He played as a primary musician in the band for The Highwaymen. He was the final steel guitar player and producer for Waylon Jennings. He played on albums from Sturgill Simpson and Chris Stapleton. He earned the nickname the “Man of Steel.”
Margo’s back, reunited with original producer Matt Ross-Spang, and just released perhaps the best album since her debut, maybe the best album of her entire career, and maybe one of the best country albums so far this year.
Over the last few months and years, something has been coming to the rescue of this relic of mass advertisement: independent country music. Charley Crockett, the Turnpike Troubadours and others have used billboards.
This unassuming building, formerly known as the Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa, was once the home and creative nucleus of legendary producer and songwriter Cowboy Jack Clement.
When the history books regard this era when the independent became the mainstream in country music, Tyler Childers will play perhaps the most important, and most pivotal role in that story.
“Snipe Hunter” by Tyler Childers is nowhere near as good as some of the hyperbolic proclamations being bandied about profess, and it’s not even close to the colossal letdown that others are alleging.
Once again the public is being asked to weigh the character of Zach Bryan after an online imbroglio. And once again, the scenario feels like a big nothing burger, blown out of proportion.
It’s hard to overstate how big this is, both in the present tense, and for what it could mean for the future. The Recording Academy has just announced that for the upcoming season, there will be a Best Traditional Country Album.
We don’t have many more details just yet. But Tyler Childers will have a new album coming out likely in the next few months, and legendary producer and music guru Rick Rubin will be the man in the control room.
There are just a few landmark records that you can point back to in the history of country music and legitimately claim they revolutionized the genre in fundamental ways.
For Sturgill Simpson, performing at Stubb’s was returning to the scene of the crime in Austin. “Well alright, we’ve been waiting like ten or eleven years to do this again,” Simpson said as he walked out on stage.
Sturgill Simpson (or Johnny Blue Skies) capped off a cold, but action packed weekend in Texas at the Two Step Inn Festival just north of Austin. It was a truncated, but inspired and untethered festival set.
The debut country album from Shooter Jennings called Put The ‘O’ Back in Country was a critically-important moment in the country music revolution we’re currently in the midst of.
So much for retirement. Those who’ve seen Simpson live can attest that he’s having too much damn fun at the moment with the reconstituted lineup of his legendary band to stay home.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kentucky music savant Sturgill Simpson and country legend Gary Stewart led the 2024 inductees into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame on Saturday, October 26th at the Renfro Valley Entertainment Center in Mount Vernon.
Luke Bryan made an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast in an episode published on Wednesday (10-23), and participated in a little revisionist history about his career and how it careened into Bro-Country.
lan Jackson, Sturgill Simpson, Miranda Lambert, and what’s left of Lynyrd Skynyrd will be the headliners of the 3rd annual Two Step Inn Festival. They will join 30+ other artists across three stages.
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.
Taken as a whole, F-1 Trillion is much more of a contemporary version of pop country than it is anything else, with committee-written songs, little heart, substance, or soul. But this album is supposed to be fun, and Post Malone succeeds.