We are excited to announce the musical lineup for the debut Chattahippie Music Festival, featuring the best talent in Americana, Rock, Blues, Jam, Country, Folk and Bluegrass from around the nation! With over thirty artists from ten states, this promises to be a great celebration of peace, love and music!

Northwest Georgia Bank presents the 2008 Chattahippie Music Festival featuring: Pure Prairie League, Chris Knight, The Derailers, Charlie Louvin, Walt Wilkins & The Mystiqueros, Two Tons of Steel, Elizabeth Cook, Dallas Wayne, The Gougers, Gary Nicholson, Jason Eady & The Wayward Apostles, Laura Cantrell, Buzz Cason & The Love Notes, Beggars’ Caravan, Lou Wamp, Roger Alan Wade, Dane Varese, Joe Moss, Trent Summar & The New Row Mob, Jimmy Davis, Michael Johnathon,  Band of Heathens, Doug & Telisha Williams, Miles from Nowhere, Michael Hearne & South by Southwest, Tommy Alverson, Billy Block, Whitey Johnson, Penguin, Tressie Seegers, Darryl Lee Rush, and The New Binkley Brothers.

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Billy Block
Nashville, TN
www.billyblock.com

Billy Block to host our Saturday Night Lineup!

CMT’s newest weekly program is Billy Block’s Western Beat, which features artists that you may not hear often, or at all on contemporary country radio these days.

Not only does the show feature live performances by the artists, but they’ll also be interviewed by Billy Block, or his wife, Jill, in between sets. The shows are taped at the Exit/In, and are the centerpiece of the Western Beat empire which includes a radio show, Internet website, magazine, and record label.

Billy Block got his musical start in the Texas music scene back in the late ’70’s playing drums for local artists, Freddy Fender, Shake Russell, Billy Joe Shaver, and B.W. Stevenson. He moved to Los Angeles in 1985, and worked a variety of jobs for the next 10 years, including gigs in a house band at the famed Palomino Club as part of Ronnie Mack’s Barn Dance. Block credits Mack’s efforts in California as being one of the sparkplugs of the alternative country movement.

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Trent Summar & The New Row Mob
Hometown: Nashville, TN
Genres: Americana, Country, Farm Rock
Website: www.trentsummarmusic.com

Not that labels in music matter much — at least they shouldn’t — but Trent Summar has an evocative and altogether hard-to-resist term for the music he makes: Farm rock.

That probably says it well enough. But in case further explanation helps, we’re talking about that intersection where Chuck Berry rock and George Jones country converge. We’re talking about love songs that veer off the beaten path with honest slices of rural imagery and humor.

It’s a place on the musical map that’s entirely familiar but just a little too rowdy, a little too much fun (and in truth, too rooted in tradition) to be called mainstream country

If you’ve heard Summar’s 2000 debut album, the critically acclaimed Trent Summar & The New Row Mob, or seen his raucous live act in recent years, you may already be a staunch farm rock adherent.

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Pure Prairie League
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Genres: Americana, Country, Rock
Website: www.pureprairieleague.com

Their rich history goes back to 1969 in the Southern Ohio area where a group of young musicians initially played cover tunes at local bars. Original member Craig Fuller and early member George Powell were beginning to stir their song writing abilities around the time original drummer Tom McGail happened to catch a late night 1939 Errol Flyn flick called Dodge City. The movie’s Pure Prairie League was the woman’s temperance union attempting to clean up Kansas’ most lawless town. RCA signed Pure Prairie League after seeing them play in Cleveland, Ohio. The first album was released the following year. The most memorable thing about it was the Norman Rockwell cover from a 1927 Saturday Evening Post cover, ” recalls Mike Reilly. (more…)

Buzz Cason
Hometown: Nashville
Genres: Americana, Rock, Singer/Songwriter
Website: www.buzzcason.com

4-day Tickets / Thursday Night Feature!

As 2007 arrived, Buzz Cason was the only songwriter credited with cuts by pop icons, the Beatles, Pearl Jam and U2 – not to mention Martina McBride, Gloria Estefan, Jan & Dean, The Derailers, Placido Domingo and even the Oak Ridge Boys. And it all started because of girls.

