Tim Mcgraw

TIM MCGRAW may have Faith at home, but he's lost Faith in his record company. They're releasing another McGraw greatest-hits package even though Tim has made only one album since the last one. Billboard.com reports that the abundance, or should we say, redundance, of hits has McGraw apologizing to his fans. "I am saddened and disappointed that my label chose to put out another hits album instead of new music," McGraw said in a statement. "I've only had one studio album since my last hits package.

Tim McGraw is such a genial, good-natured entertainer, such a professional when it comes to playing host to a packed arena of hootin' and hollerin' fans, that you can almost forgive him his sins of soft-rock banality, crass commercialism and shameless pandering. Almost. On Saturday night at the First Union Spectrum, McGraw and his eight-piece band the Dancehall Doctors played a generously spirited 2 1/2-hour show. The highlights and lowlights included several covers of rock hits from the 1970s (including Steve Miller's "The Joker" and Elton John's "Tiny Dancer")

What Ozzy Osbourne is to devil metal, what Jimmy Buffet is to parrot pop - throw in, too, Jerry Bruckheimer's testosterone-filled flicks and the networks' second-tier talent shows - that's what showy country crooners Faith Hill and Tim McGraw seem ready to become: summertime perennials. The handsomely married couple's Soul2Soul tours, the production-heavy likes of which sold out Wachovia Center on Saturday, are quickly becoming annual events, even when there are no new recordings ready to hawk.

As he strolls into his dressing room several hours before showtime at the Westbury Music Fair, Tim McGraw looks like anything but the red-hot country star that he is. For starters, he's got no attitude and no entourage. What's the sense in having a multi-platinum album, Not a Moment Too Soon, with a couple of gold singles, "Indian Outlaw" and "Don't Take the Girl," if you're not going to get yourself an entourage to boss around? But a major star, he is. Not a Moment, his follow-up to a lackluster debut, hung on to the top country-album slot for six months, only recently dropping to its current number-three position.

Backstage in his dressing room at the Saginaw Civic Center, Tim McGraw opened a bottle of beer and asked: "How far is South Bend from here?" Wearing a wide-brimmed, black cowboy hat and boots with toes sharp enough to be lethal weapons, McGraw had just wrapped up a concert date in front of a packed house and posed for pictures with a delegation of teenaged fans. One of the hottest new names out of Nashville - his "Not a Moment Too Soon" is the top-selling country album in America, highlighted by the controversial hit single "Indian Outlaw" - McGraw was scheduled to climb back on the bus and head to South Bend, Ind., for an appearance at Notre Dame.

Festivals, concerts, movie screenings and more will be plentiful and better coordinated on both sides of the Delaware River this summer, officials said yesterday. One sign of cooperation: Camden's Adventure Aquarium is springing for the America's Birthday weekend fireworks that go along with the Wawa Taste of Philadelphia Concert (July 6). And no Philly complaints that Cirque du Soleil will set up its tents on the Jersey side (adjacent to the Susquehanna Bank Center) for the first time, for the premiere run of "Totem" May 30-June 23. The Great Plaza at Penn's Landing is mostly about freebie fun this year - including this weekend's Art Star Craft Bazaar, the 10-event strong Peco Multicultural Series on Saturdays and Sundays through August, and "Screenings Under the Stars" series of recent hit flicks on Thursdays in July and August (including "The Hunger Games" and "Silver Linings Playbook")

8 tonight CHANNEL 6 Highlights of the annual four-day event in Nashville, Tenn., are scheduled to include performers Tim McGraw (right), Trace Adkins, Jason Aldean, Alan Jackson, and Reba McEntire, among others.

Late Show With David Letterman (11:35 p.m., CBS3) - Actress Sally Field; Shawn Klush performs. Jimmy Kimmel Live (11:35 p.m., 6ABC) - Dr. Phil McGraw; actor Jim Jefferies; Tim McGraw performs. The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (11:35 p.m., NBC10) - Actress Amy Adams; Hunter Hayes performs. The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson (12:35 a.m., CBS3) - Actress Amanda Peet; musician Paul Williams. Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (12:35 a.m., NBC10) - Joel McHale; Al Roker; Matt Pond performs.

Friday Night Lights is already being ranked among Rudy, The Longest Yard, and Remember the Titans as one of the best football films of all time. The gridiron drama is now blitzing living rooms on DVD, and it's a winner. Based on the best-selling book by H.G. Bissinger, Lights looks at the real town of Odessa, Texas, where football is everything. High school football talk radio chatters in almost every scene, players get interviewed on TV in the preseason, and the coach makes more money than the principal.

"I'm from a map dot," Tim McGraw sang shortly after taking the stage  at the Susquehanna Bank Center on Friday night, "a stop sign on a blacktop. " But McGraw, who took the stage to the decidedly un-countryish sounds of Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive," is defined as much by big-tent showmanship as small-town sentiment, sometimes to the latter's detriment. Two Lanes of Freedom, McGraw's 12th studio album, is his first since extricating himself from a contract with Nashville's Curb Records, his home for the previous two decades.

