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“All aboard,” Mumford & Sons wrote online to announce their upcoming Railroad Revival Tour. On the heels of dropping their most recent studio effort Rushmere, the trio is adding another 2025 trek to their slate, nearly 14 years since they initially launched the first Railroad Revival shows. Nathaniel Rateliff, Trombone Shorty, Chris Thile, Ketch Secor, Madison Cunningham, Lucius, Celisse, and Leif Vollebekk will join the group for the August dates. (Ed Helms...

Welcome to our weekly rundown of the best new music — featuring big singles, key tracks from our favorite albums, and more. This week, Rihanna makes her triumphant return with a summer club banger, Kesha delivers some boy-crazy hyper-pop, and Giveon taps the classic Memphis soul sound. Plus, new music from Jin, Latto, Wolf Alice, and more.

Rihanna, “Friend of Mine” (YouTube)

Kesha, “Boy Crazy” (YouTube)

Giveon, “Rather Be” (YouTube)

Jin, “Don’t Say You Love Me” (YouTube)

Rico Nasty, “Crash” (YouTube)

Latto, “Somebody” (YouTube)

G Flip, “Disco Cowgirl” (YouTube)

Cautious Clay,...

Ketch Secor, the leader of Old Crow Medicine Show, takes a stroll down one of Nashville’s most out-to-get-ya streets — I know, I lived there for 10 years — in his debut solo song “Dickerson Road.” Featuring strung-out, skronk-blues guitar from the Cadillac Three’s Jaren Johnston, the track evokes the gritty, hustling, danger-around-the-corner vibe of Dickerson Pike, a gasoline alley of car lots, tire shops, and seedy motels.

“Who’s knocking on the screen door/rattle the bars/he’s got one shoe/gas can stuck in his arms y’all,...

Mumford & Sons are resurrecting their “Railroad Revival” tour, which they last embarked on in 2011, hitting four cities this summer by train.

The four-date tour will take place in August 2025. After picking up where the 2011 jaunt left off in New Orleans on August 3rd, it will move on to Spartanburg, South Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; and conclude in Burlington, Vermont. See a full list of the band’s upcoming tour dates below.

Get Mumford & Sons Tickets Here

Tickets for the “Railroad Revival” tour will go on sale to the general public on Friday, May 16th at 10:00 a.m. local time via Ticketmaster. There will also be several pre-sales taking place on Thursday, May 15th. Members of Mumford & Sons’ Agora fan community (sign up here) have first access to purchase tickets beginning at 10:00 a.m. local time, while a Live Nation pre-sale for select dates will start at 12:00 p.m.

Mumford & Sons will hit the rails again for the first time in over a decade, announcing the return of their Railroad Revival Tour.

The summer 2025 run will pick up where the 2011 tour left off, at New Orleans’ Woldenberg Park on Aug. 3. After that, Mumford & Sons will travel up the East Coast, playing Piedmont Fairgrounds in Spartanburg, South Carolina (Aug. 4); Allianz Amphitheater in Richmond, Virginia (Aug. 5); and the Champlain Valley Exposition Center in Burlington, Vermont (Aug. 7). All four outdoor venues are aptly located near a local train station.

Just like the initial Railroad Revival tour,...

“If I had an idea that gave me a feeling, I would pursue it,” Turnpike Troubadours frontman Evan Felker tells Rolling Stone. “On this record, it was all about trying to find songs in a very different manner than overthinking things, or trying to let people know that I could write some cool lines or that I know a big word. Not trying to impress anyone, just trying to feel something.”

Felker is referencing The Price of Admission, an 11-track record that Turnpike dropped on Friday after a week of...

For generations, people have come to Hot Springs, Arkansas to enjoy its thermal springs and elegant bathhouses. But around this time of year, they’re drawn to the historic spa town for another attraction – the longest running documentary film festival in North America.

The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival wraps up its 33rd edition this weekend with a screening of Luther: Never Too Much, Dawn Porter’s film about the late singer-songwriter Luther Vandross.

Over the course of nine days, Hsdff, a program of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute, has screened world premieres, works in progress, Oscar-contending films, and more – a slate from as far away as Bhutan and Ethiopia, and as close as Arkansas itself.

