Reba McEntire

[Kim]

Love Took Reba By Surprise

By Sarah Wyland
gactv.com


Reba McEntire had known her husband-manager Narvel Blackstock for a while before she fell in love with him. The two met when he joined her band as a steel guitar player and later became her manager. They unexpectedly fell in love and were married in Lake Tahoe on June 3, 1989.

“When I fell in love with Narvel, it was like ‘ Wow! You’ve been here how many years? I’ve respected you all of these years, but wow?!’” Reba said. Reba and Narvel will celebrate their 22nd wedding anniversary this year. In a day when so many celebrity marriages end in divorce, Reba has said the secrets to her marriage are “respect, faith, love, trust and a whole lot of patience.”

[Kim]

There's No Pressure Anymore For Reba McEntire


Want to know the story behind the latest artist to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame? Tune in to Backstory: Reba McEntire, premiering Saturday on GAC at 9 PM, ET. After three decades in country music, Reba shares, ¡°There¡¯s no pressure anymore, it¡¯s just about having fun. To get to still be in the running with it, I¡¯m just so grateful.¡± Following a childhood of rodeo and singing in Oklahoma, McEntire headed to Nashville and landed her first recording contract in the mid-¡¯70¡äs. At the time, female singers had little input into what songs they sang or how their records were produced. However, Reba spoke up and asked to record what would become her first #1 record, ¡°Can¡¯t Even Get The Blues,¡± which was being pitched to a male artist. She elaborates, ¡°I didn¡¯t want to be a bitch about it. I just wanted to be a little bit more gracefully forceful.¡±

McEntire goes down memory lane, from her first movie ¨C Tremors ¨C to starting Reba¡¯s Ranch House. She also recalls her larger than life headlining tour, noting, ¡°Ten dancers flying all around me; clothes changes ¨C 15 a show. Good Lord, it was just like a three-ring circus.¡± From there it was on to a successful run in Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway. While on The Great White Way, McEntire landed her first sitcom, Reba, which ran for six seasons. She admits, ¡°The first year of the Reba show was the hardest. Everybody was learning, everybody was getting to know each other and I was totally ignorant to that process.¡± McEntire later leaped into retail with a clothing, bedding, luggage and home goods line, which she says has been ¡°a wonderful experience.¡± Former Reba co-star Melissa Peterman jokes that next Reba is ¡°going to conquer the music scene in outer space because frankly, she could.¡±

Source: Dial Global
Contact: [e-mail]

[Kim]

Reba McEntire Gives Son Shelby the Green Flag

Apr 15th 2011
by Donna Hughes
theboot.com



Brian Cleary, GRAND-Am Road Racing


Reba McEntire is thrilled her son Shelby has found his calling racing cars, but that doesn't negate the fact that she worries about him when he is zooming around the race track.

"That first time when that green flag drops, my stomach goes right to my throat, and then it goes back down and then I'm OK," Reba tells The Boot. "But, boy, that roar is tremendous."

While she assumed Shelby would follow in her footsteps and those of husband-manager, Narvel Blackstock, and Shelby's older brother, Brandon, and join the family music business, Reba was pleasantly surprised when he took up the sport of racing last year.

"This thing with Shelby and racing came out of nowhere," Reba explains. "Ever since he was a little bitty boy, we would be driving somewhere and he'd say, 'Mom, do you know what kind of car that is?' And I'd say, 'Blue?' And he'd say, 'No! That's a Mazda so-and-so-and-so.' He'd know the year and everything, and I thought, 'How does he know all that?' It's always been cars, and he was just so unhappy in college. I said, 'Shelby, what is it that makes you happy?' He said, 'Racing.' Well, you could have slapped me in the face, and I could not have been more shocked! I said, 'What do you mean racing?' He said, 'Mom, I want to race cars.'"

Shelby, who turned 21 in February, attended the University of Arizona last year, but quickly realized college was not the right path for him. A family friend's introduction to the owner of a racing team steered Shelby in the right direction.

"We were going to put him into the ITT Technical school and let him work on cars and be a mechanic, which I thought was ridiculous because he didn't know anything about being a mechanic," the songstress explains. "And then on his last day of school, a good friend of ours, Pat Manley, said, 'I've got a friend. I want you to go to brunch with me.' It was Jim Click, who owns car dealerships all over Arizona and had a racing team. They went to brunch, and Jim said, 'Hey! Do you want to go to upstate New York and work on my pit crew?' He said, 'Yeah,' and he did."

