CRS 2011

Country Radio Seminar 2011 has come to a close. At the Renaissance Hotel and Convention Center, stages and media room booths are being deconstructed, giant banners and jumbo screens are coming down and folks are packing up and heading back home after a week long event held in Nashville every year. We'd like to take this moment to recap our week and bid farewell to our friends at country radio; we'll see you soon!

CRS is an annual event where radio industry folks from all over the globe travel to Nashville for a week and attend panels, workshops, parties and performances. It's an opportunity to record artist promotion liners ("Hi, I'm George Straight and you're listening to..."), do interviews, build relationships with record labels and see performances by up and coming artists as well as established ones. Throughout the hotel and convention center there are broadcasting booths and microphone recorders, artists, publicists and managers scurrying about. Some of the stations and publications are even set up in a room or suite in the hotel. Once this week we even sat on a guy's bed to record the interview!

Our week started bright and early Tuesday morning with a live on-air interview and performance with our good friend, Moby with Moby in the Morning. Moby was one of many radio shows broadcasting live from the convention center this week. We first met Moby back in April down in Roswell, Georgia at The Swallow at the Hollow. He's a big fan and a good friend.

The next four days were packed full with many more interviews, dinners lunches and several really fun performance opportunities for us.

Our label, Black River Entertainment had a 1969 Airstream that had been transformed into a mobile cigar lounge parked out on the street in front of the hotel all week . It was a very vibey place for us and our promotion staff to invite radio folks to come out and have a drink and a cigar. Inside the tricked out airstream, which was aptly named the "When The Smoke Clears Cigar Lounge", they had ours and Sarah's brand new videos playing on a loop. Genius!

On the last night of CRS every year, they put on a huge show in the grand ballroom called New Faces. It's a very big honor to play this show. This year's lineup was Lee Brice, Steel Magnolia, Josh Thompson, The Band Perry and Jerrod Niemann. Before each act plays, they show a short video introduction, most of which are comical and very entertaining. They serve a very nice fancy dinner during the show, and CRB presents awards to the stations and programers.

This year we had the awesome opportunity to play a full band show on the stage right out in the lobby of the ballroom. As people gathered to enter the New Faces show, we provided the entertainment until they opened the doors. Sarah went on at 5:40, and we played from 6 to 6:30. Sarah did great and we had a BLAST! Our goal is to be ON the New Face stage next year!

After the New Faces show let out, we went over across the street down on Broadway to Cadillac Ranch for the after party. This year's after party, which was hosted by our good friends at Digital Rodeo, was themed "The British Invasion". Country acts get to blow off a little steam from a long week, and sing a cover song of their choice in the theme. We rendered the popular Beatles tune, "Can't Buy Me Love" to a packed house of radio folks and peers. It was a PERFECT ending to an amazing week!

We want to send a HUGE thank you to our label, Black River Entertainment, our publicist Suzan Niles, and our manager, Nancy Tunick for putting together such an eventful week for us.

Thank you CRS 2011, we'll see you next year!

Matt, Brad & Tim
Due West

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