Jim Ed Brown, member of the influential early country family band The Browns, esteemed solo artist, and long-time devoted member of the Grand Ole Opry, has been diagnosed with lung Cancer. Brown made the announcement today after he was forced to cancel a few shows recently. “I am forever grateful for the love, support, and prayers during this time,” Jim Ed said in a statement.
A wide, sweeping undertaking, “Something In The Water” sees Carrie Underwood carve out the sweet spot for her voice and make an inspiring and faith-based composition the vessel to illustrate the mighty ferocity of her God-given vocal prowess, along with instilling the moments with an elegance and grace that in unison swell to achieve one awe-inspiring performance height.
Outlaw queen, regular Grand Ole Opry last-minute stand-in, SiriusXM DJ, and general badass Elizabeth Cook has decided to take some time off to deal with personal matters. Many were concerned that Elizabeth may be suffering from a serious health issue. It was revealed today that the country star appears to be suffering from severe exhaustion.
The George Jones Museum and Event Center is coming to downtown Nashville. This is the news relayed from George’s widow, Nancy Jones, who announced today that she has spent $4.35 million on two pieces of adjacent property. Early plans call for a 44,000 sq. ft. facility that would include event space, a music venue, restaurant, and gift shop, all to commemorate the legacy of George Jones.
Last week people were meowing over a newly-released video marrying Meow Mix cat food with what appeared to be a Bro-Country parody called “Country Cat.” The two-minute video performed by country artist J.R. Moore enlists typical sonic and lyrical tropes of country music’s current hyper-trend into a humorous advertisement as part of a Meow Mix brand relaunch.
Have you ever been scanning through photos of your favorite (or least favorite) artists and thought, “Hot damn! That dude look just like this other dude!” From eery similarities like Sturgill Simpson and Javier Bardem’s creepy character from the movie No Country For Old Men, to Johny Paul White and Johnny Depp who I am pretty much convinced are the same exact person…
Just over two months since the body of 22-year-old Cory Barron was found by a landfill worker in New Russia Township, OH after the young man had gone missing at Jason Aldean’s July 18th concert at Progressive Field in Cleveland, and friends and family still don’t have any answers as to the circumstances surrounding his death, and maybe never will.
Sweet GA Brown is the real deal when it comes to songwriters—sweating under a blue collar all day to earn the right to sing in swill joints at night. His music emanates from the small town of Ringgold, GA just outside of Chattanooga; that’s the Georgia-Tennessee-Bama region that has seen the rise to other songwriters who like to cut their hard-hitting realism with humor like Roger Alan Wade.
If the unusual and offbeat of the country music realm is something you love to delve into—if the Roger Miller’s, the Shel Silverstein’s, and the John Hartford’s hold a special sway on your heart, and something just a little strange, unexpected, and funny is where you find enjoyable wrinkles in the forgotten shadows of country music’s otherwise explored reaches, then this album from Ween…
George Strait’s recent album The Cowboy Rides Away: Live from AT&T Stadium sees ‘The King’ score both the #2 spot on the Billboard country charts, and the #4 spot on the all genre Billboard 200 this week, but this isn’t because of what a lot of fans are saying, it is in lieu of it. Saving Country Music has sounded off on the egregious use of Auto-Tune on the album, and so have many George Strait fans.
Good gosh, what does Keith Urban have to do to buy a break? So the Keith Urban brain trust gets together, scratches their heads a little bit and says, “Boobs. You know, there’s always boobs.” And so here we see Keith Urban resort to the same female objectification the rest of country music is suffering from in this new semi-NSFW video for his stalled single “Somewhere In My Car.”
18-year-old concertgoer Sean Murphy was accused of raping a 17-year-old girl and was arrested on the scene. The incident ended when a woman attending the concert asked the girl if what was happening was consensual, and she said, “No,” according to the Sun Chronicle, and the woman pulled the suspect off the girl who then fled. Now prosecutors have dropped rape charges against the teen.
All we’ve been hearing from Kenny Chesney in the run up to the release of his new album The Big Revival is how badass it is going to be because he took an entire year off of touring to focus on it, at one point scrapped an entirely completed album awash in beer and tailgate songs to make it, and did some serious soul searching about the direction he wanted to take.
On July 13th, Tim McGraw slapped a woman named Jesslyn Taylor in the crowd at the at Aaron’s Ampitheatre in Atlanta while numerous cameras captured the incident on tape. A new report from Radar Online posted Tuesday shows Jesslyn Taylor recorded on camera for the first time speaking out about the incident, and saying that McGraw still owes her an apology.
Trust me when I say if you go ambling through American college towns, you won’t find anything resembling a dearth of string bands with a bunch of young men and their banjos and fiddles stomping and shouting on stage. What you will find a dearth of are these bands that are actually worth listening to, at least outside of the context of a drunken college town barroom.
Hypothetically he does, or at least metaphorically. But depending on Tyler Farr’s proficiency at internet research (which I’m guessing is pretty sub-par) and his proximity to the Big Apple where New Yorker culture writer Jody Rosen—who coined the term “Bro-Country”—makes his bed, Farr will probably just have to settle for sending verbal daggers out towards Rosen in The Arizona Republic.
This isn’t just your average album release, or even your average album release from Lee Ann Womack. This one has a little more special meaning for Womack since it is her first release without a major label, and a release that helps rate of progress for both women and traditional country artists looking to revitalize their place to a wider audience.
On Monday, September 22nd, the subset of American country music known to many by its nickname “Bro-Country,” died at its home in Nashville, TN. Though the specific cause of death has yet to be ruled on by the local medical examiner, preliminary findings appear to show that Bro-Country had been exhaustively over-utilized over the last few months and years until it finally passed away from overexposure.
Nobody could have anticipated that a George Strait album would be the vehicle for the most excessive, and most blatantly obvious use of the pitch correction software known as Auto-Tune that I have ever, ever heard in the history of recorded music, barring projects purposefully using Auto-Tune as a special effect. The use of Auto-Tune on The Cowboy Rides Away is egregious.
I write these words knowing that many will roll up to this Tim McGraw dissertation looking for a bowl of blood as recompense for the emotional direst recent Tim McGraw singles such as “Truck Yeah” have waged on the mental state of many innocent country music fans. But the simple truth is Tim McGraw’s new album ‘Sundown Heaven Town’ deserves to be spared the most sinister strokes from the poison pen.
Acting as a guide through both the explanation of the roots of country music and the streets of Nashville, Justin Townes Earle and many others try best to define “country” for a foreign audience in the film. The Country Roads DVD also includes an entire Justin Townes Earle concert performed at Pace University on October 26th and 27th of 2012 called “The Spirit of Woody Guthrie.”
On Wednesday September 17th, Hank3 stopped at the Outland Ballroom in Springfield, MO for the start of his current West Coast tour. Hank3 played three separate sets of music for the packed house representing the three facets of the 3rd generation performer: Country, Hellbilly, and Metal. Photo journalist Robert Kipness of Black Bird Creative was there to capture the event.
Jack White’s criticisms of Rolling Stone, The Foo Fighters, and The Black Keys would probably be taken with a little more weight if they didn’t feel like they were so rooted in spite. But Jack raises a very important topic in how music journalism has evolved over the last few years, especially as print magazines have been forced to move into a more robust online presence.
Ever since Randy Travis suffered a severe heart malady and subsequent stroke on July 7th of 2013, fans have been concerned about the condition of the country star, with little to no true information about his health condition or status. Now we get to see the first video of Randy, who is seen walking with the aid of a cane and looking good as he attended an annual fundraising function in in Denison, TX.