Normally, Darren Nicholson would have a mandolin in his hands. But on this day, he’s gripping a chainsaw. High up on Utah Mountain in Haywood County, North Carolina — overlooking the Jonathan Creek valley with the Great Smoky Mountains in the distance — Nicholson is cutting through large trees that have toppled onto roadways during the wrath of Hurricane Helene.

“Right now, I’m working on a giant red oak and a locust,” the bluegrass musician tells Rolling Stone. “It’s just two trees, but I’m not a tree service.

Before Luke Combs became Luke Combs, instantly recognizable by his beard, Blue Otter baseball hat, and Pfg fishing shirt, he used to make regular trips to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to wander its halls. He’d marvel at Merle Haggard’s boots and Keith Whitley’s motorcycle and let the history seep in. On Wednesday, Combs received his own exhibit at the Hall of Fame, Luke Combs: The Man I Am, a look back at the milestones, both personal and professional, that shaped his career.

“This...

Earlier this month, a handful of lucky Bob Dylan fans in Europe stumbled upon a new release entitled 50th Anniversary Collection 1973 in record stores scattered across the continent. The 28-track collection consists of nothing but studio outtakes from the 1973 Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid soundtrack sessions, but it’s sent the Dylan collecting community into a frenzy. Bids are surging past the $500 mark for the few copies available on Ebay — and fans are combing the shelves of European stores in the hopes of finding one.

Fiftieth-anniversary collections like this...

The biggest story of this year’s International Bluegrass Music Association award show wasn’t that Billy Strings won his third consecutive Entertainer of the Year honor. Nor was it that Sierra Hull took home her sixth Mandolin Player of the Year trophy. And it wasn’t even that Molly Tuttle pulled off a trifecta with Female Vocalist, Song, and Album of the Year.

Rather, the takeaway from the 2023 gathering at the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, North Carolina, is that the ongoing “transition” within the...

Zz Top were never really a ballad band. Think “La Grange,” “Tush,” and “Legs.” But for 1986’s Afterburner they tried their hand at a power ballad with “Rough Boy” — this was the Eighties after all. Earlier this week in Nashville, Keith Urban put his own spin on “Rough Boy” at a special event honoring Zz Top’s Billy Gibbons.

Urban was in attendance for the annual BMI Troubadour dinner, an industry event held each September by the performing-rights org to salute a select artist as its “Troubadour.” Last year’s went to Lucinda Williams,...

Origins is a recurring series that gives artists a space to break down everything that went into their latest release. Today, Old Crow Medicine Show dig into their new collaboration with Mavis Staples, “One Drop.”

Old Crow Medicine Show have shared “One Drop,” the latest single from their upcoming album, Jubilee. The spiritually rich, uplifting tune features legendary R&b and gospel singer Mavis Staples, who vocalist Ketch Secor credits as lifting the band’s sound to new heights.

“This is the latest in our canon of ‘songs of a spiritual persuasion,’ and, I think, one of our best, due in no small part to the presence of a legend of gospel music and more, the great Mavis Staples,” Secor explains. “Mavis epitomizes a life in roots music, and Old Crow can only hope that the next 25 years will bring us, like she is, closer to the true vine.”

The joyous,...

Old Crow Medicine Show rally for gun safety in their new song “Louder Than Guns,” a response to last month’s Nashville school shooting. “I don’t want to wake up on another Groundhog Day,” vocalist-fiddler Ketch Secor sings on the track before shouting, “No, I don’t want to hear another rat-a-tat-tat-tat echo down the hallway.” A choir of children join the group for the song’s outro, singing, “Louder than guns/More powerful than bullets flying/Can’t you hear the people crying?” The kids keep singing, “louder than guns.

Music City is coming together for a benefit concert to honour the victims of the horrific school shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, where six people — three children and three school employees — were killed last week.

Billboard reports that Belmont University’s The Fisher Center will host “A Night of Joy Celebrating the Covenant School” on Wednesday, April 12, with the event “to honour the victims and their families as well as the church, staff and first responders, and bring an evening of music, hope and healing.”

