By Melissa Grego
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - It's never too early to plan for Christmas 2001. Garth Brooks and Whoopi Goldberg are teaming up for ``Call Me Claus,'' a two-hour Yuletide musical set to air on cable's TNT in December. Goldberg will star as a home shopping network producer who hires an actor to play Santa Claus, but the thespian actually turns out to be Santa himself. Nigel Hawthorne, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Victor Garber will co-star. Brooks is expected to contribute music for the project, and he may bring Goldberg into the recording studio for the project as well, he said Tuesday via satellite during TNT's presentation at the Television Critics Assn. tour in Pasadena, where the project was announced. Brooks will likely not appear onscreen in the picture, he added. He and Goldberg will executive produce.
In an unconventional arrangement, Columbia TriStar Television will release the home video of the picture nine days after the TNT premiere.
Wednesday January 17 2:41 AM ET
Entertainment News
By Jay Orr(posted on country.com)
Eleven years after he had a Country Radio Seminar crowd whooping and hollering over "Friends in Low Places," Garth Brooks returned to the annual event Friday (March 2), this time performing solo. Dressed casually in jeans, a Chris LeDoux ball cap and work boots, Brooks revisited his old hits and played songs that influenced the direction of his music. He also answered questions from the large lunchtime gathering at the Nashville Convention Center.
Brooks made an ambiguous announcement of his retirement in October, though he is at work on a new album. "It's been a year, a year and a half, of taking care of responsibilities that I ran from for years," he said, apparently referring to his role as father to his daughters. Brooks referred only briefly to future work. His new album, he predicted, will show Bob Seger's influence. "For me, where Bob Seger was in the '70s is where I want to be right now as an artist, singing what I call 'blue-collar cool stuff," he said. "When I see the album, I see thunderstorms, wheat fields, that kind of cowboy country thing, for me."
He also said his estrangement from his wife Sandy (they filed for divorce in November)has colored the new project. "Everything that I write ... sounds like Edgar Allan Poe on downers. Dark would be bright for this stuff ... I should be drinking to write this kind of stuff." Of the 4,000 songs he has heard for the new project, Brooks said he has put a hold on one for himself and one for a duet with Trisha Yearwood. His producer, Allen Reynolds, has listened to more than 10,000 songs without bringing one to Brooks.
The CRS luncheon was hosted by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the performing rights organization that collects royalties for the performance of Brooks' songs. "I know the ASCAP luncheon is to come and to show you guys stuff you haven't seen," he said, "but you guys pretty much know me inside and out, so what I thought we'd do [for the 11-year anniversary] is ... just talk to each other." Brooks began with Cat Stevens' 1971 pop hit, "Wild World," a song he said he played at Willie's Saloon in Stillwater, Okla., before becoming a recording artist. He recalled meeting Bob Dylan at the Grammys in 1992 -- "I could never understand a damn word he ever said," Brooks joked before performing Dylan's "To Make You Feel My Love."
Brooks waxed wistful for the country music of the '70s. "It will never be what it was when it was Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, Conway Twitty, Charley Pride, Loretta Lynn," he said. He proclaimed "He Stopped Loving Her Today" the "all-time, best-written country song there is," but said his personal favorite is Cal Smith's 1974 hit, "Country Bumpkin." From his own repertoire, Brooks did parts of "Beaches of Cheyenne" (a request from an audience member), "The River," "Unanswered Prayers," "She's Every Woman" and "We Shall Be Free." He brazenly demonstrated his debt to Seger and James Taylor, playing a medley that suggested striking similarities between Seger's "Turn the Page" and Brooks' "The Thunder Rolls," and acknowledging Taylor as a key influence on his arrangement of Victoria Shaw's "She's Every Woman."
Fielding questions from the audience, Brooks said he would most like to ask a question of Jesus Christ, though he does not know what that question might be. He admitted he "got the living s--- kicked out of me" for undertaking the Chris Gaines project. "I don't think people really dug me playing a character that was so opposite of me." He invited one audience member, Gina Notrica, to join him onstage to harmonize on a chorus of "The River." And to Johnny Cash's sister, he admitted that while he admires the Man in Black "one of the few smart decisions I made was not to try and copy Johnny Cash."
Brooks nodded to his CRS appearance 11 years ago with a performance of "Pains," a parody of "Friends in Low Places," and he finished his informal session with "The Dance."
