Mammoth Blog

Prospects for Cuban performances by the New York Philharmonic look promising following a tour of concert halls and meetings with music officials on the island, orchestra president Zarin Mehta said Sunday.

Mehta said a final decision will be made by the Philharmonic's board of directors. Eric Latzky, the orchestra's vice president for communications, said an official announcement could be as much as a month off.

But Mehta said the trip looks promising, with tentative plans for performances on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 at the 900-seat Teatro Amadeo Roldan, a renovated concert hall a few blocks from the Malecon coastal highway.

"We have to go back now and work on repertoires, budgets. There are practical considerations like: how do you get the instruments in, where do you store them?" Mehta told The Associated Press in Havana. The Philharmonic's incoming music director, Alan Gilbert, would conduct.

The island's Culture Ministry invited the orchestra to perform in Havana, and U.S. officials have agreed to allow the musicians to visit under an exemption to legal restrictions on travel to Cuba, Latzy said.

The Communist Party daily Granma reported on Saturday that authorities were looking forward to such a tour, which would be among the most high-profile American cultural exchanges with communist Cuba since Fidel Castro's rebels came to power a half-century ago.

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra made a celebrated tour of Cuba a decade ago.

Mehta said the orchestra is concentrating on people rather than politicians: "We just want to come and play music and let others worry about the politics. That's their problem."

He noted that no major change in U.S.-North Korean relations occurred after the orchestra played in the North Korean capital in February 2008, the first performance by a major visiting orchestra in that totalitarian state.

Still, Mehta said, the music did seem to touch many of the North Korean concertgoers, who included government officials and military officers.

"Here you have all these people who have been taught that Americans are the devil," he said. "When we played a Korean piece, you should have seen the change in the stoic, impassive faces of the Koreans. Many of them were weeping."

The New York Philharmonic has a long tradition of musical diplomacy. The late Leonard Bernstein led America's oldest philharmonic orchestra in a watershed tour of the Soviet Union in 1959, and later in communist China and Eastern Bloc countries in the 1980s.

Mehta said some of the visiting musicians might give masters classes to Cuban students and allow them to sit in on dress rehearsals. source>>>

Five years ago this week, Gov. Rendell signed into law the signature policy achievement of his tenure -- legalized slot machine gambling. Act 71 of 2004 allows for 61,000 slot machines in 14 casinos throughout Pennsylvania. The governor promised many benefits from gambling revenue, the most appealing of which was a predicted $1 billion in property tax relief.

With lawmakers considering expanding the state's gambling monopoly to include table games (such as poker and craps) to fill the current budget gap, it is important to consider its impact thus far. Unfortunately, Act 71 has failed to deliver the promised benefits. Instead of reducing property taxes, the governor created a political web of corruption. The egregious flaws in the legislation were pointed out five years ago, but regrettably ignored, giving taxpayers little to celebrate.

Licenses for slots casinos were sold for a mere $50 million each, far below their probable market value, to politically chosen winners. This cost Pennsylvanians more than $2 billion in potential revenue. In 2004, estimates conservatively set the worth of Philadelphia casinos at $500 million each, and the Pittsburgh casino at $300 million.

Even licenses at horse racing tracks have resold for more than $50 million. The Meadows racetrack in Washington County was bought for $53 million in 2001, but resold for $225 million in 2005. This 325 percent increase in value does not include the cost of improvements just to house slot machines. The Pocono Downs facility was sold for $280 million. This is revenue the state could have earned had it competitively bid slots licenses.

The property tax reductions haven't materialized either. While the administration estimated $1 billion in annual property tax reductions, the actual amount in 2008-09 and for 2009-10 was around $600 million each year. That amounts to about $200 per Pennsylvania homeowner.

Yet because it took four years to deliver any gambling funds, property taxes skyrocketed while homeowners were waiting for relief. Since 2004, annual school property tax collections have increased by an estimated $3 billion, or five times the level of relief. On average, homeowners are paying $800 more in school property taxes than before the slots law.

