The Music Universe Podcast The Music Universe Podcast

BBR Music Group/Wheelhouse Records singer/songwriter Elvie Shane delivers his most daring work yet with his sophomore album Damascus, available now. Full of unflinching honesty rooted in compassionate clarity, Shane takes pieces of each character he’s met on his path, melding them into one beautifully woven work. The road to Damascus isn't a journey one takes lightly, yet the album tells the stories of those often untold, giving each testimony a chance to shine through. Shane co-wrote all songs on the project produced by his frequent collaborator, Oscar Charles.

"Very heavy-hearted for I'd say 60 or 70% of it," Shane tells us about the album's content. "You know, songs like 'Fan on High' and 'Chicken Shit' are a little bit more light-hearted. But man, I just really wanted to, what I've been noticing more than anything in the world the last few years is a lot of struggle. And a lot of struggle with my folks in particular, with blue-collar people. I'm a rural Kentucky boy, you know, come from a lower middle-class family, truck driver, and a factory worker as parents. Those are the people that I love and care about and I feel like they're very interesting people and I want to tell their stories. But within that picture of blue-collar struggle, there are some afflictions as well, be it addiction, political issues, religious issues, or prison reform. I think we tried to touch on all of those a little bit in this record."

Shane discusses a few songs in more detail and what's ahead on this edition of The Music Universe Podcast.


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Last month, legendary icon Tony Orlando played his final sold-out show in Las Vegas this week after 51 years as a Las Vegas headliner and now at the renowned South Point Casino.

In 1973, the crooner began topping the bill in Las Vegas at the famed Riviera Hotel showroom and soon after began headlining the esteemed and historic Las Vegas Hilton. During his early explosive period performing in the entertainment capital, he headlined most of the city’s legendary venues such as Caesar’s Palace, The Mirage, and The Desert Inn -- and continued an amazing twenty-five years of residencies in all of Michael Gaughan’s venues, including his hugely successful South Point Casino showroom.

On March 22nd, Orlando will bring an end to his long and illustrious 62-year live concert performing career at Mohegan Sun's 10,000-seat arena in Uncasville, Connecticut. Amazingly, this will mark his 65th appearance over 23 years at the venue.

“I am so honored that my last concert will be at my favorite venue on Earth, Mohegan Sun Arena,” Orlando says. “My relationship with Tom Cantone, the stage crews, and the staff at Mohegan Sun Arena has been flawless. I also want to thank all my friends within the Mohegan Tribe for making me feel like family and for the opportunity to say goodbye. Thank you for making my dreams come true.”

Throughout February and March, Orlando will play a handful of farewell North American stops, hitting Niagara Falls, Ontario on February 27th and 28th, along with playing a pair of Illinois shows in Des Plaines on March 2nd and St. Charles on March 3rd -- as well as a poignant East Coast date in Atlantic City, New Jersey on March 16th.

Tony Orlando – a 60-plus-year hitmaker and standing-room-only live draw -- was recently honored as a New Jersey Hall Of Fame Inductee and remains a relentless supporter of American veterans. Orlando is a Grammy-nominated artist with a whopping 15 Top 40 hits, two platinum albums, three gold albums, and millions of copies sold. “Tie A Yellow Ribbon” was the No. 1 Billboard Song of the Year for 1973 and went on to become the theme song for Tony Orlando and an anthem for hope, reunion, and renewal in America.

Orlando is a recipient of two American Music Awards and a People’s Choice Award for Best Male Entertainer. He is the 2016 recipient of the Casino Entertainer Of The Year award and the Bob Hope Award for Excellence in Entertainment from the Congressional Medal Of Honor Society, honoring his tireless efforts on behalf of our nation’s veterans.

In 1990, Tony was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame to commemorate his outstanding achievements in the entertainment industry. He was also inducted into Mohegan Sun’s Walk Of Fame in 2010.

Orlando will continue hosting his beloved hit radio program Saturday Nights with Tony Orlando on 77 WABC Music Radio (Red Apple Media, Inc.), which airs in New York, as well as reaching New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. Orlando will naturally continue engaging in a multitude of ongoing projects – including a new film and multimedia company, Tony Orlando Productions.

Be sure to subscribe to The Music Universe Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Select episodes now streaming on Canyon Star TV.

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(EDITOR’S NOTE: In this episode, we mention Toto will perform with Journey for 44 dates this year. That number is 30 with 14 headlining dates of their own).

Next week, Toto launches its third consecutive tour with Journey with 30 appearances throughout the United States and Canada through the spring with an additional 14 headlining performances planned. A tour of Europe follows this summer with additional headlining dates to be announced.

The band is led by guitarist Steve Lukather (Luke) and frontman Joseph Williams, also known as The Dogz of Oz. In the fall of 2019, we began our podcast with Luke featured in our inaugural episode. Now, as we hit the 200 mark, we invited Williams to join us in the hot seat where we chat about the band's new lineup featuring Williams on vocals, Luke on guitar and vocals, Greg Phillinganes returning on keyboards and vocals, Nashville studio musician Shannon Forrest returning on drums, John Pierce on bass, Warren Ham on horns, percussion, vocals, and Steve Maggiora on keyboards and vocals -- and additional topics.

