In fact, McEntire, herself a Country Music Hall of Famer (as is Lynn, of course), has been wanting to perform at the Festival for years, but her many activities, last year including her TV series Malibu Country, got in the way.
“We’re not doing the show anymore, and we made a point of coordinating our concert dates this year so we could do Johnny’s festival,” says McEntire, who was gently swayed by Bill Carter, the festival’s producer and founder, and her former manager (she’s now managed by her husband Narvel Blackstock).
“Bill’s a very inspiring person, and if he believes in something, you better take notice!” McEntire continues. “His word goes a long way for me and Narvel, so we penciled in the date and then put it in ink—and now we’re doing it.”
Both Lynn and Bare were contemporaries of Johnny Cash. Although McEntire is younger and didn’t achieve her own country chart dominance until the mid-1980s, she too, has a deep connection to the Man in Black.
“In 1991, when the plane crash happened, we asked Waylon Jennings to speak at the funeral,” says McEntire, recalling the event that tragically claimed the lives of eight of her band members.
“He said, ‘I just can’t do it. It’s way too close to what happened to me.’”
Jennings was playing bass for Buddy Holly in 1959, and was going to fly with him to the gig following their appearance in Clear Lake, Iowa—but gave up his seat to J.P. Richardson—a.k.a. The Big Bopper who perished along with Holly and Ritchie Valens when that plane crashed.
“I said, ‘Waylon, I totally understand,’” McEntire continues. “So I asked Johnny—who had just buried his mother—and he came and spoke.”
McEntire had performed with Cash once, in Switzerland.
“I didn’t know him really well personally, but my good friend did,” she says. “Johnny understood that someone was needing some comforting: We put people on a pedestal and think they’re immortal and beyond perfect, but they have hearts and feelings and care. For Johnny to come and speak at the memorial was so sweet and special for all the families, and meant the world to them.”
McEntire is especially glad to support the Johnny Cash Music Festival’s charitable endeavors, which include the restoration of his boyhood home in Dyess, Ark., and a scholarship fund established in his name.
“Getting kids in college is very important to me,” says McEntire, “and refurbishing Johnny’s boyhood home is such a cool idea.”
Meanwhile, McEntire is focusing on her own cool idea in spreading a positive message via her new composition “Pray for Peace.”
“That’s been a big project for me,” she says. “I was walking around on my place in Tennessee, and just started singing the words ‘pray for peace’ and got the biggest chills and said, ‘Wow! That’s a song.’ Then every time I went out walking I came up with more of the song.”
She eventually brought the song to the studio and recorded it, and is now asking her fans to contribute to a YouTube video for the song that she’s just posted.
“I’m asking the fans to submit clips of them, from wherever they are in the world,” says McEntire. “I want them to invite their friends, family and co-workers to film and upload themselves doing the ‘Pray for Peace’ motions in the video in spreading a message of peace, from a location that shows where they are in the world—like a landmark or scenic view.”
“If we can reach an agreement on praying for peace, maybe I’ll settle down!” she adds.
Until then, McEntire remains busy as ever.
“We’ve been doing concerts all year long,” she says, noting also her appearance in Nashville at the May 6 “We’re All 4 the Hall” benefit concert for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. And projecting ahead to the Johnny Cash Music Festival, she says she’s particularly excited to see her fellow headliners, though she singles Bare out.
“I haven’t worked with Bare in years!” she says. “I’m really looking forward to it!”
"Tickets for this concert have sold very quickly," said Haley Stout, manager of the University’s Central Box Office. "I encourage anyone who wants to see it to get their tickets as soon as they can because we have only a few at each price level left and we expect an early sell-out."
Tickets for the Johnny Cash Music Festival are on sale now and available at Arkansas State’s Central Box Office (1-888-278-3267) and online at Tickets.AState.edu. Tickets can also be purchased by logging onto the official website of the Johnny Cash Music Festival: JohnnyCashMusicFest.com.
news@showmetimes.com
Public Hearing Announced in Caruthersville
on Overearnings Complaint Against Ameren
Consumers filed the complaint after public documents released by the PSC showed that over the past two years Ameren has over earned more than $100 million from its customers than the PSC had authorized.
A complaint is Ameren customers’ only opportunity to oppose the monopoly utility’s overearnings and persuade the PSC to order a reduction in their rates. Such overearnings potentially cost Missouri consumers millions of dollars.
Noranda Aluminum, the state’s largest consumer of electricity, filed the overearnings complaint at the urging of both residential and business consumers. The complaint asks the PSC to order Ameren to reduce its rates.
The public hearing will be held June 9, 6:00 p.m. in Caruthersville at the Armory located at 801 West 3rd Street.
