Merle Haggard Debuts At Number 1 On Bluegrass Charts
- The Politico has a great “story behind the song” type feature about how “For These Times” was written and eventually ended up on Martina McBride’s latest album, Waking Up Laughing. Inspiration is everywhere.
It begins in Pittsburgh on election night 2006. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), losing to Democrat Robert P. Casey Jr. by a wide margin, gathered his wife and six children around a hotel ballroom microphone and conceded.
- If you’re wanting to visit your local theater on November 14th to check out the live Garth Brooks performance you’ll have to buy your tickets on National CineMedia’s FATHOM website. Tickets go on sale Friday (October 19th).
- Here’s some news that’s bound to destroy Jim’s spirits: his girl, Carrie Underwood, has been linked to a guy named Chase Crawford, who is apparently an actor. On the subject of Tony Romo, Underwood says:
“We’re very good friends, and I talk to him pretty much every day, whether it’s a text or whatever,” she says. “But we were never, like, dating. We hang out. We like doing the same things, and we come from similar backgrounds, and we both stumbled into big fame real fast. So we understand where each other is coming from. It’s just the wrong time for both of us. In a different world, we might have dated. But not in this one right now.”
Poor Romo.
- When the Billboard Top 200 is released tomorrow there will be four country albums in the Top 10. Rascal Flatts, LeAnn Rimes, Reba McEntire, and Sara Evans hold that ever so distinguished honor.
- Miranda Lambert talks about Keith Urban giving her the inspiration to bring her A game to her shows.
- McCoury Music, the people who brought you The Bluegrass Sessions from Merle Haggard, have a video on their site with The Hag in studio recording “Holding Things Together”. Marty Stuart is sitting next to him playing his signature laden mandonlin.
- The Bluegrass Sessions brought Merle Haggard his highest first week of sales since 2000 and while only coming in at number 43 on the country charts, he earned a debut spot at the top of the bluegrass charts.
“Each take became a performance. Merle’s singing was totally inspired,” Stuart writes in the album’s liner notes. “In fact, he got to the point where he didn’t even go into the control room to listen to playbacks. There was no need. All of us knew what we were doing was right.”
- At 19 years old Rissi Palmer was offered a deal on an R&B label. Much to the surprise of her family she turned them down.
“A lot of people in my family said, ‘I can’t believe you just did that. That’s money.’ But I couldn’t imagine having to sing something I didn’t feel, I didn’t identify with and didn’t feel sincere about,” she says.
Her new country album comes out on October 23rd.
- Emmylou Harris will give the keynote interview that’s being conducted by Peter Cooper at the Eighth Annual Americana Music Festival and Conference in Nashville on November 2nd.
- Check out Big & Rich’s new short film/music video for the song “Between Raising Hell and Amazing Grace”. Big Kenny plays a drunk preacher while John Rich is a speedy gunslinger. It’s seriously lacking in character development, but it would have been hard to add any more in with the short amount of time they had. Who do you think is the better actor?
Popular Stuff
Sponsor
Is Dave Haywood going solo? This and many other of country music's most pressing questions answered in the September edition of The 9513's world famous Mailbag!
Caroline Herring likes to sing songs about life in the South. No, not exactly like Justin Moore and Jason Aldean...
The 9513's resident historian Paul W. Dennis sits down for a chat with country music legend Gene Watson.
As much as we love girl singers, we love songs about girl singers even more. Here's just a few of the many tribute songs out there.
Step away from the river and up to a jukebox, because heartbreak is only temporary, but a good song about drowning yourself—like a diamond—lasts forever.
What do you think about music labels "testing the waters" with a single before providing access to an artist's entire album? 
What country artist, young or old, would you recommend as a must-listen artist to a newcomer on his/her journey through country music, and what would your essential song picks be?Tagged In This Article
Big Kenny // Carrie Underwood // Emmylou Harris // Garth Brooks // John Rich // LeAnn Rimes // Martina McBride // Marty Stuart // Merle Haggard // Miranda Lambert // Rascal Flatts // Reba McEntire // Rissi Palmer // Sara Evans
Current Discussion
- Vicki: Or Alison Krauss and Union Station, Ricky Skaggs, Patty Loveless and Vince Gill
- Vicki: The Beatles, Carrie Underwood, Jamey Johnson and Josh Groban.
- Matt: I'm glad you chose to review this as opposed to the new Joe Nichols album. Instead of complaining about bad ...
- Terry Ridont: I think its cool. Thats what I like about indy rock artists, everything isn't the same high budget packaging and ...
- Stormy: Jon: The problem is that the progressive country music is now being called Americana. And why is it ...
- Razor X: Maybe his brother did talk him into it but what’s to say he hasn’t ‘always loved’ and ‘wanted’ to ...
- Brian: Josh Kelley will be fine. At the very least it means Katherine Heigl may show up on country award shows regularly. ...
- Razor X: Change may be inevitable but we aren't required to support it and if enough people boycott it, it doesn't last ...
- Jon: "You can’t stop “progress”… We can if we try hard enough. Um, no. Not that I think "progress" is a good ...
- Joe: When she moved from Mercury to BNA, I think we were all just allowed to think there'd be some grand ...
No Comments Yet
RSS for comments on this post | Trackback URI for this post
Leave a Comment