FEATURED ARTIST – TEEA GOANS Teea Goans has a mission. She wants to give a gift to people who love traditional country music and are searching for it. She wants to bring an awareness to the new generation of country music fans who are not familiar with the classics. I wanted to make my newsletter […]
FEATURED ARTIST – JODY NIX I met Jody Nix and his Texas Cowboys in July 2008, when they came to Washington, D.C., to represent the state of Texas at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. I’d been listening to them for a while by then, on XM Radio. When I called Jody last week at his home […]
NEWS Jim Ed Brown (1934-2015) Jim Ed Brown died June 11 at the Williamson Medical Center in Franklin, Tennessee, of lung cancer. He was 81. He last performed on the Grand Ole Opry in April, while his cancer was in remission. It returned June 3, and he began a second round of chemotherapy. James Edward […]
NEW RELEASE OF TWENTIETH CENTURY DRIFTER: THE LIFE OF MARTY ROBBINS The University of Illinois Press is issuing the paperback version of Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins in August. Any suggestions as to what I should do to publicize the release? FEATURED ARTIST – SAMMY KERSHAW I Won’t Back Down is the […]
NEWS Johnny Gimble (1926-2015) One of the greatest fiddlers of all time, Johnny Gimble, died May 9, three weeks before his 89th birthday, due to complications from several strokes. John Paul Gimble spent most of his life in Texas, other than the Nashville period and World War II, when he was drafted into the U.S. […]
NEWS The principal of Bakersfield High School recently presented Merle Haggard with his high school diploma–an honorary one. In 2013, Cal State University Bakersfield gave Merle an honorary doctorate, and Buck Owens was posthumously honored with the President’s Medal.
NEWS Randy Travis is married! He wed Mary Davis in Denton, Texas, on March 21, 2015, with the Rev. Tommy Nelson of Denton Bible Church officiating. The Cooke County Marriage Licenses Office issued the license last month to Randy B. Travis, 55, Tioga, and Mary D. Beougher, 55, Tioga. A surprise attendee at the 50th […]
FEATURED ARTIST – THE QUEBE SISTERS BAND I first saw The Quebe Sisters Band (kway-bee) at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., the summer of 2008. I’ve been a fan ever since. I called Hulda Quebe Stipp the other day and said I wanted my readers to know who they are. Hulda told me […]
NEWS Jerry Brightman (1953-2015) One of Buck Owens’s Buckaroos, Gerald “Jerry” Warner Brightman, 61, died at his home in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, on March 9. At age 14 he joined the Wheeling Jamboree staff band in Wheeling, West Virginia. After Buck Owens asked him to play steel guitar on some recording sessions, he became a […]
FEATURED ARTIST – BILL ANDERSON “We’re still iced in down here,” Bill Anderson told me on the phone last week. He said Nashville had received snow on top of the layer of ice already on the ground, and it was “supposed to go down to single digits tonight.” I told him the temperature here had […]