The Americana Music Association has just announced an additional 84 names of showcasing artists who will be gracing stages all around Nashville September 12th-17th for the 2017 AmericanaFest, adding to an already-stacked poster of names now swelling to 187 participants, and expected to reach close to 300 eventually.
This week, Florida Georgia Line’s collaboration with the Backstreet Boys called “God, Your Mama, and Me” hit #1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay Chart, meaning The Backstreet Boys—a washed-up boy bad who otherwise had not received a #1 distinction for over 18 years—is now the owner of a country music #1.
Toby Keith has made a career out of being uncool, and making cool things uncool by his mere presence. And now he’s done it with marijuana. “Wacky Tobaccy” as a song has got nothing. The fact that it’s supposed to be a stupid song doesn’t let it off the hook for being a stupid song.
David Rawlings and long-time collaborator Gillian Welch have once again compiled a collection of songs together, this time called Poor David’s Almanack. It will be Rawlings and Welch’s 8th collaborative album since first meeting at the esteemed Berklee College of Music, and will be Rawlings’ 3rd solo release.
It might actually be the intangibles and industry tentacles extending from Walker Hayes and “You Broke Up with Me” that make the whole thing so sinister. This is not just the lead single from a Sam Hunt knockoff you’ve never heard of before.
Jason Isbell and his band The 400 Unit have just notched their best-charting, and best-selling record of Jason Isbell’s career with The Nashville Sound. Selling a total of 54,000 units, including 51,000 in pure album sales, it puts Isbell #1 in country, and #4 overall for this week on the album charts.
Sarah Jane Scouten, from British Columbia’s Bowen Island, was born into a household where she was exposed to the music of Hank Williams and Canadian folk singers such as Stan Rogers from an early age, and those influences have gone on to infer her strong roots-based style.
On October 23, 1988, Austin City Limits went Bakersfield for one legendary night when an upcoming hot shot California country throwback traditionalist with jellyspine hips named Dwight Yoakam took the stage, and so did the man that he saw as his primary influence, the legendary Buck Owens.
Songwriter and performer Bobby Boyd, who was known for writing numerous hits, including the Garth Brooks #1 “Two of a Kind, Workin’ on a Full House,” has passed away. Bobby Boyd was a staff writer for Jimmy Bowen at Elektra Asylum Publishing, starting his professional songwriting career in Nashville in 1980.
Music, and country music specifically plays a big role in the series, not just in the soundtrack, but in many of the jokes told, and in the titles of each episode. Many other musical Easter eggs are placed throughout the series for music fans, such as posters on the wall, and albums in the local bar’s juke box.
As times get lean for alternative newsweeklys, their penchant to dispose of any and all journalistic class, fact-based reporting, or positive counterpoints to their dubious assertions goes out the window in lieu of mercilessly ripping into entire segments of artists without a single word of objectivity or credit where credit is due.
When it comes to neotraditional singing duos, The Secret Sisters are regarded at the very top of the discipline. However that hasn’t exactly won them the fame and comfort that is usually reserved for the esteemed and elite of a medium.
The hope still is that country music legend Loretta Lynn is on the road to recovery and rehabilitation after suffering a stroke on May 5th, but she’s not ready to return to the stage just yet. Word came down on Wednesday (6-21) that Loretta would be canceling some upcoming performances.
At the moment, we don’t have any motive, or any solid information on why Jacob Stockdale would decide to gun down two of his family members before attempting to take his own life. Though the public can surmise about a motive, there was no evidence or prior knowledge of trouble within the family.
What started out to be the idea for a heavy metal album of Outlaw country covers by DevilDriver frontman Dez Fafara has apparently turned into a monster project that may include dozens of songs and as many as 25 guest appearances. Though the songs will be country, the approach to most of the songs will be metal.
Look, is it possible for us to make too much of this situation over country music artist Lindsey Ell having a radio appearance last Friday canceled on a CBS-owned radio station because she’s in a relationship with rival iHeartMedia on-air personality Bobby Bones? Yes, it is. But I’m not sure we’re there yet.
Both sides of Texas country are well-represented in upcoming artist John Baumann’s third official release, Proving Grounds. You don’t have to go digging for a bio on Baumann to find out what he’s all about, it’s all articulated right there in his songs.
One would be hard pressed to find another industry that is as insular, antiquated, and downright embarrassing as the one that is in charge of managing the affairs of mainstream country radio. Despite checks and balances that are supposed to be in place, the amount of backroom deals and dirty practices is unconscionable.
Steve Earle isn’t just your average aging thinning-hair post-mainstream relevancy Americana dude who was kind of big in the 80’s. At 62-years-old, he’s probably the youngest guy who can legitimately claim honest ties to the original country music Outlaw movement of the 70’s.
Two members of the Stockdale Family Band are dead, and the third is in a local hospital after suffering a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in an incident Thursday afternoon (6-15). 25-year-old Jacob Stockdale is suspected of shooting his 21-year-old brother James Stockdale and 54-year-old mother Kathryn Stockdale.
Zephaniah Ohora is quickly revealing himself as one of the greatest country music discoveries in 2017, and so there’s no better place for him at the moment than leading a collection of the Top 25 Current Songs for Saving Country Music’s official Spotify playlist.
Chris Stapleton’s second solo record From A Room: Vol. 1 has officially shipped a sum total of 500,000 units and streaming-equivalent credits to become the first country album in all of 2017 so far to officially go Gold according to the RIAA. The certification was award to the album on June 8th, only a month after the release date.
It’s not just talent that sifts certain artists to the top of the heap of their discipline, it is timing. And Jason Isbell is one of the defining artists of our era because he is Southern, and enlightened, and can understand the perspective of the poor Southern man, as well as the faraway intellectual.
My life took a devastating and decidedly palpable turn for the worse when I cued up Shania Twain’s long-awaited new single, “Life’s About To Get Good.” Somewhere Robert “Mutt” Lange is cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West. Did someone pull a practical joke on Shania in the studio? Because this thing’s a stinker, and it’s all the fault of the production.
