DAVE'S DIARY - 6/10/2014 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 6 - SERIES 24

SWEDISH SWEETHEARTS HEADLINE NU COUNTRY TV

Stockholm sweethearts of the rodeo First Aid Kit honour their hero Emmylou Harris on Nu Country TV Thursday October 9 at 10.30 pm on Channel 31-Digital 44.

Texan troubadours Radney Foster, Billy Joe Shaver, Kevin Fowler and Wade Bowen return to the show repeated Monday 5.30 am and 2.30 pm and Thursday 2.30 am.

Brisbane 2014 Starmaker winner Jared Porter returns to the program filmed and edited by Laith Graham.

Nu Country TV is a highlight of the C 31 streaming list on Digital 44.

Just follow this link on your computer or mobile phone - http://www.c31.org.au/program/view/program/nu-country-tv

FIRST AID KIT REVIVES EMMYLOU

Stockholm sweethearts of the rodeo First Aid Kit join a long list of artists to honour Alabama born country icon Emmylou Harris in song.

They perform evocative video Emmylou from third album The Lion's Roar they promoted on their Australian tour early this year.

Emmylou was chosen by Rolling Stone magazine as #10 Single in 2012.

The Swedish duo also performed a live version of it on the David Letterman show after Splendour In The Grass festivals and Hi-Fi Bar concerts in the Melbourne CBD.

They later played My Silver Lining on Letterman - album title track The Lion's Roar was featured in TV show Misfits and In the Hearts of Men adorned the popular Bones series .

First Aid Kit comprises sisters Johanna, 23, and Klara Söderberg, 21, from Enskede - a suburb of Stockholm .

Both attended its English school and their father - a former member of Swedish rock pop band Lolita Pop - has a home studio.

They started to perform live but Klara, then 14, was still at school, so they could play only at weekends and on April 7, 2008, released debut EP Drunken Trees .

Novocastrian Catherine Britt and Tennessean Rory Lee Feek of Joey & Rory also recorded Sweet Emmylou on albums earlier this millennium and Southern Pacific had a hit with A Girl Like Emmylou from their 1986 Killbilly Hill album.

Further info - http://www.thisisfirstaidkit.com/

HEY PORTER

Expatriate Californian Jared Porter returns to the show with his aquatic metaphor for the heart.

Deep End is on the 35 th Starmaker winner's debut album East To West.

Porter has toured and recorded with fellow Starmaker winner Kaylee Bell who moved here from New Zealand long after Jared arrived with his mum at 15.

Jared was born in Grass Valley below the high Sierras in northern California - the mountain range was eulogised in Harley Allen song High Sierra on Trio 2 - the 1999 album featuring Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt.

Jared now hangs his hat in Brisbane when not on the road with his band.

CLICK HERE for our Porter CD Review in The Diary on August 4.

RADNEY FOSTER HEARTWRECKED

Radney Foster performs his video for Whose Heart You Wreck from 10th solo album Everything I Should Have Said .

Foster, now 55, hails from Del Rio , Texas , and cut three wondrous discs with Bill Lloyd as Foster & Lloyd from 1987.

He has penned enough chart toppers to keep him from diluting soulful albums that began with Del Rio , Texas , 1959 , in 1992.

Foster also wrote expat Australasian superstar Keith Urban's smash I'm In for his Gravity album and Raining On Sunday .

Radney headed south to Basin St, New Orleans in the previous video for Louisiana Blue from his 2012 album Del Rio Texas, Revisited: Unplugged and Lonesome.

We also featured Foster's evocative video for his Angel Flight from eighth solo CD Revival in 2009.

Foster's song is a tribute to airmen returning from combat and the video surpassed one million views combined on Youtube.

The video had over 300,000 views, and the Angel Flight Radio Tower DVD Mix over 720,000.

It features interviews with former Hootie & The Blowfish singer Darius Rucker, who did background vocals on the song, along with co-writer Darden Smith and Foster explaining how it came about.

Proceeds from the sale of Angel Flight benefit the Texas National Guard Family Support Foundation that aids military families in crisis.

His solo albums included Labor of Love (1995), See What You Want to See (1999), Are You Ready for the Big Show?, Another Way to Go (2002) and This World We Live In (2006).

Foster's 13 Billboard hits include Just Call Me Lonesome #10 - 1992 and Nobody Wins #2 - 1993.

Godspeed , inspired by his former wife of 12 years decamping to France in 1994 with their son Julien, now 21, was one of three to grace huge selling Dixie Chicks albums.

He also wrote smashes for Rucker, Kenny Chesney and Brooks & Dunn and A Real Fine Place To Start - an historic hit for Sara Evans.

CLICK HERE for Radney CD review in The Diary on July 16, 2013.

BILLY JOE SHAVER ANOTHER HEART SONG

Revered Texan singer-songwriter Billy Joe Shaver last toured here with singing Texan crime novelist Kinky Friedman in 2002 on the eve of his quadruple heart by-pass operation.

So it's appropriate the 75-year-old survivor performs a live version of Heart Of Texas from Billy Bob's in Cowtown - Fort Worth .

The Corsicana born singer is promoting his album Long In The Tooth that also features two of his songs recorded by fellow Texan - Shotgun Willie Nelson, now 81.

He opened for Waylon, Willie and The Highwaymen, cut a live album at the Corner Hotel, Richmond , and performed a special after midnight birthday show for this diarist at Paul Madigan's long defunct Druids' lodge on the mean streets of Brunswick on previous Australian tours.

