Kane Brown and Kacey Musgraves are heading to Australia for the launch of LONGHAUL, a new country music festival arriving in January 2027.
The inaugural festival will stop in three cities across one weekend, beginning Friday, Jan. 22, at Melbourne Showgrounds, before heading to Sydney Showground on Saturday, Jan. 23, and Brisbane RNA Showgrounds on Sunday, Jan. 24.
Brown and Musgraves will headline the new event in what are billed as their only Australian shows. The lineup also features Charles Wesley Godwin, Margo Price, Maddox Batson, Ava Hall and James Barker Band, alongside Australian artists Beau Shearer, Denvah, Nathan Lamont, Taylor Moss and Tyla Rodrigues.
Presented by LONGHAUL Touring and powered by TEG Live, the festival is entering the market at a time when country music’s Australian audience is becoming harder to ignore. The bill brings together arena-level U.S. names, Americana favorites, emerging international acts and local artists, pointing to a wider version of country than the genre’s traditional festival lane.
“We have been working very hard on this festival concept for a number of years and so it is incredibly exciting to finally launch the inaugural LONGHAUL Festival with an awesome lineup of international and domestic artists, headlined by superstars Kane Brown and Kacey Musgraves,” Tim McGregor, global head of touring at TEG Live, said in a statement.
“LONGHAUL Touring is just getting started with this flagship festival and there is a lot more in the pipeline to share with you all very soon,” McGregor added. “In the meantime we look forward to welcoming fans to LONGHAUL Festival next January for what will be a great summer’s day out in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.”
Brown brings major Billboard history to the lineup. In 2017, he became the first artist to top all five of Billboard’s main country charts at the same time, leading Top Country Albums, Hot Country Songs, Country Airplay, Country Digital Song Sales and Country Streaming Songs in the same week.
Musgraves arrives with her own chart and awards résumé. Her 2024 album Deeper Well debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales, Top Country Albums, Americana/Folk Albums, Vinyl Albums, Top Current Album Sales and Tastemaker Albums charts. Her 2018 album Golden Hour won album of the year at the 2019 Grammy Awards.
The rest of the bill leans into country’s broad current moment. Godwin has become one of the genre’s fastest-rising live acts, Price remains a key Americana voice, and Batson represents a younger wave of country artists building global audiences online.
Afterpay will serve as the official presale partner for LONGHAUL. The Afterpay presale begins Friday, July 24, at 12 p.m. local time and runs until Monday, July 27, at 12 p.m. local time. Other presales begin Monday, July 27, at 1 p.m. local time, before general tickets go on sale Friday, July 31, at 2 p.m. local time via Ticketek.
Morgan Wallen’s I’m the Problem leads Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart (dated July 25) for the 45th nonconsecutive week. This ups Wallen’s career tally of weeks at No. 1 to 231, allowing him to extend his lead as the artist with the most weeks at No. 1 in the chart’s 62-year history.
Wallen’s achievement is especially impressive because he has amassed this hefty total of weeks at No. 1 in such a short amount of time. He first topped the chart on Aug. 15, 2020.
Before returning to No. 1 this week, I’m the Problem spent the past 13 weeks at No. 2 behind Ella Langley‘s Dandelion. That was the longest Wallen has been locked out of the top spot since he rose to superstar status in January 2021 with Dangerous: The Double Album.
Top Country Albums originated as Hot Country Albums in the Jan. 11, 1964 issue of Billboard. Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire (The Best of Johnny Cash) headed the inaugural chart. The compilation was well-timed: “Ring of Fire” had headed Hot Country Songs for seven weeks the previous summer and had crossed over to reach the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The chart was named Hot Country LP’s from 1968 to 1984, when vinyl LPs were king.
Twenty-one artists have logged 50 or more weeks at No. 1 on Top Country Albums. Male solo artists dominate, as you might expect, though three female solo artists have achieved the feat, as have two groups. (One of those groups is an all-female group.) Only one Black artist has amassed 50 or more weeks at No. 1, though that may change as country becomes more inclusive.