In 1956, Buzz (then an Inglewood, TN teenager) was given the opportunity to lip-synch “White Christmas” on the Noel Ball Saturday Showcase, a local talent show on WSIX-TV (ABC). Reluctant to delve into a television musical, Jim Seymore, a fellow art student organizing the show told him, “It’ll be fun and there’ll be lots of girls there!” Buzz did enjoy himself and afterwards met other musicians at the television station to later form a band they named The Casuals. Generally recognized as Nashville’s first rock-n-roll band, The Casual’s first album also launched Buzz’s songwriting career with, “My Love Song For You,” co-written with band-mate Richard Williams. By 1957, The Casuals had become a national touring act, replacing The Everly Brothers on a tour of 60 fair dates.

During this same period, Buzz met Bobby Russell, an aspiring writer at the old Globe Recording Studio in Nashville located above Mom’s Tavern (now Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge) and the two began to co-write. At the urging and support of Gary Walker of Lowery Music, they wrote and recorded “Tennessee” as a studio group, The Todds. The song was covered in ‘58 by Jan and Dean, their first Hot 100 record on the BILLBOARD chart, and thus an association of more than 25 years began. Prior to moving to California, Buzz wrote another Todd’s single with Russell, “Popsicle,” which went on to become another Top 20 record for Jan and Dean in 1963.
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Charlie Louvin
Residence: Nashville
Hometown: Henager, Alabama
Genres: Americana, Singer/Songwriter, Country
Website: www.charlielouvinbros.com

2008 Grammy Award Nominee!

The term “living legend” gets thrown around quite a bit, but it actually applies to Country Music Hall of Famer Charlie Louvin.

The magical harmonies and depth of feeling found on Louvin Brothers recordings of the 50’s and 60’s inspired a new generation of musicians, firmly establishing the Louvins’ stature as one of the most influential duos in country music history.

In 2006, the Tompkins Square label reached out to Charlie about making his first new studio album in over ten years. They enlisted Mark Nevers, who engineered sessions for many top country artists, and produced Calexico, Lambchop, Candi Staton among others. Guests on the album include Elvis Costello, George Jones, Jeff Tweedy, Will Oldham, Tom T. Hall, Tift Merritt, Marty Stuart, Bobby Bare Sr., David Kilgour, members of Bright Eyes, Lambchop, Clem Snide, Superchunk and more.

Louvin enjoyed the experience. “Mark Nevers is one of the best engineers I’ve ever worked with. My brother and I cut our teeth on some of those old songs and they influenced us tremendously. I’m glad we’re able to remind people of them.”

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Elizabeth Cook
Hometown: Nashville, TN
Genres: Americana, Country
Website: www.elizabeth-cook.com

In contemporary country music, it’s a rare performer who will dare to take on the industry on her own hogs-and-kisses terms. But for the artist whom Nanci Griffith has called “this generation’s Loretta Lynn,” it takes a certain tenacity to meld smart attitude with classic tradition, the credibility of a life lived with genuine hillbilly passion, and the integrity to write an acclaimed cache of uncommonly cool songs. In other words, for Elizabeth Cook, it takes balls.

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Gary Nicholson

Residence: Nashville
Hometown: Garland, Texas
Genres: Americana, Singer/Songwriter, Country, Blues, Rock
Website: www.garynicholson.com

Thursday Night Exclusive - 4-day Tickets Only!

A 2006 nominee for the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Gary Nicholson has had more than 350 of his songs recorded, has won 26 ASCAP songwriting awards and is responsible for more than a dozen major hits. Unlike most tunesmiths, he is not bound by musical genre. His songs routinely top the country hit parade. But rock bands, blues artists, folk stars and bluegrass acts have also embraced him as a songwriter.

“I’ve never found it difficult to ’shift gears’ between different musical styles,” Nicholson says. “I let myself be dictated by the needs of the artist or of the writer I’m collaborating with. A lot of these guys are just looking for good lyrics. Songwriting is songwriting. A song is a song.”

As a guitarist, Gary Nicholson has brightened recording sessions and/or concert stages with the likes of Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, Bobby Bare, Delbert McClinton and Tracy Nelson. During his long career, he has also played lead guitar in at least 10 of his own bands.

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