Tickets- Official Box Office

Granger Smith and Earl Dibbles Jr.

will be performing live at The Bluestone on Thursday, March 16th

Doors for the show will open at 7pm

Opening Artist: TBA

Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 day of show

Tickets will go on-sale Friday, February 3rd at 10am

PURCHASE HERE

RESERVED LOFT TABLE SEATING

RESERVED TABLE PURCHASE DOES NOT INCLUDE ADMISSION TICKETS TO THE SHOW.  

Admission tickets must be purchased separately.

• Loft Lower Tier: $250 (seats four people-no exceptions)
• Prime view of stage!
• Includes first bucket of Miller or Coors Light
• Server
• Exclusive Private Bar access

• Loft Upper Tier: $200 (seats four people-no exceptions)
• Includes first bucket of Miller or Coors Light
•  Server
• Private Bar Access
• May be Obstruction in View

*All Reserved tables located in the loft area

My name is Granger Smith. Sometimes long, fancy industry bios are helpful, but other times you just need to hear from the guy actually living it, so here’s my story.

I was born and raised Texan, and I’m proud of that. I grew up along with two brothers, a couple of yellow labrador retrievers and parents that stayed together because they loved each other. My life changed when I was 14 years old and decided I would teach myself to play guitar. This was motivated by two things: I thought the guitar would make girls pay attention to me, and George Strait played one. By the time I turned 15, I was performing weekends on small town stages in North Texas, and doing my best as a fan club member to attend every George Strait concert within driving distance. Playing high school football was an important rite of passage for me, along with hunting and fishing, but the dream of a music career consumed me. At age 19, I was satisfied with enough songs I had written to make an album. As a freshman at Texas A&M, I was able to scrape together some studio money by pre-selling the album to friends around campus. For being just a kid, that album did pretty well. It landed me a songwriting deal with EMI Music Publishing in Nashville, and the following year, I took the leap to Tennessee.

 DAVID NAIL will be performing LIVE at The Bluestone

on Friday, November 17th, 2017

Doors for the show will open at 7pm

Opening Artist: Jimmie Allen

Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 day of show

Tickets will go on-sale Friday, August 18th at 10am

PURCHASE HERE

RESERVED LOFT TABLE SEATING

RESERVED TABLE PURCHASE DOES NOT INCLUDE ADMISSION TICKETS TO THE SHOW.  

Admission tickets must be purchased separately.

• Loft Lower Tier: $250 (seats four people-no exceptions)
• Prime view of stage!
• Includes first bucket of Miller or Coors Light
• Server
• Exclusive Private Bar access

• Loft Upper Tier: $200 (seats four people-no exceptions)
• Includes first bucket of Miller or Coors Light
•  Server
• Private Bar Access
• May be Obstruction in View

*All Reserved tables located in the loft area

ALL SALES ARE FINAL

ABOUT

During the making of his fourth MCA Nashville album, David Nail underwent a transformation – and so did his music. Fighter is the most vulnerable, personal record the Missouri native has ever made, and it signals the beginning of a new phase in his career.”

“Six months ago, people would ask me about the record and I would jokingly say ‘It’s my love-making record,’” Nail explains. “But what it meant to me then and what it means to me now are completely different. … Having been a father for about five months, it definitely changes the dynamic of things.”

Following the birth of he and wife Catherine’s long-hoped-for children (twins born in December 2015), the singer-songwriter found his world turned upside down. The mark he wanted to leave and things he wanted to say had changed, and despite an early version of Fighter being already finished, he decided to record four new songs, completely changing the project’s tone.

In short, Nail decided to get real in a way he never would have allowed himself before. Already known for powerful, emotionally-charged vocals, he took the same approach to choosing Fighter’s 11 tracks (seven of which were written or co-written by Nail himself), celebrating life’s victories but also exposing the knock-downs he’s endured – and it wasn’t always flattering.

“[I was] like, ‘Am I ready to sing this? Am I ready to tell this story?” Nail says. “[But] they come from a genuine place that you can kind of say, ‘Okay, I’ve said that. I’m at peace with that.’ I think that’s what this record is.”

Writing and singing in courageous personal detail, Nail confronted some of his deepest troubles, revealing the clarity he’s achieved about his hometown, the true struggle depression caused in his marriage, the answered-prayer of his children’s birth and the things he never told his own father.

Meanwhile, producer Frank Liddell (who also guided Nail’s first three albums, I’m About to Come Alive, The Sound of a Million Dreams and I’m a Fire) made sure Fighter’s musical tone was just as authentic, backing Nail’s volcanic vocals with a melting pot of Mississippi-delta sounds — a mix of classic-country balladry and sweaty Memphis soul, with touches of in-the-moment modernity sprinkled throughout.

“I grew up listening to all this music that my father listened to,” says Nail. “A lot of it was classic, huge songs and artists from the ‘60s and ‘70s – and even the ‘80s – so I think there’s always part of me that just falls toward that type of sound, rather than fighting it and trying to say ‘Whoa! No-no-no, we need to stay 2016.”

Big-name collaborations abound, with Nail inviting Vince Gill, Brothers Osborne, Lori McKenna and Logan Brill to help tell his story, as well as Bear and Bo Rinehart of NEEDTOBREATE.

