Sleeper Agent's "Winter Wonderland" Verizon Wireless 2013 ChristmasCommercial Is Now Available on iTunes

   My previous entry about the Bowling Green, Ky., based alternative rock band, Sleeper Agent and their "Winter Wonderland" Verizon Wireless 2013 Christmas commercial is now my most widely read blog with 11,522 pageviews! Simply, amazing for sure!  My second highest read blog has 4,562 pageviews and it took three and half years to get to this point. Obviously, viewers of this Christmas commercial are wanting to know what the name of this alternative rock band that did a cover of "Winter Wonderland."  This is a classic song that has put the Christmas spirit in people's hearts for years.  So now everybody knows and they can even have their own copy of the full version of the Sleeper Agent song.  Thanks to Sleeper Agent's manager, Missy Worth, who is based in Hollywood, Calif., and their management team at RCA Records in New York City, they made it happen in just four days according to band member, Tony Smith.

   You can download Sleeper Agent's version of "Winter Wonderland" that has been taking the world by storm or "snow storm," if you will by clicking on to this link to make your purchase for only a $1.29. https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/winter-wonderland-single/id776216341  And along the way, grab yourself some Christmas Cheer!

Sleeper Agent's Verizon Wireless Christmas Commercial 2013

     Several weeks ago Bowling Green, Ky.'s, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XliBdscCSQk&t=23sbased alternative rock band, Sleeper Agent, recorded a demo of a cover version of a well known Christmas pop song, "Winter Wonderland," written in 1934 by Felix Bernard (music) and Richard B. Smith (lyricist). Sleeper Agent's version was picked over two other band's demos. After having the song recorded song professionally in a studio in Nashville, Verizon Wireless initially liked the Sleeper Agent demo better, the one they had recorded themselves in their own practice room in Bowling Green. However, Sleeper Agent and Verizon Wireless met halfway and came to an agreement to use lead singer, Alex Kandell's professionally recorded vocals dubbed over the demo music. But at the last minute, Verizon Wireless decided to go ahead use the professional studio version for the commercial that is now airing on major television and radio networks across the country during this 2013 Christmas holiday shopping season according to band member, Tony Smith. Watch the video here: http://www.ispot.tv/ad/76IY/verizon-winter-wonderland Also, if you would like a copy of the full version of the song, you can now purchase it on iTunes for only a $1.29.  Click here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/winter-wonderland-single/id776216341

Sun Club Will Shine Its Light On Rocky's Bar In Downtown Bowling Green, Ky., Thursday Night, Nov. 14th.

   Since the Bowling Green Music Scene has gained national and international attention these last couple of years thanks to alternative rock bands with major record deals and touring schedules such as Cage The Elephant and Sleeper Agent, Bowling Green has become a destination point for other lesser known groups to play shows.
   One of those such bands is "Sun Club" from Baltimore, MD. and they will perform at Rocky's Bar located on Main Street in downtown Bowling Green, Thursday night, Nov. 14th. According to band member, Shane Justice McCord, said they have been playing for a while.
   "We formed out of the ashes of another band in 2012. Last year we toured down to SXSW, passing through Bowling Green and lots of other cities on the way. We've been constantly touring since and are releasing our debut EP in early January," McCord said.
   On their Bandcamp web-site they describe themselves as "Sun Club is a group of buddies playing happy music." You can also hear two songs of theirs called, "Beauty Meat" and "Language Juice, " on the site. To find out more about Sun Club, go to their Bandcamp or Facebook pages at www.sunclubband.com and www.facebook.com/sunclubband
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Bowling Green, Ky's Alternative Rock Sensations, "Sleeper Agent" Announce New Album and Single

     For those of you who are signed up on Bowling Green, Ky's alternative rock sensations, "Sleeper Agent's" e-mail alerts on their web-site already, you probably saw where they announced yesterday the name of their new upcoming album on RCA Records, "About Last Night," and their new upcoming single, "Waves."

"Our new album, About Last Night, is finally on the horizon. Sleeper Agent has returned and is ready to get raw and cathartic with you. Over the last year songs poured out of us at a feverish pace. From the back bench in a van to total seclusion in the mountains of Kentucky, we grew closer, shared stories and turned them into what would become a labor of love, life and loss. Heavier in heart, heavier in sound; we couldn't be more thrilled to finally share this batch of 12 brand new songs with you. The beginning of 2014 marks a new beginning for Sleeper Agent as we kick off an extensive stateside tour with New Politics. In the weeks to come you’ll have your first taste with "Waves"accompanied with intimate visuals. We can’t wait to meet you all over again. Let’s make it count."

    According to the e-mail, the single will be out sometime this month (November) accompanied by a lyric video which will be posted on their web-site and the internet such as Vevo and Youtube.  Sleeper Agent will tour with the "New Politics" and "Magic Man" beginning Jan.14, 2014 in Houston, Texas.  They will also tour for one week in November starting on Nov. 22 in Nashville and ending up in Atlanta on Nov. 27. For more information regarding their new album and ticket sales for their upcoming tours, go to their web-site at http://sleeperagentmusic.com/  You can also signed up on their web-site to receive the e-mail alerts in order to get the latest news from Sleeper Agent.

