMM Show is the nation’s biggest and most important trade expo for musical instruments and gear. Yet even on the crowded and cacophonous show floor in July at the Music City Center, Gibson Brands, Inc., formerly Gibson Guitar Corp., was dead center and impossible to miss.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Grammy-winning folk singer and musician Rhiannon Giddens and the late Frank Johnson, the leader of a 19th century black brass band, will be the first recipients of the inaugural Legacy of Americana Award.

The Americana Music Association announced the new award on Wednesday in partnership with the National Museum of African American Music. The award will be presented during the Americana Honors & Awards show in Nashville, Tennessee, on September 11.

The Local, a bar one block away from Nashville’s Centennial Park in midtown, hums with a beckoning light, open garage doors and roots music on a recent Monday night. Sound check is over. A woman steps on stage, pulls the microphone down to her height and greets the murmuring Monday night audience.

“Welcome to the Local Brew Live,” she says. “I’m your host, Ana Lee.”

Fresh off a weekend at the 60th Newport Folk Festival, including a historic woman-powered Saturday sundown jam curated by Brandi Carlile, songwriter Amy Ray brought a stage full of friends to play country music for an exclusive WMOT member audience on Wednesday evening. The Indigo Girl and folk icon has been making solo music with varying degrees of punk and twang since 2001's Stag. On this evening's set for WMOT's series Wired In, much of the material was drawn from her 2018 album Holler, including its chill and melancholy title track.

Country music’s relationship with Nashville is but a recent dalliance compared to Music City’s gospel roots. That story extends back into the 19th century, with the establishment of The Fisk Jubilee Singers and the inspiration for the Ryman Auditorium. Nashville’s first music publishers and some of its first radio stations were gospel-based. And in 1921 came the founding of the Fairfield Four, probably Nashville’s most famous gospel vocal group. The lineage of the Fairfield Four thrives and resonates in Odessa Settles, this week’s guest on The String.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (OSBORNE) -- The Southern Festival of Books is out with this year’s initial list of author appearances.

The free, three day festival will be held at the main branch of the Nashville Library beginning October 11.

Serenity Gerbman is the Director of festival sponsor Humanities Tennessee. She says the 2019 author’s list includes Ottessa Moshfegh (MOSH-fed), Tara Conklin, Karen Thompson Walker, and New York Times Best Seller Casey Cep who wrote the new book about Harper Lee.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Taylor Lewan, Tennessee's three-time Pro Bowl left tackle, says the NFL has suspended him for the first four games of the season for violating the league's policy on performance enhancers.

Lewan announced his suspension Wednesday in an emotional video he posted to social media, saying he received the letter from the NFL a few weeks ago that he had tested positive for ostarine. He said he wanted to share the news himself, which comes a day before the Titans report for training camp.

Balsam Range of North Carolina and Nashville's Earls of Leicester find themselves positioned to possibly extend their dynastic dominance of the International Bluegrass Music Awards with nominations for Entertainer of the Year and then some. The suite of nominees was announced Wednesday morning by radio host Kyle Cantrell. Balsam Range and the Earls have traded top honors at the awards since 2014. Also nominated in the category are nine-time winners The Del McCoury Band, the Sam Bush Band and Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers.

The track "Too Much," which falls in the middle of Courtney Harman's solo debut album Ready Reckoner, begins with Hartman's own footfalls from the middle of a much bigger journey. We hear her boots crunching on a gravel trail, one after the other, with a walking stick playing counter-rhythm, before the spare guitar and voice comes in. It's an audio postcard from the Camino De Santiago, a 500-mile trail across northern Spain comprising one of the most significant pilgrimage routes in the Western world. In the Spring of 2017, Hartman walked the walk.

One of the hardest things to describe in music is what makes a melody excellent. It’s a bit like design; success is supposed to be somewhat self-evident. But in general, one listens for an inner balance and a confident arc, like a good story. Too many skimp on these values, composing notes to fit chord changes, when it’s wiser to work in the opposite direction. Nashville’s Dara Tucker could give clinics in melody.

Music City Roots, the 10-year-old live radio show and public television series, announced plans for a new venue on Thursday. Co-founder John Walker and community leaders unveiled The Roots Barn, a new concert venue to be built next year in the growing music scene of Madison, TN. When live broadcasts return to the WMOT airwaves, scheduled for late 2020, it will be known as Music City Roots - Live From Madison Station.