Arts and Entertainment

Chuck Mead’s fourth solo album comes out Friday, June 21. And while the title track “Close To Home” is about the power of music to tell uncomfortable truths, it could also apply to Mead's all Nashville album release tour this week, starting Tuesday night, as Mead explained to WMOT last week.

"It's nice to have a gig every day for five days and sleep in your own bed,” he said.

There’s been an aura of awe and expectation around Dylan LeBlanc since his first batch of recordings, virtually demos made with a friend in Muscle Shoals AL, was discovered and released by England’s Rough Trade Records in 2010. The Smiths, arguably that label’s most famous artists, offer a glimpse of a comparison to LeBlanc, with their gloomy emotionalism and drama on and off the microphone.

Dr. John, an ambassador of New Orleans music and heritage as iconic as Mardis Gras Indians and brass bands, has died at age 77. Since emerging in the late 1960s as the mystical Night Tripper bedecked in feathers, jewels and bones, the pianist, songwriter and session musician born as Malcom John Rebennack, Jr. led a long parade of joy, propelled by swampy funk, primal R&B and an instantly recognizable voice.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (OSBORNE) -- It’s shaping up to be a soggy CMA Fest this week in Music City.

Middle Tennessee's stretch of dry weather comes to end beginning Wednesday.

Meteorologist John Cohen with the National Weather Service Office in Nashville says the mid-state can expect showers and thunderstorms each day Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Two of the biggest music festivals in the country - CMA Music Fest and Bonnaroo - are about to arrive in Middle Tennessee. Crowds of 50-70,000 people will assemble to commune with artists most of them can barely see, other than via huge video screens. We're partial to more intimate relationships with our music and our fellow fans.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (OSBORNE) -- Music Row has been named to a list of the nation’s most endangered historical treasures, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation is asking Nashvillians to get involved.

The Washington DC based Trust ranked Music Row second on it’s List of America’s Most Endangered Historic Places for 2019.

Songwriter, guitarist and band leader Liz Brasher - who performs Saturday at 9 pm as part of 895 Fest - was WMOT’s first nominee to NPR’s national Slingshot talent discovery pipeline. When Brasher was selected in 2018’s inaugural class, it brought her debut EP Outcast to global attention and led to tour dates with Blondie, The Psychedelic Furs and The Mavericks.

Michael and Tanya Trotter, the married duo known as The War and Treaty, played the Hope Givers Mental Wellness & Music Festival in LaGrange, GA recently. It wasn’t their highest profile set of the past year by any means, but with a theme and setting like that, the Trotters seemed destined to be there. They radiate hope and joy. Their debut album is entitled Healing Tide. They are a love delivery vehicle.

It’s been one of the most unusual yet entirely rational career trajectories in the history of popular music. Most artists do one thing, get hot for a while, crest and then resign themselves to nostalgia tours of their heyday. Ricky Skaggs rode bluegrass to one tier of fame, country to another and then returned to the music that launched him - music that allows him to stay fully alive and relevant.

  More than perhaps any time I can remember, Americana music is defined by songwriter/artists or duos, with fewer bands emerging as contenders for the headlining slots. That’s an observation not a criticism, but it’s worth noting that while artists like Jason Isbell and Margo Price have terrific bands, ensembles branded as bands with collective names tend to think a bit differently about music making and to offer a particular experience for the listener.

For the first time in its 18-year history, four women were nominated as the Americana Music Association's Artist of the Year on Tuesday afternoon. And that wasn't the only way past patterns were disrupted in anticipation of the 2019 Honors & Awards show this Fall. No Album of the Year nominees were among the prospects for Artist of the Year or Duo/Group of the Year. New acts turned up in the Album and Duo/Group category, giving hope for first-time winners.

In “Rock Billy Boogie,” a classic 1957 record by the Rock and Roll trio, Johnny Burnette name-checks a Memphis honky tonk.

Well, I know a little spot on the edge of town/Where you can really dig 'em up and set 'em down/It's a little place called, The Hideaway/You do the rockabilly till the break of day...

That little spot has gone by the name Hernando’s Hideaway for so many decades that nobody reliably remembers when it opened. But it re-opens this summer, with hard country singer/songwriter Dale Watson as the new proprietor.

On a late March afternoon at Tulsa Strings Violin Shop, the tempo of life feels decidedly adagio, which in music speak means slow and easy-going. The curvaceous bodies of violins and violas hang in rows. A young woman is practicing Bach on a cello down a hall. In back, work benches hold the mysterious and intricate tools of violin repair. That’s Jacob Mehlhouse’s specialty.

Not every hobby gets its own national holiday, especially one in the seductive days of Spring. If there’s a “Souvenir Spoon Collectors Day” sweeping the nation each year, we haven’t heard of it. But vinyl junkies and music lovers have grown accustomed, in the manner of youngsters and Christmas, to the arrival of Record Store Day every April. For a dozen years now, fans have lined up before the sun rises to invest (yes, that’s the word) in their passion.