Read More: How CMT Music Awards Attendees Are Honouring Nashville Covenant School Shooting Victims

Author and speaker Anne F. Downs will host the event, which will feature performances from a who’s who of Nashville artists, including Chris Tomlin, Colony House, Dave Barnes, Drew Holcomb, Ellie Holcomb, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, Lady A, Matt Kearney, Matt Maher, Natalie Hemby, Sixpence None the Richer,...

Ketch Secor helped found the Episcopal School of Nashville, where his two young children are currently students. It’s a small, private Christian institution that has much in common with the Covenant School of Nashville, which was the site of a grisly mass shooting earlier this week that claimed the lives of three children and three adults.

Those similarities and the safety of his children were surely on the Old Crow Medicine Show leader’s mind when he hopped on Instagram and let loose with an intense, viscerally raw plea for change in this country.

First Lady Dr. Jill Biden attended a candlelight vigil in Nashville on Wednesday evening. The event honored the lives of six people — including three children — murdered in a mass shooting at an elementary school Monday morning that has left Music City reeling. The night saw featured performances from Sheryl Crow, Margo Price, and Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, each of whom has spoken out in favor of gun regulation after this week’s tragedy.

Among the event’s speakers, which did not include the First Lady, were Nashville Mayor John Cooper,...

Old Crow Medicine Show cut loose with a bright blast of roots-rock in their new song “Paint This Town,” the title track from the Nashville band’s upcoming album due out April 22.

Paint This Town, the group’s seventh studio album, follows 2018’s Volunteer and sees the group moving back to former home Ato Records. This time around, Old Crow kept things close to home, co-producing the album with Matt Ross-Spang (Margo Price, John Prine) at their own Hartland Studio.

With its jangling guitars, harmonica, and decidedly rocking drums, “Paint...

Molly Tuttle pays tribute to a free-spirited woman in the new song “She’ll Change.” It’s the singer-guitarist’s first release from an upcoming 2022 album, her first with record label Nonesuch.

Tuttle penned the song with Old Crow Medicine Show frontman Ketch Secor, and the end result is a sprightly tune on which the picking dives off in ways as surprising and unpredictable as the woman being described. “She don’t worry about tomorrow/She’s got plenty on her mind,” Tuttle begins, dashing off nifty acoustic-guitar runs between lines.

The Americana Music Association’s annual Americana Honors & Awards will return for its 20th year on September 22nd at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Nominees in each of the categories were announced by Keb’ Mo’ and Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor during an afternoon event at Nashville’s National Museum of African-American Music on Wednesday.

Artists appearing in multiple categories include Jason Isbell, Amythyst Kiah, Valerie June, and Brandi Carlile. Isbell and Carlile are both up for Artist of the Year, while Isbell’s Reunions is nominated for Album...

Keb’ Mo’ and Old Crow Medicine Show have teamed up for the collaborative single “The Medicine Man,” which was written and recorded while the Covid pandemic spiraled in 2020.

Set to a loping groove with dashes of fiddle and banjo, “The Medicine Man” has an easygoing sound that almost conceals some sharper commentary on the crisis of the last year. Keb’ Mo’ assumes lead vocal duty here, wrestling with the physical and mental effects of the pandemic. The titular “Medicine Man,” of course, is less of a mystical, spiritual figure than...

Singer-songwriter Hailey Whitters has teamed up with country vocal quartet Little Big Town for the new single and video “Fillin’ My Cup,” the first new music Whitters has released since her 2020 album The Dream.

A fiddle-driven country-rocker with ringing electric guitars and beefy drums, “Fillin’ My Cup” was written by Whitters with Nicolle Galyon and Hillary Lindsey. It’s another tune full of quirky philosophical observations in the vein of her previous standout releases “The Days” and “Janice at the Hotel Bar.” In this case, Whitters gets the sublime harmony...

How long has it been since Valerie June released new music? When her last album, The Order of Time, dropped, Donald Trump was two months into his presidency. Since then, June and her intoxicating mélange of folk, blues, and new-age R&b have been praised by the likes of Bob Dylan, and she played a galvanizing set at the Newport Folk Festival in 2018.

