Song Review – The Turnpike Troubadours – “Mean Old Sun”
The first observation about “Mean Old Sun” is that it’s distinctly a Turnpike Troubadours song.
The first observation about “Mean Old Sun” is that it’s distinctly a Turnpike Troubadours song.
Every discussion about the music of Bella White invariably begins and ends with her highly affected, and highly affecting voice. All great music finds that balance between the familiar and the unexpected, and Bella’s unique phrasing brought to a yodel-like projection makes for a novel listening experience.
If you’ve gotta listen to country pop though, make it Caitlyn Smith. Even before her debut album ‘Starfire’ was nominated for Saving Country Music’s Album of the Year in 2018, she was one of the few bright spots in the pop country space where you didn’t give a damn that she didn’t sound like traditional country.
It is times like these when cooler heads and calming wisdom is what the world needs. In fractured and fevered moments, ratcheting down the rhetoric, centering the most important things in life, and working towards being the solution as opposed to the problem is the approach that you hope prevails.
The worst part about “Queen of Me” is not just that it’s a big miss for whatever Shania Twain was going for. It’s that it’s also a missed opportunity for her to ride the wave of resurgent interest in 90s country to do something that could actually represent legacy women in country music well.
Despite his punk country popularity, Fulks actually started out as a folk and bluegrass musician who was raised in the Blue Ridge of Virginia and the Piedmont of North Carolina. And after performing in the club scene in Greenwich Village and attending Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk, joined Special Consensus.
Extra is everything you were hoping Josie Toney’s debut album would be. When she sings, Toney evokes the ghosts of the classic country era by mixing old-school country with old-school blues indicative at times of Hank One. You may think of her as an instrumentalist first, but the album showcases…
RC Edwards stumbled upon Lance Roark in 2020 during the Turnpike hiatus/pandemic when he was looking for a lead guitar player. Roark fit the bill, but has subsequently slid even deeper into the Turnpike universe while finding a way to showcase his own music at the same time.
Willie Nelson will turn 90 on April 29th, and has shown no signs of slowing down, either on the road, or in the studio. His last album called “A Beautiful Time” was released last year on his birthday and went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Country Album, and earned it entirely on the merit of the music.
In many respects it feels like a victory and cause for celebration any time a truly traditional country record is released. Making country music the right way requires such an uphill battle in today’s country landscape. When it comes to Dillon Massengale though, that’s just where the victories begin.
Luke Combs may be the reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year, but you get the distinct impression that he’s barely aware of it. There’s no cocksure attitude as he stands up there on stage in his Bass Pro fishing shirt with the flap across the back. He’s just a grown up pudgy choir kid from North Carolina.
If we could wave a magic wand and instantly remake mainstream country music into something much better than what it is today, Chancey Williams and “One of These Days” would not be a bad wish at all. It’s country with steel guitar and fiddle. It’s cool. It’s catchy and hooky, but the songs still say something.
Austin has 6th Street, but Dallas has Deep Ellum. Houston has the massive Rodeo Houston, but Dallas has the State Fair of Texas. Lubbock has The Flatlanders and Flatland Cavalry, but Dallas has Joshua Ray Walker, The Vandoliers, and Matt Hillyer. It’s easy to overlook the Dallas influence on Texas music…
As if the the Gods of Southern rock came down from the Heavens to smite a new band out of the hard Alabama iron, these dirty and sweaty mothers from Gadsden, Alabama can grow hair on your chest just from listening to them. Them Dirty Roses can deflower virgins simply by them being in the audience.
Sam Munsick’s specialty is songwriting, and that comes into sharp focus on Johnny Faraway. With nine original Western songs all solely written by Sam, the album is a spirited entry into the Western music canon, studied and reverent to the songwriting modes of authentic Western music.
Love him, hate him, find yourself among the population of the very few who feel indifferent about him, Morgan Wallen is the biggest thing in mainstream country, and at this point, by such multiples of scale, it truly is difficult to comprehend. We’re talking Garth-level, generational, genre-defying popularity.
There is no shortage of artists who don’t fit snugly or at all into the otherwise big tent of the country music genre who are clamoring to get in, and for a host of reasons. It’s often because in the pop or hip-hop worlds, these performers would be small fish in a big sea, yet […]
With a couple of acoustic releases over the last couple of years, Alabama songwriter Drayton Farley rocketed up the depth charts of emerging talent in the Americana realm with the way his songs resonated with audiences irrespective of their stripped-down nature, and tantalized the imagination.
Dierks plays both sides of the country music cultural divide, and in the past he’s put out albums that very much appeal to folks who wouldn’t be caught dead listening to corporate radio. But that’s not exactly what “Gravel & Gold” is. It’s definitely not like his 2016 album “Black” either.
Every once in a while, an album or artist comes along, and it only takes a song or two, or maybe even a minute or two of the first song before you to start asking, “Where have you been all my life?” Amanda Fields is one of those artists, and “What, When and Without” is one of those albums.
Welcome to the world of the country music underground and general audio oddities, eastern Kentucky edition. Making your way to Louisa, Kentucky and Lawrence County on the West Virginia border, you enter the habitat of the one and only Laid Back Country Picker.
Reaching for Channing Wilson is reaching for the hardest stuff possible in the realm of country music. If this music was alcohol, it’d be the kind of spirits that are illegal in some parts of Alabama—the stuff that dubs as turpentine in a pinch. You want country damn music, straight with no chaser.
It’s a great time for bluegrass, it’s a great time for traditional country, and it’s a great time for quality songwriting. Bluegrass duo Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley find the sweet spot between all three of these disciplines on their new album “Living In A Song.”
Is country music truly experiencing a transformational moment? Is this moment really touching most every sector of country, including some of the most corrupted corners of the mainstream? If this new Chase Rice is any sort of bellwether, then the answer would be in the affirmative.