Americana Music Festival 2015 Picks

americana-fest

Sleep deprivation, dehydration and perpetual joy at musical discovery are risks faced by attendees at the 16th annual Americana Music Festival and Conference this week in Nashville.

But those voluntary perils are undertook gladly for an opportunity to see some of the best roots music from around the world playing live showcases at multiple venues around the city and to partake in panels and seminars giving career tips and insights to musicians and other industry types. Then there’s the indescribably good Hattie B’s hot chicken) located near the hosting Hutton Hotel.

I’ll be skipping this year but if I were on the ground (and had a way to be many places at the same time) these are the shows I’d be sure to see.

Tuesday, September 15th

Donnie Fritts & John Paul White – 11:00 PM – City Winery

Wednesday, September 16th

The Suffers – 10:00 PM – Cannery Ballroom

James McMurtry – 11:00 PM – City Winery

Patty Griffin – 12:00 AM – City Winery

Thursday, September 17th

Ry Cooder / Sharon White / Ricky Skaggs – 10:00 PM – 3rd & Lindsley

Buddy Miller & Marc Ribot – 3rd & Lindsley

Ryan Culwell – 8:00 PM – The Basement

Daniel Romano – 12:00 AM – The Basement

Ray Wylie Hubbard – 9:00 PM – Cannery Ballroom

Pokey LaFarge – 10:00 PM – Cannery Ballroom

Randy Rogers & Wade Bowen – 11:00 PM – Cannery Ballroom

Eilen Jewell – 9:00 PM – City Winery

Dustbowl Revival – 10:00 PM – City Winery

Jeffrey Foucault – 12:00 AM – City Winery

Legendary Shack Shakers – 8:00 PM – The High Watt

Birds of Chicago – 9:00 PM – The High Watt

Lindi Ortega – 10:00 PM – The High Watt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AnMZG9sgkY

Possessed by Paul James – 12:00 AM – The High Watt

Mary Gauthier – 10:00 PM – The Listening Room

The Stray Birds – 8:00 PM – Mercy Lounge

Lera Lynn – 10:00 PM – Mercy Lounge

honeyhoney – 11:00 PM – Mercy Lounge

Humming House – 12:00 AM – Mercy Lounge

Darrell Scott – 6:00 PM – Downtown Presbyterian Church

B̩la Fleck & Abigail Washburn Р7:00 PM РDowntown Presbyterian Church

Friday, September 18th

Lewis & Leigh – 8:00 PM – Mercy Lounge
September 16, 12pm AMA-UK Mid-Day Party, Blue Bar
September 17, 5:30pm, Acoustic Set at British Underground High Tea, Tin Roof

Sam Outlaw – 8:00 PM – 3rd & Lindsley

Caitlin Canty – 9:00 PM – City Winery

Lee Ann Womack – 9:00 PM – 3rd & Lindsley

John Moreland – 10:00 PM – Mercy Lounge

Whitey Morgan – 10:00 PM – 3rd & Lindsley

Cale Tyson – 10:00 PM – The High Watt

Jim Lauderdale – 11:00 PM – 3rd & Lindsley

Uncle Lucius – 12:00 AM – – 3rd & Lindsley

Henry Wagons – 11:00 PM – Basement East

American Aquarium — 12:00 AM – Mercy Lounge

Saturday, September 19th

Andrew Combs – 10:00 PM – Mercy Lounge

Doug Seegers – 10:00 PM – City Winery

Gretchen Peters – 11:00 PM – City Winery

The Hello Strangers – 12:00 AM – City Winery

Fats Kaplin and friends – 11 PM – The Station Inn

Sunday, September 20th

Thirty Tigers Gospel Brunch – 1:30 PM – City Winery

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2015 Lineup

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2015

As they have done the last few years organizers of San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival have trotted out over a few say streaming teaser mixes from their upcoming bill.

It’s a playful challenge for the thousands of fans that attend the free three day roots music festival at Hellman Hollow and Marx and Lindley meadows in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park to lend their ears and make their best guess as to who those 100 musical acts that will play seven stages.

