Merle Haggard deserves credit for a lot. But who knew that late in his career when an aging Merle Haggard was in his swan song, he also played a pivotal role in the legacy of another Country Music Hall of Fame act: Brooks & Dunn.
What Brooks & Dunn fans really want to know is if or when the duo might be interested in releasing some legitimately new music. It’s been since 2007’s Cowboy Town that they did. Well, according to Kix Brooks…
Everybody wants to be 90s country these days, but nobody wants to live through an era without the wide proliferation of the internet, and when cell phones looked like carry-on luggage. But if you want the real stuff, you’re always best going directly to the source, like Ronnie Dunn.
90s country is back on the upswing, and either you can get your fix from some new performer who was still soiling their diapers or learning multiplication tables when Alan Jackson and Brooks & Dunn were dominating country radio, or you can go to the source.
You have to be happy with this class overall. Certainly, you can look over the elongated list of other potential inductees that grows even longer every year due to the Hall of Fame’s austere approach to induction, and do a healthy level of second guessing.
Garth Brooks is the latest high-profile country star to purchase property in Nashville’s Lower Broadway entertainment district with the intent of putting up a new multi-story bar and restaurant. Acquiring the three-story, 40,000 square foot property at 411 Broadway…
Brooks & Dunn will be the newest inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame in the Modern Era. This was the news coming out of the press conference held Monday morning (3-18) in the Hall of Fame rotunda in Nashville. Brooks & Dunn was a commercial powerhouse duo in the 90’s if there ever was one.
Don’t worry, there will be plenty of country artists from the early and late 90’s who we won’t retrospectively be praising as we get older and the music of today gets worse. But you’re short changing yourself as a country fan if you write off many of the big songs and early albums of Brooks & Dunn as forgettable fluff.
While nobody was paying attention, the Dickey Brothers of Cumulus Media added yet another tentacle to their increasingly tentacle-rich country music venture known as NASH. NASH TV boasts videos and programs from some of NASH radio’s biggest shows. Then you can get extremely niche-like with shows such as “Picks From The Sticks” and “HickXtreme.” Cue the incidental comedy.
NASH Icon, the partnership between Cumulus Media and Big Machine Label Group meant to give new life to older country stars, has its second signee. Martina McBride, rumored since the beginning of the new imprint to be a possible artist for the label, made it official on Tuesday (12-23). But there is a curious situation brewing between the label and another older star—Ronnie Dunn.
It looks like Hank Williams Jr. might be the next signee to the Cumulus Media / Big Machine Label Group joint venture known as NASH Icon meant to give new life to aging artists who’ve been passed over by mainstream country radio. In the midst of Hank’s ACCA performance, he switched over from a cowboy hat to a black hat with gold lettering that simply read “ICON” across the front.
CBS Evening News reporter Steve Hartman took a deeper look into how his two young kids were computing the lyrics of country songs in their developing brains as they sat and listened to popular country music in the family motor carriage. His conclusion? “I’ve got some sobering news — Nashville is alcohol-poisoning the minds of our young people,” he says in his report.
The only thing worse than a country music awards show is four of them. It feels like these annual earaches are multiplying like a pestilence in country music and the music world beyond, and now we have yet another machination of forced television pageantry to contend with. Say hello to the “American Country Countdown Awards”—the Busch League of country music award shows.
When the news broke last week that there would be yet another new country music awards show squeezing its way into the already-crowded TV event space, it stimulated a collective rolling of the eyes from many over-saturated music fans and industry types. Really, how many of these things do we need? Buried in the details however was the insight that the Awards wasn’t just the latest ploy….
What’s refreshing about “Bleed Red” is even though it has the epic, anthemic approach indicative of the flag-waving anthem, it is not about politics, or any polarizing subject at all. It’s about the opposite. It’s the antithesis of the awful, too-often called upon emotional-driven overballad, that doesn’t sacrifice the soul-stirring epicness that makes these type of songs the best reminders of why we love music.