Colter Wall puts his mission statement (with a touch of irony) right there in his opening track. New album Memories and Empties begins with “1800 Miles,” noting the distance between Wall’s Saskatchewan home and Nashville. The singer’s about as country as it gets, but he often seems relatively untouched by Music Row. With Memories and Empties, he looks into a more traditional and radio-friendly sound, but only in his own way, still eschewing most of this century’s country music even as he moves himself off the plains.
With “1800 Miles,” Wall offers an honest self-appraisal of his artistry. There’s no flash; there’s nothing commercial. There are no “rhinestone clothes” or any adherence to subculture roles. That’s been true throughout his…
Category: country
American Aquarium dropped their Live at Red Rocks album and they performed their song about Wichita Falls during the concert.
It was just over a year ago that American Aquarium performed at the Red Rock Amphitheater in Colorado. This was not the band’s first show at this venue, however this one in May of 2024 was recorded for a live album.
One song that a lot of folks love here locally is ‘Wichita Falls’. We have a lot of songs that mention or are written about Wichita Falls. Pat Metheny’s album ‘As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls’ is probably the most famous nationally. American Aquarium’s song titled Wichita Falls is probably the most famous here in town. American Aquarium front man BJ Barham wrote the song…
Over the years, West Virginian Charles Wesley Godwin has built up a reputation for delivering excellent live shows. He’s supported artists such as Luke Combs and Zach Bryan and is at present out on the road with Eric Church. Live from the Steel City is a 23-track album that displays Godwin’s expertise and showcases his expansive catalogue of road-tested material and the prowess of The Allegheny High. Godwin describes Live from the Steel City as a recording of “a live show the boys and I have curated in bars, clubs, theatres, amphitheatres, arenas and stadiums over the last several years”. The speakers sound stacked for this sold-out gig at the AE Outdoor stage in Pittsburgh. Recorded in September 2024, the day before the Pittsburgh Steelers played…
…This limited edition release is part of the Corb Lund – Dark Horses Club. New West Records will be releasing unreleased records and material from Corb Lund throughout 2025 and 2026.
You gotta give it up for those proud men of the army, this fine nation would collapse into the sea if it wasn’t for the influence of ex-military dudes and the jobs they perform. Whether they’re barking orders at us in PE lessons, refusing us entry to nightclubs because our shoes are “fucking casual, mate”, holding up the one arm they have left whilst begging for change outside of Jubilee Line Underground stations, or just simply raping and killing a bunch of women: the real life soulja boys are an essential part of the fabric of our society. And more than worthy of having…
…includes five previously unreleased recordings. These include Lucinda Williams’ ‘Sweet Old World’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Every Grain of Sand’, both of which featured on “Wrecking Ball”. The additional tracks include Tom Petty’s ‘Thing About You’ and Bill Monroe’s ‘Get Up John’ along with ‘All I Left Behind’ which was co-written by Harris with Kate and Anna McGarrigle.
This live project, which includes the talents of the always great Buddy Miller, is an interesting reflection of an American icon. Eclectic, it is reflective of Emmylou Harris‘ excursions into areas of music beyond the country and rock spheres she has already conquered. But it is the country arena that best showcases her ever-flowering ability with a song. “I Ain’t Living Long Like This”…
Willie Nelson spent much of the summer out on the road with the Outlaw Festival, so it’s only appropriate that his new studio album is paying tribute to a fellow Outlaw.
Workin’ Man: Willie Sings Merle finds Young celebrating his late friend Merle Haggard, with whom he recorded three albums between 1983 and 2015. Willie’s 78th original album, Workin’ Man features a host of Hag favorites including “Okie from Muskogee,” “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down,” “Today I Started Loving You Again,” “Mama Tried,” and “If We Make It Through December.”
…The album was recorded at Nelson’s Pedernales Studios in Austin and marked the final recordings that Nelson made with a pair of members in his longtime Family band: drummer…
Songwriter Cindy Walker’s name is well-known to country music fans. Her songs have charted more than 400 times, recorded by icons such as Ray Charles, Bob Wills, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley. Willie Nelson released an entire album devoted to Walker’s work: (You Don’t Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker) back in 2006. She has been celebrated for her ability to capture emotional moments in everyday situations that define our lives, such as meeting an old lover, aging gracefully, and dreaming of a better future.
