• The big for fans of the Man In Black is that Rick Rubin’s American Records will release American VI: Ain’t No Grave, the final volume in the American series that  helped revitalize Johnny Cash’s career beginning in the early 90’s, after he was unceremoniously dropped from Mercury Records. February 26 would have been Cash’s 78th birthday. (New York Times)

• The economy may be for the dogs but it seems like it’s every week I find out about another ,usic festival cropping up. This time it’s Austin’s Americana focused Old Settler’s Music Festival (April 15-18) who have just released a partial line up list: Joe Ely, Patty Griffin, The Travelin’ McCourys, Fred Eaglesmith, Buddy Miller, Peter Rowan, The Lee Boys, The Gourds, Band of Heathens, Radney Foster, Blue Highway, Mindy Smith, Alison Brown with Joe Craven, The Infamous Stringdusters, Bearfoot, Solas, The Special Consensus, The Wronglers, Elizabeth Cook, Ruby Jane. Sounds like a winner. Grab those tickets, this one will fill up fast.

• I was lucky enough to catch Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard as they headed out to a brief 4 city tour, the first time they had appeared on stage together.  This legendary dup will appear once more for one show (as far as I can tell) at Ft. Worth’s Bass Performance Hall on February 17. (Pagasus News)

• If you missed it today on NPR, you can head over to the Fresh Air site and listen to T. Bone Burnett discuss the creation of the Crazy Heart soundtrack.

• Will there be a Patsy Cline Boulevard coming to Music Row?

• WillieNelson.com posted that The Texas Yoda has wrapped up his newest, as-yet-untitled album,  recorded live in Nashville in four days and produced by prestigious Americana producer T-Bone Burnett. From the post “Some folks have mistakenly called it bluegrass,” says Burnett. “It’s actually pre-bluegrass. It’s some of the songs Willie’s been singing his whole life.” The material ranges from 1920s to 1960s.” The album features a string section, Buddy Miller on guitar and Mickey Raphael on harmonica, includes “The Man With the Blues,” which Burnett says is the first song Willie ever wrote. Other tracks include covers of “Dark As a Dungeon” by Merle Travis and “You Done Me Wrong” by Ray Price. No release date has been set.

• Recording and visual artist Ronnie McDowell showed up at at George Jone’s home on home in Franklin, TN on Christmas day bearing the gift of a portrait — commissioned by Jones’ wife, Nancy — depicting Jone’s celebrated DUI arrest while operating a riding lawn mower.

• Roseanne Cash has announced a short tour to support her latest release, The List. (No Depression)

• The 11th annual San Francisco Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival is coming up February 12-21. The nine-day festival will feature many great bands at various locations around the Bay Area.

• The 11th Annual Musicfest at Steamboat concludes today at the Steamboat Colorado ski resort. Seriously, people, next year someone at the event needs to hook a blogger UP!

• The Country Music Museum and Hall of Fame plans to update their main exhibit space to devote an area to Americana and contemporary bluegrass music. The new exhibit will feature artifacts from Alison Krauss, Jim Lauderdale, Dell McCoury and Buddy Miller. Also to be included  in the the second floor gallery’s theatre (in front of the Hee Haw exhibit)  a new video exhibit will be featured showing about how topical events and social political issues are reflected and country music. The exhibit will feature examples like Merle Haggard’s “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill,” the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl,” and Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue (The Angry American).”

• For that Americana rock lover you need a gift for Billy Reid has offers a hand-made and -finished wooden box from Ross LeBlanc containing rare t-shirts inspired by the roots artists Old Crow Medicine Show, Justin Townes Earle, Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit, and the Drive-by Truckers, and also includes a DVD of Old Crow Medicine Show’s live performance at the Tennessee Theater.