The Commonwealth Foundation and others also predicted that slots gambling would cut into state lottery sales. As the State Lottery's profits go to fund the Department of Aging, this should be a serious concern for lawmakers looking only at new revenue. Our predictions have proved to be accurate; slots gambling has negatively affected the lottery. The Legislative Budget and Finance Committee found that in counties with a casino, lottery ticket sales fell 4.2 percent. And statewide, lottery sales have been stagnant after years of double-digit growth.
Nataline Rogol

Besides these disappointments, the Gaming Control Board has proved costly and susceptible to corruption. The six board members have a combined salary of more than $1 million, not including benefits, with a few earning more than the lieutenant governor. The members are not required to work any minimum number of hours, and many hold outside jobs.

When the executive director stepped down from her position recently, the board paid her more generously than her contract stipulated, giving her an extra $60,000. Board members took a recent trip to Italy that cost more than $30,000, during a ban on out-of-state travel. The board also receives the perk of leasing luxury cars.

All in all, the board's expenses have added up to more than $25 million per year.

The cost overruns from the board are such that it had to repeatedly "borrow" from the Property Tax Relief Fund to pay its bills.

More discouraging is the board's failure at conducting background checks and investigations. Many employees were hired before they had completed any background check, including a senior employee whose background check continued five months after he was hired.

The lack of complete background checks has led to embarrassing situations for the board. One employee was charged for murdering his girlfriend, and then was found with drug paraphernalia. One employee was found to have falsified information on his background investigation questionnaire, but 10 months later was returned to his original position.

Perhaps the most infamous example of faulty investigation is the fiasco involving Louis DeNaples, who was awarded a license to open the Mount Airy Casino. DeNaples was charged with four counts of perjury for lying about his connections with organized crime figures. In April his charges were dropped, in exchange for the transfer of the casino to his daughter.

Gov. Rendell's much-hyped slot machine legislation has failed to deliver on his soaring promises. Gambling's first five years in Pennsylvania have been an embarrassment for residents and state officials, something lawmakers should consider before further expanding legalized gambling. source>>>

About four years passed between the time Pennsylvania's governor embraced the idea of thousands of slot machines across the state and the familiar whir and buzz of people actually playing the machines.

From 2003 through the end of 2006, Pennsylvania endured political wrangling, lawsuits, public hearings and finally construction before the first person fed a dollar into a slot machine. Even now, only eight of the 14 authorized gambling facilities in Pennsylvania are operating.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland is counting on a much quicker turnaround. Strickland's plan for slot machines at the state's racetracks - and with it, the foundation of the state's two-year oper- ating budget - depends on the machines booting up in May.

If Pennsylvania is precedent, Strickland is wildly optimistic.

"From what we went through here, I wouldn't expect anything to start flowing as far as new gaming revenue for at least a year or two or even more," said Doug Harbach, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell first proposed the idea in 2003. A year later, lawmakers authorized it. Then came lawsuits, local zoning disputes, public hearings across Pennsylvania and extensive background checks of would-be casino owners.

Pennsylvania's first casino opened in November 2006 in Wilkes-Barre.

Closer to Ohio, the Meadows Racetrack southwest of Pittsburgh became the Meadows Racetrack and Casino with the opening of a temporary gambling house in June 2007. It wasn't until April 2009 that patrons like Barbara Manko, a 71-year-old retiree who lives south of Pittsburgh, had a permanent piece of Las Vegas in their backyards.

"We went to Wheeling before this," Manko said. "We've been waiting to have something like this closer to home."

The Wheeling Island Casino, located off I-70 just across the Ohio border, draws thousands of Ohioans every day. The Meadows, some 30 miles farther east, also attracts a significant number of Ohioans.

That will likely change if Ohio gets as many as 17,500 slot machines at its seven racetracks, including two in central Ohio. After years of opposing slots at racetracks, Strickland switched his position June 19. His aides say Ohio's seven racetracks need to have 80 percent of the slot machines up and running by May in order to realize $933 million in revenue anticipated for the state's two-year budget.

Most of the immediate revenue is expected to come from a $65-million-per-track license fee, but significant delays could endanger the underpinnings of the state's budget.

