Album Review – John Baumann’s “Border Radio”
Perhaps nobody evokes geography in their music from the perspective of a songwriter better than John Baumann. This is one of the reasons he was drafted into the West Texas supergroup The Panhandlers.
Perhaps nobody evokes geography in their music from the perspective of a songwriter better than John Baumann. This is one of the reasons he was drafted into the West Texas supergroup The Panhandlers.
The Steel Woods stand on stage as modern-day Southern rock Gods. On what’s now their fourth full-length album, there’s no reason to measure them against any other, no need to attempt to draw comparisons.
The younger, more blonde, and more bombshell that a woman is in country music, the more pop their country music leans. This is the unfortunate stereotype that country music fans have been conditioned to believe over the last 15 years.
For some, life is for the here and now. It’s an oyster to savor. But for some others, they see life more as a continuum, with their particular time on earth being part of a greater lineage of family, people, and culture.
Brent Cobb’s new album Southern Star is about absolutely nothing at all, and about everything all at once. It is both a simple work that doesn’t say much, and perhaps the most prophetic and deeply philosophical album all year.
Brian Setzer’s new album ‘The Devil Always Collects’ will make you want to paint flames down the side of the family cruiser and start rolling a pack of cigs in the arm of your plain white T.
In 90 years of life, some 75 years in music, and around a hundred original albums of one version or another, Willie Nelson has just about done it all. But he hadn’t done a bluegrass record until now.
Margo Cilker sings country music like others breathe. Her songs are always taking you somewhere, with the rich language evoking the places, landscapes, and characters in your mind in stark relief.
Scott Southworth cool in his own way. He’s genuine: to himself, to his songs, and to country music. In an era when interloping, affectations, and cosplay are all the rage, he’s the real deal.
Nick Shoulders is a modern musical marvel. he’s created an appetite for otherwise arcane modes of country music. There is no competition, comparable, or peer to Nick Shoulders. He’s a subgenre all unto himself.
You pipe up the new Tyler Childers album Rustin’ In The Rain and the tandem twangy guitar sounds introducing the title track immediately hit your ears, and all of a sudden everything seems a little more right in the world.
Ashley McBryde’s strong suit is taking snapshots from the everyday lives of average working people, and gracing them with unadorned, plainspoken, but deeply potent songwriting poetry.
This is the sound of tattooed scars, cauterized wounds, and calloused hands. This is the sound of folks with sinewy muscles and bulging veins earned not from pumping iron, but from forging steel and beating back rust.
Old Crow Medicine Show is at its best when they embrace the wild assed hillbilly street performer persona. Crow has always put the “show” into their version of throwback country.
Just as fulfilling as discovering a brand new artist and watching them rise to fame, it’s similarly rewarding to stumble upon a local band whose music has national implications and is better than all those major radio acts.
Zach Bryan deftly and poignantly encapsulates the sincerest feelings of people that they can’t begin to express themselves. When they listen to his songs, it’s like staring straight into their very souls.
The story of the Turnpike Troubadours is one of a victory, where the better angels of a bunch of friends from Tahlequah, Oklahoma refused to allow some moments of weakness and the outside noise to tear asunder something…
They don’t really fit into any scene distinctly. But instead of grousing about it, they’ve decided to get good enough to start their own. If they keep releasing albums like ‘Wild Man,’ they very well just might.
This EP establishes that Hank Williams IV is not just a lark. No matter where he fits in the Hank Williams legacy, Ricky Fitzgerald fits somewhere, and that helps ensure the future of that legacy.
The purpose of this album is to dive head first into Eady’s Mississippi roots in a way that takes shape as serious grooves and shack shakers designed to get the soul singing and the limbs twitching.
There is one thing that is inarguable about William Beckmann. The South Texas native has a voice that is begging to be heard by the masses. He’s one of those artists where you don’t wonder “if,” but “when” he’ll blow up.
It’s the wide array of influences that the Turnpike Troubadours bring to bear in their music that makes their songs feel both wholly unique and keenly familiar, often conferring a warm feeling even upon the very first listen.
Cue up this fine specimen of authentic country music that will steal you away to a sublime place where all is right in the world like only the best of country music can do. Because this, ladies and gentlemen, is the best of country music.
Listening to Kyle Keller’s new album ‘The Great American Highway,’ you get the sense that Roger Miller and Tom T. Hall would approve of the songs from this Gainesville, Florida native, even if nobody else does.