That job led to Shelby's latest. "This last weekend, Shelby was in the Jim Click car racing a Grand Am race," she boasts. "He went from 18 to third before he handed it over to Michael McGovern, who was the second and more professional driver of the team. Who would have thought it? If it wasn't for Pat Manley and Jim Click, Shelby probably would never have realized his dream."

Even though the racing world is different from what the proud mother is accustomed, it still encompasses a few familiar elements that have Reba feeling comfortable with Shelby's decision. "There's so many great people in the racing business, and I'm just thrilled to death," she exclaims. "It's like being in the rodeo business: you know everyone and it's all like a family. And then the music business: it's all like a family. I feel so grateful that he is so blessed to be in such a wonderful family again, but now in the racing business. So, I couldn't be happier for him."

Reba is taking most of the summer off the road, but you can catch her on the small screen being honored during the the Academy of Country Music's 'Girls' Night Out: Superstar Women of Country: Concert of the Year,' airing April 22 at 9:00 PM ET on CBS.

[Kim]

Reba’s New Single Cost Her Sleep

By Sarah Wyland
gactv.com



Reba lost some shut eye over her latest single, “When Love Gets a Hold of You.” She woke up in a panic, the song stuck in her head. She couldn’t remember if she had put the song on hold and took action to make sure it was hers.

“I was thinking, ‘Omigosh, is that a song on the radio, or is that a song I’ve been hearing out of all of the demos and have I put it on hold?’” she said. So she picked up the phone and called her label to gurantee the track was hers. “I say, ‘Did we put this song on hold? If we haven’t, put it on hold, and if we have, double hold it,’ because I just knew it was a very strong song that I wanted to sing. It was worth that one night of sleep that I missed.”

Reba joins Blake Shelton on The Voice tonight on NBC at 10/9 CT as a mentor for his team.

[Mallrat]

Pioneers Reba McEntire, Jean Shepard and Bobby Braddock enter Country Music Hall of Fame

By Chris Talbott, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press –

Sun, 22 May, 2011.. .

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - It was only fitting on a night when women received their due at the Country Music Hall of Fame that Reba McEntire would take a moment to give special thanks to fellow inductee Jean Shepard.

"Thank you for coming before me and paving the way for girl singers," a teary McEntire said to Shepard after being inducted by Dolly Parton. "I couldn't have done it without you and I'm honoured beyond words to be inducted with you."

Those two pioneering women and Bobby Braddock, an iconic songwriter whose inclusion begins to right a wrong, were welcomed in a star-studded and humour-filled ceremony at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

Parton surprised McEntire with her appearance and celebrated the redheaded spitfire who has had more than 50 top 10 hits and more No. 1 albums than any other female country artist.

"Reba and I kind of feel like sisters," Parton said. "We both through the years have had enough hair to stuff a mattress."

The 56-year-old McEntire has been a consistent force in Nashville for three decades and remains one of country music's most recognized and beloved stars. She's been name-checked as an influence in both music and business by virtually every young female country singer of note.

She started charting songs in 1976 and rode a string of No. 1 hits to a Country Music Association entertainer of the year award in 1986 and remains a presence at the top of the charts and on every nominations list. She also succeeded on television, where her self-titled sitcom still runs daily in syndication, on Broadway and is the face of several product lines.

She was celebrated by fellow Oklahomans Garth Brooks, who sang her Grammy-winning "Whoever's in New England," and Vince Gill, who sang "Somebody Should Leave." And Martina McBride and Kelly Clarkson performed "Does He Love You?" together in one of the evening's more powerful performances.

McEntire, whose induction has been colored by her father Clark's recent illness, choked up briefly talking about the championship rodeo rider. She said she once asked him what was more fun, the winning or the journey to get there. He told her it was the journey, of course.

"I agree with dad 100 per cent," she said.

Without Shepard, the path McEntire and today's legion of hit-making women would have had it much tougher. Shepard broke into country music's male-dominated world in the 1950s by kicking down the door with an outsized personality and voice to match.