"It's unbelievable how many versions of this band if you count all the musicians that have played from behind. Of the old guard, you know, it's basically just me and Luke, you know," he says. "But Greg Phillinganes is back and he was once a full-blown member back in the early 2000s and we're thrilled to have him back because he's just exceptional in every single way, so that's wonderful. And then Shannon who was with us during the teens for about six years is back, and it's great to have him back. He's probably -- more than anybody -- reminds me of the way [original drummer] Jeff [Porcaro] used to play. And he also has this encyclopedic knowledge of all the Toto material, so rehearsals are like a breeze. So between those guys, I mean, it's really solid, and it sounds amazing. I can't wait for everybody to hear it."

Over the past decade, Toto has had a major renaissance in popularity like few bands at this point in their career. No individual statistic exhibits this more than achieving the milestone of over 3.4 billion streams at Spotify alone. The total plays of the band’s collected works across all platforms is now approaching five billion. Amongst the most listened-to recordings, “Africa” accounts for over one billion streams on Spotify alone. The song was recertified by the RIAA eight times platinum.

Individually and collectively, the band’s family tree can be heard on an astonishing five thousand albums that together amass a sales history of half a billion albums. Amongst these recordings, NARAS applauded the performances with hundreds of Grammy nominations. They are pop culture and are one of the few 70’s bands that have endured the changing trends and styles while continuing to remain relevant.

Be sure to subscribe to The Music Universe Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Select episodes now streaming on Canyon Star TV.

Become a supporter and support this podcast with a small monthly donation to help sustain future episodes.


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For four decades, Mark Miller has been the frontman of multi-platinum and multi-award-winning group Sawyer Brown and a trailblazer in country music. Now, he’s pulling back the curtain on his storied career with his new memoir The Boys And Me: My Life in the Country Music Supergroup Sawyer Brown, due February 6th via Forefront Books.

From the early days of honing their craft in small-town venues to winning the first-ever televised singing competition with Star Search to becoming country music’s most enduring act, Miller offers a backstage pass to the heart and soul of Sawyer Brown with never-before-told stories.

"The book wasn't my idea," Miller tells us. "My brother is our manager and he came up with the idea that [the band] need[s] to do a new album. My daughter's been involved. She is involved in production and has her own TV show. She really signed on and wanted to do the documentary. And then he thought it would be a good idea to do the book. Just as we talked about my personality, I just thought who in the world would want to read a book about me? And so that was my that was my first thing... Robert Nolan was the, I guess, ghostwriter or whatever. That was the first thing I said to Robert. I said, 'This was going to be difficult for me because I don't even know what parts of me are interesting.' So I think the reason for the book was just maybe to complete the 40-year package with the documentary, the album, and the book. The book, of course, covers my life all the way from growing up. The documentary covers basically the beginning of the band. That's where that picks up."

The book's foreword was written by NFL Hall of Famer Kurt Warner.

The Boys And Me stands as a testament to the band’s enduring legacy and its impact on the country music landscape. Accompanied by the band’s new tell-all documentary, Get Me To The Stage On Time, and a Blake Shelton-produced album, Desperado Troubadours, coming March 8th via their longtime label Curb Records, Miller’s memoir continues the celebration of Sawyer Brown’s 40th anniversary.

The first two singles of the new album, “Under This Ole Hat” and “Get Me To The Stage On Time,” are available now.


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Marking a new pinnacle in a lifetime of creative achievement, multi-talented entertainer Charles Esten will release his highly anticipated independent debut album, Love Ain’t Pretty, on January 26th.

A diverse and richly textured full-length project more than ten years in the making, Love Ain't Pretty began taking shape when Esten first arrived in Music City to play Deacon Claybourne on ABC/CMT’s Nashville, and now showcases a singer-songwriter with a masterful grasp of the full human condition. Working in tandem with hitmakers like Jon Nite, Eric Paslay, Gary Burr, Leslie Satcher, and more, Esten co-wrote all 14 songs, diving deep into wide-ranging themes of earth-shattering romance, big-picture reflection, and beyond. Vividly detailed and filled with the emotional daring of a celebrated storyteller – both onscreen and onstage – Esten explores life, love, and the passing of time through the lens of a traveled and tested everyman, who has never lost his innate sense of wonder, or his wide-open soul. Meanwhile, he teamed with producer Marshall Altman (Frankie Ballard, Marc Broussard, Matt Nathanson) to sculpt a calm, controlled, and beautifully contoured sound, blending the forward momentum of Country Rock with Rootsy small-town charm, and a warm, soulful vocal.

"[O]ver these years in college, I was singing other people's songs in their voice. I was doing Buddy Holly and his voice on TV's Whose Line [Is It Anyway]. As you know, they would go, 'We want you to sing this song in the style of Neil Diamond or the style of U2.' So you're doing other people's voices for a long time. Part of the journey of any artist is finding out, all right, 'Who am I then?' And Nashville is a beautiful place to get to do that because you're surrounded [by talent]," Esten tells us.