• T Bone Burnett discusses his personal story of singer/songwriter Stephen Bruton. Thier collaboration and friendship led to the music selections for the upcoming Jeff Bridge’s movie about a down but not quite out country singer Crazy Heart. Burnett also mentions upcoming production duties with Jakob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Gregg Allman, Robert Randolph and John Mellencamp, and overseeing an all-star recording of music written by Mellencamp and horror-writer, and Americana music fan, Stephen King for “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County,” a play with music. And then there’s “Tough Trade,” a new series about three generations of country music stars, for which he’s serving as executive music producer. It’s set to premiere next year for EPIX, Viacom’s new multiplatform entertainment service. (LA Times)

• Paramount Pictures has begun an open casting call to find a Caucasian girl between the ages of 12 and 16 to play the lead role of Mattie Ross in the upcoming Joel and Ethan Coen’s remake of True Grit. (Cowboys and Indians blog)

• The winners of the 20th annual International Bluegrass Music Awards went to: Dailey & Vincent : Entertainer of the Year and Vocal Group of the Year, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper : Instrumental Group of the Year, Dan Tyminski – Male Vocalist of the Year, Dale Ann Bradley – Female Vocalist of the Year, Wheels : Dan Tyminski, (artist/producer) Album of the Year, Don’t Throw Mama’s Flowers Away : Danny Paisley & The Southern Grass (artist) – Song of the Year (via BlueGrassJournal.com) See photos from the award show, held at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tenn (The Bluegrass Blog)

• The 9513 sits down with a Q&A with Canadian Country Music artist Corb Lund.

• London-based Americana (Euro-Americana?) band The Dog Roses have a new EP, Just Another Saturday, scheduled for release next month. It is discribed as “foot tapping country-bluegrass mix with hints of celtic thrown in for good measure.” Download Let the Bottle Take the Heartache from the forthcoming EP: Let The Bottle Take The Heartache Away.mp3

• Go pick up the new podcast from NineBullets.net featuring tracks from upcoming cds by Lucero,  Strawfoot and Micah Schnabel (Two Cow Garage) as well as new material from Drivin’ & Cryin’ and Chuck Ragan.

• Sounds Country takes a look back at Jerry Jeff Walker’s 1975 release Ridin’ High

• Hardly Strictly Bluegrass begins today and goea on until Sunday in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park Speedway Meadow. The 9th year of this free annual Americana and roots festival features 5 stages featuring John Prine, Lyle Lovett, Ricky Skaggs, Gillian Welch, Steve Earle, Billy Joe Shaver, Elizabeth Cook, Buddy Miller and many, many more. You can follow HSB on twitter. And you can follow Twang Nation tweets from the festival all weekend.

I’m baaaack. So if you’ve been keeping up with my tweets, or just reading the news,  you know the 10th Annual Americana Association Conference and Festival in Nashville last week was quite a shin-dig. I missed goodBBQ and that laid-back Southern charm and although the conference attendance seemed to be down a bit (well, a lot actually), if my Shiner fogged memory serves me, the showcases were better than ever.

There were a number of memorable nuggets that I wanted to quickly share. For one thing, there must be an aging painting in Jim Lauderdale’s attic becuase the man that is ubiquitous not only at the AMA event but in Americana music in general, still beams with youthful charm.

The performance that made my biggest impression was a serendipitous discovery. A friend’s showcase Friday afternoon at BB Kings brought Dallas’ Somebody’s Darlng to my radar. I should be ashamed of not knowing about them earlier since they hail from my home town and they rocked my ass with a their roots-rock soul sound.

Then there was the two great guitar pulls. The Douglas Corner Cafe featured The Americana Renegades Show with excellent performance by Irene Kelley, Roger Saloom, Joe Whyte and Stoll Vaughan. The club was like a Blue Bird Cafe II with a reverent and attentive audience. Then I lucked into getting out of the rain and a long line at the Station Inn to see Nanci Griffith, Mary Gauthier & Elizabeth Cook in their own audience hushing performance was a great treat.