While Rendell's gambling proposal was intended to lower property taxes for Pennsylvanians, Strickland's is a last-ditch attempt to prop up Ohio's sagging state budget.

Rendell's proposal was vetted in a series of public hearings around Pennsylvania. Strickland has no plans to do the same with his plan.

The Pennsylvania plan allowed slot machines at the state's six racetracks plus a new one, five new standalone casinos and two resort facilities. The Ohio plan provides for slot machines only at the state's seven existing racetracks.

Although those differences favor a speedier resolution in Ohio, there's one factor over which Strickland and Ohio lawmakers have no control. Just as anti-gambling groups held up Rendell's proposal by suing, the conservative Ohio Roundtable is vowing to go to court to block Strickland's plan.

The group believes slot machines fall outside the scope of the constitutional amendment authorizing the state lottery 36 years ago.

"We feel (Strickland) is going outside his realm of authority," said Rob Walgate, Roundtable vice president. "We don't think the voters in 1973 voted to authorize slot machines at racetracks."

In states where no one sued to block gambling, the process of converting racetracks into casinos happens quickly in most instances. Indiana's two racetrack-casinos ("racinos") opened a year after lawmakers approved them. Florida's three racinos opened within months of being legalized in 2006.

"If there's an overwhelming desire to move forward on the part of the governor, the legislature and the affected communities, it can move very quickly," said Craig Parmelee, a gambling-industry analyst for Standard & Poor's in New York. "That's not typically the case."

The Meadows Racetrack and Casino in Pennsylvania is a likely template for Ohio's racetracks. Before the track was reborn as a gambling mecca, it attracted a dwindling contingent of horse bettors.

Now, it's thriving. The horse betting area on the basement level, however, is library-quiet compared with the din of electronic slots on the ground floor. Although horse-racing purses have swelled to $15,000 with subsidies from the slots - compared with $5,000 pre-slots and about $3,000 in slots-free Ohio - interest among the public hasn't picked up.

Magna Entertainment Corp., which runs the horse races at the Meadows but does not own the facility, reported that it lost $2.6 million last year operating the racetrack and nearby off-track betting locations. The company, which is in bankruptcy proceedings, could pull out of the facilities.

Many racino operators across the country are relegating horses and greyhounds to ever-smaller areas of their property as more profitable slot machines and table games occupy prime space, said Bennett Liebman, an Albany Law School professor who specializes in gambling law.

At the Meadows Thursday evening, as slot machines and simulated blackjack tables - Pennsylvania doesn't yet allow table games - teemed with people, about half of the 200 seats in the grandstand overlooking the racetrack were empty.

"I'm just here for a girl's night out," said Judy Frey, who lives in a Pittsburgh suburb and stayed in the casino as horses circled the track. "I'm just not into the horses. I don't know about trifecta and all that." source>>>

The baseball world takes a breather from its relentless schedule to celebrate the best of Major League Baseball at the All-Star Game and Home Run Derby, bringing plenty of gambling opportunities at online casinos. Sports betting fans will have not only the game itself, but eight top sluggers from which to choose for the long ball contest Monday night.

The game on Tuesday will see the American League as a slight favorite. The National League is at even money right now, reflecting the reluctance bettors have in crossing the AL streak of games won, eleven wins and Bud Selig's ignominious tie since the last NL victory. A lot of experts are thinking the NL may have the better unit this year, but bucking that streak causes hesitation.

In the basher's festival, Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals, clearly the dominant player in the game, sits as the favorite, at +175. Albert will be playing on his home field and in front of hometown fans, as if he needed any extra edge.

Ryan Howard, the Philadelphia Phillies' massive first baseman, is a close second choice at +200. Howard may not hit for average like Pujols, but he has the potential to match him homer for homer.

Two more National League first basemen follow, Prince Fielder at +300 and Adrian Gonzalez at +400. The four American League representatives are Joe Mauer and Carlos Pena at +600 each, with Nelson Cruz at +800 and Brandon Inge of Detroit the longshot at +900. source>>>

If the double-file restarts in NASCAR Sprint Cup racing, which began with the June 7 event at Pocono, were intended to create excitement for fans, they certainly have accomplished the objective.

