All you have to do to turn your friends and family into Turnpike Troubadours fans is to play them the music. If there was one artist, one band out there that can bridge all gaps between your pop country friends to your hard rock buddies, it’s Turnpike. Young or old, male or female, city, country, or suburban, the music resonates with all.
Artists give greatly of their personal lives to entertain us. The least we can do is not use their personal lives as our entertainment. The story of how the Evan Felker and Miranda Lambert relationship became the worst kept secret in Texas music, and how when it broke, the celebrity gossip rags got it all wrong.
We’ve know for a while about Miranda Lambert’s penchant to show support to independent artists by attending their concerts, with John Moreland and the women of the Hard Candy Christmas Tour being just a few examples. Saturday night (4-7) was the 7th Annual Dia Del Gallo celebration at the historic Floore’s Country Store was another.
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?
No country music outfit deserved a berth on the vaunted Austin City Limits stage more than the reigning Saving Country Music Artist of the Year The Turnpike Troubadours. This is a huge honor for a band that’s been making big waves in the Texas and Red Dirt music scene for nearly a decade.
The Turnpike Troubadours were the headliners at Mile 0 Fest in Key West, Florida on Friday night (2-9), and despite putting on an top notch performance as usual, a half-pint visitor on the stage nearly stole the show, during a week that has seen many guest performers make their way on stage to sing each other’s songs.
One of the most erroneous arguments made in music is that traditionally-inspired country cannot be relevant to the modern ear—that it’s a mode stuck in nostalgia, with a by-gone influence not receptive by the young and hip of today.
The last few years have been a somewhat down era for excellent, legacy-caliber releases in country music and independent roots,. But 2017 was a different story, especially the first half, leaving us with difficult choices of what to consider to be the best of the year. As always, your feedback is requested, and will be included in the final calculus.
The Turnpike Troubadours will finally get their own appearance on Austin City Limits. The revered, longest-running music television program taped live at Austin’s Moody Theater has chosen the Oklahoma-based band for the final episode of ACL’s 43rd Season.
The Turnpike Troubadours have just crashed the mainstream party at the top of the Billboard Country Albums chart with the release of their latest record, ‘A Long Way From Your Heart.’ Signed to Thirty Tigers, and with little help from radio beyond regional play, they continue to show what quality music and grassroots efforts can result in.
2017 continues to make a great case for itself as a bumper crop year for songs and albums, and recent additions to Saving Country Music’s Top 25 playlist reflect that. Just added to the stable of the best country songs are Alan Jackson’s surprise new single “The Older I Get” from a yet named new album, and more….
Before the accolades start to feel like platitudes, and the reasons become excuses, the Turnpike Troubadours should find their place in the national narrative. Because country music needs them. The Turnpike Troubadours are the band for right here, right now, delivering everything you want, saddled by nothing you don’t need.
As summer concludes and we start to enter what promises to be a very crowded fall for landmark releases in country music, new songs have just been added to Saving Country Music’s Top 25 Playlist to get you ready. Also, the playlist is finally available for those who use Google Play.
For those who’ve been to a Turnpike Troubadours show over the last year or two, or were somehow otherwise tuned into the throwback country soul of Charley Crockett through his first few self-released records, they need not be assuaged to the idea that he could be the next big thing in roots music.
In the first song released from the Troubadours’ upcoming album A Long Way From Your Heart out October 20th, a familiar female protagonist for many Turnpike Troubadours fans re-emerges. “Lorrie,” who has now made an appearance in numerous Turnpike songs, becomes the heroine of “The Housfire.”
You’ve never heard of the Mile 0 Festival in Key West, Florida before, but you have now. And it will be hard to forget about it once you feast your eyes on the pretty ridiculous lineup they’ve assembled for their inaugural run. It’s scheduled for February 7th – 11th 2018 at the new Truman Waterfront Park Amphitheatre in Key West.
The Turnpike Troubadours have cut short their current tour, with lead guitar player Ryan Engleman citing an undisclosed personal issue as the need for the cancellations. The shows cancelled affect dates primarily on the West Coast and in the interior West for the next week.
Is it October 20th yet? How ’bout now? Sorry for the impatience, but that’s the day one of the most badass independent country bands in existence will release their highly-anticipated fourth album A Long Way From Your Heart via Bossier City Records and Thirty Tigers.
As times get lean for alternative newsweeklys, their penchant to dispose of any and all journalistic class, fact-based reporting, or positive counterpoints to their dubious assertions goes out the window in lieu of mercilessly ripping into entire segments of artists without a single word of objectivity or credit where credit is due.