First Published October 2021
feat. LEE BRICE/ ROD + ROSE/ DYLAN SCOTT
Celebrating 56 years in business, Curb Records is one of the world’s leading independent music companies. Owned and operated by Mike Curb since 1964, Curb has achieved a staggering 435 number-one singles, over 1,500 hundred Top Ten hits and charted over 4,500 records in total. Curb Records has been influential in the careers of some of the biggest names in country music, including Tim McGraw, Hank Williams, Jr., Rodney Atkins, LeAnn Rimes, The Judds, Dylan Scott, Sawyer Brown, Wynonna, Lyle Lovett, Jo Dee Messina, Hal Ketchum and Desert Rose Band, to name only a few. Their current roster includes some of the top names across multiple genres of music, with one of the biggest on the country side of things being one LEE BRICE.
Bricerecently took the top spot at U.S. country radio with his current single, Memory I Don’t Mess With, a track taken from his hit 2020 album Hey World. Written by Brice, Brian Davis and Billy Montana, the song hit a chord with audiences as it evokes both a nostalgic look at your life and reminds us that some memories are best left preserved in the past, untarnished.
When Brice isn’t selling out arenas, writing and recording songs, or building new brands like American Born whiskey, you’ll find the family man with his wife Sara, their two young boys, and their daughter. With over 3 billion on-demand streams, and over 3.6 billion spins on Pandora, Brice has been enjoying massive success at digital streaming services, as well as at country radio and on the road. His recent #1, the aforementioned Memory I Don’t Mess With, followed three prior chart-toppers; One of Them Girls, I Hope You’re Happy Now with Carly Pearce, and Rumor, a record which was also nominated in the category Single of The Year at the 55th Annual ACM Awards.
Brice, in fact, is one of the most-played country artists of all time on the Pandora platform, and was the second country artist behind Keith Urban to receive the Pandora Billionaire plaque. Lee is also a GRAMMY nominee, a CMA and ACM award winner, all on top of his nine #1 radio singles, A Woman Like You, Hard to Love, I Drive Your Truck, I Don’t Dance, Drinking Class, keeping company with those we’ve already named. Brice is also a talented songsmith in his own right, Garth Brooks, Jason Aldean, Kenny Chesney and many others have taken his songs into the studio. Brice has performed on numerous TV shows, including NBC’s Today, ABC’s The Bachelor, NBC’s The Voice and FOX’s Miss USA 2018, and also performed as part of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song honoring Garth Brooks which aired on PBS in March 2020.
At the 54th Annual CMA Awards, Lee took home the prize for Musical Event of the Year for his song with Carly Pearce, I Hope You’re Happy Now, while at the 56th ACM Awards that same record won Single of the Year and Music Event of the Year, with Lee and Carly Pearce performed the song live.
Also on the Curb Records roster are duo Rod + Rose (Rodney Atkins and Rose Falcon), and their latest offering is the commitment-filled ballad, Put Me Back Together, which dropped earlier this month. Described as a slow-burning track, the release previews the couple’s forthcoming and self-titled EP, which is due for release in late January 2022.
Together, Atkins and Falcon—married since 2013—are an unstoppable force in life, love and music. She was a rock ’n’ roll princess who was offered a record deal at just 15 and has since written songs which have been recorded by Faith Hill, Lady A and Eric Paslay. He is an established country voice and a working man’s songwriter – the kind who understands how real people feel – with 6 #1 hits to his name, many of which topped the charts for four weeks plus. And now, for the first time, they’ve joined creative forces in an official capacity for Rod + Rose.
Rod + Rose have been singing side by side for years and share two sons: Ryder and Scout. Most recently, the duo co-wrote several tracks for Atkins’ latest album, Caught Up In The Country, whose gold-certified title-cut, featuring The Fisk Jubilee Singers, set the record (at the time) for the longest-running single in Billboard Country Airplay history at 57 weeks.
