Williamson Branch is a bluegrass and country band from Nashville, and their 15-year-old fiddle and guitar player Melody Williamson recently wrote a song called “There’s No Country Here.” Despite her age, Music Row would be wise to remove themselves for their laundry list clatter and listen to what the future of country music has to say about where country music is headed.
Curb Records is releasing yet another album from Tim McGraw; an artist that hasn’t called Curb Records home officially for over 2 years. The album will be called Love Story and will feature Tim McGraw’s “12 biggest love songs,” two previously-unreleased recordings, and will be released exclusively through Wal-Mart on February 2nd, 2014.
Country music songwriter and performer Ray Lawrence Jr. who gained recognition when Hank Williams III included two of Ray’s songs on his 2011 album Ghost to a Ghost has a daughter who has been missing since November 23rd in the Phoenix area.
Mamie Warner, aka Mamie White, sister of Dancing Outlaw Jesco White, and one of the main characters in the 2009 Johnny Knoxville-produced film The Wild & Wonderful Whites of West Virginia has been arrested in Boone County on numerous charges. Mamie was taken into custody on November 8th and taken to the Southwestern Regional Jail in Holden, WV and placed on $25,000 bond.
The inaugural inductees to the Outlaw Music Hall of Fame set to open in the Spring of 2014 have been unveiled. In an event carried live during a 3-day concert in Altamont, TN, the 17 initial inductees were announced in two different categories: Pioneers/Innovators (Pre-1970), and Highwaymen (1970-1990). Along with the official inductees, the Outlaw Music Hall of Fame also announced Guardian Award winners.
Few things get people talking in the independent channels of country music like a Hank3 release. From his neotraditional days in the early 2000’s when he had traditionalists singing his praises, to his magnum opus Straight to Hell from 2006 that saw his punk and metal influences bleed over into a hard country approach, to his last few releases that have become a polarizing subject with many fans….
Hank3 is poised to release two new albums next week, and embark on an extended tour of Texas, the West Coast, and upper Midwest. Brothers of the 4X4 and A Fiendish Threat come on the heels of an extended touring hiatus after Hank3’s drummer Shawn McWilliams required shoulder surgery. Hank3 was gracious enough to sit down with us ahead of the tour and releases to talk about what fans can expect…
The last few weeks might go down in history as one of country music’s most feud-laden moments. Though country music feuding may be on a sharp rise here recently, it is not an uncommon or recent occurrence in country music by any stretch. Nothing gets folks talking like a good old artist on artist donnybrook. Here are some of the most infamous over the years.
In 2013, there is only one music artist who can say they’re officially banned for life from country music’s most storied institution: the Grand Ole Opry. No, it’s not David Allan Coe, Hank Williams III, or some other hothead, firebrand artist quick to call out the Opry and other mainstream country music institutions at any perceived slight. No, the offending party is none other than alt-country luminary Neko Case.
The underground country movement initially formed around the mid 90’s not because somebody launched a website or a record label. It wasn’t because of a festival or because someone came up with a special name for a new genre. It came from the songs artists were writing, recording, and performing; songs that spoke very deep to the hearts of hungry listeners.
Crazy Lonesome Blue comes at you with no frills, offering up a bevy of original songs, a few covers and traditionals, and an all-star cast comprising the Nightlifer’s lineup. It’d take a DNA test to convince me that Danny Kay isn’t a cousin of Lucky Tubb in the way his lonesome drawl with a rounded cadence really pulls the emotion out of the words to a song while pulling the listener’s ear right in.
Over the last few years, country fans have come to expect a mixed bag from Hank3, whose veered more towards punk and heavy metal as time has gone on. His first two albums became staples of the early 2000’s neo-traditionalist movement, while 2006’s “Straight to Hell” was the beginning of a much harder sound. Hank3 is calling his upcoming album “Brothers of the 4×4” a traditional country record.
We’ve been saying it all year—right now it is women taking the leadership role in trying help to save country music. But they’re not the only ones, and if you wanted to look for another significant segment of artists doing more help than harm to the genre, there’s no better place to look than north of the border. Here are six Canadian showing the type of creative leadership country music needs.
The long-rumored, long-anticipated Hank Williams III and David Allan Coe collaboration was a long time in the making and even longer coming. But it’s here, and though some may have been wishing for a few songs or even an entire album, clocking in at over 7 minutes, “The Outlaw Ways” will satiate your Hank3/David Allan Coe collaboration jones just fine.
Just announced, Hank Williams III’s next album will be called Brothers of the 4X4. The album will contain 16 tracks, and be released on Hank3’s own record label distributed by Megaforce Records. The release will also be accompanied by a “hellbilly/punk” album called A Fiendish Threat that will include 13 tracks.
Lonesome Wyatt is a pioneer of Gothic country with his band Those Poor Bastards, and one of the originators of underground country whose song “Pills I Took” was covered by Hank Williams III on his landmark album Straight to Hell, he is one of the few artists who will never be forgotten regardless of the long-term fortune of the underground country sub-genre.
Hank Williams III has been on extended touring hiatus, one of the longest of his career, as his drummer Shawn “McNasty” Williams had surgery to repair a rotator cuff, reattach his bicep tendon, and remove bone spurs. But the grandson of Hank Williams has apparently been using the time well, writing and recording a big chunk of new material.
Wayne Hancock has more handles than a chester drawers: The Train, The King Of Juke Joint Swing, The Father of Underground Country, The Viper of Melody. He deserves every single one of them, yet none of them nor all of them combined seem to do justice to the enjoyment and influence his music has dispensed over the years.
Like Chris Knight, Ray Lawrence Jr. is a simple man who has this sensational talent to be able to put defining moments of the human experience to words and music in a way that rekindles the feelings of those moments. Ray’s simplicity becomes his strength by imbibing his music with a blue collar, colloquial grace. Ray Lawrence Jr. is America’s local honky tonk singer.
The long-rumored, long-awaited collaboration between Hank Williams III and David Allan Coe may finally be in the offing. The song called “The Outlaw Way” was recorded early last year at Hank3’s home studio in east Nashville when David Allan Coe was in town. Hank3 first spoke about the collaboration in a live chat last February.
Mike Curb’s repressive stance towards artists and his sharky dealings with other labels is a given amongst the informed country music community, with his latest ploy being the release of a duets album from Tim McGraw two weeks before the former Curb artist is slated to make his debut on Big Machine Records. But Hank3 and Tim McGraw are just the tip of the iceberg.
If anybody asked me point blank, who is the artist that is most saving country music right now? I would answer without hesitation, “Marty Stuart.” Marty Stuart is the man. He breathes country music, and helps preserve it and pay it forward almost as if it was an involuntary action. He doesn’t know how to do anything different.
The King of Juke Joint Swing, The Viper of Melody, one Wayne “The Train” Hancock will be releasing his first album in nearly 3 years on February 26th called “Ride” through Bloodshot Records. And that’s not the only new Wayne Hancock album out. On the day after Christmas, Bloodshot Records released “Choice Cuts: Best of Wayne Hancock.”
As first reported here on Saving Country Music, Curb Records is releasing a new album from Hank Williams III that includes outtakes from his first two solo albums, Risin’ Outlaw from 1999, and Lovesick, Broke & Driftin’ from 2002. The album has now been made available for pre-order through Amazon and is entitled Long Gone Daddy. It will be released on April 17th, 2012.