Here’s a look at all artists who have topped Top Country Albums for 50 or more weeks.
The Grand Ole Opry’s Opry 100 Honors is set to honor the life, career and legacy of the late Charley Pride on Sept. 22.
The event, held at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry House, will feature performances from Opry members Darius Rucker and Pam Tillis, as well as Neal McCoy and Pride’s son, Dion Pride.
Mississippi native Pride, country music’s first Black superstar, was known for hits including “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’,” “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone,” “Roll On Mississippi” and “All I Have to Offer You (Is Me).” Pride landed 29 No. 1 Billboard Hot Country Songs chart hits during his decades-long career and earned three Grammy Awards.
He signed with RCA Records in the 1960s and earned a career breakthrough with “Just Between You and Me.” In 1971, he was named the CMA’s entertainer of the year and earned two consecutive male vocalist of the year honors (1971-1972). Pride was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000. Among his other accolades are the ACM’s pioneer award and the Recording Academy’s lifetime achievement award.
Pride made his Opry debut in 1967 and became an Opry member in 1993, when he was inducted by Jimmy C. Newman.
“The Grand Ole Opry held a very special place in my father’s heart, and our family is deeply grateful to see his music and legacy celebrated on the stage he loved so much,” Dion Pride said in a statement. “It will be an honor to perform alongside artists who admired him and to share his songs with the fans who have kept them alive for generations.”
“Every single night Charley Pride came home to the Opry was an event,” added Opry executive producer Dan Rogers. “His performances were amazing. The crowd response was like no other. And the backstage area was always, always buzzing. Charley’s spirit and songs live on, and we’re so looking forward to celebrating both on the Opry stage in September.”
$5 from each ticket sold for Opry 100 Honors shows will directly impact the Opry Trust Fund, which has supported country music professionals with assistance for emergencies, medical bills and other hardships for over 60 years. Since the launch of the Opry 100 Honors series in 2025, the shows have honored other country music legends including Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, Charlie Daniels, Porter Wagoner, Bill Monroe, Minnie Pearl, Roy Acuff, Hank Williams, Little Jimmy Dickens and Don Williams.
When Ne-Yo first came to Nashville in 2012 to record “She Is” with Tim McGraw for Ne-Yo’s album R.E.D., he says he immediately connected with the city’s relaxed writing and recording style.
“That’s when I realized it’s done a little different in Nashville,” Ne-Yo tells Billboard. “I was expecting to pull up to a studio, but I pulled up to Tim and Faith [Hill]’s home. Tim’s at the door with no shoes on. Faith is in the kitchen, and she made food for everybody, and we just sat in the living room and talked about life and songs. Tim’s always been super supportive of me, just an all-around good dude.”
With his first full-fledged, country-inspired album Highway 79, which released July 10 on HSG Ventures/10K Projects, Ne-Yo set out to recreate that same laid-back feel in the studio. “I was like, ‘I want that vibe all over again,’” he says.
Ne-Yo spent four months in Nashville, writing with artists, writers and producers including Luke Laird, Breland, Chuck Harmony, Claude Kelly, Dave Cohen and Lady A’s Charles Kelley. He previewed the album’s blend of R&B and soul sounds with songs including the tender “Simple Things” and the party anthem “Up Out and Gone.”
“When I decided I wanted to do something country-inspired, right away the thought was to go to Nashville. It just didn’t make sense to try to do something in the country vein without touching the mecca of country music,” he says. “We didn’t go into the studio trying to make hits. We wanted to make music that people related to — regular people, everybody.”
Those sessions produced songs like “If I Roped the Moon,” inspired by a line his co-writer Kelley brought to the session: “If I rope the moon, you would still want the stars.” “It’s such a classic country metaphor,” Ne-Yo says. “Without even hearing the full song, you hear that line, and you feel something right away.”
Ne-Yo also collaborated with Breland on the high-energy “Dance Right Now.”