This would not be the first time Ameren has earned more than the PSC authorized. A story last March in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed that “the utility’s own financial data show that it earned millions of dollars more than authorized in 2012.”
The story reported that Ameren over earned $80 million. Its 11.66 percent return on equity exceeded the 10.2 percent the PSC had authorized.
Ameren has increased base rates by 43 percent over the past six years.
In addition, since 2009 has charged customers $500 Million in surcharges. Ameren has indicated it will ask the PSC for another base rate increase later this summer.
The Fair Energy Rate Action Fund (FERAF – www.fairenergyrates.com) is a Missouri-based consumer and employer group formed in 2009 with the goal of keeping Missouri’s energy rates fair and affordable. FERAF seeks to accomplish this goal by educating the general public and public policy makers about the impact of utility rates on business and residential consumers.
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An Evening With Chris Tomlin UPDATE:
BRANDON HEATH Added to the Concert Tour!
Cape Girardeau, Missouri - On Friday, July 18th, GRAMMY® award winner and 21 time Dove Awards recipient, Chris Tomlin is bringing his tour to the Show Me Center.
Tomlin has dedicated his life career to a singular pursuit: to bring people closer to God. Building a career is just fine, he says, but nothing compares to building bridges through music that lead to hope, healing and higher ground. Yet Tomlin also embodies something rare in popular music. On his latest disc, Burning Lights, he not only hits the mark for deep substance, but also delivers lean, muscular songs that exert a magnetic pop pull. True to its title, Burning Lights shines like a sonic supernova, yet never loses its human scope and beating heart in the process.
Tomlin has had a very successful career. After ten No. 1 radio singles, a GRAMMY Award and 8 other GRAMMY nominations, 21 Dove Awards, and one platinum album and four gold albums, he touches the hearts of listeners like no other.
Brandon Heath has been added as the opener for the Chris Tomlin concert. Heath is one of Christian music’s most beloved and respected artists and songwriters. A two-time GMA Male Vocalist and five-time GRAMMY nominee, Heath has delivered some of Christian music’s most thought-provoking anthems, including the 2009 GMA Dove Award-winning Song of the Year, “Give Me Your Eyes” and “Your Love,” which topped the charts for an amazing eight weeks. A Nashville native, Heath began writing songs in his teens and gained a national audience with the release of his 2006 Reunion Records debut album,
Don’t Get Comfortable. His warm, expressive voice and intuitive songwriting have earned him an enthusiastic fan base and the respect of his peers.
This is your chance to see Chris Tomlin live in his first ever performance at the Show Me Center as well as his special guest Brandon Heath. Tickets are on sale now. You can purchase tickets online at www.showmecenter.biz, in person at the Show Me Center box office, or by phone at 573-651-5000. “Like” the Show Me Center on Facebook for more information and promotions at www.facebook.com/showmecenter.
Submitted to
news@showmetimes.com
Cape Girardeau, Missouri – On Friday, July 18th, GRAMMY® award winner and 21 time Dove Awards recipient, Chris Tomlin is bringing his tour to the Show Me Center.
Tomlin has dedicated his life career to a singular pursuit: to bring people closer to God. Building a career is just fine, he says, but nothing compares to building bridges through music that lead to hope, healing and higher ground. Yet Tomlin also embodies something rare in popular music.
On his latest disc, Burning Lights, he not only hits the mark for deep substance, but also delivers lean, muscular songs that exert a magnetic pop pull. True to its title, Burning Lights shines like a sonic supernova, yet never loses its human scope and beating heart in the process.
Tomlin has had a very successful career. After ten No. 1 radio singles, a GRAMMY Award and 8 other GRAMMY nominations, 21 Dove Awards, and one platinum album and four gold albums, he touches the hearts of listeners like no other.
This is your chance to see Chris Tomlin live in his first ever performance at the Show Me Center. Tickets go on sale to the public Friday, May 2nd at 10 a.m. You can purchase tickets online at www.showmecenter.biz, in person at the Show Me Center box office, or by phone at 573-651-5000. “Like” the Show Me Center on Facebook for more information and promotions at www.facebook.com/showmecenter.
news@showmetimes.com
Jonesboro, Arkansas - Bobby Bare wanted to appear at last year’s Johnny Cash Music Festival, but he was already booked by the time the date was set.
But for the fourth annual Cash Fest, to be held Aug. 15 once again at Arkansas State University’s Convocation Center in Jonesboro, he emphatically states without hesitation, “I’m there!
A big Cash fan since the Man in Black arrived on the country and pop music scenes in 1955, Bare had also been a friend of Cash since 1957.
