Here's the little boy who was lost and found again.

Well, kind of…maybe.  But it’s a cool story.  In California, an 8 year-old boy with autism wandered off after school into the San Bernardino National Forest.  When he had been gone for more than 24 hours, his dad had a great idea:  He got the search party to start blasting some of his son’s favorite songs, one of which was Alan Jackson’s “Good Time.”  This plan worked perfectly, and the boy came out of hiding with just a few bruises and scratches.  Technically, I believe an Ozzy Osbourne song was playing when he re-appeared, but still!  It’’s a great story and we’re glad he’s okay.

On the 10th anniversary of the day when the “world stopped turning,” Alan Jackson has been asked to perform at the official commemoration concert in Washington, DC, this weekend.  The show, called “A Concert for Hope,” will take place on Sunday, and while you’d think it would be covered on TV, it will only be shown by a few ABC affiliates, and not ours.  So if you’d like to see it, head to this website and you can watch it live.  You can also see the stories that Americans have shared leading up to the anniversary of the attacks.

Alan Jackson wrote what became the definitive 9/11 song not long after the attacks, when he was woken in the middle of the night with the chorus running through his head.  Just a month or so later, he was playing at the CMA awards, but not without some mixed feelings:

“It was a tough performance for me, just the whole idea of releasing that song was a little bit tough,” says AJ. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to put that out, but everybody convinced me it was the thing to do, and in retrospect I agree with that, but I hadn’t really sung that song much, first of all. It’s hard to go out and sing something new anyway, and the topic made it nerve-wracking. I didn’t think about what was going to happen or anything. We just sang it, and I just remember, other than being relieved I got through it, I felt very proud that it seemed to cause a reaction with people. I was proud that I got to it do it and it seemed like it meant something.”

Here’s that amazing performance from 2001:

I love this picture:

That lovely long-haired person playing guitar is none other than Keith Urban, playing guitar in an Alan Jackson video from long ago.   I know that all of you hard core Keith fans know this, but it’s still fun to look back on one of his earlier gigs.  In fact, Keith recently told the story of this encounter with AJ, who he was super-excited to meet.  Here’s the video:

Thanks again to my pal Shannon at NashvilleGab.com for digging this up.

Me likey!

If you want Alan Jackson’s “Where I Come From” to be one of the songs the NASA atronauts will wake up to while in space, you can vote to make it happen by clicking here.  you can also vote for songs by Willie Nelson and Aaron Tippin…

Whoa, dude, makes me feel kind of old that Randy Travis has been making music for 25 years because I remember so well when he first arrived on the scene.  He’s the guy who made country cool again, at least to me.  So to celebrate 25 years in the business, Randy is picking up the phone and basically calling whoever he wants to ask them to duet with him.  The album, due out early next year, will feature Kenny Chesney, Josh Turner, Alan Jackson, Tim McGraw, John Anderson and Carrie Underwood, and that’s just so far.  More will probably join up in the next few months, and I guarantee you it will be super cool.

Most of us would be bummed if our house went for $10 million less than the asking price, especially since that would put us well into negative numbers. But for Alan Jackson, it’s not so bad. After 11 months, his 17,000 square foot estate, Sweetbriar, has just sold for $28 million, which is still the most expensive property to sell in the Nashville area in the last 13 years. This place has 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, a 20-car garage (yes, AJ likes his cars), a log cabin, 3 ponds and a 10 acre lake with a white sand beach.

Here’s a snippet of Alan Jackson’s latest single:

There’s a sound way in the background, and it turns out that it’s AJ playing an anvil with a hammer. Not just any anvil, but a specially chosen one that he tried about 4 hammers on before he found just the right sound. I wonder if he ordered it from the ACME catalog?