Month: August 2025

Sixteen years ago, Mae Estes was just a lucky fan who scored a meet and greet with Luke Bryan before his concert. Now, she’s performing on the same stage with the country music superstar and experiencing a true “full circle” moment.

Luke Bryan is currently in the midst of his 2025 summer headline run dubbed A Country Song Came On Tour. The trek launched in May and welcomed a slew of rising talent as openers, including Mae Estes. This week, she took to social media to reflect on this dream-come-true opportunity and took fans in time to share when her journey with Bryan really began.

The heartfelt post featured a slideshow that mostly included recent photos captured during a show at the Xfinity Theatre in Hartford, CT when Bryan invited Estes to the stage during his set to perform together. But, two of the photos were taken back in 2009 when the songstress had the pleasure of unexpectedly meaning Bryan for the first time.

“Y’all already know I’m sappy and that “full circle” is the name of the game round here sooo…Check out these pics from 2009 when @lukebryan played in Little Rock and some random lady walked up to me and my sister in our lawn chairs out front and asked if we wanted to meet Luke. She gave us meet and greet passes and we got this pic,” she explained while recalling that unforgettable night.

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A post shared by Mae Estes (@maeestes)

Almost 20 years later, she’s soaking in the moment and feeling grateful that her love for Luke Bryan and performing led her here. Estes also thanked her team and Bryan’s for turning this dream into reality.

“Thanks to my team and Luke’s for this unreal experience and @mackenzieryanphoto for these pics. We’ll see y’all this weekend in WV, Nashville, then VA!”

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A post shared by Mae Estes (@maeestes)

With Estes joining the last few dates of the tour, fans still have the chance to see her perform her growing catalog live. Most recently she captured the hearts of her audience with the new track, “Mountain of a Man.”

The upbeat song, penned by Jon Decious, Lauren McLamb, Liz Rose and Paul Sikes, serves as a gritty breakup anthem that hones in on the pain of loving someone that makes moving on feel impossible. Despite the character knowing exactly what she was getting into, the blue-collar cowboy’s charm still held her captivated.

“Damn that mountain of a man/ Tumbleweed, wild horse, seventeen hand/ Daddy fighting mad, Mama don’t understand/ Why I’m rock-bottom rolling with a Rolling Rock can/ Got so drunk that I got sober/ High as I got, I never got over that mountain of a man/ (How do you get over a) Mountain of a man,” she delivers on the chorus.

Anchored by Estes’ signature neotraditional style and rich layers of fiddle, pedal steel, and dobro, the track drives home the truth, highlighting what feels too good to be true often is.

“This tune reminds me of an old Patty Loveless song. It’s so much fun and I feel really lucky that the songwriters let me record it,” Estes shared with her label.

The tune has also become a staple in her live shows as she’s made it a tradition to pick out an honorary “mountain of a man” in the crowd.

“I think lots of summertime memories will be made with this one blaring in the background,” she added.

“Mountain Of A Man” follows the release of the “Mr. Fix It” in May. TikTok helped launch “Mr. Fix It” into the spotlight earlier this year, with the first video earning 800K+ views and thousands of comments. The song soon inspired a trend on the platform as fans created their own videos honoring the “Mr. Fix It” in their lives.

Mae Estes plans to keep the momentum going with more new music dropping later this year.

The post From Fan To Tourmate: Mae Estes’ Full-Circle Moment With Luke Bryan appeared first on Country Now.

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Kenny Chesney is giving fans an inside look at the ups and downs that came with his rise to country music stardom in his new book, Heart Life Music. The superstar recently sat down with his co-writer, Holly Gleason, in an interview interview on TalkShopLive, and opened up about some of these early struggles and the moments that almost made him doubt his path.

When asked if he ever thought about giving up when times got tough, Chesney candidly revealed, “I wouldn’t say that. I mean, giving up is pretty intense. I think there were moments where I didn’t think that it might happen. I had hoped, but I can’t say that I thought about giving up.”

He admits that he was so focused and determine to make his dreams come true that walking away didn’t feel like an option. However that fear of never truly making it did creep in at times early on in his career.

“There were definitely some moments where I thought this might not happen early on because we were releasing some singles that nobody played. Then we had one or two that somebody played, and then we had another slick spot where…I didn’t know.”

Thinking back to that chapter prompted Chesney to recall a moment when he was sitting with his mom on his bus back in the day. He remembered telling her that if his 1996 song titled “Me and You” didn’t make big waves, he believed he would be dropped from his label. Luckily, the song went on to reach the No. 2 spot on the Billboard Country chart and served as the title of his third studio album.

“To think about that now is just insanity. But that was truly a moment where I wouldn’t say I was going to give up, but I was having those thoughts of this might not happen the way I wanted to,” he admitted.

