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Category Archives: festivals
Big Laura Bell Bundy News!
Straight off the road with Rascal Flatts comes former Broadway Baby and current country music artist, Laura Bell Bundy, who is taking her electric stage presence to Wisconsin for Country Fest 2013! Laura will be hitting the stage with DJ Soulman in the Electric Country Leinie Lodge Friday, June 28th, and Saturday, June 29th.
Check out Laura’s big announcement regarding Country Fest below, but not before we share more exciting news with you! For those of you who are unable to catch what are sure to be killer performances, we are absolutely thrilled to share with you that Laura has released a brand new song to iTunes, entitled “Two Step”, which also features up-and-comer, Colt Ford. “Two Step” is a part of the Dance Y’all Volume 1 EP, which also includes Florida Georgia Line, Greg Bates, and Thomas Rhett. You can purchase a digital copy of “Two Step” by clicking here.
Make sure to visit us on social media and let us know what you think of Laura’s latest track!
Brantley Gilbert to perform at Harley Davidson 110th Anniversary
Country’s resident rocker Brantley Gilbert has a pretty exciting event coming up in the fall. He’ll be performing at the 110th anniversary of Harley Davidson concert, taking place August 29th until September 1st. The festival will take place at Henry Maier Festival Park in Milwaukee. Yes – its happening over Labor Day, so why not check it out?
The 3-day event will feature over 60 artists and bands from all genres of music. Representing country is Brantley and Shooter Jennings. There are a variety of ticket packages starting at $95 each, so check out the ticket details on Harley Davidson’s site.
Will you be going to check it out? What music festivals are you planning on heading out to this year?
Toby Keith, Luke Bryan & Brad Paisley confirmed for Watershed Fest!
After a successful first year, the Watershed Music Festival is returning to the picturesque Gorge Amphitheatre August 2-4. Luke Bryan, Toby Keith, Brad Paisley, Lee Brice, Terri Clark, Kip Moore, Thompson Square, Chris Young and more with late night sets at the “World Famous Late Night Honky Tonk” by Shooter Jennings and Blackberry Smoke. Three-day festival passes and camping go on sale Friday, March 15 at www.watershedfest.com and .ticketmaster.com and livenation.com. Camping starts at $110 and festival passes are priced at $149 including taxes and fees.
“This time last year as we were getting ready to announce the first year of this festival, we knew we had a great location and a unique concept for country fans, but we didn’t know how amazing the weekend would turn out to be,” said Brian O’Connell, five-time ACM Promoter of the Year and President of Live Nation, Nashville. ”We were blown away by the fans and the support from the artists. We have some new surprises planned for this year and hope to keep making it bigger and better year after year.”
Watershed Music Festival features a versatile lineup of artists, late night sets, outrageous camping sites, collaborations and more. The Gorge Amphitheatre, located in George, Wash., is undoubtedly one of the most scenic concert venues in the world and offers sweeping views of the Columbia River Gorge. The area itself is a watershed for the Columbia River, thus inspiring the name of the event.
What an exciting line-up! Will you be going?
Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley & Luke Bryan are Faster Horses
Get ready country music fans in Michigan! A brand new festival is about to take off in Brooklyn, MI with some huge country stars. The Faster Horses Festival, which is being organized by Live Nation’s ACM Promoter of the Year Brian O’Connell, will feature headlining performances by Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, and Luke Bryan. The three-day festival will run from July 19th to the 21st and will also feature performances by Jerrod Niemann, Thompson Square, Kix Brooks, Chris Young, Colt Ford, and more to be announced.
Three-day festival passes are $170 and will go on-sale on Monday, February 25th at fasterhorsesfestival.com.
Following the success of the inaugural Watershed Festival at the famed Gorge Amphitheatre last year, O’Connell selected a wide-open field in the secluded Irish Hills in Michigan for his next country camping festival. Surrounded by lakes and rolling hills, this area of Michigan is a summer hot spot, attracting vacationers far and wide. The Faster Horses Festival is set to be a prime summer event featuring 2 stages, 9 campgrounds, late night jam sessions, food trucks, bonfires and more to highlight the unique summer lifestyle experience in the area.