Seeing Bearfoot do their short set at the Compass records’ notorious Hillbilly Central open house was also a nice surprise. I was not familiar with this newgrass band but they held the packed audience in spellbound attention with their performance and did musch less cocaine than the former Hillbilly Central residents.

There was the spellbinding rustic winsomeness of Amanda Shires. The leather-tough gold-hearted girl  – Angela Easterling (w. Will Kimbrough), and the omnipresence of Austin Texas with The Gourds, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Asleep at the Wheel, Reckless Kelly, Radney Foster and Charlie Robison.

Then there was standing near the stage to behold the wonder that is John Fogerty (along with Buddy Miller) at his semi-secret show at the Cannery. Wow…wow…

It was old-school alt-country at the closing night at the Basement with the ex-singer of Nashville super group BR549, Chuck Mead, and the only band that rivals the Drive By Truckers for a live performance, the Bottle Rockets, sending the whole thing off to a booming, bitter-sweet end.

Then there were the artists, radio, writers, fellow bloggers and general soldiers that, like myself, champion this music each and every day out of love more than riches (Ha!)

You can’t be everywhere all the time, and the four performance spaces for the AMA festival are a considerable distance from each other, so there are tough choices to be made and many show I wish I could have attended. But with a little logistics and a dash of serendipitous happenstance this trip to Nashville was a great party with wonderful memories (from what I can remember!)

• Canada.com posts a feature on the upcoming album of classics by Willie Nelson, American Classic – Willie Nelson returns to ‘the good songs’ (release 8/25)

• The New York Times also features a piece on Willie Nelson’s American Classic.

• The Boston Herald posts a feature on honky-tonk neo-traditionalist Paul Burch- Looking for authentic country soul? Burch is ‘Still Your Man’ – about his new release and the music business.

• I have come to the acceptance step of the grief cycle, bit Todd VanDerWerff’s excellent and exhaustive re-review of the HBO Western series Deadwood at The Onion’s TV Club brings a smile to my face.

• Check out Kim Ruehl’s interview with Santa Cruz’s roots band The Devil Makes Three from the Bumbershoot music festival.

• Tom Russell posts a new addition to his blog giving context and back stories to the songs on his upcoming Calexeco-backed album Blood and Candle Smoke.

• Bruce Robison posts on his MySpace blog that he will have a song in Texas cartoon mogal Mike Judge(Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill) film Extract and that he’ll be heading out  on tour with Robert Earl Keen and Todd Snider. (via the 9513.com)

• Patty Griffin’s upcoming Buddy Miller produced Gospel album Downtown Church will be released in early 2010 and was recorded earlier this year in the sanctuary of the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville, according to her website.

• Willie Nelson premiered his new video covering Tom T. Hall’s Shoeshine Man (below) The song is not on his upcoming covers album American Classics so I have no idea whay he made this video, but he seems to be having a ball. The Texas Yoda has taken a page from the DIY codger goofing around in front of a video camera recently used by Neil Young for his video Fork in the Road.

• The Americana Music Association announced the lineup for its 2009 festival,  Sept. 16-19 at around several of  Nashville’s best venues – The Mercy Lounge, The Cannery Ballroom, 3rd & Lindsley, The Station Inn and The Basement.  On the roster is Cross Canadian Ragweed, Angela Easterling, Asleep at the Wheel, The Bottle Rockets, Jim Lauderdale, Buddy Miller, Joe Pug, Charlie Robison, Marty Stuart, Patrick Sweany, Those Darlins and many more.

• Popmatters.com has posted an mp3 for Chain, a cut off Vic Chesnutt’s upcoming release At the Cut (Constellation) to be released 22 September (US)

• Randy Travis, Martina McBride and Ray Price join an International  line-up of over 60 International, UK and Irish acts performing on three separate stages at the UTV CountryFest ‘09  August 1st – 2nd  at the Kings Hall in Belfast.