As well as 50-year-old Mark Martin ran for all 400 miles of Saturday night's LifeLock.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, leading for a track-record 195 of the 267 laps, he still had to survive a couple of late, tension-filled restarts to secure the victory.
» Click to enlarge image
Mark Martin waves the checkered flag after grabbing it as he drove by the grandstands upon winning the LifeLock.com 400 Saturday night.
(Liz Wilkinson Allen/Staff Photographer)

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- Complete coverage: Our NASCAR page

Jeff Gordon wound up second, Kasey Kahne third, Tony Stewart fourth and Denny Hamlin fifth.

Martin's postrace gathering with the media centered on the last restart, where he decided to take outside position rather than the bottom of the track.

"On the last restart, on cold tires, if someone could get to your outside, they would suck you around pretty bad," Martin said. "I think you saw that with the 83 (Hamlin).

"You might not have seen it that much with me and the 48 (Jimmie Johnson). He managed to slip me enough that I couldn't beat him around the first time. So the second time we went through there, I wasn't going to let it happen again. I almost wiped us both out.

"With Jeff Gordon, new tires, put him on my outside, it was a risky move. Restarting and putting me on the outside of him also was a risky move because it wasn't my favorite place to be. But I thought I'd rather put him in that vulnerable position than me be in it."

The last restart capped what goes in the books as one wild stretch run. So hectic, in fact that Martin said, "I don't even remember all the things that happened toward the end.

"With 15 (laps) to go, I thought we were going to win the race if nothing else happened, but I knew it was going to be a long way. And boy, it was. It was a lot longer than I thought it was going to be, and eventful."

Gordon said Martin, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, made the right move on the final restart.

"He went a little early, which he should have," Gordon said. "That is strategy you have got to take into account on the final restart. It caught me a little off guard and I spun my tires."

Regardless of the strategy the drivers employ, the double-file restarts add volumes to the eventfulness of a race finish.

"We were in control of our own destiny until they (other drivers) started wrecking," Martin said. "And you know they're going to do it. They do it every race.

"I shouldn't complain because more often than not recently they're running the first two-thirds of the races nearly caution-free, and I should take that and be happy because that's a lot better than it used to be a few years ago, where it was just 15 laps at a time the whole race. So we get the long greens now, we just don't get them at the end."

Martin readily admits his forte is the long runs.

"When the cautions start coming, I cringe because I have the superior car on the long run and who knows what happens on the short runs," he said.

So far, his pluses on the restarts outweigh the minuses. But with seven races before the Chase for the Sprint Cup begins, "All that means to me is I'm likely to lose out more than I gain going forward," he said.

Around the track

Martin and Gordon also finished 1-2 in the June 14 LifeLock 400 at Michigan International Speedway. Donna and Richard Musgrave of New Castle, Colo. picked that 1-2 finish correctly. They were at Chicagoland Speedway on Saturday, pulling for Martin and Gordon to pull off another 1-2 in either order, which would mean a $1 million prize from LifeLock for the lucky fans.

Lo and behold, it happened.

A Chicagoland Speedway representative estimated Saturday's crowd in the stands at between 55,000 and 57,000 (there is seating for 75,000), with another 10,000 in a packed infield.

Series points leader Stewart dodged one accident and rallied back from a pit miscue and a flat tire to finish a solid fourth. It was Stewart's series-leading 11th top-five finish and his seventh top-five in nine career Sprint Cup starts at Chicagoland.

"You always need strong nights like we had tonight," Stewart said. "When you're trying to put yourself in a position to win a championship, consistency is the biggest thing. To be able to knock off top-fives like we did tonight, that's what it's going to take to win a championship. That's what makes nights like tonight so crucial, being able to battle back from some adversity.

"It was a solid night, then it got to be really bad and then it got really good at the end. I'll take a fourth place tonight, given where we were with about 30 (laps) to go."

