Six-time Grammy winner and Country Music Hall of Famer Ronnie Milsap is getting a serious start on his new year. Having just announced the first leg of his 76 for 76 Tour, the Southern soul country legend will play a birthday show at Nashville’s iconic Ryman Auditorium on January 16, where you never know which guests from his forthcoming album, the Duets, will show up. **At the Ryman with Abby Anderson and special guest appearances by Little Big Town and MORE!**
“I’ve asked a few of my friends,” says the ever-coy musical force behind 40 #1s. “And I can’t name names, but there are a few folks who said they’d love to come be part of my party.”
His January 18 release is quite the survey of Milsap’s vast musical reach. For the blind young man who got his start playing the R&B venues of the South, charting “Never So Had It Good” and getting career advice from Ray Charles who recorded the Top 5’s B-Side “Let’s Go Get Stoned,” reaching across generations and genres comes naturally.
Whether it’s a frisky “No Gettin’ Over Me” with progressive genre-smearing songwriter Kacey Musgraves, an aching “Houston Solution” with hard country king George Strait, a lush reworking of “Lost in the 50s Tonight” featuring Little Big Town or rocking “Southern Boys and Detroit Wheels” with ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Milsap is in his element. That joie du musique carries over to performances with four fellow Entertainers of the Year: Dolly Parton (a “Smoky Mountain Rain” redux, personalized to her own Appalachian heritage), Jason Aldean (a smoking “Prisoner of the Highway”). Luke Bryan (a steamy “Stranger in My House”) and Willie Nelson (Mike Reid’s brand new “A Woman’s Love.”)
“Normally, I hate talking about myself,” says the humble man Elvis once exhorted, “More thunder on the keys, Milsap!” about the media flurry, “but this record was so much fun, and the guests were so good, how can I not talk about it? I’m so proud of the performances, the friendships and the songs…. I want everybody to hear it.”
January 16 at the Ryman, Milsap will do a very special birthday show to kick off a major tour – and tease his new record. Then on January 18, the Duets arrives so people can hear what Milsap’s so excited about.
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