The Texas Steel Guitar Association held its 40th annual jamboree last week. This was my first year to attend. Festival information was hard to find. I couldn’t even find what time events began and ended each day. The night before the four-day event, I decided to take a chance and bought my ticket. When I arrived, I needed to buy a $5 program just to find out what time the music began and ended each day. It turned out to be an outstanding event with dozens of steel guitar players doing 30-minute sets on the main stage. On Saturday, they began at 8AM and didn’t finish until after midnight! The h ..read more

A lot of money is flowing in country music these days. Even artists who aren’t on the radio charts are selling out large venues and making obscene amounts of money. Reigning CMA entertainer of the year Lainey Wilson has a new song entitled “Country Is Cool Again.” Indeed. Of course, we old folks remember Barbara Mandrell’s 1981 hit “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.” The good part is that there is more music available to the public now than at any time in history. You can pull up pretty much anything from any era in the history of recorded music, plus new music is flowing out from every ..read more

Welcome to 2024! There is more recorded music freely available to you now than at any point in history, and there’s plenty of new music flowing in every week. Negativity and tribalism are very popular, but I’m too busy enjoying music to spend much effort on that. Believe it or not, it’s possible to enjoy more than one kind of music. It’s even possible to enjoy artists from both yesterday and today and the artists from both the mainstream and the independents. It’s easy to get caught up in the biggest and newest artists and most talked about trends, but let’s also appreciate the older artists w ..read more

There are way too many country awards shows. In the last month alone were the CMA awards, TCMA awards, BBMA awards, and IWMA awards and probably a few others. Grammy nominees were announced, too. Nothing against any of these, but I listen to music. I do not listen to little statues. I’ll go ahead and throw in some opinions, anyway, because I need something to discuss. The biggest story of the CMA awards was the crowning of Lainey Wilson as entertainer of the year. In terms of qualifications, she’s tremendously behind, but the voters loved the view. What’s the real story here? I suspect that a ..read more

On the Facebook version of Robert’s Country Blog, I’m kicking off November with a flurry of November-themed songs. Since the beginning, my goal with this blog is to provide something a little different from other sites and this little series fits that goal. There are plenty of sites covering the mainstream and the major indies already. I have been busy enjoying Oktoberfest season. In Texas and Oklahoma, country and western music sometimes shows up in the polka and Oktoberfest scenes in interesting ways. The Tulsa Oktoberfest has a couple of small stages that feature local acts, many of which a ..read more

I didn’t watch any of the recent flurry of awards shows (ACM Honors, Americanafest, IBMA, People’s Choice, etc), but I’ll throw in a couple of thoughts. The IBMA is looking for a new host city after next year’s event in Raleigh. Bluegrass Today published an article discussing this. I have no idea which cities will be in contention. I selfishly hope that it’s somewhere much closer to me than Raleigh. The Grand Ole Opry-affiliated People’s Choice Awards reportedly didn’t air Morgan Wallen’s three wins. I’m not into Wallen’s music, but at least on the surface, it appears the People’s Choice Award ..read more

A lot has happened since my last post in August, beginning with the “insta-stardom” of Oliver Anthony and following through with a record-breaking cluster of country songs atop the all-genre charts. The good news is that the stranglehold of the mainstream terrestrial radio has been broken. The bad news is that the new “avenues of success” aren’t perfect, either. Political posturing by people on both sides fueled some of the “record breaking success stories” more than the quality of the actual music. Roughly half of the US population, including the majority of rural America, which country music ..read more

I haven’t been to many “name” concerts lately, but I’m fortunate to live in an area where there is a constant supply of good local acts. Most often, I visit Gruene Hall and other venues in the New Braunfels area, but there are also several quality country venues in Austin. You can throw a dart at a calendar for Gruene Hall or the Broken Spoke and find good music. I’ll especially put in a good word for Geezerfest, an annual charity event at Gruene Grove. This event has been around since 2009. This year, three dozen or so acts donated their time and talent over three days. The only downside is t ..read more

I spent a week in Nashville for CMA week last month. I saw over forty acts on official CMA stages and over twenty more acts during my time in Nashville. I mostly attended free daytime shows, but I won a ticket from the Hard Rock Cafe to Nissan Stadium on June 9th. As luck would have it, this was the night with the best lineup: Tanya Tucker, Lainey Wilson, Cody Johnson, Miranda Lambert, Keith Urban, Hardy, and more. Reba McEntire made a surprise appearance in a duet with Cody Johnson. Hailey Whitters, Dalton Dover, and Jelly Roll played short sets at the stadium. Elle King made appearances. Avr ..read more

I’ve been to a lot of concerts since my last post a month ago. I did not attend the ACM Awards, but I spent a lot of time at the free ACM Country Kickoff concerts on May 9-10. A few miles away on May 10 was the Opry NextStage event. Fortunately, traffic wasn’t bad and parking was free at both venues. Since these were “short sets,” most artists didn’t bring a full band, and as a result, there was little to no steel guitar, banjo, and mandolin, even from artists whose recordings include such instruments. The Opry provided a house band for the NextStage event. I’ll give some credit to Ian Munsick ..read more