Long in the Tooth , produced by Ray Kennedy and Gary Nicholson, on the Lightning Rod label, features Hard to Be an Outlaw - a duet with Willie - that appears on Nelson's album Band Of Brothers and The Git Go that also graces Willie's disc.

Shaver is bemused about his image of a hell raiser in Nashville in younger days.

“Half the stories are a blown-up bunch of bullshit,” Shaver jokes.

“One time these two guys tried to roll me in the alley behind the old Ryman in Nashville and I whupped ‘em and left ‘em lying there. By the time I'd walked to the other end of town, people were already saying I'd beat up five guys, fucked ‘em up so bad, kicked a hole in their damn car - all kinda crazy shit! The more I tried to deny it, the worse it got.

“And there's a guy in Nashville that goes around telling people he's me! That don't help me none either. Making out with girls and writing hot checks. I always tell ‘em, “Look at his hand and see if he's got anything gone.” If he went and chopped his fingers off to be me, he's a pretty dedicated motherfucker!”

Billy Joe has fond memories of late fellow Texan Townes Van Zandt who also played Madigan's .

“My wife Brenda just hated Townes,” he revealed recently.

“I met him when she and I lived in Houston , and we got into LSD. All these kids were into it, and they had places where you could hit it and watch movies, with mattresses on the floor where you laid down because after you took that shit, you couldn't walk. My wife would have to come and almost scrape us off the pavement.

“Years later, after she'd had cancer a couple years and was getting close to death, a doctor told me she wasn't going to make it through the night. So I told her I'd had a dream that she had passed and that Townes was up there to greet her. She hated that guy so bad she said, ‘I ain't going.' She lived another year almost.”

CLICK HERE for a Billy Joe feature in The Diary on April 11, 2007.

WACO WADE WINS BATTLE

Fellow Waco warrior Wade Bowen explored wars with few winners in his video for A Battle Won from sixth album The Given in 2012.

Justin Niebank produced The Given - his first for a major label, featuring nine of his originals.

It explores relationships from desolation to domestic difficulties and features Texan icon Guy Clark on late Townes Van Zandt classic To Live Is to Fly.

The Texas Tech University graduate hails from Waco - hometown of Steve Martin and Billy Joe Shaver - and was a member of West 84 with Matt Miller in 2001.

He released his 2002 debut album, Try Not To Listen , a live disc in 2003 and another studio album in 2006.

In 2008 Wade released If We Ever Make It Home and on November 21, 2009 cut his second live album at Billy Bob's in Fort Worth .

The album was released on April 27, 2010 as a CD/DVD combo.

He is the brother-in-law of Cross Canadian Ragweed singer Cody Canada and co-wrote Don't Break My Heart Again with Pat Green.

Further info - http://wadebowen.com

KEVIN FOWLER LOVE SONG

Amarillo born singer Kevin Fowler has written hits for dual Louisiana Gubernatorial candidate Sammy Kershaw and Mark Chesnutt.

But this week he performs a humorous version of Love Song from his seventh album How Country Are Ya ?

Fowler, now 48, also evoked humour with his Willie Nelson spoof - Santa Got Busted By The Border Patrol with a cameo by Asleep At The Wheel singer Ray Benson - and recorded satirical Don't Touch My Willie about the Red Headed Stranger's drug busts.

His propensity for booze songs including The Lord Loves a Drinking Man, Beer Season, Long Neckin' (Makes for Short Memories), Drinking Days, Ain't Drinking No More, Beer Money, All The Tequila in Tijuana and Beer, Bait & Ammo.

Fowler, father of three daughters, could feel jinxed - his last three labels closed shortly after releasing his albums.

In 2010 when Kevin signed with Disney subsidiary Lyric Street Records he was on a roll but eight weeks after release of his single Pound Sign they folded.

Fowler broke the streak after signing to Colt Ford's label, Average Joe's Entertainment .

He and Colt collaborated on Ford hit Hip Hop In A Honky Tonk for 2010 Ford album Chicken & Biscuits .

Fowler also recorded a duet with George Jones on Me and the Boys and wrote Long Line Of Losers for Montgomery Gentry and earned some serious "mailbox money."

Fowler sources songs driving his pickup at his ranch near Junction - he calls these songs "presents from the song gods."

"Those seem to be the best ones," he said of songs including Cheaper To Keep Her and Ain't Dead Yet and Now You're Talkin' with frequent Aussie tourist David Lee Murphy.

Others include drinking man's anthem I Pulled a Hank Last Night and Honky Tonk Junkie - a clever tribute to genre icons.

Further info - www.kevinfowler.com

HOW TO KEEP NU COUNTRY ON AIR

We need your support as we celebrate the 24th series of Nu Country TV.

Australian record companies and artists have joined forces to ensure our survival.

We have new CDS by major artists you can win by becoming a Nu Country TV member or renewing your membership.

They include singing actors Willie Nelson and Tim McGraw, Voice judge Blake Shelton, Ashley Monroe, Brad Paisley, Gary Allan, Toby Keith, Dierks Bentley, Eric Church, Carrie Underwood, Chris Young, Charley Pride, Slim Dusty, Kacey Jones, Rosanne Cash and more.

We also have the latest John Denver all-star tribute album and DVDS by Lady Antebellum.

CLICK HERE for our Membership Page for full details.

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