This week Sturgill Simpson embarked on a much-anticipated sold out American tour, and the third night of the tour saw him in his home state of Kentucky playing at the Madison Theater in Covington, just over the river from Cincinnati. The venue was filled to capacity, with little room for elbows or egos, and during Sturgill’s song “Sometimes Wine” a scuffle started in the crowd.
As the longest running music show on TV enters its 40th season, Austin City Limits has announced its second installment of inductees into its Hall of Fame founded in 2014. The original crew of the Austin City Limits show will also be honored as the 2015’s non-performing inductee. As part of the Hall of Fame announcement, more performers for season 41 were also revealed.
Sturgill Simpson’s current national tour has been selling out dates left and right, and has most everybody in country music talking about his continued meteoric rise. But something causing some fans quite a bit of curiosity was the inclusion of a DJ outfit called Electric Western to open some dates in the Midwest & the West Coast. Were Sturgill fans all of a sudden being asked to sit through EDM and hip-hop sets?
Get ’em while the getting’s good because they’re about to be gone. That’s not a sales pitch, that’s the simple reality of Sturgill Simpson’s upcoming tour starting on 1/29. After going on a sold out club tour in the latter half of 2014, Sturgill’s next stint on the road sees him graduating to bigger clubs and many theaters to house the growing demand. But even with more capacity, many dates are selling out almost immediately.
For years now, the long-awaited solo album from country music songwriter Chris Stapleton has been like the White Whale of albums to informed country music listeners who pay attention liner notes. Meanwhile other fans remember Stapleton from his days in the bluegrass band The SteelDrivers. Beyond his songwriting, Stapleton’s solo sets are things of shiver-inducing magic.
The Sturgill Simpson love continues to pour in from different sectors of the music world, and now extends to songwriter and guitarist John Mayer, who is apparently “jealous” of the Kentucky-born country music performer. One of his biggest fans in mainstream country has been Keith Urban, and in a recent interview, when asked about Sturgill, Urban said “He’s the best.”
Sturgill Simpson is now officially a major label artist. The Kentucky native who’s been making waves throughout country music over the last year with his award-winning album Metamodern Sounds In Country Music has signed to Atlantic Records, part of the Warner Music Group, and will release his next album currently being recorded through the major label.
As the college football consciousness of the country zoomed in on Arlington, TX and the first official National Championship game ever played at the collegiate level Monday night, Zac Brown Band was tapped as the entertainment for ESPN’s College Gameday presentation leading up to the big game. Zac Brown Band played Jason Isbell’s much-appreciated but fairly obscure song for fallen soldiers.
The increasingly irrelevant Academy of Country Music Awards, or ACM’s, released their annual earache of ignoble pseudo-country performers known as the semi-final “New Artist” nominees this Monday, that spellbind any beholder with an even elementary understanding of the definitions of “New” and “Artist” as to how such names were populated.
This isn’t going to be some long form praising of Sturgill Simpson’s work in 2014, or yet another rundown of his long list of successes last year. There’s already been plenty of that, arguably too much of it, and I am just as tired of writing about it as you are of reading of it. Yeah yeah, Sturgill Simpson’s great, but his name has become the independent country version of click bait.
Where the last time Sturgill made a stop in Austin he was sporting a conversion van stenching of the road, now there was a big primary blue tour bus idling across the street. the gallery was packed by the time Sturgill took the stage. Tight and well-tuned from playing down-to-the-minute sets on tour with Zac Brown, Sturgill and the boys chewed through their songs like clockwork, with Simpson showing fire…
In 2014, you had two previously-unknown women release towers of country music brilliance in Tami Nelison’s Dynamite! and Karen Jonas’s Oklahoma Lottery. You had folk blues songwriter Charlie Parr deliver a masterpiece in his instrumental triumph in Hollandale. You had the Swedish sister duo First Aid Kit feature what very well would had been considered an Album of the Year on any other year…
2014 was a year of great flux in country music. Where 2013 was dominated by public feuds and outcries by many country performers about the direction of the music, 2014 became the year things began to be done about many of the problems plaguing the genre. With Bro-Country as the battleground, the fight to return some balance to the country format began to make headway.
It’s not every day you get trolled by a CMA Entertainer of the Year winner, but that’s what Saving Country Music found itself experiencing Sunday night (12-28) when Ronnie Dunn took to his always colorful Facebook page to post links and commentary to recent stories on SCM about his involvement (or non involvement) with the new Cumulus Media/Big Machine Records’ joint venture called NASH Icon.
From crude videos taken on somebody’s phone, to full production videos with scripts and actors and sets, to animated shorts and everything in between, you never know what’s going to capture the imagination and become the perfect compliment to a song in the visual form. what breaks through the crush of visual material to be called the best in 2014?
The hope of fans of any independent music artist is that they will be able to achieve a sustainable career, and that their music will find wider appeal amongst the listening public. When an independent artist succeeds, it’s important that we pay attention to what lent to that success so hopefully more worthy artists can achieve similar results, and to ask what that success might mean.
2014 has been a year of great flux in country music, with some legendary successes by independent artists and new mainstream artists, and the shuffling out of other artists and the fumbling of what once were legendary, high flying careers. Here’s a run down of the five biggest winners and losers in the greater country music world in 2014.
Everywhere you look people are singing the praises of independent country music upstart Sturgill Simpson and his latest album “Metamodern Sounds in Country Music.” But not everyone shares in the positive sentiments. As with all things, taste is subjective, and one music fan named Justin Rose from East Nashville is not on board the Sturgill Simpson bandwagon, at least not anymore.
On Friday morning (12-5), the Grammy Award nominations were inefficiently and unceremoniously announced via Twitter, and once again proved that their nose for quality in country music is somewhat better than what we’re used to seeing from the country music industry itself, even if their ability to categorize music remains somewhat curious.
The Americana Music Association has just unveiled their list for the most played albums in 2014, and there’s quite a few surprises, and quite a few names traditionally considered country filling out the ranks. Though 2014 still has another month to go, the end of November traditionally marks the end of the radio calendar in music, allowing us to look back and see who had the greatest impact on the format.
Each year when Saving Country Music sits down to compile the best songs, it’s done so with a solemn reverence and understanding that the idea embedded in a song has the power to change a life, and change the world. There are many songs out there that are a joy to listen to, but a Song of the Year must say something that can evoke shivers, and do so in a way nobody else has done before.
Move over Jamey Johnson and Kacey Musgraves. There’s a new critical darling in country music, and he’s neither country nor worthy of critical acclaim. Yes, I’m talking about the suave-haired cocaine club EDM-fueled country music marketing colossus and Svengali of the country music public named Sam Hunt. Sam Hunt and his music have nothing to do with country…
2014 has revealed itself as the “Year of the Dark Horse” when it comes to compiling the greatest albums released in the last 12-month span. Tami Neilson, Karen Jonas, Charlie Parr, Matt Woods? Who’s heard of these people outside of their respective fan bases? And meanwhile the realm of mainstream music can’t field one candidate, unless you want to count First Aid Kit.
Saving Country Music’s 2013 Album of the Year was not Jason Isbell’s breathtaking Southeastern, or Sturgill Simpson’s breakout High Top Mountain, but the comeback record from the Latin-inspired Raul Malo and The Mavericks called “In Time.” Now The Mavericks have announced that they’ve been in the studio again and will release the followup to In Time called “Mono.”