IN THE SPOTLIGHT – JOHN ANDERSON Patience can be a virtue when trying to schedule an interview. It took more than 16 months before the stars aligned and I got a call from John Anderson to talk about my Randy Travis biography. It’s quite a thrill to hear such a recognizable voice on the other […]
IN THE SPOTLIGHT – WADE LANDRY The last time I saw Wade Landry was in July at The Troubadour in Nashville, with Mel Tillis Jr. and his Memory Makers band. So imagine my surprise when I called him two weeks ago, and he’s now living in Louisiana. Kayo and I had first met Wade in […]
IN THE SPOTLIGHT – MARK CASSTEVENS “The very nature of our job is to be invisible,” says Nashville session multi-instrumentalist Mark Casstevens. Specializing in acoustic guitar, Mark accompanied over 250 artists in the recording studio from 1971 through 2010. “If you have an ego, you shouldn’t be in my line of work. You have to […]
IN THE SPOTLIGHT – ROGER BROWN Randy Travis’s 1993 album, Wind in the Wire, contained four cuts by one songwriter, Roger Brown. I called Roger to discuss how that astounding number came about. He was in the right place at the right time. He and his friends had been writing cowboy songs, something no one […]
NEWS Charlie Monk, music industry networker and radio personality, died at home December 19 at age 84. Over fifty years ago, he co-founded the Country Radio Seminar, which is now a weeklong convention that draws more than 2,000 people and has live performances all over Nashville. He and radio promotions man Tom McEntee started Country […]
TWENTIETH CENTURY DRIFTER AUDIOBOOK AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD I’m thrilled to announce that Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins is now available to the public as an audiobook. It can be downloaded from Audible.com or Amazon.com. Thanks to Frank Gerard for narrating both Marty’s story and Faron’s story. I have a few complimentary copies […]
Let’s take a moment to honor the memories of Faron Young and Marty Robbins. Marty died December 8, 1982, at age 57. Faron died December 10, 1996, at age 64. NEWS The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and the University of Illinois Press have signed an agreement to co-publish and distribute books on […]
NEWS Founding member and guitarist of the Country Music Hall of Fame group, Alabama, Jeffrey Cook died peacefully at his beach home in Destin, Florida, on November 7, at age 73. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2012. Born in Fort Payne, Alabama, in 1949, he began playing in bands at age 13 […]
IN THE SPOTLIGHT – RANDY TRAVIS When Kayo Paver and I drove to North Texas in 2016, we included Tioga on our route and an excursion to find the Randy Travis ranch—which we did. No one answered when I punched the call button at the gate, so we headed home to South Dakota. Never could […]
IN THE SPOTLIGHT – BRUCE WILLIAMS While doing research for my Randy Travis biography, I called Bruce Williams (of Williams & Ree) to talk about their USO tours; he had emailed me his phone number. He and Terry were in Minot, North Dakota. “There you are, Diane, just calling me right out of the blue, […]