The breakup rumors are untrue, but the upcoming touring commitments by the Turnpike Troubadours will not be met, and the band has announced they are going on an indefinite hiatus as frontman Evan Felker continues to battle through personal issues that have resulted in numerous cancelled performances.
Artists, fans, and independent music industry will come together once again in Nashville this September for AmericanaFest. Part music conference, part fan festival, it combines scores of venues across Nashville for hundreds of performances and showcases. The 20th Annual festival will include some 300 total performers.
If you’re a fan of old time music, then you’re a fan of Leon Redbone. The last of the pure Vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley performers who mixed together blues, ragtime, jazz, and other roots styles that would have fit perfectly on the early vestiges of the Grand Ole Opry stage, he was a living, breathing, musical preservationist.
You’ll have to wait all the way until September 27th to hear Jon Pardi’s new record “Heartache Medication” in its entirety. But we now have the track list, cover art, and songwriting contributors for the new record, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff to unpack.
It wasn’t just your average Grand Ole Opry presentation Tuesday night (5-28). When you saw country traditionalist Kelsey Waldon was scheduled to perform in the same segment as John Prine, and that Sturgill Simpson was given his own extended set to close out the show, you had a sense something special was in the air.
“I don’t want to put out an album. I really don’t,” Blake Shelton says. “I’m sure that at some point my record company people are going to pressure me into it, but as of now, I’m not putting out an album this year. I know that.” According to Shelton, he didn’t even want to record “God’s Country,” or go into the studio at all.
It’s honky tonk and heartbreakers coming at you hard and heavy in the latest additions to the Saving Country Music Top 25 Playlist. Charlie Marie and “Rodeo” don’t relinquish the top spot, but nipping at her heels is Tyler Childers with his much-anticipated lead single off his upcoming new album.
Shane Morris—the former Sony music employee who became a national media celebrity and Twitter star after supposedly exposing the systemic racism in country music—has just exposed himself as a serial liar. Subsequently, his Twitter account has been either been deleted or shut down by the the social network.
Mere hours ahead of a scheduled appearance at the White Oak Music Hall in Houston, Texas Friday night (5-24), the Turnpike Troubadours have canceled the performance, their other performances this weekend, and perhaps all future performances, as the future of the band is left uncertain in a troubling statement by the band.
Information is still scant to come by, and it is still very early in the process, but the word has come down to Saving Country Music headquarters for fans of surging independent country star Cody Jinks to “expect the unexpected” when it comes to how Texas native’s new album will be released.
Ever since the tragic health issues of Randy Travis took his Hall of Fame voice from us prematurely in 2013, it’s been a struggle to get by without any new music from the country legend. But unexpectedly and with no fanfare, a brand new song from Randy has surfaced. Called “One In a Row,” it comes from the archives of Warner Music.
Hank Williams Jr. is on the search for a missing family heirloom in the form of a Remington Model 11/48 16-gauge shotgun. “Growing up, I spent a lot of time in South Alabama with my Granddad Sheppard. Now I’m looking for his shotgun,” Hank Jr. says. “I want to pass that old Remington down to my children and grandchildren.”
If you want to voluntarily succumb to some culture shock and the strange clashing of two worlds, then try on for size pop star Selena Gomez buying a Sturgill Simpson CD from a local store amid an impending zombie invasion. What’s this all about? The scenario comes from the twisted mind of director Jim Jarmusch.
Featuring three days of live performances, local organizers didn’t take their chances booking expensive mainstream names with dodgy talent and tired acts. Instead the festival is doing what many regional festivals all around the country are doing, which is drawing their entertainment from the riches of the Texas and Red Dirt.
New music is coming from traditional-leaning mainstream country artist Jon Pardi, and he promises it will be loaded with fiddles and steel guitar, and exactly what country music’s twang lovers crave. “When I wrote that song, I knew the fiddle was going to count it off and we’re going to have a fiddle intro…”
The tour bus of country star Travis Tritt was involved in a fatality accident late early Saturday morning (5-18) as he was leaving a performance at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina’s House of Blues. Neither Travis Tritt, nor anyone on the bus was injured, and the accident was not the bus driver’s fault. However two people died.
If you have a hankering for Hank and haven’t received your fill of music from the Hillbilly Shakespeare over the years, you’re in luck. BMG is getting ready to release a rare collection of Hank Williams archive material made in October of 1949 called “The Complete Health & Happiness Recordings.”
Independent country singer and songwriter Michaela Anne has singed to North Carolina’s Yep Roc Records, and will be readying the release of a new album soon. The well-respected Nashville-based performer has regularly appeared on stage with artists such as JP Harris and Sam Outlaw, while forging her own critically-revered career.
A new biopic film about one of country music’s most interesting, iconic, influential, and troubled acts is being developed. Real life best friends Ethan Hawke and Alessandro Nivola are teaming up to play Charlie and Ira Louvin, known collectively as The Louvin Brothers, in a film adaptation of Charlie Louvin’s famous account, “Satan Is Real.”
Tyler Childers has just singed to Sony’s RCA Records in a partnership with his own imprint called Hickman Holler, and will be releasing his latest record called Country Squier on August 2nd. Along with the new album, Tyler Childers has announced a bunch of new tour dates dubbed the “Country Squier Run.”
Kentucky-born resurgent country artist and fast-rising star Tyler Childers is now a major label country artist. As first reported by Saving Country Music on Wednesday (5-16), and made official during a video premier Thursday, Tyler Childers is the newest signee to RCA Records, a division of Sony. He will release “Country Squier” through the label.
You gotta love when one of your favorite music artists starts massively screwing with you head with cryptic verbiage and imagery, making you rack your brand about what it might be all about. These days this usually means new music or some other big development is on the way, and that’s what fans of Tyler Childers are hoping for.
The Americana Music Association has announced the 2019 nominees for their annual Americana Music Awards to be held this September at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. In a video hosted by The Milk Carton Kids taped at Soundcheck Nashville on Tuesday, May 14th, four nominees in six categories were unveiled.
Fans of country music most all recognize the name of Bob Wills as the King of Western Swing. But if you’re listening to the music of Bob Wills, it’s often Leon Rausch you hear singing. A fixture of Western Swing for some 60 years and known as “The Voice of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys,” Leon Rausch has passed away.