Kahne, on finishing third after being passed late by Gordon: "I fought hard against Jeff there at the end. I wanted to hold him off. I felt like we were better than him all night. He had some fresh tires there and was better than us then and ended up beating us. I wasn't really very close to the 5 (Martin), but I cleared the 24 (Grodon) and then he charged back."

Hamilin and seventh-place finisher Brian Vickers, the pole-sitter, appeared to be going at it pretty well on a late restart.

"We got into the 5 (Martin) and 48 (Jimmie Johnson) there on the restart," Hamlin said. "The 83 (Vickers) got a little loose under me and got us up the track, but that's part of it. That's double-file restarts for you right there."

Said Vickers: "That was just hard racing. I mean, it was the last restart. I don't know what happened between him (Hamlin) and Jimmie (Johnson). I don't know if Jimmie just got loose or he (Hamilin) got into Jimmie. He hung on our right rear and did his job. But he was pretty tight -- for his good and my good. It ended up getting us really loose."

Johnson had his issues with Kurt Busch late in the race. Busch, an avid Cubs fan who sang during the seventh-inning stretch Sunday at Wrigley Field, said Johnson did not drive down the stretch like a three-time defending champion should.

So what exactly happened between the two? "I don't even know," Johnson said. "I think the 24 (Gordon) got inside of me and got me loose. And then the 2 (Busch) and I touched and he body-slammed me after that.

"But that was the least of my problems. The bigger problem was when I was leading and the 11 (Hamlin) pushed me all the way through (turns) 1 and 2 and eventually I lost control of the car."

Dale Earnhardt Jr. on his 15th-place effort: "We messed up way bad at the end the last 70-80 laps. We screwed the pooch on all of the adjustments. We had it too tight and we had it too loose. I don't know really what we weren't doing right. We should have finished a little better, but we're getting there." source>>>

After a 16th-place finish at Chicagoland Speedway on Saturday in the LifeLock.com 400, NASCAR officials have taken the car of Martin Truex Jr. for further inspection at NASCAR's Research and Development Center after the rear-end of the No. 1 Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet was found to be too high in post-race inspection.

Truex Jr., who announced on Tuesday of last week that he was leaving Earnhardt Ganassi Racing for Michael Waltrip Racing in 2010, made his fourth career start at Chicagoland Speedway. He started 21st and spent 56.9 percent of the race in the top-15, according to NASCAR's post-race loop data statistics.

Truex Jr. failed to lead any laps during the race and ran no higher then ninth during the event.

The Mayetta, N.J. native maintained his 24th-place points position and is now 450 points out of the top-12 chase cutoff.

Officials will inspect the car this week and will announce any penalties at the beginning of the week at the earliest. It has become standard procedure for NASCAR to announce penalties on Tuesday but they withhold the right to announce them at anytime.

The Sprint Cup Series has an off-weekend before they head to Indianapolis Motor Speedway on July 26 for the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard. source>>>

In front of 70,000, Mark Martin and his No. 5 CARQUEST/Kellogg's Chevrolet won the LifeLock.com 400, his 39th victory in 741 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races. This is his fourth victory and ninth top-10 finish in 2009, and his first victory and fourth top-10 finish in nine races at Chicagoland Speedway. He is within one victory of matching Harry Gant's 1991 season record for a driver age 50 or older.

Grabbing second, 4-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon and his No. 24 DuPont/National Guard Patriot Academy Chevrolet posted his sixth top-10 finish in nine races at Chicagoland Speedway. It is his 13th top-10 finish in 2009.

Kasey Kahne rolled into a third place finish in his No. 9 Budweiser Dodge to post his first top-10 finish in six races at Chicagoland Speedway.

Two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion, and current points leader Tony Stewart nailed his 7th top five finish at Chicago in nine tries by finishing fourth.

Denny Hamlin rounded out the top five and gave Toyota their best effort on the night. Ford's best result came from Carl Edwards way back in 14th.

Joey Logano (18th) was the highest finishing rookie.

