LeAnn Rimes with husband Dean Sheremet on the Orange Carpet at the 43rd Annual ACM Awards, Sunday, May 18, 2008 in Las Vegas, NV. Photo by David Vespie.
September 2, 2009 — Yesterday, LeAnn Rimes posted the following message on her website, answering the ongoing question of "Will they or won't they divorce?"
"After much thoughtful mutual consideration, Deane [sic] and I have agreed to move forward with dissolving our marriage. This decision was amicable and we remain committed and caring friends with great admiration for one another. Thank you so much for all of your continued love and support – it is deeply appreciated."
LeAnn and Dean Sheremet married in 2002 and seemed to have a happy union. When rumors of divorce began swirling after LeAnn was spotted with the co-star of her early 2009 TV Movie, "Northern Lights," Eddie Cibrian, LeAnn posted to fans on her website: "This is a difficult time for me and my loved ones, but I appreciate all your continued support. I would like to=2 0assure all of you that this is a place for you to hear things directly from me and as you all know, not everything in our lives is always black and white."
In July, she was spotted in public without her wedding ring, and People magazine indicated LeAnn and Dean were living apart. Meanwhile, Eddie Cibrian's wife, Brandi Glanville, told Us Weekly that she had left Eddie, saying Eddie and LeAnn "deserve each other."
Just before LeAnn's most recent announcement, she and Eddie were spotted vacationing in Mexico.
Garth Brooks to Enter a Hall of Fame
Garth Brooks with the first ever ACM Crystal Milestone Awards backstage at the 43rd Annual ACM Awards, Sunday, May 18, 2008 in Las Vegas, NV. Photo by David Vespie.
Sept. 2, 2009 — Garth Brooks seems a likely future member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. For now, he can take solace in occupying a slot in the Oklahoma State University Alumni Hall of Fame.
Garth will join the OSU Hall alongside two of the school's best-known athletes — Heisman Trophy-winner Barry Sanders and former major-league third baseman Robin Ventura — during homecoming activities in October. The three will serve as grand marshals of the Sea Of Orange Parade Oct. 17, according to OSU Alumni Association, and will earn their official inductions during the Cowboys' football game that same day against the Missouri Tigers.
Garth, who participated in track during his college days, graduated from the school in 1984 and released his first album five years later. He named his touring band after=2 0Stillwater, the city in which OSU is based. And he's such a revered figure at the school that when John Martin wrote "Cowboys 4ever," a new fight song, the first person he played it for this spring was Garth, The Tulsa World reported. Garth can expect to hear it a number of times at homecoming.
Rodney Atkins Relishes Mustard Seed Fundraiser
Rodney Atkins performs at the VAULT Concert Stage at LP Field in Downtown Nashville Friday, June 12 during the 2009 CMA Music Festival. Photographer: John Russell / CMA.
Sept. 2, 2009 — "It ain't always pretty/But it's real." That statement about small-town life from Rodney Atkins' "These Are My People" hit home for Rodney, and he's going back home to the town where he went to college — Cookeville, Tenn. — for These Are My People, This Is My Town, a charity event he hopes to replicate in years to come.
Rodney and Phil Vassar are set to play the Hooper Eblen Center Oct. 8, with proceeds benefiting Tennessee Tech University Athletics and the Mustard Seed Ranch, a faith-based children's agency.
"I'm grateful to the people of the Upper Cumberland and am honored to be able to give back," Rodney says. "We've had successful events in the past, but I look forward to giving students and supporters of these organizations a really fun, high-energy show. Eve rything we raise will go back to help kids at TTU and Mustard Seed Ranch, and it gives me great pleasure to be part of it."
Adopted as a kid in East Tennessee, Rodney is a long way from home this week. He plays the Twin Falls County Fair in Idaho on Wednesday, the Oregon State Fair on Thursday and the Alaska State Fair on Saturday.
Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley Part Of Broadway "Quartet" Show
Million Dollar Quartet photo courtesy of johnnycash.com
(l-r) Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash
(l-r) Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash
Sept. 2, 2009 — Jukebox musicals featuring the songs of Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley have been launched on Broadway in recent years, and their legacies return to the Great White Way next spring in yet another show called Million Dollar Quartet.
