Fans of Reno, Nevada’s Hellbound Glory who’ve been waiting patiently for new music since the release of their last album Damaged Goods can tide themselves over on a brand new single just released called “The Feud.” A fiery, raucous account of the rigors of rural living, the song features a more rock vibe compared to most Hellbound Glory material, and raw, gunpowder-stained lyrics.
The depths Viacom and American corporate media have slumped to in their tireless endeavor to exploit and further stereotype the rural residents of the United States is nothing short of a black eye on the American culture, and an abomination of the entertainment medium. It is worse than most garden variety hardcore pornography on the psyche of the viewer, and on the dignity of the subject.
Fred Eaglesmith puts fresh-faced country music interlopers riding a popularity wave in their place in “Johnny Cash,” a song off of his 2012 release 6 Volts, and whose new video was just released this month. Eaglesmith chides the brittle, shallow understanding of Johnny Cash that starts with his American Recordings era, but overlooks his prolonged career struggles, and Johnny’s well-documented and deep religious devotion.
Forget all your stuffy old outmoded notions of what Nashville is. Right now Nashville is the center of the music universe in so many more ways than what is represented by the few city blocks of old houses and mini-rise office buildings on Music Row. Right here, right now, Nashville is the place to be for independent music. It’s Haight Ashbury circa 1965. It’s Guy Clark’s kitchen in the movie Heartworn Highways.
Just when we thought the American public was finally getting wise to the fact that country rap is a Cancer of Western Civilization, needing to be cut out and radiated like the grapefruit-sized, puss-filled tumor it is, here it comes roaring back like a raging case of bleeding hemorrhoids. It’s the audio equivalent of sneaking out of your mom’s house to smoke pot behind a Pizza Hut.
Eastern Kentucky’s Sturgill Simpson will be releasing his long-awaited debut solo album High Top Mountain on June 11th, via Thirty Tigers. Comprised of 12 tracks, 10 of which were written by Sturgill, the album’s songs “…range from furious honky-tonk to pre-outlaw country rocking to spellbinding bluegrass pickin’ to emotional balladry, making the album a one-stop guide to everything genuine in country music.”
So here it is ladies and gentlemen, a list of what Saving Country Music considers to be the “Greatest Country Music Albums of All Time.” Please understand numerous factors went into this list, but the most important determining factor was influence. This is taking into consideration the wide panoram of country music, not just classic or traditional country.
As one of the original members of Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt frontman Jay Farrar is one of the forebearers of the alt-country sound that now has morphed into the all-encompassing Americana behemoth that here in 2013 is enjoying a meteoric rise in influence. But instead of trying to figure out how to ride that popularity wave, Farrar and Son Volt release an album that is so doggone country, you could almost call it conceptualized.
Lonesome Wyatt is a pioneer of Gothic country with his band Those Poor Bastards, and one of the originators of underground country whose song “Pills I Took” was covered by Hank Williams III on his landmark album Straight to Hell, he is one of the few artists who will never be forgotten regardless of the long-term fortune of the underground country sub-genre.
I want to publicly and vehemently renounce violence, and threats of violence, to anyone, or from anyone, for any reason, and specifically relating to any reason involving music. This includes threats toward Shooter Jennings or his fans, towards pop country personalities and their fans, or for any disagreements or misunderstandings or different interpretations of what music is good, and what music is not good.
The Independent Music Awards has announced their 12th Annual nominations, and it includes many great names from the independent country/roots world like Rachel Brooke, The Boomswagglers, Lucky Tubb, The Steel Wheels, Tom VandenAvond, Langhorn Slim, and The Carper Family to name a few. The Awards honor exceptional independent artists traditionally ignored by mainstream media and big box retailers.
Legendary country Outlaw singer and songwriter David Allan Coe is recovering at the Ocala Regional Medical Center after being broadsided by a semi-truck early Tuesday morning in his 2011 black Chevrolet suburban. Coe’s son, guitar player Tyler Mahan Coe has released a statement to Saving Country Music about the incident.
