3 Nashville singer-songwriters to headline Trussville Heritage Days this April
Adam Craig, Ray Fulcher, and Jordan Walker will play a 'county music writer's round' from 7 to 9 p.m. on April 4. The event is free to the public.
Craig has written songs recorded by Jason Aldean, Dustin Lynch, Montgomery Gentry, Parmalee, George Strait, Kane Brown, and Cody Johnson, among others.
His first hit song, 'Close Your Eyes,' was recorded by Parmalee, after which Craig was signed to a record deal with BMG Records. His single 'Just A Phase' charted in the top 30.
Fulcher has co-written six No. 1 songs and has had more than 25 songs recorded by Luke Combs, along with cuts by Chris Young, Zac Brown Band, Riley Green, Kameron Marlowe, and Dillon Carmichael, among others.
As an artist, Fulcher has more than 30 million streams to his credit. Fulcher's debut full-length album, 'Spray Painted Line,' was released by Black River Entertainment in 2022.
Walker, formerly of the country music duo Walker McGuire, has had songs recorded by Combs, Johnson, Brown, Cold Swindell, Jordan Davis, Trace Adkins, and Drew Baldridge, among others. Walker has been signed to Sony Music Publishing Nashville since November 2019.
He was a co-writer on the multi-week No. 1 single 'When It Rains, It Pours' by Combs, which has been certified by RIAA as a diamond single.
Heritage Days is organized by the Cahaba Homestead Heritage Foundation and will run from April 1-6.
In addition to the concert, the festival will feature Alabama artists painting the historic area, the Gee's Bend Quilters, historic home tours, and more.
For more information, click here.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
100 years of glory and decay
Before the Uptown Theatre opened its doors to the public on Aug. 18, 1925, advertisements in the Chicago Daily Tribune overflowed with hype for the city's newest and biggest movie palace. 'It will hush and thrill you,' one ad promised. 'It throbs with beauty.' 'It is one of the great art buildings of the world,' the Uptown's owners, Balaban & Katz, asserted in another ad. 'You have never seen such dignified luxury, such exquisite elegance as lives in its towering pillars, its mountainous ceilings, glowing colors, stately promenades, lounges, cosmetic rooms and smoking rooms.' The grand opening was touted as 'an event you will remember all your life.' It wasn't mere hyperbole. This was one of the largest and most elaborately decorated movie theaters ever constructed. The morning after the Uptown opened at 4816 N. Broadway, a Tribune movie critic reported that the 4,320-seat Uptown was even grander than downtown's 3,861-seat Chicago Theatre, which Balaban & Katz had opened four years earlier. 'It's a splendiferous palace of a place — the Chicago's dressy sister,' wrote Mae Tinée (a jokey pseudonym used at the time by Tribune critics). 'Don't ask me about the architecture because I don't know anything about architecture. But I do know that Sister Uptown … is lavish of space, decoration and comfort, is sumptuously furnished and is beautifully and softly lighted inside.' The North Side's Uptown neighborhood held a festival to celebrate. Bands played on street corners, trapeze artists twirled overhead, and a daredevil set himself on fire before diving into a pool of water. Over six days, more than 500,000 people flocked to the streets around Broadway and Lawrence Avenue, according to the Tribune. (Another publication pegged the attendance at 750,000.) Those crowds included an estimated 150,000 people who went inside the movie palace that week. Balaban & Katz, a chain owned by two families from Chicago's West Side, had been building bigger and bigger theaters as Americans spent an increasing amount of their leisure time at the movies. After constructing the Central Park Theatre on the West Side in 1917, B&K had opened the Riviera on the North Side, the Tivoli on the South Side and the Chicago Theatre in the Loop. Then the company spent $4 million (roughly $73 million in today's money) creating the mammoth Uptown right across the street from the Riviera — motivated, apparently, by the desire to open an even bigger theater. The Chicago architectural firm Rapp & Rapp designed all of the movie palaces for B&K. As architect George Leslie Rapp explained, the ornate buildings gave everyone a chance to experience what it was like to step inside a European castle. The Uptown cast a spell on visitors with giant chandeliers, colored glass windows, tapestries and bronze clocks, to name just a few of its countless decorative touches. 'The fanciful heads of Renaissance Cupids, fantastic gargoyles, griffins, the laughing heads of mythological gods and jolly demons grimace in friendly humor,' according to a promotional Balaban & Katz magazine. 'These are not impractical attempts at showing off,' architect George Leslie Rapp said. 