Last month, June curated a livestream show to get out the vote and combat voter suppression, recruiting Brittany Howard, Black Pumas, Jon Baptiste, Rhiannon Giddens, and others for the cause.

Whether it’s coming out of Nashville, New York, L.A., or points in between, there’s no shortage of fresh tunes, especially from artists who have yet to become household names. Rolling Stone Country selects some of the best new music releases from country and Americana artists.

Molly Tuttle, “Olympia, Wa”

The bluegrass star reconnects with the Bay Area punk of her youth with this vibrant cover of Rancid’s “Olympia, Wa,” from the band’s 1995 LP …And Out Come the Wolves. A track off Tuttle’s upcoming covers...

As the frontman of Old Crow Medicine, Ketch Secor builds a bridge between the traditions of old-time music and the all-encompassing sounds of modern-day Americana. His band has even woven itself into the world of contemporary country, thanks to Darius Rucker’s triple-platinum cover of “Wagon Wheel.” Even so, Secor remains an ardent fan of the old stuff, enthusiastically singing the praises of pre-wwii roots music during this week’s episode of Walking the Floor.

Recorded in April via a socially-distanced Zoom call, the newest installment of Chris Shiflett’s...

Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor goes it alone in the new song “Quarantined” — but he sure would like to have some company. A lighthearted ode to be being separated from the one you love, the track finds the man-out-of-time musician suffering through two full weeks without as much as an embrace.

“I wanna hug you and hold you tight/but I gotta wait 14 nights,” Secor sings in the ragtime number, lamenting the sad truth that “one little cough can kill us all.” He even works in a reference...

Old Crow Medicine Show provide a rallying cry for the city of Nashville and a message of positivity for the world at large in the new song “Nashville Rising.”

The string band’s Ketch Secor wrote the song in the days following a deadly tornado that touched down in the city, decimating homes, venues, and businesses, and killing two in Nashville. Before cleanup was even completed, Nashville, like the rest of the country, was dealt a blow from the sweeping coronavirus pandemic.

“These are the dark times where music can really light the way,...

Christopher “Critter” Fuqua has played his last official concert with Old Crow Medicine Show. Fuqua, a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, co-founded the country string band in 1998 with singer and fiddle player Ketch Secor. His final show was the band’s annual New Year’s Eve concert, broadcast live on Sirius Xm’s Outlaw Country, at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium.

Fuqua’s exit caps a year of lineup changes for Old Crow Medicine Show. Guitarist Chance McCoy left the group earlier in 2019, and solo artist Charlie Worsham joined as an adjunct member.

In celebration of the new YouTube Originals documentary The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash, the streaming company has announced plans for the first Cash Fest in Nashville. Scheduled for November 10th at War Memorial Auditorium, the event will include performances of Cash’s songs by a wide-ranging group of artists, including Little Big Town, Elle King, Cage the Elephant’s Matt Shultz, and Midland.

Additional artists participating in the revue-style show, presented in partnership with the Johnny Cash Trust and the Best Fest, include Perry & Etty Farrell, Judah & the Lion,...

Musicianship was the theme of the evening for the second of Marty Stuart’s three Artist-in-Residence performances at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on Wednesday. Titled “Psychedelic Jam-Bo-Ree” and featuring a multi-generational cast of guests, the emphasis felt tilted slightly more “jam” than “psych,” with Stuart and his band the Fabulous Superlatives flexing their instrumental chops.

In a way, the show was akin to Stuart’s annual Late Night Jam, held each June at the Ryman Auditorium during Cma Fest. That show mirrors the format of an old radio program,...

In conversation, Ketch Secor, the Old Crow Medicine Show frontman and fiddler, is always ducking down the backroads and side alleys of American musical history. And it’s impossible to not tag along. Credit his old-soul personality and charisma, but especially his encyclopedic knowledge of country music, which makes him a perfect commentator in Ken Burns’ sprawling Country Music documentary. The series premiered Sunday on PBS and runs nightly through September 18th, before resuming for another four episodes on September 22nd.

Aside from being interviewed, Secor was also brought in...