Clearly, that wasn’t the case because we now know that Kenny Chesney has built a career as one of the biggest names in country music who continues to break barriers in the genre. His creativity is never fleeting, and that’s proven within his new book that takes fans on a journey through milestone moments, the people who guided him along the way, and plenty of never-before-heard stories from the past 20+ years.

The East Tennessee native spent countless hours with his co-writer talking through different memories of his life, looking through photos, and reflecting on everything up until this point. In doing so, he creature a piece of work that highlights the joy of working towards something that often felt unattainable, but yet was never beyond the bounds of his imagination.

“We were trying to create snapshots of my journey, vignettes of my soul,” Chesney shared in a press release, “and lots of my friends since I started on this magic carpet ride. I moved to Nashville in January 1991, and here we are, talking about it in this book. Sitting here looking at the ocean, hearing these waves crashing, we can’t wait. Especially if you’ve been part of this journey, I can’t wait for you to relive it…and for those who weren’t part of this journey, we hope you take something from this and apply it to your life, we can’t for you to hear it, errr, read it.”

With Heart Life Music, the 2025 Country Music Hall of Fame invitee shared his hope that any members of his No Shoes Nation community who reads this book will find a bit of themselves in the stories, just as they do with his music.

“I think that’s one of the things that has been one of the common denominators of our connection, is that I’ve been fortunate enough to write and record some songs that reflect their own life. I think this book does that too,” Chesney explained. “Like I said earlier, somebody that’s in a small town that’s got a dream that doesn’t know what that means, they have no idea how to go about it, maybe this will give them a little courage to do that.”

When writing this book, he clearly thought back to his own childhood and the days of laying in his grandmother’s backyard and dreaming up what would become much more than anything he could have imagined at the time. Now, he wants to encourage anyone else who might have had a similar upbringing to shoot for the stars because they never know where it could lead.

“When I was growing up, like I said, lying on the ground in my grandmother’s backyard, I couldn’t have been further away from this moment. And so if you’re out there and you’re lying out in your backyard staring up at the stars in the sky with a dream, I’m telling you it can happen. It’s not for free. But this book is proof. I am proof that the journey is worth it.”

Set for release on Nov. 4 by William Morrow, Heart Life Music will be available in hardcover, e-book, and digital audio formats. Fans can pre-order the book HERE.

The post Kenny Chesney Admits Fear of Failure Crept In During His Early Career appeared first on Country Now.

​Country Now

Actress Sydney Sweeney, whose recent American Eagle ad has been making headlines, stars in the upcoming film Americana as Penny Jo, a small-town waitress with dreams of becoming a country music star.

The crime-drama also features Paul Walter Hauser as “Lefty” Ledbetter, Halsey as Mandy Starr, Eric Dane as Dillon MacIntosh, Zahn McClarnon as Ghost Eye, and Simon Rex as Roy Lee Dean.

Americana follows a group of dynamic characters whose lives collide over the possession of a rare Native American artifact in what’s being billed as a “wildly entertaining modern-day western.”

After the artifact lands on the black market, Sweeney’s character teams up with a lovelorn military veteran (Hauser) to reclaim it, putting them in the crosshairs of a ruthless criminal (Dane) working for a shady Western antiques dealer (Rex). Tensions rise  when others join the hunt, including the leader of an Indigenous group (McClarnon) and a desperate woman fleeing her mysterious past (Halsey).

In promotion of the film, Lionsgate created posters mirroring those of iconic country music albums, each featuring one of the stars of the film. 

As part of the promotional campaign for Americana, Lionsgate has unveiled a series of striking posters inspired by iconic country music album covers, each reimagined with one of the film’s stars.

Sydney Sweeney channels Dolly Parton’s Jolene (1974), the legendary album that introduced the world to both its title track and the timeless “I Will Always Love You,” written for Porter Wagoner.

Paul Walter Hauser takes on Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger (1975), perfectly capturing the outlaw spirit of the original.

Halsey pays tribute to “The Man in Black” with a recreation of The Legend of Johnny Cash (2005), the hit compilation that spanned the icon’s decades-long career.

Simon Rex steps into modern country territory with a recreation of Chris Stapleton’s From A Room: Volume 2 (2017).

Eric Dane brings a retro flair by reimagining Dwight Yoakam’s This Time (1993), his fifth studio release.

Willie Nelson’s influence pops up again in Zahn McClarnon’s take on Shotgun Willie (1973), one of the records that cemented Nelson’s outlaw image.

Finally, Gavin Maddox Bergman tips his hat to folk-country great John Prine, recreating the singer-songwriter’s self-titled debut from 1971.

Americana is set to release on August 15, 2025.

The post From Dolly Parton to Johnny Cash: ‘Americana’ Cast Channels Country Legends in New Posters appeared first on Country Now.

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