Album Review – Lainey Wilson’s “Whirlwind”
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The album captures some of Lainey Wilson’s most impassioned and soaring performances of her career. A lot of great songs and writing also grace these 14 tracks. It’s the production of Jay Joyce that’s disappointing.
Peewee Moore is “Making Sure The Story’s Being Told”
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These honky tonk albums are hard ones to make in 2012. Everyone else in country is trying to carve their niche, bending and blending genres and doing any manner of outlandish things to get folks to pay attention to them in a glutted music world. Meanwhile the charge of the honky tonk musician is to keep the traditions alive through purity.
Album Review – Rachel Brooke’s “A Killer’s Dream”
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Rachel Brooke is one of the few select artist with enough mustard to rise out of the ashes of the country music underground and become a force in the greater roots world. Like an early Emmylou Harris, the music industry should be shuttling her across the country to lend her singular vocal texture to other projects in between putting out excellent solo albums that time finds hard to forget.
2012 Saving Country Music Song of the Year Nominees
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Every year this list stirs a little controversy because people misunderstand that these are not supposed to be the songs you “like” the best, but instead is supposed to be compositions in a given year that have the most impact. They’re songs that make you change the way you see the world, or change the way you see yourself. It is reserved for those few compositions that have the ability to change lives and to change the world.
Defiant Images of Country Music Dissent
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The fight for the purity of country music is almost as old as the genre itself. The conflict between pop and traditionalism, and the fight for creative control for artists runs like a thread throughout country music’s history, defining it as much as the twang of a Telecaster, or the moan of a steel guitar. Here are some of the most iconic images of country music revolution, and the stories behind them.
2012 Saving Country Music Album of the Year Nominees
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2012 was a bumper crop year for great albums in the greater country music world, and that necessitates a bolstered lineup of candidates for Saving Country Music’s coveted Album of the Year. 7 total made the list, with others admittedly getting completely screwed by their absence. I already have a bead of sweat forming across my brow brought on by the impossible decision of who I’m supposed to pick off this list.
Once And For All, Does Taylor Swift Use Auto-Tune?
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Over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a topic more beset with assumption, conjecture, and sometimes, idiocracy. Whether Taylor Swift uses Auto-Tune in either the live or recorded formats is not an opinion. Either she does, or she doesn’t, and the evidence we have to make those conclusions in many cases is obvious.
Don Maddox to be Recognized on His 90th Birthday By Hometown
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Don Maddox, the last surviving member of the wildly-influential Maddox Brothers & Rose, will be recognized in his hometown of Ashland, Oregon for his 90th birthday at the Don Maddox Birthday Celebration on Saturday, December 8th. The Maddox Brothers & Rose are one of the most influential bands in the history of American music. They played shows with folks as far ranging as Ernest Tubb and Elvis Presley.
Ray Wylie Hubbard Writing & Recording w/ Ronnie Dunn
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Ray Wylie Hubbard and Ronnie Dunn wrote some songs together back in September, and has been in Austin where for the last few days, they’ve been recording with an all-star band of George Reiff, Rick Richards, Ian McLagan from Faces, Brad Rice formerly of Son Volt, and others. “Started recording in Austin yesterday,” Ronnie Dunn posted on Facebook.
Blues Review – Alive at the Deep Blues Fest
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Alive at the Deep Blues Fest is a full tilt listening experience. No tired, dragging renditions of “Mustang Sally” to be found here. Instead what you have is the raw, uncapped energy of true blues revitalization channeled through some of the strongest talent the roots world boasts. Deep Blues partnered with Alive Naturalsound Records to record the concert and showcase artists on Alive’s roster in a live context.
Hellbound Glory to Tour w/ Kid Rock on “Rebel Soul” Tour
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Reno, Nevada’s Hellbound Glory with be touring with Kid Rock on his “Rebel Soul” tour to transpire at the very start of 2013, trekking through the Midwest and South. Leroy Virgil, the frontman of Hellbound Glory is one of country music’s best kept secrets in regards to songwriting. The band first rubbed elbows with Kid Rock on his “Chillin The Most” cruise down in Florida last March.
Why Underground Country Music Is Dying (A Treatise)
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I have been struggling to write this article for almost two years, but have been putting it off because there’s some hard things to say, and I didn’t want to “talk down” a movement that was already trying to deal with pretty alarming trends. But I think that especially now, zooming out and trying to be honest and critical in a constructive way is important, because there is positively no doubt that underground country is dying.
What Happened to Respecting Women in Country Music?
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Somewhere in the last year or so, country music crossed that line from being the last bastion for respect of beautiful women in American popular culture, to hanging out in the gutter with the rest of the vermin, making videos of venereal-infused floozies dry humping flashy vehicles in the classic vein of tasteless, materialistic, shallow-minded rap imagery.