“That was the only real preset thing we did in regard to the music,” Ne-Yo says. “With every session, I wanted to go in and just do whatever felt right. But for this session, I was like, ‘I got a couple slow situations. I needed something with some tempo.’ So, the music kind of came first, then from there we just started brainstorming on what the subject matter was going to be. The premise of the whole song is meeting someone in a nightclub, and it’s like, “I could sit here and try to figure out who you are, or you can sit there and try to figure out who I am — or we could just dance and worry about all of that other stuff later.”
It was Ne-Yo’s mother who helped spark the idea for the album title for Highway 79, a nod to the road that connects Ne-Yo’s hometown of Camden, Arkansas (two hours south of Little Rock) with Bearden, Arkansas, where his extended family lived.
“It was like double-wides, trailer parks, the whole nine,” Ne-Yo says of growing up in Arkansas before his family later relocated to Las Vegas. “I’ll say my love for the stage was definitely born in Las Vegas, but my heart and who I am as a person was birthed and nurtured in Arkansas.”
He remembers loving the storytelling aspect of songs such as Reba McEntire’s 1991 version of Bobbie Gentry’s “Fancy.”
“’Fancy’ was the first country song I ever heard in my life,” Ne-Yo recalls. “I wasn’t double digits yet, that’s for certain. First, Reba’s voice, then just the story of it. I remember when my mom brought that song home, I was hooked on it for five days straight.”
Ne-Yo also discovered Kenny Rogers through his love of the music of Lionel Richie, who wrote Rogers’ 1980 country hit “Lady.” He since became a fan of Garth Brooks. “I even love the Chris Gaines thing when he did that,” Ne-Yo says. “I used to think, ‘He has the kind of voice that he can do R&B if he wanted to,’ and then he did that, and I’m like, ‘See?’’
“Country music has songs about the not-so-glamorous part of life, and being just a regular person,” he adds of his affinity for the genre. “You can have the truck and the 9-to-5 [job] and that’s okay. It’s like R&B and hip-hop music, some of it kind of got to this place where you got to be so cool all the time, have all this money, the women got to love you, and you drive this fast car, all these things and that’s just not the reality of 90% of the world. That cool thing can get exhausting. The coolest person I’ve ever met is not that person behind closed doors — they are just a regular person at that point.”
Ne-Yo made several appearances around Nashville leading up to the release of his new album, including making his debut on the Grand Ole Opry in November. That performance included renditions of Ne-Yo’s 2006 pop/R&B hit “So Sick” and a collaboration with The War and Treaty on a version of Rascal Flatts’ “Bless the Broken Road.”
“It’s not a small thing to step into that circle,” Ne-Yo said of his Opry debut. “If they love you there, you did something right. I was a little nervous, but I got up there, did what I did, and it was standing ovation, just open arms and it felt good to be accepted that way. It was an amazing experience.”
Looking ahead, Ne-Yo says he would love to work with The War and Treaty on new music and work with McGraw again (he attempted to work with McGraw again on the Highway 79 project, but says the two artists’ schedules didn’t align).
He’s certain of one thing about Highway 79: there is more where that came from.
“This will not be my last country-inspired album,” Ne-Yo says.
Country star John Rich has been officially sworn in as Special Envoy for American Landowners, according to a White House social media post Friday (July 10).
The post shows the Big & Rich member being sworn in surrounded by his family and shaking hands with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
Earlier Friday, Rich also posted heralding the ceremony: “Today, I’ll be sworn in as ‘Special Envoy for American Landowners’ by President Trump at the Oval. My family will be there with me! (My Dad bought his first new suit in 25 years). I greatly thank @realDonaldTrump for giving me the opportunity to fight for my fellow Americans.”
Rich also quote-tweeted the White House post, adding alongside an American-flag emojio: “Let’s get to work.”
Though the swearing-in did not take place until Friday, Brooke Rollins, secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture, announced Rich’s appointment last month.