Tony Stewart leads the point standings by 175 points over Jeff Gordon. source>>>

I can barely remember when I started winding up an old battery Victrola upstairs at Grandpa and Grandma Boone's house and listening to early country records. The story songs have stayed with me all my life. The lyrics of songs such as "Frankie and Johnny" start out describing a romance, but then you realize it's really about a romance that's gone terribly wrong.

They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and the outcome is revealed in these lyrics:

With a rooty, toot, toot,
Three times she shot.
Right through that hardwood door.
She killed her man,
'Cause he done her wrong.

Country music imitates life. It always has, and it did again on July 4 in Nashville.

My thoughts rushed back to my childhood, sitting on the floor listening to those records, after I heard the tragic news that former Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair was dead. Only 36 years old, he was a football hero and a prominent member of the Nashville community.

Also dead was Sahel Kazemi, a 20-year-old waitress who was dating McNair, a married man and father of four sons. Kazemi had some financial and legal problems, but she apparently also suspected McNair was seeing yet another woman.

Police say Kazemi shot McNair four times as he slept on a sofa before shooting herself in the head. She had only recently purchased the gun she used, and when I heard about her body being found at his feet, I could not help but think about these old songs from my childhood -- songs about women who loved men but could not have them.

At the time of the shooting, the world was still reeling and weeping over Michael Jackson, whose life was apparently jerked away by prescription drugs. The Jackson story took up half of the newspaper's front page, and reports of the McNair murder took up the other half. As I got ready to tape another episode of CMT's Southern Fried Flicks, I found myself cooking and humming a tune about a gal named Frankie who killed her man. Once in a while, I'd feel a tear sneaking down my face.

Youngsters like Taylor Swift and Kellie Pickler probably never heard "Frankie and Johnny" and other of those old songs of tragedy, such as "Long Black Veil," "Otto Wood" and "The Wreck of the Old 97," but they are the vehicle that launched country music long before the parents of these girls could carry a tune.

They don't write country songs like they used to, but Jamey Johnson's doing a pretty good job of putting truth on paper these days. source>>>

Early success and hype have at times overwhelmed a young artist. For each one who makes it through the first few years with their creative compass intact, hundreds more are swallowed up by pressure. With the release of Roadhouse Sun, his second album for Lost Highway Records, Ryan Bingham shows that he's been through enough in his life to deal with just about anything -- but that's not to say that he isn't still growing up.

His story is one of constant motion. Moving from town to town with his family throughout childhood, he became a bull rider in his late teens and traveled on a touring rodeo circuit. On one of those tours, he found music and songwriting and hasn't left the road since. By the time of his major label debut, Mescalito, a firestorm of sorts had started around his life with some claiming him as heir to the throne of certain long-gone troubadours. The critically-acclaimed singer-songwriter recently talked to CMT.com about how people interpret his past, the feeling on his new album and finally finding a place to unwind.

CMT: People make a lot of your past, but how do you feel about the way you are portrayed?

Bingham: A lot of it's truth, but there's definitely some exaggeration in there. I mean, I think a lot of writers may take a simple or basic story, and to make it appealing to people who read magazines and stuff, they kind of put their own twist on it. Sometimes it's cool, and sometimes it's kind of like, "What the hell are y'all talking about?" But you've just kind of got to take it in stride. People can read what they want in magazines, and if they need to clear something up, just give me a call -- and we'll set it straight.

Does it affect the way some people approach you, thinking you're this kind of outlaw guy who's just drifting around?

No, not so much. I think a lot of people can kind of see that up front. Sometimes I think people are skeptical of what they read. You know, like, "Oh, this kid's only 28 years old. There's no way he's lived through that kind of s***." But everybody has the right to their own opinion. And, I don't know, just come out and see a show or come meet us and see what you think for yourself.

The story is really interesting, but how does it relate to your music in the present? If you were writing a song now, would your past still have a big influence?

It used to more than it does now. Maybe it's part of me growing up and putting some things behind me that I used to dwell on when I was younger, but it seems like more, now today, I seem to have a little bit more of an optimistic kind of a view on life. I'm writing more about the stuff that I look forward to than the stuff that I'm looking back on.

Did that lead you to write different kinds of songs like "Endless Ways," which has a political side to it?

