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Entertainment
2008 Corn Palace Festival The entertainment that is lined up for the 2008 Corn Palace Festival is outstanding! Jason Aldean with Julianne Hough will be performing on Thursday, August 21. Rick Springfield will be rocking the stage on Friday, August 22. Corbin Bleu of High School Musical fame will be performing on Saturday, August 23, and country music legend Lorrie Morgan will be rounding out the entertainment with her performance on Sunday, August 24. Additionally, Guy and Ralna of the Lawrence Welk Show will be performing during the 2008 Polka Festival on September 18, 2008. Tickets for Jason Aldean and Guy and Ralna are now on sale. Tickets can be purchased at the Corn Palace Box Office, by phone at 995-8430 or 800-289-7469 and through the Corn Palace Festival Online Store. Tickets for Rick Springfield, Corbin Bleu and Lorrie Morgan will go on sale on Saturday, April 26 at 7:00 a.m. at the Corn Palace box office. The Corn Palace box office will only be open on Saturday, April 26 and on Saturday, May 3 for ticket sales until regular summer hours are set. Tickets for these shows will be available through the Corn Palace Festival Online Store all the time starting April 26.
JASON ALDEAN
Lives and careers have tipping points, days when investments pay off and when a bunch of scattered puzzle pieces suddenly fit together. Jason Aldean doesn't have to think long when asked to call up his top game changing moment of 2006. "We were playing a show in Portland, Oregon. It was a little club, just an acoustic show," says the Macon, Georgia native. "Hicktown' (Aldean's first single) had been doing okay. It was probably 25 on the chart or something. The club was basically sold out. And we went into "Hicktown,' and the place just went crazy." "Hicktown," propelled by a spanking beat and a girls-gone-hillbilly-wild video, would go Top 10 before long, but that's the night it found its place in the full-roar, sing-along party that is Jason Aldean's groove. "We couldn't even hear ourselves for people singing to us," he recalls. "And that was the first time when I got the feeling that we had a hit. We had had pretty decent crowds at our shows, but it seems like from that show on things turned a corner. You get that kind of feedback and it hits you that you may end up having a career." A year after that show, the whole career thing looks better than ever. At a time when new artists in country have struggled to be heard, Aldean broke through a crowded field, capturing the Academy of Country Music Award for Top New Male Vocalist and earning a gold album just 12 weeks after his debut's release. Aldean followed up "Hicktown" with "Why," a fist-to-the-heart ballad that rang the bell at No. 1 on radio and CMT. Now he's preparing to drop his second album, a collection of songs that sustain his emphasis on relatable, recognizable lyrics while pushing into new sonic territory. The standout tracks include a tight duet with fellow rising star Miranda Lambert on "Grown Woman," the brooding "Back In This Cigarette" which almost screams to be made into a video, and the swampy groove of "I Break Everything I Touch." The project narrowly dodged disaster when a fire at Nashville's Treasure Isle Studio very nearly destroyed the recordings during the final mastering stage. The project, titled Relentless after a particularly feverish cut on the disc, benefits he says from the track record he established with his debut. "We were able to find great songs for the first album, but we had to dig a lot harder to get them," says Jason. "And this album, it wasn't as hard. After a couple of hits, people are more willing to give you great songs. So we kind of had a whole new world open up to us with this, and we took advantage of it." Why has Aldean been able to connect with so many people so fast? His fans would probably say relatable songs, a powerful, dynamic voice, and total dedication to giving himself up for an audience. He's done it for years at a stretch across the Southeast, in bars and taverns and some places you'd best not even go. He's thrown down for 15 people in halls that could have held hundreds. And he's spent the last year proving he can connect from the biggest stages, the ones that they haul around in multiple semi-trailers. You get the sense that Aldean gets pumped up to sing live the way college quarterbacks fire up for games. The Tennessean called his music "amped-up contemporary country, with Southern rock and honky-tonk influences." Aldean calls it "aggressive country." So it's no surprise that behind his radio success is a desire to commune with his crowd, to make a party happen wherever he and his band go. He played some 200 dates last year, a hard pace, but one he's trained for. "I was playing clubs when I was in high school," says Aldean. "But it was one of those things where I don't know if people knew how serious I was. I don't even know if I knew how serious I was about it at the time." After high school, he put a band together and went out on the road. "I actually had a chance to go to college and play baseball or go after a music career," he says. "But I was in bars every night, having fun, playing music. At that point I threw everything I had into it." Those high school days were spent in