“America’s farmers, ranchers, and landowners are among the greatest stewards of our nation’s resources and the backbone of our rural communities,”said Rollins, in a statement posted on the USDA site on June 10. “President Trump understands that private property rights are fundamental to the American way of life. John Rich has long been a champion for rural America, and I look forward to working alongside him as we continue fighting for the people who feed, fuel, and clothe our nation.”
In his role, according to the USDA, Rich will engage with and advocate for farmers, ranchers and private landowners and “engage directly with landowners across the country and work to address challenges posed by government overreach, activist pressure campaigns, and outside interests that threaten private property rights and the long-term viability of rural communities.”
Those threats, according to the release, include “pressure related to large-scale solar and wind development that may impact productive farmland, ranchland, and rural livelihoods.”
Rich, an ardent Trump supporter, has turned to song in the past to express his feelings about perceived government overreach including in “The Devil & The TVA,” a song he released last September. The tune criticizes the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned public utility established by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Rich fought against the TVA’s plan to build a methane gas facility in Tennessee’s Cheatham County that would impact local farmland.
“President Trump has afforded me the great honor of serving as Special Envoy for American Landowners,” said Rich, in a statement. “I look forward to representing and advocating for landowners’ rights and standing up for the farmers, ranchers, and rural families who work every day to provide for our country. Protecting private property rights and ensuring that landowners are not harassed, intimidated, or pressured by outside interests will be at the heart of this mission.”
Maren Morris is ready to hit pause on touring.
During an interview with Today on Friday (July 3), the 36-year-old country-pop star revealed that her current dreamGIRL Tour will be her last for a while as she focuses on songwriting and spending time with her son. The brief trek wraps Aug. 15 with a show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium.
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“This is sort of my last tour for a bit, because I want to be able to free think more and be in the studio more, and just figure out what I want to say next,” Morris said when asked about making time to write. “It’s been 10 years of touring, so no real time to stop and truly be creative unless I carve out the time.”
Morris — who recently revealed the wedding favors she received from Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s nuptials — appeared on Today to promote HERO: A Second Wind, the expanded anniversary edition of her 2016 debut album. The set peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, spawned the top five Hot Country Songs hit “My Church” and earned Morris a Grammy nomination for best new artist.
Released June 26 through Legacy Recordings, HERO: A Second Wind includes the newly recorded songs “Hard Liquor and Soft Rock” and “We Can’t Be Friends,” along with original demos from the HERO songwriting sessions.
After wrapping the dreamGIRL Tour, which features songs spanning her catalog, Morris said she’s looking forward to spending more time at home with her 6-year-old son and returning to the studio.
“I’m excited to home a little bit more after this run,” Morris said. “So we’ll do this string of shows, knock it out, and I’ll go home. My son is starting kindergarten and I really wanted to be off the road when that began. I’ll just get back in the studio and figure out what the eff happens next.”
One possibility for what’s next? Broadway. Morris has already branched into writing for film, co-writing “Kiss the Sky” and “Even When I’m Not” for DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot in 2024. She said she’d also love to write music for a Broadway production.
“I feel like Broadway — it’s just a storytelling medium and you get more time,” the singer said. “So I would love to do something like that, write for a musical.”
Morris released her most recent studio album, Dreamsicle, in 2025.
The United States Men’s National Soccer Team is on a roll during this 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament, and Weston McKennie made sure to celebrate their latest victory while jamming out to country music’s biggest song.
Following the team’s 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina on Wednesday night, the midfielder shared a celebratory video on social media from the team bus. In the clip, he played and passionately sang along to Ella Langley’s smash hit “Choosin’ Texas.”
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In the clip, McKennie sings along to the chorus while smiling at the camera before panning over to his teammates, including Tyler Adams, Christian Pulisic and Antonee Robinson, who sing along during the post-match celebration. He then turns the camera toward the other side of the bus, where the rest of the squad joins in on the festivities.
The video also included a message for the country star that read, “Nothing better than @ellalangleymusic after a win.”
Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” continues its historic run at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, where it logs an 11th nonconsecutive week at No. 1. The song is now the longest-leading Hot 100 No. 1 by a woman with a country hit, among songs that have also reached Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart.
The U.S. men’s team will next face Belgium on Monday in a highly anticipated rematch of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Round of 16, when the Americans fell 2-1 in extra time. The U.S. will be without leading striker Folarin Balogun, who was suspended after receiving a red card during Wednesday’s victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Alan Jackson played a career-spanning set of 24 songs at his final concert Saturday night (June 27) at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, over four decades after moving to Music City to chase his dreams of being a country music singer-songwriter.
Jackson spearheaded his special ‘Last Call: One More for the Road – The Finale’ show, bringing his decades of touring to a close with a massive concert that not only sold out Nissan Stadium, but brought fans who didn’t score tickets into the stadium to pack out downtown Nashville for a livestream of the event.
Early on in the evening, before Jackson’s set, artists including Miranda Lambert, Eric Church, Lainey Wilson, Cody Johnson, Riley Green, Thomas Rhett, Luke Combs and Carrie Underwood paid tribute to the country hitmaker, performing some of their favorite songs from his extensive catalog, which includes 26 No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay chart hits.
Church performed a rendition of Jackson’s heartbreaking “Someday,” Wilson performed the lovestruck “Tall, Tall Trees,” Johnson sang “Job Description,” and Thomas Rhett offered “Small Town Southern Man.”
Though rain and thunderstorms rolled through at various points during the concert, spirits couldn’t be dampened. After lightning and more rain rolled in halfway through the evening, fans showed up ready to party as Jackson took the stage to much fanfare. He led the packed audience through years’ worth of hits, from his breakthrough “Here in the Real World” to rowdy anthems like “Good Time” and classics such as “Chattahoochee” that chronicle small-town living and young love.
By the time Jackson ended his set close to midnight, waving to fans from the stage as fireworks lit up the night sky above, concertgoers were roaring their approval and cheering the artist who has given country music lovers so many enduring hits and so many celebratory concerts over the years.
Below, Billboard rounds up every song from the star’s headlining portion of the show.
See the full setlist performed by Alan Jackson at his final concert below.
He has always been notably quiet in person and has seldom had a lot to say from stage.
But big speeches weren’t what people have wanted from Alan Jackson. They wanted the songs: “Drive (For Daddy Gene),” “Chattahoochee,” “Don’t Rock the Jukebox,” “Remember When,” “Small Town Southern Man,” “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).” Those titles spoke volumes about Jackson as a singer-songwriter, and about the fans he served.
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Jackson caps his concert career Saturday (June 27) at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium with Last Call: One More for the Road — The Finale, a show that serves as a milestone in the Country Music Hall of Fame member’s career and a nostalgic reminder of his substantial body of work. But just as importantly, it highlights his influence. More than 35 years after Jackson reached the national spotlight, the ‘90s country that he helped define — marked by strong hooks, proud lower- and middle-class stories and an unapologetic use of fiddle and steel guitar — is hot. “Last Call” will feature appearances by a bundle of younger artists who took the baton, including Riley Green, Cody Johnson, Lainey Wilson, Eric Church, Miranda Lambert, Lee Ann Womack and Luke Combs, just to name a few.
They’re not the only music folks who’ll be on hand. The stadium will also welcome the four executives who headed the labels that oversaw his releases prior to this year: Tim DuBois, who signed Jackson to Arista Nashville; Joe Galante, who worked with him when a restructuring placed Arista under the RCA Label Group umbrella and, later, under Sony BMG; Mike Dungan, who signed him to Capitol Nashville; and Cindy Mabe, who succeeded Dungan at Universal Music Group Nashville (now MCA).
They collectively see Jackson as a key voice for the nation’s heartland.
“I call him the Norman Rockwell of country music,” DuBois says. “He just paints a picture that is so relatable to middle-class America.”
