As you might have noticed, Twang Nation is trying out a new look. After 4 years + the other theme was showing some wear and tear and I wanted something snazzier that handled RSS better. Here it is. I’ll be hacking around on it for the next, well, forever.. so let me know what you [...]
The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica has a feature on the growing predominance of younger female artists in Music City (Country’s New Face: It’s Young and Blond) in the wake of the success of Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Kellie Pickler, and how spunky DIYers, like Peoria, Illinois’ Veronica Ballestrini, are busy using the web [...]
Add to the Twitter hashtag trends of #followfriday and #musicmonday one that I can really get behind – #twangthursday.
#twangthursday follows these earlier trends of assigning each day of the week a adjective that makes it easy for other twitter users to find and add to a specific discussion. From what I can gather about the [...]
Though Jason and the Punknecks aare described by some as punk-country. Gratuitous tattoos and a stage show that gets a bit rowdy the band has more in common with Bill Monroe than the Sex Pistols (though, as I’ve argued before I think the Sex Pistols have more in common with Monroe that 95% of what [...]
These are tough times for America. Wall Street and board room crooks, unnecessary wars, mounting national and personal debt, massive unemployment, terrorists threats.. These are not the toughest times we’ve faced in our history,I think the fisr depression and the civil war were much tougher, but they are hard relative to the lives most people [...]
MSNBC’s 5 Top has a list of the top 5 lies about American Idol. And although most are obvious (AI is a popularity contest not a singing competition…uh YEAH!) lie #4, “Country music is about telling stories,” is very interesting to me. The point made in the article is that all songs – except nonsensical [...]
Today is Annual Record Store Day Record Store. More than 700 independent record stores across the world with joining with fans, sponsors and musicians for concerts and special promotional giveaways.
Three of my favorite indys are Waterloo Records in Austin, Grimey’s Records in Nashville and Amoeba Records right here in San Francisco. I briefly worked at [...]
I saw Billy Bob Thorton and his group the Boxmasters perform in Nashville last year as part of the Americana Music Association conference last year. The band played the big room downstairs at the cannery. My expectations were low. I figured a Hollywood star’s vanity project would just end up as Dogstar 2.0. But hell [...]
I read the ridiculous article in the New York Times about John Rich and believe Rich, and the Republicans he stumped for in the last election, are about as concerned about the plight of the common man as a vegetarian is about the finer points of aged beef.
I believe Rich’s populism is nothing more then [...]
Country music pioneer Hank Williams III and flavor-of-the-moment ‘tween pop cash machine Taylor Swift will collaborate on a song they wrote together entitled “I’d buy you a drink if only you were 21.” The song was constructed over the last week by text messages and goat hide parchment and blood ink. All proceeds will be [...]