Music. According to Kim.

I figured out pretty early on that the only way I could make this series work is if I was completely honest about what I struggle with myself. So before I get to the songs that I've chosen to feature in this installment, I'm going to tell you a little about what's been going on with me this year. As some of you know, I have rheumatoid arthritis and was first inspired to start this series during arthritis awareness month (May) last year. The first post wouldn't end up going up until June. The best laid plans and all that. I decided to keep it tied to arthritis awareness, but really, the goal behind this series is to use music to try to encourage anyone going through a tough time. Whether they also have rheumatoid arthritis or not. It's been over a month since I last posted. 2017 has been a tough year in regards to my health. My rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has spun completely out of control and I was without a rheumatologist for a few months. My pain levels have bee...

Welcome to the 2nd installment of this series! In Part 1, I focused on emotional songs with the intent of moving from the dark to the light. Or, as is the case with many of the videos in today's post, the lighthearted. Lately, I've been gravitating a bit more towards more upbeat songs. You know, the ones that make you want to dance along. The ones that make you smile and just put you in a happy place. The ones that are flat out fun. If you ask me, you can never have too much fun. There's so many people who take themselves way too seriously and I think the world would be a better place if more people made a point to enjoy themselves more often. From a chronic pain standpoint, I think anything that encourages us to move is a good thing. Now obviously, this is not always possible. Be it due to pain or stiffness or overwhelming fatigue, sometimes the best thing to do is rest. Listen to your body.  That said, if you feel up to it and the music moves you, let it. Not a dance...

Yes, it's another post about Home Free. What can I say other than my name is Kim and I am a Home Freeaholic. Not only can I admit that, I do so with pride. Good thing too since I'm pretty positive that there is no cure for this. Now, I first wrote about these guys back in March. You can read that post in its entirety here if you wish, but here's a rather pertinent excerpt: " Home Free is also like Little Big Town in that they favor more intricate harmonies over basic ones and said harmonies are rock solid. Neither of these groups would work anywhere near as well if anyone was missing. Each person is great on their own, but their true strength lies in the combined sum of their parts. I truly believe that if you like one of these groups, you'd probably like the other as well. Especially if you enjoy any of the LBT albums that Wayne Kirkpatrick produced. Just because Home Free sounds closer to how LBT did then. I also believe that Home Free needs to cover at least...

The summer of 2005. The first time I ever heard Little Big Town. It was during CMA Fest or whatever it was called then and we were sitting pretty far from the stage and off to the stage so we really couldn't see them all that well. It was a few months before they would release The Road to Here . Little did I know that this group was going to end up making a huge impact on me. I had no idea how many roads I would drive on, how many Little Big Town miles I would tack onto my car over the next few years. Thousands. It has to be in the thousands. I've seen many acts more than once, but none anywhere near as much as I've seen them. I didn't know back then that I would end up meeting them time and time again and how much those meetings would mean to me. How much these four people would mean to me. Little did I know how frustrated I'd end up getting, wondering why they weren't more popular than they were then. Things have changed a bit. I've watched these ...

Well, it's the middle of December and y'all know what that means: Christmas is right around the corner. Which means that we've all been listening to Christmas music since about Thanksgiving, if not sooner. I've gotten a few new Christmas albums recently and it occurred to me that my collection of Christmas music is fairly large. So I've been listening to all the different versions I have of a bunch of these songs and decided that it might be fun to write about my favorites. Guess what this is? This will be divided into three categories and thus, three posts. This one focusing on traditional Christmas carols, as it states in the title. The other two? Christmas standards and original Christmas songs. Please note that these are in no particular order and not every artist listed is a country act. Most of them are, but not all. There are a bunch of songs to get to and respecting that, I'm not going to go into too much detail about why I picked each song. I'll...

So day 4 was JakeCarrieStormGate 2013. Day 3 was the Lenny Kravitz fiasco. Day 2? Well, there was  some sort of technical difficulty and a huge failure to communicate just what was going on. A situation that they chose to handle by not handling it. The artist involved? Little Big Town. But like the other couple of days, I'll get to that later. Let's start with the beginning of the night show at LP Field.

