Kern County Honors Bakersfield Legend With Merle Haggard Drive
- Today Merle Haggard gets his own road. California’s Kern County approved the renaming of Seventh Standard Road to Merle Haggard Drive. The ceremony will take place at the Bakersfield Harley Davidson and will also mark the beginning of an initiative to create a greenway next to Haggard Drive to be known as Hag’s Place.
- Hector Saldaña says when Sara Evans broke into a twangy, a cappella three-part harmony with her two sisters on “In the Pines” at the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, it was as genuine a highlight of any rodeo in recent memory.
- Miranda Lambert helps raise funds for the Humane Society of East Texas and even adopted her own dog from the pound. She says one of her dog’s quirks is that she won’t pee anywhere except on perfect grass.
- For an artist that has many No. 1s as George Strait I imagine it’s hard to get excited about much in the music industry anymore, but his newest single, “I Saw God Today”, is the highest single debut of his career at nineteen on the R&R and Billboard charts. His next album, Troubadour, is due out on April 1st.
- A topic that never loses its buoyancy: Dolly Parton nicknamed her boobs. GAC joins the fun by calling her tour “a bust.”
- The Big Rock Candy Mountain blogger asks for your perfect albums and offers up The Trinity Sessions by The Cowboy Junkies as his perfect album.
It’s that kind of album. Spare and intimate, hushed and built for radio static, the angelic and sleepy voice of Margo Timmins. And I’m obsessed with voices, not the “perfect” voice, but the voice that sounds the most human, or contains the most humanity. Margo Timmins is both, and she melted my teenage heart, sad, sultry, and sublime.
- Carrie Underwood says she doesn’t really know what to do with babies, but says motherhood and babies “are probably inevitable at some point.”
- Songwriter Bob McDill set a schedule of writing one song a week for three decades and was rewarded with dozens of No. 1s and hit songs such as: “Amanda”, “Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold)”, and “Good Ole Boys Like Me”. On March 1st he’ll be at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum for the quarterly series Poets and Prophets: Legendary Country Songwriters. He’ll participate in an in-depth, one-on-one interview, perform briefly, and sign autographs.
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News that former Sugarland member and co-founder Kristen Hall is suing her ex-mates, to the tune of $1.5 million, goes a long way towards providing a bit of context regarding the Atlanta singer/songwriter’s sudden departure from the group.
In Memory of Don Helms (1927 - 2008) Helms dated back to a time when an excellent four or five piece band and a good singer were all that were needed to make great country music. No drums, no light shows, no production tricks in the recording studio–just good music.Tagged In This Article
Bob McDill // Carrie Underwood // Country Music Hall of Fame // Dolly Parton // George Strait // Merle Haggard // Miranda Lambert // Sara Evans // The Cowboy Junkies
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Trackback URI for this postFebruary 13, 2008
[…] a star. Now, 55 number ones and a hall of fame induction after “Unwound” hit the radio, George has scored his highest-ever single debut ever with “I Saw God Today,” a heavily sentimental, lightly narrative three verse […]
4 Comments
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February 13, 2008 at 1:02 pm Permalink
Bob McDill is one of my favorite songwriters of all time. Just an awesome writer.
February 13, 2008 at 3:34 pm Permalink
“A topic that never loses its buoyancy”
you must be quite pleased with yourself.
Regarding the George Strait single, similiar to the success of the Garth “more than a memory” single, this probably says a lot more about modern country radio than it does about the strength or worthiness of the single.
February 13, 2008 at 4:14 pm Permalink
Titillating!
February 13, 2008 at 8:19 pm Permalink
So does the fact Dolly named her twins Shock and Awe mean she is a big Toby Keith fan? Hmmm…
Its nice that Merle is getting one of the streets of Bakersfield named after him, but what’s lacking is a concert venue dedicated to him! I think someone should re-create the old “Blackboard” honky tonk where Buck and Merle and others got their starts. They could feature quality cover bands singing Bakersfield sound classics including songs from The Maddox Brothers and Rose. Of course to make a go of it these days they’d probably have to feature ranchera music a few nights a week…..
Carrie Underwood’s public comments always amaze me with their combined simplicity and vapidity! Every written or spoken Carrie interview I’ve ever read or heard has absolutely bored me to tears. If she has a favorite color I’d guess its white, and bet her favorite ice cream is plain vanilla. It seems that unlike the intriguingly focused Taylor Swift and loopy Kellie Pickler, Carrie never has anything truly unique or interesting to say about anything. On the extreme other end of the spectrum is the delightfully zany Sarah Buxton who never seems to say anything that’s not funny or completely off the wall…
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