Of women in country music at the time, the 77-year-old Shepard said: "There wasn't none of us. I was happy to do my part. I hung in there like a hair on a grilled cheese."

Shepard, one of 10 children born to a poor sharecropping family in Oklahoma that eventually moved to California, sang from the female point of view. Her honkytonk style and plain-spoken approach won her fans "ignored in Washington and dismissed by Madison Avenue," said hall of fame director Kyle Young, who served as the evening's host.

"Together Jean and her fans were myth busters who effectively created the climate change that parted the clouds for Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette in the next decade and beyond," Young added.

When her induction was announced earlier this year, Shepard said she was frustrated that it took her decades longer to make it into the hall of fame than those who came after her like Lynn and Wynette. She remained distressed on Sunday that other important acts like Skeeter Davis and The Browns are still not enshrined.

"Don't let their efforts fall by the wayside," Shepard said. "Let's vote them into the hall while they're still here."

Like some of those legacy acts, songwriters also are an under-represented group in the hall of fame. Braddock is just the fourth pure songwriter enshrined in an institution built on their work.

Fellow hall of fame member Bill Anderson slayed the audience with some of Braddock's funniest lines before the 70-year-old delivered a classic comic performance.

"It's like getting to go to your own funeral without having to die," Braddock said. "How awesome is that?"

Braddock gave up his early infatuation with rock 'n' roll and moved to Nashville in 1964, with almost everyone he knew telling him it was a bad choice. He hit the charts for the first time the next year and wrote or co-wrote five decades of hits, including some of the most important songs in country music history.

He has uncommon versatility, moving from heartbreakers like "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and "He Stopped Loving Her Today," the Jones hit generally considered country's greatest song, to comic everyman numbers like "I Wanna Talk About Me" and his latest No. 1, "People Are Crazy," which singer Billy Currington reprised during the ceremony.

"According to BMI, nine of Bobby's songs have been played on the radio from one to three million times each," Young said. "To put that in perspective, understand that just one million plays equals radio play around the clock for six and a half years."

Former Braddock protege Blake Shelton and his wife Miranda Lambert, back from a quick honeymoon following their wedding last weekend, also saluted Braddock with the appropriate "Golden Ring," a song Tammy Wynette and Jones took to No. 1. Braddock thanked Jones, who Braddock noted cut 29 of his songs, and producer Billy Sherrill, another hall member, and all the co-writers who have shared hits with him over the years.

Braddock is the first inductee under a new system that guarantees a songwriter's enshrinement every three years. He believes many of his collaborators will soon have plaques of their own.

"I'm going to be taking them in there with me, and eventually they're going to be in there on their own," Braddock said. "

___

Online:

www.countrymusichalloffame.org

[Mallrat]

Reba McEntire, Blake Shelton Raise $500,000 for Oklahoma Tornado Victims

05/27/11, 5:30 pm EDT

Reba McEntire and Blake Shelton raised $500,000 for victims of recent tornados in Atoka County, Okla., during sold-out disaster relief concerts Wednesday and Thursday (May 25-26) at the Choctaw Events Center in Durant, Okla. Susie McEntire-Eaton and Kelly Clarkson made surprise guest appearances at Thursday night's show. McEntire and Shelton co-headlined the event and opened the show with a duet of "Oklahoma Swing." McEntire was born near Kiowa, a community located some 30 miles from the greatest devastation. Shelton was born in Ada and currently resides in Tishomingo, less than 50 miles from the Atoka County line. All proceeds from both shows, as well as donations from the Choctaw Nation and fans, will go toward Atoka County's ongoing relief efforts through the Tushka Disaster Relief Fund. Additionally, a special mobile fundraising campaign is underway through the mGive Foundation. Fans can text OKGIVE to 27722 to make a one-time donation of $10 to be billed to their monthly cell phone bill.[/b][/color][/font]

[Mallrat]

McEntire announces tour dates

Wednesday, July 6, 2011 – Reba McEntire will embark on the All the Women I Am tour this fall throughout the U.S. and Canada. The upcoming, 31-city venture kicks off on Sept. 1 in Ft. McMurray, Alberta, Canada with special guests The Band Perry, Steel Magnolia and Edens Edge slated to open select U.S. dates and winds up Nov. 19 in Tupelo, Miss.

