Why is Morgan Wallen getting a second opportunity to play Saturday Night Live when there are so many other worthy names from the country and roots world that are still waiting for their first one?
Tip your hat to the folks who curated the roster for the 2025 FareWell Fest in Redmond, Oregon, because it might be the best independent country lineup we’ve seen so far in 2025. Crowned by Tyler Childers and Sturgill Simpson.
Similar to many recent Super Bowl halftime performances, the Grammy Awards were primarily dominated by lip-synced performances and choreographic dancing without a live instrument to be seen on stage.
Cowboy Carter’s Best Country Album win wasn’t earned, it was compelled. Unequivocally, Beyoncé told us herself about her 2024 album Cowboy Carter, “This ain’t a country album.” But apparently, Grammy voters disagree.
From a homeless and train hopping busker, to one of the fastest-rising stars in independent roots music, to now a three-time Grammy-winning artist, the hopeful and inspiring story of singer and songwriter Sierra Ferrell only continues to get sweeter.
Sierra Ferrell is about to have a BIG 2025, so it might be one of your last opportunities to see her in small venues. She’s just announced a slew of new headliners dates under the appropriate title “Shoot The Moon.”
Railbird 2025 includes an excellent crop of top-of-the-line independent country and roots artists. But it’s the headliners Railbird has announced that have return patrons chirping
Whoever is booking/curating this thing has done their homework, and really knows their stuff. Let’s hope the rest of the lineup comes together with similar results.
When Saving Country Music was first founded in 2008, the idea that we would ever get to where we are today in country music seemed like a virtual impossibility, a pipe dream, and certainly an uphill battle to say the least.
All the nominees for the 2024 Saving Country Music Album of the Year deserve nothing but praise for being catalysts for the country music revolution we’re currently enjoying. But only one can take the prize.
Alright, we ran down the nominees for Album of the Year and Song of the Year. But it’s time to give a little love to the songs that simply get stuck in out heads and remind us of the sheer joy of music.
A Song of the Year is not just a “song.” It’s a form of artistic expression that can change a life, that can change someone’s perspective, or that can change the world. It’s something that must be able to give you goosebumps.
It’s time to engage in one of the most important exercises all year: determining who and what will be crowned the Album of the Year in 2024. The point of this exercise is not to devolve music into a competition.
At a time when actual country performers are inspiring pop stars more than ever, it should be those country performers represented in the country categories, not the pop and hip-hop stars they’re inspiring.
The Grammy Awards are supposed to be the one place where the critically-acclaimed, criminally-overlooked, and lifers of a respective genre get the recognition they deserve from a non-profit that puts the art first.
One of the signs that it’s a new day in country music is how a host performers who started as street buskers, train hoppers, and hitchhikers have now become some of the premier names in genre.
Since the Grammy Awards are one of the few awards that weigh artistic merit over commercial success, it makes it a bit more important to pay attention to for fans and advocates of independent artists.
Now that it’s all in the books—and after four long days of humpin’ around from stage to stage in the middle of a late season Ohio River Valley heat wave—here are some of the things that were seen and heard.
The world is waking up to just what a wonder it has in its midst with songwriter and performer Sierra Ferrell. From busking on street corners for ragged dollars, to now being recognized with some of the top awards in the industry.
It’s a good time to be a country music fan. No reason to reach for the Backstreet Boys, Diplo, or Nelly to entice fans to the event. If anything, they give the whole lineup an ick factor it doesn’t need.
For nine years, “Honky Tonk Tuesday Nights” organized by Nashville musicians Brendan Malone and Kevin Martin of The Cowpokes has been the small local gathering with massive international impact on country music.
You better like Country music with a ‘C’ because it’s coming at you hard and heavy in this playlist update. It includes tons of upbeat twang just in time for the heart of the summer, and just as country has never been hotter.
From this attendee’s perspective, it was the most fulfilling musical moments experienced since the return of the Turnpike Troubadours at Cain’s Ballroom in 2022. This was even after I was hunted down by security.
It really is hard to come back to reality after spending three days in picturesque Whitefish, Montana, taking in the music of some of our generation’s very top talents courtesy of the Under The Big Sky Festival.