If you’ve been paying any attention to country music over the last few years, you know to be paying attention to just about any performing songwriter hailing from Kentucky. It’s the state that has given us Tyler Childers, Dillon Carmichael, Chris Stapleton, Kelsey Waldon, and Sturgill Simpson just to name a few over the last few years.
It’s the charge of country and folk musicians to sing about the struggles of the common people that often go woefully unheralded by the rest of popular culture. But sometimes it’s not just people, but places that deserve the dignity of poetic adulation.
Just what 2017 has in store for us in the country music department remains to be seen. But we do know about what to expect in the release department for at least the first quarter of the year, while rumors abound about the big projects that could come to light later in 2017. Here’s a run down of what we know, what we think we know, and what we would like to believe.
Take a Pacific Northwest songwriting gem and refine her with the finest of care by some of Austin, TX’s best master craftsmen, and the result is the 3rd and defining studio album from Seattle-based songbird Zoe Muth called World of Strangers. Backed by her touring band The Lost High Rollers on her two previous releases, Zoe ratcheted up the game with the new album….
Where most musicians might peak in their 20’s, Ray Wylie Hubbard seems to be hitting his stride in his 60’s. Since the release of his latest album The Grifter’s Hymal, he’s been asked to play David Letterman, and write and record with Ronnie Dunn of Brooks & Dunn fame. But he’s taking time out of his busy schedule to put on a festival of the music he likes.
As one of the original members of Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt frontman Jay Farrar is one of the forebearers of the alt-country sound that now has morphed into the all-encompassing Americana behemoth that here in 2013 is enjoying a meteoric rise in influence. But instead of trying to figure out how to ride that popularity wave, Farrar and Son Volt release an album that is so doggone country, you could almost call it conceptualized.
Ray Wylie Hubbard and Ronnie Dunn wrote some songs together back in September, and has been in Austin where for the last few days, they’ve been recording with an all-star band of George Reiff, Rick Richards, Ian McLagan from Faces, Brad Rice formerly of Son Volt, and others. “Started recording in Austin yesterday,” Ronnie Dunn posted on Facebook.
Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett has decided to take his passion for Wilco and country/hipster fusion duds to the next level and be this week’s personality to “Go Country.” His new “country” band called The Dead Peasants will release a self-titled album on July 12th. Just like all others before him, Shiflett makes the announcement […]