The call came in mid-March to local talent company, Call Me Entertainment's president, Rosie Mietzel. Could she come to Nashville Easter weekend... a young country music star of tomorrow that Rosie met in Nashville 2 years ago, had made it to the final round of auditions for NBC's summer series, "Nashville Star" via his strong video audition tape. The show had selected Michael Joseph as one of their finalists, and he wanted Rosie to be on-site to help him through the intricate live audition process with the judges.

Call Me Entertainment had the knowledge, thanks to Rosie's background in the TV industry, country music, and prior experience with bringing local bands down to Hollywood 2 years ago for the first season of another NBC show, "America's Got Talent". "Nashville Star" had held regional auditions in 8 cities, followed by national final auditions in LA, Austin, Washington DC and finally Nashville..."Music City"...the capital of country music.

On Friday morning in Nashville, there were 6,000 hopefuls lined up outside Opryland Hotel, waiting for the last chance to audition. Rosie saw some familiar faces among the production crew from the AGT experience, helping her quickly learn how the weekend would run. Each contestant got 15 seconds to try and wow the judges enough to move them to a 2nd room, where they got 2-3 minutes to sing again. The ones that made it successfully through that round, were invited to come back on Saturday to perform live before the Casting Director, his staff, and the Production Company executives. About 100 people made this final cut and were moved through to Saturday.

Michael Joseph did not have to participate in the Friday mayhem, thanks to a professionally produced video that told his personal story and featured him singing 2 country songs. So he showed up on Saturday, along with the Friday finalists. Even though he had a scheduled noon audition time, he didn't get to go before the judges until 5pm. But when he finally got to perform, Michael got to sing 4 different songs in front of the main judges, as well as tell his personal story on camera.

Overall, there were 35,000 people auditioning for a slot on the show. 125 people were selected to be part of the first 2 weeks of the show, along with a military cast chosen from auditions held on the USS Iwo Jima aircraft carrier. When the show goes "live" for audience voting on the 3rd week, it will have been narrowed down to the top 8-10 contestants, and audience voting will select the eventual winner, similar to American Idol.

Did Michael Joseph make it onto the show? Due to confidentiality agreements with the show, nothing more can be said about the proceedings or the outcome. I guess you will have to watch the show starting on June 9th to find out!

But on another note, Call Me Entertainment knows of another country duo, "Brother Trouble" that has made it onto another reality show that just started airing on Friday nights on CMT called "Can You Duet?" If you come to the Black & White Ball on August 16th to see Little Texas perform, their supporting guitar player, Mark Sutton, is 1/2 of "Brother Trouble", and is on the show! Starting Friday, April 25th, you can watch the progress of "Brother Trouble" on the show, and then see him live and in person in Auburn on August 16th, performing with one of the all-time supergroups in country music, Little Texas. He'll be playing and singing along on all their hits including "God Blessed Texas", "Amy's Back In Austin", "Kick A Little", and "What Might Have Been".

That's your country music report for this week!