Tag Archives: Miranda-Lambert

News Round Up: Taylor Swift Attends Miranda Lambert’s Revolution

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  • Vince Vaughn is not only hilarious, and tall, but he loves country music. Or is it Americana music…hell I can’ keep up.
  • The Americana extravaganza that is Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is next weekend people. John Prine, Lyle Lovett, Boz Scaggs, Steve Earle, Ricky Scaggs, Gillian Welch, Booker T and the Drive By Truckers as his backing band, Mavis Staples, Emmylou Harris, Doc Watson, Aimee Mann and Little Feat. And it’s FREE!
  • Taylor Swift showed up at the Ryman last night to watch Texas’ own Miranda Lambert play her new release Revolution (I wonder if she has to pay Steve Earle royalties on that too?) That’s right Taylor, that’s how it’s done! During her performance Lambert knelt down and kissed the historic wooden stage of the hallowed Mother Church of Country Music. No mics where taken from any performers as far as I know…

News Round Up: Country Music Is Dead (RIP Johnny Cash)

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  • The 9513’s Matt Griffin draws comparisons to Levon Helm’s newest release, Electric Dirt,  and  Johnny Cash’s latter career reviving American Recordings.
  • The Academy of Country Music has chosen the The Ryman Auditorium as the Venue of the Year. Special awards to be presented at the 2nd Annual ACM Honors, scheduled for September 22 at Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center, will be the Jim Reeves International Award to Dolly Parton, the Mae Boren Axton Award to David Young, the Poet’s Award to Merle Haggard and Harlan Howard. Lee Ann Womack will host the evenand there will be special performances by Bobby Bare, Vince Gill, Randy Houser, Jamey Johnson, Miranda Lambert, Jim Lauderdale and Patty Loveless.
  • The Country Music Association Awards announced the nominees for their 43rd annual awards ceremony. All the usual suspects, Paisley (leading with 6 nominations),  Chesney, Swift, Urban. A nod to tradition  – George Strait. Some black horses added – Joey + Rory for Vocal Duo Of The Year and The Raconteurs with Ricky Skaggs and Adhely Monroe performing the song Old Enough as the Musical Event Of The Year (?) Duller than the Grammys I say. Tune in to see Jamey Johnson perform and try to refrain throwing things at the TV when Kid Rock takes the stage.
  • Johnny Cash dies On this Day, 2003, at Nashville’s Baptist Hospital, of complications from diabetes, 4 months after death of wife, June Carter.

News Round Up: The Glossary is Giving Their 2007 Album, The Better Angles of Our Nature

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  • PopMatters.com has Juli Thanki’s newest Torch & Twang post (Louisiana Woman, Texas Troubadour)  Thanki bypasses the standard view that Loretta Lynn’s best duet partner was Conway Twitty and makes her case for Ernest Tubb.
  • Best Buy is offering an exclusive EP from Miranda Lambert today which  includes her new single “ Dead Flowers” from her upcoming album Revolution. The EP includes three bonus tracks from her prior album, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The cost of the EP is $1.99, or you can pre-order Revolution and get the EP free. (via My Kind of Country and the 9513.com)
  • Kris Kristofferson, Ray Price, Bobby Bare Jr. and My Morning Jacket are some that will pay tribute to writer, artists , country music songwriter and Playboy mansion resident Shel Silverstein on Turnable, Twistable Man which is produced by Silverstein ‘s friend Bobby Bare.
  • Murfreesboro, Tennessee-based quirky indy Southern rock band the Glossary is giving their new 2007 album, The Better Angles of Our Nature, free from their official site and in different quality formats.  I’ll review it soon, but after a couple of passes on the iPod it’s a great one.
  • Happy birthday Patsy Cline  (Sept 8 1932)
  • Another use for texting? Apparently looking for the country crooner that stopped in your town and might have knocked you up is now on that list.  A certain lady with a Wisconsin phone number is currently looking for this Rodeo Romeo. (via NashvilleScene)

Rounder Records Turns 40

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  • 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.

