Keith Whitley – Don’t Close Your Eyes
There are songs, and then there are cornerstones. Alan Jackson’s “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow” is decidedly the latter, a declaration…
Terri Gibbs – Somebody’s Knockin’
It is a sound that lives in the liminal spaces: the dim light of a late-night radio dial, the long,…
David Allan Coe – The Ride
It’s 2 AM on an interstate somewhere between nowhere and the next gig. The truck radio is tuned low, a…
Tanya Tucker – Two Sparrows in a Hurricane
The year was 1992. Country radio felt like a battlefield of fresh-faced neo-traditionalists and the new crop of polished, pop-friendly…
Kathy Mattea – Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses
The radio glowed a low, hypnotic orange against the pre-dawn blackness of the interstate. It was an hour when the…
Trisha Yearwood – She’s in Love with the Boy
The sound was a fire-engine red truck idling on a gravel road, waiting for a girl named Katie to climb…
George Strait – You Look So Good in Love (1983)
The hum of the highway at two in the morning is a universal sound of lonesomeness. It is, perhaps, the…
Dan Seals – Bop (1985)
It’s a sound that smells like the inside of a 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass, a phantom aroma of stale cigarette smoke…
John Anderson – Swingin’ (1983)
The memory isn’t of a stadium or a spotlight, but of a specific kind of late-night radio. It’s the hum…
The Judds – Why Not Me (1984)
The year is 1984. Nashville is in the midst of a transition, still rooted in the smooth, almost orchestral approaches…