Country Music

We're at the finale already (didn't this season seem short?). I'll say it right here at the top of the episode - unless William falls repeatedly on his keister, requiring the judges to give him 5's across the board, there's no way he's not winning this thing. That being said, I'd be OK with any of the three finalists winning, even though I'm personally Team Driver. Tonight's show will have each couple dancing two dances:  1. Judge's pick, which are new routines danced to new music, but in a style the couple has previously danced and in which the judges would like to see them improve.  2. Freestyle Tomorrow night, the couples will be doing some sort of third scored dance, details about which we'll learn later.

Johnny Mathis, he of the vocal velvet and distinctive purr, sounds today almost uncannily close to the way he did when he first stirred up the music world in the mid 1950s. The singer has new album out this month, adding to his remarkable 130-plus discography with a laid-back, lushly sung collection of country classics, "Let It Be Me — Mathis in Nashville. " This week, he marks his 75th birthday with a concert in Baltimore. Before heading on the road, he called from his California home for an interview: Question: "County music" and "Johnny Mathis" are not often uttered in the same sentence.

So what is it with male country music stars these days?It's as though there's a requirement that they be drop-dead gorgeous.Even if you aren't into country music, there's no escaping these lean, lanky hunks whose handsome faces can be found on television, magazines and newspapers everywhere."

Baltimore Book Festival Every year for the past 15, Baltimore has reaffirmed its nickname as "The city that reads" when thousands of the happily literate flock to Mount Vernon for the free Baltimore Book Festival. The idea is simple: talk books, buy books, meet book authors and otherwise celebrate the abundant pleasures of the printed page. This year's festival will include appearances by more than 100 authors, including actress Holly Robinson Peete, "America's Next Top Model" judge Nigel Barker, "The View" co-host Sherri Shepherd, former grappler and Minnesota Governor Jesse Venture and NPR's Michele Norris.

Title: "Finding Her Voice: The Saga of Women in Country Music"Author: Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. OermannPublisher: CrownLength, price: 594 pages, $32.50A century ago, the female country musician of the moment was Lotta Crabtree, a banjo-playing, innocently risque young woman who invariably switched into sentimental gear at the end of each show and brought down the house with a tear-jerking rendition of "Dear Mother, I'll Come Home Again." Crabtree died a millionaire, but she earned fame and fortune the hard way -- traveling from town to town on horseback and performing mostly in mining-camp saloons.

The joke, which is probably older than the washing machine on grandma's front porch, goes like this: What do you get if you play a country music record backward?You get your wife back, you get your job back, you get your dog back. . . .But add another one to the list: You get your life back.An Auburn University sociologist who found a correlation between suicide rates and country music also has found something else: Them's fighting words.The professor and a colleague have written a real tears-in-your-beer abstract: "The results of a multiple-regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the air time devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate."

Baltimore's Jennifer Grimm, the general manager of country music station WPOC-FM 93.1, is bound for Nashville later this month to attend the "Country Music Association Awards Show."Her station has been named Station of the Year in the large-market category in the annual awards show, which is airing Sept. 30 on CBS-TV (Channel 11). This is the second such CMA award for the outlet in three years. WPOC deejay Laurie DeYoung was also among five finalists for the CMA's Broadcast Personality of the Year.

Performances by Travis Tritt, Marty Stuart and Highway 101 will headline Crisfield's second country music festival, according to Jody Albright, director of the Governor's Office of Art and Culture.The Tangier Sound Country Music Festival, scheduled for June 27, originally was designed to help rejuvenate an area of the Eastern Shore that had been hurt by layoffs and plant closings in the seafood and other, manufacturing industries. In 1990, the first year of the festival, about 14,000 music fans visited the tiny town at the southern tip of Somerset County.

SOME YEARS ago, I wrote a column about how much I loved country music, which was a bunch of hooey, but it got in the newspaper anyway.I only wrote the thing because there was nothing else to write. What happened was, my deadline was two hours away and this one editor, who was a royal pain in the behind and had the shoe-banging temper of Nikita Khrushchev, kept calling out: "YOU GOT SOMETHING FOR ME?! HUH?! YOU GOT SOMETHING FOR ME?!"God, he was making me nervous. Finally, with the clock tick-tick-ticking, I threw up my hands and said: " Country music."

Dick Clark and his associates have sensory apparatus like a seismograph. This is not always the case with network TV executives.But when Garth Brooks' "Ropin' the Wind" entered the album charts at No. 1 and later reclaimed that spot over Guns N' Roses' new double album, and when the Country Music Awards telecast in October pulled its largest-ever audience, the tremors made network "suits" look up. And while he had their attention, Mr. Clark hit them with...

