The 9513 - Country Music Blog

Bluegrass and Dixieland jazz may, upon first glance, seem rather different from one another, but they do have several common traits, such as a shared love of improvisation. In addition, as their names suggest, both genres grew out of specific regions and remain linked to those regions and their people. These shared characteristics are part [...]

Continue reading "Album Review: Del McCoury Band & Preservation Hall Jazz Band – American Legacies"

Your enjoyment of Aaron Lewis’ EP, Town Line, is directly proportional to how much you enjoy his debut country single, “Country Boy.” If you loved the down-home, don’t-tread-on-me sentiments, then are you ever in luck, because the song shows up three times on a seven-track album. If you thought it was a pandering, turgid tune [...]

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The tenth time’s the charm for Eric and Leigh Gibson. The brothers–and their talented band–keep outdoing themselves with each successive record. Their latest, Help My Brother, features the best harmonies in the business (sorry, Dailey and Vincent), and they’ve never sounded better together than they do on these dozen tracks. Some of the brothers’ finest [...]

Continue reading "Album Review: The Gibson Brothers – Help My Brother"

Lucinda Williams, one of the great American artists of her time, finally seems willing to be consoled. On her eighth studio album, Blessed, she devotes her energy to getting all the anger out of her system. The result is a milestone in an already matchless repertoire. Working with Don Was and Little Honey producer Eric [...]

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Banjo player Joe Mullins has bluegrass in the blood. Radio, too–he’s the son of the late disc jockey/fiddler Paul “Moon” Mullins, who was one of the Stanley Brothers’ Clinch Mountain Boys, performed with his son in the Traditional Grass, and spent over four decades as a broadcaster in Southwest Ohio. The younger Mullins, who recently [...]

Continue reading "Album Review: Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers – Hymns From the Hills"

A country rock quintet from Dallas, Eleven Hundred Springs has issued 11 albums since their 1998 debut. On Eight the Hard Way, the band showcases their winning blend of country shuffles and Western swing hoedowns. Lead vocalist Matt Hillyer’s wistful singing lends a bittersweet feeling to these songs about dark bars and broken hearts. His [...]

Continue reading "Album Review: Eleven Hundred Springs – Eight the Hard Way"

The third major posthumous multi-artist tribute to Waylon Jennings is certainly the most youthful of the lot. In fact, about half the performers featured here had not yet made any significant mark on mainstream country music by 2003, the year that saw the release of both Dualtone’s singer-songwritery Lonesome, On’ry and Mean and RCA’s more [...]

Continue reading "Album Review: Various Artists – The Music Inside: A Collaboration Dedicated to Waylon Jennings, Vol. 1"

You’d think that Hot Club of Cowtown would have recorded a Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys tribute album earlier in their twelve-year history, considering that they named their band in honor of Wills (and gypsy jazz pioneer Django Reinhardt’s Hot Club of France). Luckily, What Makes Bob Holler is a covers album that’s worth [...]

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The title of Hayes Carll’s fourth and best album is a reference to the military acronym that stands for “Kiss My Ass Guys, You’re on Your Own,” and a pair of tracks weave personal narratives into political statements. The title cut, with rapid fire verses a la REM’s “It’s the End of the World As [...]

Continue reading "Album Review: Hayes Carll – KMAG YOYO"

Blaze Foley is probably remembered more today for the songs that were written about him (“Blaze’s Blues” by Townes Van Zandt and “Drunken Angel” by Lucinda Williams) than the ones written by him. John Prine, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson have covered his songs, but Foley, who was shot to death in 1989 at the [...]

Continue reading "Album Review: Gurf Morlix – Blaze Foley’s 113th Wet Dream"