Hag's Big City B'day w/ Jamie Oliver & pals @ The Horseshoe, April 1

This year's Merle Haggard birthday bash includes special guests Jim Cuddy, Russell deCarle, Caitlin Hanford and more!

Tickets for Hag's Big City B'day Bash are $25 advance and are going fast right here. 

Happy Birthday Dale Watson!

Raising a bottle of Lonestar to honky tonk hero Dale Watson! Here's an interview, a chat with Otis Gibbs and some vintage clips.

Deke Dickerson chats with Otis Gibbs about Merle Haggard, Grady Martin and more

Listen to guitarist and music historian Deke Dickerson tell a few stories about interviewing Merle Haggard and more.

Remembering Merle Haggard on his birthday

Remembering singer/songwriter and country music great Merle Haggard on his birthday with a documentary and some road stories.

Happy Birthday Ray Benson!

Celebrating the birthday of Asleep At The Wheel's Ray Benson with some performances, interviews and stories about his pals. 

Doug Paisley @ The Rivoli, Friday

Check  from Doug Paisley's versions of tunes by Blaze Foley, George Jones and Autry Inman off "Sad Old World" available here. 

Remembering Merle Haggard on his birthday

Remembering country great Merle Haggard with interviews, performance clips and some classic Hag tales collected by Otis Gibbs. 

Hag's Big City Birthday

A Celebration of the music of Merle Haggard

Join us at The Horseshoe tonight (Saturday, April 6) for an evening of Merle Haggard’s biggest hits, in celebration of his birthday. Performed by Jamie ‘Big Tobacco’ Oliver, and a well crafted crew of seasoned players, with some very special guest appearances by Russell DeCarle, Lori Yates, 

Melissa Payne, Nicolette Hoang, Devin Cuddy, Nicholas Campbell and many more!

The all star backing band includes:

Steve Briggs - guitars

Burke Carroll - steel guitar

Alanna Jenish - fiddle

Andrew McCarthy - drums 

Jesse Whiteley - keys

Bruce MacKinnon - sax

Jay Mallany - bass

Angie Hilts - vocals

Jamie 'Big Tobacco' Oliver - vocals, guitar

Doors at 8pm.

19+ with Photo ID

Tickets $30. Get 'em here: www.showclix.com/tickets/HappyBirthdayMerle

Happy 90th Birthday Willie Nelson!

Celebrating Willie Nelson's 90th birthday with some early TV performances and interviews. 

Eli 'Paperboy' Reed previews new Merle Haggard salute with "Mama Tried"

Eli 'Paperboy' Reed puts a soulful spin on Merle Haggard's country classics on Down Every Road out April 29th.

Here's the scoop...

Eli “Paperboy” Reed pays homage to country legend Merle Haggard by putting a soulful spin on some classic tunes on Down Every Road set for release April 29th via Yep Roc. Recorded in Brooklyn with longtime collaborator Vince Chiarito (Black Pumas, Charles Bradley), Reed taps into all the heartache of Haggard’s iconic catalog and channels it into explosive, high-octane performances that blur the lines of genre, geography, and race to reveal the common, distinctly American threads tying them all together. 

You can pre-order Down Every Road right here. Listen to "Mama Tried" and "I'm Gonna Break Every Heart I Can" followed by the tracklisting.

Eli 'Paperboy' Reed – Down Every Road (Yep Roc) 

1. Mama Tried 

2. I'm Bringing Home Good News

3. Somewhere Between

4. Teach Me to Forget

5. It's Not Love, But It's Not Bad

6. If We Make It Through December

7. Silver Wings

8. I'm Gonna Break Every Heart I Can

9. I'm a Lonesome Fugitive

10. One Sweet Hello

11. Workin' Man Blues

12. Eli Paperboy Reed featuring Sabine McCalla & Sabine McCalla - Today I Started Loving You Again

Watch Junior Brown play Don Rich's silver sparkle Telecaster

Guit-steel hero Junior Brown bends the strings on the 1964 Fender Telecaster which Don Rich made famous with Buck Owens' Buckaroos. 

Bear Family previews The Bakersfield Sound box with rare Merle & Buck tracks

Listen to Hag's early crack at "I'm Gonna Break Every Heart I Can" off the Scott Bomar-produced 10 CD box The Bakersfield Sound due August 9th.

RIP Merle Haggard, 1937-2016

Sadly, country great Merle Haggard died of pneumonia in Palo Cedro, California today, his 79th birthday.

Happy Birthday Iris DeMent!

Cheers to Iowa City's amazing Iris DeMent on her day. Here are a couple of typically stellar performances.

Kinky Friedman unveils "The Loneliest Man I Ever Met" @ Hugh's Room, Monday

The songs of Tom Waits, Willie Nelson, Warren Zevon and others get Kinky-fied on the Texas raconteur's new disc. 