Jackson has amassed 26 No. 1 singles on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs among 50 top 10 singles, deftly using everyday language and unpretentious musical construction to create a bond with the genre’s listeners. He avoided gimmickry and never overplayed the emotional content in his material. Instead, he delivered his stories with sincerity and respect, using those tales as his primary means of communication. He could acknowledge commitment and economics in the same chorus — as he did when he sang “Livin’ on love, buyin’ on time” — capture intimacy in the lines of “When Somebody Loves You” and laugh at rejection in “She’s Got the Rhythm (And I Got the Blues),” the latter co-written with fellow traditionalist Randy Travis.
Jackson connected with men and women at the heart of their humanity, but he had his surface attractions, too.
“I know I sold a ton of music,” DuBois quips, “but I also sold a lot of long legs and long hair.”
A native of Newnan, Ga., Jackson communicated regular-Joe status through a love for the water and a passion for automobiles. He married his high-school sweetheart and kept cassette recordings of his songs in brown paper grocery bags, writing about his parents, his wife, his good times, his church and his growing pains. Fans saw him as one of their own — and he was. He still is.
But he wasn’t a pushover when it came to the music business. He needed a record company, but wasn’t about to sacrifice his identity to make it. Particularly as a younger man, he was prone to push back when the business people asked him to try marketing moves that didn’t fit his view of his art.
“He wanted it to be about the music,” remembers Dungan, who first worked with Jackson in the early days of his career. “When you’re the head of marketing, as I was at Arista, there are a million opportunities to fight with a man like that.”
And they did. Dungan remembers one brutally loud argument at a Nashville restaurant that turned the heads of other patrons. It wasn’t personal. Jackson simply had a public profile and — like most great artists — a sense of what he was willing to do when his name or likeness was attached. He knew what made his business work, and he didn’t compromise when it didn’t make sense.
“He was always on the lookout for anyone and everyone who was going to try to interfere with his creative process,” Dungan recalls.
Galante knew that side of Jackson, too. A year before Arista came under Galante’s leadership, Jackson registered a top 5 single with “Little Man,” a frank lament about the brute force of big businesses gobbling up market share in small communities. It wasn’t just posturing, but his own artistic success placed him in situations where he had to make choices between the music and the business sides of the music business.
When WHTZ New York, Z100, heard Jackson’s 9/11 reflection, “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning),” the top 40 station was interested in playing it. As a five-minute country ballad, “Where Were You” was a bit of an outlier for a pop station. The company was willing to accept that, but executive vp Butch Waugh funneled one request to Galante: Could Jackson remix it with less steel guitar? Galante called the artist with the proposal.
“The silence — it seemed like an eternity, but it was probably three or four seconds,” Galante recalls. “He said to me, ‘I kind of like steel.’ And the next thing I heard was a click. I went into Butch’s office, and he said to me, ‘How did it go?’ I said, ‘Well, as I expected, he’s not going to change the record. And I don’t think he should.’”
It’s not like Jackson was acting out of selfishness. Though his songwriting was a hallmark of his career, he recorded a fair number of outside songs, including 18 of his top 10 singles, such as “Little Bitty,” “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” “Gone Country” and “Right on the Money.”
There was a practicality about it — invariably, the songs represented his love of classic country or expressed his viewpoint in a way that he didn’t think he could. The songs he selected and the compromises he refused to make were all a part of a genre that was central to his identity.
“He never lost his roots, and I think he always thought about that,” Galante says. “I mean, he was a shade-tree mechanic, coming from a small town, and still remembered what the struggle was like. I think that resonated in everything he picked, or wrote, and we worked.”
When Jackson left Arista, he called Dungan, who had moved on to Capitol, and suggested working together again. He acknowledged that they had had their share of arguments, but said he always knew that Dungan was giving him an honest assessment. He apologized for the long-ago restaurant squabble, and he laughed it off when Dungan said he wanted to get Jackson back on the radio. Jackson believed programmers had moved on.