Grey DeLisle, a longtime admirer of Cindy Walker, is best known for her voice acting work, but she’s also a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter. With her own deep roots in music, DeLisle recognizes the significance of Walker’s legacy as…
Two days of intense inspiration were as long as it took Texas-born songwriter Dallas Burrow to record his latest album, The Way the West Was Won. Experience must play some part in it. Burrow got his first guitar at age ten, inspired by both his father’s own playing and songwriting. However, his career as a musician can be said to have started some twelve years ago, a period which has brought forth a series of EPs and studio albums, as well as live recordings, music videos and plenty of live shows. Burrow is a busy man, balancing family duties, extensive touring and duties as proprietor of the Redbird Listening Room in his hometown of New Braunfels, Texas. So if experience has influenced his latest album’s confident sound, discipline must surely factor into it too.
Like most country artists, the Louisiana-born, Arkansas-honed Dylan Earl reveres the outlaw era, its sainted names of Johnny, Waylon, and Merle. As a student of both their music and their anti-authoritarian temperaments, he’s rightly mystified at how far the genre has strayed from their light in the long, paradigm-warping aftermath of 9/11. “I’d rather be a bootlegger than a bootlicker,” Earl sings on “Outlaw Country,” his fiery ode to an alternate vision of the good old days — a time when you couldn’t listen to “Folsom Prison Blues” in a Blue Lives Matter-stickered truck without catching some well-deserved hell. With its “Subterranean Homesick Blues”-referencing video and refreshingly blunt political opprobrium, “Outlaw Country” has brought Earl some viral attention.
Collectively, singer-songwriters Mike Reid and Joe Henry have, throughout their respective careers, amassed a collection of Grammy awards along with numerous other accolades that few will have matched. Reid initially made a name for himself during the first half of the 1970s in the NFL, playing football with the Cincinnati Bengals, before moving to Nashville in 1980 after Jerry Jeff Walker recorded his song ‘Eastern Avenue River Railway Blues’. From there, he quickly became one of the hottest names in town, writing no less than twelve number one singles during the following two decades, including Alabama’s ‘Forever As Far As I’ll Go’, Ronnie Milsap’s ‘Stranger in My House’, for which he won a Grammy in 1984 for ‘Best Country Song’ and Bonnie Raitt’s iconic ‘I Can’t Make…
This is quite a tale: Shooter, son of Waylon Jennings, discovers a tranche of his father’s personal multitrack tapes from the analogue years, dating between 1973 – when he wrestled artistic control from RCA – and 1984, when he had quit cocaine, joined The Outlaws and digital technology took over everything.
The tapes were shelved for 40 years, until Shooter took them down, opened them up and brought them to Sunset Sound in 2024. He started digging through them, and found that rather than the demos he expected, many of these “lost” recordings were fully fledged tracks waiting for an album to take them in.
In fact, he has found three albums’ worth of songs, to be released from the original tapes…
Wesley Hanna is based in Fort Worth, Texas. He previously worked in the oil fields and, also as a cowboy, preferring the Stetson to the hard hat, he has produced a gem of a country album. There is a lot to enjoy as Hanna delivers ten self-penned originals and one written by the late Charlie Fitzgerald Robison, who recorded the murder ballad also known as ‘Magnolia’ on his 2004 album, Good Times. Hanna’s version is faithful to the original, a lilting waltz, giving a fine tribute to Robison, who inspired Hanna in his musical endeavours.
Country ghosts and names are lurking in every corner of the record; however, the music sounds fresh and contemporary at the same time. The writing is slick and relevant, and…
Born in Augusta, Georgia, in the late 1940s to Polish-Lithuanian immigrants, Daniel Antopolsky may have been a lost immortal, but he is not lost now, and he may become an immortal.
AUK readers may already know the story of the friend of Townes van Zandt, who was the first person to hear ‘Pancho and Lefty‘ as it was being written, who saved van Zandt’s life following a drug overdose and who subsequently left the music scene in the ’70s, travelled the world and settled down on a farm near Bordeaux after meeting his soon-to-be wife, French medical student Sylvia Kirsch. This followed his startling re-emergence in 2015, when his debut album, Sweet Lovin’ Music, was released at the age of 67.
And now comes Ballad of the Stable Boy,…
Craft Recordings proudly celebrates the 50th anniversary of J.D. Crowe & The New South’s self-titled album—a landmark collection that helped shape the future of contemporary bluegrass—with an expanded reissue on CD.