By Edward Morris(posted on country.com) No one bashed Faith Hill or Shania Twain during the "Too Country? Too Pop?" discussion at Country Radio Seminar Thursday (March 1). In fact, most speakers agreed that country acts who find a pop audience are good for the business as a whole. "I don't think country music should be the only format on the planet to have boundaries," said singer and panelist Collin Raye. "It stifles creativity." Without mentioning "Murder On Music Row" by name, Raye lamented the "fingerpointing" that the song had engendered within the industry. "Old Hank [Williams] wasn't traditional at the time," Raye observed, alluding to the song's invocation of Williams as the essence of country. "He was a rebel."
Appearing on the discussion panel with Raye were Brad Paisley, newest member of the Grand Ole Opry and an uncompromising advocate of traditional country; Bill Macky, vice president of national promotion for MCA Records; Pam Shane, media analyst; Gregg Swedborg, program director of KEEY, Minneapolis; Joe Galante, chairman of the RCA Label Group; and Meg Stevens, program director of WGAR, Cleveland.
Paisley began the discussion by defining what he believes country music is. "[It's] about honesty and reality," he said. "Pop music focuses on the record, country music on the song." In addition, he noted, country has a sonic "texture that's not found in other places -- steel guitars, fiddles, harmony vocals." While agreeing with Paisley about the primacy of lyrics in country music, Raye differed about the sound. "I don't think it has to do with anything sonically," he said. Demonstrating an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject matter, Raye pointed out that Ray Price's 1970 hit, "For the Good Times," is "nothing but orchestra" and a far cry from the shuffles and honky-tonk songs for which Price became famous. Even so, Raye asserted, "he's as country as cornbread." Raye also pointed out that Glen Campbell's great hits of the 1960s "weren't three-chord country songs" but that Campbell was clearly stamped as a country artist. Raye contrasted country's music emphasis on coherent lyrics with the relative unimportance of this feature in pop music. "What's 'Strawberry Fields Forever' about?" he asked rhetorically. "I don't think even John Lennon knew. But it's a great record."
Raye praised Garth Brooks for making country music look "cool" and appealing to the young, even if it meant "smashing guitars" on his television specials. "By enhancing his audience, it enhanced our business," Raye asserted."We keep having this panel, don't we, guys?" Shane remarked, "and [this time] we're not screaming at each other." She counseled record and radio executives to pay closer heed to their consumers as they create and program music. "Real people ain't stupid. They know when it's good and when it relates to their lives." All the programmers on the panel concurred that Faith Hill's high-profile appearance on last week's Grammy show was good for country music. Swedborg said that every time a pop radio station in his market plays a Faith Hill song, "it's a three-minute advertisement for our station." Instead of country stations fretting that a song they're playing will cross over to pop, he added, "we've got to get our spins first."
In response to the question of why country stations don't program music by such older and revered artists as George Jones and Merle Haggard, Swedborg said, "There's a simple answer. Not enough people want to hear it." Paisley said it particularly pains him to hear someone in authority say, "Man, that's a great record, but it's too country." "If it's a great song, take a chance," he pleaded. "Who gives a crap about [what] research [says]?" Raye voiced alarm that the industry is encouraging country songwriters to write only upbeat and positive songs. He speculated that if young Merle Haggard tried to break into the business today by playing an A&R person "Mama's Hungry Eyes," he would be stopped after the first line and told, "That's too sad." "Country music, I always thought, was supposed to be sad at times," he said. He maintained that ruling out songs about the sad side of life is "a bigger threat to country music than [any particular kind of] instrumentation is."
Crossing a country record over to pop radio isn't something a record label decides to do abitrarily or unilaterally, Galante said. "Before we try to cross something over, we talk to the artist first." And, he added dryly, "Aside from the artistic side, there's a side based on sales." Galante pointed out that country artists with crossover records have a far easier time gaining national television exposure than acts that are popular only within the country format. Remixing country songs to get a different sound, he continued, simply acknowledges the reality that "pop, like country, has its own needs ... In the other world, [different] mixes come out on a regular basis."
A speaker from the audience noted that there is little outcry about musical purity within the industry if a country artist records and "countrifies" a pop hit. Raye agreed, citing such examples as Mark Chesnutt's cover of Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," the reworking of the original lyrics in Narvel Felts' cover of Dobie Gray's "Drift Away" and Johnny Lee's "Country Party" retrofitting of Ricky Nelson's "Garden Party." Summarizing his take on musical integrity, Paisley said, "I don't have the recipe for success, but I do have one for failure. It's trying to please everybody." Raye offered this advice to those who would be arbiters of country music: "If it works, and people like it, applaud it.