New single Put Me Back Together was written by Caitlyn Smith, Trevor Dahl, Brenton Duvall, Johnny Price and Kiara Saulters, and was originally performed by electronic music trio Cheat Codes, featuring Kiara, but the lyrics read like the Cliffs Notes to Rose and Rodney’s real life love story. “To me”, observes Falcon, “it’s a song about falling together instead of falling apart during difficult times. 2020 was a challenging year for us and most everyone we know, but we got through it. When life gets messy, we lean on, and into, each other. We aren’t perfect, and it’s not always butterflies and roses; but we stick together, and at the end of the day, we can laugh at all the crazy times we have been through.”
Atkins produced the track alongside Seth Mosley (who has also worked on projects with High Valley, and for KING & COUNTRY), and it follows Rod + Rose’s debut offering, Being Here, Being There which came our way back in August.
Together, Rod + Rose offer the merging of lean writing and pure poetry, straight up country intertwined with a little bit of roots, a perfect merger of love, songs, life and the way two people from different places perfectly complement one another. In a world where differences often drive a wedge, these two use those things to create a whole that embraces it all. And they sound so good doing it.
Now, one of the complaints often levelled at modern day country music – especially where male artists are concerned – is the number of songs that talk about trucks, girls, and beer. And that’s definitely a valid argument, no question about it. But just because a record happens to mention a truck, doesn’t mean it’s automatically a bad song. Like so much in life, it’s all about how you do things. And Curb’s DYLAN SCOTT does it pretty damn good on one of his latest cuts, New Truck. At radio now, the single had already clocked up over 13 million streams by the start of this month when Scott also dropped the ‘live’ video, taking that chance to celebrate being back on the road playing to fans, and using exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from his current shows.
“The first time I heard ‘New Truck,’ it sounded different than anything else I was listening to,” the Louisiana native shares. “We’ve all been in a situation where you and your significant other have broken up, and it’s tough. Every time you get back in your truck, you go back to certain memories of them in there as well. So this song is saying, ‘Man, I need a new truck to quit thinking about her.’”
The release of that New Truck live video follows the release of new single Static back on October 1st. “‘Static’ is a song that relates to a lot of people’s lives, including mine, to a T,” explains Scott. “You grow up in a small town, and all you can think about is leaving that small town, chasing a dream, chasing a dollar, moving to a bigger city. And once you get there, it’s all great. But sometimes you’ve just got to get back out in the middle of nowhere, back to your roots, where there’s nothing but a little static on the radio.” Both New Truck and Static were penned by HARDY, Hunter Phelps, Ben Johnson and Ashley Gorley.
Currently wrapping up a stint touring as the main support for Luke Bryan’s Proud To Be Right Here Tour, 2021 CMT Music Award winner Scott is the total package—a powerful singer with a deep, resonating drawl; an old-soul songwriter with a young spirit; a heartthrob with an easy smile; and a dreamer who followed in his father’s footsteps to Nashville. The double platinum-certified My Girl became his first #1 at radio, followed by platinum Top 5 single, Hooked, then his latest #1, the gold-certified Nobody. His Nothing To Do Town EP hit #1 on the Billboard Country Album Sales chart, and the project’s title-track has been certified RIAA gold, as was his self-titled debut album.
With career on-demand streams having already hit a staggering 1.2 billion, the Louisiana-native has headlined shows and opened for Garth Brooks, Luke Bryan and Chris Young. Scott garnered his first career nomination for Best New Country Artist at the all-genre 2019 iHeartRadio Music Awards and was named among Country Radio Seminar’s coveted New Faces of Country Music Class of 2019. Additionally, he released a seven-song EP honoring legendary singer/songwriter Keith Whitley with An Old Memory (A Keith Whitley Tribute).
~ Memory I Don’t Mess With by LEE BRICE, Put Me Back Together by ROD + ROSE, and Static by DYLAN SCOTT, are all OUT NOW.
On The Right TRAX 