“That’s when I met John,” says Bare, who likewise broke through on both the pop and country charts in the early ‘60s with hits like “Detroit City” and “500 Miles Away from Home.”
Cash, of course, had begun his career with Sun Records in Memphis, where his early country/pop hits included “I Walk the Line” and “Ballad of a Teenage Queen.”
“He moved to California, and I went over to his house a couple times,” Bare recalls. “He had people like Patsy Cline, Don Gibson, Grandpa Jones. He was having a goat roast, and we were all sitting around the big living room singing and playing.”
Bare was living in L.A. then.
“Everybody saw me as a West Coast pop singer, which wasn’t true, but I’d had pop hits. Buck Owens and Wynn Stewart and Harlan Howard and Hank Cochran were out there, and we were all friends. But there weren’t a lot of country people there who were singers, so I hung out with pop stars like the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean. Glen Campbell lived right up the street.”
Bare had had a No. 2 pop hit in 1958 with "The All American Boy," a talking blues song that was mistakenly credited to Bill Parsons that was inspired by Elvis Presley.
“Chet Atkins was a big fan of the thing, and loved the way I talked,” says Bare. “He signed me to RCA in Nashville, and my first three or four records there—‘Shame On Me,’ ‘Detroit City,’ ‘500 Miles,’ ‘Miller’s Cave’—were mostly talkin’. About the only singing I did on most of the big hits was me singing along with the Anita Kerr Singers [vocal backing group] on the chorus. Me and Bill Anderson [who had the country/pop hits ‘Still’ and ‘8 x 10’ at the same time] weren’t so much singing as doing recitations. I don’t think I really got to sing until ‘Four Strong Winds’ [Bare’s No. 3 country hit in 1964] or ‘(Margie's At) The Lincoln Park Inn” [No. 4 in ‘69].”
With songs on both the pop and country charts, Bare was able to tour the South with rock acts like Bobby Darin, the Dave Clark Five and The Ronettes, then return two months later to the same venues, this time with country stars like Marty Robbins, Hank Snow and Loretta Lynn.
Bare soon relocated to the Nashville area, as did Cash.
“We lived out in Hendersonville with them for 45 years, and when our daughter died in 1975, John was the first one there. We both lived on a lake, and I used to go sit on the boat docks with John and catch fish. He was just good people. We all know that—and I know it firsthand.”
Bare warmly remembers an episode of his 1980s TV series Bobby Bare and Friends on The Nashville Network, in which he interviewed songwriters, who performed their hits. Cash and his fellow Sun Records star Carl Perkins were the guests.
“They were the only ones I had on the show that day, and somewhere during the interview I said, ‘John, did you ever do anything crazy on the road?’—which of course was a real loaded question. I knew some of the crazy stuff he’d done! But he said, ‘Nope. Never!’ Carl busted out laughing and so did I, and then John caught it and we had to stop the tape, we were all laughing so hard.”
Cash “done a lot of crazy [stuff] that almost killed him,” continues Bare, “but didn’t we all?” Bottom line, he adds, “He had a heart as big as Tennessee and Texas put together.”
Last year Bare joined Cash in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
“I didn’t do anything to promote going in—like others do—so I was shocked when I got the call,” he says. “Tom T. Hall inducted me. He used to play in my band, and said, ‘There are a lot of crazy things you’ve done up there—and it’s beginning to look like we’re gonna get away with it!’ Kris Kristofferson sang ‘Come Sundown’ [Bare’s 1970 hit, which Kristofferson wrote], and he got very emotional about the whole thing.”
Kristofferson, who also wrote Cash’s classic hit “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” played the first Johnny Cash Music Festival. Looking ahead now to Aug. 15, Bare has a special understanding of the significance of the event, which raises money to restore Cash’s boyhood home in nearby Dyess, Ark.
“I know how he felt about his home place, and how historical things meant a lot to him,” Bare says. “So it’s just a privilege—and an opportunity for me to try to help raise money for it, and for the ASU scholarships that are awarded in his name. I feel we owe Johnny Cash as much as we can give back to him, no matter what it is.”
And Bare is especially pleased that this year’s Johnny Cash Music Festival, which will be hosted by legendary singer and comedian Mark Lowry, will also star fellow Country Music Hall of Famers Reba McEntire and Loretta Lynn.
“I’m like everybody else,” the country music veteran proudly concludes. “I love Reba and Loretta, but the deal is, I’ve loved them from the very beginning!”
Tickets for the Johnny Cash Music Festival are on sale now and available at Arkansas State’s Central Box Office (1-888-278-3267) and online at Tickets.AState.edu. Tickets can also be purchased by logging onto the official website of the Johnny Cash Music Festival: JohnnyCashMusicFest.com.
