• From cbs4denver.com - Denver’s Railbenders will stand out at the Mile High Music Festival as the only country/rock band featured on the bill with Spoon, Josh Ritter, Dave Mathews and Tom Petty.

• The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band will feature music from their 42 year career to Austin’s Riverside Arena stage at 9:15 p.m. Friday, July 18. D.C. Drifters & Friends opens the show.

• The San Jose Mecury News has a nice piece on David Andersen who plays his 15-year-old Epiphone and greets tourists from around the world in the atrium of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Earl Scruggs said of Andersen “I love your pickin,’ son.”

• Nashville Skyline’s always excellent Chet Flippo has good things to say about  Randy Travis’ upcoming release “Around the Bend (July 15)

• For all you with laptop country music asperations Beta Monkey Music has released “Pure Country I: Rocking Nashville” a new set of drum loops targeted to Country music musicians. The loops come in many formats, including Apple Loops, which are compatible with GarageBand and Logic. Just bring a real drummer when you hit the road, folks.

• There still seems to be some confusion why Tim McGraw dragged Marcus Nirschl 30, a union glazer from Kent, Wash. on stage at a Washington State performance and then had him thrown out of the show. There have been allegations the man assaulted a woman who was in one of the front rows but the YouTube video of the incident is inconclusive (Q: Does McGraw allways look so bored while on stage as he does in this clip?). The ejected fan says he’s still a fan of McGraw. “I still like the guy,” Nirschl said. “The music’s still great. I just don’t know why he wanted to punch me.”

• Our thoughts go out to Elizabeth Cook on the passing of her mother. Cook has used her MySpace Blog to share her feelings uduring these rough times.

• Del McCoury’s new release,  Moneyland (7/8), wants to raise awareness of serious economic issues facing Americans today through a thoughtful selection of six new (or newly recorded) songs, mixed with eight neglected gems and classic favorites that offer a hard-hitting look at today’s economic injustice. In addition to songs from the Del McCoury Band, the album features songs from Marty Stuart, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Bruce Hornsby along with the Fairfield Four, Chris Knight and others.

• The Dallas Morning News’ Mario Tarradell opines on the mixed success of several pop country crossovers.

• PopMatters.com really digs Alejandro Escovedo’s new release “Real Animal” (Back Porch). They also dig (though a tad less so) a newly discovered treasure for me Slim Cessna’s Auto Club’s “Cipher” (Alternative Tentacles)

• Kathy Mattea performed at the Roseburg’s Stewart Park Music on the Half Shell summer free concert series.

• From Country Hound - After an eight-year hiatus, Randy Travis is making his return to the Country Music industry with his new album, Around the Bend (7/15.)

• Macon, GA’s macon.com asks Can Justin Townes Earle save country music?

A collection of unreleased George Jones duets entitled “Burn Your Playhouse Down” (Bandit Records) will be released on August 19. The recordings range from the mid-70s with his ex-wife Tammy Wynette to the most recent recording from 2007 with his daughter, Georgette, the only child from the union of George and Tammy.

Seven of the recordings are extra songs, not included in The Bradley Barn Sessions that MCA Records released in 1994. Produced by Brian Ahern, the Bradley Barn recordings brought together superstar musicians and singers from both the country and rock world. Recorded during the worst ice storm in Tennessee history, the 1993 sessions, which took place over the course of several weeks, brought together Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, Leon Russell and Marty Stuart - as the core of the studio band with Keith Richards, Mark Knopfler, Emmylou Harris trading off as instrumentalists and vocalists on many of the songs.

The top players in Nashville - Eddie Bayers, Mac McAnally, Jerry Douglas, Glenn Worf, Brent Rowan, Glen D. Hardin, John Jennings, Harry Stinson, Richard Bennett and many more made the icy trek every day to Mt. Juliet,  about 30 miles outside of Nashville. No one wanted to miss these historic sessions which paired Jones with a selection of superstars influenced by the artist they considered the greatest living country singer. Ahern produced the classic Jones hits as an acoustic project to give the songs a different feel than the originals.

The complete track list for Burn Your Playhouse Down includes:
• “Burn Your Playhouse Down,” Keith Richards
• “Window Up Above,” Leon Russell
• “Selfishness In Man,” Vince Gill
• “She Once Lived Here,” Ricky Skaggs
• “I Always Get Lucky With You,” Mark Knopfler
• “You’re Still On My Mind,” Marty Stuart
• “When The Grass Grows Over Me,” Mark Chesnutt
• “I Always Get It Right With You,” Shelby Lynne
• “Tavern Choir,” Jim Lauderdale
• “Rockin’ Years,” Dolly Parton
• “Lovin’ You, Lovin’ Me,” Tammy Wynette
• “You And Me And Time,” Georgette Jones

Northeastern Pennsylvania’s The Weekender has an interview with Texas’ hillbilly king Dale Watson. Dale. As usual, rails on pop-country music and thinks his style of old-school honky-tonk should split from the country genre proper:

“It didn’t really focus on or strengthen the type of music that I like to keep out there,” he said. “I think country music — what was country music — has to go the route of bluegrass, which was considered part of country music, but they created their own festivals, awards and genres.”

