For those that have never been to SXSW, the whole thing is broken down into showcases. A showcase can be put on by a record label, a booking agency, a publicity agency, a radio station, a blog, it doesn’t matter. And where doesn’t matter either. Wherever there is space in or near downtown Austin, there’s a band playing. Find yourself a space and make it happen!
I am quite astonished with this in so many different ways I don’t even know where to start. Actually I do. How about with the fact that Gwyneth, across multiple platforms, including movie, radio, and performance, and from a critical and commercial standpoint, has already failed in country music. The movie “Country Strong”, which is the impetus for this whole country music career, was a colossal critical and commercial failure.
This is the music I have been waiting my whole life for. I am a changed man for having listened to this album. It brought me back to being a little kid again, to the first time I heard music, at Christmas or something, where it was this magical thing that uplifted my spirit, yet at the same time was a very visceral experience where you lose all sense of deportment and start jiggling around like a child possessed.
Purity and decency in country music just won a big battle, as Trace Adkins’ follow up to “Honky Tonk Badanka Donk” called “Brown Chicken Brown Cow” has been summarily defeated, stalling at #39 in the Billboard country charts, despite a top-level media push and a major music video. Trace Adkins may be dumb, but he’s not stupid, and gave the epitaph himself as an apology to radio.
Of course, not every one can be here, but I will be, and leading up to SXSW, I will be doing my best to get everyone ready for the big shindig, including everyone that cannot attend. As I prepare for it, cover it, and then wrap it up, I’ll do my best to encapsulate the experience for everyone, and through articles, pictures, videos, audio, and interviews, help you live the experience vicariously through me, and through osmosis hopefully turn you on to some great music.
That’s right folks. On the weakness of the universally-panned and box office flopping movie “Country Strong”, Gweyneth Paltrow has decided to “Go Country”, openly shopping for record labels. Paltrow played a post-reheb pop country starlet in the movie, and has performed the title track “Country Strong” at award shows.
I really want to like Hayes Carll…People like to compare him to Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt and Tom Waits. But in the end, though he’s a good songwriter, he’s not a great one, and the overselling and mischaracterizing of his music has led to some unnecessary criticism, and a missing of the point that his music is fun, and meant to be enjoyed.
As if Nashville needed anything else to be more like the Hollywood of the South, celebrity news outfit TMZ set up shop in the Music City this week, specifically on lower Broadway. “I wanted to get a new batch of stars,” explained Harvey Levin on the show that originally aired Friday, 3-4-11. But instead of getting “tim, Faith, Dolly, and Carrie,” they got the barely-known but boysterous Bridgette Tatum, and “Slim Chance…
In an effort to stay behind the curve of the massive devolution in social networking and information dissemination that has plagued music over the past few years, Saving Country Music has set up and old fashioned email list/newsletter sign up, so that people that are not on Twitter and/or Facebook can still stay in touch with the website.
A couple big bits of news have just oozed out of the deep cracker swap of interior Florida like Jed Clampett’s bubblin’ crude. The first is that up and coming one man band “Lone Wolf”, who was heard first right here on Saving Country Music’s SCM LIVE on Reverend Nix’s “Mojo Medicine Show” has announced his debut album, and Lowebow Fest will be broadcast in its entirety on SCM LIVE!
Adam Lee likes to drink, and then write songs and sing about it with a voice somewhere near the slickness of Dale Watson, that can also limbo down looowww like Junior Brown, all while holding himself like a slightly plumper version of Pokey LaFarge. You may get pulled in the door with the voice, but you will stick around for the songwriting. Though the theme is one (drinking), the witty lines and turns and stories are many, and the quality stays top shelf throughout the album.
I’m not giving any answers here, only questions and concerns. Not criticisms, just observations. I have severe, deep loyalty to Hank III, but I am loyal to the music above any man. As inexplicable as it is to think that Shooter Jennings has now taken the helm from Hank III in the effort to help highly-talented up and coming country bands, it is also undeniable.
