The release of the Rodeo Houston main stage lineup is always a highly-anticipated event in Texas and beyond, and this year Oklahoma’s Turnpike Troubadours have earned an opportunity to play on arguably the biggest stage in Texas, and native Texan Kacey Musgraves has been selected to open the rodeo in 2019.
The Turnpike Troubadours never started out to be some huge band. The best never do. This wasn’t a business venture for these boys. This was a bunch of corn fed Oklahomans from Tahlequah getting together to pick a few tunes for fun, eventually inviting their friends and family over to listen, then venturing out to play a few bars.
It’s not exclusively the music from our favorite artists that inspires us. It’s how they’re gifted with the tenacity to pursue their dreams fearlessly, and with a willingness to sacrifice we all wish we had, or maybe we did have at one time before life got in the way. But they don’t let life get in the way. They get in the way of life.
The day after the Turnpike Troubadours canceled an appearance at the Centurlink Center in Bossier City, Louisiana with Stoney LaRue last minute for undisclosed reasons, the Oklahoma-based band has now canceled a scheduled appearance in Corpus Christi, Texas at the Concrete Street Amphitheater for October 27th.
A concert scheduled to occur at the Centurylink Center in Bossier City, Louisiana Friday evening (10-26) featuring the Turnpike Troubadours and Stoney LaRue was canceled unexpectedly at the last minute for undisclosed reasons.
All is well in Oklahoma. Those are the reports from Saturday night’s (9-22) appearance by powerhouse Red Dirt band the Turnpike Troubadours after they took the stage at the Medicine Stone Festival in their hometown of Talequah, Oklahoma. After a series of canceled shows due to kidney stones….
The Turnpike Troubadours have canceled yet another round of shows affecting performances in late August and up to their appearance at the Medicine Stone Festival on September 21st, which is still on. Their show Thursday night (8-30) at the Beaumont Event and Concert Hall in Wayne, Nebraska was canceled Thursday afternoon.
Oklahoma’s Turnpike Troubadours were forced to cancel their appearance Sunday night (8-26) at the Fayetteville Roots Festival after frontman Evan Felker was deemed too ill to perform. The cancellation comes after the band canceled their final appearances on the Miranda Lambert and Little Big Town “Bandwagon Tour.”
Texas music singer, songwriter, spirit animal, and general badass woman Jamie Lin Wilson has announced her latest album ‘Jumping Over Rocks.’ Her follow up to 2015’s ‘Holidays and Wedding Rings,’ it comes at a time when Texas music is looking for headliner-caliber women, and looking in the direction of Jamie Lin.
Artists give greatly of their personal lives to entertain us. The least we can do is not use their personal lives as our entertainment. The story of how the Evan Felker and Miranda Lambert relationship became the worst kept secret in Texas music, and how when it broke, the celebrity gossip rags got it all wrong.
When the topic of discussion turns to legacy alt-country bands, it’s easy for the Old 97’s to get left out of the mix, and unfairly so. Since their epicenter revolves around Dallas, and not Austin, Nashville, or Los Angeles, it seems like they’re always a little more out-of-sight, out-of-mind than their mammoth output and legacy deserves.
Before the accolades start to feel like platitudes, and the reasons become excuses, the Turnpike Troubadours should find their place in the national narrative. Because country music needs them. The Turnpike Troubadours are the band for right here, right now, delivering everything you want, saddled by nothing you don’t need.
Steel guitar and accordion have always had their place in the sound of the Turnpike Troubadours, even if they weren’t featured full time. When fleshing out songs in the studio, or when lead guitarist Ryan Engleman started playing some songs behind the steel rig a few years ago, it added another dimension and dynamic to […]
In the first song released from the Troubadours’ upcoming album A Long Way From Your Heart out October 20th, a familiar female protagonist for many Turnpike Troubadours fans re-emerges. “Lorrie,” who has now made an appearance in numerous Turnpike songs, becomes the heroine of “The Housfire.”
For six years straight, the Turnpike Troubadours have celebrated a self-appointed holidays each Spring called Dia Del Gallo at the historic Floore’s Country Store on the outskirts of San Antonio. The city has always been a crossroads of cultures, and the rooster (“gallo” in Spanish) has always been the band’s official mascot.
From California to Brooklyn, to the deep South and interior West, Oklahoma’s Turnpike Troubadours will be embarking on an extensive U.S. tour starting March 30th in Baton Rouge, and ending in August at the Braun Brothers Reunion in Idaho. 39 dates in all will be encompassed in the tour over the next six months.
Turnpike Troubadours frontman Evan Felker is one of the most respected songwriters in Texas Country/Red Dirt and beyond, including just having his song “The Bird Watchers” named Saving Country Music’s Song of the Year for 2015. But after numerous drunken performances, some fans are in an uproar, while others are reaching out with sympathy and concern for the songwriter.
When it comes to picking the “best” songs from a given time period, it’s a much more subjective chore than selecting the best albums or the best artists. Our relationship with songs is just so much more intimate. The emotions songs can touch tend to range so much farther on the spectrum. To discover a song that really touches you, it’s not just dependent on the songwriter to write and perform a compelling tune.
Being willing to go where a song takes you is the challenge in the heart of every music lover. Hopefully one of these songs released in 2015 will take you some place you want to be, or somewhere you’ve never been before. These songs were selected on their own merit, not from the strength of the artist or album from where they came.
‘Things That Can’t Be Undone’ is one of those albums you ultimately enjoy, but you may have initial reservations about, or maybe even concerns over, or downright complaints about for some listeners because it is full of unexpected curve balls. This album is not like anything Corb has ever released before. Pairing up with Corb is producer extraordinaire and the man of the hour in Americana Dave Cobb.
That’s the thing about the Turnpike Troubadours: they’ve exuded a patience and steadiness that has put them steadfastly in touch with the underlying spirit of country music. If they wanted to pivot just slightly and go some big rock route, they could blow up huge. But they didn’t and they don’t ,and they still blew up huge. This isn’t old country. This is new country, only the roots are still attached, and the branches fan out wide.
Time was when the Turnpike Troubadours were just hoping to garner enough of a following so they could play historic venues like Cain’s Ballroom or Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, TX. Now they’re facing the reality that they may just be too big to play these historic spaces anymore except as a nostalgic anomaly. They required a three-night residency at the “Oldest Dance Hall in Texas” to accommodate all the comers.
Raleigh, North Carolina-based country rock band American Aquarium, and specifically their frontman, singer, and principal songwriter BJ Barham have been known to twist off about the state of country music upon occasion, both online and on stage. Such was the case on Tuesday (10-28) when the band reminisced about the time one of today’s biggest pop country acts actually opened for them.
As the lives of most songwriters go, John Fullbright has lived a charmed one for sure. His debut studio release, 2012’s “From The Ground Up” found its way to the very highest reaches of industry accolades when it was nominated for Best Americana Album at the 55th Grammy Awards, and he seemed to be quickly anointed as a songwriting golden boy out of the gate.