Yeah, I think just part of that is just growing up. I just turned 28 this year, and over the past eight years through the Bush administration and all that, a lot of [messed] up stuff has been going on with the country. Who knows where it's going to head from here, hopefully in a better direction, but anybody that lives in this country is aware of what's going on. It's on the news every day. It's in newspapers. People are talking about it everywhere, so it's just kind of another thing that you're exposed to. A lot of that's political and economic and all that, and I think it's important to write about it, as well.

Marc Ford produced both records and is also a former member of the Black Crowes. Is there a certain sound that he brings?

It's definitely kind of an older sound. Kind of like the older rock 'n' roll stuff. I don't think Marc listens to much music that wasn't recorded before 1970. (laughs) And that's kind of the stuff we're into, as well. So I think just as far as his outlook on the whole production part of it -- and I think, sonically, the whole record, the drums, the guitar tones and everything like that -- has kind of an old school approach to it that we really dug.

Elijah Ford, your bass player, is Marc's son. Who did you meet first?

I met Marc first. When we first met Marc, me and [drummer] Matt [Smith] came out to L.A. and were just playing in a small club down in Hollywood. Marc was in the crowd of about five people that was there just hanging out. We just became friends and started jamming together quite a bit, and when we got the opportunity to go in and work on the record, he was the first guy we called up.

I think Elijah was probably 16 or something when we met Marc. He was young, and later it came up that we needed a bass player on the road. Marc mentioned to us that Elijah could play, and we got him on the road. He's been with us ever since.

Was it really important for you to have your touring band, the Dead Horses, playing on the record?

Yeah, it was really important for me to have the guys that I play with on the record because that's how we sound live when we go out on the road. I think it's important for people that come out to the shows to really get what's on the record. And we all really enjoy playing together. I couldn't imagine using anybody else but those guys, anyway.

What's a typical day on the road like for you and the band?

Well, before all the record label stuff started, it was just me and my drummer -- and that was it. We didn't make any money, and we couldn't find anybody who would put up with us to go on the road because we were always just camping out in the truck. You know, we were both kind of homeless, so wherever we would end up -- on somebody's couch or somebody's back yard or camping out somewhere -- that's where we were.

But since we've got the record out and they've got us on kind of a schedule, it's a little different. It's basically wake up, drive in the van and get to the gig, play and drive again to the next town. Just a lot of driving and playing and trying to take in all the sights along the way and experiences and people you meet. Things like that. Maybe get a few songs out of it, as well.

You've been doing it for so long, there must be something about the road that you really love. Do you know what it is?

Well, I don't know. It's kind of a love/hate relationship. Growing up, we always moved a lot. It wasn't because we wanted to, it was because we had to -- living out of a cardboard box and stuff, the family always trying to find work in different towns. And then I started rodeoing when I was young and ended up spending a lot of time on the road doing that. There's definitely a part of it I love. And the traveling, it's kind of a freedom that you have that you're not tied down to a house and bills and stuff, and all that really matters is that you're just out in the wide open and kind of throwing caution to the wind.

But it's also nice to have a place to go to, kind of a home base where you can chill out. This place I'm living at now in California is the first house I've ever had in my whole life with my own name on the mailbox. It's a pretty comforting thing. The first two or three months I was here, I think I slept for two or three weeks at a time just from being on the road for, like, 10 years straight and finally having a place to wind down and kind of come back to reality and catch up with myself. source>>>

Kenny Chesney will perform at New York's Central Park on Aug. 14 as part of Good Morning America's summer concert series. His appearance on the ABC show takes place the day before he headlines the sixth annual New England Country Music Festival at Gillette Stadium near Boston. When tickets to the show went on sale in December, the concert sold out in 10 minutes even though Chesney's support acts had not yet been announced. Sugarland, Montgomery Gentry, Miranda Lambert and Lady Antebellum were later announced to appear. This marks Chesney's fifth consecutive time to headline a show at Gillette Stadium. He's playing 12 stadium shows this summer as part of his Sun City Carnival tour. source>>>

Brad Paisley is the big news this week as his American Saturday Night catapults into the No. 1 niche on Billboard's country albums chart. The collection racked up first-week sales of nearly 130,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Holding for the second consecutive week as Billboard's top country song is Dierks Bentley's "Sideways."