Over the years I’ve attended the event it’s always unlike any live event I’ve attended. The Bay chill is tempers by warming temperatures and fleet week has the United States Navy’s flight demonstration squadron The Blue Angels zipping high overhead the largely mellow crowd enjoying great music rolling through the rolling fields under the Eucalyptus, Monterey pine, and Monterey cypress trees.

Stumped or just want to cut to the chase? Hood thing the full bill has just been confirmed.

Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin with The Guilty Ones
Scott Miller & The Commonwealth’s Ladies Auxiliary
Spirit Family Reunion
Nick Lowe
Jim White vs. The Packway Handle Band
ALO
Joe Pug
Tim Barry
Tony Joe White
Buddy Miller
Anderson East
The Oh Hellos
Robyn Hitchcock
Nels Cline & Julian Lage
The New Mastersounds
Asleep At The Wheel
Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys
Flogging Molly
Delbert McClinton
Fantastic Negrito
Gregory Alan Isakov
Steve Earle & The Dukes
Jamey Johnson
Michael Franti & Spearhead
The Milk Carton Kids
Hot Tuna Electric
The Mavericks
Doobie Decibel System
Joe Jackson
Fairfield Four
Indigo Girls
Gillian Welch
Lera Lynn
Neko Case
Lee Ann Womack
Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds
Angel Olsen
Beth Hart
Heidi Clare & The Goose Tatums
Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell
Paul Weller
Boz Scaggs
The Stone Foxes
Ben Miller Band
Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires
Monophonics
Leftover Salmon
The Blind Boys of Alabama
Chicano Batman
Pokey LaFarge

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2015
Three days, seven stages, over 100 artists
Friday-Sunday, October 2-4, 2015
Hellman Hollow, Lindley & Marx meadows in Golden Gate Park
FREE

Rosanne Cash Artist in Residency – Night Two Country Music Hall of Fame w Emmylou Harris & Lucinda Williams

Rosanne Cash,  Emmylou Harris & Lucinda Williams

Photo by Rick Diamond, Getty Images

This is a guest post by Holly Gleason

​When Emmylou Harris sang, “One thing they don’t tell you about the blues when you got ‘em/ You keep on falling ‘cause they got no bottom” in the aching “Red Dirt Girl,” the first song in what was supposed to be Rosanne Cash’s second night as the Country Music Hall of Fame’s 2015 Artist in Residency, the night seemingly could’ve turned into a night of one upsmanship and “watch this.” Raw, almost bleeding and deeply vulnerable, Harris’ song set a high bar for artistry and emotional pulse that could’ve read as a challenge.

​But given that Harris and Cash have been dear friends for 35 years and Lucinda Williams friends for almost 25, what emerged was a testimony to love, grace, talent and songs well-realized. Drawing on old songs, cover songs and songs yet to be recorded, the American roots music queen wove a tapestry of human emotion that brought everyone in touch with their deepest – perhaps even unacknowledged – selves.

​Seeing three women who’ve lived lives, ignited intense love affairs, faced great disappointments, shored up, thrived not just survived – and then wrote or found songs that distilled those things is a thrill. But to watch them love and respect each other unabashedly, shower the others with compliments and tell cheeky stories is to understand the power of women unfurled.

​For Rosanne Cash, whose velvety claret voice soothed Williams’ rusty barb wire tones on the final verse and chorus of “Sweet Old World,” the most rock-leaning of the threesome inspired a moment of true rapture with her song of death and devastation. Williams’ version of the song from the 1992 album of the same name has taken the stunned despair and deepened it with both a world-weary recognition of how much it hurts losing people you love and an appreciation for how wonderful the world is.

​Emmylou Harris waxed wry, offering the insight about NPR’s liberal point of view: “the truth” before launching into stark “Emmett Till,” which she introduced by explaining his racially-driven murder 50 years ago may well have tipped the civil rights struggle in a way that allowed Barack Obama to America’s first black President. Not one to preach, the gently reflection suggests much about the power of songs and women to deliver volatile social messages in ways that make injustice emerge on their own.

