Is it Wednesday yet?

I had a really long post written last night and then managed to kick the power strip to my computer and lost it all. GRRRRR. Which is probably just as well, since I was grumpy from having spent hours in a pair of high heeled boots that I shouldn't have been wearing. (But will wear again tonight, LOL.)

Two events yesterday, the Music City Walk of Fame induction and the Songs of the Year Concert. We talked to Reba before her induction about the honor, the CMA's, and her Habitat for Humanity project. I mentioned the other day about Gretchen's changing looks... Reba's is much more drastic. And expensive, I'm guessing. I wish I had a better picture of her. It was a little shocking, actually. (Although at this moment Blogger isn't letting me add any pictures, GRRR.)

After that I went to the red carpet at the Songs of the Year event. We had great positioning on the red carpet - 2nd in line behind GAC, who sponsored the event. Spent hours doing index cards of prep for the air talent who was going to be doing the interviews, and he wound up ditching me. I did get great soundbites from those who did the carpet, including Jo Dee, Blake Shelton (and yes, he talked about Miranda, it was very sweet), new daddy Josh Turner, Lonestar, Trace Adkins and others.

My two favorite moments of the night: The guys from Lonestar were gathered all around, and Richie was talking but I couldn't quite reach my microphone from where he was standing, so Keech reached over and took it from me and held it up.

And then, there was my new favorite person, James Denton, from Desparate Housewives. I've never seen a single second of that show, but A) he's a good lookin' guy in cowboy boots, and B) he loves XM. On the red carpet ropes there's a sign for each media outlet, and he walked over and said "Who's with XM?" I said hello and he went on to tell me that he has XM in his car, loves it, loves XM 175, the baseball channel... lots of XM love. He gave a great interview about being from Nashville and loving country music, as well as presenting "The Brooks & Dunn Award" (his words) with Trisha at the CMA's. (He said she's blowing off rehearsals so he has to rehearse by himself.) Trisha, btw, didn't do the red carpet.

The show itself was less of a concert and more of a TV taping, which meant a whole lot of downtime between each performance. James and Trace traded off intro'ing each artist, and when James was out there he did a lot of audience interaction, talking about his tv show, the CMA's, etc. I didn't make it through the entire show, but stayed for most of it, including seeing Haggard, Trisha, and one of Trace's songs. (He did two.) Eric Church and Jack Ingram were the only ones who had to redo their performance while I was there.

Another misc. note - I was seated in front of the box that contained the ABC soap stars who walked the red carpet and stayed to watch the show (and got in trouble for bringing beer into the Hall, only to bring more in later, LOL.) They got hounded for autographs, but were very nice to those who asked.

I'm backstage in the press room tonight for the show, Jon will be live at 7pm Eastern, tune in to Highway 16 as I'll be sending him all the backstage scoop!

Happy CMA Day to you!