Long revered by musicians, fans and the press, J.D. Crowe & The New South (or, “Rounder 0044,” as it is lovingly referred to), which was recently inducted into the GRAMMY® Hall of Fame and added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry features such classic tracks as “Old Home Place,” “Cryin’ Holy” and “Rock Salt & Nails.” The lineup of musicians on the album brought Crowe and his longtime bassist Bobby Slone together with three young players who were on their way to becoming bluegrass legends: Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas…
…While country music is reaching new heights commercially, the age-old debate about real country music is as heated as ever. (See: mudslinger Gavin Adcock’s recent beef with outlaw torchbearer Charley Crockett.)
For Zach Top, a young traditionalist inspired by smooth stars of the 1990s like George Strait and Randy Travis, it seems that conversations around the genre’s purity aren’t so much angering as they are befuddling.
Today’s country regularly strays from its roots to incorporate production from other genres, yet there isn’t a hint of modernity in Top’s sound. His dedication to a bygone era of country radio serves as a form of subtle resistance, and his emergence as a breakout star tells another story:…
…Limited Edition CD includes the bonus track, “Too Stoned to Cry,” featuring Billy Strings.
“I will make country albums again,” Margo Price told MOJO circa 2023’s Strays, her fine, shrooms and psychedelia-led wander off-piste.
What’s a tad surprising, perhaps, is just how quickly and wholeheartedly she has re-embraced her roots. With its classic country lexicon – rhinestones, liquor stores and tear-soaked Kleenex all figure – Hard Headed Woman is the first LP Price has made entirely in Nashville, her home of some 20 years. Tracked in RCA Studio A, that hallowed space frequented by Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton et al, it also has the blessing of Waylon Jennings’ widow Jessi Colter, who, sensing a good fit perhaps, urged Price to cover her husband’s song…
As he played the local bars and clubs, Jesse Daniel acquired the nickname “Son of the San Lorenzo”, and it stuck. It is a fitting moniker for a collection of songs that look deeply at the place, the people who live there, and most profoundly, himself, as Daniel takes a long, hard look at where he has been and what lies ahead.
From his firm foundations in old school Bakersfield honky tonk he adds the music he grew up with. Rock, whether country (The Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers), Southern (Allman Brothers), or classic (The Stones, Zeppelin), all pop up here. Recorded live to tape, the sound is bold and rich as Daniel took charge of just about everything from arrangements to writing.
…Catharsis runs throughout Son of the San..
Ace Records continues its quest to offer variations on a theme by exploring country interpretations of the music of Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen’s Country collect 20 covers of The Boss, some familiar (Johnny Cash’s “Johnny 99,” Steve Earle’s live take on “State Trooper”), some offbeat (a take on Tunnel of Love opener “Ain’t Got You” by Solomon Burke, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s version of beloved outtake “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)”), and some altogether lesser known (Americana acts like Lera Lynn and The Whiskey Treaty Roadshow interpreting “Fire” and “The Rising”). The set was compiled by Sean Rowley, a well-known British DJ/presenter who happens to be one of the men on the album cover of Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?.
Born from hectic writing sessions late at night, The Pleasures have offered an album that critically examines where the blame lies in lost love. The Melbourne-based duo, Catherine Britt and Lachlan Bryan, have forged a partnership in the vein of Parton and Wagoner and Parsons and Harris. A dark, brooding alt-country album packed with blues-rock influence, Enemy of My Enemy is a cynical litany of love gone wrong.
Anger ebbs and flows throughout. One moment, the duo spits venom and points fingers: ‘Was It Something I Said?’ is a callous duet taking place at the crossroads of a relationship as the singers dare each other to walk away. Elsewhere, the emotions soften and ease into a ballad. On ‘It’s OK (Knew What You Meant)’, there’s a glimmer…
For Daniel Donato, the term “Cosmic Country” accounts for much more than just his quartet’s moniker. It also represents a musical and personal ethos. The journey and the destination. As the affable guitarist explained to Glide in a 2023 interview, “Cosmic Country is kind of like this tale as old as time. It’s the duality of things…You have this contrast of what is unknown with what is known…and it’s me trying to create a dance between those two things.” In truth, it is everything.
Using this mindset as a guide post of sorts, Donato and his immensely talented ensemble, consisting of William “Mustang” McGee (bass), Nathan “Sugarleg” Aronowitz (keys) and most recent addition William “Bronco” Clark (drums), have quickly garnered a well-deserved reputation…
An utterly abysmal set of reverb drenched mediocre songs. Those R.E.M. covers are so catastrophically tone-deaf it’s a wonder Michael…