Saturday

Cynthia Bickey Art Gallery, 600 Johnstown Road, Beckley, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Hinton Senior Center birthday party, 11:15 a.m., for anyone with a birthday this month who is age 60 or over. Call 304-466-4019.

Filed under: Exclusive, First Time Stories

Larry Gatlin teamed up with brothers Rudy and Steve in the late ’70s to become one of country music’s most successful acts, charting such now-classic hits as ‘Broken Lady, ‘All the Gold in California’ and ‘Houston.’

Larry wrote all but two country songs he and the Gatlin Brothers recorded in their first 17 albums. Songwriting was most certainly his calling.

When Larry was auditioning to join a gospel music group called the Imperials in 1971 in Las Vegas, he was walking through a showroom and caught the attention of country singer Dottie West. She was so impressed with his writing skills that she recorded two of Larry’s compositions: ‘You’re the Other Half of Me’ and ‘Once You Were Mine.’ (She was so impressed, in fact, that she passed one of his demo tapes around Nashville and bought him a plane ticket so he could relocate there.)

The Boot caught up with Larry to ask where he was when he heard his first record on the radio. In this case, it was his first song cut by his musical guardian angel.

“You are not going to believe this,” Larry told The Boot with a big smile. “I had moved to Nashville and Dottie West had recorded one of my songs called ‘You’re The Other Half of Me.’ And this is back before I had a record deal with Monument Records. I was waking up and going to work down at WLAC-TV. I was a janitor down there. My wife was out of town. Janis had gone back to Texas for something … I was by myself in our little apartment, and I had the alarm clock set for maybe one, two, three in the morning, to wake me up. When the radio came on — this was back in 1971– it woke me up with ‘You’re the Other Half of Me’ with Dottie West singing it. Well, good Lord, I jumped out of that bed, and I nearly passed out! Unbelievable! So that’s the first time I heard one of my songs on the radio.”

Filed under: Country News

Keith Urban topped the country — and pop — charts with his 2009 album, ‘Defying Gravity’ and it’s almost a sure thing he’ll do it again when the follow-up to that smash album is delivered. There’s no word yet on a release date for the new record — Keith is in the process of selecting songs for the disc, and it’s still too soon to tell what kind of collection it will be once it’s complete.

“We recorded a lot of songs and we’re deciding which ones may constitute a new album,” Keith tells the Burlington Free Press newspaper in Vermont. “At this stage, I would say it’s not a radical departure. I can’t even put my finger on what it is now. It’s just a new record [laughs]. It’s perhaps a bit deeper. It’s a sexier record.

“I love boy/girl songs,” Keith adds. “They’re timeless.”

THEATER Top of Utah 'THE ALTOS: A LITTLE LOWER THAN THE SOPRANOS,' Hunt Mystery Theater, 7 p.m. Sept. 10, 24, Boccia's D'Italia, 1045 N. Washington Blvd., Ogden. $15/show, food available for purchase. 866-569-1482. Discount code for $2.50 off: hmnews. Additional shows and dates at a Sandy restaurant. www.huntmysteries.com . read more

Music BILL ROSS RECYCLE BAND: 7 to 10 p.m. Admission $5. Elk River Community Center, 902 Main St., Elkview. Call 304-965-3722. ADAM TUCKER BAND: 6:30 p.m. Free. No opening act. Part of Live on the Levee. Haddad Riverfront Park. Vi...

Filed under: Exclusive, Country News

Toby Keith has been traveling to the war zones for over nine years with the USO, making 167 trips so far. The country superstar is a tireless supporter of the military men and women who defend our country, going over to entertain them in oftentimes dangerous territories. “Me getting to go and see their faces light up and be on a base with 25 guys in the middle of nowhere on the Pakistan Border is all I need for a reward,” Toby tells The Boot.

It’s one thing to show up at a safe venue on American soil to entertain loyal fans, but it’s a whole different story when one goes to a war zone. We caught up with Toby to ask him about the scariest situation he’s ever encountered on one of his USO tours.