My Thanksgiving 2024 Playlist

This year's Thanksgiving Playlist is a mix of up-tempo songs to keep us energized during Thanksgiving dinner cleanup plus lots of new songs that I played on my radio shows. Here's the Spotify link. I've been doing these playlists for about 20 years and rule #1 is never to repeat a song although I broke that rule for American Girl after Tom Petty died.

My wife Leslie suggested we start with Start Me Up by The Rolling Stones. Somehow I've never thought of that!

Next is the badass Bruce song, Man's Job, featuring both Sam Moore and Bobby King on the backing vocals.

I have always loved Jennifer Johnson & Me from Robert Earl Keen and Heard It in a Love Song by The Marshall Tucker Band.

How 'bout some new Reckless Kelly? Keep Lookin' Down The Road.

Joe Ely's Fingernails will bring the energy level up. Keep those air piano-playing fingers high!

Of all the great songs from the Twisters soundtrack, I keep coming back to Wall of Death by Wilderado, Ken Pomeroy and James McAlister. You can see the three of them playing it in the scene where a bunch of storm chasers are hanging out by a camp fire, grilling, throwing a football around. 

Morgan Wade's new album, Obsessed, contains the powerful Time to Love, Time to Kill.

Next are two from Sierra Ferrell's Trail of Flowers album, nominated for the Grammy in Best Americana Album, I'll Come Off The Mountain and Lighthouse, which was nominated for Best Americana Roots Performance. There is more Sierra Ferrell to come.

I had never heard of  Jesse Malin until I heard his haunting Broken Radio '22, dedicated to his late mother who died when he was a teen. This song was originally released in 2007 and features a voice you will recognize. Watch them play it here. And I recently read that Jesse Malin is recovering from a stroke and Springsteen and others have put together a tribute album of his songs called Silver Patron Saints.

Texas Tornados - Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers, Flaco Jimenez and Freddy Fender - tear it up on (Hey Baby) Que Paso, with Augie singing the lead.

The classic Volver, Volver from Los Lobos is for my son Gary, who wrote a paper about these guys for college!

Californian John Stewart was a member of the Kingston Trio and sang on Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign. His, July, You're A Woman has always been one of my favorites and now is a favorite of my California girl Dara!

Just Outside Of Austin, by Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real, refers to his dad Willie's ranch on the Pedernales River, where Leslie and I have been to several of Willie's Luck Reunions. "It ain't so bad a place to raise a kid". Check out the video and while you're at it, check out Lukas's video for his dad on Willie's 90th birthday.

Austinites The Band of Heathens and former Austinite Hayes Carll are touring as Hayes & The Heathens. Here's Nobody Dies From Weed, which also has a fun video.

Let's stick with Hayes Carll for a minute with Nice Things. "This is why I gave you empathy".

Billy & Beau is a beautiful song by North Dakotan Brennen Leigh. "The heart wants to go where the heart wants to go".

The late Chris Wall wrote the great song, I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight. Jerry Jeff Walker had a great version of it. Here's Sunny Sweeney's.

I can't get enough Turnpike Troubadours. I saw them this year at Georgetown, TX's Two Step Inn Fest, which is rapidly becoming my favorite music festival. Here's Whole Damn Town and Every Girl.

Next come three of my candidates for 2024 Song of the Year.

Sierra Ferrell's American Dreaming, also from Trail of Flowers, has been nominated for Best Americana Performance and Best American Roots Song (co-written with Melody Walker). (Don't ask me to explain how the Grammys differentiate between "Americana" and "American Roots"!).  I think this record is best appreciated from the video which shows her playing the song starting in her tour van to bigger and bigger audiences as the song builds to its crescendo. Yes, she's been majorly successful in chasing her American Dream but she reminds you of they price to be paid. I got to see Sierra at the Luck Reunion last year and at both the Two Step Inn Fest and at Stubbs in Austin this year! 

Kacey Musgraves' musings on life and free will, The Architect, was nominated for  Best Country Solo Performance,  Best Country Song (written with Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne) and the album it's from, Deeper Well, Best Country Album.

Does it happen by chance? Is it all happenstance?

Do we have any say in this mess?

Is too late to make some more space?

Can I speak to the architect?

This life that we make, is it random or fate?

Can I speak to the architect?