"I'm from a map dot," Tim McGraw sang shortly after taking the stage  at the Susquehanna Bank Center on Friday night, "a stop sign on a blacktop. " But McGraw, who took the stage to the decidedly un-countryish sounds of Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive," is defined as much by big-tent showmanship as small-town sentiment, sometimes to the latter's detriment. Two Lanes of Freedom, McGraw's 12th studio album, is his first since extricating himself from a contract with Nashville's Curb Records, his home for the previous two decades.

Festivals, concerts, movie screenings and more will be plentiful and better coordinated on both sides of the Delaware River this summer, officials said yesterday. One sign of cooperation: Camden's Adventure Aquarium is springing for the America's Birthday weekend fireworks that go along with the Wawa Taste of Philadelphia Concert (July 6). And no Philly complaints that Cirque du Soleil will set up its tents on the Jersey side (adjacent to the Susquehanna Bank Center) for the first time, for the premiere run of "Totem" May 30-June 23. The Great Plaza at Penn's Landing is mostly about freebie fun this year - including this weekend's Art Star Craft Bazaar, the 10-event strong Peco Multicultural Series on Saturdays and Sundays through August, and "Screenings Under the Stars" series of recent hit flicks on Thursdays in July and August (including "The Hunger Games" and "Silver Linings Playbook")

Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison In a preferable Austin, Texas-focused alternative universe, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw would be shunted aside and wife-and-husband team Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison would be the first couple of country music. Back in the '90s, Willis flirted with Nashville mainstream success, but the star-making machinery rubbed her the wrong way, and she brought her honkytonk angel voice back home to the Lone Star State and married Robison, a big, sensitive lug of a hardscrabble singer-songwriter who has scripted hits for George Strait, the Dixie Chicks, and, yes, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.

Late Show With David Letterman (11:35 p.m., CBS3) - Actress Sally Field; Shawn Klush performs. Jimmy Kimmel Live (11:35 p.m., 6ABC) - Dr. Phil McGraw; actor Jim Jefferies; Tim McGraw performs. The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (11:35 p.m., NBC10) - Actress Amy Adams; Hunter Hayes performs. The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson (12:35 a.m., CBS3) - Actress Amanda Peet; musician Paul Williams. Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (12:35 a.m., NBC10) - Joel McHale; Al Roker; Matt Pond performs.

Pop Regions of Light and Sound of God (ATO ***) My Morning Jacket singer Jim James has dabbled outside the band before with Monsters of Folk and other projects, but this is his first proper solo album. Begun after he was injured in a fall from the stage in 2008, and partially inspired by Lynd Ward's 1929 wordless woodcut novel God's Man , the present album is a loose song cycle largely concerning one man's crisis of faith and rebirth. With James playing almost all of the instruments himself, the album moves around stylistically, as you might expect of a restless artist of James' catholic tastes.

"HOLY MOTHER HARRY LOOKS FIT. " So Lady Gaga tweets. ( Fit ? Sexual slang for "hot," "sexy. ") The Lady was talking about Prince "Helicopter" Harry 's naked frame, which was caught on camera during a recent game of strip billiards in Las Vegas. The photos were widely admired around the globe. We think they'll spark renewed interest in the royal family. Buckingham Palace, however, is not amused. An unnamed Harry pal tells Us Weekly "this was not the type of fun he was supposed to be having.

THE FRONT of today's People Paper is so packed with news that Tattle is going to have to take some space away from the non-news to bring you another scary "Dark Knight Rises" story — this one from Ohio. What was 37-year-old Scott A. Smith thinking when he attended a Saturday screening of the latest Batman movie with a gun, ammo and several knives? According to his attorney, he was just trying to protect himself. Matthew Bruce, an attorney for Smith, says his client had no intention of causing harm or panic when he brought the weapons to the theater.

Another year, another sold-out mid-June Kenny Chesney concert at Lincoln Financial Field — it's pretty much been a Delaware Valley tradition since 2007. True, in 2010, the pop-country superstar from Tennessee eased off regular seasonal stadium touring, but he did send out his concert movie Summer in 3D to make the rounds, complete with footage from Chesney's June 2009 date with Philly at the Linc. Saturday found the 44-year-old singer back in the football stadium with familiar trappings — Chesney beginning his two-hour-plus show from midfield, launched over the crowd on a chair suspended by cables leading him to the stage from above while singing and waving, capping another multiple-act bill with some all-hands-on-deck, rock-song covering and autograph-signing — but there were differences ... The most important departure was sharing the bill this summer in a near-double-headliner format with fellow behatted big-timer Tim McGraw on their "Brothers of the Sun" tour.

COUNTRY STAR Kenny Chesney will play a free concert June 20 on the beach in Wildwood, sources say. We're told an announcement is expected Thursday morning. A Wildwood spokesman did not return our request for comment Wednesday. Chesney, who was briefly married to actress Renee Zellweger before she divorced him, accusing him of "fraud," plays a paid, ticketed concert with Tim McGraw on June 16 at Lincoln Financial Field. His new album is to be released June 19. We hear that American Express has something to do with the free concert and that it will also be streamed online.