The 3rd edition of Music City Connection features Sara Evans, Radney Foster, and Marcus Hummon. The show will be aired on Tuesday, May 9th at 12noon ET
with encore broadcasts on Thursday, May 11 at 4pm ET, and Saturday, May 13 at 9pm ET
Sara Evans is a study in contrasts: a smooth-skinned looker hailed by People magazine as one of the world's most beautiful people yet one who travels with her three kids; the wife of a politician who prefers farm life to dwelling in a capital city; and a deeply spiritual woman with an occasionally bawdy sense of humor.
Accompanying her personal dichotomies, Evans' recording career has traveled a wide course: She was hailed as a country traditionalist when she made her recording debut in 1997 but freely explored pop and rock influences in her ensuing albums. She clearly knew what she was doing: Her Born To Fly CD earned an Album of the Year nomination from the Country Music Association, and her Restless project garnered a similar nod from the Academy of Country Music.
With Real Fine Place, her fifth RCA Records release, she assimilates the components of her multi-faceted personality and musical influences in a package that still manages an impressive consistency. She turned to several pop and rock figures but also tackles some of the countriest sounds of her career. It's a complex account of 21st century womanhood held together by the ultra-feminine—and ultra-confident—voice of Sara Evans.
Spurred by the success of the last album's "Suds In the Bucket," Evans was inspired to dig just a little more into her traditional roots on Real Fine Place, pursuing small-town themes and blue-collar sonics. Yet it still sounds refreshingly modern, and it most certainly uses a modern creative approach. Where country historically employed males to makes the decisions for "girl singers," Evans took full command of her album, co-producing the project with Mark Bright and co-writing six of its 13 tracks.
Real Fine Place, in fact, became a huge family affair, with contributions from her brother, two sisters, and parents. The heavy involvement of her relatives is appropriate for Evans, for whom family is not just a cultural buzzword, but a way of life. She was born the third of seven children and grew up in a Missouri farming community, where she sang in a family band by the age of five. In 1991, she moved to Nashville, where she met fellow musician Craig Schelske (also one of seven children), who became the centerpiece of her second family. They moved to Oregon in 1992, married in ‘93, and returned to Music City in 1995, where she was guided by songwriting legend Harlan Howard toward receptive ears at RCA.
Her first album, Three Chords and the Truth, produced by Dwight Yoakam's then-guitarist Pete Anderson, earned her critical acclaim and even the praises of George Jones. But its retro-leaning sound didn't quite catch the ears of mainstream country radio.
It did catch the ears of her contemporaries, though. As a result, her sophomore album, No Place That Far, featured guest appearances by Vince Gill, Martina McBride, George Jones, Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski. The title track also brought her first legitimate hit.
Her third album, Born To Fly, took some creative risks, but paid off handsomely, garnering four hit singles, her first double-platinum album and a bevy of awards nominations.
As Evans tours behind Real Fine Place with three kids in tow (Avery was born in August 1999, Olivia arrived in January 2003, and Audrey Elizabeth in October 2004), she lives out those contrasts that are so much a part of Sara Evans' existence: the homebody who chews up mileage on a tour bus, the devoted mom who's also a glamorous award-winner.
http://www.saraevans.com
Texas singer/songwriter Radney Foster continues to take chances. His third CD for Dualtone, the introspective yet freewheeling This World We Live In, combines Foster's gift for literate songwriting with the rough and tumble sound of a man who's done battle with the complexities of life.
The set reunites him with producer Darrell Brown and engineer Niko Bolas, the team behind Foster's critically acclaimed See What You Want To See. Arrangements were banged out in the studio, and that live, old-school feeling comes across in the tracks.
It's not hard to pick out Foster's influences; everything from Buck Owens and Jimmy Webb to the vintage pop of the Beatles and the truth and grit of Texas troubadours Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. Yet while you can hear those ghosts in the grooves, the collection is all Radney Foster.
This World We Live In is just the latest addition to Foster's catalog. Though he's been writing songs since he was 7, he first gained attention in the late 1980s as one half of Foster & Lloyd. The duo released three groundbreaking albums, yielding hits "Crazy Over You," "Sure Thing," "What Do You Want From Me This Time?" and "Fair Shake," and showing a generation of youngsters that country music could be hip without losing sight of the roots. You may have heard the famous quip about the Velvet Underground: Not a lot of people bought their records, but everyone that did started a band. The same could be said of Foster and Lloyd; many artists in Nashville claim it was the first F&L record that convinced them to move to town.
