Sturgill rescheduled the dates to make it up to the communities he missed because of the cancellation, including one of the few available dates in Charlottesville at The Jefferson Theater—the same night as 2015’s Americana Music Awards. Sturgill had a choice, and it couldn’t have been an easy one.
Welcome ladies and gentlemen to Saving Country Music’s 2015 Americana Music Awards LIVE blog! As the festivities stream live from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, we’ll tag along to leave our observations, keep up with the winners, discuss the performances, and share what happened with the folks who missed it.
Don Henley, the singer and drummer for the Eagles, will be releasing a country album called Cass County via Capitol Record—his first solo album in 15 years. This was the news coming out of an exclusive listening party held at the Ruby event space as part of this week’s CMA Fan Fest in Nashville. And don’t expect this to be an aging rocker looking for a second wind in country by chasing the current trends.
On Thursday afternoon via The Ford Theatre at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the Americana Music Association announced the nominees for the 2015 Americana Music Awards. Stugill Simpson, Shakey Graves, and Lucinda Williams lead the nominees, with all three receiving nods for Album, Song, and Artist recognition. Sturgill’s guitar player Laur Joamets also gets into the action with an Instrumentalist of the Year nomination.
Whether you have already purchased your tickets or are planning to soon, or you’re sitting back and laughing at the idea of a bunch of “Outlaws” setting sail in a luxury liner outbound for the Cayman Islands, don’t lie to yourself and say that this isn’t something that you wouldn’t love to participate in if you could swing it. Out at sea with some of your favorite country artists surrounded by the beauty of the Caribbean?
In the fall of 2012 when Ronnie Dunn (of Brooks & Dunn) was looking to write and record material for his upcoming album, he reached out to Texas music songwriting guru Ray Wylie Hubbard after falling in love with the gritty sound Hubbard imbibes on all his records. Dunn flew into Austin as Ray Wylie wrangled up an A-list of Austin musicians to to participate in a recording session.
Lucinda Williams is getting ready to release a double LP called Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone on September 30th through her new label Highway 30 Records on Thirty Tigers. Lucinda Williams stopped down to talk to Rolling Stone, and she had some interesting things to say when asked if she pays attention to mainstream country much these days.
Sunny Sweeney is an east Texas girl at her core, and no matter what Nashville does, it’s never possible to completely quiet those jangling spurs or smooth out that accent. She very much fits that mold of the Texas country artist that got big enough to be recognized by Music Row, but always felt just a little too authentic to do much more than experience that world from the outside looking in.
Old Crow Medicine Show’s new album Remedy is the first album the string band has released since officially minting a #1 song in the form of Darius Rucker’s take on “Wagon Wheel”, and the first as the freshest members of the prestigious Grand Ole Opry. 2013 was a big year for the buskers, and the band has gone from riding praise from Doc Watson and the kind mentoring from David Rawlings ….
In February it was announced that the the era-defining album “Wrecking Ball” released in 1995 by Emmylou Harris was getting the reissue treatment, with a remastering of the original album, a new disc of demos and outtakes, and a DVD delving into the making of the album, all set to be released on April 8th. You may wonder why this was the album picked out of the choir for a reissue, and why now.
2014 promises to be another great year for music, and the first part of the year might just be one of the busiest seasons for anticipated releases we have seen in quite a while. From a lost Johnny Cash album, to a new one from his daughter Rosanne, to Jason Eady, a big re-issue from Lucina Williams, and releases from Scott H. Biram and Robert Ellis, there’s enough here to get your music taste buds salivating.
Today the nominees for the 2012 Americana Music Awards were announced. What struck me as I watched the presentation was how overtly cliquish the Americana Music Association has become, or continues to be, as they narrowcast out awards to the same pool of networked-in, dramatically-familiar, and specifically-focused artists that all tend to know each other, and carry the same politics.
Alright, so we all had a good chuckle poking fun at the 6 Pop Country Archetypes, now let’s see what happens when I turn the poison pen towards the folks much more likely to frequent Saving Country Music; those folks that live on the fringes of the greater country music world.
The Rolling Stone has just reported that a long-rumored project pairing Bob Dylan and Jack White together to oversee the recording of an album of Hank Williams songs that were found without music in a briefcase will be released on October 4th. The title is The Lost Notebook of Hank Williams . It is being released on Dylan’s Egyptian Records imprint…
“Every great artist has had a place where their music could be birthed.” That quote from the new documentary Anderson Fair – For The Sake of The Song about a small, long-lived acoustic room in Houston puts into perspective how important the venue is to music more than any other I could procure. We talk […]
Some criticize that there’s not enough talk around here about the Texas music scene, and I couldn’t agree more. There’s some great music going on down there, and unfortunately I just don’t have the time to sink my teeth into it all. That was one reason I set up the Saving Country Music message board, […]
This blog may not be for everybody, because it’s gonna be a very long and very involved one. But for a while people have been asking for info and my comments on the subject. It’s taken a while for me to put it out because I want to get what facts there are straight, and […]