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.
If you’re a Southern rock fan, and your haul from Halloween and Christmas leave you feeling short changed, wait until The Steel Woods unleash their second album Old News upon the world via Thirty Tigers/Woods Music.
You may not be into attending big arena shows, but it’s hard to not be happy for the big opportunity being bestowed to the Turnpike Troubadours, Southern rock revivalists The Steel Woods, high caliber songwriter Natalie Hemby, and Tenille Townes who have all been tapped as openers on Miranda Lambert’s “Bandwagon Tour.”
Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton, and Jason Isbell comprise the current Mt. Rushmore of independent country and roots music, and that is unquestionable, regardless of how you may feel about any one of them specifically, or even as a group. But what is the fourth mug we can put on top of that mountain?
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.
Get your hemp necklaces and nag champa ready, because Miranda Lambert is about to embark on the “Livin’ Like Hippies” tour come January, and even if you’re fair to partly cloudy on Ran Ran herself, she’s assembled a pretty badass lineup of openers that represent a who’s who of cool independent acts that may coax you off your couch.