The production, currently being presented at Chicago's Apollo Theatre, revolves around a legendary recording session on Dec. 4, 1956, in which the brightest stars associated with Sun Records — Elvis, Johnny, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins — performed songs in an impromptu gathering around the piano at Sam Phillips' Memphis studio. The original session is surrounded in mystery and folklore, and the Quartet production leans heavily on the spirit of the time, according to Broadway World, featuring such songs as "Blue Suede Shoes," "Great Balls Of Fire," "Whole Lot Of Shakin' Going On," "Sixteen Tons," "Who Do You Love" and "Folsom Prison Blues." Americana artist Chuck Mead, formerly of the Grammy-nominated band BR5-49, is the musical director for the show.
An Elvis-themed entrée, All Shook Up, ran at Broadway's Palace Theater for seven months in 2005, while Ring Of Fire: The Johnny Cash Musical Show played the Ethel Barrymore Theatre for seven weeks the following year.
Country-related fare is currently receiving plenty of theatrical attention. Dolly Parton's 9 To 5: The Musical, which earned four Tony nominations this spring, closes after Sunday's performance at the Marquis Theatre. Joe Nichols and Lorrie Morgan are already set to appear in a production of the George Strait movie Pure Country in 2010.
The subjects of Million Dollar Quartet continue to make waves on their own. The Man In Black will be portrayed in a November graphic novel, Johnny Cash: I See Darkness. Jerry Lee Lewis has a new country album, Mean Old Man, on the way later this year or in early 2010.
Songwriters Hall Makes "Stand" for Tammy Wynette
Tammy Wynette photo courtesy of tammywynette.com.
Sept. 1, 2009 — Eleven years after her death, Tammy Wynette — whose "Stand By Your Man" ranks among the best-known country songs in history — will finally enter the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame during a ceremony Oct. 18 at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel.
Tammy will be inducted alongside two full-time songwriters who wrote their own iconic pieces: Kye Fleming was responsible for Barbara Mandrell's theme song, "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool"; and Mark D. Sanders authored Lee Ann Womack's mega-hit "I Hope You Dance."
"Kye, Mark and Tammy have made many poignant and enduring contributions to the music world and certainly deserve to take their places among their gifted peers," said Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame Foundation Chairman Roger Murrah, whose own songwriting credits include hits by Alan Jackson, Alabama and Blake Shelton. "It's an honor for us to recognize them for their outstanding accomplishments."
"Stand By Your Man" was an exercise in speed. Tammy and producer Billy Sherrill co-wrote it in about 20 minutes during a recording session in August 1968 when they had finished cutting several other songs and still had time left on the clock. It was not, however, Tammy's lone contribution as a writer. She also penned the aching ballads "'Til I Can Make It On My Own" and "Another Lonely Song," as well as "Two Story House," recorded in a 1980 duet with George Jones.
Kye created more than 20 hit songs, most of them with frequent co-writer Dennis Morgan in a flurry of activity when they wrote for Pi-Gem Music, a publishing company owned by Charley Pride and producer Tom Collins during the late 1970s early '80s. They were adept at crafting material for artists that Tom produced, yielding the Barbara Mandrell titles "Fooled By A Feeling" and "Sleeping Single In A Double Bed," the Sylvia hits "Nobody" and "Like Nothing Ever Happened," the Ronnie Milsap classics "I Wouldn't Have Missed It For The World" and "Smoky Mountain Rain" and Steve Wariner's "All Roads Lead To You." Kye's creative high point is arguably "Give Me Wings," a tender Michael Johnson study in the art of loving without smothering. Dennis Morgan was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall in 2004.
Mark D. Sanders' name was frequently in the parentheses beneath hit song titles during the 1990s. He wrote John Anderson's "Money In The Bank," Ricochet's "Daddy's Money," Lonest ar's "No News," George Strait's "Blue Clear Sky" and Diamond Rio's "Mirror, Mirror," and recently made waves with Jack Ingram's single "That's A Man." "I Hope You Dance" earned Song of the Year honors from the Country Music Association, the Academy of Country Music and the Grammy Awards; was hailed by the National Endowment of the Arts as one of the most significant songs of the 20th century; and became a centerpiece in the Tyler Perry movie The Family That Preys, featured in the script's dialogue with a Gladys Knight rendition used over the ending credits.
Among the more than 170 previous Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees are Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Vince Gill and Kris Kristofferson.
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