Though the plan was to retire this particular annual live event commentary amid the rapid decline of popular award shows and the lack of interest they create, since this year the ACM’s are making a seismic shift to streaming online through Amazon Prime…
Take your favorite traditional 90’s country vibes, mix them with a good measure of strongly-written songs in the Texas music tradition, and spice it up with a just little bit of south Texas Tejano squeezebox flavor, and what you have is the latest album from Matt Castillo.
The best in country music don’t make music because they want to. They make country music because they have to. It’s not a means to an end financially. It’s a requisite emotionally and spiritually. Making country music is how a true country music artist unburdens their soul.
We are living in the era of Billy Strings in bluegrass music, and it won’t be long before that is so self-evident it’s trite to say, and his popularity and influence spills over into the popular culture realm at large. Gone already are the days of seeing him in clubs or on side stages .
When you write a song at the age of 13 that becomes a country standard and a hit in three separate decades, you know you were born to make country music. Warner Mack was born Warner McPherson on April 2, 1935 in Nashville, Tennessee, and was a natural.
“Jukebox Charley” isn’t just the name of an old Johnny Paycheck song. It’s a good term of endearment for Charley Crockett since he’s quickly proving that that he and his backing band The Blue Drifters can light into just about any classic country song you can call out
All the appetites of your country music palette are satiated by the end of Jenny Tolman’s ‘Married in a Honky Tonk,’ with your funny bone tickled, you brain stimulated, and your spirit raised. Jennyville is a fulfilling place to spend a few hours, and return to often.
From country to Americana, to folk and classic rock, from Canada to the United States and around the world, everybody knows and loves The Band, and their influence and appeal is stratified across genres and continents. But along with Robertson, there is another surviving member.
The nominations for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced last month, and leading the pack and making the biggest splash was not a name from the rock world, but a country one in the form of Country Music Hall of Famer Dolly Parton.
When the finals transpired at the 2022 San Antonio Rodeo Saturday, February 26th, Ryan Bingham wasn’t there to compete, but to cap off the 2022 season with a performance on the big stage at the center of the AT&T Arena, and who better…
To sing country, you have to live country, and that’s what makes the music of Mike Kuster so much more meaningful. It comes with that real life, lived-in and loved aspect that you just don’t get from the antiseptic and formulaic notions of big radio singles.
George Jones once famously asked, “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes?” Well when it comes to the buttoned-up, straight-ahead style of country music indicative of George Strait and others, the answer from the new generation of performers is Randall King.
When Cody Johnson partnered his independent CoJo Music record label with Warner Music Nashville in 2018, we thought it could result in the best of both worlds. Johnson would keep creative control. But if we’re being honest, the results were mostly mixed.
It was 1913, and ethnic Jews living in the Ukraine region of the Russian Empire were regularly subjected to brutal, mob-like massacres, known as pogroms. Just two years after a young boy named Nuta Kotlyarenko (Нута Котляренко) was born in Kiev on December 15th, 1902.
2022 has us working overtime already to keep up with all the great songs coming out on high-caliber albums from artists old and new. The easy part is finding new songs worthy of being highlighted. The hard part is choosing which old ones to take off.
Now a decade and a half after his debut single “Alyssa Lies,” Jason Michael Carroll is releasing his first single in many years with another song that hits close to home and deals with the tough topic of Alzheimer’s Disease called “Tell Me Your Name (Diane’s Song).”
One of the great things about The Wooks is you could pick them up and drop them smack dab in the middle of a bluegrass festival, or a punk club in Brooklyn, or a honky tonk in Texas, or a hipster bar in Berkeley, and they would immediately become a favorite band.
The bloodlines of Jennings and Williams are running together once again as the great grandson of Hank Williams, grandson of Hank Jr., and the son of Hank Williams III has signed with the record label of the son of Waylon Jennings, Black Country Rock.
In a story Saving Country Music was painstakingly attempting to avoid, Sam Hunt’s wife Hannah Fowler filed for divorce on Friday, February 18th, claiming infidelity from the “country” star—specifically “guilty of inappropriate marital conduct” and “guilt of adultery.”
A little random, but still cool nonetheless, reigning Saving Country Music Album of the Year winner Charles Wesley Godwin got some inadvertent, unexpected, but deserved national recognition on Tuesday (2-22) from an unlikely place: a Spotify publicity campaign.
What if you could see many of these fast rising names all in one place, along with other great names in the country, roots, and Americana realm? That is the experience the Wild Hare Music Festival is offering in Canby, Oregon this summer on July 15th and 16th.
One interesting Merle Haggard story that seems to have gone under-reported in the Internet age is that Merle Haggard was the pick by Burt Reynolds to play his semi truck-driving sidekick “The Snowman” in the legendary Smokey and The Bandit movie series.
The Turnpike Troubadours continue to reveal the itinerary of their 2022 comeback tour, which has included numerous famous spots. But no venue in country music is as vaunted as the Mother Church of Country Music, The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
Good Day For Living is hard to get through if you’re a fan of all those early Joe Nichols records. But right when you’re ready to renounce your Joe Nichols fandom forevermore, the final few songs remind you of why you were a fan of Joe Nichols in the first place.