Presales for select shows will begin on Saturday, July 9 at 10 a.m. central. Only RebaNet fan club members will have the exclusive opportunity to purchase up to four tickets maximum of the best seats available via Reba.com. RebaNet membership is free and in addition to presale privileges, benefits including meet and greet opportunities, bonus content and fan forum accessibility

Tour dates are:

* The Band Perry, Steel Magnolia, Edens Edge

** The Band Perry only [/b][/font][/color]

[Kim]

Reba McEntire Feeds Thousands of Families in Oklahoma


Reba McEntire is making sure plenty of families will be well fed in her native state of Oklahoma as the year draws to a close. The country icon learned of a food bank located in the town of Kiowa, where she attended school as a child, and wasted no time in donating a large sum of money to support the worthwhile cause.

While the 'Somebody's Chelsea' singer refused to disclose the amount, a spokesperson for the food bank said it was a substantial gift -- enough to provide 200,000 meals, or feed more than 2,300 families for one week.

"We are thankful for this generous donation from Reba McEntire," executive director of the Regional Food Bank Rodney Bivens, shares (quote via News OK). "No child should ever have to go to bed with the pains of hunger in their stomach."

The 56-year-old songbird is well-known for her charitable giving. She co-hosted a tornado relief concert in Oklahoma earlier this year with Blake Shelton, and also donated $100,000 to the Red Cross (where she serves on the National Celebrity Cabinet), following Nashville's deadly floods last year. Reba says she is always eager to help when she can.

"To know that you can lend a hand and make someone's life a little better, brings you back up to realize why you are on this earth in the first place," she shares. "And that's to learn how you can grow as a better person by giving and loving."

Reba will spend several weeks at home before she heads overseas for a series of shows in England, Ireland, Switzerland and Germany.

[grg_straitfan]

Reba McEntire: 'I searched my soul after Who Do You Think You Are?'
Published Friday, Mar 2 2012, 12:36pm EST | By Justin Harp |

Reba McEntire has revealed that she had mixed feelings after researching her family history on Who Do You Think You Are?.

The country music star appears in this Friday's episode of the NBC reality series, where she discovers a shocking family secret in Europe.

In an interview with Parade, McEntire admitted she gained a much greater insight about her family through Who Do You Think You Are?.

"I learned a lot about my ancestors and some information was disturbing," McEntire disclosed.

She added: "I had to do some soul-searching, but it was a wonderful experience."

McEntire was recently forced to prove that she was still alive after falling victim to an internet death hoax.

Who Do You Think You Are? airs Fridays at 8/7c on NBC.

[Kim]

'Malibu Country,' Reba's New Sitcom Picked Up by ABC


Looks like ABC liked the pilot episode!

"Congrats to everyone associated with 'Malibu Country'! We got picked up!!" Reba McEntire tweeted over the weekend, elated that her new sitcom will now officially run for at least one season. "We're going to have so much fun! Can't wait to get to work!"

ABC had already agreed to the pilot of the show, which stars the country legend as a divorced mom of three who moves from Nashville to Malibu, Calif., after discovering her country-star husband was cheating on her. Reba's character and her kids will have to adjust to the very different world of Malibu, where she'll also try to resurrect her own music career. Watch an extended preview of the show below.

"I miss the 'Reba' show so much, so it will be great to get back into the TV world again!" Reba posted on her website, referring to her self-titled sitcom that ran from 2001 - 2007 on the WB and CW networks.

Iconic actress Lily Tomlin will play Reba's mother on the show. Other castmates include Sara Rue, Julietta Angelo, Justin Prentice, Jai Rodriguez and Owen Teague.

Reba will also act as an executive producer on "Malibu Country," alongside her husband Narvel Blackstock and former "Reba" producer Kevin Abbott, along with Mindy Schultheis, Michael Hanel, Pam Williams and musician Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. It's not yet known when the first episode will air.

[trisha]

Great picture of Reba & Terri they record a song today for Terri's classic country cover cd.The cd will be released in a few months. www.whosay.com/TerriClark/photos/219567

[tourschedule]

Reba McEntire does not have a new album out, but that does not stop the classic country songstress from teaming up with some excellent comedians and going back out on tour.
Are your city on this list?
easysector.com/tour-dates-2016-2/