Signed by BMI singer/songwriter Toby Keith to his Show Dog Nashville label, their self-titled album was released digitally the week of July 7, debuting at #7 on the country iTunes chart, garnering the iTunes Discovery Download of the week, and featured on iTunes home page. CMT viewers voted their new single and video “Different Breed” into the #3 spot on CMT Pure.

Carter’s Chord are true daughters of the Outlaw country movement whose parents Barny & Carter Robertson toured and recorded with Waylon Jennings at the height of his Outlaw fame and raised the sisters on music. Their debut album, produced by Keith and father Robertson, features five songs written by the sisters with their distinctive sibling harmonies creating a sound that melds their deep country roots with utterly contemporary appeal. The girls are currently opening for Keith on his summer-long “Biggest & Baddest” tour and their album’s physical release is scheduled to drop in the fall.

Toby Keith smiles as he fields questions from the press at BMI. (Photo by John Russell)

Three-time BMI Songwriter of the Year Toby Keith remains one of the most successful musical entertainers of his time. With nearly 35 million albums sold, he has been deluged with critical praise and peer approval in the form of awards and he's consistently been one of the top-drawing live performers in the nation. His current hit single, "She's A Hottie," is featured as the only newly-produced track on his latest two-disc release, Toby Keith's 35 Biggest Hits, which compiles the smash hits spanning his career.

Local and national media outlets made themselves comfortable in BMI's conference room. (Photo by John Russell)

BMI's Jody Williams (left) presented a slew of Million-Air certificates to Toby Keith (right). (Photo by John Russell)

Pictured are (l to r): manager TK Kimbrell, CMT's Brian Phillips, Toby Keith, BMI's Jody Williams and Paradigm's Curt Motley. (Photo by Alan Mayor)

The 13th Annual Hog's Breath Key West Songwriters Festival looms enticingly on the horizon. Presented by Cherry Heart Music and proudly supported by charter sponsor BMI, the event is slated for April 30 through May 4 in Key West, Florida. The festival revolves around five days and nights of more than 20 free shows, staged at an array of the island's most popular drinking holes and hot spots. Informal adaptations of Nashville's signature in-the-round acoustic showcases dominate much of the schedule, while this year, a street concert Saturday, May 3 featuring the Jeffrey Steele Band and Robert Earl Keen adds a Mardis Gras fillip to the mix.

BMI songwriters dominate the diverse lineups. Americana trendsetters including Robert Earl Keen, Raul Malo, Kim Richey and John Oates will perform alongside Nashville's most engaging and prolific hitmakers, including Jeffrey Steele (Rascal Flatts' "What Hurts the Most"), John Scott Sherrill (Steve Wariner's "Some Fools Never Learn"), Wendell Mobley (Rascal Flatts' "Fast Cars & Freedom"), Jamey Johnson (George Strait's "Give It Away"), Scotty Emerick (Toby Keith's "As Good As I Once Was"), David Lee (Tim McGraw's "I Need You," featuring Faith Hill), Keith Follese (Tim McGraw's "Something Like That"), Jim Beavers (Gary Allan's "Watching Airplanes"), Heather Little (Miranda Lambert's "Gunpowder and Lead"), Steve Bogard (Dierks Bentley's "Every Mile A Memory"), Bobby Pinson (Sugarland's "Want To"), Doug Johnson (Randy Travis's "Three Wooden Crosses"), Chas Sandford (John Waite's "Missing You"), Chuck Cannon (Toby Keith's "How Do You Like Me Now"), Max T. Barnes (Diamond Rio's "That's How Your Love Makes Me Feel"), Chuck Jones (Chris LeDoux's "Cadillac Ranch"), Rodney Clawson (Jason Aldean's "Why"), Gary Hannan (Joe Nichols's "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off"), Billy Yates (George Jones's "Choices"), Jerrod Niemann (Garth Brooks' "Good Ride Cowboy") and Dallas Davidson (Trace Adkins's "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk"), with Curb recording artist Lee Brice (Garth Brooks' "More Than A Memory"), singer/songwriters Heather Morgan, Stephanie Chapman and Lauren Lucas and Orange County rock outfit Lit's Jeremy Popoff.

For a complete list of sponsoring hotels, local businesses, schedules and participating songwriters, please visit www.keywestsongwritersfestival.com or call 305.296.4222.

Key West and country music’s thirteen year love affair is anything but secret, and the Hog’s Breath Key West Songwriters Festival, presented by Cherry Heart Music and BMI, serves as the 13th annual spring rendezvous.

Live music bliss and a favorite of Key West locals, the event introduces brimming crowds to the songwriters behind smashes. Diverse lineups deliver rare, “Key West only” moments: Hit makers including Jeffrey Steele (Rascal Flatts’ “What Hurts the Most), Jamey Johnson (George Strait’s “Give It Away”) and Scotty Emerick (Toby Keith’s “As Good As I Once Was”) will perform alongside Americana trendsetters including Robert Earl Keen and Raul Malo. The festival revolves around five days and nights of more than 20 free shows, staged at an array of the island’s most popular drinking holes and hot spots. Informal adaptations of Nashville’s signature in-the-round acoustic showcases dominate much of the schedule, while this year, a street concert Saturday, May 3 featuring the Jeffrey Steele Band and Robert Earl Keen adds an enticing Mardis Gras fillip to the mix.

