Angela Hacker Wins Nashville Star, Miranda Lambert Hits Platinum, And Josh Turner Goes Double Platinum

In short, the duo’s formation, confused and chaotic as it may have been, serves as a prime example of the type of category-defying, artist-driven project that will become more prevalent as the traditional music industry model changes, said Stuart Dill, the group’s Nashville-based co-manager.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but much of what passes for country music in the States is little more than sanitised pop of the lowest quality.

I interviewed Hank’s grand daughter, Holly once and she told me it was only when she came to the UK and Ireland that anyone asked about her grandfather’s music. In America, it seems, the great Hank is thought of as some long lost historical figure there to be admired but not played on the radio.

via Country Nation

His song Live Until I Die was the hardest for him to get thru, he told the audience he had written for his Grandmother and he couldn’t keep the tears from flowing, he lost his Grandmother last week. He and the band started the song but Clay couldn’t finish singing the first verse, the audience picked up the song for him until he got his composure back.

Haggard, who once sang about moving to Montana because he was “tired of this dirty old city,” began his career playing around Los Angeles and San Francisco. He thinks the whole genre has lost its identity.

“The days of originality and the things that made country music country music are not being played now,” Haggard said during a recent phone interview from his Northern California home. “The originality went away when they tried to play rock ‘n’ roll. I think that’s what caused it to go down in the big cities.”

“It’s been a struggle from day one just trying to get here, especially when I was back home,” says Turner, whose speaking voice is as deep as you’d expect.

“I would get ridiculed for the clothes that I wore, for things that I talked about, my dreams. The people that I was around weren’t necessarily dreamers. It made it hard on me as a young boy, wanting to come to Nashville. But I knew in my heart of hearts I could do it.”
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“I try to sing the songs that mean something to me,” Turner says. “I really cling to that traditional heritage of country music that I feel like is being abandoned by a lot of artists and overlooked by certain artists. I’ve found through my own experience that you can make traditional country music and still be on the cutting edge, still be new, still be fresh. It takes a little bit more work, but it’s worth it, and it happens.”