A couple of the top flight performers in independent country are teaming up for a rare run of select shows in locations they don’t always play. This will be a unique opportunity for fans to get their taste.
Now Central Oregon will have their own country and roots festival, and it may have one of the best lineups of any independent country event all year. Called the FairWell Festival, they have just announced their inaugural lineup for their July 21-23 festival at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds in Redmond.
The amount of country/roots/Americana releases coming at you each week has officially reached critical mass. And it will spill over like a school bus taking a dive into an above ground pool on Friday, October 28th. Luckily, you know about lil’ ol’ Saving Country Music, so at least you have a head start.
The final months of 2022 are here, and just like the first portion of the year, it is jam packed in an increasingly cluttered environment for new releases. Instead of being overwhelmed, use this guide to help you navigate through the crush of titles, with the first 20 albums listed considered some of the top releases.
There are many festivals out there now catering to independent country and Americana. But in three short seasons and amid a pandemic, Under The Big Sky Fest has quickly made the case for being the biggest and most important of all off the strength of its lineups.
Call them bluegrass. Call them folk or Americana. Call them whatever you want, but when Trampled By Turtles take the stage, something magical happens that’s hard to quantify. They grab your attention with amazing instrumentation normally only reserved for bluegrass.
In what is quickly becoming both one of the biggest and most important festivals in independent country and Americana in just its third year, Under The Big Sky Fest in Whitefish, Montana has announced its 2022 lineup for July 15-17, and once again it’s a doozy.
Floydfest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and just off the Blue Ridge Parkway has formally announced their 2022 lineup, and it’s a doozy. Not exclusively a country or roots festival, they consider themselves more a “world” festival, but they always include a healthy dose of cool country.
It will never be the easiest festival to get to for anyone. It’s certainly not the cheapest when it comes to ticket prices, accommodations, or incidentals. But what’s for certain after the second year of Mile 0 Fest in Key West, Florida, is that this is Texas and Red Dirt’s premier musical event each year.
The best bands don’t begin as business ventures. They begin as groups of friends who get together to play a little music, and end up melding so well there’s no other choice but to start playing that music for others. Similarly, their success is organic, almost accidental. Even they may not know know it all happened exactly.
Corporate country has figured out a way to weasel its same command and control structure strangling commercial radio into online playlists and leave many of the best and the brightest of country on the wayside. But Saving Country Music is doing its level best to even the playing field by offering a healthy alternative.
There will be more music from the dynamic and much-loved string band Trampled By Turtles, which is music to the ears of their fervent fan base in Minnesota and beyond. Trampled by Turtles reunited at a cabin in Minnesota in the fall of 2017 to see what would happen, and if the time was right to move forward with the project.
I don’t blame Dave Simonett for wanting to take some time away from what has been his main gig for 15 years as the frontman of the bluegrass-esque Trampled By Turtles. As stellar of a collective of musicians as Trampled By Turtles is, at some point the experience of a string band is going to feel limiting to someone who is a songwriter first.
Maybe you came for the speed, but you stayed for the songs. It’s hard to believe that the bluegrass-esque band from Duluth, MN has been around for going on 14 years, but in that time Trampled By Turtles amassed a strong fan base in Minnesota and beyond, and released eight records, including their latest ‘Wild Animals’ from 2014.
Trust me when I say if you go ambling through American college towns, you won’t find anything resembling a dearth of string bands with a bunch of young men and their banjos and fiddles stomping and shouting on stage. What you will find a dearth of are these bands that are actually worth listening to, at least outside of the context of a drunken college town barroom.
Distribution and publishing company Thirty Tigers has signed critically-acclaimed singer-songwriter Hayes Carll to work on a new album this fall, with hopes for an early 2015 release. Carll is now considered one of the mainstays of country/Americana touring channels, playing an average of 200 shows a year.
I actually come from the camp that believes that if Mumford & Sons weren’t so popular, more core roots fans would respect them. But it is really hip to hate and undervalue Mumford right now. Let’s hope that the current backlash doesn’t hurt every band with a banjo, because there’s many great string bands out there that and mix high energy and heartfelt songs into the string band concept.
Many of the bold changes in the direction of popular music begin with artists that are too fey, too polarizing to become popular themselves. So it takes others who understand how to soften music with sensibilities to make it accessible to the masses, and hopefully, if time is on their side, transect the popularity timeline, resulting in superstardom.
Whether it’s folk, bluegrass, country, or Cajun, Foghorn can play a breakdown, a Celtic jig, a Cajun waltz, and cut a rug to an early country tune in the span of as many songs and sell you quickly on the idea that you don’t need amplification or new school modes to make music that is both memorable and entertaining. Outshine the Sun is an excellent album, and where it makes its mark is in the positivity of its message.
the loss of .357 String Band may go down as underground country’s greatest tragedy. I can think of no other project that was so ripe for becoming a success story of authentic American underground roots. They were brilliant, but accessible at the same time. It is a great sin of American music. They have re-issued their landmark 2008 album “Fire & Hail” on vinyl.
By all accounts, I should hate these dudes, and this album by proxy. t was announced that Babel was the best-selling debut so far in 2012, selling 600,000 copies and outpacing folks like Justin Bieber. Really? Has the “roots” revolution reached such a point that it is the most popular, mainstream thing going in music these days? How am I supposed to be okay with that, and where is this leading?
A few days ago, CMT launched a new format and website called CMT Edge with the intent of covering artists outside the norm of mainstream country music. Since then I’ve been asked many times what I think of it, and my stock answer has been that I don’t exactly know what I think of it yet. Having said that, I see no reason at this point not to stay positive about it.
Trampled by Turtles have flat out blown up on our asses, debuting videos on CMT and selling out theater shows, while still being true to their original approach. That’s what happens when you have good guys putting out great songs and great albums and developing a sound that is familiar enough that it’s easy to get comfortable and acquainted with.
From the outside looking in, one may look at the lineup of The Muddy Roots Festival for example, and wonder how all these bands could all be booked right beside each other and it work seamlessly. This illustrates the dramatic sonic and geographical diversity that goes into creating what we know now as the underground country roots, or “Muddy Roots” world.