When Country fans think of Kitty Wells they usually think of “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” It endures as one of her best songs but I have always had a morbid fascination with her song “I Gave My Wedding Dress Away.” At first blush it seems like a standard broken-hearted lament but [...]
I try not to think of Ray Price as the man who made AM radio so scary in the early 70’s (and most of the 80’s) with “For the Good Times.” In fact, when I started to dig deeper into the vaults as I learned about Country music I had written Price off just because [...]
Many years ago I started looking for great breakup songs and, of course, spent a lot of time digging through Country records for material. I spent hours digging through crates of records at a used record store, listening to dozens of songs and taking requests from the staff. I found a lot of great material [...]
Shortly after I moved to Texas I wound up at a backyard party where I was introduced to moonshine. Just like one would expect a friend passed over a mason jar with a wink and a warning. “Do yourself a favor,” he told me, “let a little get in your nose first so you don’t [...]
Country and Punk don’t have a lot in common but they do share an important characteristic - shorter songs are almost always better. Sure, there are epic country songs out there but when a track clocks in at under three minutes it usually means something went right. (Long, weepy country songs were part of what [...]
There are a lot of great Johnny Cash songs out there, so it was incredibly hard to pick just one. However, it’s also the birthday of someone special so the choice becomes that much easier.
From the underrated I Walk The Line soundtrack, the ballad “Flesh and Blood.”
Johnny Cash - Flesh and Blood
I had the good fortune to get tickets for Neko Case’s taping of Austin City Limits back in 2003. It was a hot, hot night in Austin and the studio at KLRU was not offering much in the way of help in getting out of the heat. Like most people going to a live show [...]