The official Next Big Nashville 2008 schedule and panels have been announced. We Own This Town will be updating their show listings over the next few days to highlight the plethora of shows we feel are the highlights of the whole showcase but be sure to check the, very handy, schedule site to get a grasp on just how many bands are playing around town.

It is worth noting that The Carter Administration are featured in this month’s issue of The Big Takeover (No. 62). You can read the article here and learn all the mysterious plans that the band has in store for the future (including re-recording a chunk of past releases).

The Features have made their latest album, Some Kind of Salvation, available for pre-order on 180-gram double vinyl. The wax will include a digital download card to get all the tracks in mp3 as well as two bonus tracks that won’t be included on any other incarnation of the album.

Word on the street is that the vinyl version will ship on (or before) September 30th and a digital version will be ‘officially’ released sometime in mid-October. The CD version will probably wait until early 2009.

More news of the various variety:

Theory 8 Records will release Islands from Keegan DeWitt on October 7th, 2008. You can snag a download from it here.

Among other random bug-fixes and spruce ups I’ve added an ICS version of the show calendar so you can subscribe to the feed in iCal, Google Calendar, etc.

Have you seen The Deli Magazine? Great local coverage worth keeping an eye on.

More changes are on the way at We Own This Town, hoping to shift the focus from news purely to shows and podcasts – as incoming news is few and far between.