Nashville, TN

2011 marks not only the 40 year Anniversary of the CMA Music Fest but also the 10th year of the Shure office in Nashville. I have been fortunate to be able to attend this show since Shure opened the Nashville Artist Relations office in 2001. It has been great to be able to support this event and meet with all of the great people who have put it on over the years. It has changed over the years as they are now taping many of the performances for later inclusion in a 2 hour television special. Roughly half of the artists that performed at LP Field during the 4 day event are either Shure Artists or used Shure on vocals. OK, why not, let’s list them all!

Shure Artists:

Sara Evans
Brad Paisley
Dierks Bentley
Little Big Town
Martina McBride
Trace Adkins

Josh Turner, Dailey & Vincent  and Rascal Flatts

Shure users:

Ashton Shepherd
Chris Young
The Band Perry
and The Janedear Girls

It’s always great to see the crews for each of these artists and meet new faces and engineers.   This show is the perfect place to get lots of business accomplished.  Although it’s very hot and the hours are long, I do look forward to this show every year.

Each night, the stadium filled up with enthusiastic crowds and there were several guest artists who showed up to sing along.  Alabama showed up on Thursday night to perform with Brad Paisley, American Idol winner Scotty McCreery joined Josh Turner on a song, Martina McBride and Idol runner-up Lauren Alaina made a great pairing on Martina’s song “Anyway“, Little Big Town joined  Rascal Flatts for an awesome display of vocal harmonies on a medley of classic rock tunes.

As customary, each night started off with the singing of our National Anthem.  On Saturday night, Shure Artists’ Dailey and Vincent sang their version which is THE BEST version that I have ever heard.  I’m sure it will be up on the internet soon enough,  keep an eye out for it.

Some of the products that were prominently used throughout the shows included the UR2/SM58 and the UR2/KSM9 for many of the lead and backing vocals, the Beta 98AMP for toms, a few KSM313 ribbon mics on amps  and well as many KSM32′s for overheads and guitar amps.

The annual appearance of rain was broken this year but it was a close one on Saturday evening.  It cooled off quite a bit (which was welcomed by some) but never a drop.

So comes to a close another great year of artists performing at this wonderful event.  Speaking of Anniversaries, my wife and I celebrated 17 years on Saturday!  Looking forward to many more!

Ryan

Patti Smith rocks the cover of this issue, in which editor Cory Lorentz shares a letter from a thoughtful and inspired reader who learned not to judge a magazine by its cover (or a rocker by his image).

View and download the full On Tour With Shure Summer 2008 Issue on shure.com.