Wayne “The Train” Hancock has announced that he has a new lead guitar player, and his name is Matt Thomas. Matt replaces James Hunnicutt who toured with Wayne for a stint, and will be playing with the Hard Money Saints on the West Coast in September. Matt Thomas is from Austin, and the word from [...]
The last few days has seen a small flurry of news concerning the movement to Reinstate Hank Williams to the Grand Ole Opry. The online petition is about to crest 40,000 signatures (or it might already have by the time you read this), which was a goal of the Reinstaters to reach by the end [...]
For whatever reason, over the last few years Europe has become a huge support base for REAL country music. Bands that can barely scratch by in the Stars and Stripes are treated like top notch celebrities over the pond, with larger, more attentive and appreciative crowds and better pay. I have also met a lot [...]
You may or may have not noticed I haven’t been around much in the past couple of weeks. Thanks for all the emails of concern {actually, I receive not a one } but no, the flying monkeys that Curb Records dispatched to silence me did not find my hideout, and Nashville’s lawyers still haven’t figured [...]
Back in the mid 70′s-the first time country music was saved- The Outlaws of country like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings found a home and harbor from Nashville’s ill ways in the Austin, TX singer-songwriter scene. People like Jerry Jeff Walker, Michael Martin Murphy, Townes Van Zandt, and Ray Wylie Hubbard had made Austin a [...]
Last week the pop country world was rocked when the duo Brooks and Dunn announced they were breaking up. Though the duo has never had any particular reason to be in my crosshairs, information that came out in the various stories about the breakup painted a clear picture of the overly commercial approach that the [...]
I’ve been thinking a lot about George Strait lately. Though I’ve never been a big fan of his music, he seems to be an exception to some of the rules that govern Music Row. Yes, he’s sold millions of albums and is all over commercial radio and CMT, but he also gone out of his [...]
If I had to pick one stand out performer out of the dozen plus acts I saw at Pickathon outside of Portland last weekend, it would be Justin Townes Earle. I was lucky enough to be able to see him three different times, and after his first show we sat down for a quick interview. [...]
Today was the day in 1952 that Hank Williams, the King of Country music, was fired from the Grand Ole Opry for missing rehearsals due to his excessive use of alcohol. The Opry promised that they would Reinstate Hank Williams after he sobered up, but Hank Williams died New Year’s Day of 1953, and was [...]
The thing I like about the one man bands like Joe Buck and Scott H. Biram is the abominable amount of energy they put into their music. It is rare to see an individual member of a band with as much energy as a one man band, or a one man band that doesn’t have [...]
I normally try to answer questions here not ask them, and you’d think that after running a website called “Saving Country Music” for as long as I have I would have asked this question before. And I’m not asking this question rhetorically either. I really want to know, is country music dead? I began to [...]
Well I’m back from Pickathon. Had an amazing time, saw some great artists, met a lot of great people. Over the next few days (and weeks maybe) I’ll be talking about the bands I saw and people I met, and will share some interviews with you I did. Instead of boring you with a whole [...]
