Chris Cagle Gets Back in the Saddle

“Man, this come­back stuff’s a lit­tle hard on the ego,” Chris Cagle admit­ted Mon­day night (June 25) on the eve of the release of his aptly titled new album, Back in the Sad­dle. It comes almost 12 years after he debuted with Play It Loud, an album that went on to pro­duce two Top 10 hits, “Laredo” and “I Breathe In, I Breathe Out.”

So why the need for a comeback?

“I’ve got dreams that are not paid for,” he said. “I’ve got kids. I’ve got a wife. I’m not com­plain­ing. I’m will­ing to go through what­ever I’ve gotta go through to get back to that place. I got up the moun­tain before, but I lost my foot­ing. To get back up there, it’s gonna take some time. Show by show, day by day.

Hunter Hayes To Help Flam­ing Lips In World Record Attempt
Hunter Hayes is try­ing to help break a Guin­ness World Record. The ris­ing coun­try star is set to join rock­ers the Flam­ing Lips in an attempt at beat­ing the record of Most Live Con­certs in 24 Hours (Mul­ti­ple Cities). Hunter is one of sev­eral acts join­ing the band on their 24-hour tour, with his part tak­ing place at Benny’s Boom Boom Room in Hat­ties­burg, Mis­sis­sippi, today dur­ing the O Music Awards. His per­for­mance will broad­cast live online at OMusicAwards.com, start­ing at 7:30 a.m. [ET]. The Flam­ing Lips will play eight cities in 24 hours, kick­ing it off last night.

Kel­lie Pick­ler Splits With Sony Music Nashville

Coun­try star Kel­lie Pick­ler has split with her record label, Sony Music Nashville, her rep con­firms. Coun­try Music Tat­tle­tale first reported rumors of the break Wednes­day (June 27). Later in the day, Pickler’s man­ager, Larry Fitzger­ald, con­firmed the news in a state­ment to ABC News Radio that read, “Kellie’s con­tract with Sony came to an end and they mutu­ally decided not to renew.”

Pick­ler, who first rose to fame as a con­tes­tant on the fifth sea­son of ‘Amer­i­can Idol,’. Her debut album ‘Small Town Girl’ was released in Sep­tem­ber of that year and went gold, plac­ing two hit sin­gles with ‘Red High Heels’ and ‘I Wonder.’

Pickler’s self-titled sec­ond album in 2008 gave the singer two more hits in ‘Don’t You Know You’re Beau­ti­ful’ and ‘Best Days of Your Life.’ In Jan­u­ary 2012, the 26-year-old singer released her third album, ’100 Proof,’ which has not per­formed as well as her pre­vi­ous out­ings. Her depar­ture from Sony might not have been com­pletely unex­pected. “I’m still always gonna make music regard­less of whether or not I have a record deal,” Pick­ler told ABC News Radio in Jan­u­ary while pro­mot­ing the release of ’100 Proof.’