Craig Fehrman's "Home Grown: Cage The Elephant and The Making Of A Modern Music Scene" Is A Smash!

      Last Summer, while talking to my wife, Patty, and Tony and Alex over dinner, (Tony Smith and Alex Kandel who are from the alternative indie rock band, Sleeper Agent. Tony is my son and Alex is our future daughter in-law), Tony informed us that a writer from New York had been in Bowling Green interviewing the guys from Cage The Elephant and other local musicians and key people in town about the Bowling Green Music Scene.
    Tony also said that the writer who had written for the New York Times and had interviewed him and Alex too. Of course, I thought that was really cool but Tony did not know a whole lot about it other than he just said that the writer was probably going to write an article of some sort about Cage and the booming music scene in Bowling Green. Tony said that he didn't know where it or when it was going to be published. After that conversation, I basically forgot all about it until over a year later when somebody posted it on Facebook last week, that Craig Fehrman's Kindle single, "Home Grown: Cage The Elephant and the Making of a Modern Music Scene" was now available on the internet. Of course, I bought it for $1.99 and then gobbled it up within an hour or so on my iPhone. It's a quick read and about a 20,000 word article or 58 pages. It has 13 chapters such as "Too Hot For Skinny Jeans," "It's Like Its Own Little Babylon in the Middle of the South. But With a Lot of Churches," and "Tidball's." I have to admit that I was totally fascinated how this very talented writer had captured the essence and the current mood our of fair city of 60,000 and its happening downtown and music scene.

"But Cage seemed different. A little Googling revealed that all five members still lived in or near Bowling Green. It also revealed that they were right about the quality of their tiny local scene. In the last few years, Bowling Green had birthed Sleeper Agent, a snappy retro rock group that had signed with the iconic Mom + Pop label, played on Fallon, toured with Weezer and fun. The city could also claim Morning Teleportation, a spacey jam band that packed their six-minutes song with 20 minutes's worth of hooks."

    Fehrman describes Cage in great detail and writes about Cage drummer Jared Champion's dad, (Bill Champion, who happens to be a friend of mine.). He also writes about local DJ, Tommy Starr from Bowling Green's legendary rock station, D93, who helped build the local music scene to what it is today through the years by his radio program, "Home Cookin'" showcasing local musicians and bands. Also featured in the book, is Bryan Graves, a Bowling Green resident and co-founder of the Starry Nights Music and Arts Festival along with Matt and Brad Shultz from Cage, that has gained a lot of widespread media attention these last few years as far as outdoor music festivals goes. He also interviews local Blues musician Kenny Smith and Jeremi Simon-Kinnaman from the indie rock band, "Schools" and writes about another up and coming band, "Buffalo Rodeo." Fehrman digs in deep and really gives the reader sharp insight of what's happening in the Bowling Green Music Scene and how it involved to where it is today. Fehrman even conducts a phone interview with John Carperter, the famous horror film movie director who lives in Hollywood who is originally from Bowling Green. Fehrman reveals that Carpenter is also a musician of many sorts.
    Here's the author's bio from is web-site: "Fehrman is a Ph.D. student in Yale’s English department and a freelance writer. He’s written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Slate, among others, and been interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. (You can find a full archive of his work here.) He’s also working on a book about presidents and their books — and, more broadly, about how, when, and why we started expecting politicians to write books.
    Fehrman grew up in Dillsboro, Indiana, and graduated from the University of Southern Indiana in 2007, majoring in English literature and psychology. Both Yale and Connecticut represent new experiences for him, but, so far, they’ve been good ones. According to Fehrman, he's married to a beautiful and understanding woman named Candice, who works as a book editor in Fairfield, Connecticut."

    I give Fehrman's Kindle single, five stars.  It's an awesome read and spot on regarding the ins and outs about Cage The Elephant and the Bowling Green Music Scene. To download his book, go to Amazon.com here at http://www.amazon.com/Home-Grown-Elephant-Making-Modern-ebook/dp/B00G2N4JCE/ Also, to view Fehrman's web-site, go to http://craigfehrman.com/

Bowling Green, Ky's., Mariah's Restaurant And Legends Sports Bar Has A Touch Of Hollywood

     One of our favorite restaurants and sports bars in Southcentral Kentucky is "Mariah's Restaurant and Legends Sports Bar" located in downtown Bowling Green.  Mariah's claims to be the oldest brick house in Bowling Green built in 1818 and it's

located at 801 State St. in the downtown area.  Their motto is "Creative cuisine in a casual atmosphere." You can usually find my wife, Patty, and I sitting at a table in Legends Sports Bar on a Friday night enjoying the Happy Hours specials and delicious menu items such at the BBQ Grilled chicken sandwich along with a side item of fruit.  Also, you usually find our favorite head bartender, Bryan Graves, who just so happens to be co-founder of the Starry Nights Music and Arts Festival along with brothers, Matt and Brad Shultz of the internationally known alternative rock band and RCA recording artists, "Cage The Elephant."  Bryan is also involved in other aspects of the Bowling Green Music Scene by managing a local, up and coming  alternative rock band called "Buffalo Rodeo."

