Willie Joins Kacey for “Are You Sure” Video; 2015 CMA Nominees; Steve Earle Talks Sense to Mississippi

• This year’s CMA nominations are out, and thus ready to be skillfully dissected by Country Universe’s Jonathan Keefe.
• Also at Country Universe, a really lovely review of a really lovely album as Larry Rogowin writes up Darrell Scott’s Ten: Songs of Ben Bullington. I’ve been listening to the Scott album quite a bit this year myself.
• Saving Country Music’s Trigger made some CMA predictions.
• Chris Stapleton reacts to his four CMA nominations: “Mainly, I’m just trying to make music that I like. I had no expectations, and I still don’t completely comprehend or understand the events of this morning. But I’m grateful for it.”
• Real country fan Carl Outlaw took Alan Jackson to task – for not being Hank III, mostly – in a review of “Jim and Jack and Hank.” Carl Outlaw is always a hoot.
• Saving Country Music says the “formulaic, aggressively laundry list” title track of Alabama’s first album of new material since 2001 “isn’t just bad, it’s something that makes you wish you could go back and completely erase it from your country music consciousness lest it run rampant through your memory and sully any rosy regards you had for Alabama’s past accomplishments.” Yikes.
• The Drive-By Truckers will release a new live album called It’s Great to Be Alive on October 30. The performances are culled from a three-night stand at the Fillmore in San Francisco last November.
• Luke Bryan gave one of his most extensive interviews to date to Rolling Stone Country. Choice pieces of it also show up in a video interview, posted separately.
• Merle Haggard is a Taylor Swift fan.
• Holly Gleason wrote up Rosanne Cash’s second Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum residency show, which featured Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams, for Twang Nation.
• The Tennessean and the Nashville Songwriters Association International bring you story-behind-the-song videos with Gretchen Peters (“Independence Day”) and Gary Gentry (“The One I Loved Back Then,” aka “The Corvette Song”).
• Kacey Musgraves’ new music video for “Are You Sure” finds her drinking and singing with Willie Nelson in a smoky Texas bar.
• Ashley Monroe played a couple for Yahoo’s Ram Country,
• Windmills/Deb B. at MJ’s Big Blog has the tracklist, including songwriting and production credits, for the Carrie Underwood album that comes out next month. I’ll go way out on a limb here and guess that three-way co-writes are in vogue right now.
• Steve Earle is urging Mississippi to remove the Confederate battle flag from its state flag. Proceeds from sales of Earle’s new song “Mississippi, It’s Time” will benefit the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Tomorrow’s album releases:

• Brett Eldredge – Illinois
• Thom Shepherd – 12 Pack
• Jewel – Picking Up the Pieces
• Brooke Hogan – I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend

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