The New York City based Village Voice has a characteristically snarky feature covering the latest releases by Carlene Carter, Sheryl Crow, Shelby Lynne, Allison Moorer, Tift Merritt and Kathleen Edwards.

The Kansas City Star has a feature on alt.country singer/songwriter and Nashville native Sara Cox on how she balances her career with being a mother of three. Apparently Kathy Mattea was her baby-sitter growing up. Cool!

The Academy of Country Music shows their criteria for country music excellence - sales over talent - and their exceptional consistency for surprising no one by nominating Kenny Chesney for 11 nominations.

The 9513 returned after a brief outage (hyew!) to draw my attention to this great article from the Houston Chronicle featuring country music legend Ray Price. Here’s a taste:

Price’s early notoriety was as a wingman, of sorts, for Hank Williams. They met in 1951 and became fast friends and roommates, drinking buddies and tour partners. Price would stand in when Williams was too drunk to perform. Williams got Price on the Grand Ole Opry. Price calls Williams “a great cat, down to earth.”

They were supposed to meet for lunch on the New Year’s Day, 1953, that news broke of Williams’ death. Price had seen him a few weeks earlier.

“He was pretty low. He was really depressed over his marriage and he slowly went (crazy). But he was a nice guy. Twenty-nine when he died. And he died at the top of the heap.”

Ryan Adams, musical legend or precocious twit? I think there’s an argument to be made either way - but one thing there’s no argument on is that Adams early Band, Raleigh, NC’s Whiskeytown, made some of the best damn alt.country music in it’s short existence.

Whiskeytown’s 1997 major label debut, Strangers Almanac will be re-released in a deluxe, 2-CD edition on March 4, 2008 on Geffen/UMe/Mood Food/Outpost.

During the time of the recording the band was led by a 22-year-old Adams and was in a certain level of turmoil: There was a new rhythm section (bassist Jeff Rice and drummer Steven Terry joined Adams, Cary and Wandscher), band member fiddler-singer-songwriter Caitlin Cary was in a relationship with the former drummer Eric “Skillet” Gilmore, Adams had been offered his own solo deal and they had no guitars because they had been misplaced during the trip to Nashville. The acoustic guitar heard on Strangers Almanac was bought in a pawnshop.

Disc one is the original album plus five previously unreleased live public radio performances. 17 of the 19 recordings on the second disc were previously unreleased recordings and are from the pre-production sessions for Strangers Almanac (commonly referred to as the Barn’s On Fire sessions). Intimate acoustic demos of “16 Days,” “Avenues” and “Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart,” are included plus several original songs making their premieres in the Whiskeytown catalog: “Kiss & Make-Up,” “Indian Gown,” “Barn’s On Fire,” “Streets Of Sirens,” “Breathe,” “Nurse With The Pills” and “10 Seconds.” Also included are covers of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” Gram Parsons’ “Luxury Liner,” Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone” and an early version of the True Believers’ “The Rain Won’t Help You When It’s Over.”

If this release comes anywhere close to the treatment reached by the Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and The Allman Brothers Band Eat a Peach deluxe editions it should be a great addition for Ryan fans.