By: Edward Morris

Goodbye, Santa. Hello, normalcy. With all the Christmas music now gone, new songs have popped up on the charts, and lots of the albums that the seasonal fare had squeezed out are back.

And, oh yes, the unsinkable Taylor Swift tops both the songs and albums charts this week.

Coming in highest among the first-time songs is Joe Nichols' "It Ain't No Crime," bowing at No. 45. Following it are Jypsi's "I Don't Love You Like That" (No. 46), Miranda Lambert's "Gunpowder & Lead" (No. 51), Star De Azlan's "She's Pretty" (No. 52), Rocky Lynne's "I Can't Believe It's Me" (No. 54), Josh Turner and Trisha Yearwood's "Another Try" (No. 57), Yearwood's "This Is Me You're Talking To" (No. 58) and the Road Hammers' "I Don't Know When to Quit" (No. 60).

Songs re-entering the charts are Big & Rich's "Loud" (No. 48), Cole Deggs & the Lonesome's "Girl Next Door" (No. 49), Tracy Lawrence's "Til I Was a Daddy Too" (No. 50), Gretchen Wilson's "You Don't Have to Go Home" (No. 53), Dolly Parton's "Better Get to Livin'" (No. 55), Crossin Dixon's "Make You Mine" (No. 56) and Trace Adkins' "I Got My Game On" (No. 59).

Following Swift's "Our Song" in the Top 5 are Sugarland's "Stay," Montgomery Gentry's "What Do Ya Think About That," Rascal Flatts' "Winner at a Losing Game" and Keith Urban's "Everybody."

There are no new albums on this week's chart. The returning titles are Emerson Drive's Countrified (No. 52), the various artists collection Three Wooden Crosses (No. 58), Alabama's 16 Biggest Hits (No. 60), The Very Best of Travis Tritt (No. 61), Cross Canadian Ragweed's Mission California (No. 64), Jake Owen's Startin' With Me (No. 65) and The Very Best of Tracy Lawrence (No. 66).

Also, Gram Parson and the Flying Burrito Brothers' Gram Parsons Archive Volume One: Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969 (No. 67), The Very Best of Reba McEntire: 20th Century Masters The Millennium Collection (No. 68), the multi-artist Forever Country (No. 70), Merle Haggard's The Bluegrass Sessions (No. 71), the various artists anthology Original American Classics: Country Greats (No. 72), Tritt's The Storm (No. 73) and Wilson's One of the Boys (No. 75).

Trooping in descending order after Taylor Swift in the Top 5 albums are Garth Brooks' The Ultimate Hits, the Eagles' Long Road Out of Eden, Carrie Underwood's Carnival Ride and Rascal Flatts' Still Feels Good.

What else can I tell you?

A concert commemorating the 40th anniversary of the recording of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison has been canceled. The tribute concert, which was to feature Cash's drummer, W.S. "Fluke" Holland, was to have taken place Sunday (Jan. 13) at Folsom State Prison in Folsom, Calif., at the same cafeteria where Cash performed on Jan. 13, 1968. The event was canceled following security concerns and disagreements between event organizers and prison officials. The show was being promoted by Jonathan Holiff, the son of one of Cash's former managers, Saul Holiff.

Brooks & Dunn's Kix Brooks will be in New York City next month to offer wines from his Arrington Vineyards during a party benefiting the T.J. Martell Foundation. Brooks is a partner in the winery which is located approximately 30 miles south of Nashville in Arrington, Tenn. Four of the winery's 12 wines will be offered during the Feb. 3 dinner at the Blue Smoke Restaurant and Jazz Standard. Brooks and several Nashville songwriters will perform at the event. Tickets start at $125, with a limited number of VIP seats available for $295.

Luke Bryan Takes Long Road to Fame
Singer-Songwriter Worked Lots of Georgia Clubs to Prepare for Nashville

By: Edward Morris

Two weeks before Christmas in 2003, a small crowd gathered in a lobby at BMI's Nashville headquarters to hear some new songs from the staff writers at Murrah Music. One of the four writers who performed that day was Luke Bryan, a tall, muscular guy with an easy smile and a strong, urgent voice. His first song was about a country boy outfoxing a city babe. His second recalled the joys of fishing with his grandfather.

