99.5 WYCD, Detroit's Best Country Music! - 2008 Poets & Pirates Tour at Ford Field!

2008 Poets & Pirates Tour at Ford Field!

On Saturday, August 2nd, 99.5 WYCD welcomes to Ford Field, the 2008 Kenny Chesney Poets and Pirates Stadium Tour, starring Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban, LeAnn Rimes, Gary Allan, and Luke Bryan and the 99.5 WYCD Beach Bash!
Tickets for the show at Ford Field are on sale now at all Ticketmaster locations, ticketmaster.com, and the Ford Field Box Office!

About Kenny Chesney:
In 2007 Kenny Chesney spent the most weeks on Billboard's Country Singles chart as a writer. Not only did the triple and current Country Music Association and three consecutive and reigning Academy of Country Music Entertainer of the Year pen his 3 week #1 "Beer In Mexico" all by himself, but he co-wrote Rascal Flatts' month-long chart topper "Take Me There," from their brand new CD, Still Feels Good.

"I think too many people spend too much time worrying about who wrote what, who published this or that," saids the laidback singer/songwriter from Luttrell, Tennessee. "Maybe it's all the years I spent at Acuff Rose, wanting to write with Dean Dillon and Skip Ewing, talking to Whitey Shaffer and what have you. You spend time with those guys, you get very serious about what a great song is, but just as - or maybe even more importantly - what makes a great song for the person singing it. . . cause there are hits, and then there are songs that say something about who you are."

Certainly Chesney has built a career on songs that define his place. Whether it's first loves - "Never Wanted Nothing More," first thrills - "Young," and "Keg In The Closet," first real fun - "When The Sun Goes Down," first ache - "Anything But Mine," first maturity - "There Goes My Life," and "The Good Stuff," there is an honesty and a song quality that established the 5'6" star as someone who knew how his audience lived, loved and felt.  - Nashville

Having just seen his Flip-Flop Summer Tour named the 2nd biggest tour behind last summer's Police Reunion Tour, Chesney's already had the first sell-out of his 2008 Poets & Pirates Tour.

About Keith Urban:
Exhilarated crowds have followed three-time CMA nominee Keith Urban from Germany to the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and parts of the United States.

Nearly a decade and a half after he first came to America from Australia, Keith Urban has arrived in a major way as a global musical force. This accomplished singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has slowly but surely established himself as one of the most consistent and exciting talents not simply in county music, but in our music world as a whole.

A sense of steady artistic growth has been apparent since Urban’s American debut as part of the country rock trio The Ranch back in 1997. There’s been a series of increasingly acclaimed solo albums from 1999’s Keith Urban, to 2002’s Golden Road to 2004’s Be Here, which topped Billboard’s Top Country Album charts as well as hit 3 on the Billboard 200. Keith Urban and Golden Road, combined, produced 7 Top 5 Singles, including four #1s with sales of more than 4 million. Ultimately, Be Here, which went platinum in every country in which it was released, and four times platinum in the United States, would yield five smash singles (“Days Go By,” “You’re My Better Half,” “Better Life” “Making Memories of Us” and “Tonight I Want To Cry”). Urban earned his first Grammy Award for Best Male Country Performance and the very prestigious Entertainer of the Year Award from the Country Music Association.

Anyone who imagined that the massive success of Be Here and the flurry of honors that followed, it would lead Urban to rest on his laurels is in for a big, bold and rather beautiful surprise.

Following the 2007 release of Love, Pain & the whole crazy thing, Keith has been honored with three 2007 CMA Award nominations including: Entertainer of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year, and Album of the Year - Love, Pain & the whole crazy thing. Additionally, "Stupid Boy" written by Sarah Buxton, Dave Burg, and Deanna Bryant has been nominated for Song of the Year.

About LeAnn Rimes:
When a performer grows up in the spotlight, it's often hard for public perception to mature along with them. Some people still picture LeAnn Rimes as the pretty 13-year-old with the incredible voice who first burst on the national scene with the hit "Blue." In reality, LeAnn Rimes is so much more. As an artist, she's matured into a songwriter of considerable depth and as a vocalist; she's grown into her gift in an even more impressive way.