Macon, Georgia, hometown of music legends like Otis Redding and Little Richard. "I didn't think about it much at the time, but looking back I don't think you can grow up somewhere that has that kind of musical history and not be influenced by it in some way. I definitely think I was influenced by it, especially the Southern Rock thing. It just taught me to be who I am." For a while there, it looked like Jason might sidestep some of the hardships typically waiting for a newcomer in Nashville. He landed a major label record deal and a publishing contract. But the record deal fizzled after a year, and his publisher started to get antsy. "In the meantime, my daughter was born in 2003," says Jason. It was a blessing, to be sure, but one that put the not-yet-happening music career into cold new perspective. "I basically just started putting in for some jobs back in Georgia. My priorities had changed a little bit. It was more about making sure I had baby formula and diapers at home than it was about me getting a record deal. I was doing what I had to do." When the Broken Bow deal came through at the last possible minute, it was great news but certainly not a guarantee of anything. Independent labels had struggled for years to be taken seriously at radio. But label founder Benny Brown had been building his brand and a promotions team for several years by the time Aldean came along. They'd even helped singer/songwriter Craig Morgan thrive after being dropped from a major, landing big hits and paving the way for Aldean's "Hicktown" and all that would follow, including the momentous ACM win. Aldean says that was the no-doubt high point of his career so far. "I had grown up watching those shows on TV from the time I was a kid and seeing all the guys that I looked up to on the show and winning these awards," says Jason about his Top New Male Vocalist nod. "At the time it seemed like such a reach to get to that point, so to first of all be sitting in the audience, second of all to be nominated for an award, and then to actually win it. . . .I think anybody who goes back to see the tape of that night would probably see how nervous I was. I almost knocked the microphone over." It's no nervousness and all nerve on Aldean's new album Relentless. You can feel the attitude he brings to his live shows in its opening lines. The lead song and lead single, "Johnny Cash" is about freedom and abandon, a fantasy about blowing off the grind and the naysayers and hitting life's highway with the top down and "Folsom Prison Blues" or "Big River" pumping on the stereo. Later, Aldean sings "I Use What I Got" about the pride and steel it took to get through the hard times in a breaking career. The album closes out in a similar vein a song with a "Honky Tonk Woman" backbeat about a serial heartbreaker called "I Break Everything I Touch." Relentless also has a darker side, with a handful of songs about the wake of busted love and sonic textures that are grittier than one normally hears on country radio. He and long-time producer Michael Knox took advantage of success not by trying to repeat themselves, but by looking for new angles. "It was cool to go in and experiment a little bit with this record and not have to worry about everything being so mainstream," Aldean says. After all, he knows his fans. He sees them most every night on a stage somewhere, and more often now on the street or in a restaurant, where he's being recognized more and more regularly. "It's cool. I like meeting people and hearing what they have to say," he says. "One thing I learned about fans is that they're brutally honest. They'll tell you if they like something and they'll tell you if they don't. But that's good. That's the way I am too." For more information about Jason Aldean, visit his website at www.jasonaldean.com.
For more information about Julianne Hough, visit her website at www.juliannehough.com.
RICK SPRINGFIELD Rick has sold over 19 million records while charting a whopping 18 Top 40 hits to date. Springfield will be doing “RICK SPRINGFIELD & FRIENDS PERFORMANCE CRUISE” in November and he recently appeared on Oprah. Rick plans to release an album later this year. His most recent release, a Christmas CD entitled Christmas With You, was released on his own label, Gomer/DKE Records and features 14 elegant arrangements of traditional Christmas favorites and one extremely moving original track, Christmas With You, which was dedicated to all of our fallen troops. He released a concert DVD, Live in Rockford in October 2006 which was filmed live as part of the HDNet Concert Series at the historic Coronado Theatre in Rockford, IL. The Day After Yesterday was released in July of 2005, on Gomer/DKE Records. December of 2005 brought about Rick’s long anticipated return to ABC’s daytime hit show, “General Hospital,” in the role he originated nearly 25 years ago as Dr. Noah Drake. Having performed for millions of fans over the last three decades, and showing no signs of slowing down, Rick continues to play 100 shows a year, sharing his love of performing, unstoppable energy and his unique brand of crowd interaction with thousands of fans each night. Rick literally wades deep into the crowd at each show. Visit Rick Springfield's website at www.rickspringfield.com for more information about Rick and his many accomplishments.
