I Wanna Talk About Trace

So. Rewind - Wednesday. It was a crazy busy morning... my weekly deadlines were all out of wack because I was producing a Friday show on a Wednesday, and it's a holiday weekend to boot. So tempted as I was to completely blow off the Toby Keith press conference... I really wanted the audio for our awesome little news features - The Nashville Flash.

So Storme and I raced out of the studio, over to BMI. Now last time I was at BMI for a joint media event, my microphone was set up on the right, and Keith Urban sat on the left. This time I asked the publicist which side Toby was sitting on. ;-)

Toby and Mark Wright come in and talk about their new joint venture between Show Dog and Universal South. Quite honestly, it's not very exciting. Much more business related... Toby rants about the Music Row politics some, but mostly, it's going to be a lot of editing to get 10 seconds of audio the fans are gonna want to hear.

Look at that, I got "wanna" and "gonna" in the same blog. You'd never know I was born north of the Mason Dixon line.

I will say though, HUGE press turnout. The most I've ever seen at a BMI event. TV, Radio, Internet, Print and a whole bunch of people I'd never seen before. Apparently if you could spell Toby's name, you were in.

So they're talking about artist roster (unchanged at this point, no one's been cut) and synergies, and Toby getting his own masters back (which, clearly was the motivating factor behind going back to Universal after trashing them.) And then in a "oh yeah by the way" moment after his publicist whispers in his ear, he announces he's signed his first artist.

"We've signed" Mark corrects him.

We've signed to Show Dog Records... Toby continues.

"Show Dog-Universal" Mark corrects him.

I feel your pain Toby. I still slip and it's been a year and a half. Carry on.

So he talks about his new signing, and truly, I'm zoning out. I'm sitting next to Lorianne Crook wishing her hair was bigger so it would hide me taking a nap. Great, just what we need.. some new artist we've never heard of. And there's a rustle behind me, and Trace Adkins walks around the table.

And I kid you not, the first 10 seconds, I thought it was a joke. Ha! Funny! But it turns out, people in Nashville can keep secrets after all. This one came out of left field!

I don't have my audio with me to share quotes, but Trace was very gracious in thanking Capitol for 15 years together. A few other notes from memory:

- Trace saw how happy Toby was when they toured together, and he "longed" for that.
- Trace called Toby up to pitch the idea
- Toby has heard some of Trace's new music, but says he's just going to let him do his thing... he doesn't micromanage his artists.
- Great Buck Owens story... if the quotes aren't floating around out there on the net I'll dig 'em out for you. Remind me.
- The deal was signed just an hour before the press conference.

It was Trace's birthday, so they brought out a cake and sang to him. At that point, it was 15 minutes to Storme's live show so we bolted back to the studio, and I produced a story that ran all day today in the Nashville Flash, using audio from both Toby and Trace. Fun! Wow - did I just use fun and work all in the same paragraph? Why yes I did. Work's gotten fun again. Shhh... let's just keep that our little secret, ok?

I'm headed out to my annual girl's scrapbooking weekend at Henry Horton State Park tomorrow... if I don't get to check back in here, have a great weekend!