For a complete list of sponsoring hotels, local businesses and participating songwriters, please visit www.keywestsongwritersfestival.com or call 305.296.4222.

“All those months on the bus we really weren’t finding new rock that was moving us,” says Shadows (born Matthew Sanders). “Instead, we were listening to everything from Toby Keith to T.I., and finding elements we could incorporate into what we were doing to make our next record more interesting to us.”

Indeed, the string sections on the soaring “Afterlife,” the children’s choir on “Unbound (The Wild Ride)” and the pedal steel/banjo stylings on “Dear God” might strike longtime A7X fans as mind-bogglingly incongruous, but as Gates says, “It’s the dueling guitars, Shadows’ voice and the Rev’s brutality that make every one of the songs sound like Avenged Sevenfold.”

The group’s also entered a new phase lyrically, Shadows says. “I feel we all experience a certain inner conflict,” he says, “the push and pull between how we think we should act, or want to act, and the temptations and human instincts that we often blame when we don’t end up being the person we want to be.”

All the boundary pushing on display, he adds, came naturally. “We write what we really feel in our hearts,” he says. “The label didn’t push us. We took six months to write, and we wrote every single day and just drained everything out of us. At the end of the day, we were 100 percent happy.”

Playing to an expanding fanbase through the end of the year, it seems that A7X’s followers feel the same way.

The BMI Country Awards turned a spry 55 years old as they were held tonight, Tuesday, Nov. 6, at the performing right organization's Music Row offices in Nashville. Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) - the first home for country music - was also the first U.S. organization to honor the genre's songwriters and publishers with their own awards show in 1953. BMI President & CEO Del Bryant and Jody Williams, Vice President of Writer/Publisher Relations, Nashville, hosted the black-tie ceremony toasting the writers and publishers of the past year's 50 most-performed country songs in the BMI repertoire.

2007 BMI Country Awards: Award Winning Songs

Jeffrey Steele received his second Country Songwriter of the Year title, while his poignant composition "What Hurts The Most" earned the coveted Song of the Year crown. Sony/ATV Music Publishing Nashville snagged Publisher of the Year bragging rights for the sixth consecutive year, and a tribute to Willie Nelson recognized the newest BMI Icon's unifying music and humble dignity.

"What Hurts The Most," co-written by Jeffrey Steele and published by Gottahaveable Music and Bug Music/Songs of Windswept, landed the 39th Robert J. Burton Award, presented to the most performed country song of the year. Recorded by crossover titans Rascal Flatts, the nostalgic ballad earned a slew of accolades including two Grammy nominations, and became the group's fifth no. 1 single.

Nashville's best-selling artists have come to rely on 2007 Country Songwriter of the Year Jeffrey Steele's uncanny hitmaking prowess. Steele secured his first Country Songwriter of the Year win in 2003, and has spent the past four years enriching his bejeweled catalog, which includes five of this year's most performed songs: Rascal Flatts' "My Wish," "Me and My Gang," and "What Hurts the Most," Steve Holy's "Brand New Girlfriend" and Keith Anderson's "Every Time I Hear Your Name."

With 17 songs among this year's top 50, Sony/ATV Music Publishing Nashville (through its companies Sony/ATV Acuff Rose, Sony/ATV Songs LLC, Sony/ATV Melody and Sony/ATV Tree) picked up its sixth consecutive Publisher of the Year win. The publishing powerhouse accumulated the highest percentage of copyright ownership thanks to award songs including "Give It Away," "Would You Go With Me," "Every Mile A Memory," "Tim McGraw" and "Kerosene."

The capstone of the evening took the form of the Icon tribute to beloved legend Willie Nelson, featuring performances by fellow pioneers Kris Kristofferson and Emmylou Harris, along with contemporary country trendsetters Toby Keith, Josh Turner and Keith Urban. Willie Nelson's ascendance to internationally-renowned treasure is a singular path marked by self-belief and musical brilliance. As a BMI Icon, Nelson will perhaps be recognized most for his songwriting, which has long enraptured the entire world. His love of the offbeat and heedlessness of conventional time signatures have made Nelson an innovative and inimitable guitarist. As a singer, his deft phrasing and naked sincerity are irresistible. A romantic aesthete, Willie Nelson makes all that he touches beautiful. The Texas native's "Crazy," "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground," "Funny How Time Slips Away," "On the Road Again" and "Good Hearted Woman" merely skim the surface of a catalog stacked with unvarnished classics. Famous for his ceaseless touring, Nelson is an untiring philanthropist and humanitarian, most visibly through Willie-coined events including Farm Aid.

The 2007 BMI Country Awards also honored hit songwriters Brett Beavers, Rodney Clawson, Jamey Johnson, Tony Martin, Bill Anderson, Steve Bogard, Scotty Emerick, Toby Keith, Wayne Kirkpatrick, Bobby Pinson and the Warren Brothers, who each supplied two or more songs to the top 50 list.

Publishers EMI Blackwood Music, Inc; Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp.; Jeffrey Steele Music Group; Bug Music/Songs of Windswept; Universal Music Publishing Group; Big Gassed Hitties; Brett Beavers Music Group; Gold Watch Music; Music of Stage Three and StyleSonic Music each took home three or more awards.