How people feel about the Turnpike Troubadours at the moment depends a lot on who you speak to, and if they’ve been personally caught up in some of the recent cancellations. But when it comes to their fellow artists in the Texas/Red Dirt scene assembled at this week at Mile 0 Fest, it’s love, concern, and respect.
Texas music legend Charlie Robison will be making a rare public appearance since retiring from music in September of 2018 as part of a special tribute being put together at this week’s Mile 0 Fest in Key West, Florida. Mile 0 Fest also addresses the Turnpike Troubadours cancellation.
When you hear these songs and themes, and take into consideration the current events surrounding Brandon’s complications from heart surgery, it makes this effort nothing short of haunting. Most all of the songs of ‘Tail Lights in a Boomtown’ hold such a deeper meaning, you can’t help but be moved.
The Turnpike Troubadours were the headliners at Mile 0 Fest in Key West, Florida on Friday night (2-9), and despite putting on an top notch performance as usual, a half-pint visitor on the stage nearly stole the show, during a week that has seen many guest performers make their way on stage to sing each other’s songs.
The problem with the whole Texas Music/Texas Country/Red Dirt “scene” is just that—what to call it. Texas Country is not really Red Dirt, even though the two regularly get lazily lumped together. Texas Country and Texas Music are separate things as well, but once again get summarily bundled. Yet all of these things are intertwined.
For 21 years, The Americana Music Jam has assembled some of the finest talent in Texas music to raise funds for worthy causes. Co-sponsored by Gruene Hall, and hosted by KNBT 92.1 FM out of New Braunfels, this year proceeds went to benefit Hope Hospice and Communities in Schools of South Central Texas.
The Bowen Musicfest hosted by Texas music star Wade Bowen has just announced its 19th Annual, 2017 lineup, and it’s a doozy. Maybe the best yet. Folks will pack themselves into Indian Springs Park in Waco, TX on Sunday, June 4th for the festivities, all benefiting the Bowen Family Foundation.
You may not be comfortable with how exactly to define the quasi country, quasi-rock music that comes out of the Texas / Oklahoma region known as Red Dirt, but what you can be confident in is that it would never have come to life like it did without a man named Tom Skinner. Bass player, songwriter, and father of Red Dirt music Tom Skinner passed away Sunday evening, July 12th.
Who will be releasing new albums in 2015? What are some of the most-anticipated projects? What are the rumors swirling out there about new albums that may be coming down the pike? Here’s a rundown of upcoming projects from artists recommended by Saving Country Music that you can look forward to in 2015. Please feel free to leave your thoughts about what you’re excited about being released.
Ahead of this self-titled release, the buzz was immense. There was a sense this wasn’t going to be simply another Wade Bowen album—that his experiences of the last few years helped Wade see himself for who he really is, instead of who everyone else wants him to be. Two songs in, and this album already delivers on any promises and expectations preceding it.
Lone Star Music, the Texas music cornerstone that has such good taste and cool vibes that appreciation for it’s unique approach of putting the music first spreads well past the Texas border, has just announced the nominees for their 6th Annual Lone Star Music Awards, and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t hit the sweet spot in showcasing many of the artists that are helping to save country music.
“Some Old, Some New, Maybe a Cover or Two” feels like Canada taking a moment to reflect on his past, refocus on his roots, and ready himself for the future. This album is much more than just running through some old Ragweed material, a couple of Departed tunes, and a few of his favorite songs. There’s something unspoken between the tracks (in an album with a lot of speaking and stories)….
Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Seth James has announced today that he has decided to leave The Departed, a band he helped form with former members of Cross Canadian Ragweed Cody Canada and Jeremy Plato. He will continue to play with the band until his final show at the legendary Texas venue Gruene Hall on November 23rd.
JJ Cale passed away yesterday evening (7-26-13) from a heart attack. He was 74. His influence on music was great. His influence on country music was unfairly unheralded and understated, but important nonetheless. the first established country artist to really do country funk right was Waylon Jennings in 1974 with the song “Louisiana Women” by JJ Cale.
If Red Dirt spans a wide sonic palette that ranges from hard country to straight rock n’ roll—with alt-country, country rock, Southern rock, and even some country pop thrown in between—then Jason Boland is the hard-edged bookened defining Red Dirt’s country border. In other words, it is pretty difficult to be more country than Jason Boland and the Stragglers.
Texas music is becoming hard wired and institutionalized, and this creates a few game-changing, long-term effects on the overall country music landscape. It is offering a template to the rest of the music world, and not just country music, of how to regionalize and organize a group of like-minded musicians and fans together to where they’re not dependent on corporate America’s traditional musical industrial complex.
Well this was not what I was expecting. When comparing Adventus to the first Departed album This Is Indian Land, this album symbolizes a dramatic, wholesale shift to the rock world. In fact if there’s any other genres mixed in here, they would be blues, and especially funk. Adventus is much more Red Hot Chili Peppers than it is Red Dirt. At least in sonic style.
Diamonds & Gasoline has a lot of the common earmarks of a Red Dirt album, and a lot of a good freshman album, even though officially it is their 2nd release. I really like this album, but moreover, I really like their potential, and am excited to see what the Turnpike Troubadours have to offer in the future.
There is nothing I take more seriously than naming what I think is the best album of any calendar year. The Album of the Year offers a guidepost for future generations to find the best music that was forgotten by the mainstream, while at the same time being a current ambassador to the mainstream to illustrate what great music they are overlooking.
This is one of the funnest, freshest, well-written, well-produced albums to come out this year. There’s good songs, good performances, and it’s bold. While still sounding relevant and un-obscure, Cody and The Departed were able to stay out of the well-worn grooves that run like tired veins through so much of mainstream music.
We’ve been waiting for a legitimate, Larry Jon Wilson reissue for a long time, but fans of the crazy, punk-infused string band Larry & His Flask have been waiting for a full-on LP release from them for years as well, and finally got it today in the release of All That We Know in digital form, with CD’s to be ready in August.
When I first caught wind that a movie written by legendary Texas songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard was in the works, and that it starred Kris Kristofferson and Dwight Yoakam, my ears perked to say the least. But as the movie neared release, it was clear something about Last Rites of Ransom Pride was off. Information about the film was sketchy at best, and despite my best efforts to obtain more, emails and phone calls weren’t returned.