Saturday
If you don't have tickets to Saturday's Keith Urban and Taylor Swift concert yet, you're probably out of luck. The concert is the first sellout of the year at Wells Fargo Arena, at around 13,000 tickets. Urban is one of the genre's biggest stars and Swift one of its fastest rising, creating a perfect storm of fan demand.
Taylor Swift broke through in 2006 with her self-titled debut on the strength of hits like "Tim McGraw." Her latest album, "Fearless," topped the Billboard charts for 11 weeks thanks to "Love Story" and "You're Not Sorry." Swift is poised as a crossover artist, recently appearing and performing in "Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience" and "Hannah Montana: The Movie."
New Zealand-born, Australia-raised Keith Urban has been turning out hits for more than a decade, including "But for the Grace of God," "Better Life" and "Stupid Boy," and crossed over to mainstream charts with "You'll Think of Me." His latest album, "Defying Gravity," became his first to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 off the strength of songs like "Sweet Thing." Oh, and he's married to Nicole Kidman, so he's got that going for him, too.
Sunday
Tickets still remain for Sunday's Big Country Bash, featuring established acts like Tracy Lawrence and John Michael Montgomery, breakthrough bands like Gloriana (who have been touring with Swift) and local favorite Jason Brown.
Lawrence headlines this year's festival. The singer has endured some rocky moments to get where he is. In 1991, shortly before the release of his platinum-selling debut album, "Sticks and Stones," he was shot four times in an attempted robbery. The shooting changed Lawrence and he began carrying a gun, ultimately leading to a weapons charge in 1994.
"I never got counseling for that and I carried a lot of hostility over that," Lawrence said in a phone interview. "I should have gotten counseling; I would recommend it to anyone who goes through traumatic experiences."
Now Lawrence is trying to focus on the positive things in life. Earlier this month he released "The Rock," an album of Christian-based songs. The album is Lawrence's second on his own record label, Rocky Comfort. He has found the switch to handling his own music career to be a liberating one, and suspects that "The Rock" wouldn't have been welcomed at his former labels Atlantic, Warner Brothers or DreamWorks.
"When you move from one label to another, their priorities are already in place," Lawrence said. "I'd do something like try to call a meeting with the staff and they said, 'Stop calling. When we want something we'll call you.' It's like I had been told to shut up and go sit in the corner. I knew that wasn't for me."
The change proved to be a successful one for Lawrence: His first self-published album, "For the Love," gave him his first No. 1 hit in 11 years. The fact that Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney performed on the track probably didn't hurt.
Lawrence recently had another brush with death, but the effects were far less lasting than the shooting. In March his tour bus had a tire blow, sending it crashing through the median onto the other side of a thankfully empty highway.
"We had two crock pots of food going. I was making a pork tenderloin and a pot of beans. Suddenly my bulldog was freaking out. It was wild, I thought we were going to tip over."
Could the combo of country cooking, a barking dog and a near-death experience be a source for a good song?
"Everything's a source for a song if you find the right angle," he said.
