Recently here at The CMBeat, I got to go to a great event and I can’t wait to share more about it! I got to attend a taping of two episodes for the popular show, Larry’s Country Diner, which is filmed at Ray Stevens’ Cabaret Theater just right outside of Nashville, Tennessee!
The musical guests for these two episodes were known country music group, Exile and another band, the Hot Club Of Cowtown! So, I wanted to recap a little bit about the show, before you can watch the tapings live on RFD-TV coming soon!
If you haven’t heard of Larry’s Country Diner, the show is about showcasing different artists from the country music genre, with each episode having a different musician, as they perform, tell stories with the cast, and chat about upcoming new things that the artists are doing. Larry’s Country Diner’s cast consists of Larry Black, Keith Bilbrey, Renea the Waitress, Jimmy Capps, and the always hilarious, Nadine.
The first taping starts off with Exile performing a song called, Take Me To The River, along with a few others tunes including a medley of songs that different members of the band wrote for other country music artists that include, When She Cries At Night by Restless Heart, What A Beautiful Mess by Diamond Rio, It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Easy by Janie Fricke, followed by Take Me Down and The Closer You Get, both by Alabama.
When talking about the band Alabama, they mentioned about how them recording Exile’s songs, made a huge impact for them, “When Alabama recorded, then it changed everything.” says Exile. Some of the other songs Exile sang include, Super Love and a gospel song called, Didn’t It Rain. The band also talked about how they always love visiting everyone at Larry’s Country Diner and said they get “great feedback from the show.”
While going into another segment they introduce the lovely, Nadine. She sits and chats with Larry along with the cast about current things going on with her and tells jokes. She started off by saying that she learned a new fact, which was if you were sarcastic, it would add an extra three years to your life, so she had a feeling she was going to live forever! Nadine also claimed she stopped watching the news because it was bad and she got enough of that from her scales! Another thing she was talking about was she didn’t understand why people needed to go see shrinks when she could tell them what’s wrong with them for free, haha!
Nadine always ends her segment on the show by saying what she will put on her local church sign! This episode’s saying was, “Don’t blame a clown for acting like a local, but ask yourself why you keep going to the circus.”
Larry’s Country Diner also features all of their sponsors including Boot Daddy along with PFI, Tarter USA and Springer Mountain Farm Chicken. On this episode, Gus Arrendale, the owner of Springer Mountain Farm Chicken, had a story to tell! The story goes like this… A cowboy loses his bible, and he is very distraught from losing it. So all of a sudden a chicken comes up to him with his bible in its mouth, and the man throws his hands up in the air, saying “It’s a miracle!” but the chicken says to the cowboy, “No, your name was written on the inside page.” The cowboy then fainted, haha!
Before this episode was over, Exile talked about their new record that is coming out on July 13th! This new album is a double-CD collection of 30 demos that the band made in a garage in Kentucky between 1979-1982 and no one has ever heard before! “It was an amazing time for us.” said the band. They also jokingly said, “You’d think we’d sing one off of it right now but we aren’t!”
The next episode’s featured guest was the band, The Hot Club Of Cowtown! They sang four songs including She’s Killin’ Me, My Candy and Rodeo Blues which was both written by the lead singer, Elana James and ended with the song, Big Balls In Cowtown. Larry was happy to see the band back on the show as he said, “It’s so nice to see you guys again.”
At the beginning of this show Larry exclaimed, “I learn something new every time I do this show!” He then preceded to tell a story about a lady who had this weird clunking sound every time she made a turn in her car. She took it to the mechanic shop she used and they couldn’t figure out what the problem was. She finally took the bowling ball out of her trunk and that fixed the problem, haha!
The announcer of the show, Keith Bilbrey, also told his fun fact of the day, which was that the word “Pizzicato” is another way of saying plucked violins. Elana James, the lead singer of The Hot Club Of Cowtown, jumped in on the conversation with Bilbrey as she used to play classical when she was a child. Bilbrey asked her what was the different between a violin and a fiddle, and she responded, “a violin plays and a fiddle dances.”
In the last episode, they also mentioned about how the featured guitar player that is a part of the Larry’s Country Diner cast and a very well known musician in Nashville, Jimmy Capps was recently honored by getting a road named after him in his hometown. Larry ended the show by thanking the Hot Club Of Cowtown for coming, “Come back and see us again guys.”
Check out this small gallery of photos from the shows here!
It was a great time attending these two tapings for Larry’s Country Diner! It’s always a interesting show and the cast and crew is so sweet! Thank you again to the people at Larry’s Country Diner! Stay tuned to see the episode with Exile premiere on RFD-TV on July 18th, with The Hot Club Of Cowtown’s episode airing the following week on July 25th.
Be sure to keep up with Larry’s Country Diner on their Facebook page HERE or on their website, www.larryscountrydiner.com. If you would like to find out more about Larry’s Country Diner’s sponsors, you can find Boot Daddy at their website by clicking HERE, PFI at their website www.pfiwestern.com, Tarter USA at their website, www.tarterusa.com, and Springer Mountain Farm Chicken at their website as well, www.springermountainfarm.com. If you would like to keep up with the artists too, you can find Exile at their website by clicking HERE, and The Hot Club Of Cowtown at their website, www.hotclubofcowtown.com.
Do you watch Larry’s Country Diner? Who is your favorite artist you’ve seen on the show? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so leave me a comment below or on social media!
TheCMBeat 