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10 More Awesome Country Covers Of Pop Songs

Posted by Joshua

Yesterday the folks over at Buzzfeed posted a list of 17 Awesome Country Covers of Pop Songs. It’s a solid list. I can’t argue with it. I know 12 of the 17 covers and have enjoyed them to varying degrees on the YouTubes and such.

But, there are a lot more awesome country covers out there that Buzzfeed missed.

And because I love country music and I have a soft spot for pop – I’m going to share 10 more awesome country covers of pop songs today!

1. “Born This Way” – Little Big Town

2. “Home” – Blake Shelton

3. “Fast Car” – The Wilkinsons

4. “How To Save A Life” – Jess Moskaluke

5. “You & I” – Miranda Lambert

6. “Free Fallin” – Keith Urban

7. “Sweet Baby James” – The Lovelocks

8. “Wagon Wheel” – Darius Rucker

9. “Night Moves” – Garth Brooks

10. “Life In A Northern Town” – Sugarland ft. Little Big Town & Jake Owen

This one is my favourite. It gives me chills. I love it.

Thank you and goodnight.

Posted in Awesome, Entertainment, Music

Keith Urban Lights The Fuse, Blows Up Toronto

Jan 25

Posted by Joshua

Last night I started my 2014 live music year at the Air Canada Centre with Trish, in an executive suite thanks to Boots & Bourbon and Diageo.

We won the tickets at Boots & Bourbon on Wednesday night, not a bad way to punctuate a first visit to a new country spot in the city. And a big thank you to Trish who pushed me to go when I was cold and not feeling it so much earlier in the evening. I’ll be back to Boots & Bourbon for the Molson Stock Ale, Fried Chicken, Corn on the Cob, Snow Crab, Desserts… and country music.

I felt spoiled all night. There was food in the suite, we had front row seats in the box, drinks were included, encouraged and poured for us. And, the music was awesome.

Brett Eldredge opened the show. He’s a young country singer from Illinois who is picking up steam in his career, and with good reason. His music was catchy and fun and on stage he did a great job of engaging the crowd that was pouring in steadily.

The sound was also great thanks to the 5 piece band on stage with Brett. His 2 guitars, bass, keys and drums all pulled their weight. I was also drawn in by his cover of Let’s Stay Together. I’m a sucker for covers done country, and this was the first one of the night – and it didn’t suck.

The set closed with the very tall ( 6’5″) Eldredge and his band playing his biggest hit, Don’t Ya. Dude did good. Keep an eye on him in the future.

Next on stage was Little Big Town. Award winning, great sounding, fun energy, very talented, big favourite of mine, Little Big Town.

Side note: Big ups to the stage crew who tore down Eldredge’s set and got things ready for Little Big Town in less than 15 minutes.

As Trish and I watched their set I realized that there were only 2 acts I could think of with 2 female and 2 male voices playing a feature role like these 4 do. The only names I could come up with were ABBA and Fleetwood Mac. Clearly they are more Fleetwood Mac than Abba, and I’m totally okay with that.

The set opened with Little White Church, a great option with the clapping and singing and harmonies that make this band who they are.

We also got to hear Bring It On Home (thanks for the feels guys), Tornado, Pontoon, a sweet cover of The Oak Ridge Boys’ Elvira, Your Side of the Bed, Sober, and they ended the set with Boondocks, the song that made me fall in love with the band more than 8 years ago.

I loved every minute of the set and desperately hope that I’ll see Little Big Town on stage again someday… maybe even at Boots & Hearts.

Next, last, biggest, and best was Keith Urban. The reason that we were all packed into the Air Canada Centre. I’ve been at the ACC for hockey, basketball, lacrosse, wrestling and now this concert – and I have never been part of such an enthusiastic, engaged, amazing crowd as I was last night.

Country music fans love Keith Urban. I love Keith Urban. His music has been better than solid since his first album in 2000 – hell, the guy has gone to #1 on the country charts 16 times. I bought his greatest hits album earlier in the week, before we had tickets to this concert – and you need to know that there is going to be another one of those before too long.

