Terry Redlin is one of the country’s most widely collected painters of wildlife and Americana.  The out-of-doors themes in his artwork can be traced to his childhood and the priceless works of this award-winning artist are now housed in the museum on the grounds, designed by Redlin’s son, Charles.  The facility opened to the public in 1997 and has welcomed over 2 million visitors since.

Originally built as a cattle barn in the early 1900s, the building, currently known as Billy Bob’s Texas, was enclosed in 1936  and has been used as an AT-10 airplane manufacturing plant and a department store (Clark’s) so large that the stock  boys had to wear roller skates. 

In 1981, Billy Bob Barnett opened what has gained international acclaim as “The World’s Largest Honky Tonk”.  To date, Billy Bob’s has garnered 5 Academy of Country Music’s “Club of the Year” awards and been awarded the Country Music Association’s “Club of the Year” twice.  References to BBT have been made in movies and TV through the years and at least 30 artists have recorded live albums at Billy Bob’s. 

Many thanks to Entertainment Director, Robert Gallagher (pictured) , Bear, AJ, Pam Minick, Melissa, Justin, Chris, Wendy, house security, local radio and the entire staff and crew of this landmark for your generous hospitality and another wonderful experience …  CHEERS! 

With scenic Nashville as a backdrop, Restless Heart, along with hundreds of their friends and colleagues, performed in sweltering heat and humidity to enthusiastic audiences during this year’s 4 day CMA Music Festival.

The CMA donates half of the proceeds from each festival to music education in metro Nashville public schools through “Keep the Music Playing” in partnership with the Nashville Alliance for Public Education.  (The CMA has donated more than $3.3 million to “Keep the Music Playing” since the program was launched in 2006). 

A welcome boost to a recovering city— this year, the other half of the CMA proceeds are going to the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee to aid in relief efforts for flood victims in Nashville and surrounding areas.

Legendary country artists, Restless Heart, today announced the Aug. 8 release of a special edition of their first live album. The CD, “25 and Live!” is also a celebration of the group’s 25 years together.

Recorded in late 2006 at Riverside Hotel and Resort, Laughlin, Nev., the band’s tenth album is a collection of 14 chart-topping, crowd-pleasing favorites presented the way every fan wants to hear Restless Heart – LIVE!

Choosing the final 14 cuts was no easy task. Through the years, Restless Heart put 26 hits on the country charts with 15 in the Top Ten. Cross-over success, rare in the music world, was also theirs with six songs making the adult contemporary charts, including taking the #1, #2 and #3 spots. The final album play list includes six tracks which rose to #1 on either the country or adult contemporary charts.

“We made the choices based on what we felt were the real fan favorites at our shows,” said Larry Stewart, the band’s lead singer. There were ample opportunities to gage fan reaction – Restless Heart was on stage for more the 100 performances in 2006 alone, including an around-the-world tour of military bases.

The album has all six country #1 songs – “That Rock Won’t Roll,” “I’ll Still Be Loving You,” “Why Does It Have To Be Wrong Or Right,” “Wheels,” “Bluest Eyes In Texas,” and “Tender Lie.” “Tell Me What You Dream,” performed by drummer John Dittrich, never made the country list but was #1 on the adult contemporary chart. Another Dittrich crooned cut, “When She Cries,” was covered on three charts – #2 on adult contemporary, #9 on country and #33 on the US Hot 100.

Other cuts (and their rankings) are “Dancy’s Dream” (#5), “Fast Moving Train” (#4), “Let the Heartache Ride” (#23), “Long Lost Friend” (#16) and “New York Hold Her Tight” (#23). The only non-charted song “Hummingbird” always draws the great crowd reaction. “I get behind the drums with John and we both cut loose,” said Stewart, “The fans love it.”

Fans, old and new, can remember that action and the other great times at Restless Heart shows with this new album available for limited sale now at www.restlessheartband.com

There is an old song that contains the lyrics, *”Don’t throw the past away, you might need it some rainy day, Dreams can come true again, When everything old is new again.” These lyrics accurately apply to one of the most accomplished and successful vocal groups of all time. In one brief decade that began in the late 80′s and ended in the mid 90′s, Restless Heart earned three gold albums, had seven singles in a row go to number one on the charts, received twelve Grammy, CMA, ACM nominations and were named ACM’s Vocal Group of the Year (1990) which gave them a solid following on both country and adult contemporary radio. Their exceptional vocal harmonies, delivered with flawless perfection, led to a string of hits that included “Bluest Eyes in Texas,” “I’ll Still Be Loving You,” “That Rock Won’t Roll,” and “Why Does It Have to Be (Wrong or Right).” Disbanding the way they did — irreconcilable differences — left them without closure and, lucky for their fans, has led them to a reunion that resulted in their new album; Still Restless. The award winning band, with all five original members (Paul Gregg, Dave Innis, John Dittrich, Greg Jennings, Larry Stewart), is back together and sounding better than ever.

