Lady Antebellum in Omaha

Lady A came to town on Friday, November 19th and showed everyone exactly why they are getting nominated for so many awards lately. 
David Nail warmed up the crowd nicely for the group.  At first everyone was sitting, but after telling everybody to get up and sing his song Red Light with him, everybody did stand up and most people stood the rest of the roughly 35 minute set.
Unlike most concerts where the act comes out rocking and running around, Lady A took a different approach and showed off what they do best-harmonize.  The curtain rose to them singing I Run To You in an acoustic way for the first part until the rest of the band joined in.  After that they got the show rockin' by singing the fan anthem, Stars Tonight.  And they kept the rest of the night rocking, even when they slowed it down to show off each of their voices.  One of my favorite parts (which I knew it would be going into the show) was getting to hear Dave sing Do I, which him and Charles wrote with Luke Bryan, who took the song to #1.  I gotta admit that I'm a Dave girl, so getting to hear him sing all by himself and really hear the voice that is usually hidden by Charles and Hillary's voices was a real treat for me.

Omaha was the next-to-last stop on their fall tour, but they treated it like it was the last night of the tour.  It has become quite popular that pranks are pulled on the last night of a tour, but Lady A got pranked by David Nail's crew in Omaha instead of Kansas City.  During the song American Honey, a bunch of guys in bee costumes stormed the stage, dancing all around.  It had Hillary laughing so much she could hardly keep her composure to sing after the instrumental interlude that they entered during.  Then towards the end of of the song, Charles told them to come back out and he told them that they ruined the song.  Below are a couple videos of the prank that I found on YouTube.  You'll have to turn your monitor sideways for the first one :)





Lady A always seems to be having a fun time during their shows.  Case in point, just look at the pictures below-

Their energy onstage is infectious and makes you leave wanting more.  Unfortunately for me, I don't know when I'll be able to get that next 'Lady A fix'. I will just have to wait and see where their next tour takes them, and then take myself to the closest one!

And to close out the blog-a few more pictures from the night-

CMAs > ACMs > CMT music vid = Grammys > >>>>> AMAs

There's only 5 (soon to be 6 with the ACAs) music award shows that I tend to watch. My favorite of those are the Country Music Association awards, aka the CMAs. The CMAs were held just a couple weeks ago and did not disappoint. There were lots of great performances and I felt the winners in their respective categories deserved their win. Then last night was the American Music Awards, or the AMAs. Those are on the very, very bottom of the totem pole. I love all kinds of music, not just country. And I like many of the artists that performed on the awards show last night and the songs they did. The problem is that most of those non-country genre performers are not the greatest live. They are so over-produced in the studio and then sound like crap when you see them live. It seems all they care about are the theatrics of the performance and forget about trying to sound good while doing it. If it wasn't for the fact that my favorite artist, Lady Antebellum, was up for 5 awards I wouldn't have even watched it. At least with the Grammys they tend to not go so over-the-top with the performances and they get a good variety of performers.
And the AMAs are fan voted, which can be good and bad. Obviously the teeny boppers have all the time in the world to vote for Justin Beiber since he won 4 awards, although he may not be deserving of all of them. From what I have heard him sing, he's good, but not worth the craze that's surrounding him. I guess we'll see how that turns out in a year or two. Other than that, the people who won in the other categories aired seemed to be about the outcome I was expecting. Here's hoping for some better performances at the upcoming awards shows!

My little issue with the Hello World music vid

So first of all anybody that knows me knows that I absolutely love Lady Antebellum.  And that may be putting it a bit mildly.  (Let me insert a plug here for the twitter account @ladyafans that I run with a couple of other lovely gals.  Follow it if you have a twitter account!)  I love the song Hello World.  It is the one song by them that can get me a bit teared up everytime I hear it.  And I love the video that they have done to go with it.  I had something slightly different in my mind, but it is still a very powerful video that will get a person full of emotion.  So my issue with the video? During the crash scene there are tons of people standing around right next to the accident!  Maybe its from having parents that were on the volunteer rescue squad in the small town I'm from and having a husband who is a doctor, but in real life they would not be able to be that close and there would be police officers there keeping them back.  So other than that little issue I have I love the video so here it is for you to enjoy as well!

October, the month of much CD buying!

 

The month of October was a big CD buying month for me. The last 3 weeks of the month included a trip (or 2) to the store to get a CD that had just come out that day.

It all started with the October 12th release of the self titled debut album by The Band Perry and a Target exclusive Christmas CD from Lady Antebellum called A Merry Little Christmas.  Admittedly, I only listened through the Christmas CD from Lady A once and then put it away. It will come back out the day after Thanksgiving and get much play during the following month.  But from what I remember hearing it was great!  The Band Perry put together a quite impressive debut album.  I already had their digital EP which contains 5 of the 11 songs on the CD and loved those 5 songs.  The 6 songs added to those did not dissapoint either.  My favorite is probably Double Heart which is about a guy getting a tattoo with the woman's name next to his which sends her running away as fast as possible (and it happens with more than one guy!).  Besides being a fun song, it is what I'm guessing the most difficult to sing vocally for Kimberly, but she does it to perfection as she does on all of the songs.

On October 19th the 4th album from Sugarland titled The Incredible Machine was released.  And once again Jennifer and Kristian put out an amazing collection of songs.  Besided the almost too catchy Stuck Like Glue, my favorite song from the album would be Tonight, which ironically comes right after Stuck Like Glue on the CD.  It is a slow tempo song and really shows off the "incredible machine" of a voice that Jennifer Nettles has.  I'm pretty sure she could sing the phone book and make it sound cool with the range of styles of music she can do.  Sugarland continues to grow with each album and seem to create a new sound to the band while keeping it the same at the same time.

And of course just last week on October 25th (not sure why it was released on a monday) Taylor Swift's much anticipated 3rd album came out.  I guess quite a few other people bought it too since I heard it sold over a million in it's first week!  A couple of my favorite songs on the album are ones that are actually not about the boys in her life.  Never Grow Up is the new version of The Best Day from her previous album Fearless.  While not really being about the same thing, it is one of those slow songs about life when younger that makes a person cry when hearing it.  And I'm kind of a sucker for those kinds of songs.  Mean is a song about all of the Taylor haters out there.  Not so ironically it is the most country/bluegrass sounding song she has ever done for all of those that say she is pop and not at all country.  Although those are my 2 favorites, the song that I feel is the best lyrically written song that she may have ever done is Dear John.  It is rumored to be about John Mayer, and by listening to the lyrics it definitely could be.

So if you are looking to buy some new music I would recommend any and all of these CDs.  I actually gave a The Band Perry CD and the Sugarland CD for a couple birthday gifts.  Gotta spread the country music love!