The Grammy for ‘The Nashville Sound’ adds to an already-impressive list of accolades for the record, including winning the Americana Music Award for Album of the Year, as well as the very surprising nomination for Album of the Year by the Country Music Association, or CMA. Isbell also wins for “If We Were Vampires”
All of the information to get you prepared for the 60th Annual Grammy Awards, including the performances, the presenters, the nominees, and what to watch for in regards to the greater country music realm. It could be a big night for Chris Stapleton and others, and country performers will get some of the marquee performances.
At 12:01 last night (or this morning), after all the hands had been shaken, and all the hugs exchanged on the Saturday Night Live set in New York’s Rockefeller Center, you didn’t know what to do with yourself. Okay, now you’re supposed to just nestle into bed and act like that didn’t just happen?
Chris Stapleton is scheduled to make his second appearance on Saturday Night Live this Saturday evening, January 27th, and it appears he will be bringing fellow Kentucky native Sturgill Simpson along with him. This SNL appearance could be the beginning of a very big run for Stapleton to start off 2018.
Earlier this week numerous outlets, including US Weekly, Fox News, E Online, and scores of country music blogs asserted that Miranda Lambert had newly revamped the lyrics to her song “Little Red Wagon” to take a jab at Blake Shelton. Now they’re saying Blake is firing back. But neither is true.
The Pickathon Festival just outside of Portland, Oregon has just announced the initial lineup for their 20th Anniversary season, and like most every year, numerous important luminaries from the effort to help save country music have made the cut.
Zac Brown just can’t help himself. You can’t fault the guy for wanting to follow his musical passions, if in fact that’s the motivation here and not just padding his pockets. But he’s broken a promise to country fans once again by releasing a song that is admittedly not country to country radio.
What happened to Justin Timberlake making a country record, or at least including some country or “earthy” Americana on it? I can’t tell you. However “Say Something”—the studio track that is—delivers somewhat on Timberlake’s more updated promise of Man of the Woods being “Americana with 808’s.”
Journeywoman songwriter and closet singer/performer Caitlyn Smith just released perhaps the best country pop record to grace the roster of Music Row projects in a half a decade or more, and we should all be embarrassed and inconsolably incredulous it took so damn long for this voice and these songs to get their proper due.
Southern rock Gods Lynyrd Skynyrd—or at least what’s left of them—have announced a massive final farewell tour, planning to leave the stage afterwards for good in the midst of a few of the post-1977 crash member’s declining health, including primary leader Gary Rossington who has suffered from heart issues over the past few years.
The hard-driving, Grammy Award-winning bluegrass band The SteelDrivers have a new permanent lead singer and guitar player. Kelvin Damrell, who is native of Berea, Kentucky, and grew up in a family of bluegrass Gospel singers, has been named as the replacement in a spot previously held by some very big names, including Chris Stapleton, Adam […]
Justin Timberlake’s long-anticipated original song with Chris Stapleton will be arriving Thursday (1-25), and it will be called “Say Something.” It has also been announced that he will be performing with country legend Emmylou Harris at Sunday’s 60th Annual Grammy Awards. The details:
The Söderberg sisters don’t just sing, they soar. Their harmonies are so angelic and adept, the siblings come across more like deities than entertainers, untouchable and ethereal, blessed with immortal capacities, and brought to the Earth only to convey their wisdom in sonnet and rhyme.
Songwriter and promising mainstream performer Ashley McBryde’s debut major label release on Warner Nashville will be arriving March 30th, and will be named after the song she wrote for her Grand Ole Opry debut that helped spark off a national narrative behind the Arkansas native. She’s also released a new song called “American Scandal.”
The promise of technology and its interfacing with music is a great equalization of the playing field, both opening up the creative possibilities for artists, and the ability to discover new music for fans. For too long the stuffy and outmoded system of radio feeding us what they wanted us to hear reigned over music […]
It’s hard enough to have an album go platinum these days. Even when you’re a superstar with smash hits and spend a million+ on an advertising campaign. Now take into consideration not just forgoing all of those pre-release formalities, but starting off your release cycle by outright giving your record away to your fans.
The legendary and Hall of Fame country music career of Alan Jackson has been marked by two underlying things: his ability to write and sing songs that stay true to country’s roots and ultimately become mega-hits (he had 26 #1’s overall), and his propensity to step up at critical moments and say or do whatever he can to help preserve the music.
“Parallel Line” could have been cut by Ed Sheeran, Keith Urban, The Weeknd, Justin Bieber, or whomever. It doesn’t really matter who sung it; it would have sounded almost exactly the same. That’s why so many immediately identified this as an Ed Sheeran song. Popular music is just numerous pop franchises with many different faces.
“It’s not a reunion, it’s a revival” says Jimbo Mathus about the band’s latest incarnation and their new album, Beasts Of Burgundy, which includes twelve new original songs, and is said to be inspired by the City of New Orleans, the poet Ron Cuccia, and “a disregard for convention.”
“People can tell the difference between (B.S.) and not (B.S.). I’ll second the motion to say there shouldn’t be rap in country music,” Randy Rogers says. “But I will go on the record saying I like Kendrick Lamar. I like my rap. But when I think of country music, I think of Merle Haggard.”
I don’t care how bad your week has sucked, or how mopey you are that you’ve already reneged on your New Year’s resolutions, Blackberry Smoke just announced they have a new album on the way, have just unveiled a new song, and all is right in the world, at least where hard-driving Southern-inflected roots rock is concerned.
Before Dave Cobb became known as the producer du jour in country and Americana, he was a workaday musician and engineer who was looking to get his name out in the industry. In 2009, The Oak Ridge Boys took a chance on working with Cobb on their release ‘The Boys Are Back,’ and it was the beginning of a revival in their career.
Earlier this week, Rolling Stone published an in-depth report about the prevalent culture in country radio systemically looking the other way when young artists—mostly women—are taken advantage of, harassed and often expected to be receptive to inappropriate behavior by older men in the radio industry.
Tis’ the season to officially announce your 2018 record apparently, as Wednesday (1-17) saw the unveiling of two marquee projects of note in the country and roots world. Old Crow Medicine Show will release their latest record “Volunteer,” and Lindi Ortega will release a concept album called “Liberty.” The details:
