Blog Posts by Chris Willman

The just-concluded 2012 CMA Festival drew 70,000 people to Nashville... and those were just the artists.

Okay, maybe it just seemed that way. But nearly everybody who was anybody made it to the main stage this year, turning in performances that will be whittled down into a three-hour ABC special to air Sept. 17. We caught up with quite a few of them backstage, starting with the coming telecast's co-hosts...

Luke Bryan and Kimberly Perry, licensed to thrillLUKE BRYAN AND KIMBERLY PERRY

These two will be the official emcees when the CMA Festival special airs on ABC in September. So they were busy throughout the four-day festival shooting introductions and interviewing their fellow stars. Despite their mutual extroversion, these new duties didn't always come naturally.

"I didn't know what a co-host is supposed to do," Perry (of, of course, the Band Perry) admitted backstage. "You see Brad and Carrie on the CMAs and those are some tough shoes to fill. I actually practiced for my interviews, because I had never done an interview before.

It's all over but the weeklong hangovers, now that the CMA Festival is history. But there's plenty to look forward to, when it comes to the new albums that a lot of the participating superstars have in the works. Here's what we learned about some of them backstage at Nashville's LP Field, as the artists eagerly chatted up their new singles and/or works-in-progress:

The Band Perry, backstage at the CMA FestivalTHE BAND PERRY

Now it can be revealed: The producer on the Band Perry's sophomore album is none other than Rick Rubin—initially famous for the Beastie Boys and other hard-hitting recordings, but recently better known for gentler works with the Dixie Chicks, Josh Groban, and Neil Diamond.

"We're about halfway finished with our second album, which feels really good, to at least have the meat and potatoes under our belt," said Kimberly Perry. "The producer hunt for us was about a year-long process. We had been meeting and discussing and praying and doing pre-production and trying to decide what the best fit was. Kind of on a

"She wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts..."

Well, that was then. This is now.

There's nary a T-shirt to be found in "Taylor Swift: Speak Now—Treasures from the World Tour," now on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. You will come across some short skirts, however, in the exhibit, which opened to the public this week. Also, a hillbilly dress, some Shakespearian outfits, some '60s girl-group outfits, and, yes, even a wedding "gown shaped like a pastry," as described in the title song of the Speak Now album.

Taylor's flying balcony, on displayThe 11 stations along the way at the Hall of Fame represent about the number of costume changes that occurred during Swift's spectacular 2011 world tour. Signs and photos helpfully point out which outfits correlated with which crucial song in the set list. A few props are thrown in, too, from a goat to the floating balcony in which Taylor soared over the audience at the close of each night's show. (Sadly, there is neither the technology nor the liability insurance

If you think Blake Shelton is thrilled about going back for a third season of The Voice, you're right. And wrong.

"So far, I'm doing the back-to-back seasons," he said backstage at the CMA Festival Friday night, shortly before taking the stage at Nashville's LP Field. His emphasis was on the so far part of that equation. "At some point, something's gotta give. I've been very vocal with the network and Mark Burnett's production company. It's like 'Man, this sucks, because the reason that you want the four of us is because we're viable artists right now—current. And we can't do both, if we do back-to-back seasons.' I've been hammering 'em about it."

Blake Shelton, backstage at Nashville's LP FieldNot that he has any intention of jumping off the train. "We are gonna do this fall," he emphasized. "We've already committed to that. And in fact we start in a week or two, filming it again. And I look forward to that. I love it, and I can't imagine not being a part of The Voice, ever. I mean, I'd love to do it from now on. But it just needs

Miranda Lambert hasn't heard from Eric Church since she suggested last month that the fellow country star should "grovel" in apology to her and hubby Blake Shelton.

But if she has any message for Church, it's this: Dude, she is "Over You."

Miranda Lambert backstage at the CMA FestivalBefore performing Thursday night at the CMA Festival, Lambert was asked backstage if she'd gotten the apology she was looking for from Church. "No," she answered, before adding that she understood how her one-time pal and former opening act might've gotten himself into trouble with a controversial Rolling Stone interview. "I think that anybody can get roped into a really bad interview situation. I've had things printed about me before that sounded way worse than they were. I know he said what he said. But it died off just like anything else that happens. Everybody loves to call it a feud. It's not really a feud. It's just 'Dude, you totally messed up and you know it,' and you move on."

It sounds like Lambert still wouldn't mind hearing Church eat

"I am de invisible man!" Bob Welch once quipped, shortly after he was weirdly excluded from Fleetwood Mac's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Bob WelchIndeed, Mystery to Me, the title of one of the Mac albums on which he served as frontman, is a phrase that could sum up how Welch is remembered by many of the supergroup's more casual fans, even as news of his apparent suicide rocked the music world Thursday. He was Fleetwood Mac's principle singer and songwriter for five well-regarded albums released over a period of three and a half years in the early 1970s. But between the all-consuming popularity of the members who replaced him and the drug problems that turned him into a recluse after a handful of solo hits, his role in rock history was quickly eclipsed, to the point where his being left out of the Hall of Fame wasn't nearly as controversial as it should've been.

Welch's role in Fleetwood Mac might best be encapsulated in two words: "transitional figure." Which may account for the

The hallmark of tonight's CMT Music Awards looks to be pairing performers with partners twice their size (or half, depending on how you're looking at it).

Gary LeVox backstage with Journey singer Arnel Pineda and Jonathan CainRascal Flatts will be closing the three-hour live telecast by joining up with classic-rock band Journey for a medley of "Banjo" and "Don't Stop Believin'." As you can see from some of the adjoining solos, Gary LeVox dwarfs Journey's current singer, Arnel Pineda, in just about every way. Except, presumably, vocal prowess—but you can be the judge of that at about 10:53 p.m. ET/PT.

Toby Keith and Kristen BellAnd how about hosts Toby Keith or Kristen Bell? There seems to be a premium on very diminutive Kristens hosting country awards shows, as Kristen Chenoweth just did similar duties on the ACM Awards a couple of months back. At 5'1", Bell is two inches taller than Chenoweth, but still manages to look like something the 6'3" Keith might have as an appetizer before the main course. Will she tower over him, comedically?

And then we have Barack Obama and Mitt

Paul McCartney—boozer?

The image hardly seems to fit. In the early '70s, the newly liberated ex-Beatle seemed to all the world to be "Hi Hi Hi," as one of his hits of the era put it… whether he was high on life, high on living a bucolic life in the Scottish countryside, or high on the wacky weed that occasionally landed him in legal trouble at the time. The Cute One could hardly have seemed more carefree.

But McCartney has now revealed that he had periods of feeling low, low, low in the years immediately following the breakup—enough so that he was driven to drink.

Paul McCartney in 1971In an interview promoting the deluxe reissue of his 1971 album RAM, McCartney talked about his reliance on alcohol to get through the bitter aftermath of the Beatles' breakup, and how it gave him a rare occurrence of writer's block.

On an "average day," McCartney told Drowned in Sound, he'd go for a horse ride with wife Linda and his kids in the pastoral surroundings around Mull of Kintyre, and then, "in the evening, I'd