This listening session was dominated by hit makers of yore. Ricky Skaggs, Tracy Lawrence, Sawyer Brown, Michael Martin Murphey and Roy Head with Jeff Chance are all on board with new sounds. Ricky and Tracy, in particular, are audio delights.
Our three contenders for this edition’s DisCovery Award can all be found on independent labels and the Disc of the Day goes to the combo of Rascal Flatts with New Zealand born and Britain-created pop warbler Natasha Bedingfield.
Grammy Award winning art director Bill Johnson has died at age 68. He passed away at home in Nashville on Wednesday (6/15) following a battle with lung cancer. As the art director at CBS Records in the 1980s and 1990s, he left his visual imprint on an entire generation of country record makers. Johnson was […]
You can tickle my dancing feet or dazzle my brain with word play, but if you really want to get my attention, pierce my heart.
The Country Music Association released its preliminary statistics on its 40th annual fan festival on Monday, and the results are impressive. There is no official estimate on how much economic impact this year’s festival had on downtown, but it is a safe bet that it surpassed last year’s $24 million.
Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame member J. Harold Lane died last week in Nashville at age 82. His funeral was held Monday (6/13), and he was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery. Lane initially rose to prominence as a founder of the Gospel Harmony Boys. He is best known as a performer for his 22 […]
Steve Popovich, one of the most colorful record executives in the history of Music Row, died suddenly on Wednesday (6/8) at age 68. Often described as a “maverick,” he was the head of Mercury Records in 1986-88 and ran his own label, Cleveland International Records, from 1976 onward.
We have a mixed bag of sounds on tap today. The listening session was dominated by indies. Some of them were quite listenable (Stephanie Urbina Jones, Aaron Einhouse), others not so much.
When the Americana Music Association announced its 2011 awards contenders recently, it jolted me into awareness of how long it has been since I penned an Americana review column.
Texas music publicist Jolene Mercer died Saturday, May 28, following a long illness. She was noted for working with such artists as Chris LeDoux, Ricky Lynn Gregg, Janie Fricke, Asleep at the Wheel, Charley Pride, Neal McCoy, Josh Logan and Billy “Crash” Craddock. At various times during her career, she was also an event planner, […]