Year: 2016

ACM Week – Day 4 – Party For A Cause

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Saturday 4/2/16

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Day 2 of the ACM Party For A Cause Festival was INSANE. Live country music from today’s top acts from noon to midnight! That’s twelve full hours of fun for myself and thousands of other country fans! It was a lot hotter in the desert today, and this Mainer was loving every minute of the heat!

Gates opened at noon and the Cabela’s Archery Tournament was finishing up inside the gates. Team Luke Bryan (consisting of Dustin Lynch, Eric Paslay and Kristy Titus) was competing against Team Justin Moore (consisting of Chase Rice, Chris Janson, Granger Smith and Wade Middleton)in a tic-tac-toe archery tournament. (Literally shooting arrows at the space where they wanted to place their “X” or “O”.)  People were everywhere, trying to get the artists attention, waving their cameras and posters for them to sign. A few lucky groups got some selfies with Luke!

The only one that I was lucky enough to snag a photo with was Granger Smith (thank you for that Granger! Much appreciated!). I can’t wait to see where his career leads him after his first number one song, Backroad Song.

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Yee Yee Nation!

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WPOR Announces Old Port Festival Lineup!

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The 43rd annual Old Port Festival will be held on June 12th, 2016 from 11am to 5pm! There will be four stages with live music scattered throughout downtown Portland, Maine. I of course, will be there at the WPOR stage! See the lineup below!

WPOR Stage (Middle & Temple Streets)

12pm — American Ride (local cover band)
1pm — Matt Gary
2pm — Drew Baldridge
3pm — Dylan Scott
4pm — Brooke Eden

First of all, I’ve been dying to share this news with you since I spoke with Brooke Eden in Vegas at the BBR Music Group brunch on Sunday April 3rd before the ACM Awards. But because I knew my station had not officially announced the lineup yet, I kept it to myself. I went up to Brooke at the brunch and told her that I was that girl who made her come out of her bus in the freezing cold to come into WPOR so that I could meet her and take a photo with her, and that I needed a re-take since I was in my “work clothes” lol. She informed me that she would be coming back to Portland the same weekend as CMA Fest and I was ecstatic! She also told me she would be performing later that night at the ACM Official After Party, All Star Jam, which was officially my first time seeing her live!

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Brooke Eden and I at the BBR Music Group brunch in Las Vegas!

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World Premiere of Chris Janson’s “Holdin’ Her” Video

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CHRIS JANSON’S “HOLDIN’ HER” VIDEO PREMIERES TODAY ON CMT

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Chris Janson continues to enjoy the success of his debut album Buy Me A Boat. The title track became the singer songwriters’ first #1 single, has been certified Platinum, it won the iHeartRadio Award for “Country Song of the Year,” earned him a nomination for Breakthrough Male Artist of the Year for the American Country Countdown Awards which airs this Sunday on Fox (5/1/16), and much more. But for Janson, his greatest success is his wife and kids.

 They are the inspiration for the song and music video for his new single, “Holdin’ Her.” “It’s my number-one favorite song,” said Janson. “It’s the story of the things that I love most: my wife and my kids and my journey in life. If anyone wants a real look inside my life, here it is!”

“I’m so excited and happy about this video,” said Janson.  It is a very personal and real look into our life with my wife, kids and bonus kids. This song is our love story and I wanted real moments in the video.”

SEE THE VIDEO HERE!

In addition to his ACCA nomination, Janson will perform on the show. 2016 has been just as incredible as 2015, when he landed on multiple year-end lists, including Billboard‘s Top New Country Artist list, Rolling Stone Country’s Best list for his full-length debut and The New York Times Best Songs of 2015 for “Buy Me a Boat.” He was chosen as a 2016 Next Big Thing by MusicRow and, adding to the industry recognition, received standing ovations for his electric performance at the prestigious New Faces Concert during Country Radio Seminar. Acclaimed for his spirited harmonica playing and riveting live show, Janson has played the Grand Ole Opry more than 130 times and earned spots on tour with Blake Shelton, Toby Keith and Luke Bryan.

You have to see this sweet and heartfelt video! I had the opportunity to see Janson perform this song live at the ACM All Star Jam (after the ACM Awards) and I was blown away hearing it for the first time. It’s such a polar opposite of his #1 single, Buy Me a Boat, and shows a completely different side of his personality. Janson told the crowd when introducing the song, that he hates the term “step-children” and he instead calls his wife’s previous children, “bonus kids”. Such an admirable trait!

Faux-Chella: My Perfect Country Music Festival

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Country Heartbeat Day1 Fixed

With Coachella just around the corner, TickPick and I have teamed up to present with Country Heartbeat readers my ideal country music festival! I have so many favorites that they had to divide the festival between two days! If you’ve been following this blog for a while now, it’s pretty obvious who my favorite country artists are. Whenever someone asks who my favorite artist is, I ask them if I can give them a top-5 or top-10 list instead, because it’s entirely way too hard to narrow down. I then proceed to list the above 10 artists, and a few others… depending on whose show I may have seen recently and re-fell in love with.