​That is the power of the feminine mystique in experienced hands: they can tackle charged topics, embrace Bob Dylan (Cash’s “Girl from North Country”) with innocence informed by passion, get visibly emotional (Williams before singing her beauty in the ravages “When I Look At the World” from last year’s “Where The Spirit Meets The Bone” album) and near intimidation (Cash talking about how she spent her first five years trying to impress Harris “and this song did it”) met with off-handed humor (Harris’ reply “which one?”) as the walk-up to Cash’s second #1, the dusky torch “Blue Moon with Heartache.”

​For those gathered in the 800-seat Ford Theater, it was the rare peak into the realm of women unfettered. The pair let it all hang out: glorying in songs, basking or demurring from the praise, making off-handed jokes and being unabashedly honest about their love for each other. In the small details – designer Natalie Chanin’s teaching Cash to sew with the admonition “You have to learn to love the thread” turning into the metaphor that inspired the double-Grammy winner “A Feather’s Not A Bird” or Harris revealing the inspiration culled from a birthday gift from the late Susanna Clark, “a print of a Terry Allen piece, what looked like a Leonardo DaVinci drawing of an arm, which would’ve been enough, but then there was a boat emerging from the arm, and it was called, ‘When She Kisses The Ship Upon His Arm” – empowers and grounds part of where their strength lies.

​But more than that, it is the communion of friends, artists, muses. For Cash’s second night of a three night residency – the final being September 24 – she pulled back the veil and revealed the essence of a woman’s heart. It is joy, hope, sorrow and beauty all tempered with love and knowing, and when it is joined to songs tendered with lyrics of nuance, it is a stunning thing, indeed.

​By the time of the encore, the cheers had taken on a force of their own. After pulling Cash’s breakthrough “Seven Year Ache,” the tale of a heartbreak moving through a wide swath of town, as the common ground, each woman had shown her strength and lifted the others up. Celebratory, that man become incidental – yet Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone,” the night’s final song, also suggested these three understand the potency of romance, desire and falling in love to the hilt.
​What isn’t necessary becomes wanted, and that is the magic of life, emotion and the uncertainty of how we move through the world. Standing shoulder to shoulder on the edge of the stage, Cash, Harris and Williams bowed – as much to the forces that brought them to this place as to the packed house on their feet.

Holly Gleason has written regularly for ROLLING STONE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, PASTE, NO DEPRESSION and HITS, as well as contributing to RELIX, THE OXFORD AMERICAN, PLAYBOY and THE NEW YORK TIMES. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Watch Out! Morrissey Covers Waylon Jennings’ ‘Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?’

Morrissey Covers Waylon Jennings

Growing up as country and metal as my primary cultural staple I never caed for The Smiths (too whiney, though “How Soon Is Now’ is badass) and was never a Moz solo fan (too mopey and pseudo clever) But I do have to give the man credit for pulling off a damn fine rendition of ‘Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?’

Last Saturday from the stage of the The Visalia Fox Theatre Morrissey, dressed like a paunchy X Men, and his cracker-jack band gave his all to Waylon Jennings’ first single from the album Dreaming My Dreams’ album. A not too subtle middle finger to Music Row that was released 40 years to the month and Jennings’ fourth number one on the country chart as a solo artist.

I do like the idea of a crowd of Morrissey fans largely wondering what the hell they were listening to.

Son Volt To Release 20th Anniversary Version of Acclaimed Debut, ‘Trace.’ Tour To Follow.

SON VOLT'S TRACE  DELUXE REISSUE

While I oh-so-paiently await that long overdo Uncle Tupelo reunion (come on already, we ain’t getting any younger!) I will find solace in the upcoming release of the 20th anniversary version of Son Volt’s spectacular acclaimed debut album, ‘Trace.’

