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A former “Nashville Star” contestant who filed assault and harassment charges against country star John Rich is now suing the singer.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in Circuit Court, Jared Ashley cites the assault and harassment allegations and contends that Rich and Rich’s attorney defamed him by falsely telling the media that Ashley demanded $2.9 million to drop the charges.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

Rich is part of the hit duo Big & Rich.

He turned himself in to Nashville police last week to face assault and harassment charges and was released on $3,000 bond.

Rich denied all the charges.

A representative for Rich said Tuesday that the singer declined comment.

Big & Rich’s Big Kenny Alphin says his second solo album, “The Quiet Times of a Rock and Roll Farm Boy,” is the work of “a man on a mission.

The album’s 10 tracks — including the first single, “Long After I’m Gone” — are just a sampling of the “couple hundred songs” Big Kenny has written since he completed work on his Last Dollar studio, a component of the “University of Creativity” he’s built up on the Nashville spread he calls home.

“I confined myself to a time of thinking and praying and contemplating the things that really made a difference to me,” he told Billboard.com. “I figured if I’m gonna get out there and do something, I better say something that might mean something to some people.

“And then, man, it just started exploding from there. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, learning my studio, just constantly working and trying to make something that sounded sonically cooler.”

Big Kenny, who last year underwent surgery to repair spine injuries he suffered in a 2001 car accident, took more than the music in-house for the new album. After butting heads with Big & Rich’s label, Warner Bros., he decided to strike out on his own, starting his own Love Everybody Music.

“I had to work for what was right for me,” he said. “I’d made all this music, and I didn’t know how I was gonna be able to put it out. But Big Kenny wanted to speak. When I feel that way, nothing can hold me back.”

Big Kenny co-produced “The Quiet Times…,” due out November 10, with Chris Stone, who engineered the last two Big & Rich albums. His songwriting collaborators included 3 Doors Down’s Brad Arnold, Ben Moody (Evanescence, We Are the Fallen), Richie Supa and Muzik Mafia member Jon Nicholson.

He’s on the road with his Rockin’ For a Reason show, and he’s busy making videos for songs on the new album that will be shown on his BigKenny.tv web site.

Big & Rich, meanwhile, remain on a recording hiatus, even though he and John Rich continue to play shows together.

“He’s focusing on his thing, and I’m focusing on my thing,” Big Kenny said. “We don’t want to confuse them. When John gets to a point where he would have the time and that fits in when I have the time, we have to get together and write. We have to have new material. I accept that we’re both very creative guys that are gonna do other things. Call me the will.i.am of country music, or the Jack White of country music; I’m gonna make creativity wherever I can, whenever I’m drawn to it.”

(Editing by SheriLinden at Reuters)

(please visit our entertainment blog via www.reuters.com or on http://blogs.reuters.com/fanfare/)

A Nashville judge has dismissed assault and harassment charges against country music singer John Rich.

Rich and other witnesses testified Friday before Judge John Aaron Holt that he did not punch aspiring singer Jared Ashley at a private nightclub in March 2008.

Ashley, a former contestant on the cable TV music show “Nashville Star,” claimed Rich later threatened him in a voice mail message.

Rich is a member of the duo Big & Rich and had a solo hit earlier this year, “Shuttin’ Detroit Down.”

Courtesy of NME.com – Motown sound singer to follow in footsteps of Lou Reed at Austin eventMotown legend Smokey Robinson will give the keynote speech of the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas next March.
The music aspect of the festival, which sees acts take over venues across the US city for gigs plus lectures and seminars, is set to take place on March 17-21.

Last year Lou Reed gave the event’s keynote speech while bands including Metallica, Jane’s Addiction, Kanye West and Black Lips played live.
The 2010 line-up has yet to be announced.
Smokey Robinson played a London gig on Saturday (October 24) as part of the BBC Electric Proms gig series, at the Roundhouse venue.
For more on Smokey Robinson, check out his NME.com page.

Courtesy of NME.com – Bono admits his band ‘didn’t pull off the pop songs’U2 frontman Bono has admitted that he has been disappointed by the lack of success of their recent album “No Line On The Horizon.”
The band’s 12th studio LP shot straight to the top of the UK album chart when it was released in March and has sold a respectable one million worldwide.

However the LP, is the group’s lowest selling in more than a decade, with 2004’s “How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb” selling 3.2 million copies to date and 2000’s ”All That You Can’t Leave Behind” clocking up sales of 4.3 million.
The album’s first single from the album “Get On Your Boots” peaked at number 12 in the UK singles charts and follow-up “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” only reached number 32.
Bono admitted that he was disappointed that the band didn’t “pull off the pop songs”.
He told Spinnermusic.co.uk: “We weren’t really in that mindset and we felt that the album was a kind of an almost extinct species, and we should approach it in totality and create a mood and a feeling, and a beginning, middle and an end.
“And I suppose we’ve made a work that is a bit challenging for people who have grown up on a diet of pop stars.”
The band plan to release their already-recorded next album, ‘Songs Of Ascent’, in 2010.
For more on U2, check out their NME.com page