By the powers vested in me by the institution of country music, I hereby declare July 15th, in the Year of Our Ford 2022, an official country music holiday due to the incredible volume of important country and roots music releases being debuted on this day.
Featuring three days of live performances, local organizers didn’t take their chances booking expensive mainstream names with dodgy talent and tired acts. Instead the festival is doing what many regional festivals all around the country are doing, which is drawing their entertainment from the riches of the Texas and Red Dirt.
The newest additions to the Saving Country Music Top 25 Playlist don’t include a lot of boot scooters, but it may contain some of the best-written songs released all year. As we near the end of the year, it’s time to start considering the best songs and albums of all of 2018. Some of them could be on this playlist.
The Southern rock side of the country music space is blessed with some serious stalwart bands that have been around for years. At the same time, just like with every genre of music, the flux of bands breaking up and legends passing means there’s always room for fresh faces and new perspectives on the music to help keep it vital.
It has once again come that time of year for reflecting back on some of the best albums released in the last 12 months or so, not to treat country music as competition per se, but as an exercise undertaken with the intent of expanding your musical knowledge in hopes the gaps that formed due to the busy lives we all live get filled in with joyous little music projects.
Songwriter and frontman Nick Dittmeier has seen the struggles from all sides. Living on the Indiana side of the Ohio River in the greater Louisville, KY area, he can pull inspiration from the evisceration of the coal economy, the dilapidation of the Southern small town, and the abandonment of the Midwest as the traditional American agrarian culture is replaced by the rise of urbanization and corporate farming.