Country Music Stars Perform at GATS

Singer-songwriter Randy Houser to treat show attendees at free concert

Randy Houser, one of the country's top music singers, will treat attendees of the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas Friday night.

Aficionados of custom trucks and lovers of country music attending the annual Great American Trucking Show in Dallas are in for a treat as singer Randy Houser will follow the Grascals opening act in a free concert tonight at 5:30 in Ballroom C.

Tickets for the concert, sponsored by Mobil Delvac, are available today in the Dallas Convention Center’s registration lobby.

With a vocal prowess reviewers say is riveting, Houser’s first single, “Anything Goes,” catapulted to the Top 20 following an appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman” in 2009.

Another single that year, “Boots On,” peaked as No. 2 on Billboard’s Top Country Hits and reached the top 5 Hot Country Songs in 2009.

The singer-songwriter’s debut album, Anything Goes, released by Universal Records South, is described as exceptional. A new album, They Call Me Cadillac, will be released Sept. 21.

Houser is also the only new male artist to reach the top 5 on Hot Country Songs in 2009. “It’s hard to

believe that as a new artist I’ve got one that far up there,” he says.

A Mississippi native, Houser was born in Jackson and reared in the small town of Lake. His musical influences include R&B, Delta Blues, gospel and the country sounds of the deep South’s honky-tonks, says his publicist Ebie McFarland.

In 2008, the Grascals won Bluegrass Band of the Year and Instrumental Group of the Year awards given by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America.

The Grascals, a Nashville, Tenn.-based group, will entertain with band founders Jamie Johnson, Danny Roberts, Terry Smith and Terry Eldredge.

New to the bluegrass-country mix are fiddler Jeremy Abshire and award-winning banjoist Kristin Scott Benson.

The band’s fourth collection, The Famous Lefty Flynn’s, is an amalgam of pop, country, gospel and bluegrass.