The beautiful duet between Raul Malo and Sierra Ferrell, Moon & Stars, from The Mavericks new album, rounds out my candidates for 2024 Song of the Year. Sierra's soaring vocal makes this song for me. 

Room at the Top is right up there with American Girl as my favorite Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers songs. Then there's this classic from Stevie Nicks with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Stop Draggin' My Heart Around!

Your taste of Jason Isbell is If It Takes a Lifetime.

I keep on showing up

Hell bent on growing up

If it takes a lifetime

The Bob Marley biopic, One Love, came out this year. Kingsley Ben-Adir is incredible as Brother Bob, and bassist Aston "Family Man" Barrett's son plays his dad. Here's Family Man's biggest moment: Stir It Up. Kacey Musgraves recorded Marley's Three Little Birds on Deeper Well.

We lost a great songwriter, singer and actor, Kris Kristofferson, this year. Here's his To Beat the Devil.

My Radio Shows

Here are all my radio shows from last year and this year:

3/17/23 Pearl's General Store

On March 17 I took over Pearl's General Store for two hours of country and Americana music including the first Cover Me, where I play a great song and then a great cover and ask you the listener to let me know which one you prefer. Since it was St. Patrick's Day I played some Irish music. Also the rodeo was in town and the Luck Reunion at Willie Nelson's ranch was taking place that day so I played some music from both.

3/30/23 Lonesome Stranger

On March 30 I did my first show on the Lonesome Stranger. It was delayed 45 minutes due to technical difficulties but I was able to get a few sets in. Then we brought in Shakey Lyman, a musician from Philadelphia that I didn't know beforehand, to play some songs. This was a good experience for me to handle live music. I finished up with Cover Me at about the 1:02 mark.

5/5/23 Pearl's General Store

This was a fun show. I started with some duets from Gram and Emmylou and Johnny and June, then played First Aid Kit's fantastic song Emmylou, which namechecks all of them. Lots of Don Williams, some Merle, some Cojo, and Tex-Mex from both the Tiarras and Selena for Cinco de Mayo. In the second hour I had a great set of Miranda Lambert, some local Austin women, music from Crazy Heart, and ended with the Clint Black classic A Better Man.

5/11/23 The Lonesome Stranger

I had a co-host, Saint Annie, who is apprenticing with KOOP, for part of the show. She was fantastic and the music she played, Wilco, the Nude Party, Neko Case and others definitely complemented the music I played. I started with Jason Isbell, who is in town this week, had two women singers in Cover Me, played some Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens, and then a lot of Bruce Robison's songs including some of his Next Waltz projects. The show finished with a shout out to the Big Squeeze, Texas Folklife's youth accordion contest, and then some Red Dirt music from Oklahomans Cross Canadian Ragweed, Turnpike Troubadours and Jimmy LaFave.

6/15/23 The Lonesome Stranger

This was the week Jason Isbell released Weathervanes as well as the 10th anniversary of Southeastern so I played songs from both albums. Then Mary Beth, a new apprentice, came on and played a few sets including Blaze Foley's Clay Pigeons, which John Prine covered. For Pride Month I played songs from Brandy Clark, Brothers Osborne and Allison Russell. I played a few songs from the new album of country Stones covers, Stoned Cold Country, had Grammy winners for both song and performance in Cover Me, and played a bunch of Texas country songs. I did a set of songs (Alabama Pines, My Tennessee Mountain Home and What I Like About Texas) that illustrate why a sense of place is so important to me in southern music, and finished with Anniversary Song for my wife Leslie!

9//7/23 The Lonesome Stranger

This may have been my best show yet. I started with Will Hoge and the Black Opry's Can I Be Country Too?, played a lot of new music including Rhiannon Giddens' You're the One and Zach Bryan and Kasey Musgraves' song of the year, I Remember Everything. I paid tribute to the late Ian Tyson and finished up with Luke Combs' cover of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car.

11/30/23 The Lonesome Stranger

Many of my favorite Country and Americana  artists, that I have been playing all year, like Allison Russell, Rhiannon Giddens, Tyler Childers, Zach Bryan, Jason Isbell and the War and Treaty were nominated for Grammys so I played them all. I played tributes to two college friends we lost, Gary Stein and Adrian Sanchez, and played a bunch of new stuff.

