• 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!

• Rosanne Cash talks to the Wall Street Journal about her new release, The List, and joins George Jones by stating her views on the homogenization of mainstream country radio.

• The Who’s Roger Daltrey says Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium is the “That’s the best bloody place for a musician to play in the whole —— world.” You get one guess what goes where the lines are but this is a quite as it appears over at Country Standard Time.

• ABC’s Good Morning America brings you 5 Things You May Not Know About Dolly Parton.

• Kris Kristofferson was presented with the BMI Icon award Tuesday evening and watched while Vince Gill, Patty Griffin and Willie Nelson performed some of his best-loved compositions.  “Why Me,” “Help Me Make It Through The Night,” “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)” and “Me and Bobby McGee.”

• Geoff Muldaur recently sat down with the New York Times’ Ben Sisario to discuss the extraordinary group of musicians who came together to form the Texas Sheiks. The Texas Sheiks includes the late Stephen Bruton (Kris
  Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt, and T-Bone Burnett) who did not live
  to see the album released, blues singer Johnny Nicholas (Big Walter Horton and Robert Jr. Lockwood, Asleep at the Wheel), Cindy Cashdollar ( Levon Helm, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Paul Butterfield), Suzy Thompson ( Dave Alvin and Alice Gerrard).  Bruce Hughes (Jason Mraz, Bob Schneider)

• Austin 360 has coffee with promoter Shilah Morrow of Sin City Social Club. She has had quite a colorful life.

• The Country for Our Country benefit concert will occur  in Tyler, Texas this Saturday night (10/24). The event will celebrate the troops and benefit wounded soldiers by providing them with counseling and support during a difficult transitional period in their lives. The benefit will feature performances by Joe Nichols, Heidi Newfield, Derek Sholl, and Kacey Musgraves and The Big D & Bubba Show will emcee the event.

• Nashville’s legendary Station Inn get a two-year option on its lease.

• Check out Ryan Bingham’s new video for his song Country Roads.

• Paste magazine’s Andy Whitman gives his view of the landscape of country (really Americana or alt.country) music of the aughts (‘00.)

• Also in Paste, Wilco to start work on new album in January.

• John Fogerty and Bruce Springsteen will unite for a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame event.

• Find Lighten’ (the opposum) over at georgejones.com and get entered to win prizes like: Cracker Barrel Gift Cards, Autographed CD’s, and concert tickets.

• The Country for Our Country benefit concert will occur  in Tyler, Texas this Saturday night (10/24). The event will celebrate the troops and benefit wounded soldiers by providing them with counseling and support during a difficult transitional period in their lives. The benefit will feature performances by Joe Nichols, Heidi Newfield, Derek Sholl, and Kacey Musgraves and The Big D & Bubba Show will emcee the event.

• Nashville’s legendary Station Inn get a two-year option on its lease.

• Check out Ryan Bingham’s new video for his song Country Roads.

• Paste magazine’s Andy Whitman gives his view of the landscape of country (really Americana) music of the aughts (‘00.)

• Also in Paste, Wilco to start work on new album in January.

• John Fogerty and Bruce Springsteen will unite for a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame event.

• Find Lighten’ (the opposum) over at georgejones.com and get entered to win prizes like: Cracker Barrel Gift Cards, Autographed CD’s, and concert tickets.

• Country music legend George Jones seems to be popping up on all the TV shows recently to promote his new Cracker Barrel exclusive album, A Collection of My Best Recollection. This Sunday morning the Possum will make another appearance on CBS Sunday Morning this Sunday October 11, 2009. Host and interviewer Bob Schieffer visits George’s Nashville home and stops by Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium late this summer to talk about life, love and a lot of musical history, as well as all that he  is up to today. Jones has said that the new release might be his last album and has tour dates through the rest of the year and early next.

• The follow up to last year’s Mother’s Best radio show recordings Hank Williams: Unreleased Recordings will be released November 3rd. Revealed: Unreleased Recordings will feature 50 new tracks including some new songs and dialogue between Hank and the emcee of the show and his band. The release will also include the first public performance of  Cold, Cold Heart.

• Collectors’ Choice has chosen six of Waylon Jennings’  RCA albums from 1966-’70 and will release them as three double CDs: Folk Country/Waylon Sings Ol’ Harlan, Love of the Common People/Hangin’ On and Waylon/Singer of Sad Songs. The CDs will be available on November 24. Grammy Award-winning annotator/historian Colin Escott wrote the liner notes.