Rachel Brooke’s new album Down In The Barnyard has been creating a lot of buzz lately, and on Wednesday she talked with Jashie P of Outlaw Radio Chicago about the album, her upcoming tour with Those Poor Bastards, a proposed 7-inch release on Farmageddon Records, and how Shooter Jennings is helping her with his “XXX” movement.
Caleb Klauder has been a well-kept secret of the Pacific Northwest for too damn long my friends. His latest album Western Country proves why. Some may dub him the Wayne Hancock of the West, revitalizing the classic sound without mimicking or mocking it, but his star is bright enough to burn outside the confines of any region.
Gas prices are expected to reach a national average of $5 per gallon by mid-summer. Even at $3.25 (which is what I paid this morning), it’s still hard. As my band budgeted this last tour we got hit by it. You work out your estimated gas cost, overestimate a bit and hope nothing on the van breaks so you come out a little ahead. Of course, that didn’t happen this time as gas prices shifted throughout the week…
Saving Country Music has moles in every one of Nashville’s major labels, and apparently a PROMINENT, WELL KNOWN NASHVILLE LABEL was about to launch another daddy/daughter duo cut in the same mold as Billy Ray and Miley. As the idea was presented to me, it was to be, “a vast, multi-level, multi-platform, cross market super franchise with the hopes of putting the label on solid ground…
Yes Spring is beginning to sprung, in some places at least, and as highways are reopened and paroles lifted, the great mass of musicians get ready once again to hit the open road. Of greatest importance to Saving Country Music, this includes the 2010 Album of the Year winner Hellbound Glory, and fast-rising neo-traditionalist Lucky Tubb & his Modern Day Troubadours. Full tours have just been announced from Road Bound Booking (see dates below), as well as additional dates for Wayne “The Train” Hancock & Bob Wayne. (See full Road Bound Booking calendar).
Rachel Brooke’s Down In The Barnyard was one of my most-anticipated releases for 2011. Then again 2011, especially early, has been full of anticipated releases that have been either disappointments in one way or another, or difficult to wholly appreciate because they’re full of previously-released material. Luckily, Down In The Barnyard delivers.
That’s right folks, THIS SUNDAY, 2-20-2011, none other than Wayne “The Train” Hancock will be on Saving Country Music’s live streaming channel, aka SCM LIVE, for a streaming video concert, with his full touring band at 6 PM Central! This is a special edition of Jashie P’s Outlaw Radio, and it will be coming LIVE from Chicago, IL.
I’ll level with you folks. I do not like tribute albums. At all. Any of them. Period. No matter who the albums are in tribute to, or who is doing the tributing. I’m not going to give some long-winded intellectual treatise about why, I will fully admit it simply comes down to taste. They are just not my speed. Chide me all you want, I probably deserve it.
I know I didn’t make a list of candidates for some stupid “Artist of the Year” like I did for Album of the Year or Song of the Year for 2010. I know I didn’t even announce that there would be an Artist of the year for 2010, and up until a few days ago, the idea of doing it didn’t even cross my mind. But that is what is great about having your own website, you can do whatever the hell you want.
During last week’s Super Bowl, one of the most gut-stirring commercials featured rapper Eminem in a spot for Chrysler, showing solidarity with the embattled city of Detroit which has taken the brunt of the economic downturn over the past few years, and by proxy has become the brunt of jokes that many times unfairly portray the hard work and strength that has come out of that city and its people.
In a few recent interviews, Justin Townes Earle has let slide some tidbits about big plans for the upcoming year. It was just announced today that he would be playing The Nelsonville Music Festival in the middle of May, and Bonnaroo in June, but sometime afterward he will be heading to the old continent to make some new music inspired by Memphis.
As the name implies, Hillgrass Bluebilly Records defines the nexus of where hillbilly, country, bluegrass, and blues meet. This rich and diverse environment that has been created in the independent/underground music world embodies all roots music as unified expressions of purity and soul, regardless of the origins. Keith Mallette and co-founder Ryan Tackett have created a burgeoning homespun record label that is getting…