• Chet Flippo over at CMT’s Nashville Skyline and Miss Leslie at the 9513.com are strolling down the mine-laden path of “What is country music?”

• Classical Americana? Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas and Buddy Miller will be among the musicians who will perform with the Nashville Symphony on Sept. 12 during the inaugural Classical Americana concert at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. The concert is one of the events leading up to 10th annual Americana Music Festival and Conference taking place Sept. 16-19 in Nashville.

• Lost Highway Records will release a compilation of music Willie Nelson has made on their label. Willie Nelson’s Lost Highway will be released on Aug. 11 with three previously unreleased songs. The 17-track album features Grammy-winning duets with Ray Price (”Lost Highway”) and Lee Ann Womack . Other guests on the album include Elvis Costello, Diana Krall and Lucinda Williams.I;m not sure that the work Willie has done while on Lost Highway really warrents the compilation treatment but I will hold judgment until I hear it.

• Bob Schneider teamed up with Dixie Chick Martie McGuire for a  sold-out show at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, CA. SPINearth.tv (SPIN Magazine’s new global music site) recently published an exclusive photo collection from the DVD taping of the show.

The Americana Music Association announced the nominees for the trade organization’s 2009 Honors and Awards ceremony today at its annual celebration at BMI Nashville. The show, in its eighth year, will be held Thursday, September 17 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee.

I’ve attended the conference and showcase for the last three years and it’s always an amazing time. I don’t agree with all the nominees, and as a member of the organization I voted accordingly. But one thing is for certain, every nominee kicks the shit out of 99% of the CMA Awards.

The 2009 Americana Music Association Honors and Awards Nominees are:

ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Real Animal, by Alejandro Escovedo
Written in Chalk, by Buddy & Julie Miller
Jason Isbell & The 40 Unit, by Jason Isbell & The 40 Unit
Midnight At The Movies, by Justin Townes Earle

ARTIST OF THE YEAR

Alejandro Escovedo
Buddy Miller
Justin Townes Earle
Raul Malo

INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR

Buddy Miller
Gurf Morlix
Jerry Douglas
Sam Bush

NEW & EMERGING ARTIST

Band of Heathens
Belleville Outfit
Justin Townes Earle
Sarah Borges

SONG OF THE YEAR

“Chalk,” written by Julie Miller, performed by Buddy Miller & Patty Griffin
“Country Love” by the Gourds
“Homeland Refugee,” by Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock, performed by the Flatlanders
“Rattlin’ Bones” by Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson, performed by Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson
“Sex And Gasoline,” by Rodney Crowell, performed by Rodney Crowell

DUO GROUP OF THE YEAR

Buddy & Julie Miller
Flatlanders
Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson
Reckless Kelly

• Hank Locklin , Country legend, Grand Ole Opry member, pioneer of the country music concept album and “Nashville Sound,” and one of the greatest tenor singers in country music history, died Sunday in Brewton, Ala. His greatest hits included Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On in 1958 and Please Help Me I’m Falling in 1960.  Mr. Locklin had recently released his 65th album, By the Grace of God. He was 91.

• I knew that country music fans were old school in thier aesthetic preferences but was surprised by the Country Music Association study which found that “countryphiles (18–54 year old passionate fans who appreciate country music and are fervent consumers of CDs, radio, television and concerts) are purchasing few digital downloads and, by extension, only half of country music’s biggest fans have home Internet access. I haven’t seen the details of these findings but it might explain why the top chart sellers are country music artists (well, Taylor Swift anyway.) It’ll be interesting to see what decisions will be made by the CMA because of these findings. Here’s to the return of local Jamborees!

• Though I’ve decided to not review Middle Cyclone,  the new indy-pop release Neko Case the folks at Hearya.com do and they like what they hear.

• Juli Thanki over at the always entertaining 9513.com reviews Written in Chalk, the new release by Buddy and Julie Miller (which I will be reviewing.)