82 Year-Old Ray Price Not Slowing Down

Featuring “12 songs of some of my friends that are gone.”

The list includes Williams, Jennings, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Marty Robbins, Conway Twitty, Johnny Paycheck and others. He plans to record a short spoken-word intro for each song. “I already got a video figured out, too,” he says. “It’ll be corny as hell.”

Asked when people will hear it, Price answers quickly.

“If you listen to the radio, I doubt you’ll ever hear it.”

His singing throughout is characteristically effortless, marked by the almost conversational but deft phrasing that’s gives his songs a lived-in veracity. All of which adds up to what is indeed a pretty good time.

If you were planning your own music festival…what five acts would you put on it (living or dead)…where would you have it….what would you call it?

There’s a lot of interesting answers so far.

Herring flawlessly reports the grisly material. Presented with corresponding degrees of damnation and empathy, her watertight assessment of the 1994 American tragedy would be a crowning achievement for most artists. On Lantana — an embarrassment of riches drawing the straightest line between tradition and transition this side of Adrienne Young — it only rates halfway up the chart.