Mountain Grass Unit Arrives in the Summer of 2025
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With lead guitar player Luke Black and mandolin player Drury Anderson graduating from the Berklee College of Music in May, this summer has become the moment for Mountain Grass Unit to take the full-time plunge.
Saving Country Music’s 2016 Song of the Year
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Every year, Saving Country Music goes through the exercise of choosing the “best” song in its humble estimation. In 2016, this winner happens to be a song about losing and defeat. A song like this is only made possible from the total collapse and unrelenting broken heart of a musician at the end of their rope.
So Now Alt-Country and Americana Are Part of the Alt-Right?
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These days, as country music continues to improve in the mainstream, and we’re seeing incredible support for independent country music like never before, one of the biggest issues emerging in country music is not bad artists making bad music. It is journalists and columnists of all people, who are using the forum of country music to forward political agendas.
Saving Country Music’s Essential Albums List for 2016
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Below you will find Saving Country Music’s 2016 Essential Albums List—this site’s most inclusive and complete list of recommended albums released in 2016. This year the list has been expanded to 60 albums, along with additional lists of positively-reviewed albums, and other albums that are currently on Saving Country Music’s radar.
Saving Country Music’s 2016 Album of the Year
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2016 was a difficult year to be a traditional country music fan in many respects, and not just from the death of so many legends. In independent circles, it was a year of having to settle for albums prefaced with explanations of why the artist decided to move away from their country influences, even if it was just slightly, or just on a temporary basis.
George Michael Is Gone, But His Butt Will Prevail and Outlive Us All
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For those who profess that it takes an army of songwriters, producers, programmers, and samples to make a hit record, let’s hold up George Michael’s ‘Faith’ as a prime example of why that mentality is folly, and the downfall of modern American anticlimactic pop music.
Album Review – Jerry Garcia’s Hart Valley Drifters in “Folk Time”
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You certainly can find better bluegrass albums released in 2016, but it might be hard to find one more remarkable or historically significant. For generations now, the true devotees of the Grateful Dead have known that Jerry Garcia’s passion for bluegrass, old time, and country music was much more than some simple lark or a passing era in the legendary jam band’s lineage.
‘Twas The Night Before Christmas (The Ballad of Bro Country)
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‘Twas the party before Christmas, when all through the home
One creature was dancing, on a truck covered with chrome;
The beer cans were stacked on the chimney with care,
In hopes that Luke Bryan soon would be there;
Your Favorite Music Artists Are Being Targeted by Counterfeit Merch Sellers
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Merchandise sales are the manna of the independent music world. With no disrespect to the musical efforts of your favorite artist, you can boil them down to glorified T-shirt salespeople in the way the lion’s share of their profits come from the merch table. It’s what puts gas in their tank and food on their table, and allows them to make a respectable living.
Randy Rogers Comes Full Circle with Purchase of Cheatham Street Warehouse
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You can put any concerns away that the historic Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos, TX will either be razed or turned into a Karaoke Bar anytime soon. Randy Rogers of The Randy Rogers Band has purchased the property from the heirs of the founder and owner of the building, Kent Finlay, who passed away in 2015.
No, The Randy Rogers Band is NOT Playing at Trump’s Presidential Inauguration
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Deep breaths everybody, deep breaths. You can put your pitchforks away. Yes, The Randy Rogers Band will be playing in Washington D.C. for a function that runs parallel with the Presidential inauguration in February, but it is a long-running event that’s been held since 1953 by the Texas State Society.
The Biggest Country Music Flops in 2016
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It was either feast or famine for country singles in 2016. As the rigged singles system that almost guarantees #1 songs for any releases from big-named artists metastasized at radio—creating an incredible volume of singles hitting #1 for a solitary week before immediately falling off a precipice—if a song happened to not fit into that rigged system…
Andrew Dorff Was The Kind of Songwriter Nashville Needed More Of (RIP)
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Andrew Dorff was the kind of mainstream country music songwriter Nashville needed more of—someone who wrote the sleeper hits of surprising depth and humanity compared to most radio singles, and the solid album cuts from mainstream artists you may otherwise write off.