And that’s the only problem, with 16 #1 hits, a ton of other fan favourites, and a new album (Fuse) to tour, there was no way that we were going to hear every song that we were hoping for from Keith Urban.

But he tried his best.

The irony was not lost on me when he opened the set with Long Hot Summer… real funny dude. The set list was full of great songs and amazing performances. I don’t know how to tell you what the highlights were. There wasn’t a song that I didn’t like. There wasn’t a miss.

We had highlights like his walking through the floor crowd to get to a small stage during the interlude and then banging out a couple songs for the fans at the back of the arena. Coming out for his encore in a Maple Leafs jersey with Urban, #1 on the back – and the captain’s C on the front. He’s now my favourite Leafs’ captain since Wendel Clark. And I know 1 girl’s highlight of the night was Keith Urban pulling his guitar off his shoulder, signing it with a black sharpie and handing it to her. Yup, that happened. She cried.

I’m currently in love with Keith Urban’s duet with Miranda Lambert on We Were Us – and Karen Fairchild of Little Big Town did not disappoint when she came out to sing the #1 hit 2/3 of the way through the set. Loved it.

It was also cool to see all of Little Big Town come back out to sing on You Gonna Fly and it must have been a rush for Brett Eldredge to come out and sing Kiss A Girl with a guy who has a career that he has got to dream about having some day.

I need to say this too, Keith Urban could play lead guitar in pretty much any band, in any genre. He is amazingly talented and we all got to see it up close when they put a GoPro camera on his guitar and projected the video onto the big screens.

I sang along so much last night that my voice started to go near the end. It was a concert experience that I couldn’t have hoped to be any better. Heck, it was a concert I didn’t know I was going to until less than 48 hours before Brett Eldredge, Little Big Town and Keith Urban took the stage on Friday night.

If you love country music, go see any of these 3 acts when you get the chance.

You won’t be disappointed.

Trust me.

Posted in Awesome, Entertainment, Music, Reviews

3 Comments

Tags: Air Canada Centre, Brett Eldredge, country music, Karen Fairchild, Keith Urban, Light The Fuse Tour, Little Big Town, Miranda Lambert, Toronto

Boots & Hearts 2014, January 7th Line-Up Announcement!

Jan 7

Posted by Joshua

There were 2 big announcements made this morning.

1) Team Canada revealed the 25 man roster for the Men’s Ice Hockey Team at the Sochi Olympics.

2) Boots and Hearts announced that 7 new acts have been added to the 2014 line-up:
★ Toby Keith
★ Hunter Hayes
★ Lee Brice
★ Gord Bamford
★ Neal McCoy
★ The Road Hammers
★ Tim Hicks

It’s a welcome back moment for Tim Hicks who played on the Front Porch Stage in 2013 to open the show with The Stone Sparrows and Emerson Drive. I’d be willing to bet that he makes the jump to the main stage this year. And if his set last year was an indication, he’ll be great. I look forward to see what covers he comes with this year after Outkast’s Hey Ya and Willie Nelson’s On The Road Again last summer.

I’ve seen Toby Keith and The Road Hammers before, and I’m excited to see both of them again.

Toby Keith put on a great show in Toronto at the Molson Amphitheatre in September 2010, which made me happy because I’m not a huge fan of some of his music. But I will freely admit I sang along through the entire set. I have no doubt that I’ll enjoy him again this year. Keith confirmed on his Twitter account that he will be playing on August 1, which leads me to believe that he will be our Friday night headliner.

The Road Hammers set was a little colder, with the stage set up on the Rideau Canal on a chilly February night in 2008. I was living in Ottawa at the time and my friend Terry and I dealt with the cold and sang along to most of the first Road Hammers record as well as one of the favourite Canadian country songs of all time, Jason McCoy’s Born Again in Dixieland.