“I was very shocked, because if you ever work with artists, you know none of them ever say that,” Dungan notes. “It’s the other side of the coin. It’s like they will not accept that radio won’t play them anymore. Here was a guy, who was very difficult in his early career, being the most grown-up adult in the room.”
The fact is that Jackson had a handle on what worked for him.
“Looking back,” says DuBois, acknowledging his own battles with Jackson, “he was right more times than I was.”
Jackson’s final concert is timely in a way he could not have predicted when he booked it more than a year ago. Back in 1989, Jackson — despite his longing for a recording contract — insisted on meeting DuBois’ boss, Clive Davis, before he became the first artist signed to Arista’s unproven Nashville division. Davis died on June 22, just five days prior to Jackson’s stadium show. Similarly, Larry Shell, who co-wrote “Murder on Music Row” — the award-winning 1999 release that excoriated the country industry for turning its back on tradition — died June 17. George Strait, who recorded “Murder” with Jackson, will participate in the concert.
Jackson’s legacy “matters so much, because the past, present and future of country music all connect together,” says Mabe, whose Joan of Arc Music is set to develop an NBC special out of the concert. “He’s an extension of Hank Williams, and what he’ll do for that next generation is they’re going to pick up the extension of Alan Jackson and move it forward. That’s why this concert and everything that comes in this moment is going to be so pivotal. It’s a cultural moment. It’s not just a last concert.”
Mabe’s production, of course, will need to demonstrate that through the music and through the other voices that might appear in it. Jackson, as someone who isn’t prone to talk much publicly, is certainly not one to boast. It’s not necessary.
The most talkative people in a room “tell you everything that they possibly know about anything,” Mabe observes. “The one with all the information is the quiet guy in the corner. That’s Alan Jackson. I’ll be honest, he knows a lot of stuff.”
Bailey Zimmerman is off the hook after allegedly trashing a hotel room in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The country artist had been facing federal and criminal misdemeanor charges after he allegedly caused $16,000 in damage to his room, including the television, phone, coffee table and two chairs, as well as marks on the walls and stains on the carpet. According to TMZ, which first reported the news, which Billboard independently verified, the hotel also alleged that the singer charged more than $400 in alcohol to his hotel room, but the tab was not settled.
Charges have since been dropped, and the case dismissed because full restitution was made, reports KRQE, quoting the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office.
As previously reported, Zimmerman had been scheduled to perform at an amphitheater at Sandia Resort and Casino in Albuquerque on May 27, but according to TMZ, authorities noted the singer seemed to be intoxicated, stumbling and acting hostilely, as well as throwing stage equipment during soundcheck. The outlet reported that Zimmerman left the soundcheck, returned to the resort and canceled the show.
According to the title, Zimmerman was ultimately evicted due to his behavior, but the hotel called police to escort the singer off the premises when he allegedly refused to leave in a courtesy bus.
Zimmerman went on to apologize for the incident. “To the Pueblo of Sandia and my fans: I want to address the events surrounding my canceled show in New Mexico in May and the reports that have followed,” he wrote in a statement, seen by Billboard. “First things first, I want to apologize to the Pueblo of Sandia and to everyone at Sandia Resort & Casino. I never meant for any of this to come across as disrespectful. I am deeply sorry for my actions that transpired. I respect your community and the hospitality and appreciate the opportunity that was given to me to perform on Native Land. I take full accountability for everything that happened and I am sorry to anyone who feels hurt or disrespected.”
The message continued, “To my fans who bought tickets and showed up expecting a performance, I am so sorry, you deserved better from me. I understand that being a musician comes with big responsibilities, both on and off stage, and I know that I fell short that day. I am reflecting on the disappointment and concern that I caused.”
He insisted he was “taking this legal matter seriously. I am committed to doing the work necessary to learn and grow. Thank you to my fans for holding me accountable and for understanding that I am human. I do not take your support for granted.”
Zimmerman’s next scheduled concert is Thursday evening, June 25 at the Country Drive Music Festival in Ashland, Nebraska.