     While sitting at the bar several months back, I was admiring the beautiful, antique wood structure with the adorning columns and large mirrors.  I started asking questions about it and Bryan told me that the bar was removed from a restaurant in Chicago and brought to Bowling Green after Mariah's almost burned down back sometime in the 90's.  After they remodeled the restaurant and installed the antique bar in Legends, it has been a talking piece among patrons and bartenders ever since.  Bryan pulled out his cell phone and showed me a picture where the bar is in the background of a scene of a movie that came out in 1990 called, "Mr. Destiny" starring James Belushi and Michael Cain.  In the picture that Bryan showed me, Belushi is sitting at the bar talking to Cain who is acting as a bartender. Needless to say, I was intrigued by the photo.  So now we have another Hollywood connection besides horror film director and producer, John Carpenter, who is from Bowling Green.  If you ever make it down to Mariah's, check out the beautiful antique wood structure in Legends Sports Bar.  You won't be disappointed and you'll also love the painted murals of Western Kentucky University sports scenes on the wall.

"Stuckey's" Is A Rare, Roadside Jewel These Days

     Every once in a while you will see something on the interstate while traveling that will trigger those childhood memories.  This happened to me the other day when traveling South on I-65 in Alabama.  I saw it on the way down to Florida and so I decided to stop on my way back up to Kentucky.  I stopped at a "Stuckey's," which is one of the first roadside convenience store chains in the country.  The one I visited was along I-65 at the Hope Hull, Ala, exit.  I remember in the early 70's when growing up in East Memphis, when my mom and dad and I traveled out west in 1971 and down to Florida and the east coast in 1972, we literally saw tons of "Stuckey's" it seemed like along the interstates.  Nowadays, it appears that there are very few left and they are a dying breed.  The lady at the checkout counter at the one in Hope Hull said that there was only three left in the state of Alabama. And she said that all of them now share spaces with a fast food chains which was not part of the original design of the buildings or the concept of the store.  The one we stopped on our recent trip had a Dairy Queen on the other side of the building.  In Kentucky, the former Stuckey's building at the Upton, Ky., exit has been converted into a porn shop.  But at least I did manage to buy one of those original Stuckey's pecan candy rolls and a Stuckey's T-shirt while at the one in Alabama. And I was really glad to see this particular one still hanging on.  For me, it was just totally nostalgic thing to see the inside of a Stuckey's building again and see all of the cool, little trinkets and candy that they offered to us bright eyed travelers who will never forget Stuckey's.

 Here's more about Stucky's from Wikipedia:

Stuckey's is a roadside convenience store chain found on highways throughout the United States. Stores are concentrated in the Southeast, Southwest, and Midwest, although operations have existed as far east as Connecticut and as far west as Oregon.^[1] Stuckey's Corporation, the company operating the chains, has its headquarters in Silver Spring, unincorporated Montgomery County, Maryland.^[2]

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 History
  • 1.1 Early days
  • 1.2 Downfall, then rise
• 2 References
• 3 See also
• 4 External links

History[edit source | editbeta]

Early days[edit source | editbeta]

Stuckey’s originated in the early 1930s in Eastman, Georgia. When founder W. S. Stuckey, Sr., had a successful pecan harvest from his family's orchard he decided to offer a portion of the crop for sale in a lean-to roadside shed. Many Florida-bound tourists travelingU.S. Route 23 stopped to purchase the pecans.

Stuckey's advertisement from 1976 Rand McNally Road Atlas

As the roadside business continued to expand, Stuckey's wife, Ethel, created a variety of homemade pecan candies to sell at the stand, including pecan log rolls and pecan divinity. In 1937, Stuckey constructed his first store building. Much like the former roadside lean-to, the new business focused on selling these Southern candies to highway travelers. This first Stuckey’s shop added a restaurant, then a novelty section, and then gas pumps. The final addition was a teal blue roof (which would later become the company's trademark). Until the onset of World War II, Stuckey’s continued to open stores in Georgia and Florida. The number of stores declined somewhat during WWII due to the effects of wartime sugar rationing.

After WWII ended, the Stuckey’s business once again began to grow and it sold a number of new franchises. The company constructed a candy factory to supply an eventual 350-plus Stuckey's stores located throughout the continental United States. As the post-war baby boom flourished and families undertook more long-distance auto travel, Stuckey's continued to grow as they were usually constructed along major highways and frequently were paired with Texaco gas stations as well as restaurants and clean restrooms.^[3]

A modern Stuckey's/BP in Yeehaw Junction, Florida

Downfall, then rise[edit source | editbeta]

In 1960, W. S. Stuckey attempted to create a hotel chain called Stuckey's Carriage Inn, but opened only four locations. In 1967, Stuckey's merged with Pet, Inc., maker ofPet Milk.^[4]

The company at its peak had over 350 locations, which dwindled to fewer than 75 after a decline in the late 1970s under ownership by Pet. It was repurchased by formerCongressman W.S. Stuckey, Jr., in 1985. It currently has over 200 franchise stores in 19 states.^[5]