Iconic comedian Louie Anderson, the three-time Emmy Award® winner, is one of the country’s most recognized and adored comics; named by 
Comedy Central as “One of 100 Greatest Stand-Up Comedians of All Time.” His career has spanned more than 30 years. He is a best-selling author, star of his own stand-up specials and sitcoms and he continues to tour the country performing to standing-room-only crowds worldwide.
In 2016 Anderson was cast to co-star along with Zach Galifianakis and Martha Kelly in the hit FX comedy series Baskets. Anderson plays the extraordinary role of Christine, the matriarch of the Baskets clan. He based the character on his mother and his five sisters who were all a major presence in his life. Anderson won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as Christine Baskets in 2016.
“I’m not as nice in the character as my mom was as a person. It really is an extension of my mom, Anderson says, adding that he always aims to make his performance “as real as possible” without “affecting or cartooning it up. It felt like it was divine intervention when I got the call to be on the show, that somehow my mom, from the great beyond, was finally getting herself into show business where she truly belonged in the first place.”
Sharing the ups and downs of his childhood experiences as one of eleven children in Minnesota, Louie crafted comedy routines that rang true for his early club audiences while reducing them to helpless fits of laughter, routines that led him from his career as a counselor to troubled children to the first-place trophy at the 1981 Midwest Comedy Competition. Henny Youngman, who hosted the competition, recognized the diamond-in-the-rough genius of the young comic and hired him as a writer, providing invaluable experience that soon put Louie in his own spotlight on comedy stages all over the country.
Johnny Carson, the comedy icon for generations of rising stars, invited Louie to make his national television debut on the “The Tonight Show” in 1984, and the rest is history. Leno, Letterman, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, “Comic Relief” and Showtime, HBO and CMT specials followed, including hosting the legendary game show, Family 
Feud, making Louie a household name and opening doors for him as an actor. He has gueststarred in sitcoms like “Grace Under Fire” and dramas like “Touched by an Angel” and “Chicago Hope,” and he has had memorable featured roles in film comedies like “Coming to America,” opposite of Eddie Murphy, and the classic “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” In 2013, he took a dive on the ABC reality series, “Splash” where he conquered his own fears while becoming an inspiration of hope. His standup Special, “Big Baby Boomer” premiered on CMT, in 2013. Also in that year, he competed and inspired on the ABC reality competition show, Splash.
“Can I get a hallelujah, can I get an amen?” sings Texas-born, Nashville-dwelling Maren Morris on “My Church,” the lead single from her debut full-length, HERO. Though “sing,” however, might not be the most appropriate verbiage – she belts, more like it, in her dynamic range that can growl soulfully one moment and twangily howl the next. It’s an honest performance from an artist and writer who stands out for the singular point of view, sheer creativity and fearless approach to music she’s developed since she began performing and writing as a young child. Using the boldest colors from across many genres as her palate and country as her canvas, Morris’ stories are vivid paintings that can be gleefully fun, tearfully heartbreaking and a perfect balance of modern and timeless.
With HERO, her first LP for Sony Music Nashville, Morris starts with a bang, not a whimper: opening with a mysterious vamp full of swampy swagger, “Sugar” seamlessly blends the attitude of R&B with a catchy, 
countrified chorus. In other words, it’s Maren Morris in a perfect nutshell. “I don’t want to ease anyone into this record,” she says. “It’s not my personality. It feels so good to start the album out that way, and the music itself is not shy. But then it goes on to these really internal moments, too.” Indeed, she bounces from “Sugar” and the next track, the equally infectious, spitfire spirit of “Rich,” to the pristine glimmer of “I Could Use a Love Song” and later, the poignant balladry and awe-inspiring vocals of “Second Wind” and “Once.” It all results in one of the more inventive and engaging perspectives in country music to come along in years, conjuring a special, wildly different world where salvation comes through the FM dial and the stage is a place both to party and pray.
Morris built buzz at a breakneck speed with her self-titled EP, which introduced all of the diverse and dynamic sides that comprise her – from the confident, danceable swagger of “80s Mercedes,” to the island jam of “Drunk Girls Don’t Cry,” and the soulful confessions of “Wish I Was.” And, of course, the thrilling pop-country-gospel amalgam of “My Church,” a track about the spirituality that comes with to letting your body and mind be enveloped by the power of music.