CORBIN BLEU
In 2006, he had a supporting role as "Chad" (the best friend of the male lead) in the very successful High School Musical, the Emmy award-winning Disney Channel Original Movie. Bleu also guest starred in the premiere episode of Disney's Hannah Montana. Bleu's next film, Jump In! co-starring actress and R&B vocalist Keke Palmer as well as Bleu's father David Reivers, premiered on January 12, 2007, and has since become one of the highest rated Disney Channel Original Movies of all time. His debut album, Another Side, was released May 1, 2007. Bleu toured with fellow HSM cast members from late November 2006 to late January 2007 in High School Musical: The Concert performing at about 40 different cities. To promote his debut album, Bleu performed at the NextFest Tour 2007 along with Aly & AJ, Drake Bell, and Bianca Ryan. For more information about Corbin Bleu, visit his website at www.corbinbleu.com.
LORRIE MORGAN
She had one minor hit single in 1978; the following year another minor hit with "I'm Completely Satisfied", an electronically dubbed duet with her late father. She began touring Nashville nightclubs and opened for a number of acts, including Jack Greene, Billy Thunderkloud, and Jeannie Seely. She toured as a duet partner with George Jones and spent two years as part of the Opryland USA bluegrass show and as a regular singer on TNN's Nashville Now. In 1990, Morgan had her first number one single, "Five Minutes". Morgan's second album, Something in Red, was released in 1991, and went platinum. The same year, she married her third husband, Brad Thompson, bus driver of Clint Black. Watch Me, her third album, was released on RCA's newest label, BNA Records; it contained the number-one single "What Part of No". Watch Me also was certified platinum, making Morgan the first female country artist to have three albums in a row to be certified platinum. Morgan's romantic life gained tabloid attention with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman following her second divorce. Morgan was voted Female Vocalist of the Year by the fans in TNN's Music City News awards in 1994. She would earn this honor again in 1996, 1997 and 1998. She also appeared on Frank Sinatra's Duets II album, singing a version of "How Do You Keep the Music Playing" intertwined with Sinatra's "My Funny Valentine". 1995 saw the release of Morgan's Greatest Hits CD, which produced her third number-one single in the song "I Didn't Know My Own Strength". The next year, Morgan was featured on the Beach Boys' now out-of-print album Stars and Stripes Vol. 1, performing a cover of their 1964 hit "Don't Worry Baby". The Beach Boys provided the harmonies and backing vocals. For more information about Lorrie Morgan, visit her website at www.lorrie.com.
GUY AND RALNA of the LAWRENCE WELK SHOW
Guy Hovis, a vocalist, was born in Tupelo, MS on September 25, 1941. He attended the University of Mississppi and originally wanted to be an accountant, but soon found music and showbiz more inviting. While paying his dues in nightclubs all over Los Angeles, he married Ralna English in 1969. The next year, he joined his wife on the Lawrence Welk Show as one half of "Guy & Ralna" which was one of the show's most popular acts. Since Welk, he has remarried, recently to Sarah (Sis) Lundy, and has worked as State Director for US Senator Trent Lott (R-Mississippi). While not working in politics, he sings live, as a soloist or with his ex-wife Ralna, and spends time with his daughter Julie. Ralna English, one of the most dynamic performers to ever hit the stages of America, performs more than 125-days-a-year throughout the U.S. and Canada. She appears with Symphony Orchestras from Arizona to Florida, in showrooms from Atlantic City to Las Vegas, and on stages from San Diego to New York. Ralna's great diversity of music includes jazz, blues, gospel, country, pop, patriotic and songs from the '30s and '40's. Ralna's been a favorite on television's "Lawrence Welk Show" since 1969 and more than 3 million people continue to watch her on TV each week. Ralna most recently was seen internationally on CNN's "Larry King Live," "The Today Show," "ABC World News" and QVC, America's largest retail home shopping network. Ralna's website, (www.ralnaenglish.com) receives more than 200,000 hits per year and her CDs, released on her own independent label, sell throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. Ralna is a singer for all ages. Ralna English was raised in Spur, Texas, a "suburb" of Lubbock. She began her professional singing career with a junior high school rock 'n roll band and appeared on local television shows and public events. While attending Texas Tech University, Ralna was chosen to perform at Six Flags Over Texas in Dallas. While there, she was spotted by a record company executive and for the next two-and-a-half-years, Ralna sang jingles during