David Macias is the President of Thirty Tigers: the marketing and distribution company. Jon Hensley, the manager for Shooter Jennings and Wanda Jackson who unexpectedly passed away on Monday June 1st, was a former employee of Thirty Tigers. David reached out to Saving Country Music to post a remembrance of Jon as he travels to Kentucky to attend his funeral.
You look at these two guys, and it is living history right in front of you. But they aren’t living history museum pieces. They are lucid, active participants in the music community, still writing and singing songs, still with the fire inside them to contribute to the genre they helped create, and pay country music forward to yet another generation of loyal and appreciative fans.
There’s been much ado about country artists of the fairer sex over the last couple of weeks. For Logan Brill, whose Carnival Records album Shuteye came out on June 2, that debate is all just noise. Sure, she’ll righteously stand up for women artists and songwriters. But for Brill, music is pursued for the passion of good quality songwriting and the artistry of storytelling—everything else comes secondary.
Family, friends, and fans of artist manager Jon Hensley continue to morn the passing of the 31-year-old who was found dead in his home in Bowling Green, KY on Monday, June 1st. Known for his work with Wanda Jackson, Shooter Jennings, and others, Hensley was a well-known personality in the independent roots music community.
Austin-based road warriors Uncle Lucius are getting ready to release their fourth album The Light on June 9th through Thirty Tigers, and Saving Country Music has an exclusive track for you to listen to early called “Gulf Coast Gypsies.” Produced by George Reiff at Austin’s Treefort Studios, the new album includes songwriting contributions from all of Uncle Lucius’ four members.
Being willing to see where a song takes you is at the heart of every music lover, and in this spirit I present eleven hand selected songs released in the first half of 2015 that will hopefully take you someplace you want to be, or somewhere you’ve never been before. This is the cream of the crop in my opinion; the gut punchers not for the faint of heart.
Jon Hensley, an artist manager known for his work with Shooter Jennings and Wanda Jackson, has died. Recently Hensley was best known as the manager and right hand man of Waylon Jenning’s son Shooter Jennings. Along with managing the second-generation performer and regularly traveling with him on the road, Hensley helped to operate and launch Shooter’s record label BCR Media.
So we’re close enough to the half way pole in 2015 to start thinking about what the best has been so far, and to get ready for what is sure to be a pretty exciting second half of 2015 for album releases. There’s been some big surprises, a few letdowns, but overall 2015 so far has been a pretty varied season for releases.
Some bad songs make you angry that such a monstrosity would ever be released under the country banner. Some make you sad for what country music has become. This one? Randy Houser’s entry into this new R&B sexy time Bee Gees-inspired country music disco craze? This thing had me laughing out loud so hard from being so embarrassing and absurd, I had milk shooting out of my nose. And I wasn’t even drinking milk.
Sorry syntax Nazis, I couldn’t figure out how to turn my R’s backwards, but I am definitely talking about the 90’s era “nu metal” rap rock noise band Korn, and principally their frontman, vocalist, and bagpipe player Jonathan Davis who is apparently working on a country “project” if you are to believe the brief Instagram post a few days ago.
For the last two years, the annual Kenny Chesney concert at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field on the city’s North Shore has resulted in awe-inspiring images of the trash accumulated by tailgaters arriving early in the morning and drinking to excess before the concert even begins, and jaw-dropping tallies for the amount of arrests, citations, and paramedic activity necessary by city police and EMS personnel.
A hiatus in The Trishas project presented a window for Jamie to spread her wings, and that’s what she does in Holidays & Wedding Rings. Far from a songwriter who has spent her best material on past projects, or is too burdened with home and family to find time for the guitar and notepad, Wilson taps into the keenest observations and inspirations of her career.
Zac Brown covered Isbell’s “Dress Blues” on his recent release Jekyll + Hyde. Though it was fairly common back on the 70’s through the 90’s to have bigger artists cover songs from alt-country voices such as Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and Lucinda Williams, the “Dress Blues” cover is one of the first examples of the newer generation of Americana artists garnering wider exposure through the vehicle of bigger stars.
Chris Michael Ferrell won’t receive a new trial in the shooting death of country music artist Wayne Mills. That was the decision Judge Steve Dozier of the Davidson County Criminal Court came to on Friday (5-29), despite the pleas of Ferrell’s defense attorney David Raybin. However the appeal process may be just beginning for the Ferrell defense.
When country music traditionalist Jamey Johnson announced he was starting his own Big Gassed record label in late 2014, he promised he wouldn’t be the only one on the roster. Part of his motivation to go independent was to release music from other artists who inspired him, and now it appears that the first full-length release from Big Gassed won’t be from Jamey, but the label’s first signee (aside from Johnson).
The last week of May in 2015 will be one to remember in the history of country music after the comments made by industry radio consultant Keith Hill to Country Aircheck on Tuesday (5-26) stirred quite the controversy. Mr. Hill insisted that if country radio stations wanted to increase their ratings, they needed to yank female performers from the airwaves…
What on God’s wide creation would compel a cantankerous country music critic who normally would rear up like an infuriated grizzly bear on its hind legs whenever some washed up rocker or crumbling pop princess decides that country music is the nursing home of their career and actually call for a pop star to crossover into country?
Merle Haggard is getting ready for the release of his new album with Willie Nelson next week called Django & Jimmie, and ahead of the release he had some interesting revelations about some things in his past, and what he might have coming up in the future. Many have wondered why Merle never joined the Highwaymen, but it apparently wasn’t because they didn’t want him.
In an interview posted with Keith Hill on Tuesday (5-26) in Country Aircheck, the industry consultant not only advised country radio not to play female artists, and certainly not to play them back to back, but had the audacity to compare them to the “tomatoes” of the country music salad. “If you want to make ratings in country radio, take females out,” Keith Hill said point blank in the interview.
Well it’s about damn time. What an ass backwards country music world we live in where you get clued into a great new song through an advertisement, while radio continues to descend into a wasteland. But that was the fate of “Roots & Wings.” Now Miranda Lambert and Dodge have released the full thing, or actually two separate extended versions.
Trouble began when the heavily-intoxicated Carson started a fight in the concert area. He then left the area, and returned in his SUV, brandishing a revolver, and threatening to kill people. According to witnesses, he was trying to run people over in the concert area where approximately 50 people were still assembled after the concert. Carson’s rampage eventually ended when another individual in a Jeep rammed him.
But the allegations and stories about the practices of Mikel Knight and the Maverick Dirt Road Street Team go beyond being overworked and circumventing local ordinances. Stories of physical abuse, mental anguish, individuals being abandoned in small towns, and even the death of street team members in auto accidents after being overworked have been circulating for the last year.
Many of your favorite Austin, TX musicians who list their hometown as Austin actually live in a small community south and west of the city in the panoramic Texas Hill Country called Wimberley. About a 45-minute drive from Austin, the small town of less than 3,000 sits on the banks of the Blanco River, and is a favorite day trip for many central Texas residents.
Amidst the graveyards of American dreams is where you’ll find the grey, bent, and wiry folklore rhythm master known as Charlie Parr nosing around, looking for his next discovery. With a resonator on his knee, and a tapping foot you could calibrate a Swiss timepiece to, Mr. Parr bends his back to looking for the perfect rhythm or melody for a mood like an archeologist looks for a lost civilization’s prized possession.
