Lonestar Names Their New Fearless Leader…I Mean Lead Singer

Brody Vercher | September 13th, 2007 Email Share

  • In his Nickel Creek concert review Chuck Hinton says “Assuming they avoid the many pitfalls of young stardom, the sky is the limit for these fledgling troubadours.”
  • Has anyone come across Digital Rodeo yet? I just came across it and haven’t had a chance to properly explore, but it looks like a nicely designed social network for country musicians and fans. Sort of a hybrid between MySpace and Virb. It might be a cool place to discover new music.
  • Listen: Barbara Wilkinson informed us about a new Texas Swing songwriter demo that she posted on her MySpace, “Cowboys Love Texas” was co-written with Ed Williams and Sonya Wood.
  • A few weeks back we posted about 18 of Hank Thompson’s albums being released digitally. USA Today has that story and adds that it’s part of a growing trend to release deep catalogs as digital-only reissues. Yesterday Capitol Records Nashville released nine albums by Charlie and Ira Louvin, however, I can’t seem to find them anywhere.
  • In other Hank Thompson news, “Governor Rick Perry and Mayor Virginia DuPuy have declared October 8, 2007, ‘Hank Thompson Day‘ in The State of Texas and in The City of Waco.” Now that is pretty cool. Visit Take Country Back for a brief bio on the life and career of Thompson.
  • Talking about her upcoming Duets album Reba McEntire expressed her desire to reach a younger audience.

    “You’ve got to keep your work current,” she says. “You’ve got to change with the times and know what’s going on.” In her view, “Duets” is a way of “bringing the old with the new and mixing it up.”

    She also talks about making calculated decisions as to who she did duets with so that she could draw from their fan base, in essence, make country supporters of pop fans.

  • Keith Urban is putting out a hits album on November 20th, although the title and track listing haven’t been confirmed yet.
  • After the CMA Awards show incident involving Faith Hill, the singer says she almost threw in the towel for good.
  • Matt from The Lost Highway sing the praises of the new Chesney album, awarding it a 4 out of 5 stars, but Trisha Yearwood’s hits album tops that with a perfect five out of five stars. Country Mike says he won’t be buying it though, because he got virtually the same thing ten years ago.
  • Listen: Three new tunes from Kevin Fowler are up on his MySpace. “Me And The Boys” even features some vocals from George Jones. His album Bring It On hits shelves on September 25th.
  • ABC is going to have a two-hour special on September 18th titled “Elvis, Viva Las Vegas.” It “will examine how the King of Rock-and-Roll affected Las Vegas” and will include performances from Toby Keith, Miranda Lambert, Faith Hill (who seems to be all over the place lately), and Willie Nelson.
  • No Depression co-editor Grant Alden unleashes some pent up anger about formulaic Texas music and stupid songs on his blog.

    I am tired of stupid songs. I am tired of music which revels in being drunk and stupid and surviving it. I am flat worn out by the songs which inspire and are inspired by that delusional lifestyle, and the singers who substitute a faux cowboy yee-haw attitude for a distinctive singing style. For having a voice. For having a clue.

  • Lonestar’s new lead singer: Cody Collins.
  • Tom Roland says “one of the hallmarks of a really good song is its ability to remain useful years after its introduction.” He goes on to say that John Michael Montgomery’s “Life’s a Dance” is one such song and gives a few examples as to why. I remember when this song came out, mainly because it’s one of the songs that sparked the more-than-a-decade long mega-infatuation my sister has had with John Michael Montgomery.
  • To be honest I haven’t had the time to read this entire article on Jerry Jeff Walker, but it’s there if you want to take a peek.
  • Getting lost in all the Kenny Chesney hoopla was Moot Davis’s honky-tonkin’ gem of a sophomore release, Already Moved On. His MySpace currently has three of the songs from his album available for your listening pleasure.
  1. Hollerin Ben
    September 13, 2007 at 11:58 am Permalink

    “USA Today has that story and adds that it’s part of a growing trend to release deep catalogs as digital-only reissues”

    finally the major labels do something vaguely intelligent. Isn’t it way past time where they should have all of their content digitized on a server somewhere that people can go to to put their old records/whatever on their ipods? Isn’t that a no brainer? It’s like “oh gee, we have all this awesome content lying around, should we sell some of it? Nah, who has time for that???”

    “No Depression co-editor Grant Alden unleashes some pent up anger about formulaic Texas music and stupid songs on his blog”
    No Depression, pah. I’m sick of their lame magazine being full of boring articles about dreamy sounding folk rock. I’m also sick of music that values being obtuse over being clear and understanable. Plus, didn’t they have Miranda Lambert on the cover like 2 months ago? So its like “oh Texas music is all well and good when its helping us sell magazines, but on my INTERNET BLOG I am gonna rip Texas music a new one! HAHAHAHA!

    and didn’t the editorial in the Miranda issue say something like “well, you guys may think that this is lame of us because shes like mainstream and we are only supposed to like stuff that isn’t, but we waged a battle with Nashville back when it was Garth and Shania, and largely the battle is won.” I laughed out loud when I read that. Talk about a phyrric victory huh? Another victory like the last 10 years of Nashville and we’ll have won ourselves right out of an American artform.

    Hell yeah for Moot Davis. The new album is the most interesting awesome sounding album of the decade. The first one was cool, but this one is like, crazy good. Pete Anderson man, he just keeps churnin out dank records. Good for you guys for featuring it.

    I’ll take No Depression seriously when they put someone like Moot Davis on the cover, for once. But then again, real country music is so passe isn’t it. Stupid No Depression.

  2. Chris N.
    September 13, 2007 at 1:16 pm Permalink

    I’m sure the Moot Davis cover would sell like gangbusters … to Moot’s immediate family.

  3. Hollerin Ben
    September 13, 2007 at 2:47 pm Permalink

    haha, burn.

    but I know that when I think of No Depression, I think of magazines just flying off the shelf and frantic calls from Barnes and Nobles all across the country begging for more copies because the cover with Alejandro Escoveda has been selling like gangbusters!

    No Depression isn’t Rolling Stone right? The whole point of the magazine is to highlite music because of artistic, rather than commercial relevance. If “selling magazines” was the reason for their existence, wouldn’t they have Carrie Underwood and Tim McGraw on the cover?

    and assumably people read No Depression to find out about music that doesn’t get huge exposure elsewhere, but that is awesome correct? so my point, is that if No Depression is going to have critical credibility, then instead of highliting 1.artists who are mainstream and famous (Miranda) or 2. Artists who have been around 10 or 15 or 25 or 40 years and already have afanbase and are recognized as awesome, No Depression should actually prove that they have critical clout and put an artist on their cover who is awesome who can actually use exposure. Rolling Stone back in the day was hip because they didn’t need soundscan or 10 years of history to tell them what was cool or good. They knew what was cool and good.

    No Depression shouldn’t rely on the popularity of their cover artist. Conversely they shouldn’t need to siphon the credibility of their cover artists. Their magazine should sell because No Depression has credibility on their own because they have proven (over their rather long history, its not like its new) that they know what is cool and good in the world of roots/country music.

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