Her new album, Family, marks the first time LeAnn has written or co-written every song, and the result is a collection that reflects where she is at this season in her life. "I'm just completely baring my insides," LeAnn confesses. "I think people feel like they've known me for so long. They've grown up with me and I've grown up with them. A lot of people believe what they read and what they see on the surface, but there's so much underneath for me as a human being, not as an artist, and that's where this is coming from. It's coming from real life. What I've lived outside the whole fame and fortune world is real life, real relationships, hardships, pain and real honest emotion. That's where it's coming from."

LeAnn readily admits it's not easy to be lay her soul bare for the whole world, yet there's also a freedom in becoming that transparent. "It's hard to be that vulnerable, but it's exhilarating all at the same time," she says. "It's therapy for me. I'm definitely accepting myself for who I am. I'm loving that and letting it speak for itself, loving my real emotions and letting who I am come across in my music and lyrics. It is exhilarating to know that what I'm putting out there is really me as an adult and not me as a kid singing someone else's songs. I'm not discrediting anything that I've done. I've had incredible hits written by some great writers, but I finally felt that it all came together on this record. It's incredibly exciting."

About Gary Allan:
It's raw and emotional. It's freight-train-to-nowhere lonely. It's hard-rockin', no-apologies country music that has traded in its twang for a gravelly growl millions of fans recognize as the voice of Gary Allan. And with Living Hard, his latest release from MCA Nashville, Allan once again proves that, though times may change, the thread of truth at the center of his music remains the same.

"I think the fans are gonna feel that this record is different," he says, "but the most important thing is that what I do is authentic. I've never pushed for a certain image. I've just always done my own thing."

This time around, Allan says, that includes letting listeners ride along through his personal landscape over the past year. "The record has taken about a year to make," he says, "and I think the whole thing reflects change. I think every record sort of reflects where I'm at, and I've made a ton of changes this year, just mentally and in how I'm approaching everything. "Oh," he adds with a grin, "and I think it's much more rockin' than anything I've done."

Allan decided to crank it up musically. "I just felt like I was growing so much and wanted the music to reflect that. I think the result has more of an edge." More edge, from the man who's already got a reputation as a bit of a Nashville outsider? "Hopefully country music feels like they need somebody like me in the fold just to shake things up," he laughs.

Not that this was all his idea - Allan feels some of the changes come from the fans themselves. "It's not like I was trying for a new direction, it's almost audience driven, too. l feel like I've got this young crowd with me now, I've got these rocker kids in my audience. And I grew up with that music, too," says the California-bred singer, "so to me that stuff is right alongside Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. The people really dictate the music, too. I feed off the audience, whatever they're really wanting is what they drag out of me. I've got the edgy side of the country crowd -- and I want to keep them."

No danger of losing them - Living Hard is an all-out rocker with a heavy Rolling Stones influence, and in "Like It's a Bad Thing" he lets it rip with a song that reads like a Gary Allan bad boy manifesto. "That song does sound like me, doesn't it" he says. "I think if anything that sort of renegade spirit is even more prevalent on this album. We've always danced to our own tune."

About Luke Bryan:
Capitol Records Nashville's Luke Bryan had a banner year as the only country artist chosen by Billboard magazine as one of the "Faces to Watch in 2007" and Country Weekly picked him as "Who's Hot in 2007."

The Georgia native lived up to his expectations when he released his debut album I'll Stay Me, debuting at #2 on the country albums chart and having a Top 5 hit with his debut single "All My Friends Say."

With his #2 debuting album came numerous national media reviews running in the pages of USA Today, People Magazine, Billboard, Country Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Houston Chronicle, and Albany Herald, to name a few.

Bryan has toured with everyone from Dierks Bentley, Sugarland, Josh Turner, Sara Evans, to Brooks & Dunn. In 2007, Bryan also saw success as a songwriter having hit the top of the country singles chart with a song he wrote for Billy Currington, you may know well as "Good Directions."

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