I put together a playlist for my friends incorporating a lot of the new music I've been listening to recently (and blogging about here), plus a few tributes to songwriting legends we lost this year. It includes mainly passionate music from new Austin bands as well as from progressive Americana and Country musicians (many of whom are from Texas).
Here’s the Spotify link.
Here's the Amazon Music link.
You’ll hear several songs from The Highwomen on here, both as a band (Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, and Texans Maren Morris and Amanda Shires), as well as individuals. I wrote about them earlier in a blogpost. Crowded Table was just nominated for Best Country Song by the Grammys.
This year Mickey Guyton became the first Black woman to sing solo at the Country Music Awards. She’s from Texas. Black Like Me was nominated for Best Country Song Solo Performance.
On the blog you will also find a writeup on several of these songs under the title Southern Artists Speak Up. Do yourself a favor and take 6 minutes to watch Tyler Childers’ video message about his song Long Violent History, in which he imagines his fellow white rural Appalachians (he’s from a holler in eastern Kentucky) being treated by the police as Blacks are treated.
Rhiannon Giddons leads a new group of Black women singing new and old songs in traditional styles, Our Native Daughters, with Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla and Allison Russell.
Black Pumas (nominated for Album of the Year as well as Record of the Year and Best American Roots Performance for Colors ), Jackie Venson, The War and Treaty and Los Coast are all new Austin bands. The Los Coast remake of Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come features Austin great Gary Clark Jr. on vocals.
Leon Bridges from Fort Worth teamed up with Houston trio Khruangbin on a beautiful song about driving around Texas with one you love.
While we’re driving around Texas, there’s my favorite song of the year, West Texas in My Eye from the Panhandlers, a supergroup of Texas musicians (William Clark Green, John Baumann, Cleto Cordero and Josh Abott) brought together under the auspices of Bruce Robison’s The Next Waltz, a new effort here in Central Texas dedicated to the preservation of Texas country music that my wife Leslie and I support. The video is beautiful.
Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson all released great albums this year. I also included Tyler Childers Grammy-nominated song from last year, All Your’n.
I couldn’t leave out the Highwomen’s classic lesbian country song, If She Ever Leaves Me, sung by Brandi Carlile but written by Isbell and Shires.
Of course I had to include tributes to three songwriters we lost this year: Billy Joe Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker and John Prine, a Texan, a New Yorker who became a Texan, and a former Illinois mailman. Prine’s I Remember Everything was nominated for Best American Roots Performance and Song.
And Kacey Musgrave’s Rainbow has helped us get through this challenging year.