Same Trailer, Different Park is the loss of corporate country’s innocence. It is a total flip of perspective from the fare the mainstream country public is used to. It’s an awakening, an awareness of an alternative set of ideas that dash the mores that keep radio country and its listeners locked in suffocating patterns that don’t allow the soul the space for self-exploration and growth.
Before this album, I’d been mostly opinion neutral on Holly Williams. Being the granddaughter of Hank Williams, the daughter of Hank Jr., and the sister of Hank3 appointed her music the respect of more than a cursory look. She was neither here nor there, and with a lack of scene support her career sort of drifted. The Highway, released on her own Georgiana label, changes all of that.
With the appeal for roots music on the rise throughout the music landscape, it’s no wonder Southern rock is making a resurgence. Where a few years ago Southern rock seemed to be all about nostalgia and/or rehashing the same old tired twangy rock guitar riffs, the sub-genre now finds itself flush with a new crop of talent bringing creativity and a fresh, more progressive approach to the format.
If you’re not down in Austin yourself participating in the biggest music festival / music conference / music convention in the world known as South by Southwest (SXSW), it can almost seem like social media is working to taunt you for not participating as the event transpires between Tuesday and Saturday. We don’t want to revel in what you’re missing, we want to make it an opportunity to discover new music…
Part promotional tool for these showcases and artists, part tips to SXSW goers, part personal itinerary, part letting folks know what I’m clued in about so other folks can let me know what’s cool that I am missing, this is Saving Country Music’s SXSW 2013 living itinerary. SXSW is so expansive and so convoluted, there is no way one person can know everything, or let alone see and hear it…
Bob Everhart, a traditional country musician, and the President of the National Traditional Country Music Association since 1976, along with Maggie Penn at the Traditional Music Foundation have banded together with other organizations and individuals to launch an initiative to attempt to remove Blake Shelton from the Grand Ole Opry, and get more traditional country played on the radio.
The comments at the concert beginning a Dixie Chicks world tour sparked off possibly the biggest black balling in the history of American music. Spoken 10 days before the beginning of the Iraq War, the backlash took the Dixie Chicks from the biggest concert draw in country music to relative obscurity in country music in a matter of weeks.
Like A Rose is a short and sweet, classic country album that encapsulates Ashley Monroe’s skills as a formidable traditional country songwriter with a sweet voice embellished with sincere pain. The approach to Like A Rose is traditional, but light in the way the rhythm is laid back and some of the textures are ambient, making it in some respects a cross between country and Americana, broadening the appeal of the record.
Ladies and gentlemen, Caitlin Rose has arrived. The Stand-In is frighteningly good. It’s an enterprise in the evocation of rich human emotions, interwoven with delicious hooks and intelligent riffs, stirring vocal performances delivering meaningful, elevated lyricism, and a towering production performance that may go down in the history books. Just simply… Wow.
The pop country megastar that never was, but still may be someday named Michael Jackson Montgomery is finally releasing an album called The Bleeding Cowboy on April 9th. He has also just released the second single from The Bleeding Cowboy called “I Support The Troops More Than You.” Michael Jackson Montgomery spoke to Saving Country Music in this exclusive interview.
It’s not that JD McPherson does anything different than many other artists have done before him. It’s just that he does it better. Good music will always be relevant, and JD McPherson is living proof of this. A strict revivalist of the 1950’s rock & roll blues, his music has branched out and burrowed into the consciousness of many folks not regularly susceptible to the pull of a straight-laced throwback rock & roll show.
Willie’s life has run the full gamut of the American experience. That’s why we love him and give him a pass even when we may not agree with some of the things he says or does. Or at least most of us do. Those fans jump to conclusions that Willie is some limp-wristed softy that has no respect for the 2nd Amendment, maybe they should look back at a couple of incidents in his past.