“When I’m making a record I selfishly want to push my buttons so I try to approach it as my swan song, it could be the last piece of music I make. I want to fulfill some life goals in the process and one of my biggest influences in the word is Vince Gill so I’m thankful he said yes”

Brothers Osborne kick the project off in star-crossed revelry on “Good at Tonight,” McKenna joins “Home” to quietly uncover Nail’s love/hate relationship with his hometown, Gill adds stunning harmony vocals to the country-soul “I Won’t Let You Go” – a promise to David’s wife Catherine – and the Rineharts help close the album in tender admiration with “Old Man’s Symphony,” an overdue thank-you note to Nail’s dad.

Along the way, he toasts to the passion of youth in the upbeat hit “Night’s On Fire,” pledges romantic relief in the raw Chris Stapleton co-write “Ease Your Pain,” delivers a desperate double entendre in the indie-rocking “Lie With Me” and crafts a loving, rock-a-bye origin story for his new family in “Babies” – an instant classic.

Then there’s the project’s title track, “Fighter,” a heartfelt ‘80s-country throwback ripped from Nail’s real life that holds his wife up as an unshakable supporter – even when he was at his worst.

“’Fighter’ is about as honest as I’ve ever been in a song,” Nail admits. “I mean, when you’re quoting your wife saying things that are not pleasant [about you], you know it was our story. … But it also, I think, tells the story of me.”

Nail and Catherine have had to fight their whole lives, he explains – for his career, for their marriage, to battle back inner demons and to conceive their beautiful kids – but their ultimate success in those battles has led them to a better place. And it also gave the album a mission.

Fighter is more than a bookmark in Nail’s life and career – it’s a period on the final sentence of a difficult chapter. Penned during dark times that have given way to a new sunrise, these are some of the most meaningful and personal songs he’s ever recorded. And now that they exist for all to hear, he can finally move on.

“I feel like I’ve told the main aspects of my career, and my life, up to this point,” he explains. “So I really think whatever we do in the future, we’ll be able to start just completely fresh. It’ll be a new story, a new part of my life.”

-Chris Parton

Joe Diffie LIVE at The Bluestone on June 29th, 2018

*Opening Artist: Dillon Carmichael and David Adam Byrnes

*Doors for the show will open at 7PM

*Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 day of show

Tickets On-Sale Now!

Joe Diffie was regarded by many of his peers as one of the better vocalists in contemporary country, and lent his traditional sensibilities to humorous, rock-tinged novelties and plaintive ballads. Diffie was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1958 and grew up in a musical family, first performing in public at age four with his aunt’s country band. He played in a rock band during high school, and later moved on to a gospel quartet and, during college, a bluegrass band called the Special Edition. He worked on his songwriting and singing over the next few years while working in a foundry, and caught a break when his “Love on the Rocks” was recorded by Hank Thompson. When Randy Travis nearly recorded another of his songs, Diffie was convinced he had a shot in the business, and moved to Nashville in 1986. He took a job at the Gibson guitar plant while continuing to write songs, and became an in-demand demo singer as well. Holly Dunn’s 1989 recording of a Diffie collaboration, “There Goes My Heart Again,” proved a major hit, and Diffie found himself a hot commodity. He signed with Epic and released his debut album, A Thousand Winding Roads, in 1990. His first single, “Home,” went all the way to number one on the country charts, and “If the Devil Danced (In Empty Pockets)” duplicated that feat; meanwhile, two more singles from the album, “If You Want Me To” and “New Way (To Light Up an Old Flame),” reached number two.

Diffie became a regular hitmaker over the rest of the ’90s, and scored again with his sophomore LP, 1992’s Regular Joe; “Is It Cold in Here” and “Ships That Don’t Come In” both made the Top Five. Known primarily for his ballads at this point in his career, Diffie switched things up with 1993’s Honky Tonk Attitude, which emphasized his rambunctious, rocking side and sense of humor, and proved to be his biggest-selling album yet. The title track, “Prop Me Up Beside the Jukebox (If I Die),” and “John Deere Green” all went Top Five. Sticking with engaging humor as the selling point of his hugely popular follow-up, 1994’s Third Rock from the Sun, Diffie scored two number ones with the title track and “Pickup Man,” plus a Top Five hit in “So Help Me Girl.” 1995 brought a holiday album, Mr. Christmas, as well as a proper release in Life’s So Funny, which gave Diffie his fifth number one hit in “Bigger Than the Beatles.” 1997’s Twice Upon a Time saw his commercial momentum slipping a bit, and so Epic issued a Greatest Hits compilation the following year; its new song, “Texas Sized Heartache,” returned Diffie to the Top Five. 1999’s A Night to Remember was the most straight-ahead, traditional country record Diffie had yet recorded, and it gave him two Top Ten hits in the title cut and “It’s Always Somethin’.” He returned to his more established style for 2001’s In Another World, which found him transferred to Sony’s reactivated Monument subsidiary; its title track went Top Ten early the next year. Tougher Than Nails followed in 2004, then in 2010 Diffie returned to bluegrass for Homecoming: The Bluegrass Album, which was released by Rounder Records and was greeted by warm reviews.

Diffie had a bit of an unexpected revival in early 2013, when his name provided the chorus of Jason Aldean’s party-hearty hit “1994.” Later that year, Diffie set out on the road with fellow country singers Sammy Kershaw and Aaron Tippin on a tour called All in the Same Boat; the trio released an accompanying album of the same name in May. ~ Steve Huey, Rovi