The Saving Country Music Top 25 Playlist is built to keep you informed on all the best songs and albums coming out right here, right now in country and roots music. It’s available on most all streaming formats, or you can just use the song, artist, and album recommendations.
Not all of us will end up making it to 90. But we’re all the beneficiaries of the fact that Willie Nelson (almost) has. On April 29th, Willie will officially turn 90 years old, and on that day and the next one, a massive cavalcade of stars will converge on the Hollywood Bowl in California.
20 years in the business now, Dierks Bentley should be at the point where he can call his own shots. And seeing him paling around with Charlie Worsham lately, and hanging out in the rain to watch Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway play their set at Telluride last summer are all good signs.
The Saving Country Music Artist of the Year is not about who sold the most tickets or left the biggest footprint, or who shattered the expectations and possibilities of independent artists that are not played on mainstream country radio. It’s about the artist who most embodied the spirit of of the idea…
Let’s highlight some of the bands on the brink, that probably should be headlining festivals and big events themselves, and very well may be in the coming years. These are the artists and bands you better get out to see before like many of your favorite headliners, they end up only playing arenas.
How much does the listening public care about a batch of ol’ stuffy bluegrass cover songs? Apparently quite a bit when they’re coming from Billy Strings. His recent collaboration with his dad Terry Barber has brought in career-record numbers for the bluegrass phenom, and put him at or near the top of charts.
Just like Billy Strings, the Turnpike Troubadours have weaseled their way into becoming an arena artist, at least in select markets. This week they announced they’ll be playing the immense American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX on February 25th, 2023, along with The Avett Brothers and The Wood Brothers.
It’s a tradition as tried and true as grandma’s pumpkin pie. Every year on Thanksgiving Day, a football team has to make the worst possible pick for a halftime performer from the dregs of pop country, and embarrass country music on a national stage like your drunk uncle going on a racist tirade in front of your fiance.
If there was an ideal time for Billy Strings to hop off the bluegrass train, it would be right now. So what does he do to codify his dominance of the live music space? He goes off and records the most straightforward album of bluegrass and country standards as possible, and invites his father.
This is 2022, and artists like Tyler Childers, Billy Strings, Zach Bryan, and the Turnpike Troubadours are exploding in popularity. Add on top of that then pent up demand due to the pandemic, and we’re living in an era when you’re favorite independent artists are arena stars.
It was bound to happen, and you can bellyache all you want about not being able to see one of your favorite artists in a more intimate venue. But you were warned, and had your chances for years to see Billy Strings in local watering holes, clubs downtown, and historic theaters across the country.
The Saving Country Music Top 25 Playlist is built to keep you informed on all the best songs and albums coming out right here, right now in country and roots music. It’s available on most all streaming formats, or you can just use the song, artist, and album recommendations.
We knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. Though we all have fallen in love with bluegrass phenom Billy Strings as he’s taken the roots music world by storm to the point where his popularity has spilled out into the greater music landscape, you knew that sooner or later he would jump the bluegrass tracks…
With the re-formed Hurricane Ian bearing down on the Carolinas Thursday evening, forcing all of the festivities for the biggest gathering in bluegrass each year indoors, the International Bluegrass Music Association, or IBMA held their 33rd annual awards at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts.
The 2022 Americana Music Awards transpired at the Ryman Auditorium Wednesday Night, September 14th, with Billy Strings, Brandi Carlile, Allison Russell, Sierra Ferrell, and The War and Treaty all walking away with big awards. There were also a few surprises.
Though you won’t see any press releases about it, or social media posts about it from their personal accounts, both Tyler Childers and Chris Stapleton have been spotted in the region with their boots on the ground in Kentucky directly helping local residents after the historic flooding.
The International Bluegrass Music Awards, or IBMA’s announced the nominees earlier this week, and it felt anything but perfunctory. In previous years you had the usual suspects up for all the major awards. It feels completely different here in 2022, and for good reason. Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull, and more.
Post Malone continues to flirt with making a country album. And with the collaborations he’s already been a part of, the things he’s said, and the artists he’s touted, it’s hard to not continue to take him seriously, and to think if he does do a country album, it might be pretty good.
If you were planning to head to the madness that is the CMA Fest in Nashville next week, one of the few bright spots when it comes to the big headliners of the event has officially pulled out. Alan Jackson was scheduled to perform on the main stage at Nissan Stadium.
Marty Stuart’s long-awaited Congress of Country Music in his hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi is finally set to open in 2022. the $30 million project encompassing some 50,000 square feet of total space opened in incremental phases.
According to one metric, the Turnpike Troubadours are one of the hottest tickets in all of country music when considering the prices those tickets are fetching on the secondary market. In the same company as Garth Brooks, George Strait, Morgan Wallen, and Luke Combs…
‘Crooked Tree’ is Molly Tuttle going, “Oh, you want a bluegrass album? We’ll then here you go …” and then melting faces in 13 straight original tracks that embrace many bluegrass traditions, while still offering a uniqueness of perspective, and a personal connection to Molly.
The Grateful Dead’s founding member and guitarist Bob Weir is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of his solo album Ace released in 1972, and he did so by taking the stage at the Radio City Music Hall in New York with his Wolf Brothers band on Saturday night. Tyler Childers joined him.
Unlike country music’s big award shows like the CMAs and ACMs, The Grammys actually take the time to recognize artists in the bluegrass, Americana, folk, and blues realms, along with pulling from a more expanded list of nominees in the country categories.