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ACM Week – Day 3 – Women Of Country

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Friday 4/1/16

Total girl confession first off; I totally loved my outfit for Friday and wanted to have a mini photo shoot by the pool where we were staying with Jencita’s family. So we did.

First on our agenda for Friday was a meet and greet with Thomas Rhett at the BMLG Music Has Value pop-up store at the MGM Grand at 1:30pm. One hundred people received wristbands to meet Thomas by purchasing some Music Has Value merchandise from the shop and then there was an “if he has time” line. Since I didn’t have a physical copy of his recent album Tangled Up (I know, shame on me!), I purchased that for him to sign. One thing I learned that day? I probably shouldn’t wear white/ivory. My shirt had a lipstick stain on it within 5 minutes of arriving at MGM. So typical of me!

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Party For a Cause festival gates opened at 3pm on Friday, so Jencita and I drove down to the other end of the strip, to the new MGM Grand Festival Grounds, across from the SLS Hotel. Part of my goal during this years ACM week was to keep my radio station and all of it’s listeners, WPOR 101.9, informed with an inside look!

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ACM Week Recap – Day 2 – Guitar Pull

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Thursday 3/31/16

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As soon as I learned two of my ultimate favorites, Kip Moore and Kelsea Ballerini, would be at the 95.5 The Bull’s 8th Annual Guitar Pull, I made it a goal to attend! As most of you all know, this was a “budget trip”, so funds were limited. Per usual, I reached out to 95.5 for a chance to win some tickets, but heard nothing back. As fate would have it, my friend Chris had a pair of tickets and became ill, and he graciously donated them to me! So appreciative beyond words for this opportunity to see these artists acoustically in a laid back setting.

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Thursday night’s outfit

Up first on stage was Hunter Hayes and Kelsea Ballerini! Kelsea started off by telling the crowd that her and Hunter are “real-life friends” and that he was actually with her when she found out that Dibs had reached number 1! (It appears that Cody Alan (her “favorite human”) was there too!

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ACM Week Recap – Day 2 – Cali to Vegas

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Part 1: ROAD TRIP!

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Jencita and I left in the morning (after a quick photoshoot with Madison!) for a 3.5 hour road trip from California to Las Vegas, which ended up actually being a lot of fun! We finished getting ready in the bathroom at MGM Grand and our first stop of the trip was at Brad Garrett’s Comedy Club in the “Underground” section of MGM Grand.

We were a couple of the very few people who were present at a special taping of ACM Sessions with Brandy Clark, which included a question and answer session with Lisa Lee, the SVP of Creative & Content Production for the Academy of Country Music. You can watch the entire Q&A session below!

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ACM Week Recap – Day 1 – Maine to California

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Wednesday March 30th, 2016

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My adventures started off by being asked to call KBUL 98.1 in Revo, NV shortly after arriving at the airport! I had connected with their morning show host, Bob Richards, on twitter a couple of weeks before. During my search to win fly away’s to Vegas for the 51st Academy of Country Music Awards, I entered every contest that existed. I secured a one way flight, just in case I didn’t win, to insure that I would get there. However, while being there, I also had my hopes set on being able to attend the 3-Day Party For A Cause Festival. The price of the 3-day festival, however, was $175 before taxes and fees. Definitely not something that I could afford on my own, on top of flights, especially with this trip having a super strict budget!

Luckily I believe in manifesting your desires and the Law of Attraction. I believe that acting like you already have something (or in this care that you’re already attending) will help the Universe deliver what it is that you want. BUT, you must also put in the effort to obtain this desire, and ASK. You’re not going to get what you want magically (unless you’re insanely lucky)… you have to take some action. So I searched the official PFAC hashtag, #ACMparty on twitter to find contests to enter. I entered the ones that I could, but the “call in to win” ones, I knew I would be unable to listen to non-local radio stations day in and day out. So I reached out to the KBUL Moo Crew in Reno, NV.

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Vegas Bound for “The Week Vegas Goes Country”!

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I’m a strong believer in chasing dreams, and I know that you must do whatever it takes to make your dreams happen! Blood, sweat & tears! I spent the entire month of March picking up extra jobs and extra hours from various places, hustling, and busting my butt to be able to afford to go to Vegas for ACM week this year. I’ve worked HARD, and I’ve earned it! I wasn’t willing to accept not being there this year, especially with this being the last ACM week before the big Nashville move! There are a lot of connections to make, tons of networking opportunities, and some amazing performances that I hope to catch! I’m also extremely excited about escaping the cold and the upcoming snow predictions!

I will be sharing my adventures LIVE on snapchat! You can add me manually at @country_hrtbeat or scan my snap code below! I can guarantee that my “stories” will be filled with some exclusive behind-the-scenes stuff! You definitely don’t want to miss out!

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I will also be posting photos to an album on my facebook page, so go LIKE my page and follow along for updates throughout the course of the week! It will almost be like you’re right there with me! Feel free to live vicariously through me!

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NASH FM Guitar Pull at 3rd & Lindsley

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Well sorry it’s been a while, I’ve been out gathering information and going to events trying to figure out which way this post should go. I can attend events and brief y’all on what happened or I can give you a heads up about what’s about to happen in Nashville. Let me know what you’d like to see in the comment section below!

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