Mile 0 Fest 2025: Ground Zero for Big Moments

What happens at Mile 0 Fest in Key West doesn’t stay in Key West. It resonates throughout the Texas/ Red Dirt world, into Americana, and throughout independent country for the rest of the year.
What happens at Mile 0 Fest in Key West doesn’t stay in Key West. It resonates throughout the Texas/ Red Dirt world, into Americana, and throughout independent country for the rest of the year.
“This album is a mirror,” says Boland. “It’s a retrospective, a reflection of everywhere we’ve been and everything we’ve learned over the last 25 years on the road. These songs are about the journey. We were searching for something.”
This Rolling Stone list of the 25 Best Country Soul Albums has so many holes you could strain your spaghetti with it, while simultaneously including some titles that have no business being there.
The hits keep coming, and the Top 25 Playlist continues to be overloaded with songs that feel essential for the public to be heard. This latest update includes numerous songs that might go down as the best all year.
The purpose of this album is to dive head first into Eady’s Mississippi roots in a way that takes shape as serious grooves and shack shakers designed to get the soul singing and the limbs twitching.
Lets not overlook that a bunch of very cool and important artists all announced new albums this week in a cavalcade of titlesthat shouldn’t be allowed to slide under your radar.
Though you may not nerd out enough about country music to wonder how your favorite Texas/Red Dirt artists end up playing at your local watering hole or wind up on a festival lineup, it’s a very big part to how an artist or band either makes it breaks it in the music business.
It’s a great time for bluegrass, it’s a great time for traditional country, and it’s a great time for quality songwriting. Bluegrass duo Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley find the sweet spot between all three of these disciplines on their new album “Living In A Song.”
Mile 0 Fest has established itself as one of the premier destination events in all of country and roots music, especially if you’re into the Texas/Red Dirt side of things. Now after six years, Mile 0 Fest has its own traditions, it’s own nucleus of loyal patrons and regular performers, and a heap of fond memories.
In 2022, something happened at the Grand Ole Opry that is only fair to label as historic. More so than any other year in its nearly 100-year existence, the coveted Grand Ole Opry debut was doled out to deserving artists from across the panorama, checking off bucket list items, populating glowing resume points…
Those intimately familiar with the name Courtney Patton will need no coaxing to pay attention to a new album from her. No long-winded critical assessment is necessary, they pre-ordered this thing weeks ago, and much attention and love will be given to it for the weeks and months to come.
Things in country music are changing, and across the board, even at an old relic like the Grand Ole Opry. Of course, it’s days of launching stars overnight are long gone. But you ask any artist in country music, and they’ll tell you that making their Grand Ole Opry debut is a lifetime bucket list achievement.
There are now two consecutive country music festivals planned for Key West, Florida for the Winter of 2023: The 6th Annual Mile 0 Fest featuring Red Dirt, Texas, and Americana, and the 90s-centric Key Western Festival, happening the very next week.
Based in Texas, but affecting audiences well beyond, the songwriting of Courtney Patton is cherished among many distinguishing and attentive listeners for the poetry and insight it contains, and Courtney Patton’s often stunning delivery. She’s also revealed herself to be a badass boss lady.
The benchmarks a Song of the Year winner must meet, and the stress test it must endure is more strenuous than any other in music. We’re not looking for some infectious fanny shaker here, or even a song that might stir an emotional moment.
What is the litmus test for a Song of the Year nominee? Simply put, it’s something that very well might wet the eye. These are songs that have the power to change hearts and change lives, open you up new ideas or ways of thinking, or unlock memories or emotions you haven’t felt in years
It’s that time of year to once again commence a discussion about the best stuff released in country music. Excruciating work went into whittling the selections for Saving Country Music’s Album of the Year to 11 nominees, and even then it feels scandalous that still more weren’t selected.
Far and away, the best performance of the night was turned in by an artist entirely outside of the country music fold when Jennifer Hudson took the stage to sing Willie Nelson’s “Night Life,” leading into “You Are My Sunshine,” with assistance from Chris Stapleton on guitar.
The listening room saying “Shut up and listen” was coined for guys like Jason Eady. It would be a cardinal sin to sully a performance from this sage of singer/songwriter country with something as meaningless as idle chatter. Jason Eady doesn’t deliver songs. He delivers sermons.
It’s the 4th of July weekend! Don’t risk tanking your festivities by turning on some terrible corporate country radio station. Take a listen through the Top 25 Playlist that’s just been reinforced with a bunch of great new tunes from a bunch of top independent country artists.
The places a song can take you, the realizations a song can impart, this is the reason we cherish music so much, and we cherish songs specifically as the kernel root of all musical experiences that we remember forever. These are the best country and roots songs of 2021 so far.
If there was a songwriter out there with the acumen and muster to bust through all the bleeding-heart platitudes and overwrought sentimentally that makes so many of these songs immediately disposable, it would be Jason Eady. That’s what he does with “French Summer Sun.”
The singing Texas troubadour, and the Godfather of the Sequestered Songwriters Jason Eady will be back with his eighth studio album called “To The Passage of Time.”It was produced by Jason Eady’s longtime friend Gordy Quist of Band of Heathens.
The Saving Country Music Top 25 Current Playlist is built to keep you informed on all the best songs and albums coming out right here, right now in country and roots music. It’s available on most all streaming formats. New songs have just been added.