Joshua Ray Walker Shares Great News About Cancer Diagnosis
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A miracle is what Dallas, TX-based singer/songwriter Joshua Ray Walker and his fans were hoping for. But no matter what you call it, Joshua Ray Walker is currently Cancer free, and we’ll take it.
Wade Bowen & Randy Rogers to Release “Hold My Beer”
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That’s right, the long-running legendary Texas country tour, and the long-anticipated album complimenting the collaboration is finally happening. Hold My Beer, a studio record featuring A-list Texas country talent Randy Rogers of The Randy Rogers Band and Wade Bowen trading licks back and forth will finally be released.
NASH Icon Signs Ronnie Dunn / Makes Big Network Move
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NASH Icon is ramping up for a big 2015, making some significant moves on Monday (1-12) to start the year where 2014 ended: stirring conversation about where country music is headed and potentially stimulating a format split that would see more older country music return to the airwaves en masse. The long rumored signing of Ronnie Dunn to the label has been officially announced.
ACM’s Present a Sausage Fest for 2015 New Artist Award
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The increasingly irrelevant Academy of Country Music Awards, or ACM’s, released their annual earache of ignoble pseudo-country performers known as the semi-final “New Artist” nominees this Monday, that spellbind any beholder with an even elementary understanding of the definitions of “New” and “Artist” as to how such names were populated.
Travis Tritt’s New Verse to “Country Ain’t Country” Criticizes CMT
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Many already regarded the Travis Tritt song “Country Ain’t Country” from his 2002 album Strong Enough as a slightly-veiled protest song preaching against the changes in the country genre, even though the actual lines of the song deal much more with wider reaching cultural and geographical issues. But apparently there’s an original verse that doesn’t appear in the recorded version that overtly criticized CMT.
Hillbilly Casino’s Geoff Firebaugh Talks Live Album & Lower Broadway
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One of the last remaining bands that still holds onto that spirit that revitalized Lower Broadway and still plays there on a regular basis is Hillbilly Casino. Nearing their 10-year anniversary, the band that can regularly be seen playing Layla’s Bluegrass Inn has released a live album recorded at the Exit Inn called “Live in the USA.” I spoke to the Hillbilly Casino bass player Geoff Firebaugh about the album and Lower Broadway.
Garth Brooks Falls in Tulsa, Again on Stage Conveyor Belts
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Luke Bryan, you officially have a rival for the clumsiest entertainer in country music. When we first heard of the return of Garth Brooks, we all wondered if he would ring up the score on the younger Bro-Country pups, but we didn’t know it would be from how many times he’s waxed on stage. Garth experienced a pretty serious fall during his Saturday, January 10th show.
Viral Mashup Exposes Silent Majority of Disgruntled Country Fans
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On Wednesday morning (1-7) when Saving Country Music received an unsolicited email from a “Sir Mashalot” touting a video that had been uploaded to YouTube back on November 4th of 2014, who knew that it would become the first country music viral sensation of the young, fertile year. Subsequently the video has gone über viral, racking up nearly 2.2 million views at the time of this post.
Song Review – Reba McEntire’s “Going Out Like That”
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“Going Out Like That” is not just another single. It symbolizes the very first song from the NASH Icon enterprise pairing Big Machine Records with Cumulus Media in an effort to revitalize overlooked legacy artists, and the first single from Reba McEntire in nearly four years. As the precursor to a planned 2015 album release, the single also may give us a glimpse into what we can expect from a revamped Reba.
Odie Blackmon Talks Teaching George Jones College Course
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Around the passing of The Possum in 2013, I remember the news of his widow Nancy setting up an endowment and scholarship fund for MTSU in the name of George Jones. What I didn’t know, and what has gone somewhat under-reported, is that the passing of George and the endowment encouraged the faculty of MTSU to enter a class on the life of George Jones into the school’s curriculum.
Party Down South’s Deadbeat Dad Josh Murray in Jail for Child Support
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So much for the lovable, huggable character that is portrayed on CMT’s flagship reality show Party Down South. Saving Country music is able to report that the large, Louise, Mississippi native famous for getting naked at a moment’s notice on the show is currently incarcerated in the Humphreys County, Mississippi jail for back owed child support to the tune of $14,000.
Mashup Illustrates How Many Country Hits Are The Same
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We complain all the time about how today’s popular country music pretty much all sounds the same, but is this really true from a technical standpoint? That is what one enterprising Audiophile and songwriter set out to illustrate by making a mashup of some of Bro-Country’s biggest singles over the last couple of years in a pretty mind-blowing and revealing video.
Saving Country Music’s 2014 Artist of the Year
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This isn’t going to be some long form praising of Sturgill Simpson’s work in 2014, or yet another rundown of his long list of successes last year. There’s already been plenty of that, arguably too much of it, and I am just as tired of writing about it as you are of reading of it. Yeah yeah, Sturgill Simpson’s great, but his name has become the independent country version of click bait.