This fall, Jay Farrar will celebrate the anniversary by putting out a deluxe version digitally remastered from the original analog masters. Farrar was heavily involved in the remastering process and contributes highlighted track commentary to the liner notes, which also feature a contribution from No Depression magazine founder Peter Blackstock.

In addition to every song from the 1995 original album, the first disc also features previously unreleased demos for eight album tracks, including “Drown,” “Live Free,” “Windfall,” and an acoustic version of the rocker “Route.” The two-disc version of ‘Trace’ features newly remastered sound and more than two dozen unreleased bonus tracks will be available October 30, 2015, for a suggested retail price of $24.98. The original album will also be re-issued on 180-gram vinyl for $24.98.

Son Volt will also hit the road with original pedal steel player, Eric Heywood, along with multi-instrumentalist, Gary Hunt. The tour is billed as “Jay Farrar Performs Songs Of Trace” and tickets for the tour will go on-sale Friday, August 14. For more information please go to www.sonvolt.net.

The dates will begin with a special AmericanaFest performance at 3rd & Lindsley on September 20. Farrar will also bring the tour to New York City on October 30, and on the same day, Rhino will release a two-disc version of Trace that features newly remastered sound and more than two dozen unreleased bonus tracks.

The second disc contains an unreleased live performance recorded at The Bottom Line in New York’s Greenwich Village on February 12, 1996. At the show, the band played nearly every song from Trace , covered Del Reeves’ “Looking At The World Through A Windshield,” and performed “Cemetery Savior,” a tune that wouldn’t surface until the following year on Son Volt’s sophomore release, Straightaways.

The show also features songs originally recorded by Uncle Tupelo, the vastly influential alt-country band that Farrar started with Jeff Tweedy in the Eighties. Among the standouts are: “Slate,” “True to Life” and the title track from the band’s final album Anodyne (1993).

Track Listing

Disc One
1. “Windfall”
2. “Live Free”
3. “Tear Stained Eye”
4. “Route”
5. “Ten Second News”
6. “Drown”
7. “Loose String”
8. “Out Of The Picture”
9. “Catching On”
10. “Too Early”
11. “Mystifies Me”
12. “Route” -Acoustic Demo*
13. “Drown” – Demo*
14. “Out Of The Picture” – Demo*
15. “Loose String” – Demo*
16. “Live Free” – Demo*
17. “Too Early” – Demo*
18. “Catching On” – Demo*
19. “Windfall” – Demo*

Disc Two: Live from Bottom Line 2/12/96
1. “Route”*
2. “Loose String”*
3. “Catching On”*
4. “Live Free”*
5. “Anodyne”*
6. “Windfall”*
7. “Slate”*
8. “Out of the Picture”*
9. “Tear Stained Eye”*
10. “True to Life”*
11. “Cemetery Savior”*
12. “Ten Second News”*
13. “Fifteen Keys”*
14. “Drown”*
15. “Looking For a Way Out”*
16. “Chickamauga”*
17. “Too Early”*
18. “Looking at the World Through a Windshield” – Del Reeves cover*
*previously unreleased

JAY FARRAR PERFOMS SONGS OF TRACE – 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR

SEPTEMBER
20 3rd & Lindsley (AmericanaFest) Nashville, TN

OCTOBER
28 The Birchmere
29 Ardmore Music Hall
30 City Winery Alexandria, VA
Ardmore, PA
New York, NY
DECEMBER
2 The Troubadour
3 Slim’s
5 Aladdin Theatre
6 Tractor Tavern
Los Angeles, CA
San Francisco, CA
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA

Dave Rawlings Machine Announces New Album ‘Nashville Obsolete.’

Dave Rawlings Machine

2015 Americana releases are about to get much, much better.

Dave Rawlings Machine has announced the release of their second album, ‘Nashville Obsolete,’ on Acony Records on September 18. ‘Nashville Obsolete,’ is the follow-up to the 2009 debut ‘A Friend of a Friend.’