The Perlich Post's Top 100 Albums of 2011

1. Tom Waits - Bad As Me
2. Nat Birchall - Sacred Dimension
3. Alela Diane & Wild Divine - Alela Diane & Wild Divine
4. The Greg Foat Group - Dark Is The Sun
5. The Walkabouts - Travels In The Dustland
6. Heidi Happy - Hiding With The Wolves
7. The Black Keys - El Camino
8. Tristen - Charlatans At The Garden Gate
9. Merle Haggard - Working In Tennessee
10. Drive-By Truckers - Go-Go Boots
11. Austin Peralta - Endless Planets
12. The Dirtbombs - Party Store
13. Boubacar Traore - Mali Denhou
14. Gillian Welch - The Harrow & The Harvest
15. The Bo-Keys - Got To Get Back!
16. Black Lips - Arabia Mountain
17. Emmylou Harris - Hard Bargain
18. Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes
19. The Fleshtones - Brooklyn Sound Solution
20. Grimble Grumble - September Sun
21. John Paul Keith - The Man That Time Forgot
22. Ambrose Akinmusire - When the Heart Emerges Glistening
23. Buddy Miller - The Majestic Silver Strings

24. Diana Panton - To Brazil With Love
25. The Reigning Sound - Abdication... For Your Love
26. Tex Perkins - Tex Perkins & The Dark Horses

27. Bombino - Agadez
28. Dave Alvin - Eleven Eleven
29. The Bats - Free All The Monsters
30. OFF! - The First Four EPs

31. The Bevis Frond - The Leaving Of London
32. Tom T. Hall - A Gift From Tom T. Hall
33. Alex Pangman - 33
34. The Wronglers with Jimmie Dale Gilmore - Heirloom Music
35. Nicola Conte - Love & Revolution
36. The Pining - The Pining
37. Phil Ranelin – Perseverance

38. Vieux Farka Toure – The Secret
39. Charles Bradley - No Time For Dreaming / The Instrumentals
40. Tom Russell - Mesabi

41. Austra - Feel It Break
42. White Denim - D
43. Bruce Peninsula - Open Flames
44. Ernest Dawkins’ New Horizon Ensemble – The Prairie Prophet
45. Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 - From Africa With Fury: Rise
46. JD McPherson - Signs & Signifiers

47. Jack Oblivion - Rat City
48. Psychic Paramount - II
49. Matthew Shipp – Art of the Improviser
50. Ty Segall - Goodbye Bread
51. Dengue Fever - Cannibal Courtship
52. JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound - Want More
53. Connie Smith - Long Line Of Heartaches
54. Jennifer Castle - Castlemusic
55. My Darling Clementine - How Do You Plead?
56. Hanni El Khatib - Will The Guns Come Out?
57. Booker T. Jones - The Road From Memphis
58. Jeff The Brotherhood - We Are The Champions
59. Ken Vandermark's Predella Group - Strade d'Acqua
60. Limes - Tarantula
61. Sandro Perri - Impossible Spaces
62. Shabazz Palaces - Black Up
63. Veronica Falls - Veronica Falls
64. Seu Jorge – Músicas para Churrasco, Vol. 1
65. Timber Timbre - Creep On Creepin' On
66. Daniel Romano - Sleep Beneath The Willow
67. Meg Baird - Seasons On Earth
68. Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo
69. Bio Ritmo – La Verdad
70. Moon Duo - Mazes
71. Thee Oh Sees - Carrion Crawler/The Dream
72. Gruff Rhys - Hotel Shampoo
73. Laura Cantrell - Kitty Wells Dresses
74. Krallice - Diotima
75. The Ettes - Wicked Will
76. Gang Gang Dance - Eye Contact
77. King Creosote and Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine
78. Quintron - Sucre Du Sauvage
79. The Warped 45s - Matador Sunset
80. David Kilgour - Left By Soft
81. This One's For Him: A Tribute To Guy Clark
82. Slaid Cleaves - Sorrow & Smoke
83. Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi — Rome
84. Purling Hiss - Dizzy Polizzy
85. Hayes Carll - KMAG YOYO
86. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo - Cotonou Club
87. Royal Headache - Royal Headache
88. Wild Beasts - Smother
89. Shelby Earl - Burn The Boats
90. Fatoumata Diawara - Fatou
91. Yuck - Yuck
92. Iceage - New Brigade
93. Nick Lowe - The Old Magic
94. Apache Dropout - Apache Dropout
95. Dennis Coffey - Dennis Coffey
96. The Dirty Streets - Movements
97. The Mekons - Ancient and Modern
98. Sonny & The Sunsets - Hit After Hit
99. Glen Campbell - Ghost On A Canvas
100. Ikebe Shakedown — Ikebe Shakedown

Happy Birthday Hank Williams!

On October 4, The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams will premiere 12 unheard Hank Williams compositions drawn from handwritten lyrics found after his tragic passing and brought to life by a cast of contemporary artists inspired by his work including Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan, Levon Helm, Rodney Crowell, Jack White, Alan Jackson, Patty Loveless and others. Here's a preview...