Les Kerr recently received airplay on WRKF in Baton Rouge with the song “Justine” from his “Crawfish Caravan” CD. This is doubly exciting for Studio 23: Bryan Cumming wrote the song, so he’s involved as both producer of the track and writer/publisher of the song. This recent triumph was documented on the “News” page of the studio website, with a story of the original inspiration behind “Justine.”

          More recently, in addition to this, Les has also written “Hope and Love,” a song about his view of the damage of Katrina to the Gulf Coast from the perspective of having lived there. The song has been added as a free download to a major Hurricane Katrina web site, www.scruggskatrinagroup.com

           Ally Arnold wrote a song “All That I See” about her brother’s death that’s now being in a video at a website dedicated to families of soldiers who’ve been killed, called Children of Fallen Soldiers Relief Fund, www.cfsrf.org.

          She recorded the song at Studio 23 earlier this year. Here’s how Ally describes what happened after that: “I emailed 'All That I See' to the website director and offered it for free to play on their site; for the families. She emailed back and said she'd like to offer it for sale if I’d be willing to donate a percentage of the profits to the organization. I was thrilled to do that and next thing I knew she'd made a video montage to the song showing the soldiers pictures! It's mid-way down the site if you click on 'All That I See.' Then she visited my website and offered to list the kids album as well! So both the album and the song are available for purchase thru their site to help the college tuitions of the children who've lost their parent/s in Iraq.”

          Mark Stoudenmire, current president of the Knoxville Songwriters Association, is busy overseeing the publication of his new product, a 64-page illustrated hardcover book containing a CD with the song that inspired the entire project, “Football Time In Tennessee.” The book features illustrations by the cartoonist for the Knoxville News Sentinel; it is licensed through Collegiate Licensing and officially approved by the University of Tennessee.

          The audio CD includes the original song written by Mark, with a vocal by Joel Reese, engineered and produced at Studio 23. It has no guitar, bass, piano, or usual instruments: instead the vocal is supported entirely by horns and drums, to simulate the sound of a marching band out on the football field. Playing trumpet on the song is Ken Stoudenmire, Mark's son, who played in the UT Band during the 1990's, giving Mark his original glimpse at the excitement of game day and inspiration for the song. In addition, the CD includes excerpts of the UT Band and clips of three different radio announcers from the last thirty years who have intoned those magic words “It’s football time in Tennessee” to the thousands of fans who assemble in Neyland Stadium and listen to the Vol Network broadcast. Mark has spent several years clearing the way for this project, and formed a new publishing company for the purpose of managing the business and expanding the idea into other markets.

          The recently created website provides a colorful and detailed look at what Mark has done with one song. Check it out at www.whenitsfootballtimeintennessee.com.

          Jesse Goldberg, Nashville’s answer to Weird Al Yankovic, has found himself a niche, and has hit a productive formula for turning his unique songs into videos. The new category is satirical campaign songs based familiar seasonal carols. For example, “Hillary” is sung to the tune of “Silver Bells,” while the “Rudolph the New York Mayor” is a spinoff from “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” After recording several of these parodies at Studio 23 he discovered an unauthorized video of another song of his called “The Vasectomy Song” on the youtube site Herbunk. Instead of complaining to the video producer for using the song without permission, Jesse wrote to encourage him, saying “good job, do some more, and by the way, put my name on it.” Thus was born a prolific partnership, with five videos made in the last three weeks, and several more on the way.

          Additional campaign parodies are “John McCain” sung to “Jingle Bells,” and “Dennis Kucinich” sung to “O Come All Ye Faithful.” Also on Youtube is a video for Jesse’s song “Immigration,” sung to the French nursery rhyme “Alouette,” Catch a whiff of the silliness that sometimes comes from the productive basement in west Nashville known as Studio 23 by visiting www.youtube.com/herbunk.