‘Nashville Obsolete’ was recorded on analog tape at Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, TN, whose client list includes Willie Nelson, Bob Seger, Neal Diamond, Emmylou Harris, John Mellencamp, Johnny Cash, Steve Earle, Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Dusty Springfield, Alabama and many, many others.

‘Nashville Obsolete’ features seven original compositions written by Rawlings and longtime collaborator Gillian Welch and produced by Rawlings. This will be the seventh studio album the duo have appeared together on.

Along with vocals and guitar byRawlings and Welch, other contributors included Willie Watson on vocals and guitar, Punch Brothers Paul Kowert of on bass, and guest appearances from Brittany Haas on fiddle and Jordan Tice on mandolin. A tour in support of the album is forthcoming.

Welch and Rawlings, along with Buffy Sainte-Marie, Don Henley, Ricky Skaggs & Los Lobos, will also be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting from the Americana Music Association during the 2015 Honors & Awards ceremony held at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The award will be presented to the two days before the album is released on September 16.

1. The Weekend
2. Short Haired Woman Blues
3. The Trip
4. Bodysnatchers
5. The Last Pharaoh
6. Candy
7. Pilgrim (You Can’t Go Home)

Pre-orders of ‘Nashville Obsolete’ are currently available from iTunes and physically and Amazon

Here’s Welch and Rawlings’ opening number of “65 Revisited,” the Bob Dylan 50th anniversary tribute of his electric performance at Newport Folk Festival.

Drive-By Truckers Announce “It’s Great To Be Alive!” Deluxe 5 LP Live Release

Drive-By Truckers "It's Great To Be Alive!"

The first time I witnessed them in New York City on New Year’s Day 2005 I can attest that he Drive-By Truckers are one of the most electrifying live bands roaming the earth. Since 1996 Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley have continually created rich and compelling stories, performed by an assemblage of dynamic counterparts, that have tackled the cultural complexity of the South.

And rocked hard doing it.

On October 30th the mighty Drive-By Truckers will release a daunting chronicle of their live greatness. “It’s a Great Time to Be Alive!” a 5 LP / 3 CD / 35-track live deluxe album recorded over three nights at San Francisco’s historic Fillmore Auditorium. The Truckers will also condense the live effort into a condensed, 13-track edition titled ‘This Weekend’s the Night.’

The set reaches back to Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley’s early band, Adam’s House Cat, and brings us up to last year’s ‘English Oceans.’

Check out the performance of their 2010 ‘The Big To-Do’ track, “Birthday Boy,” below.

‘Both It’s Great to Be Alive!’ and ‘This Weekend’s the Night’ can be pre-ordered now on the band’s website.

Deluxe Vinyl side breakdown:
1A.
Lookout Mountain
Where the Devil Don’t Stay
Sink Hole
First Air of Autumn
1B.
Made Up English Oceans
The Righteous Path
Women Without Whiskey
Mercy Buckets
2A.
The Living Bubba
Primer Coat
Tornadoes
Sounds Better in the Song
2B.
Used to Be a Cop
Shit Shots Count
Runaway Train
A Ghost to Most
3A.
Goode’s Field Road
Uncle Frank
Putting People on the Moon
3B.
Box of Spiders
When the Pin Hits the Shell
A World of Hurt
4A.
Gravity’s Gone
Pauline Hawkins
Birthday Boy
Girls Who Smoke
4B.
Get Downtown
Ronnie and Neil
Three Dimes Down
Hell No, I Ain’t Happy
5A.
Marry Me
Shut Up and Get on the Plane
Angels and Fuselage
5B.
Zip City
Grand Canyon

Album Review: Jason Isbell – “Something More Than Free”

Jason Isbell

Jason Isbell  - Something More Than Free

If “Something More Than Free,” Jason Isbell’s follow-up to 2013’s career-defining album ‘Southeastern’ has a unifying theme it’s finding the everyday beauty in maturity. Yes, Isbell defies contemporary music trends by making his songs about something. His songs fully embody rich narratives that pump blood into lyrics. Words striking in their economy yet not lacking in marrow. Unlike others in the industry he refuses to hide behind crass chart confections or soul-syphoning irony. 