As influential as his work was with Foster & Lloyd, as a solo artist Foster has created a body of work with the same kind of impact. His hits –– "Nobody Wins," "Just Call Me Lonesome," "Easier Said Than Done" –– along with crowd favorites like "I'm In," "Texas In 1880" and "Folding Money," marry pop smarts and roots credibility with a profound insight into the human condition.
Among his other songwriting successes are the #1s "Raining On Sunday" for Keith Urban and "Real Fine Place" for Sara Evans, plus cuts by Kenny Chesney, Hootie & the Blowfish, Dixie Chicks, the Mavericks, Patty Loveless, Guy Clark, and Brooks and Dunn.
Foster has become sort of an older brother to the artists on the Texas music scene. He's written with Jack Ingram, Pat Green, Cory Morrow and Roger Creager for their projects, and is currently producing the Randy Rogers Band, a group known for their blend of roadhouse-rock fervor and smart songwriting. Their first collaboration, RollerCoaster, led to a deal with Mercury Records, and their debut for the label is set for a summer 2006 release.
http://www.radneyfoster.com
Marcus Hummon has a dual career as a writer of theatrical works and a chart-topping, award-winning song composer.
To date, he has created six musical productions that have been staged at venues in his home city of Nashville and beyond.
- American Duet, about race relations and musical identity, has been staged three times in Music City and is currently awaiting its off-Broadway debut.
- Francis of Guernica blends the themes of Pablo Picasso's painting, the Spanish civil war, insanity and the rise of Fascism. Its initial run in 2000 led to a full-scale production by the Tennessee Repertory Theatre in 2002.
- Warrior is the story of the tragic Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe. Its 2001 premiere was in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's Ford Theater. As a result of its box-office success and consciousness-raising, the Native American Association of Tennessee gave Hummon their Outstanding Achievement award later that year.
- Celtic music and suicide are the foundations of The Piper, which premiered in 2004 at the Hartford Conservatory in Connecticut.
- Atlanta, musical set during the Civil War, played at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville in early 2005 and is now being readied for a staging in Los Angeles.
- Surrender Road, about a day in the life of a boxer, is Hummon's first opera. It is sung via Shakespeare's soliloquies accompanied by piano and string quartet. It was staged by Nashville Opera in late 2005 and was chosen as a featured new work at Opera America's national conference in Detroit.
Alongside this theatrical work is one of the most successful songwriting careers in America's songwriting capital. Hummon moved to Nashville in 1986 and landed his first cut two years later when Michael Martin Murphy recorded "Pilgrims on the Way." In 1993, Wynonna had a major hit with his "Only Love"; Alabama scored with the baseball-themed "The Cheap Seats" the following year.
Hummon's debut album, All in Good Time, was released on Columbia in 1995. It contained "One of These Days" (which Tim McGraw took to #1 in 1998) and "Bless the Broken Road." Rascal Flatts' version of "Bless the Broken Road" became the biggest country music hit of 2005, residing at #1 for six weeks. The ballad earned Song of the Year honors from the Nashville Songwriters Association International Year and multiple nominations (including top song) from both the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music. Hummon took home a Grammy Award for Country Song of the Year at the 2006 ceremonies.
Other songwriting credits include Bryan White's "Love Is the Right Place" (1997), Sara Evans' "Born To Fly" (2000), SHeDAISY's "Get Over Yourself" (2002) and the Dixie Chicks' "Ready To Run" and "Cowboy Take Me Away" (both 1999).
The singer/songwriter has formed his own label, Velvet Armadillo Records, releasing the CDs The Sound of One Fan Clapping (1997), Looking For the Child (1999), Revolution (2003) and Nowhere To Go But Up (2005), as well as recordings of his theatrical works. He has also written a book of poetry, lyrics for the PBS children's cartoon series Book of Virtues, and songs for his 2001 pop/rock band The Raphaels. He recently signed on to write a children's book with Simon and Schuster, preliminarily titled "Isaac's Prayer."
http://www.marcushummon.com