In “What We Know Now,” the autobiographical final cut on this album, they sing “We were reckless, young and proud. We had the whole thing figured out. We never saw the writing on the wall. Even though we thought we knew it all. Oh my friend, if we knew then what we know now.” After the very first listen through of this album you will have no doubt that, with the passing of time, they have deciphered the writing on the wall and the best part is that they do know now what they didn’t know then. On Still Restless, they demonstrate that they haven’t lost any of the talent that took them to the top of the charts. Their vocal harmonies are so tight you wouldn’t be able to get a laser beam between them and the song selection reflects their growth as artists and as individuals.

The album is co-produced by Kyle Lenning and Mac McAnally, whose producing credits include Randy Travis and Jimmy Buffett. Their influence on this project was like icing on an already perfect cake; all the wonderful ingredients remained the same, they just enhanced the presentation. The end result is a delicious treat that is sure to satisfy the appetite of music lovers, regardless of the genre.

It was impossible to pick a favorite tune from this album because the song selection is so diverse and each of the eleven songs has something uniquely appealing. From the first strains of “Feel My Way to You,” through nine more first-rate songs (including their enjoyable cover of The Beatles classic “The Night Before”) to the final fade out on the poignant “What We Know Now,” you’ll be enjoyably entertained and thankful that Restless Heart is Still Restless.

Between 1985 and 1994, Restless Heart racked up six No. 1 singles and four gold albums. In the process, the five-man band plastered country radio playlists with such hits as “That Rock Won’t Roll,” “Why Does It Have to Be (Wrong or Right)” and
“Wheels.” Then, in the early ’90s, the group began to fall apart.

Lead singer Larry Stewart bowed out in 1992 to pursue a solo career. A year later, keyboardist Dave Innis departed. That left guitarist Greg Jennings, drummer John Dittrich and bassist Paul Gregg to carry the load. Although the band continued with various replacements for a few seasons, it never regained its momentum.

Now all five founding members are back with a new album, Still Restless, on Koch Records. In place of its original producers, Tim DuBois and Scott Hendricks, the band cast its studio lot with Kyle Lehning (of Randy Travis fame) and Mac McAnally (who also produces Jimmy Buffett).

A few weeks before the album was released, Stewart and Dittrich sat down with CMT.com at Koch’s Nashville office to talk about the project and explain how the band had gotten together again. Although the band members don’t revisit their past hits for the new project, the album does include a couple of familiar tunes, notably John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s “The Night Before” and McAnally’s “Down the Road,” a song he charted himself for Warner Bros. Records in 1990.

Stewart notes the band’s reunion was a long time coming.

“We were offered [a deal] to put out a greatest hits package over at RCA where we’d worked for so many years,” he says. “That was in ’98. Four of the five of us got back together and put out the greatest hits thing and recorded two new songs with our old producers, Tim DuBois and Scott Hendricks. We ended up getting offered the Vince Gill tour to support that. So we toured with Vince for year or year and a-half and did some other shows on our own for a year to two years. Then we took a year off.”

One day, while the group was still on hiatus, Stewart got a call from Hendricks, who was having lunch with Innis.

“Dave had been so far removed from all of us here for so long,” Stewart explains. “And, all of a sudden, he comes back to town. It wasn’t a real nice parting, you know, when he left. Scott called me back and said, ‘Man, Dave’s doing great.’ So I called Paul [Gregg] and told him, ‘You’re not going to believe who Scott had lunch with.’ He said, ‘Give me his number.’ Paul called Dave, and they talked to each other all day — it seemed like. They laughed and cried and buried the hatchet. Over the next days and weeks, we all talked [about] what it would be like for the five of us to get back together. … When we rehearsed, it was awesome from the very first note.”

Stewart estimates the band spent about a year and a-half gathering material, rehearsing and recording the album. “It took us a while,” he says, “to figure out what we were going to do and who we were going to do it with.” Neither DuBois nor Hendricks volunteered to produce the new album, Stewart admits. “They had their own things going, and we had our own things going.”

Adds Dittrich, “I think we were also at a point where there were some [other] people we wanted to work with, that we admired, Mac and Kyle being two of them. … Originally, it was thought that we wouldn’t burden one producer with the whole project. When Greg [Jennings] approached Kyle with the idea of doing it, he said we were also talking to Mac, thinking maybe they could do it half and half. Kyle said, ‘Heck, why don’t Mac and I just do it together?’” And that’s what they did.