• Rosanne Cash will premieres her new album, The List, live at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY October 9th and 10th as part of  the St. Ann’s Warehouse 30th Anniversary Season.

• Cash also discuses her new release with Chet Flippo at CMT.com’s Nashville Skyline.

• Ranch Twang now has a LastFM group. Join up and help share great music with other folks.

• Country Music Neo-Outlaw Jamey Johnson shows his respect for the classics by covering Vern Gosdin, George Jones, George Strait and, his most obvious influence, Waylon Jennings, at the Chicago Country Music Festival.

• Break out a jar of granny’s skull rattle folks, Juli Thaki at the 9513.com has given us her top 26 songs about moonshine.

• Tom Russell has written what could be considered a companion piece to his new release Blood and Candle Smoke at the Rumpas (Where God and the Devil Wheel Like Vultures: Report from El Paso.) The dispatch reflects Russell’s style he cultivated by hanging with American underground great Charles Bukowski and similar threads from this and previous releases about his home in El Paso, TX,  the culture, people and the drug wars.

• The Los Angelas Times’ Ann Powers reviews the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum benefit featuring Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill and Dwight Yoakam among others (including the spirit of Townes Van Zandt.)

• The Flower Pickin’ festival (October 16-19)will feature Carlene Carter, Justin Townes Earle, Jimmy Tittle, John Francis and more. The festival celebrates the day that Johnny Cash was arrested for public drunkenness in Starkville, MS in the early morning of May 11, 1965 following a performance at Mississippi State University. He spent one night in jail and paid a fine of $36. Cash sang about his run-in with “the law” in Starkville on his album, “At San Quentin (The Complete Live Concert),” recorded in 1969.

I discovered the Drive By Truckers while an ex-pat Texan living in New York City. The environment that I has always known, and taken for granted, was replaced by something foreign and I was looking for cultural footing to make me feel “at home” but also to reflect my learned redneck attitude, a new framework look back over my home and its history. That’s when I came across a review for the Drive By Truckers’ 2004 Southern rock masterpiece The Dirty South. Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, and Jason Isbell proved to the reincarnation of Lynyrd Skynyrd cut with the  Replacementsthat I needed at the time. Blue collar, backwoods gems like Where the Devil Don’t Stay, Danko/Manuel and Daddy’s Cup revived my faith in the Southern magic of storytelling and the band’s triple guitar attack revived my faith in rock and roll .

The Fine Print (A Collection Of Oddities and Rarities 2003-2008) is an odds & sods largely culled from that fruitful period in the DBTs career. Along with Live from Austin, TX album, The Fine Print fulfills the DBT’s obligation with New West Records and allows them to move on to their own label, Ruth Street Records. The dozen songs on contained here is a bumper crop from a fertile period underscoring the power and focus of that time and that line up. The bitter-sweetness from listening to the album is that as good as the consecutive albums have been, the band has not met this level of intensity or focus since the departure of the youngster Jason Isbell after 2006’s middling A Blessing and a Curse.

The album kicks off with the jaunty George Jones Talkin’ Cell Phone Blues featuring John Neff’s sweet pedal-steel. The song deals the Possum’s 1999 car wreck while he was driving drunk and talking to his daughter on a cell phone. It shows love to Jone’s hopes it’s a while before he joins the legions of legendary country stars cluttering the afterlife.

The Trucker’s have never been shy about their influences and the four covers contained here are tackled with heart and reverence. Tom Petty’s Rebels is elevated to a Springsteen-like anthem and Tom T. Hall’s Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken) details the everyday cost of war without mounting a soap box. Warren Zevon’s Play It All Night Long fits right in with the The Dirty South’s dark swampy groove and the cover of Bob Dylan Like a Rolling Stone is woozy fun and features a Shanna Tucker debut as a front and center vocalist.

The Alternate Versions of Uncle Frank, from 1999’s Pizza Deliverance and Goode’s Field Road from 2008’s Brighter Than Creation’s Dark are great but hardly improve on the originals. The gangstabilly mythos of The Dirty South’s Where the Devil Don’t Stay and The Boys From Alabama has their dark reflection in The Great Car Dealer War, but to lesser narrative affect and Little Pony And The Great Big Horse highlights Mike Cooley’s subtle greatness in songwriting and storytelling. The creepy Christmas blues cut Mrs. Claus’ Kimono should have been the song behind the closing credits of Billy Bob Thornton’s black comedy Bad Santa.

