Music: Country: If I've got a celeb fave, it's country-music songstress Carrie Underwood

Guess who's up to bat in Nashville? It's one of my few celebrity favourites, Carrie Underwood. She's up to bat in another sense too, as she'll be "batting it out" when she takes the stage at the Country Music Association's festivel, opening on June 9 and continuing thru the 13th. (The pix is actually from a 2009 event but CMA sent me this in the RSS feed I get from them in my email ... thanks CMA!)

Country Music, by Countrygal

 In Nashville, she'll be joined on stage by dozens of established and rising stars, many of them young fellows, and young gals too. Many more will be in the audience. If you want to join in summer mass events of festivity and h+-jinks, you m+t want to ante up some cash and make a trip to one of the great centers of country music and other genres, like Gospel, and the general crossover Christian taste-and-market niche, which overlaps with many genres -- since Christian music is not defined by a musical genre as such.  

Many country-music singers and bands function in both festivals, or coud if they wanted to.  But it doesn't matter so much to what association you belong.  For me, it's more a matter of whether the Gospel comes thru sometimes in the music, a given song or a theme in the overall body of work, recordings, and performances -- when it reflects personal experience, especially.

While I've got your attention, here's the June 4 country-music chart:

1. Carrie Underwood “Temporary Home”
2. Miranda Lambert “The House That Built Me”
3. Kellie Pickler “Makin’ Me Fall In Love Again”
4. Reba McEntire “I Keep On Lovin’ You”
5. Lady Antebellum “American Honey”
6. Clay Walker “She Won’t Be Lonely Long”
7. Emily West “Blue Sky”
8. Danny Gokey “My Best Days Are Ahead Of Me”
9. Luke Bryan “Rain Is A Good Thing”
10. Martina McBride “Wrong Baby Wrong”
11. Laura Bell Bundy “Giddy On Up”
12. Tim McGraw “Still”
13. Jewel “Stay Here Forever”
14. Brad Paisley “Water”
15. The Band Perry “Hip To My Heart”
16. LoCash Cowboys “Here Comes Summer”
17. Jaron & The Long Road To Love “Pray For You”
18. Kenny Chesney with Brooks & Dunn “You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone”
19. Joe Nichols “Gimmie That Girl”20. Craig Morgan “This Ain’t Nothin"

Music: Gospel: Oldtime music revival in NYC with Bluegrass Gospel's 'Diane McKoy and a Small Few"

Veteran entertainer Diane McKoy combines her love of God with her love of music and forms Bluegrass Gospel band in the Big Apple. She's a veteran entertainer who's combining her love of God and Scripture, with her love of music, by forming a new Bluegrass Gospel band in the Big Apple in her second try in her home city. As far as she knows, hers is again the only one in that northern metropolis where the grass is scarce, green not really blue.

New York, Apr28,2k7 /Christian Newswire/ -- New York City may be famed for Broadway and Wall Street, but Diane McKoy hopes America's largest city becomes known as home to her Bluegrass Gospel band, Diane McKoy and a Small Few.

"New York City may not be the first place that comes to mind when you hear about a Bluegrass Gospel band," says McKoy, the band's leader, "but God put A Small Few in my heart and I live in New York." Although there are many Gospel music groups in the Big Apple, Bluegrass Gospel bands are otherwise nonexistent. There was one other. McKoy started it. It lasted 13 years before it disbanded.

Music, by Audiovisiotor

The newly formed band features McKoy and two musician/singer friends: Steven Antonelli and Daniel Marcus. Together they produce Bluegrass Gospel and Country Gospel, music that mixes the Good Book with strings and harmonizing.

Like many indie musicians Diane McKoy and a Small Few has a My Space page. Presently, the group is playing at various venues throughout New York City. The trio is making fans out of big city dwellers wherever the band plays.

I can think of other cities, further North, that may welcome authentic Bluegrass, especially of the key Gospel variety. Fascinating too is the the fact that Gospel has differentiated into three at least subgenres: traditional, country, and bluegrass. I wonder whether I could find these different varieties online at a digital music store.