Miranda Lambert Headed Back to the Studio

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  • The 7th Annual 10KLF 10,000 Lakes Festival in Detroit Lakes, MN will feature Junior Brown, Kathleen Edwards and William Elliott Whitmore will join Dave Matthews Band, Wilco, Widespread Panic and much more . The festival will take place July 22 – 25, 2009.
  • In more festival news; the International Folk Alliance Conference in Memphis, Tenn. will feature  films, songs, stories and special events to fill the days and nights of February 18 – 22, 2009.  Slated to perform and/or speak are Charlie Louvin, Rodney Crowell, Kathy Mattea, Ray Wylie Hubbard and much more.
  • Miranda Lambert blogs that she soon will be heading into the studio to work on a new album. Lambert posts that she’s been neglecting her blog because “I’m going into the studio in February to do my third album. I’ve really been writing and concentrating on that.” Count me as a fan of something Nashville has recently got right.

I Missed the CMAs. Money says they STILL Blow.

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So this year I spared myself the agonizing spectacle of the Country Music Awards. Aside from my Texas home girl Miranda Lambert there was nothing, NOTHING, about the Nash-Vegas that would compel me to watch what amounts to a fate more painful then sitting through 5 Hanna Montana concerts….sequentially…with her dad opening the show. Seriously, Kid Rock? Even the rappers don’t want him anymore. Shania Twain?! Mutt Lang dumps here and she leaves Canada starved for the spot light? I still contened the CMAs make the Grammys seem edgy.

Stagecoach Announces Festival Lineup

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The lineup for Stagecoach, California’s Country Music Festival has been announced. Along with the garden variety Nashville pop faire – Kenny Chesney, Reba McEntire and Brad Paisley – the festival will feature more harder edged and rootsier artists – Miranda Lambert, Earl Scruggs,  Jerry Jeff Walker, Ricky Skaggs, Ralph Stanley, Dale Watson, The Duhks, some pleasant surprises, Dallas’ own Reverend Horton Heat, and a few wanna-bes – Kid Rock, Darius Rucker.

Stagecoach will take place on April 26, 2009 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, CA. Tickets for go on sale Friday, November 14 at 10:00 AM (PT) at all Ticketmaster locations.

Jessica Simpson Goes Country (badly)

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  • The New York Times has an extensive review of Joe Nick Patoski’s biography, “Willie Nelson: An Epic Life.”
  • Ted Hacker, he producer of next weekends BamaJam festival (featuring Hank Williams Jr., Miranda Lambert, Ricky Skaggs and much more), and a former country music manager for the Oak Ridge Boys, Diamond Rio and Darryl Worley details the steps it took to put the festival together.
  • Ben Cisneros at the 9513 has nice things to say about Dallas’ Eleven Hundred Springs’ new release “Country Jam.”
  • And lots of folks have lots to say, lots, about Jessica Simpson’s newest country music single “Come On Over.” The consensus seems to run toward (and I agree) that Jessica is doing to the song what she did to Tony Romo’s chances for the Superbowl.
  • There is some talk about bringing back Austins’ legendary Armadillo World Headquarters. This is the place where, after leaving Nashville, Willie Nelson focused on remaking himself as the hippy/redneck savant as we know him today. (thanks to Linda at Still Is Still Moving – the #1 fan site on Willie Nelson)

Pop Matters Features Miranda Lambert

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PopMatters.com features 20 questions with Miranda Lambert. A highlight:

Of those who’ve come before, the most inspirational are?
Merle Haggard has been my inspiration. Waylon Jennings, Emmylou Harris are close behind. Since I’ve been writing songs and performing, Allison Moorer and Jack Ingram have been big idols of mine. All of these artists have written about what’s true even if it’s not always a pretty picture.

Miranda Lambert “Gunpowder & Lead” Fresno, CA

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLC81Q49dyQ[/youtube]

PopMatters best of 2007

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The ever snarky yet entertaining music site PopMatters are dropping their “Best Of…” lists by genre and their list of 2007’s Best Country is an insightful pick of the crop. My three favorite female  country crooners of the year, Elizabeth Cook, Sunny Sweeney,  and Miranda Lambert made the list as well as some typical Nashville faire. They also take time to take some cheap shots at the Eagles (Linda Ronstadt’s old backing back reinvent itself as the oldest boy band on the planet, HA! ) which always scores points with me.

And then there’s this lyrical insight to Rascal Flatts.

It’s safe to say Rascal Flatts will never make that leap across the firewire because I really don’t see any merit in an outfit that takes ostensibly good ideas, drowns them like kittens in a syrup of glossy good taste, skins them, and then drags them out over four minutes where two-and-a-half would have been more than enough. It’s all enough to make you long for an American Idol or two.

Bless you PopMatters….bless your snarky hide!