the day and performed six-nights-a-week in nightclubs. Her career then took her to Los Angeles where she performed at "The Horn" in Santa Monica with other regulars such as Jim Nabors, Jack Jones, Vikki Carr and Steve Martin. She also performed in Las Vegas and in Lake Tahoe. Her own U.S.O. tour took her to Japan, the Philippines, Okinawa, Taiwan and Thailand. Ralna has starred with other members from The Lawrence Welk Show in 13 national TV specials including Lawrence Welk: Milestones & Memories, one of the three most-successful fundraising specials ever aired on public television! In March 2003, Ralna starred in Lawrence Welk: God Bless America, which became the second most-successful Welk TV special on PBS. In March 2005, Ralna also starred in the PBS gospel and inspirational music hit, Lawrence Welk Precious Memories. Ralna tours from coast-to-coast, performing with symphony orchestras, at civic centers, state fairs, senior expos and in showrooms in Connecticut, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno and Lake Tahoe. She especially enjoyed being the opening act for "Mr. Warmth" Don Rickles, in Las Vegas, and at Merv Griffin's Resorts International in Atlantic City. She has also performed with Doc Severinson at Phoenix Symphony Hall and with Doc and the Tonight Show Band at the Sun Dome. Ralna has been a popular guest performer at The Champagne Theatre in Branson for the past 10 years! Ralna's first solo recording, "Always," was released on her own independent label, as well as her second recording "Amazing Grace," a collection of gospel and spiritual songs." Her CD, "My Favorite Love Songs" features big band hits from the '30s and '40s, and her latest CD, "My God, My Country" features patriotic and inspirational songs. Ralna's music is sold through her website (www.ralnaenglish.com), on Amazon.com, Christianbookstores.com, in independent Christian bookstores in the U.S. and Canada, and through music catalogs distributed throughout the world. When not on a stage or in a recording studio, Ralna likes to enjoy time with her daughter, Julie, relax with a good book, or engage in a game of tennis. Because she enjoys giving back some of the blessings that have come her way, her schedule also includes numerous charity appearances, telethons, and church concerts including a performance at the Crystal Cathedral in California. One of her greatest joys was to be named Ambassador for Childhelp USA, her favorite charity. For more information about Guy and Ralna, visit Ralna's website at www.ralnaenglish.com.
The Corn Palace Festival runs Wednesday, August 20, through Sunday, August 24, 2008. If you would like to be added to our mailing list to receive information about the festival, please send your full mailing address to mschilling@midco.net.
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Every country artist once had a “day job” that commonly used music business term for an occupation that pays the bills and fills the void between hopeful aspiration and bonafide success. However, never in the history of country music has someone taken a more celebrated path on the road to their country music dream than Julianne Hough (pronounced “Huff”). 
Rick Springfield has withstood the test of time far better than most critics would ever have imagined writing and performing some of the best-crafted power pop of the past 30 years. 
As a child, Corbin Bleu modeled for clients such as Target, Toys R Us and Tommy Hilfiger. In 1996, his family relocated to Los Angeles and he soon gained a returning role on the TV series High Incident and a guest star appearance on ER. Bleu also had small roles in films such as Soldier, Family Tree, Mystery Men and Galaxy Quest before he gained a lead role the 2004 film, Catch That Kid. After the success of Catch That Kid, Bleu signed to star in Flight 29 Down, a drama series about a group of teens stranded on an island. He also has a small role as Spencer on Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide on Nickelodeon--his first appearance being in the episode titled Guide to: The School Play.
Lorrie Morgan made her first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry at age thirteen, performing Marie Osmond's "Paper Roses." Her father died when she was sixteen. When her father died in 1975, she took over his band and began leading the group through various club gigs. Within a few years she disbanded the group, and in 1977 she went on to play with the Little Roy Wiggins band. She then became a receptionist and demo singer at Acuff-Rose, where she also wrote songs. For some years in the late 1970s, she was a featured vocalist on the morning television show hosted by Ralph Emery on Nashville's WSM-TV (now WSMV); Emery was a longtime friend of her father, who appeared on the former's Opry Star Spotlight overnight music and interview show that ran for many years on WSM-AM.
