Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest. “What the hell are you yelling about?” he muttered. “Never mind,”…

The album’s real power, however, isn’t generated from its California-ness. It comes from Ledger’s willingness to write a personal record at a moment when he was reeling from the pandemic.

Prine faces the dilemma of the next generation. He must balance his responsibility of facilitating, fostering and honoring his famous parent’s legacy while also advancing his music. In a genre that often scoffs at change, especially when considering the canonical members of its aristocracy, like John Prine, children must carefully establish themselves as separate from their family, but without destroying the benefits of the association either.

But still, to the casual observer, the words can leave the impression that the art itself is somehow of the past, irrelevant to our hyper modern times. When I asked…

The event drew roughly 5,000 people both days, leading them to add a third day this year, which will take place Oct. 6-8 and include performances from Turnpike Troubadours, Charley…

Singer-songwriter Brent Cobb pauses like a preacher taking a breath and gives me a smirk. “That’s the FFA Creed.” We both start to laugh in the middle of a cow…

However, the glitz and glamour — regardless of realities — seem antithetical to country music’s near-religious dedication to the perception of authenticity. And this is especially true of those just…

Today’s artists have both a greater freedom and burden to find the authentic West. No one is succeeding at that task better than Colter Wall.

Now that she’s on the road again, it feels like she’s picking up right where she left off–on an extended run of momentum ignited by her powerful debut album. Arman’s…

Modern neuroscience has taught us that trauma rewires our brain, and in turn, reorders our body. When exposed to it, we are more susceptible to feelings of rage and anxiety,…

Creekbed’s storytelling grabbed me immediately. He told the story of Willie Nelson’s commercial jingles, penned in the 90s for Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, and then sang “Woman With the…

Many people told me that the energy surrounding this country revival reminded them of earlier, underground rock music scenes. Some went even further and asserted that the contemporary rock genre…

Equally wondrous, the song that propelled her, It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels, was a ferocious howl of feminism. Ten years before the notion of “women’s liberation” even…

Summer Dean probably shouldn’t be here, out on tour to support the upcoming release of her new album, The Biggest Life, produced by country music icon Bruce Robison. In the small Texas town where Dean grew up, young girls with professional aspirations aimed at the bank, courthouse, or classroom. Her mother was a teacher, and Summer followed in her mama’s footsteps, earning an education degree and teaching elementary school for 10 years. On a familiar and predictable trajectory, gravity’s rainbow should have done the rest.