If you prefer a more entertaining, and less sober, interview with Watson check out this one with Johnny Knoxville.

Last night’s Tom Waits show in Dallas was along waited treasure for this fan. You can read more here and here. Waits has been mining a vein of American music that is uniquely his own through his career and his songs have been covered by Allison Krauss, Johnny Cash and the Ramones among many many others (notice the intended omission of one Ms. Scarlett Johansson.)  

Big thumbs down for the venue, The Palladium Ballroom, for the lack of air conditioning for a two thousand plus crowd on a hot Texas June night.

Tom Waits: Innocent When You Dream, Houston 2008

Glitzy entertainmant industry parties in New York City are common (not that I’m invited, they do have some standards) but on the recent occasion of the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction it took “the pride of Butcher Holler, Kentucky” to give those jaded industry wonks something to talk about on the way out of the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square. Loretta Lynn brought down the house and left them wanting more.

I’m headed to Dallas to hang out with my family and attend the Tom Waits “Glitter and Doom” tour when it pulls into Big D on the 23rd. I’ll be posting sporadically during that time. In other words like I usually post. See you at the show!

Just in from the fine folks at Lost Highway Records: Bored at work?  Hayes Carll is performing live at 3:00 PM PST (6:00 PM EST) and it’s for all of us junkies!   Mike Nesmith’s (yes, THAT Mike Nesmith) VideoRanch.com and KPIG in Freedom, CA will simulcast Carll’s performance for your listening enjoyment.  You’ve got two ways to satisfy your Carll craving:

Visit www.videoranch.com and download the 3D Browser. It takes only a second and will be a trippy way to
watch Hayes perform.

Not into downloading files? Then visit www.kpig.com this afternoon (June 18) and listen to the performance.

And as always… make sure to swing by www.hayescarll.com for new tour dates, streaming music from Trouble In
Mind and loads of reviews.

• Dallasnews.com has a nice write up on the grand dame of Country Music, Loretta Lynn’s sold out show last Saturday at Ft. Worth’s Bass Hall. The night before Lo-retty had played Stubb’s in Austin’s (latter part via the 9513)

• The New York Times covered the Alison Krauss and Robert Plant show at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden. I was at this fantastic show and my review is forthcoming (I swear! Really!)

• Jonathan Yardley at the Washington Post reviews Dana Jennings’ book about country music and his hard scrabble upbringing in rural New Hampshire “Sing Me Home.” I have read this excellent book and my review is forthcoming (I swear! Really!)

• Stephen M. Deusner at Pitchfork.com uses Miranda Lambert’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” release as a jumping off point to other great country albums over the last few years that “demand to be heard with the same open-mindedness and enthusiasm as Lambert.”

• Barnes&Noble.com has posted a video of “One on One with Emmylou Harris”, recorded live at their Union Square store in New York. Emmylou talks about her new release “All I Intended To Be” and performs her songs off the album “Gold,” “Not Enough,” written about her dog Bonaparte after he dies, and “How She Could Sing the Wildwood Flower” which was written after seeing a PBS documentary on the Carter Family. She also tells a great story about how her babysitter was the conduit for her and Gram Parsons to meet.
  

• Willie Nelson and Carl Cornelius are ready to take the wrapping off the new 30,000-square foot renovation off of the renovation of Carl’s Corner truck stop, the one with the old Tango nightclub giant musician frogs on the roof.
  The new space is now christened “Willie’s Place,” and will includes a honky tonk, restaurant, a poker room and trucker amenities, with a concert July 3. “Willie’s Place” is on IH-35 about 40 miles north of Waco “Willie’s Place at Carl’s Corner” will also process and sell biodeisel fuel.

• Cross Canadian Ragweed frontman Cody Canada draws a line in the Red Dirt between their sound and pop country: “It just keeps getting more pop and more pop. We’re only in our 30s, but we’re kind of old-school, old-fashioned when it comes to country music. If it’s called ‘country music,’ it ought to sound like country music.”

• And last but not least, Twang Nation HQ will be pulling up stakes from beautiful, balmy New York City for new digs in San Francisco, CA. on July 15th (with a long stretch in the homeland, Texas, in between.