In something of a statistical triumph both songs Bryan sang that day eventually got recorded. Billy Currington cut the first, "Good Directions," and took it to No. 1. Bryan recorded the second one, "Tacklebox," for his Capitol Records debut album, I'll Stay Me.

"There are no complaints in the world of Luke Bryan out here," the satisfied Georgian tells CMT.com as he reflects not only on the success of "Good Directions" but also on the fact that his first single, the rowdy "All My Friends Say," made it all the way to No. 5 on the Billboard charts. Currently, Bryan's new single, "We Rode in Trucks," is continuing to increase its chart momentum.

Such victories were a long time coming. Bryan was performing in country bands in and around his home area of Leesburg, Ga., by the time he was 16. With encouragement from his older brother, Chris, he planned to move to Nashville when he finished high school.

Just as that was about to happen, Chris was killed in a car accident. Bryan decided to remain at home, work in his family's farming businesses and enroll at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. He continued to play in country bands, however, even as he worked toward a degree in business management and reveled in the intemperate glories of fraternity life. (He was a Sigma Chi.)

If Bryan's songs sing more of country than campus life, he explains, it's because the two pretty much ran together.

"Georgia Southern is about as rural as where I was brought up," he says. "I used to laugh that I could be in class at 3:30 and be on a deer stand at 3:35."

Bryan began making a name for himself as lead singer in a band called Neyami Road. In 1997, a local reviewer raved, "Bryan wowed the crowd with his performance. ... He danced and asked the audience to sing along to such favorites as 'Good Hearted Woman' and 'Too Hard to Handle.'" (On that particular night, the band was opening for Ricochet, a group then riding high on the strength of such hits as "Daddy 's Money" and "Love Is Stronger Than Pride.")

Neyami Road played "two or three nights a week," says Bryan. "Everybody split the proceeds at the end of the night. ... We recorded a little CD in Athens [Ga.] and sold two or three thousand copies of it around Georgia Southern. I wrote all the songs on it. It was kind of my first taste at recording."

Having completed his degree, Bryan finally made his move to Nashville in September 2001. Although he had plenty of practical experience under his belt, he was still innocent in the ways of the music business.

"I didn't know a thing about it," he admits. "I didn't have one contact. Then I met Rachel Proctor, who was a songwriter at Murrah Music. I played her some songs, and she introduced me to [company owner] Roger [Murrah]. He really dug the songs that I was writing and decided to give me a publishing deal."

Bryan's fire-tested talents prompted Capitol Records to offer him a record deal in October 2004. What with writing more songs for the project, recording them and making the obligatory get-acquainted radio tour, it wasn't until February of 2007 that Bryan made a splash with the release of "All My Friends Say." The full album made its bow in August.

Initially, Capitol planned to include "Good Directions" on the album under its original title, "Right Back Here to Me (The Sweet Tea Song)." But then Currington's version took off.

"'Good Directions' began to get so much press and become such a big song that we felt like at that point it had kind of done what it was going to do," Bryan says. "There were lots of times on my radio interviews that I was dedicating 80 to 90 percent of the interview to talking about 'Good Directions' instead of about 'All My Friends Say.'"

So Capitol dropped "Good Directions" from the album lineup and substituted "Pray About Everything," a song co-written by Bryan's producer, Jeff Stevens.

Bryan says he played about 70 regular dates during the summer of 2007 and made an equal number of special appearances for radio stations and other causes. "I've been home about once a week for about a year and a half," he reports.

After a brief fall tour with Sara Evans, Bryan will be opening a series of shows for Trace Adkins beginning later this month before touring with Dierks Bentley from February through May.

"We're in it for the love," he says emphatically, "and for meeting the fans and giving them some music they can plug into their lives."