“There was a saying: ‘The blues had a baby and they called it rock & roll.’ I always say, ‘Yeah, and I think the daddy was a hillbilly.” That’s Country Music Hall of Fame member Bobby Braddock, writer of songs including “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” on the genesis of rock music. He makes the case that its birth, near the end of the first half of the 20th century, was as influenced by country music as it was the blues.

Related: 100 Greatest Country Artists of All Time

Braddock is...

Grand Ole Opry members Old Crow Medicine Show took the stage of the Opry’s former home, the Ryman Auditorium, recently for a live, acoustic performance of their 2008 tune “Methamphetamine.” Joined by new guest member Charlie Worsham on guitar, the six musicians gather around one microphone, playing to an empty house, which adds an air of desolate intensity to the song about the ravages of drug addiction.

In an episode of the Opry’s ongoing series The Write Stuff, Ketch Secor talks about “Methamphetamine” and how it originated with a...

At a panel previewing his forthcoming PBS documentary “Country Music,” legendary filmmaker Ken Burns addressed inevitable questions about the origins of country music and the genre “not having a mass appeal.”

The director, who was joined on stage by some of the musicians featured in the marathon 16-hour endeavor, bristled a little when asked about the latter.

“I don’t know what could have more mass appeal than country music,” Burns said in response, before pointing the fact that each member of the Beatles discovered their love for music through various country stars and lamenting the fact that country music “tends to be siloed into one single thing.”

“We cloak country music in hound-dogs and pickup trucks and good old boys and six packs of beer,” Burns went on to say. “But it deals with love and loss, particularly love, and it’s hard to address it…The arguments we...

Among today’s country artists, Old Crow Medicine Show have become synonymous with the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville’s “mother church of country music.” On September 20th, the Grand Ole Opry members will pay homage to their long-running relationship with the venue with the release of the new concert document Live at the Ryman.

The 11-track collection — all recorded at the Ryman between 2013 and 2019 — includes both Old Crow staples like “Brushy Mountain Conjugal Trailer” and “Methamphetamine,” and traditionals and covers like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “Cc Rider,” and “Sixteen Tons.

Vince Gill was having some trouble with the teleprompter during the taping of Ken Burns’ all-star “Country Music: Live at the Ryman” concert in Nashville on Wednesday night.

“That’s why I didn’t go to college — I suck at reading,” he joked with characteristic self-deprecating humor after flubbing one of his lines. The show was taped for broadcast on PBS stations at a later date.

Fortunately, the Oklahoma native was in peak form doing everything else during an evening that celebrated a type of music that routinely reconnects with its roots and,...

Ken Burns’ upcoming documentary Country Music will begin airing on PBS stations before the year is out, but a piece of it will live on forever at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. At a press conference on Wednesday in Nashville, Burns showed a clip from the documentary and announced that he would be donating all the transcripts and interviews from the project to the Hall of Fame.

The eight-part documentary, on which Burns worked with regular collaborators Dayton Duncan and Julie Dunfey, was filmed over the course...

Get ready for a grand ole doc’ry.

Country fans have been thirsty for years just to get a release date for, much less see, Ken Burns’ characteristically epic documentary on the genre. A delivery date for “Country Music” was finally provided Friday in PBS’ presentation for the film at the Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena: It’ll air across eight nights in the Sept. 15-25 time frame.

And you know you’re a true country fan if you look at the details unveiled about the doc and your first response is: Only 16 hours?

“Sixteen and a half,” corrected writer/producer Dayton Duncan, one of Burns’ longtime filmmaking partners — happy to have snuck even a few extra minutes in — as he spoke with Variety after the TCA panel. The only way to get it down to that length was by cutting off the history the film covers in the mid-1990s,...

On September 15th, 2019, PBS will premiere the first episode of documentary filmmaker Ken Burns’ Country Music, a detailed exploration of the genre which has been in the works for the past eight years.

Directed by Burns and produced by the acclaimed filmmaker with his long-time collaborators Dayton Duncan and Julie Dunfey, Country Music premieres Sunday, September 15th through Wednesday, September 18th, and Sunday, September 22nd, through Wednesday, September 25th at 8 p.m. Et on PBS stations. Episodes will be available for streaming as well. The documentary follows Burns’ 2017 exploration of the Vietnam War.