Welcome to the second installment of my covers series. Check out the first part if you haven't already. Since picking songs using shuffle worked so well for me the last time, that's exactly how I'm going to do it every time. As far as I know none of these songs have ever been done by any of these artists. I forgot to mention it last time, but wanted to urge everyone to check out any songs that they don't know. You should be able to preview all of them on Amazon or iTunes. Or even YouTube. Once again, if any of the artists featured in this installment happen to come across this than they can take it as a challenge. I imagine that some of the choices might throw a few of them for a loop if they did see it. Especially one of them. Remember: I'm trying to think out of the box and not always go with what seems obvious. Some choices are more creative than others. If you came to this post via a direct link and missed part 1, you can find it  here . So that said, let...

 Well, it's that time of year when blogs and country sites all over create lists just like this one. I always enjoy reading these lists because it's interesting to see who people choose and why. I'll be honest. When I decided to make my own list, there were some artists who came to mind instantly. But choosing the rest was very hard for me. I didn't base this on numbers or sales or anything like that. Rather, I tried to think of which artists interested me the most this year. Which ones stood out among all the others and why. In doing so I realized that a lot of artists impressed me this year. Some of whom it almost pains me not to include. But there could only be twelve. There will be artists that you may be surprised to see on here and some who you'll be surprised to not  see on here. Some of which surprised me when I chose or didn't choose them. So who made the cut? Well keep on reading to find out. Including some of my pictures in here because why not? T...

Well. We've arrived at the last category in this series. If you recall from my introductory post, I decided against making a pick for Musician of the Year. Mainly because I'm not familiar enough with a couple of the musicians nominated and knew I wouldn't be able to come up with much to say about them. And that didn't seem fair. It's easier to write about artists you don't know too well than it is to write about musicians. Why that is, I'm not sure. Most people seem to be calling this for Mac McAnally (guitarist) and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that he's won it for the past four years. Not a bad track record, I'd say! My love of the steel guitar makes me hope that Paul Franklin might take this one. But honestly, all five of the men nominated would deserve it. I don't have to know all of their playing well to know that they all deserve it  because I know how strong the talent pool is in Nashville. These five gentlemen being chose...

I'm going to start this off with mentioning that the eligibility period for this years CMAs started on July 1st, 2011 and ended on June 30th, 2012. I point this out because I was pretty surprised by a couple of the songs up for this award. Not because I don't like the songs, but because it seems like it's been so long since they were released. Come to find out, when a song comes out doesn't really matter. What matters is when it reaches its peak chart position - which has to be somewhere in the top fifty. So there we go. I still think it's weird that a couple of these songs are in the running, but then, I am not a member of the Country Music Association. For anyone interested in how the voting process works and what the criteria for all the awards is, you can read about it  here . That all said, my picks have more to do with my own personal preferences and factors that I think should be considered. That should go without saying, but I wanted to make it clear. Me...

After the difficulty of the category, this one felt like a breeze. One of the categories where I instantly knew who my pick would be. Makes this a whole lot easier, lemme tell you. The nominees: Eli Young Band Lady Antebellum Little Big Town The Band Perry Zac Brown Band My pick for CMA Vocal Group of the Year? Little Big Town Before I talk about the other nominees, I just have to say once more how ridiculous I think it is that Rascal Flatts didn't get a nomination this year. Biggest snub of the CMAs, in my opinion. Though that's probably a sign of how tough this category could become. What with all the groups currently doing so well in country music. There was a time when you always knew who'd get nominated in this category because that's all the groups there were. Now in addition to the nominees and Rascal Flatts, we have Eden's Edge, The Farm, Pistol Annies and Gloriana. And then there's Lonestar, who are going to be putting out a new album at som...

When I get to the end of the month I always promise myself that I'll try to write more posts in the following month than I did in the one that's ending. As you can tell from the monthly post numbers, I haven't succeeded in doing that. I was pretty consistent from February through May and then June happened. I'm not going to get into specifics, but I will say that I just didn't feel up to writing much for a few different reasons. Hence the lack of updates. But as you can clearly see, I'm back. That's a good thing since there's a lot to write about. Song reviews for new songs by Edens Edge, Randy Houser, Parmalee, Andy Gibson, Katie Armiger and Kip Moore to name a few. Albums reviews of Alan Jackson, Josh Turner, Edens Edge and Jana Kramer. A few other kinds of blogs about random things and I'll be introducing you all to a band of guys was are based in Virginia and call themselves Steelshot. All I'll say about them for now is that I don't b...

Okay, so we've had a lot of great artists and videos featured so far and now it's time for a whole new batch of people as we head into the 20s. But we can't get there until we finish the 30s, now can we? I feel like I usually have more to say at this point, but I think I'm just going to jump back in.