Hailing from Castlewood, VA in the heart of Appalachia, the five-piece 49 Winchester serves it up greasy, whether it’s Southern fried rock, honky tonk country, sentimental moments tickling the fringes of Americana, or a version of soul that takes all of those influences and stews them.
You can try to imbibe your recordings with the influence of country royalty, or you can just invite them into the studio to record with you, which is what Amber Digby does on this new record, cutting duets with the likes of Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, the late great Johnny Bush, and Vince Gill among others.
In this new album, Sturgill Simpson isn’t just fulfilling a promise to fans to cut a bluegrass record, he’s finding and settling into the next phase of his career, which is as a full-blown bluegrass musician. Simpson saved his most personal songs for ‘Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 2 (The Cowboy Arms Sessions).’
Though it may be daunting to navigate with so many releases, Saving Country Music is here for you, and with so many releases, 2020 is also the first year you can compile a full-fledged Christmas playlist entirely of newly-released songs from the country world.
We’ve run down the Album of the Year Nominees for 2020, as well as the Song of the Year nominees, and an Essential Albums list is also coming together. But since the mainstream of country isn’t always well-represented on these lists, let’s look back on some of those best albums.
Perfectly inappropriate for the holiday season, this three-piece band wastes their otherwise great musical talent on bull$hit country songs about how disgusting the human body is, and a singlewide full of sisterwives turning the tables on their suitor. It’s immature, ridiculous, and extremely entertaining.
A Saving Country Music ‘Song of the Year’ nominee is not just your favorite ditty that gets stuck in your head. These are songs that have the power to change hearts and change lives, open you up new ideas or ways of thinking, or unlock memories or emotions you haven’t felt in years.
Divorce and country music go together like peanut butter and jelly. The “Big D” is as fundamental to country music as steel guitar. And Kentucky songwriter Brit Taylor is here to speak about her own experiences with irreconcilable differences in her debut album called “Real Me.”
Adding to his arsenal of studio projects, Cody Jinks unleashes his first proper concert album called Red Rocks Live, recorded professionally at the legendary venue of the same name situated between the painted boulders of picturesque Colorado. A sweeping work of 23 songs…
2020 has been a bad year for many things, but a good year for country music albums. Accordingly, the nominees for Saving Country Music’s Album of the Year have been expanded to an unprecedented 12 entries to represent the best releases the year has to offer.
Zach Bryan is just touched in a way where poetic recitation or interpretation of events either real life or imaginative is so natural to him, the words flow like water, and order themselves in ways that are both intuitive and inviting to the audience. His effortlessness at writing songs is the envy of all writers.
Rodeo professionals and country songwriters have always enjoyed a close kinship, even if riding a bull or roping a calf, and crafting the perfect country song may not seem like similar skill sets, or two sides of the same coin. Two-time AQHA World Champion Roper Paul Bogart knows this all too well.
As good as Kentucky has been over the last few years birthing great music, apparently it’s still been holding out on us, at least when it comes to Jordan Allen and the Bellwethers. Consider it Southern rock, with the latitude to slip in a few country songs.
New for 2020, Kentucky singer songwriter Justin Wells has released the album The United State. Ambitious and involved, Wells himself says the album “is a life, from before birth til after death. The songs are a timeline. I’m somewhere on it. Every one of you are somewhere on it.”
It’s not that ‘Fun’ isn’t without it’s moments. But Garth Brooks is too much of a cheeseball, and too surrounded by yes men to be given the reigns to produce his own stuff. Or what you get is a record like ‘Fun.’
Some of the best Miranda Lambert songs can be found on the stuff she does outside of her regular album cycles. A song about how it’s often our heartbreak and failures that lead to the insight and inspiration that becomes our greatest triumphs, “Champion” is a song of perseverance.
From growling tracks to get your blood pumping, to some of the easiest country songs to ease into, to songs written with such searing insight you’ll be squeezing back tears, ‘Black Cats and Crows’ may have been inspired by bad luck and worse decisions, but it results in immense measures of good fortune for listeners.
More than anything else, it’s the songs on Doug Supernaw’s debut album ‘Red and Rio Grande’ that makes it to hold up so well now 27 years later. Though Doug only wrote or co-wrote four of the songs, he sure knew how to pick ’em, and some of them went on to be the pick of the litter for early 90’s country.
Chris Stapleton has always been the most unlikely of superstars. Slightly overweight 36-year-olds with beards and a burly countenance aren’t supposed to be the beneficiaries of the confluence of positive circumstances that powered Stapleton so high into the stratosphere of country music, he’s transcended the genre.
When rattling off a list of the most hard charging, unapologetic honky-tonk Outlaw country bands out there who tour until it hurts, don’t know when to quit, and will kick your teeth in with their live show, The Piedmont Boys based out of South Carolina never receive their fair share of recognition.
Combining the splendid messiness of Lucinda Williams, the warrior poet heart of James McMurtry, the rock and roll abandon of east Nashville alley cat Lilly Hiatt, and enough grit and groove to make ol’ Ray Wylie Hubbard nod in approval, Becky Warren turns in a rough and tumble travelogue.
Whether you remember her from her days on Rounder Records as one of the premier vocalists in bluegrass, or if she’s just now raising a blip on your radar, Alecia Nugent and her new album ‘The Old Side of Town’ is worth bending your ear towards.
The Bloody Jug Band released their latest record ‘Stranded’ on Halloween, which is only appropriate for a band whose majority of material leans towards the macabre. But you can also overlook this band as just a horror gimmick if you’re not careful, which would be to your detriment.
The challenge of traditional country is how adhere to all those tried and true traditions, while also asserting something unique. Bringing an authentic Australian perspective to the music, James Ellis and the Jealous Guys inject a distinctive flavor.