Well folks it’s Friday. The economy is tanking faster than Chris Cagle’s career, the election is getting ugly, and the only grocery store in my hometown is closing. We’re knee-deep in a cultural war that divides us between crazy bible-thumpers and nutjob treehuggers when we used to be in this thing together. [...]

One of the great pains this week is my inability to catch the Americana Music Association Awards this weekend. This year’s installment is an Americana fan’s wet dream:

John Hiatt will receive the coveted Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting
Jason and the Scorchers will likewise receive a Lifetime Achievement Award
Levon Helm brought his legendary Midnight Ramble [...]

iTunes 8 was released this week and the big improvement was the inclusion of Genius playlists. The concept is that iTunes will automatically find songs similar to the one you’re listening to and build a playlist.
Well they had to hire some kind of Americana wunderkind because this thing works incredibly well with my library [...]

Who doesn’t love a train song? From the patented chick-a-boom beat to the raw American imagery evoked, train songs are the very rails upon which the outlaw movement came to town.
Vinyl Collective has an exclusive pre-order opportunity to grab All Aboard, the latest tribute to Johnny Cash featuring a bonus track from Lucero’s Ben [...]

It’s hardly difficult to imagine Austin’s The Band of Heathens has claimed the top spot on the Americana radio chart for two weeks now. For those lucky enough to live in the live music capital, the band has been a mainstay for several years now. Their self-titled debut followed several locally successful live [...]