For a man whose recording career lasted barely six years, Hank Williams casts an immense shadow. I’m currently doing a show called Tennessee Walt’s Hanks a Lot!—and most of the audience members seem to come in assuming that it’s a show of Hank Williams songs. When they learn that I’ll be doing songs not … Continue reading The Shadow of Hank Williams
Current Country
My Favorite Things
I did a great show last weekend in Deer Park—and I should emphasize that I did a show I’d done many times before, something like the 25th performance of Tennessee Walt’s The Other Great American Songbook, and did it neither better nor worse than usual; it was the audience that made it great, by being … Continue reading My Favorite Things
Glen Campbell Faces the End with Guitar in Hand
by Gary Graff c.2012 Gary Graff Glen Campbell gets a warm but wary reception as he strides onstage at the University of Michigan's Hill Auditorium. It's no secret that the five-time Grammy Award winner is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He announced it himself, in June 2011, and has said that his latest album, "Ghost … Continue reading Glen Campbell Faces the End with Guitar in Hand
The Jimmie Rodgers Entertainers
The most important event of the August 3, 1927, Bristol Sessions happened not on the second floor of the Taylor-Christian Hat Company building, where Ralph Peer had set up his portable Victor Talking Machine Company recording studio, but rather across town at Mrs. Pierce’s boarding house. Different parties involved had different recollections of what went … Continue reading The Jimmie Rodgers Entertainers
Is It Country? Is It Rock? 20 Ways to Tell
Watch the Grammy awards—it doesn’t matter what year—and you’re watching an exercise in nomenclature. Americans love music, but they also love finding new words to categorize it. Is this song country, folk or Southern rock? Folk-rock, alt country or Americana? Is it neo-folk, country-punk or folkabilly? Why does anybody care? Well, it’s about money, of … Continue reading Is It Country? Is It Rock? 20 Ways to Tell
