Idols Gone Country: 8/10/2011 Edition

By On 08/10/2011 · 29 Comments · In Aaron Kelly, American Idol, Bo Bice, Bucky Covington, Carrie Underwood, Casey James, Danny Gokey, Josh Gracin, Kellie Pickler, Kristy Lee Cook, Lauren Alaina

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Fresh from the country clubs (seriously, check that out for a laugh) dirt roads and dusty trails, here’s your latest Idols Gone Country! Get the latest on NEW songs from Lauren Alaina, Bo Bice, Kristy Lee Cook, Bucky Covington, Danny Gokey, Josh Gracin, Casey James, Aaron Kelly, Kellie Pickler, and Carrie Underwood!

Josh Gracin has released the official video for a special project he did in collaboration with Sears’s Heroes At Home program:

“Can’t Say Goodbye” by Josh Gracin was created in collaboration with Sears Heroes at Home. The song, based on the winning entry from the Sears “Portraits of Heroes” song contest, reflects a young war widow’s story (Seana Arrechaga) and her commitment to keeping her husband’s memory alive. All proceeds from the song will go to Heroes at Home and Rebuilding Together.

You can download the single: HERE.

Fresh off yesterday’s reveal that Lauren Alaina has cut a song called “Georgia Peaches” cowritten by Blair Daly, Mallary Hope, and Rachel Proctor comes a couple follow up tweets from a couple of the cowriters themselves with yet another tidbit. Mallary Hope tweeted:

Hey! Yes it true. Lauren Alaina cut my song “Georgia Peaches” you can find it plus another one of my songs on her new record. #georgiagals

Mallory Hope tweeted a fan asking about the other song of hers Lauren has cut and said:

I’ll let her debut the news.. I’ll tell u that I wrote it this year, by myself, on my couch, in my pjs about my gr8grandparents

Rachel Proctor didn’t confirm that “Georgia Peaches” will be on Lauren’s album but tweeted a fan that she hopes it will.

Lauren Alaina fans can also look for a 2 page spread covering her video shoot for “Like My Mother Does” in the new issue of Country Weekly with Trace Adkins on the cover.

Bucky Covington announced at the Opry last Friday that he will be releasing a new single called “I Wanna Be That Feeling.” The song is cowritten by Jimmy Yeary and Peach Picker Ben Hayslip. According to this video Bucky recorded the song on January 24th of this year. You can listen to the demo here. Check out another Bucky performance of that song courtesy kayjudylang:

The titles of a few new Casey James cowrites have surfaced thanks to Patrick Davis that involve a couple of members of the country songwriting trio known as the Peach Pickers. We have already heard “So Sweet” which Casey cowrote with Patrick Davis and Peach Picker Dallas Davidson. That trio also cowrote a song called “That Girl.” Casey also joined with Patrick Davis and Peach Picker Rhett Akins on a song called “Run Away.” A couple of previously unknown collaborators join the list as Casey cowrote a song called “As Long As There’s A Light” with Jay Knowles and Trent Summar. Knowles and Summar cowrote a Jack Ingram song called “Love You,” a Mel McDaniel song called “You Really Never Loved Her Anyway”, and have also written songs for Trace Adkins (Knowles), Montgomery Gentry (Knowles), Blake Shelton (Knowles), Billy Currington (Summar), Gary Allan (Summar), George Strait (Knowles), and Alan Jackson (Knowles).

We can also reveal the writing credits for the song “She’s Money” which Casey debuted at his show at Billy Bob’s on July 1st: the song is cowritten by Casey and Jaren Johnston according to its ASCAP registration. That’s not a Randy Owen cowrite, much to my surprise!

The title of a couple of new Kellie Pickler cowrites have surfaced with one of them featuring Kellie cowriting with Lee Ann Womack. That song is called “Living Up To Me” and Kellie and Lee Ann cowrote it with Dean Dillon. The other song is called “Mother’s Day” and Kellie cowrote it with her husband Kyle Jacobs. She is also listed as the performer of the song.

Carrie Underwood’s list of registered cowritten songs for her upcoming 4th studio album has grown by 7 and involves frequent collaborators Luke Laird and Hillary Lindsey, “Before He Cheats” cowriter Josh Kear, and a frequent Idol collaborator who’s new to the country world: Claude Kelly (Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You”, Adam Lambert’s “For Your Entertainment”, Fantasia’s “Bittersweet”, Jordin Sparks’s “The Cure”, David Archuleta’s “Falling Stars”, Lee DeWyze’s “It’s Gotta Be Love,” and “Stay Here”, and David Cook’s “Four Letter Word”).