There are two new CDs to report. Tanya Tucker bows at No. 27 with My Turn, while Cledus T. Judd's checks in at No. 56 with the humorously-titled Polyrically Incorrect.

The returning albums are Taylor Swift's Beautiful Eyes EP (No. 57), Steve Ivey's Ultimate Bluegrass (No. 73), Elvis Presley's Collector's Edition: Elvis Inspirational Memories (No. 74) and Wynonna's Sing: Chapter 1 (No. 75).

Tim McGraw boasts the highest-charting new song. His cunningly titled "It's a Business Doing Pleasure With You" arrives at No. 35 and is trailed by Toby Keith's "American Ride" (No. 38), Keith Urban's "Only You Can Love Me This Way" (No. 52), Jason Michael Carroll's "Hurry Home" (No. 56), Sarah Buxton's "Outside My Window" (No. 57) and Paisley's "American Saturday Night" (No. 59).

Albums No. 2 through 5 this week are Swift's Fearless, the soundtrack to Hannah Montana: The Movie, the Zac Brown Band's The Foundation and Jason Aldean's Wide Open. (This is the first week Fearless has pulled ahead of Hannah Montana since the latter album debuted 11 weeks ago.)

Following "Sideways" within the Top 5 songs cluster are the Zac Brown Band's "Whatever It Is," Lady Antebellum's "I Run to You," Billy Currington's "People Are Crazy" and Paisley's "Then," in that order.

By Nielsen SoundScan's count, fans purchased a total of 497,727 current country albums this past week. (That number does not include catalog sales of older country CDs.)

Keep shopping, folks. Music Row needs you. source>>>

Alan Jackson has updated his 1994 cookbook, Who Says You Can't Cook It All, with new recipes. Named after his 1994 hit, "(Who Says) You Can't Have It All," the cookbook is available exclusively through his Web site and costs $15. Jackson will autograph every 10th cookbook ordered in July. The second edition of the cookbook includes more than 60 recipes from his family, including his wife Denise and his mother Ruth, as well as more than 35 photos, some never before published. source>>>

Not surprisingly, CD sales continued to decline in the first half of 2009. Alarmingly for the music industry, growth of sales of digital albums also declined. Billboard and Nielsen SoundScan report that combined sales thus far in 2009 of CD albums and digital albums are down 23 million units from the same period a year ago. (Digital albums include TEA -- track-equivalent albums, wherein 10 digital track sales equal one album.)

Country CD sales continue to slide, but download sales are up, with country leading all music genres in rate of increase in growth. Country album downloads increased to 2.35 million -- still a relatively low number, but the rise amounted to about 55 percent.

As expected, Taylor Swift's Fearless is the biggest-selling album of the year in any music genre, with 1.3 million CD copies sold in 2009. Fearless is currently selling about 5,000 digital downloads a week. Interestingly, Brad Paisley's American Saturday Night sold approximately 129,000 CDs in its debut last week and also notched 26,000 in digital sales.

This has been a comparatively lean year thus far for new country albums, especially by major artists. Albums are expected later this year from George Strait (Twang), Tim McGraw (Southern Voice) and an as-yet untitled album from Carrie Underwood. I'm particularly looking forward to Patty Loveless' Mountain Soul II, Rosanne Cash's The List (both in October) and Radney Foster's new studio album, Revival, coming in September. source>>>

Reba McEntire is the first performer booked for the new Wind Creek Amphitheatre at the Wind Creek Casino in Atmore, Ala. Her sold-out concert is scheduled for July 17. The 2,500-seat venue has also booked Hank Williams Jr. as its second headline performer. His concert is scheduled Aug. 29. McEntire is currently on tour in Canada with dates on Thursday (July 9) in Calgary, Alberta, and Sunday (July 12) in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island. Williams' next concert appearance is July 17 in Greenville, S.C. source>>>