Country Makes Plans

Blake Shelton has indicated that he plans to marry Miranda Lambert next May in the Texas hill country. Details about the wedding are beginning to emerge. Blake has always said the one thing he and Miranda don’t agree on is their taste in music. Obviously they both like country music, but it’s the other types of music they listen to that differ. For that reason, Blake says that he is insistent on having a say-so in the music at their wedding, “The only thing, because I don’t care if it’s all pink flowers and completely girled out. I really don’t. That would be great to me. The only thing I’m wanting some input on is music.” Blake and Miranda are planning on a short ceremony so they can celebrate, and that’s when Blake’s musical preferences will come into play. “I’m going to have my music picked out and she’ll have her music. And we’re going to have live music, D-J, everything. It’s going to be music everywhere,” Blake says of the ceremony.

This weekend, Craig Morgan will be holding his Charity Ride in his hometown in Tennessee. This year he’s extended the event to two days - the first day for moto-cross events and the second for music. Proceeds from the event go towards a facility for kids who have been displaced from their families, being built in honor of Craig’s father-in-law. Craig’s oldest daughter is studying child psychiatry and would one day like to run the program at Billy’s Place.

Faith Hill is the new ambassador for the Tide Loads of Hope program. The campaign is a mobile laundry service which provides clean clothes to families affected by a disaster. Faith is a Mississippi native, and has witnessed the damage from Hurricane Katrina and the oil spill in the Gulf Coast. As the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina draws closer, the detergent maker will host a live concert featuring Faith on August 24th. The concert will be free for residents of New Orleans and the surrounding area to celebrate how far the community has come in its rebuilding efforts since Katrina.

Kenny Chesney is featured on the cover of this week’s Parade magazine, and inside he discusses how making his football documentary inspired him. He also mentions how even though he has been one of the biggest stars in country music, he still feels alone. “You’d think I’d have been happiest in my life playing music in front of 50,000 people at Gillette Stadium. But let me tell you, it’s an odd feeling to feel alone in the spotlight. I was standing onstage last year and I felt like I wanted to be somewhere else. No matter how many people were out there, it all just felt like a blank sheet of paper,” he said. Kenny’s also found it difficult to balance his personal life. He explains, “The world is a different place now. I mean, if I go out with a girl, there’s a possibility that she’s going to get up from the dinner table and go to the bathroom and use Twitter to tell everybody what she’s doing. And the next thing you know, everybody’s got a play-by-play of what you’re having for dinner. That would make anybody uncomfortable.” Kenny’s documentary, The Boys of Fall, will air on ESPN this fall.