PBS has previewed some of its 2019 launches at the Television Critics Association Press Tour.

Here’s the rundown:

*** Ken Burns’s Country Music will premiere Sept. 15. The 16-Hour documentary chronicles the history of the genre, from the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills to Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Charley Pride, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Garth Brooks and more. The eight-part series is directed by Burns and is produced by Burns and long-time collaborators Dayton Duncan and Julie Dunfey. It runs Sunday, September 15 through Wednesday, September 18, and Sunday, September 22 through Wednesday, September 25 at 8:00-10:00 p.m. Et.

*** PBS and Ryman Auditorium present Country Music: Live at the Ryman, a concert celebrating the Burns series. The show is set for March 27. Burns will host the evening, which will feature performances by Dierks Bentley, Rosanne Cash, Rodney Crowell, Rhiannon Giddens, Vince Gill, Brenda Lee,...

Kesha is digging back into her country roots — the star is set to share the stage with Old Crow Medicine Show for an all-new Cmt Crossroads collaboration.

The hour-long concert special will feature special performances of both artists’ biggest hits, including tracks from Kesha’s No. 1 album Rainbow and Old Crow Medicine Show’s iconic archive that spans nearly two decades.

People has the exclusive clip of their “Your Love Is My Drug” rendition.

“I grew up on country music. It was the first music I sang, listened to and wrote as a child, and I’m especially stoked to...

As the Country Music genre continues to grow in popularity, shows like the 49th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards are all the more important.

This year, Tim McGraw and Miranda Lambert are each up for seven trophies, while Grammy performer Keith Urban has half a dozen shots at glory.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift and Blake Shelton will each compete in five categories, as will Kacey Musgraves and Lee Brice.

The 49th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards will go live on April 6th at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena, hosted by Shelton and three-time nominee Luke Bryan.

And the nominees are…

Entertainer Of The Year

• Luke Bryan

• Miranda Lambert

• Blake Shelton

• George Strait

• Taylor Swift

Male Vocalist Of The Year

• Jason Aldean

• Lee Brice

• Luke Bryan

• Blake Shelton

• Keith Urban

Female Vocalist Of The Year

• Sheryl Crow

• Miranda Lambert

• Kacey Musgraves

• Taylor Swift

• Carrie Underwood

Vocal Duo Of The...

As the Country Music genre continues to grow in popularity, shows like the 49th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards are all the more important.

This year, Tim McGraw and Miranda Lambert are each up for seven trophies, while Grammy performer Keith Urban has half a dozen shots at glory.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift and Blake Shelton will each compete in five categories, as will Kacey Musgraves and Lee Brice.

The 49th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards will go live on April 6th at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena, hosted by Shelton and three-time nominee Luke Bryan.

And the nominees are…

Entertainer Of The Year

• Luke Bryan

• Miranda Lambert

• Blake Shelton

• George Strait

• Taylor Swift

Male Vocalist Of The Year

• Jason Aldean

• Lee Brice

• Luke Bryan

• Blake Shelton

• Keith Urban

Female Vocalist Of The Year

• Sheryl Crow

• Miranda Lambert

• Kacey Musgraves

• Taylor Swift

• Carrie Underwood

Vocal Duo Of The...

Nashville, Tenn. — Country legend Willie Nelson is on board for this year's Railroad Revival Tour.

He'll be joined by Jamey Johnson, Band of Horses and actor-musician John Reilly and Friends.

The train tour kicks off Oct. 20 in Duluth, Ga., and runs through Oct. 28 in Oakland, Calif. The artists will ride in vintage, 1940s railcars. They'll perform in open air, pop-up concert venues in parks, fields and lots around the railroad tracks where they stop.

Other stops include Memphis, Tenn.; Oklahoma City, Old Town Spring, Texas; Tempe, Ariz.; and San Pedro, Calif.

Tickets go on sale Friday at 11 a.m. Edt.

A documentary called "Big Easy Express," featuring last year's trip with Mumford & Sons and Old Crow Medicine Show, is out today on iTunes and DVD.

___

Online:

. http://www.railroadrevivaltour.com

___

Follow for the latest country music news from The Associated Press. http://www.twitter.com/AP_Country...