'Here is a shrine to democracy where there are no privileged patrons. The wealthy rub elbows with the poor — and are better for this contact.' A.J. Balaban, one of B&K's owners, said he envisioned the theaters as a 'meeting place of the aristocrat and humble worker.' The company's movie palaces, including the Uptown, were among the first theaters anywhere equipped with air conditioning — a major attraction during an era when people didn't have AC in their homes. B&K's magazine said the Uptown contained 'complex yet never failing machinery that you never see, shining engines that change the air in the theatre every two minutes, wash the air, cool the air, rewash the air, temper it exactly to your comfort.' The Uptown's lobbies, filled with sculptures, paintings and fancy furniture, were vast enough to hold thousands of people waiting for the next show. The Uptown's staff of 131 employees included 23 uniformed ushers working with military precision as they guided audience members to seats. Movies were just one portion of the show. At the Uptown's grand opening, classical musicians performed on an elevator platform that rose out of the basement. The Oriole Orchestra got things jumping with some jazz. Spanish dancers graced the stage. And the popular organist Jesse Crawford played the Uptown's giant Wurlitzer. When it was finally time for the feature film, a silent romance and adventure called 'The Lady Who Lied,' the orchestra provided a live soundtrack. The Tribune's Mae Tinée didn't care much for the film, complaining that 'it drags interminably,' but as the Chicago Daily News observed: 'The throngs paid more attention to the theater than to the picture.' In an Aug. 19 ad, Balaban & Katz proclaimed: 'All Chicago stormed the Uptown Theatre yesterday. Its opening was the most gigantic thing since Armistice Day. From North Side, South Side, West Side, and far, far up the North Shore, they came and couldn't believe their eyes. … The new theatre swept the entire city off its feet.' But just a few years later, the movie business faced major upheaval, as 1927's 'The Jazz Singer' ushered in the era of sound films. Soon, there was no need for an orchestra or organist to play during screenings. The Uptown continued presenting live entertainment for a while — including the Marx Brothers in 1928 and Duke Ellington in 1931 — but that became less common after the Great Depression hurt ticket sales in the early 1930s. Amid the economic devastation, Balaban & Katz and other theater chains stopped building movie palaces. By the 1950s, as movie attendance plummeted and Americans spent more time watching television, huge theaters like the Uptown seemed like relics. Looking for new ways to attract audiences, the Uptown added closed-circuit television equipment in 1951, occasionally showing special events such as operas and boxing matches. And the theater installed a 70-foot-wide CinemaScope screen in 1954, turning movies into panoramic spectacles. But when a Tribune reporter visited the Uptown in 1968, it was looking dingy. 'Dust now covers peeling gold wallpaper in the quiet balconies, and bits of cracked plaster have fallen on once colorful tapestry rugs,' reporter Edith Herman wrote. The theater's glamour faded further when many of its artworks and furnishings were auctioned off in 1969 and 1970. Things started to look up in 1975 when Jam Productions began presenting rock concerts there, starting with the Tubes on Oct. 31. Over the next six years, the Uptown hosted the era's most popular musicians, from Bruce Springsteen and Rod Stewart to the Grateful Dead, who played there 17 times. And yet, the theater continued to fall into disrepair. Its final show, a concert by the J. Geils Band, was on Dec. 19, 1981. It has been closed ever since. In the early 1980s, some of the building's pipes burst, damaging portions of interior walls. Volunteers pitched in to prevent further deterioration. After the Uptown passed through several owners, it was purchased in 2008 by a partnership led by Jerry Mickelson of Jam Productions. In 2018, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a $75 million plan to reopen the Uptown, but the project faltered as Mickelson tried to line up investors. As the Uptown's 100th birthday approached, Mickelson said he's seeking the city's commitment to support renovations with tax increment financing or other funding and incentives. 'The Uptown Theatre must be saved because it's one of the most extraordinary and historically significant movie palaces ever built — not just in Chicago, but anywhere in the United States,' Mickelson said in a July 31 email. 'Saving the Uptown is about more than saving bricks, plaster and history. It's about creating jobs and opportunities at the theatre for our youth. … It's about honoring Chicago's place as a birthplace of movie palaces. And it's about choosing hope over cynicism. Letting it rot would be easy. Bringing it back to life will be bold — and deeply worth it.'
Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Today in Chicago History: Essanay Studios — briefly home to Charlie Chaplin — opens for movie production
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 10, according to the Tribune's archives. Is an important event missing from this date? Email us. Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago) 1907: Essanay Studios began its 10-year run of making movies in Chicago, featuring Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson and other box-office stars. The studio made 2,000 films. About 215 survive today. Lost 'Sherlock Holmes' film shot in Chicago from 1916 found in FranceFor 23 cold winter days in early 1915, Chaplin lived and worked in Chicago, where he made one of his short comedies for Essanay Studios, 'His New Job,' before fleeing for Essanay's operation in Niles, California. 1983: ChicagoFest was held for the last time. Among the acts at Soldier Field were the Charlie Daniels Band, Chicago, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Beach Boys. 1995: Sears officially moved its headquarters to Hoffman Estates. Nearly 5,000 employees would work at the suburban site. Sears headquarters had been in Chicago since Richard W. Sears moved his watch company there from North Redwood, Minnesota, in 1887. Sears timeline: Rise, fall and restructuring of a Chicago icon over 130 yearsDemolition of the vacant campus began in 2024. Dallas-based Compass Datacenters bought much of the 273-acre site at 3333 Beverly Road on the village's far western edge in 2023, and planned to construct five massive data centers, which house the IT components needed to run the internet. Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Today in Chicago History: Cubs shine in first Wrigley Field night game that counted
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 9, according to the Tribune's archives. Is an important event missing from this date? Email us. Vintage Chicago Tribune: The entire transcript of President Richard Nixon's Watergate tapesWeather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago) 1922: A 20-year-old Louis Armstrong arrived at Illinois Central Station from New Orleans — but he wasn't sure he made the right decision. 100 years ago, Louis Armstrong arrived in Chicago. What happened next would change jazz forever.'Anybody watching me closely could have easily seen that I was a country boy,' he wrote in his first memoir, 'My Life in New Orleans.' 'I had a million thoughts as I looked at all those people waiting for taxi cabs. … As I waved goodbye I thought to myself: 'Huh. I don't think I am going to like this old town.'' Thank heavens, then, that Joe 'King' Oliver — his idol — extended him an invitation to play second cornet in his band here. The rest, as they say, is history — and thus began the years, 1922 to 1929, that Armstrong would later call 'some of (his) finest days.' 1973: Lincoln Mall held its grand opening, becoming the first enclosed mall in the far south suburbs of Chicago. It predated by nearly three years the opening of Orland Square in Orland Park. Vintage Chicago Tribune: Shopping malls!!!!!The mall closed in January 2015, with the exception of Carson Pirie Scott, which shut its doors abruptly in March 2018. Demolition followed and now there is little evidence the mall ever existed with the exception of memories and old photos. 1985: Bruce Springsteen played Soldier Field during his 'Born in the U.S.A.' tour. Seven people were killed on their way to the show when a CTA articulated bus struck a 1975 Cadillac. 1988: Night ball, at long last, had reached Clark and Addison. After a rainout the previous night, Mike Bielecki fired a called strike to Lenny Dykstra to start the game. Vintage Chicago Tribune: How Wrigley Field got lights and why Cubs fans had to wait past 8-8-88 to raise 'W' flagThe Cubs hit the Mets with four runs in the seventh inning, then held on for a 6-4 victory before 36,399 very noisy people. 'It might have been louder last night,' said Mark Grace, who drove in one of the runs in the decisive seventh. 'But that's the loudest for a complete game that I've ever been associated with.' 1993: The Sox's Bo Jackson broke a bat over his knee after striking out against Oakland Athletics pitcher Bobby Witt in the bottom of the fifth inning at Comiskey Park. Frank Thomas and Robin Ventura — in the middle of the batting order — had six hits. Thomas broke a 4-4 tie with a game-winning solo home run. Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