Are you excited for the new festival? Will you be picking up your tickets on Monday? Who else do you want to see added to the festival lineup?
Lineup Announced For Country Thunder Arizona
Country Thunder will be rolling into Florence, Arizona from April 11th to the 14th, 2013! Who will be joining them? Just some of country’s biggest acts these days, that’s all! Artists such as Lady Antebellum, Toby Keith, Eric Church, Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice, Kip Moore and many more (all are listed below) will be there, and you can be too! You’ll need a 4-day admission wristband in order to get into the shows and right now they’re available at a special early bird rate of only $99! But you’ll need to act on this early bird rate fast – and super fast- because tonight at 11:59pm Central, the prices goes up to $120. To order your tickets, and for other ticket details, head on over to www.countrythunder.com or call (866) 802-6418.
Counter-Country: Great Big Sea at Ottawa Folk Fest
As part of one of our brand new features exclusive to Keepin’ it Country, we will be introducing country music fans to artists they may not have heard of from other genres. We believe that it’s important to get to know other genres in order to greater appreciate country music and find new, different acts that you should get to know better. Our first Counter-Country band is last night’s Ottawa Folk Fest headlining act Great Big Sea. The Canadian group is one of the best in the country, formed 19 years ago, and is the perfect fit for both the festival and for Keepin’ it Country.
The group grew up in St. John’s, Newfoundland. They cut their teeth on Irish pubs in the province, playing for rowdy college students and off-duty fishermen. They formed their band trying to bring an innovative sound to Newfoundland folk music. The band hasn’t stopped touring since, and with eleven CDs and two DVDs under their belts they’re not going anywhere for a while, either.
Check out the details from their Ottawa show below. Tickets for tomorrow and Monday’s Folk Fest are still available at ottawafolk.com.
5 Reasons You Need To See JT Hodges At Boots & Hearts
We named Show Dog Universal’s J.T. Hodges our “one to watch for 2012″ earlier this year… and for good reason. His debut country album hits physical and digital stores on August 21st, and he’ll be playing the Sirius/XM Front Porch Stage on Saturday night from 6:30 to 7:30. He’ll be on-stage during Sheryl Crow and right when Alabama starts, but we believe fans need to check out J.T.
Here’s our five reasons why you can’t miss J.T.’s set in Bowmanville, Ontario tomorrow night:
The CW To Broadcast iheartradio Music Festival
There’s some good news today for fans who weren’t able to get tickets for this year’s iheartradio Music Festival, which had sold out in minutes. The CW will be kicking off their Fall Season with an exclusive broadcast of the Festival on Monday, October 1st from 8 pm EST to 10 pm EST. The two-day concert event will take place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas from September 21st to the 22nd with the hottest acts in music participating – including country’s own Miranda Lambert, Brad Paisley, Taylor Swift and Jason Aldean. It’s Taylor’s only date for 2012!
“The inaugural iHeartRadio Music Festival was an amazing experience for our listeners and music fans across America, and this year’s lineup is again going to exceed all expectations. With CW as the Festival’s TV broadcast partner, we can give people who can’t be in Las Vegas the ability to watch this extraordinary event from their own living rooms,” said John Sykes, President of Clear Channel Entertainment Enterprises. “This exclusive broadcast event emphasizes our commitment to bringing great music and content to our audience anywhere they want it.”
The following night, on October 2nd, The CW will air the one-hour season premier of Heart Of Dixie at 8 pm EST.
Boots & Hearts To Honor Capital Hoedown Tickets
In an unprecedented, fan-centric gesture, Boots and Hearts Music Festival has announced that they will be honoring all general admission tickets that had been purchased for rival festival Capital Hoedown, which was to take place in Ottawa on the same weekend this year. Starting today, country music fans wanting to exchange their Capital Hoedown tickets for Boots & Hearts tickets can visit http://www.bootsandhearts.com/ticket-exchange to complete the process. A one-day pass from Capital Hoedown will be valid for a one-day pass at Boots and Hearts, and a three-day pass at Capital Hoedown will be valid for a three-day wristband at Boots and Hearts.