This is the stuff of life.

Opener “If It Takes a Lifetime” is a ragtime jaunt on down to the working day punch-clock. The protagonist gives a weary regard on the past (I thought the highway loved me but she beat me like a drum) and embodies a hopeful determination for a better future (I keep my spirits high / find happiness by and by).

The first single “24 Frames” is a perfect example of Isbell’s economy of word and imagery. A lean narrative of diminishing the self in deference to deepen relationships set to fragments of sonic vignettes that shine. 

‘Children Of Children’ is an achingly beautiful cut that has an 70’s-era Neil Young dark ferocity about it. The song both celebrates and bucks generational norms with an acoustic guitar and slinky bass giving way to howling slide whirling in the eye of an orchestral string outro. 

The title song is soulful ode to pride in purpose. It’s from the view of a blue-collar day laborer, but it just as easily maps to Isbell’s focus and perseverance on mastering the craft in an uncertain industry. “And the day will come when I’ll find a reason,  And somebody proud to love a man like me / My back is numb / my hands are freezing / What I’m working for is something more than free.”

In the aftermath of the reprehensible Charleston church shooting South Carolina has becomes a battle ground of the South’s cultural idenity. Isbell’s “Palmetto Rose,”  written and recorded before the tragedy, is a swampy funk study of the richness of a culture often mischaracterized.  The song gets its title rom the lovely flowers woven from strips of leaves from state tree. At once Isbell gives voice to the street vendors, many African-American, that peddle them and offers up a challenge to the hubris, mostly Anglo, of revising history. “Catch you comin’ out of a King Street store / Bullshit story ’bout the Civil War / You can believe what you wanna believe / But there ain’t no makin’ up a basket weave / Everybody in the tri-county knows / Who makes the best palmetto rose.”

“To The Band That I Loved” may or may not be about his stint in the mighty Drive-By Truckers. The reference to being “22 backwoods years old” jibes with the age he was when he joined the band. The subject moves from the singular “Now I know you’ll be fine on your own” and “Your voice makes the miles melt away” recalls camaraderie shared by Isbell and band members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. But there’s another layer of nuance that makes me believe it’s for his first wife and Drive-By Trucker’s bassist Shonna Tucker. Either way it’s a fine cut that only Isbell knows knows where it’s heart lies. (UPDATE – A Rolling Stone article says “To a Band I Loved…” is about Denton TX’s Centro-Matic. So, never mind! hat tip to Jason Scally @Santascal for the 411.)

Go-to roots music producer Dave Cobb, that helmed ‘Southeastern,” returns to guide the album into aesthetic cohesion and knows enough to stay out of the way and allow Isbell and his band’s humanity to shine through. During the recording Isbell tweeted that he felt the songs on  ‘Something More Than Free” reviled those on “Southeastern.” That’s a tall order, and largely subjective. Isbell’s songs paint authentic and poetic worlds in the great southern tradition of storytelling. It’s like picking the best story your grandfather told you on the porch while driking sweet tea in the summer heat. 

Some stories might edge out others, but mostly you’re just glade someone’s around that cares enough to tell them. 

Official Site | Buy

five_rate

  

Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis Announce a Classic Country Duets ‘Key of Strife’ Tour

strife

Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis are often described as one of the finest roots male/female couples working today. Starting in July the husband and wife duo will bring that considerable talent to a mostly-Texas classic country duets tour they’ve labeled the “Key of Strife” tour.

The single released in May, ‘Storms Never Last’ originally performed by Jessi Colter & Waylon Jennings, is an perfect example of the caliber of performances to be expected.

“My favorite part about country music is how someone can talk about such a broad idea like that, like how life is hard, and say it so succinctly and with such grace. I think this concept is a great way to pay homage to all of the past great country couples.” – Bruce Robison

The logo and tour name “Key of Strife” is a play on Stevie Wonder’s famous album, ‘Songs in the Key of Life.’ The title’s inclusion of ‘strife” pokes fun at the popularity of somber country tunes while also honoring country’s greatest couples, such as George & Tammy, Johnny & June, Dolly & Kenny.