If we are to take our cues from GQ magazine, men are no longer rushing for gold — no diamonds, no elaborate chains or any other flashy jewelry. May cover model Jake Gyllenhaal's sole hint of bling is an understated $15 silver tie bar. Looking inside the issue's 162 pages, we find exactly four editorial subjects wearing jewelry beyond wedding rings or watches: a thin chain link bracelet on Lou Dobbs, a David Yurman dog tag and wooden beads on San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum, studs on L.A. Dodgers center fielder Matt Kemp and a class ring on Drums guitarist Jacob Graham.

When Sugarland singer Jennifer Nettles scans pop radio these days, she likes the newfound variety she hears. Recently, more traditional acts such as Taylor Swift and Lady Antebellum have popped up amidst the sea of dance starlets such as Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Britney Spears. Such a mix was hard to come by a few years ago, she said, when bubble gum pop had a stranglehold on the charts. It gives Nettles hope for the future of pop — and country — music. "When I see little Taylor Swift, I say, 'Go go go,'" she said.

L aurie DeYoung doesn't hesitate when asked for a defining moment from her 24-plus years as the morning voice of WPOC-FM. The moment was not heard on air, has nothing to do with the country music the station plays and happened well out of the public eye. But it goes a long way toward explaining why she has remained a dominant force on Baltimore's airwaves for more than two decades, and why she was honored in Nashville on Tuesday with her induction to...

Lady Antebellum 'Need You Now' Capitol Nashville In today's real American South, Jello shots are just as prevalent as Jack Daniels, and a game gal like Hillary Scott is as likely to lust after a guy "in black pearl buttons, lookin' just like Springsteen" as she is a Johnny Cash type. After all, the New Jersey rocker copped his style partly from the Man in Black. Lady Antebellum -- the rising country-pop trio in which Scott shares vocal duties with the perpetually pearl-buttoned Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood, who handles background vocals and guitar -- is a product of the post-Faith and Tim New South of two-career marriages and relatively guilt-free premarital hook-ups.

Compared with a country music mecca like Nashville, Baltimore's country scene might seem almost nonexistent. But for local honky-tonk singer/songwriter Arty Hill, that's not necessarily a bad thing. "In Nashville, you're working in the shadow of modern country music - which is pop music - and it's a big shadow to be working in," Hill said. "Here, there are no boundaries. We can do whatever we want. I get to do honky-tonk at Rams Head Live. That's pretty awesome when you think about it. There's nobody in Baltimore shoving Toby Keith down people's throats."

The past seems ever-present in Brad Paisley's music. One of country music's biggest stars, Paisley has filled his songs with sentimental snapshots from times gone by. His first single, "Who Needs Pictures," opens with Paisley singing about an old Kodak camera in his closet. That was more than 10 years (and 14 No. 1 singles) ago. Paisley's new album, "American Saturday Night," finds the 36-year-old West Virginia native sharing his childhood love of water sports and playing Pac-Man down at the arcade.

This is the Year of the Woman in country music, too."Yep, I guess it's the girls' night out, and it's great," says Suzy Bogguss, who just won the Country Music Association's big newcomer-of-the-year award, a category that included two other women, Pam Tillis and Trisha Yearwood, among the five finalists.All three women currently have albums among the Top 100 on the pop music charts. So do Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Wynonna Judd, Tanya Tucker, Reba McEntire and Lorrie Morgan.Bubbling just below them are Kathy Mattea, Patty Loveless, Holly Dunn, Alison Krauss, Nanci Griffith, Lucinda Williams, Michelle Wright, Rosie Flores and Paulette Carlson.

Hey, Annapolis Neck Peninsula, you could be hearing Clint Black, Reba McEntire, and the rest of your favorite country music stars all the time, anytime, on WANN 1190 AM, not just when the sun is up.Morris H. Blum, owner of the station, filed an application last month with the Federal Communications Commission to operate hours a day.The country music station has been operating on a sunrise-to-sunset schedule since going on the air Jan. 10, 1947. That could change if the FCC approves Mr. Blum's request.

The movies entertain us, enlighten us, challenge us - except when they're set in Tennessee. A look at some films depicting the two regions involved in Saturday's big game. TENNESSEE Coal Miner's Daughter Weepy tale about life of country star Loretta Lynn, starring Sissy Spacek. Hard times, cheating men, etc. Nashville Bizarre Robert Altman pic about country music biz intersecting with a political convention. The "Don't Rent" of the year. The Thing Called Love Newcomers to - what else?