“It’s disappointing to invest time and money in anticipation of an exciting weekend of country music and not have a festival to attend,” said Shannon McNevan, partner and executive director at Republic Live, the producers behind Boots and Hearts. “A cancellation of this nature negatively affects the entire Ontario country music market, from the fans confidence to buy tickets in advance to the agents of global superstars being afraid to book their artists at our festivals in the future. We believe it’s in the best interest of everyone involved, and for the future of country music festivals in this market, to ensure that if you’ve already invested your money, you have a chance to enjoy what you paid for. For this reason, we’re happy to give all Hoedown ticket holders that have not received refunds the opportunity to come and experience Boots and Hearts with us this year.”
Fans will need to provide four items for the exchange to work: ticket order number, first and last name of original ticket purchaser, e-mail address, and a phone number. Fans have until August 3rd at 5 pm EST to apply for the ticket exchange so that organizers can help prepare the festival for the new influx of crowds. A small service fee will apply to ticket exchanges. VIP tickets purchased for the Capital Hoedown can be upgraded to VIP tickets for Boots & Hearts at a nominal fee.
Boots and Hearts Music Festival will be taking place in Bowmanville, Ontario on August 10th to the 12th and will feature performances by some of the biggest names in country music, including: Carrie Underwood, Lionel Richie, Tim McGraw, Lauren Alaina, Terri Clark, Kevin Costner, Big & Rich and many more. For more information visit bootsandhearts.com.
The Day The Music Died in Ottawa
Dear readers,
When we first started this country music blog, we started out as a site for fans by fans. We listen to what our fans and readers are wanting to hear from us, what features they’d want to see, and even which artists they’d love to see interviewed. The first music festival Jessica and I ever covered together was Capital Hoedown last year, which featured acts like Carrie Underwood, Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, and Miranda Lambert among many talented acts. We were the first ones reporting the Carrie-Miranda live duet/mash-up of “Before He Cheats” with “Gunpowder & Lead” at the festival which helped propel us into being one of Canada’s leading resources for all things country music. Since that August weekend, Capital Hoedown has always been one of the highlights of our brand and we always put an extra shout-out to the festival when discussing artists this year.
This year’s line-up for Capital Hoedown was to be even bigger: with promises of Taylor Swift, Reba McEntire, Ronnie Dunn, Sheryl Crow and Brad Paisley. When I was at the line-up announcement I was more than excited over the line-up organizers had made. We interviewed Concert International CEO, and Capital Hoedown organizer, Denis Benoit back in December before the Christmas rush and he promised in the interview that tickets would be sold-out by Christmas so fans needed to get them asap for this fantastic line-up, saying that they were selling “extremely well.” Tickets weren’t sold-out, and were still on-sale throughout this year. Read our interview with Denis right here on Keepin’ it Country.
Being a fan-first site, we read every Tweet, Facebook message, wall post, and e-mail sent in to us by readers. When we started to get a few mentions and messages from fans asking us what was going on with the Capital Hoedown as some artists had removed the date from their website’s tour pages, we reached out to our friends in those artist teams to inquire about the missing dates. Once we started to receive confirmations that those artists were out, with the okay to post the news, we did so. What happened next is a sea of press interviews, camera time, and paper mentions for our site with Canadian, and American, media and radio stations as we were the first ones to even realize that something was up. We received a “seize and desist” (sic – not ‘cease’) from Denis quickly after our confirmation from artist teams that they were pulling out with promises of “serious legal action” against our site for posting the information. Nothing else ever came from that e-mail as everything we’ve posted has been factual and 100% confirmed, and after speaking with American and Canadian attorneys, we were perfectly fine to post the information.
Read more below:
