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Mavis Staples, Zac Brown & More to Honor Levon Helm at Grammys; George Strait to Receive CRB Career Achievement Award; Birthplace of Country Music Museum Approved for Funding
Elton John, Mumford and Sons, Mavis Staples, Zac Brown, T Bone Burnett, and Brittany Howard (Alabama Shakes) will take part in a tribute to Levon Helm at the Grammy Awards on Sunday. The Birthplace of Country Music Museum, currently under construction in Bristol, Tenn. recently got approved for funding. $600,000 will be paid in installments [...]
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Album Review: Dale Watson & His Lonestars — El Rancho Azul
Dale Watson, reigning king of the Texas honky tonk scene, sings about what he knows best on El Rancho Azul: drunks and dancers. Drinking songs make up a good-sized chunk of Watson’s oeuvre, and El Rancho Azul, his first official record with his touring band, the Lonestars, contains some of his best yet, from the [...]
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Album Reviews: Buck Owens — Honky Tonk Man; Don Rich — Sings George Jones
Buck Owens – Honky Tonk Man: Buck Sings Country Classics Thanks in part to his weekly appearances on Hee Haw, Buck Owens was one of the most visible country musicians of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He’d already well established himself by the mid-1960s, and he and The Buckaroos helped to develop the “California sound”—dominated [...]
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Engine 145′s Top Albums of 2012
It’s been a fantastic year for country and roots/Americana music, and it was no easy task for us to narrow down the list of albums released in 2012 to just a few favorites, but, after a few weeks of voting, here’s what we came up with. Honorable Mentions that missed the cut by just a [...]
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Ashley Monroe’s Album Release Postponed; Stream Caitlin Rose’s New Single; Bluegrass for the Rockaways Compilation Raises Funds for Sandy Relief
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum will be closed to the public from January 22 to February 6 to “make needed improvements and accommodate expansion-related construction.” The release of Ashley Monroe’s Like a Rose has been pushed back to March 5. From the press release: “The great Vince Gill and I have written [...]
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Luke Bryan Wins Nine American Country Awards; Ronnie Fauss Releases Free Christmas MP3; New Album Releases
Luke Bryan took home nine trophies at last night’s American Country Awards. The full list of winners can be found here. Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale were featured on The Los Angeles Times music blog “Pop & Hiss.” Here’s an excerpt in which Miller discusses harmony singing: “I’m not a big fan of most three-part [...]
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Best Music Books of 2012
Making year-end lists of best books is an exercise at once exciting and frustrating. Listing the best books of the year helps recall fondly those great books that revealed new information about an artist or his or her music or drives you to pick a again a book that you didn’t want to end the [...]
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Album Reviews: Omnivore Recordings’ Black Friday Releases
If you were sleeping off a pie binge or waiting in line for the chance to buy a discounted flatscreen, you might have missed the release of Omnivore Recordings’ Black Friday country records, available at independent record stores. The four 10″ EPs, featuring “rarities” recorded by Merle Haggard, Wanda Jackson, George Jones, and Buck Owens, preview [...]
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Stream Songs from Van Zandt, Willis & Robison; The Band Perry & Dierks Bentley to Pay Tribute to Johnny Cash; Peter Rowan Goes Old School
Listen to a track from the upcoming Townes Van Zandt collection Sunshine Boy: The Unheard Studio Sessions & Demos 1971-1972. Paste has a stream of “Drinking Coke and Eating Ice,” a cut from Drive-By Trucker Mike Cooley’s new solo record, The Fool on Every Corner, which drops December 11. Here’s an hour-long BBC documentary called The Joy [...]
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Roots Watch: There’s More “Dust Bowl Music” Than Woody’s
The power of music (and the secondary power of repeatedly talking and teaching a particular narrative about it), are such that for many, the Dust Bowl, some eighty years later, survives in memory mainly or solely as “the horrible experience Woody Guthrie sang about.” (For others, it’s what they saw or read in The Grapes [...]
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Current Discussion
- Paul W Dennis: Interesting song - I look forward to hearing the rest of the album
- Jordan Stacey: ooh 5 is very limiting but I'll give it a go. (Please note I'm trying for radio success, my choices ...
- TX Music Jim: Lee Ann Womack for sure we need some new music. Turnpike Troubadors They have been releasing some great material and are ...
- bob: After the not so Incredible Machine cd, I'll try to hear as much of the Nettles solo album as I ...
- nm: Richard Bennett is a class act. That is all.
- Bruce: Jon's comment about lip-syncing seems to agree with my statement "I know it isn’t a new thing.." At least I ...
- Luckyoldsun: "Randy Travis is suing the Texas attorney general’s office and the Texas Department of Public Safety to prevent the release ...
- Luckyoldsun: "Lip-syncing is ancient history;" So you're saying that lip synching is not done--or not commonly done--anymore. Gee, this board is so ...
- Juli Thanki: It sounds just like Earl. If Earl played it at quarter-speed while half in the bag. And perhaps also if ...
- Jon: Lip-syncing is ancient history; it's about time people got over that. So, Juli, the real question is, have *you* mastered "Cripple ...