McAnally provided three songs for the album, Stewart co-wrote three others and John Scott Sherrill — who penned the band’s first No. 1, “That Rock Won’t Roll” — also contributed a song. Dittrich says the band was looking for a “fun cover” to record when they made the Lennon/McCartney pick.

“Greg came up with the ‘The Night Before,’ which we all thought was a good song,” Dittrich recalls. “I think we tried six or seven takes on it, trying to copy the record, and we couldn’t do it. Finally, Mac just said, ‘Oh, they were the Beatles.’ We were about ready to scrap it, but he got his 12-string [guitar] down and started a fingerpicking thing that was a little bit quicker and said, ‘Hey, come here and sing to this.’ I sang to it — and voila! There was the idea we were looking for.”

The dissensions that contributed to the band’s breakup are gone now, Stewart and Dittrich agree.

“We love playing together,” Stewart says. “That’s why we decided to make a record. It’s so much more relaxed and a little more mature. We feel like we’re playing and singing better than we did.” Besides, Dittrich notes, “It’s not like we jumped right back to playing a hundred shows a year. I don’t know if some of us would survive a hundred shows a year anymore. It’s been a nice pace. It really has — between 30 and 40 shows a year since 2001. It’s just been a real nice mix.”

Lehning found it a joy to work with the band.

“Those guys are all really good musicians,” he says. “Anytime you’re dealing with good players, they’re always somewhat competitive. And when you’re competitive, that means you’re paying attention to what’s been going on [musically]. All of them — Dave Innis, Greg, Paul Gregg, Dittrich, Larry, all of them — were aware of records that had been made since they disbanded. So it wasn’t like having to dust anybody off. We really sat down and just started going. I think they’ve evolved very naturally. It’s hardly as if they’ve been gone.”

http://www.cmt.com/artists/news/1493981/11192004/restless_heart.jhtml

Despite having an immediately identifiable name, extensive track record of hits and supreme confidence in their abilities, Restless Heart lead singer Larry Stewart admitted to being just a little bit nervous about the impending release of the group’s first new studio release in 14 years Still Restless on Tuesday.

“It took almost four years for us to record this new release,” Stewart said. “When we started doing live shows again at the end of 2000 it was like getting back on the bicycle. But it was still a question of getting the right songs for the band and of making them work in the studio. It had been a long time since we’d done that type of project and a lot has happened with country music, so we took our time.”

The results represent both subtle enhancements and the familiar sweeping harmonies and heartfelt leads that established Restless Heart as a contemporary country group of the ’80s and ’90s. The major musical change was adding some new ingredients into the mix.

“We had never done a lot of songs with either a steel guitar or fiddle. … This time those instruments were very prominent. We also brought in some friends to work with us where before we mostly played on everything ourselves. The sound is a little more raw, more earthy, and we weren’t as concerned with trying to get everything perfect.”

These changes can be heard on such songs as “Yesterday’s News,” which has a more direct and steadfast rhythmic pulse than expected, as well as the dobro/fiddle interaction that underscores the strong vocal passages on their cover of the Beatles’ “The Night Before.” Still, no Restless Heart album would be complete without the trademark ballads, and this disc’s strong menu includes “Every Fire,” “Down The Road” and “Miracle,” plus the masterful “Looking Back,” which features drummer John Dittrich on lead vocals.

Still Restless features all five original members, with keyboardist David Innis, guitarist Greg Jennings and bassist Paul Gregg joining Stewart and Dittrich. The CD was co-produced by industry heavyweights Kyle Lenning and Mac McAnally, whose credits range from Randy Travis to Jimmy Buffett. There are also contributions from several ace session players, particularly Jerry Douglas.

Stewart views the new project and upcoming dates as phase two in the group’s career. The founding members garnered four gold albums and 15 Top 10 singles during their first run, with such singles as “A Tender Lie,” “The Bluest Eyes in Texas,” “Why Does It Have To Be Wrong or Right” and “I’ll Still Be Loving You” (Stewart’s choice as the group’s favorite single) not only dominating the country charts with a string of six consecutive No. 1 hits but also generating widespread crossover acceptance. But after winning the 1989 Academy of Country Music Vocal Group of the Year award, conflicts over direction and ego clashes eventually caused the group to split.

“We were talking recently and thinking back to how little we really knew and understood about the business the first time around,” Stewart said. “We made so many mistakes and yet we also really loved working together and singing, and that’s what ultimately brought us back together.”