Country Mike Blog

More goodwill

Mike Sudhalter  |  June 15, 2007

I was just thinking the CMA Music Festival is a redundant name, the Country Music Association Music Festival. They should just change it to CMA Festival.

On a more serious note, the organization donates half of the money it makes from the festival to a Metro Nashville Public Schools program called "Keep the Music Playing" for music education. Last year, they donated $368,502 to the program. It's good to know the high ticket prices for the event are going to a worthy cause.

I'm looking forward to Tuesday when the new Brad Paisley CD comes out. I plan on providing a track-by-track review of the new disc here on the blog.

Several independent artists had advertisements in the CMA Festival program. I thought I'd google a few of them and see who impressed me.

Stephen Cochran brings a traditional country voice to the table with the party song "Friday Night Fireside" and the ballad "Four Beers and Seven Years Ago". The Kentucky native is touring in the southeast, but hopefully, he'll play some dates nationally.

I had actually heard the debut album of Miko Marks, a California-based country singer. Checking out her website, she's got a great video to go along with the ballad "Mama", one of the songs from her debut disc, Freeway Bound. Hopefully, "Don't Come Cryin' To Me" will give Marks the national attention that she deserves.

Those are just two of the many independent artists who entertained fans at the festival. As I wrote in earlier posts, it's sometimes more exciting to see the independent artists try to build their fan base than it is to watch the superstars perform 20 or 30 minute sets in front of 40,000 people.