Cody McCarver's latest album is "Rise Up."It's been a busy summer for Cody McCarver and the fruits of that work are about to pay off.
Earlier this year he recorded "Rise Up," his latest single. He also filmed a video for the track at First Tennessee Pavilion.
Since then, he's completed 11 more tracks and "Rise Up" the album will be released tomorrow, Sept. 8, in the U.S. It was released in Europe last month on AGR Television Records.
The album includes McCarver's newest single and video, "No Such Thing as a Miracle." It also includes "I'm America" with Charlie Daniels and a hip-hop version of "Rise Up" with fellow Dunlap, Tenn., artist Shawn Cooley.
Playing on the record are Zack Olendorf on guitar, Curt Lee on drums, Jeff Mankin on vocals, Grant Parker on bass, Meredith Goins on fiddle and Lew Card on mandolin. Card also produced the record; Mankin wrote or co-wrote most of the tracks.
McCarver, you might remember, spent a decade with Confederate Railroad and then with his own country music career before stepping off the tour bus and realizing he needed to make a change in his life.
Since country music is what he knows, he kept writing in that vein, but the lyrics took on a more Christian tone. He jokingly started calling it Outlaw Gospel and soon enough the description stuck.
McCarver is also working with the guys in Smith & Wesley. They will be shooting a video this week for their new song, "Superman for a Day."
» I had a couple of calls from "grannies" this week regarding my column last week about a survey that found that millennials do not like having their grandparents commenting on their Facebook pages.
Barry CourterThe millennials, it seems, are embarrassed when grandma or grandpa comments on their hairstyle or the fact that they never call to check on them.
The callers shared a couple of common themes. First, "These spoiled, selfish and shallow millennials ought to just stop living in their own worlds and their own heads" as one caller put it.
No argument there from here.
The second idea shared by the callers was that there are people - of all ages and demographics - who would give just about anything to have or to have had a grandparent in their life. Again, we are in total agreement on this.
I did not have the advantage of having my grandparents living nearby as my kids did. What a wonderful thing.
I'm still just not sure that Facebook is the place for certain communications.
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.