Blog Posts by Chris Willman

Lady Antebellum have been enjoying the spunkiest and sauciest hit of their career with the chart-topping single "Downtown," even as the videos and promotional appearances for it feature Hillary Scott looking ever-so-more pregnant. As the band takes the stage for an exclusive Yahoo! Music performance, the average viewer might not notice Scott's expectancy all that much, thanks to the miracles of slimming black.

Still, there is that moment when Scott pleads "I don't know why you don't take me downtown anymore" that you might imagine her partner's response reasonably being, "Um, because your water might break?"

Even with the blessed event being just weeks away — Scott's baby girl, her first, is due in late July — the trio haven't lost a step, and if anything, have been compressing about six months' worth of the usual album promotion into roughly half that time.

"I can probably speak for everybody on our team and say it’s easier to promote a record when someone’s not pregnant," Scott says.

Dierks Bentley at the Belcourt [Photo: Chris Willman]Dierks Bentley should know better than to say the word "naked" at a fan club party. But he let the word slip at his annual Last Call Ball, which was held on the closing day of the CMA Festival, as he and his band played an acoustic set for just over 300 of his most hardcore and most fortunate fans.

"Sounds good in here, man," Bentley told the crowd at the Belcourt, a movie arthouse built in 1925 that once, very briefly (in the mid-1930s), served as the home of the Grand Ole Opry. "It’s good to take these songs you guys have only heard all electrified up – were you guys there last night at LP Field? — and give ‘em a little bit of an acoustic feel... I'm nervous for some reason, man. I wasn’t nervous last night in front of the stadium, but I get nervous in front of you guys. You guys know me too well. I feel naked up here." Titters and light yowls ensued. Come a little closer and all that...

In actuality, the biggest attraction of the 70-minute afternoon concert wasn't hearing acoustic

Brad Paisley at the CMA Festival [Photo: Chris Willman]Brad Paisley performed "Beat This Summer" Sunday night at the closing show of the 2013 CMA Festival. But what he and his fellow headliners were really trying to beat was the rain.

Radar showed thunderstorms headed right for Nashville's LP Field, which would explain why Sunday night's show ended more than an hour early, as opposed to the previous couple of nights, when things ended up running about an hour late. About an hour into Sunday's climactic show, a decision was made to have the remaining performers only play a couple of tunes each, so that fans would have at least a sampling of these marquee acts before they headed back to their hometowns... and so ABC would have something of Paisley, the Band Perry, and Carrie Underwood on tape for the August 12 TV special.

It made for a weird night in which the historically oriented opening acts, Lee Greenwood and Lorrie Morgan, got to play considerably longer than the current superstars who were booked to close the show.

Paisley at least had

Kelly Clarkson and Trisha Yearwood cover Garth Brooks [Photo: Donn Jones/CMA]A whole lot of stars who aren't actually country music stars invaded Nashville's LP Field Saturday for the third night of the CMA Festival. Kelly Clarkson and the Duck Dynasty family were certainly warmly welcomed, since they share plenty of roots and pals with the genre in question.

But when it came to rocker Lenny Kravitz, many attendees were wondering why he got a half-hour set at the stadium that could have been allotted to someone with the slightest connection to Nashville.

A clear crowd favorite of the night came when Clarkson brought out Trisha Yearwood to duet on her set-closing cover of Garth Brooks' "Ain't Going Down ('Til the Sun Comes Up)," in a pairing of Stronger and Newly Skinnier. The house was brought down, even if Kelly and Trisha weren't. The enthusiasm level for this surpassed even the mania that resulted when Clarkson introduced Jason Aldean for their already-a-standard ballad, "Don't You Wanna Stay."

Clarkson and Aldean at LP FieldClarkson would certainly win any award for the festival's most

Sheryl Crow at the CMA Festival [Photo: Chris Willman]The second night of stadium shows at the 2013 CMA Music Festival was a surprise party. Sheryl Crow put in an unbilled appearance, as Little Big Town graciously ceded some time in their set to back the veteran-rocker-turned-country newcomer on two numbers. Meanwhile, Hunter Hayes brought out his version of a pop elder statesman, Jason Mraz, for his closing number, "Everybody's Got Somebody But Me."

Perhaps the other headliners, Blake Shelton and Lady Antebellum, were feeling like everybody had a guest star but them. Shelton's better half, Miranda Lambert, had performed at LP Field the night before but didn't stick around for any marital duets. The closest thing to a star cameo for Lady A, meanwhile, was Hillary Scott's unborn daughter, who's suddenly taking up a lot more real estate on stage. Just a few weeks ago, Scott wasn't showing all that dramatically, but now this baby is going to get some serious camera time when a highlights show is broadcast on ABC.

The humidity in Nashville this

photo: Mike Franklin/GettyJohnny Depp turns 50 on June 9, and in many ways, the Lone Ranger star is typical for his age: He had a youthful dream of being a rock star that was thwarted as he had to settle for the mundane, day-to-day drudgery of being one of the world’s most acclaimed and accomplished actors. What middle-ager stuck in a fallback career can’t relate?

But Depp has hardly given up his musical inclinations completely, even though he hasn’t been part of an ongoing band since his group P ended life as a one-album wonder in the mid-‘90s. He frequently moonlights as the world’s most recognizable sideman. And apparently the full-time rockers who let him jump up onstage with them aren’t doing it just as an indulgence.

Taylor Swift backstage at the CMA Festival [Photo: Chris Willman]Taylor Swift went from being invited onto the Rolling Stones’ stage a few nights ago to inviting Tim McGraw and Keith Urban onto her stage Thursday night, which was as star-studded a way as any to kick off the CMA Festival’s four nights of stadium shows in Nashville.

The home of the Tennessee Titans played host to more than one match of the titans Thursday. Not long after Swift brought out McGraw and Urban as guests for their No. 1 single “Highway Don’t Care,” the Zac Brown band upped the collaborative ante by dueting with Kenny Rogers on “The Gambler” and Kid Rock on the Grand Funk oldie “We’re An American Band.”

Before performing “Highway Don’t Care” — which, on record, at least, is officially a McGraw track — Swift sang an acoustic verse and chorus of her first hit, “Tim McGraw.” Backstage, she talked about getting the call that completed the cycle from dreamy 16-year-old fan to McGraw’s fully fledged co-conspirator.

“Honestly, Tim and Faith (Hill) have both been some of the most

The CMT Awards rolled out their perennial purple carpet before Wednesday night's show, and we were there to meet the stars in all their violet-treading glory. Here's what some of Nashville's finest had to tell us:

Darius Rucker at the CMT Awards [Getty Images]DARIUS RUCKER

The wagon-master was joined by Lady Antebellum for his performance of the chart-topping "Wagon Wheel," as he was in the studio. They'd only done it once live before, at a festival where they were both booked late last month. "We played a festival together in Baton Rouge and Charles (Kelley) said, 'Hey man, you think we should practice this once?' So we decided we might want to sing it together once before we came here," Rucker told Yahoo! before the show. "I’m excited because I never get to do it with 'em. When I listen to the record, I think they sound so perfect. It sounds like Lou Rawls singing with the Jordainares! They sound like triplets when they sing."

"Wagon Wheel" is a fascinating story unto itself, having begun life as an unfinished Bob Dylan bootleg