"Big Easy Express," the music documentary that follows a ten-day road trip with Mumford and Sons, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and Old Crow Medicine Show, became available for download in 50 markets on iTunes today. Normally, this wouldn't be news. However, this launch, comes a full month before its other releases. Next month, the film will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD, which will be followed by a fall VOD/theatrical release.  The filmmakers say: "We always wanted to incorporate a global digital platform into our release strategy and to find a novel approach to bringing "Big Easy Express" to both new and traditional film audiences. We are delighted to be working with all of our partners in crafting an innovative distribution model." We'll be sure to let you know whether this running-in-reverse distribution strategy works out for "Big Easy Express." Full press release reprinted below: World...

Exclusive: Director Emmett Malloy’s documentary about a train tour by folk bands Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Britain’.s Mumford & Son has been generating strong buzz on the film festival circuit. But regardless of how it performs, S2BN Films’ Big Easy Express has the distinction today of being the first feature film distributed globally (in 50 countries) for sale and rental on iTunes ahead of any other platform, including theaters. The producers and the bands were able to make the deal with Apple because they own all of the global rights to the film and music. Apple also will be first to offer the soundtrack when that’s released. “We always wanted to incorporate a global digital platform into our release strategy and to find a novel approach to bringing Big Easy Express to both new and traditional film audiences,” Malloy and the film...

Big Easy Express takes audiences on the train that drove the bands Mumford & Sons, Old Crow Medicine Show and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes from Oakland, CA to New Orleans, La on their Railroad Revival Tour. Unlike the usual practice of separating bands into different, cramped tour buses as they travel between shows, the Big Easy Express allows these three bands to travel together and proves that, sometimes, the journey is better than the destination. With room to move around, an open bar, and a bunch of talented musicians, the jam sessions never end and it becomes hard to tell if the bands are more excited to get on stage and perform for their fans at each stop or get back on the train to perform with each other. As the bands leave the stage, instruments in hand, they become a make shift parade as they walk back to the train, still...

In Big Easy Express, director Emmett Malloy documents a tour by three cult-favorite indie-folk bands: Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Mumford & Sons. But the free-wheeling travelogue that develops is equal parts itinerant jam, extended family picnic, and traveling carnival, with Malloy and his crew as the cinematic roustabouts getting it all down for posterity. The film follows the three bands from Oakland to New Orleans, giving us a glimpse not only of their concerts but of their camaraderie as they live and travel on a train together, sharing songs, time, and experiences, and ultimately becoming more like a troupe of old-time troubadours than a batch of independent acts.

The main precedent for Big Easy Express is the 2003 documentary Festival Express, about a similar 1970 train tour featuring The Band, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and others. Big Easy Express feels like the 21st century torch-carrier...

New: Banjos, Skateboards and Kitchen Shenanigans If you love music but can’t stand the crowds, the heat and the potential sunstroke of summer musical festivals, there are new DVDs in all three categories that can carry a tune. The road-trip concert documentary Big Easy Express (iTunes exclusive starting June 26; DVD/Blu-Ray from S2BN Films July 24) is a soaring delight, even if you don’t think you like roots music. Following Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros and Old Crow Medicine Show on their coast-to-coast train ride, director Emmett Malloy crafts a loving valentine to music that’s both pared-down and richly dense, as well as an ode to the open road and our nation’s vast spaces. It’s a real treat. And you don’t have...

Read More...

While many of us are currently caught up in the excess of the summer blockbuster movie season, several smaller documentaries are quietly making their way to cinemas as well. A few trailers for these films are hitting the web this week for those looking to toss out the stale popcorn entertainment for something a little more nuanced.

For the large section of “Desperate Housewives of (Insert City)” fans out there, perhaps it’s time to take a look at the other side of the coin with “The Queen of Versailles.” Following billionaire timeshare mogul David Siegel and his idealistic housewife Jackie Siegel – who are looking to build a 90,000-square-foot mansion inspired by Versailles – the film chronicles the financial woes of the couple and their large family as America begins to experience its current financial collapse. The tale looks to be oddly compelling in that Jackie is very upfront and proud of her spending ways,...