The Oak Ridge Boys – Elvira
It’s late spring in 1981. Country music is in a curious state—the ‘Urban Cowboy’ boom is peaking, and Nashville is…
Country
Gene Watson – Fourteen Carat Mind
The year is 1981. Country music, famously resistant to seismic shifts, was nevertheless standing on a fault line. The slick,…
Don Williams – I Believe in You
It is 1980. The air is thick with the synthesized ambition of new wave and the electric fury of arena…
Merle Haggard – Medley
The first time I heard a Merle Haggard “Medley,” it wasn’t on a pristine vinyl re-issue or a modern high-fidelity…
Daniel O Donnell & Mary Duff – Say You Love Me
The air in the dim, late-night café was thick with a quiet melancholy, punctuated only by the soft clink of…
Robert & Richard Mizzell – Walk The Line
The first few notes of Robert Mizzell’s “Walk The Line Revisited,” featuring his father, Richard, do not explode from the…
Boxcar Willie – A Good Old Country Song
It’s late. The kitchen light is dim, a cold front moving in outside. The radio—not a digital stream, but a…
Jim Devine – Somebody Lied
The memory of the first time I truly heard this piece of music is clear: a late Friday evening, the…
Rhonda Vincent & Gene Watson – Gone For Good
The neon signs of Lower Broadway in Nashville blur in my memory, painted by the rain of a long-ago night.…
Tanya Tucker – Delta Dawn
The road unwinds under the dim sweep of the late-night radio, the kind of forgotten highway where all the big-city…