The 9513 - Country Music Blog

The only real cure for jet lag is adrenalin, and it’s only temporary. The six-hour time difference between New York City and France gives rise to a mental fog that a good meal, vitamins, jumping jacks, a nap, or a shower are all powerless to fix. Nonetheless, for any band that dreams of touring Europe, [...]

Continue reading "On the Road: A Kick in the Groin Is Always a Surprise"

Imagine a concert where you don’t hear an electric guitar solo until about an hour into the performance, but fiddles and steel guitars abound in almost every song. Imagine the cover songs are from Gram Parsons, Don Williams and Merle Haggard. Imagine the lead singer is singing about drinking, love and loneliness, all done from [...]

Continue reading "Jason Boland Brings Red Dirt to Georgia Clay"

50 years ago today, Hawaii became the 50th state of the union. Now, I’ve never actually been there, so my knowledge of the Aloha State comes from two great educators: television and music. But since nobody wants to read about the Saved By The Bell episode where the acid-wash aficionados get lei-d, we’ll be focusing [...]

Continue reading "Friday Five: Hawaii Five-0"

In movies, country music is flashy Nudie suits, thick accents and troubled childhoods. In Nashville, it’s barrooms, cash cows and demo tapes by the dozen. In pop music circles, it’s hokey, old-fashioned and the quintessential line “I like all music…but country.” Country music can arguably be all (or none) of these things, but they still [...]

Continue reading "Your Take: What Is Country Music?"

Lefty Frizzell rivaled and might have been bigger than Hank Williams in 1951, placing four songs in the top ten at the same time, a feat that’s never been matched. Like Williams, he led a turbulent life, mostly due to his own bad habits, but it was his friend Hank who was immortalized by an [...]

Continue reading "Stop Cutting Hits: The Story of Lefty Frizzell’s “The Long Black Veil”"

To prepare for this review, I re-listened to most of Trisha Yearwood’s single releases in an ultimately futile attempt to discover a better vocal performance. Some, such as “I Don’t Paint Myself into Corners” and “The Song Remembers When,” come close, but I believe that “This is Me You’re Talking To” represents Trisha Yearwood’s best [...]

Continue reading "Trisha Yearwood – “This is Me You’re Talking To”"

It seemed at the visitation yesterday of Steel Guitar Hall of Fame member John Hughey, that everyone in Nashville had lost a family member. There wasn’t a parking spot to be found within a block of the funeral home. I even heard someone say that not since Chet Atkins has the Nashville musician community lost [...]

Continue reading "Tribute To John Hughey: Remembering The Steel Guitar Legend"