Like most outtakes and rarities collections, The Fine Print is a bit of a mish-mash and overall doesn’t stand up as consistently as the DBT’s best work, but almost all the cuts are hands down better than most of what passes as rock these days. Besides it’s great that these songs (featuring another excellent cover by their long-time cover/poster/t-shirt illustrator Wes Freed) have seen the light of day at all I hope the release points the way to a revitalized and impassioned future for the mighty Drive-By Truckers.

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• Check out the “twitterview”  – a cute way of describing an interview conducted on twitter -  between TheBoot.com and Willie Nelson as was gearing up for his MySpace free secret concert in Maui, Hawaii.

• Speaking of the twitterverse (yeah, I’m gonna get mileage out of this), Charlie Robison won’t have to travel far to play a private living room concert for the winner of his twitter concert. The winner lives in Austin.

• The Grand Ole Opry will bring back it’s special Opry Country Classics program this fall for an eight-week run beginning Thurs., Sept. 10. Already scheduled to perform are Moe Bandy, Terri Clark, Jimmy Dickens, Larry Gatlin, Vince Gill, Jamey Johnson, George Jones, Ray Price, Joe Stampley, Marty Stuart, Mel Tillis, Pam Tillis, and Tanya Tucker.

• Rosanne Cash will be the subject of the Americana Music Association’s Festival and Conference 2009 Keynote Interview. The interview will be conducted by author/journalist Michael Streissguth – who has written books on Rosanne as well as her father Johnny, Eddy Arnold and others – will take place Thursday, September 17 from 10:45 until noon at the Nashville Convention Center.

• Jack Ingram established a new Guinness World Record – most radio interviews in a 24-hour period. Ingram was  promoting his new disc “Big Dreams & High Hopes.” Ingram recorded 215 radio interviews within 24 hours, hitting most of the 50 states, Canada, Ireland and Australia. The previous record was 96.

• Langhorne Slim’s forthcoming release is titled  Be Set Free (Kemado Records, Sept 29.) and containes this shimmery slice of heartache:  I Love You, But Goodbye  (I_Love_You_But_Goodbye.mp3). Check out Langhorne Slim’s MySpace page for more information and upcoming tour dates.

• Charlie Robison

• The Green Bay Press Gazette has a great interview with Justin Townes Earle. Earle talks candidly about his past addictions and is troubled relationship with his father. as well as his excellent new release Midnight at the Movies.

• Robert Earl Keen’s Lost Highway debut “The Rose Hotel,” produced by Lloyd Maines, will be released on On Sept. 29

• Rounder Records will celebrate their 40th anniversary on Oct. 12th at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, TN with performances from Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bela Fleck and Irma Thomas will join in this momentous celebration along with musical host Minnie Driver and special guests to be announced.

• Shreveport-based , the Louisiana Hayride (1948 to 1960) will  be inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. In it’s day the country music showcase featured Hank Williams, Kitty Wells, George Jones, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley.

• The grave of the late great Texas blues musician, Blind Willie Johnson, is  finally discovered. Johnson’s songs have been covered by everybody from Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton to Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.

• Details magazine sits down with Native Texan and anti-Taylor Swift blond bad ass Miranda Lambert for some Q&A.

• Nashville Scene’s newest cover has  “Three Hot Acts Present a New Breed of Female Songwriter” featuring Caitlin Rose, Tristen Gaspadarek and Those Darlins.

• George Jones will be releasing a CD through Cracker Barrel restaurants entitled A Collection Of My Best Recollection. The exclusive release will feature 12 tracks of The Possum’s most memorable songs, including White Lightning  Finally Friday and of course, He Stopped Lovin’ Her Today.  The CD will also include two songs that have never been released before, “I Don’t Want To Know,” and “I’m A Long Gone Daddy.”

“When the idea of working with Cracker Barrel on a CD first came up, I was all for it,” says two-time Grammy(R) Award winner George Jones. “I’ve been eating there for as long as I can remember. I love the idea of having my music right there in their retail store!”