Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and music publisher for Combine Music and founder of Monument Records, Fred Foster each received the Dale Franklin Award, an award honoring their unique leadership in country music during an invitation-only event on Sunday night (Aug. 29) in Nashville. On hand to perform were friends Rodney Crowell, Jamey Johnson, Lyle Lovett, [...]
Hank Cochran, one of country music’s most storied and prolific songwriters who wrote songs for Patsy Cline, Ray Price, Eddy Arnold, Merle Haggard, George Strait an many others passed away yesterday morning. His Wikipedia bio reads like a Mother lode for source for country gold: Born during the Great Depression in Isola, Mississippi, he contracted [...]
I want to share one of my favorite songs for this holiday weekend. The Ballad of Ira Hayes, written by the folk singer Peter La Farge, tells the story of Ira Hayes, a Pima Native American and one of the five Marines and one Navy Corpsman who raised the flag on Mount Suribachi during the [...]
No Depression magazine (and now web site), the go-to authority for roots and Americana music for 15 years, has announced the line-up for their second annual No Depression Festival, and it’s a peach! The Swell Season, Lucinda Williams, The Cave Singers, Alejandro Escovedo, Chuck Prophet, Punch Brothers and Sera Cahoone. The fun starts on Aug. [...]
Kris Kristofferson’s latest is actually some of his earliest. Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends: The Publishing Demos 1968-72 is a collection of raw demos made to shop his songs around to singers while sweeping floors at Columbia Studios in Nashville (where he later first met Johnny Cash.) I listened to 16 cuts [...]
Kris Kristofferson reminisces about his days playing football. The days before he was pulled because of too many head injuries, that is. CMT interviews the Texas Yoda, Willie Nelson about his new T Bone Burnett produced album, Country Music. Dwight Yoakam & Merle Haggard will perform together June 18 & 19 at Oregon’s Chinook Winds [...]
Listen to a stream of Merle Haggard’s I Am What I Am, his upcoming release Vanguard Records. Everyone knows that Music City big label country music is more pop than country, and some takes many pages from classic rock playbook, but PopMatter.com’s Steve Leftridge does a fine job of connecting the dots. (Pour Some Sugarland [...]
Hank Williams is being posthumously awarded a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board. The honor was revealed Monday (April 12) in conjunction with the announcement of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize recipients in journalism, drama and music. The citation was determined following a private survey among experts of popular music. It notes Williams’ “craftsmanship as [...]
In true DIY fashion The Johnny Cash Project is a “global collective art project” that allows fans from all over the world to contribute to a arrogated, user-generated video for the title track from the latest Johnny Cash recording American VI: Ain’t No Grave. The single images are then threaded together into a one-of-a-kind labor [...]
In a case that will go down in Country Music Outlaw history, a Waco, Texas jury has acquitted 70-year-old Texas Country Music Hall of Fame member Billy Joe Shaver of aggravated assault in the shooting of a man outside a Lorena, Texas bar in 2007. the incident came after Shaver had played a show.Willie Nelson [...]