Hear ‘Storms Never Last’ and see tour dates below.

6/27/15 Black Marlin Bar & Grill – Port Aransas, Texas
7/03/15 The Kessler Theater – Dallas, TX
7/11/15 the Broken Spoke – Austin, Texas
7/17/15 Gruene Hall – Gruene TX
7/18/15 Mucky Duck – Houston
7/26/15 Red Ants Pants Festival – White Sulphur Springs, Montana
8/05/15 Main Street Crossing – Tomball TX

Americana Music Association Announces 70 Additional AmericanaFest Acts

americana-fest

Building on an already stellar first-round lineup The Americana Music Association announced an additional 70 artists to perform at the 16th annual Americana Music Festival & Conference, which takes place in Nashville and runs September 15-20, 2015.

The six-day, city-wide festival fills Music City with fans, legends, newcomers, and tilts the quest for glitz into the early direction of a quest for a great song. With over 150 artists and bands scheduled, the event continues to dominate as the premier showcase for roots music and culture.

In addition to previously announced acts such as Los Lobos, Patty Griffin, and Lee Ann Womack, AmericanaFest will feature Ry Cooder, performing with Sharon White and Ricky Skaggs, Donnie Fritts performing with former Civil War John Paul White, former Old Crow Medicine Show member Willie Watson, current member of Old Crow Medicine Show Gill Landry supporting his solo effort.

Also included are Cale Tyson, Lindi Ortega, Luther Dickinson, Kelsey Waldon, Buddy Miller, Jim Lauderdale, Gretchen Peters, American Aquarium, Legendary Shack Shakers and Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear who held a mesmerizing performance last year at Jack White’s Third Man performance space.

The list of the second round announcements is below, and a complete list can be found here.

Showcase wristbands ($50, increasing to $60 on August 15) allow admission into all showcase venues, some sanctioned parties and special events, and can be purchased here. Festival and Conference registrations ($365 for members/$465 for non-members) offer priority admission into all showcase venues, sanctioned parties and events, daytime educational panels, come with one ticket to the critically acclaimed Americana Honors & Awards show at the historic Ryman Auditorium, and can be purchased here.

List of Artists Added to AmericanaFest 2015:
Adam Faucett
American Aquarium
Amy LaVere
Andrew Leahey & The Homestead
Band of Heathens
Buddy Miller
Buxton
Cale Tyson
The Carmonas
Daniel Romano
Darrell Scott
David Wax Museum
Dirty River Boys
Donnie Fritts & John Paul White
Doug Seegers
Dreaming Spires
Dustbowl Revival
Eddie Berman
Eilen Jewell
The Fairfield Four
Gill Landry
The Good Lovelies
Great Peacock
Gretchen Peters
The Hillbenders
The Honeycutters
Humming House
JD & The Straight Shot
JD Souther
Jeffrey Foucault
Jim Lauderdale
Jonathan Tyler
Josh Rouse
JP Harris
Kacy & Clayton
Kelsey Waldon
Legendary Shack Shakers
Lewis and Leigh
Lindi Ortega
Los Colognes
Low Cut Connie
Luther Dickinson
Margo Price
The Mavericks
McCrary Sisters
Michaela Anne
Miss Tess & The Talkbacks
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
Paper Bird
Pine Hill Project (featuring Richard Shindell & Lucy Kaplansky)
Pony Boy
Porter
Possessed By Paul James
Raised By Eagles
Ron Pope & The Nighthawks
Ry Cooder/Sharon White/Ricky Skaggs
Ryan Culwell
Sam Outlaw
Spirit Family Reunion
The Suffers
T. Hardy Morris
T Sisters
Taarka
Those Pretty Wrongs
Town Mountain
Uncle Lucius
Whitney Rose
Willie Watson
The Wood Brothers