Engine 145 - A Roots Music Publication

It’s beyond me when a new “musical year” begins these days, but happy New Year. The start of a new calendar year here in Nashville does have a certain distinctive local flavor to it; performers who’ve been out on the road, suddenly back home for a Christmastime break, show up at events and get-togethers around [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: New Year’s Beginnings, Middles, Endings, and Post-Mortems"

Working as I do in both journalism and music history, from time to time I’ve had the opportunity (and also the working need, truthfully) to interview the immediate families of some of country and roots music’s most celebrated figures, sometimes getting to know them outside of that defined situation.  It occurs to me again and [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Country Icons and Family Legacies"

2011 has not been a huge year for new music by many women on the country music charts, a situation that’s been much noted, often with understandable dismay. The most-heard hits by female vocalists have tended either to have come from the mixed male/female group arena or to be yet another single pulled from older [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Country Women Now, Books and Christmas"

Lately I’ve been thinking about repetition, repeatedly. See, I’ve never been one of those who can be counted on to rail against the latest alleged oncoming modern pop corruption of whatever country music has been sounding like for a while. In country, complaints about sonic invaders have always been there. But in addition, history leaves [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Refresh…Revive…Repeat…Rethink"

At this year’s Americana Music Association’s Fest and Conference, staged mid-month here in Nashville, there were plenty of convincing signs that the Americana field and format has finally come of age, and in a healthy and forward-looking way—sixteen years since it was first identified and promoted to radio, twelve since the AMA was founded, and [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Americana’s Younger Than That Now"

  No, that’s not a suggested name for the next big music magazine; Frets & Threats could have some real breadth and staying power, but I figure the magazine market is too threatened for a launch right now. I bring this up after a week at IBMA’s “World of Bluegrass,” 2011 edition, which was marked [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Frets and Threats"

Two memorable shows in Nashville last week, both well thought out, highly planned and never lagging, but strikingly different from each other, spotlighted the evolving responses and tactics women in country music have used when stardom— however that was defined in their own generation—beckoned.  Monday, September 12th at the Country Music Hall of Fame’s packed [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: From Connie Smith to Taylor Swift"

Ever since commercial country music started up in the 1920s, folks and other people have been arguing about the degree and nature of its regularly alleged and often simply assumed ties to older down home music—the music made by Americans, particularly Southern Americans, on their own porches, in their local saloons, churches, and dances. This issue comes up whenever historians weigh how [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: That Folk Roots/Country Connection—Family Style"

There was some discussion here on Engine 145 last week, sparked by Sam Gazdziak’s comments on the Justin Moore “Bait a Hook” single, and its “dumped and venting guy” lyric that raises—no, presses— the musical question “Is anyone in any way unlike what we three songwriters imagine you wish me, the country singer, to appear [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Being Really, Really Real Country (Etc.)"

For a city that’s been referred to as “Guitartown,” even by people who aren’t Steve Earle, Nashville rarely goes out of its way to spotlight music-altering git-pickers. This summer is different. The Country Music Hall of Fame has a new exhibit opening next Friday, August 12th that will run all the way through CMA Music [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Guitar Legends Who Changed More Than Picking"