Neal McCoy comes to Boots and Hearts in the role that Joe Diffie filled in 2013. A country legend who had big success in the 90s with some really catchy songs. And now he’s back, probably on Saturday or Sunday afternoon to play the hits (I’m excited for The Shake, Wink & They’re Playin’ Our Song) maybe something new and get everyone ready for the bigger acts later on. It’s also cool to note that Neal McCoy is of Irish and Filipino descent. There isn’t a lot of any Asian representation in country music, but Neal is there!

Lee Brice isn’t a name that I anticipated being on this list. But here he is. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. The 2 songs that I know best from his catalogue are Woman Like You and I Drive Your Truck. The 2nd will make you cry if you’re the kind that cries when a song is built that way. I will not be surprised if I choke up when I hear it live for the first time. Wish me luck.

The last 2 names that were announced today hold a special place in my heart and that’s because I named them both in my prediction list going into Boots & Hearts 2014. Add Luke Bryan and so far I’m 3/5 in my 2014 predictions!

Gord Bamford has been as hot as anyone else in Canadian country music in the last 3 years or so. He opened for Reba, the Queen of Country Music, on her recent Canadian tour. His biggest hit thus far is probably his most recent. Is It Friday Yet? is a honky tonk good time tune that will get people singing and dancing and drinking. Hell, the DJ played it the minute he saw Bamford walk through the door at the Rock ‘N’ Horse Saloon.

The last name is arguably the biggest right now. With all due respect to Toby Keith… Hunter Hayes is a rising star with hits behind him and in front of him. Hayes was the 2012 Country Music Association New Artist of the Year and has had 5 hit singles, including his current duet with Jason Mraz, Everybody’s Got Somebody But Me. Oh, and by the way, he won’t turn 23 years old until a month after he performs in Bowmanville at Boots & Hearts 2o14. I’m looking for Hunter Hayes to steal the show much like Dierks Bentley did before Miranda Lambert took the stage in 2013.

My only disappointment with today’s Boots & Hearts Line-up Announcement is that we still don’t have any female country acts on the bill. There are 8 male solo artists (the new 6 plus Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan) and 1 group consisting of all dudes.

I do expect that we’ll have women on the roster before all things are said and done… and we’re waiting.

Stay up to date with what’s going on at the Boots & Hearts website, Facebook page, Twitter account, and right here on the blog!

Posted in Awesome, Entertainment, Music

Why I Loved Country Music in 2013

Dec 23

Posted by Joshua

There’s been a lot of bitchin’ about country music in the last couple of days thanks to Buzzfeed posting Entertainment Weekly writer Grady Smith’s “Why Country Music Was Awful in 2013” video.

While some of the mainstream country music that was mashed up to prove his point that there are a lot of common themes in the songs that go to #1 on the charts aren’t much more than pop songs – they are country music.

And, some of the songs in that video are some of my favourites of the last year.

I love country music. That’s a well established fact here on the blog and in the rest of my life. My country music education started in the early 80’s when I was just a baby. I grew up with Randy Travis and Alabama and Juice Newton and The Judds playing on the radio. When I was a little older we got Reba and Garth and Brooks & Dunn. And now we’ve been in a 15 year period that has given us Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Kenny Chesney, Shania Twain, Paul Brandt, Terri Clark, Blake Shelton, Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood, Eric Church and yes, even Taylor Swift.

For all of the country music haters out there, and there are many, and they are loud, there are people who love this music. The “pop” tracks make them smile and dance and sing along. The sad songs remind them of the tough times that they have lived or the people that they have lost.

Here’s the thing about all music, no record is going to make everyone happy. No single is going to do it for every listener. No artist will be loved by all the people who love their genre of music. Country music is no different, never has been.

And the sooner we can all just accept the fact that Florida Georgia Line are a big hit right now – but acts like Whitney Rose, The Stone Sparrows and Kacey Musgrave are making country music too – and you can listen to them instead if that’s your style, the better off we’ll all be.

If you want to listen to some 2013 country music that I love that’s talkin’ bout girls, talkin’ bout trucks, talkin’ bout redneck boys out kickin’ up dust – and more, I’ve got a list for you right here.

Luke Bryan: Crash My Party