"I had this great producer named Marshall Altman and these incredible players around me who get to follow our lead and make these, bring these songs to life in a way we had imagined, but beyond that because of their great talents. And so, so much of this has been stripping away those impressions and those other folks to find out what it is.

"I want to say, who I am and what I want to say. Now those things have been influenced along the way. There's so much of this music I would think you would agree that Deacon Claiborne could have sung that one. And in a way he did because I played him. And I was fortunate enough to get to write three songs for Deacon on the show Nashville so that overlap is there. But it's very strange to have a debut album at this late point in someone's life. But to me, it's all for the better. It means I have things I've thought about that I want to say, and in a certain way I want to say them, and that all comes together in Love Ain't Pretty."

Esten is a global entertainer. Best known for his roles as Ward Cameron on Netflix’s Outer Banks and Deacon Claybourne in ABC/CMT’s Nashville, the artist-songwriter introduces Love Ain’t Pretty. Surpassing 21 million streams to date, Esten is a 2018 Guinness World Records title holder for the “Most consecutive weeks to release an original digital single by a music act” after delivering 54 original songs once a week for 54 straight weeks. He’s made nearly 170 appearances at Nashville’s iconic Grand Ole Opry and performed multiple headline tours in the US, Germany, Amsterdam, and the UK, further embarking on his US and international headlining Love Ain't Pretty Tour this spring. In addition, Esten serves as the National Honorary Spokesperson for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s annual Light The Night Walk and is a board member and volunteer for Musicians On Call.


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On June 4, 2022, Steve Vai began a world tour that has now staged 194 performances in 51 countries across the globe. Some of these markets he had never appeared in prior, amongst which are Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), Kaohsiung (Taiwan), Zallak (Bahrain), Bangalore and Kolkata (India), Mumbai, Macedonia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, alongside six new markets in China (Foshan, Xi’an, Chengdu, Chongqing, Nanjing and Hefei). Throughout this worldwide odyssey, Vai stepped foot on every continent other than Antarctica.

Now back at home after this marathon 19-month tour, Vai is ready to fill up his 2024 with more touring and to share new music. Earlier this month, he began the year by staging his annual Vai Academy. Titled A New Breed Of Virtuosity, Vai Academy 7.0 was staged at the Omni Championsgate Resort in Orlando, Florida.

He chats with us about the upcoming G3 Reunion Tour with Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson as well as his Satch-Vai Tour with Satriani. He also talks about new music that includes his passion project of orchestral songs and teases a big tour announcement for the fall.

"The last year and a half was the Inviolate Tour. So it was the full show that I do, but now for 24, it's more condensed. I'm out with Joe and Eric Johnson for G3 for a good handful of shows. We kick off in about ten days," Vai tells us. "And then finally, it's so nice, Joe and I are going to do a tour together, just the two of us. And that's something -- we've toured together a lot, but we've never toured as just the two of us. And for the first time, we'll also have some music that we recorded together, working on a couple of tracks there. So that's exciting. And it's really nice because it's kind of the end of a huge touring cycle, and I get to do it with Joe. I mean, we've known each other since we were little kids, you know? I started taking lessons [from Satriani] when I was like 12. We've been joined at the hip ever since, but we've never really done anything like this together. So it's very nice."

The G3 tour kicks off on January 22nd and runs through February 10th, and then The Satch-Vai Tour will be staged from March 22nd in Orlando, FL through May 12th in Santa Rosa, California, featuring an extensive itinerary that will stage 38 appearances. This marks the first time that the long-time friends have toured as a duo-bill. It is also the first time they’ve collaborated on new music, which will be premiered just before the tour heading out.

Conceived in 1995 by the multi-Grammy nominated guitarist, Joe Satriani, the inaugural G3 Tour took place in 1996 bringing together three of the most iconic and virtuosic guitarists of their time: Satriani, Eric Johnson and Steve Vai. Known for their incredible technical prowess, musical innovation and unique styles, the G3 tour was a celebration of guitar mastery and proved extremely popular, captivating audiences worldwide. Though the line-up has continually changed over the last 29 years since its inception, Satriani is celebrating G3 in 2024 by reuniting the original trio: Satriani, Johnson, and Vai. The tour is set to begin on January 23rd in Tucson, AZ staging 13 performances ending with a pair of shows at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles which Vai says will be filmed.

Satch and Vai’s musical careers have been intertwined since their very early days. Satriani served as Vai’s guitar teacher during their teenage years on Long Island, New York. Their connection has continued to evolve over the years, even sharing record labels, starting at Relativity Records in the late 80’s, to both calling Sony/Epic Records home for a significant portion of the 90’s. Together, they have also frequently teamed up with a third guitarist on multiple occasions throughout 29 years, participating in the semi-annual G3 Tours, both in the US and abroad.


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