Country Music

Laura Bryna, a graduate of Glenelg High School and a budding country music artist, will open a concert tomorrow evening at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in a fundraising event for the United Cerebral Palsy of Central Maryland. Bryna - a stage name taken from a grandmother - says that she is living a dream that is difficult for her to comprehend. She remembers over a plate of hard-shell crabs years ago asking her stepfather, Thomas Mulitz of Mount Airy, what he fantasized as a child of becoming.

A fan of rhinestones and bling, Ashley Forrest, 25, is a rising country singer from Crofton. This Ravens fan's latest album, Seven Hundred Miles, was released April 16 and she will be performing at Rams Head On Stage in Annapolis on Sunday. Before heading to the show, we caught up with the singer to find out some of her OMG-worthy loves. Worst pet peeve? I don't let the little things get to me, and I am really bubbly, so I don't really have one. What song are you hating/loving right now?

Country music might have a history of making its women play by the rules. But Miranda Lambert has made a career of speaking her mind. Lambert's effortless ability to break your heart one moment (the Grammy-winning ballad "The House That Built Me") and find glee in revenge the next ("Kerosene," a song about Lambert burning down her cheating boyfriend's house, would make her hero Loretta Lynn proud) that makes her one of country music's most vital talents. "Four the Record," her latest album released in November, finds the 28-year-old newlywed (she married fellow country star Blake Shelton last May)

With country music blaring, honky-tonk decor, and a menu stacked with smokehouse favorites, Cowboys & Rednecks (also known as CNR) is hardly shy about its theme. We half expected the hostess to greet us with a "Yeehaw!" CNR's owner, Federal Hill resident and big-time country music fan Guy Naylor, opened the bar in late 2011, imagining that it would be a fun addition to his neighborhood. Local bar-hoppers agreed; CNR is often packed to overflowing on weekend nights. CNR's success as a bar is uncontested, but its status as a go-to restaurant is less confirmed.

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."

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...

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."

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.

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.

What people go through to live their lives — war and terror, disease and pain, poverty and hunger, long journeys across continents and oceans, loss and heartbreak — always leaves me awed and humbled. You hear a story, like the one I'm offering this Christmas, and you want to raise a glass to that thing we call human spirit. Milla Dawt Hniang, who travels with crutches and guitar, has it in bunches. It has taken her 20 years past the age when her parents thought she would die. She's a Burmese-born singer-songwriter about to release her first CD and send more music of the American country-pop variety — think Taylor Swift — into the world.

Maryland might not have the biggest presence at Thursday's Country Music Awards but its presence might be the best smelling. An Eldersburg candlemaker has been named the official candle of the CMAs. That means that when Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson leave the show, there's a very good chance they'll have a few Unwined Candles in their bags -- and a little bit of Maryland. "Best believe we have been putting in long hours making candle upon candle for all of our loyal and beloved customers as well as around 100 celebrities in Nashville," the little company wrote on its blog.

Country music stars will get a whiff of Eldersburg next week. After being chosen as the official candle of the gift tent at the Country Music Awards on Nov. 1, in Nashville, the Eldersburg-based company, Unwined Candles, will have its products in gift bags for all participants. For owners and creators Dave and Anna Neith, that means late nights and full weekends as he makes more than 300 candles to take to Nashville. "It's a little overwhelming … a good problem to have," Dave Neith said.

Drama is not exactly something the networks do well any more -- especially drama that has any kind of cultural resonance. But "Nashville," which debuts at 10 p.m. Wednesday on ABC, is the one new network drama that pretty much has it all. In the world of fast-hit blog reviews, here are five outstanding elements that recommend it: Callie Khouri -- The series set in the home of country music is created by Khouri, the Oscar-winning screenwriter...

It's been a very good couple of days for CBS journalist Bob Schieffer. He had the first interview with the Romney-Ryan ticket in the Sunday night showcase of "60 Minutes"and handled it well. And then, it was announced Monday that he would be one of the four moderators of presidential and vice presidential debates this fall along with Jim Lehrer (PBS), Candy Crowley (CNN) and Martha Raddatz (ABC). No one's happier to see Schieffer making news than me, because it gives me a second chance to write about an interview I had with him last month and something he said.

Country music might have a history of making its women play by the rules. But Miranda Lambert has made a career of speaking her mind. Lambert's effortless ability to break your heart one moment (the Grammy-winning ballad "The House That Built Me") and find glee in revenge the next ("Kerosene," a song about Lambert burning down her cheating boyfriend's house, would make her hero Loretta Lynn proud) that makes her one of country music's most vital talents. "Four the Record," her latest album released in November, finds the 28-year-old newlywed (she married fellow country star Blake Shelton last May)

Country music fans lucky enough to get tickets were treated to a double bill of top-flight talent as two of Nashville's most revered recording artists, Vince Gill and Mary Chapin Carpenter, pTC performed for a sellout crowd of 4,100 at the Naval Academy's Alumni Hall in Annapolis Friday night.Gill, a 36-year-old veteran who has broken into the record charts in a big way in the past few years with hits like "When I Call Your Name" and "Cinderella," is one of country's most gifted and distinctive vocalists.

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.

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.