Newly registered songs are (credit @Typ021 for finding all 7 of these):

  • “One Way Ticket” (Carrie/Josh Kear/Luke Laird)
  • “Sunburn”(Carrie/Josh Kear/Luke Laird)
  • “Two Black Cadillacs” (Carrie/Josh Kear/Hillary Lindsey)
  • “Nobody Ever Told You” (Carrie/Luke Laird/Hillary Lindsey)
  • “Something Like This” (Carrie/Luke Laird/Hillary Lindsey)
  • “Diamonds” (Carrie/Claude Kelly/Hillary Lindsey)
  • “Bad Dreams.” (Carrie/Claude Kelly/Hillary Lindsey)

      • Bo Bice announced that he has started tracking songs with producer Blake Chancey for a new album. He has recently registered 2 new cowrites at BMI:

    • “Being Me” (Bo, Travis Meadows)
    • “Better Man” (Bo, Peter Sallis, Victoria Shaw)

      • Travis Meadows has cowritten a Jake Owen album track and a recent Lynyrd Skynyrd song. Victoria Shaw’s best known hits are Garth Brooks’s “The River” and the Ricky Martin/Christina Aguilera duet “Nobody Wants To Be Lonely”. She also cowrote several songs from Lady Antebellum’s debut album and a signature Eric Church song “Two Pink Lines”. Peter Sallis has a cut on Ronnie Dunn’s current album (“Once”).

      A new Kristy Lee Cook cowrite has surfaced at BMI called “Couldn’t Care Less”. Kristy Lee Cook cowrote the song with David Fanning (who cowrote the album cut “One Of These Days” from Thompson Square’s debut album) and Billy Montana (“Suds In The Bucket” by Sara Evans, “More Than A Memory” by Garth Brooks, and songs by Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw) recently sang a duet with a fellow Oregon native Scott Perry, the lead singer of a country band called Sweet Town Little. Check out their duet of a song called “I Didn’t Know What I Was Missin”:

      Danny Gokey has played the 2nd song he recorded for his sophomore album at some radio stops. It is called “Win Me Over” and it is cowritten by Jon Henderson, Mallary Hope, and Lynn Hutton. Mallary Hope’s recently gotten some attention on this blog thanks to her Lauren Alaina cuts. Jon Henderson cowrote Mallory’s Blossom In The Dust and Kristy Lee Cook’s “Plant The Seed,” and also has a cut on Brad Paisley’s current album (“Toothbrush”). Lynn Hutton cowrote “Jack Daniels” on Eric Church’s new CD and both Hutton and Henderson have collaborated a lot with Matt Stillwell, an independent country act who has released 3 CDs.

      Aaron Kelly has recently performed several new original songs. Check out video of performing 4 of them here. His style is reminiscent of early Rascal Flatts country/pop:

      Scotty McCreery fans: Trust me, I’m not ignoring your guy. If you’ve got new news on him, please post in comments and anything that MJ doesn’t want in its own post or Headlines will be included in this post. That goes for any news I missed from anybody else too. Thanks and enjoy!

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      • meme4cj_

        Here is more from Tammy :

        @TammyGooGoo : It’s for radio! The interview will be cut into sound bites and fed out to radio stations across the country!

        and :

        @cmilove : Anyone have a question for former American Idol, Casey James? Send it our way! We’ll be chatting with him tomorrow.

      • Eileen99

        Just now getting a chance to look at this post – so first, thanks Windmills for putting this all together. Love catching up on the Idols I like who are in the country genre.

        Re: Aaron Kelly; he was a pleasant surprise for me on the tour last season. I didn’t care for him at all much on the show, but he did impress me on tour where he leaned very country. He probably should have gone that route on the show, he could possibly have had more success that way (especially if that’s the direction he really wants to go).

        It’s interesting to me that some songwriters choose to/are allowed to/are asked to leak song information in cases where they know a song of theirs has made an album, or even in Mallary Hope’s case, the song itself. It doesn’t happen very often, so it always makes me curious if the label or the artist encourages them to do this.

      • windmills

        Eileen99: It’s interesting to me that some songwriters choose to/are allowed to/are asked to leak song information in cases where they know a song of theirs has made an album, or even in Mallary Hope’s case, the song itself. It doesn’t happen very often, so it always makes me curious if the label or the artist encourages them to do this.

        Mallary’s been performing this song from before it was even a possibility to land on Lauren’s album. Her fans know it well and a bunch of them have tweeted her saying they wanted to hear her studio version of it. She’s been telling them her version will be on her album too. I found that a little surprising but maybe she’s just trying to reassure them in case they freak and think it means Mallary won’t be able to release an album. Mallary’s struggled to get a hit which is why she hasn’t had more than an EP come out so far. But it’s very common for songwriters to be performing songs publicly and to keep performing them even after they’re confirmed to be on somebody else’s album. Sometimes they’ll even say that such and such a person is recording it or is releasing it as a single. They’re usually not counting on that info getting past the people who are actually there ;)

        As far as this info leaking, the way I came by it was not directly from songwriters. Mallary herself was wondering how it got out because she hadn’t told anybody. But since it got out she confirmed it. Mallary also tweeted a fan that the label helped place the song with Lauren. I wouldn’t be surprised if the label were hoping for some collateral help to Mallary’s career as a solo act from a couple of her cowrites being on Lauren’s album.

      • happyhexer

        Josh Gracin sounds good on that song. I hope it gets a lot of downloads, since the proceeds benefit a good charity.

        Actually, Kristy Lee Cook sounded good, too. I’d never heard her sing before — only heard about how her CD tanked. Not as crazy about her song, but really like the Josh Gracin one.

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