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Sing & Shout...Road Ahead...Margarita Smile

BILL BLOG

Tuesday December 21, 2023

 

Tuesday morning coming at you from Nashville. And it’s getting warm in Music City y’all. 66 for a high today. Record warmth in the south, record cold up north…weird.

 

YESTERDAY

I wrote online with my Maryland friend Rick Lang who is now writing songs full time after selling his exotic lumber business that he and his wife ran for years. So he’s sort of semi-retired like me…doing what he loves to do.

 

Rick sent me three or four ideas before we started writing, and I chose the one that I liked the most, wrote a couple of verses and a chorus before our appointed writing time, so at that point we just had to add another verse and tweak what was in front of us.

 

Rick wrote a bunch of bluegrass songs years ago all by himself out east while he still had his business. He then played a bunch of those for our mutual friend and head of Billy Blue Records Jerry Salley. Jerry then turned around and produced an album “Gonna Sing, Gonna Shout” that featured different bluegrass-gospel artists to sing Rick’s songs. How about that?  Here’s just one song off that project.

 

And now they are going to do it a second time, PLUS… Daywind Records, the Southern Gospel Record Company that’s in the same building with Billy Blue look set to do the same thing with a southern gospel Christmas album featuring songs Rick has written either solo, or with writers like me. So I’m looking very forward to having a song or two that I wrote with Rick on both of those albums in the future. 


 

 

NICK DUMAS

I got this nice little gift in the mail yesterday. My thanks to Nick Dumas and his great bluegrass group for recording the song “Details” that I wrote with Tim Stafford and Becky Buller. And Nick made the song his first single off this album that has done so well.


 

In fact the album is in the #5 slot this week on the charts. Congrats Nick.


 

 

THE CALENDAR

June is going to be a busy month as I’ll be on two separate Freedom Sings USA retreats writing with veterans. One in Memphis, and another in Montrose, Colorado. The one in Colorado will feature a big outdoor concert and American Idol star Hunter Girl will be joining us for that one. Also in June, there are two shows slotted in Fort Smith, Arkansas. 


 

 

The next few weeks look like this.

 

March 10 & 11 at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge for multiple shows with “Hits & Grins”.


 

 

March 18 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum with Steve Dean.

 

April 1 at the Stephens Valley Bible Church with Linda Davis and Lang Scott.


 

 

April 20 in Morgan City, Louisiana with “Hits & Grins”.

 

April 22 in Pampa, Texas with “Hits & Grins”.

 

As always, complete details on all of these shows are available here on the website.

 

HEALTH NOTES

A study shows that more than 20% of kids worldwide suffer from an eating disorder.

 

Statistics reveal only 5.7% of all US doctors are black.

Health Day News says if you’re over 40 you can help keep yourself out of a hospital by exercising just 20 minutes a day. 

 

HERE COME THE CROCS

Did you know that some brides are now wearing Crocs at their wedding? White ones of course. Nothing says romance quite like a pair of white Crocs paired with a wedding dress. 


 

 HOLIDAYS

Well, tomorrow is national Margarita Day. For some of my Trop Rock friends, EVERY day is national Margarita Day. With that I give you “MargaritavilleSmile” that I wrote with Brent Burns. Turn it on while you’re licking the salt off your rim tomorrow.


 

 

And St. Pat’s day is sneaking up. McDonald’s has rolled out its Shamrock Shakes in time for that.

 

The Irish do like their Guinness and spirits. One Irishman claimed once that he was out on a frightful night. His wife sent him out to get a quart of milk and he said he was blown straight into a pub.

 

EXPENSIVE TIME PIECE

Scott Carpenter was the 4th Astronaut sent up into space. Omega gave him a personal watch, an Omega Speedmaster at that time. He held onto it…and it’s for sale. It will only set you back 1.5 million dollars.

 And how about the woman who was given a first-generation iPhone and never unsealed the box. She’s put it up for auction online and it just sold for  $63,000.

Don’t ever thrown anything away kids.

 

MUSIC STUDY

It says that we spend 20 hours a week on average listening to music. The study also reveals that when we age, we quit listening to new music. And that the music we first hear is usually the kind of music we then listen to all our lives. What’s on your playlist right now?

 

HEADLINE OF THE DAY

“Sperm Donor With 60 Children Exposed After Parents Realized They Looked The Same”.

 

TODAY

I’ve got a double header of writing today starting with former American Idol Alex Miller who’s new album is almost finished, and I’ll have a song on that album that I co-wrote with him and Josh Shilling.

 

Then tonight I’ll be online with producer-singer-writer Angus Gill down in Australia trying to create a new song for one of two projects he’s working on now for other artists Down Under.

 

Have a great Tuesday!

 

 

 

 

 


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