Rocknrollcountrysoul #1

This is a homegrown roots music show made on my PC without a great mike. I may eventually try to do this show on the radio on a regular basis. I played a lot of great soul music from Macon, Memphis and Muscle Shoals, mixed in some classic country, and played some tunes that blur the boundaries between roots rock, country and soul. I finished up with my Song of the Year, I Remember Everything by Zach Bryan and Kasey Musgraves.

4/4/24 The Lonesome Stranger

My first show back on the air in several months, I reviewed the Grammy winners, played the new one  from Sierra Ferrell, American Dreaming, and played songs from Rhiannon Giddens and Adia Victoria from the new My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall. I followed Kacey Musgraves' journey through weed and included a couple of songs about country folks raising contraband.

5/16/24 Lonesome Stranger

I started this one with a tribute to Dickey Betts, then did some 4/20 songs, a few new ones from Zach Bryan, Morgan Wade and Brothers Osborne, some Muscle Shoals rocknrollcountrysoul from Etta James and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, two Beyonce songs from Cowboy Carter, a few Texas songs, and my two candidates for my Song of the Year, Kacey Musgraves' The Architect and Sierra Ferrell's American Dreaming.

6/27/24 Lonesome Stranger

I kicked off this one with Steve Earle's Satellite Radio, then played my usual combination of new songs with a few classics. I highlighted the first release from Black Opry Records, Jett Holden's Backwood Proclamation, and included Allison Russell's contribution to My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall. Cover Me included two versions of a song by great Texas songwriters, with the listener invited to figure out who wrote it.

10/3/24 Lonesome Stranger

We started with tributes to Kris Kristofferson and JD Souther, had new ones from Reckless Kelly, Morgan Wade, Lainey Wilson and Zach Bryan, had some songs from the great soundtrack to Twisters, plus Jason Isbell's and Mickey Guyton's songs from the Democratic National Convention, new Black Opry and Ishkode (Indigeneous) material, previewed Chris Stapleton's and Sturgill Simpson's upcoming appearances at the Austin City Limits Fest, and had a classic Cover Me.

11/14/24 Lonesome Stranger

I kicked it off with the classic Gram Parsons song, The Return of the Grievous Angel, followed by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's cover of Tom Petty's Room at the Top (from GP to TP), then played new Reckless Kelly, Flatland Cavalry, Sunny Sweeney and American Aquarium. As always some Black Opry - The War and Treaty, Julie Williams and Amythyst Kiah. Cover Me was a classic covered by one of the best voices of our time. 

My Song of the Years

Every year for the past few years I have designated a single song as my "song of the year" or SOTY. Just one song, which is why the title of this piece is "My Song of the Years" rather than "My Songs of the Year". I figured I would write them down before I forget them.

2023 Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves, I Remember Everything

Like Just Like That, when I first heard this when it came out in August I immediately said "that's my song of the year" and nothing displaced it. This is a co-write between Bryan and Musgraves with such powerful images! "Labrador hangin' out the passenger door" evokes an exact picture of  Bryan's character. The clincher is "I wish I didn't, but I do, remember every moment on the nights with you". This won a Best Country Duo/Group Performance Grammy.

Spotify link

2022 Bonnie Raitt, Just Like That 

When I first heard this poignant song a year ago I immediately tagged it as my SOTY and nothing else came out last year to displace it. When she won the Grammy for Song of the Year in the General category for this song, beating out songs by Adele, Beyonce and Taylor Swift, no one was more shocked than Bonnie Raitt herself!

Spotify link

2021 Allison Russell, Persephone

Outside Child was my favorite album of the 2021 and either Persephone or Nightflyer could be my SOTY. Nightflyer was nominated for Grammys in Best American Roots Song and Best American Roots Performance. In the Americana Music Awards, Persephone was nominated as Song of the Year (losing out to Brandi Carlile's Right on Time) but Outside Child won Album of the Year.

Spotify link

2020 The Panhandlers, West Texas in My Eye

This supergroup of Texas singer/songwriters (Josh Abbott, William Clark Green, John Baumann and Cleto Cordero of Flatland Cavalry) came together at Bruce Robison's Next Waltz studio in Lockhart to record my favorite record of 2020, written by Charlie Stout. It comes with an excellent video.

Spotify link

2019 Hayes Carll, Jesus and Elvis

This true story about Lala's Little Nugget bar in Austin has some great lines like "the King of Kings and the King of Rock 'n' Roll".

Spotify link