50 Years Ago: David Allan Coe Records the “Perfect Country & Western Song”
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We all know what the perfect country & western song is, because David Allan Coe told us what it is. He also told us why it was the perfect country & western song, and who wrote it. There’s no reason to debate…
Jason Eady’s “AM Country Heaven” Is Country Music
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What do we mean when we say “country” music? Well take a listen to Mississippi native and Texas transplant Jason Eady’s new album AM Country Heaven, and that should give you the strongest of all possible clues. And what do people mean when they say “Texas” country? This album isn’t a bad example of that either. Where I distance from a lot of other music writers is in the project’s originality.
Sunday Valley Becomes ‘Sturgill Simpson & High Top Mountain Boys’
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Sturgill Simpson, the dynamic force behind the band Sunday Valley, who is on the tail end of completing what Sturgill hopes to be his breakthrough album, has decided to go with a name change to “Sturgill Simpson & The High Top Mountain Boys” out of respect to the side players who are no longer with the band.
The Brotherhood Between Hank3 and Marty Stuart
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They say it’s a shame you can’t pick your family like you can pick your friends, but who would have ever picked the hellraising Hank Williams III and the holy cross-clad Marty Stuart to be buddies. But that’s exactly what they have been for years now, and the relationship has resulted in in some great music for the fans of both men.
Luke Bryan’s Tailgates & Tanlines (Review & Roast)
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Did you ever wonder what it would sound like if a performing artist with absolutely no qualms or reservations spread their arms wide in a succumbing posture and completely forfeited their Will to a record label saying, “Okay Music Row, do your worst! We’ll that is exactly what you get with Luke Bryan and his gawd awful album Tailgates and Tanlines.
Thank God For Marty Stuart (Nashville Vol. 1 Review)
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Marty Stuart is on an amazing roll ladies and gentlemen. What he’s doing right now with lead guitar player “Uncle” Kenny Vaughan and The Fabulous Superlatives is stuff that legends are made of. You know those periods in an artists’ career that you look back on like they can’t do wrong, churning out amazing songs and albums one after another?
“Go Ready” Bands in Country Music Right Now
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Hollywood seems obsessed with finding talent among the masses with their silly reality show contests like American Idol and The Voice, when in reality there’s a boatload of talent just sitting there waiting to be discovered right under their surgically-crafted, cosmetically-sculptured noses. So here’s a list of some bands that are go ready, right now, no excuses.
Axl Rose Blowup Shows Importance of Hall of Fame Purity
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In the end, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame isn’t illegitimate because of who has been inducted into their institution, it’s illegitimate because it is an institution, formed around a genre of music whose roots are in rebelling against institutions. Conversely, where the Rock & Roll HOF found its fundamental weakness is where the Country Music HOF finds its strength.
Album Review – Lone Wolf OMB “A Walk in My Pause”
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Katy bar the door and baton down the hatches folks because Lone Wolf, the Italian, trilingual, pizza spinning, gator wrestling, globe trotting, banjo plucking, banjo building, wild-assed Floridian from up North via Costa Rica has a new album headed your way. Warn the neighbors downstairs, cause it’s about to get loud and feet will be stomping!
TNN – The Nashville Network to Return – Updated
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The fight to preserve classic country and present it to a new generation of fans may just have become a lot easier. After 12 years off the air, the original TNN, “The Nashville Network” has just announced it is coming back this summer, and is committed to “true country music.” TNN ran for 17 years from 1983 to 2000 until Viacom morphed it into Spike, leaving many traditional and classic country fans underserved.
Record Store Day 2012 Country Music Field Guide
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This Saturday, April 21st with be the 2012 installment of Record Store Day, the annual event started in 2007 to help the struggling independent record store. 2012 will go down as the year when country came busting through the Record Store Day scene with full representation, with so many projects being released taking stock of it all can be dizzying. So here is your 2012 Country Music Record Store Day Field Guide.
Joey Allcorn: No Consent on Hank3’s “Long Gone Daddy”
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Today is the released date of Long Gone Daddy, an album Curb Records is releasing that contains outtakes from early in Hank Williams III’s career when he was under contract with the label. Most of the material on the album has been released previously. according to a press release released today by Allcorn, he had no more consent from Curb to release his song “This Ain’t Montgomery” than Hank3 did.
Progress vs. Traditionalism in Country Music
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The war vs. pop influences and progress in country music, and the purity yearned for by the traditional elements of the genre is almost as old as the genre itself. In an attempt to power through the rhetoric, here is a cool-headed attempt to explain some of the differences between the traditional and mainstream mindsets.