We’d be lying if we didn’t say it’s been a tense couple weeks of nail biting and refreshing news feeds for many fans of Willie Nelson and country music. The 91-year-old was forced to cancel multiple shows.
It’s so easy to overlook what Lukas Nelson contributes because his career so far has been so unselfish. Same goes for his long-time backing band, Promise of the Real, originally formed in 2008.
Carefully curated like MerleFest and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, it features an eclectic lineup each year. It’s not unusual to find legends and veterans of the traditional bluegrass scene, the jamgrass scene, and younger acts.
2024 is shaping up to be a bumper crop year for incredible country songs, and ones coming from a wide array of performers in a myriad of different approaches to the country genre. Keeping your ear to the ground…
What started as a very exclusive gathering has become a world-class event with international interest due to the names that play and attend the event during Austin’s greater SXSW festivities. This was especially true in 2024.
When Kermit The Frog took the stage to sing “Rainbow Connection” with Willie Nelson to start off Willie’s set, it checked off a bucket list moment for the folks in Luck they never knew they had.
It was already unprecedented that Tyler Childers would even play an event as small as Luck to begin with. To see him perform in the tiny Luck, TX church (fire marshal capacity: 49) really is a sight to see.
“Trail of Flowers” will find the West Virginia songwriter and superlative live performer taking listeners on a fantastic journey through the familiar and surreal as she takes Appalachian music and instills it with a thrust of mirth and mystery.
Many Willie songs were sung, some legendary collaborations ensued, Miranda Lambert’s fringe was longer than Snoop Dogg’s spliff, and pound for pound, it was more entertaining than any country music awards show.
Not all of us will end up making it to 90. But we’re all the beneficiaries of the fact that Willie Nelson (almost) has. On April 29th, Willie will officially turn 90 years old, and on that day and the next one, a massive cavalcade of stars will converge on the Hollywood Bowl in California.
The 2022 Americana Music Awards transpired at the Ryman Auditorium Wednesday Night, September 14th, with Billy Strings, Brandi Carlile, Allison Russell, Sierra Ferrell, and The War and Treaty all walking away with big awards. There were also a few surprises.
By the time Willie Nelson lit into “On The Road Again,” he was in top form and didn’t want to stop. He ended up going beyond the time originally allotted for his set, of course finishing with a Gospel medley where numerous other performers.
Willie Nelson gives a lot of credit to his success to the fact that he’s been able to keep the same people around him for so long. The very first part of that family was Paul English. Paul’s skills as a manager made him a mainstay in Willie’s band all the way until he passed away.
A once-in-a-lifetime event happened on January 12th, 2019 when a wide-ranging assemblage of talent from country music and beyond came together at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville to pay tribute to Willie Nelson. Called ‘Willie: Life and Songs of an American Outlaw,’ it’s being released on CD and DVD.
This year the Luck Reunion had an incredible lineup. But like everything else, it has been cancelled due to the Coronavirus. Nonetheless, they will be celebrating Thursday (3-19) with a live streaming event showcasing many of the artists originally scheduled to perform, and a few surprises.
Ever since the Netflix series The Ranch debuted on April 1st, 2016, folks have wanted to get their hands on a copy of the new version of “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” which finds Shooter Jennings and Lukas Nelson getting together to recreate the magic of their famous fathers.
Tre Cool of Green Day has pretty much joined Willie Nelson’s Family Band. Alright, that’s probably a little presumptuous and hyperbolic, but there is definitely something cool going on here, and now it’s happened a couple of times. It started when Willie Nelson played a show in San Francisco.
2019 was a stacked year for top live performances. This was supposed to be a list of the top 10 live performances, but due to such a crowded field, things boiled over. And yes, there are three #1 acts. All should be considered equals at the very top level of live performance. They were all so great, it seemed unfair to put one over the other.
One sign that mainstream country music continues to improve is the decrease in “country” songs that were worthy of rants in 2019 compared to previous years. However there were a few exceptions in 2019, and songs worthy of taking out back to the woodshed. Our full-throated opposition to these monstrosities misappropriated as “country.”
Shooter Jennings and Lukas Nelson got together to recreate the magic of their famous fathers on a new rendition of “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” originally written and performed by Ed Bruce with his wife Patsy. But of course you only get a teaser version of the song in the opening segment of ‘The Ranch.’
n a recent interview, the long-time marijuana advocate revealed that he is no longer smoking pot due to his continued breathing issues. The news came as a shock to some, if not many in the marijuana community, and others that see Willie Nelson’s name as synonymous with marijuana.
In 2019, an interesting new destination festival popped up just outside of Whitefish, Montana called Under The Big Sky. With acts such as Dwight Yoakam, Cody Jinks, Whitey Morgan, and Amanda Shires on the bill, it got the attention of true country fans, but the question was if it would be worth the trek.
It’s the common bane of most second and third generation music performers that they are expected to carry on the legacy of their parents in form and fashion, and perform up to a standard dictated by their pedigree that is often difficult to impossible to attain. But with the natural gifts for music making that […]
For the pot holiday 4/20, the Godfather of Bro-Country Brantley Gilbert reminds us that our prayers to country music Jesus to inflict pestilence upon his singing voice, or at least permanently impair him with chronic laryngitis to render him irrevocably unable to perform have gone wholly unanswered.