Three-thirty in the morning...

... not a soul in sight...

One of the side effects of either the medicine I'm on, or the fact that I've done nothing but sleep for the past week, is that I've not been able to sleep at night. When hubby got up for work this morning around 4am, I hadn't yet fallen asleep.

So at all hours of the night, all kinds of things were running through my head - from to-do lists to things I hadn't gotten around to blogging about from CRS. The hard part was although I was mentally alert, the cough syrup pretty much wiped out my energy, so I wasn't actually able to get up and DO anything about everything I was thinking about!

One of the events I wanted to tell you more about was the party that Sugarland had at CMT, celebrating their platinum album Enjoy the Ride and their first #1 song "Settlin." These photos (taken by Kim, my intern) are of the elevators in the CMT building. It was a much smaller soiree that the usual Music Row free-for all - maybe 100 people crowded into the lobby of CMT's offices.

They were serving something called "Joy Juice" which was some fruity concoction of champagne, pineapple juice, and a couple other alcoholic beverages which I've since forgotten. I can testify that it was quite joyous. They had a pizza buffet, and these enormous, colorful, sugar cookies. I thanked my buddy Katie who works at their label for providing a non-chocolate dessert - turns out she'd given up chocolate for Lent too, but was avoiding the non-chocolate sugar cookies because one thing might lead to another. She's a much stronger woman than I.

In waiting for the presentation I struck up a conversation with a guy who clearly looked uncomfortable in being there. Turns out he works for Takimine, and made the guitar that BMI was giving to the duo in recognition of their first #1 song. (He says it's an average model, nothing overly spectacular.) He's the craftsman type - not at all the show up at parties and schmooze type.

Because all things in my life seem to lead back to Garth, I mentioned that when I hear Takimine, I think of the GB7 - and he couldn't believe I knew that model number. He said they sold a lot of them, and told me a lot of things about the guitar that I, being the non-musician type, couldn't fully appreciate. Of course, he spoke highly about his Garthness. There were more Garth stories that I can't at this moment remember, regarding the timeline of the design, and how involved Garth was in it.

The story and photos from the party can be found here at CMT.com

One Garth story reminds me of another, and I was somewhere during CRS week where I ran into an acquaintance who exports country music internationally. He buys up CDs and then sells them to international importers, who then turn around and sell them to record stores who sell them to their customers at horribly high prices. I've worked with this gentleman in the past, and mostly he's always been looking for Americana and bluegrass CD's - not the mainstream country Carrie Underwood and Kenny Chesney type music. Europeans have a decidedly different taste in country music than mainstream America.

At any rate, he told me he'd done half a million dollars in export business last year - and about HALF of that was Garth Brooks merchandise. He'd go buy it at Wal-Mart and turn around and make a profit off it - so you can only imagine how expensive those Garth CD's are on the shelf in Australia! He also said he could make a bunch MORE money, but he'd promised Bob Doyle he wouldn't sell to the UK and Ireland, because they were still hoping to get a deal done there. I know I have some readers in England - has Garth made it to your store shelves yet?

Allow me to also take this opportunity to continue spreading the rumor I've been spreading for a year now, which is that 7/7/07 Mr. Brooks will play Ireland. His promoter over there recently passed away, but I'm told that a deal was done prior to his passing, and Garth told the Irish media that he'd do a tribute show to the gentleman - so I'm thinking it's all going to wrap itself into a neat little package.

Bon Jovi's new single was released today, in two versions - a rock and a country version. I don't know that the country version is much of a country song, personally. It's more of an acoustic vibe to it - a lot of Jon, less of the rest of Bon Jovi.

I can't remember if I blogged about the show Bon Jovi did here during CRS. If not, you can read about it here. It was an odd show - a full blown rock show done on a corner stage in a bare bones club. I personally didn't get a lot out of it, and didn't stick around for the entire thing - we wandered over to see Keith Urban, who was stellar.

Reports on Keith's show are here, and here - I'm sure you've seen all this by now. A few things to hit on - they brought out a full grand piano and he did "Tonight I Wanna Cry" just him and the ivories. He's such a talented musician. They had no set list, and it was pretty funny to see him look around and ask what they were doing next, and change from one guitar to another because they'd change their mind. A highlight for me was his performance of "Mama Tried." I was amazed at how well he and the band knew everyone else's material - when Ronnie Dunn showed up (from the boat, where he'd been clearly indulging in the libations, and admitted he had no business being on stage) they launched into "Brand New Man" like it was their own. It was a really incredible show.

Now that I've rambled through all THAT, allow me to share what brightened my day today, courtesy of my oldest brother, who I'm sure has no idea he sent them, and my sister-in-law. Aside from the bright colored flowers, the vase they're in is so beautiful!


Delaynie just told me "I hope you're not going to bed yet Mommy, I like falling asleep to the sounds of your hands on the keyboards." Umm... perhaps I do ramble a little too much.