Charley Crockett’s Age of the Ram arrives as the third and final entry in his Sagebrush Trilogy, a 20-song, 45-minute set built around the outlaw figure Billy McLane and cut again with Shooter Jennings in Los Angeles. The obvious move would be to compare it to some other modern revivalist country record, but Crockett is aiming farther back than that. This album is trying to turn country songs into a movie, or maybe into the memory of one, and that points straight to Marty Robbins’ Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, the 1959 western cornerstone that helped teach later songwriters how to make myth feel personal.
Andy Hedges – The Westerner
It used to be called country & western. Then two or three decades ago, for reasons I’m sure the ethnographers still debate, it just became country music. Western just sort of slipped out of the vernacular, except for maybe a strip of North America from around Calgary to somewhere near El Paso. Fortunately, there’s still […]
Readers’ Pick: Charley Crockett – Age of the Ram
You picked Charley Crockett – Age of the Ram as your favorite new release for the week of April 3, 2026.
Krislyn Arthurs Song Premiere – Missin’ Man
When you grow up in a small town you learn young that one thing you’ll never have is anonymity. So you quickly figure out how to smile and be polite because you just can’t avoid anyone. That does not mean people don’t make bad decisions, and then live with the results of those choices. Krislyn […]
Built with an Old Hammer: Dale Watson’s Honky-Tonk Truth
Photo: Jacob Blinkentaff For Dale Watson, music started at home, not on a stage. It came from the next room, early in the morning, when his father picked up a guitar. “I would wake up to my dad playing,” Watson says. That introduction opened the door to a lifetime of listening. Records spun by George […]
Studio Spotlight/1809 Studios, Dave Drago
We recently checked in with Dave at 1809 at had a great interview. Hope you enjoy! Where is the studio located? Macedon, NY (20 Minutes east of Rochester)A solar-powered recording studio is housed inside a re-purposed, 19th-century Erie Canalside Tavern. In a nice off-the-beaten-path kind of location, while still close to any amenities one needs. […]
Jennie Arnau on Sentimental Things and Touring in Hazel the Honda
Singer-songwriter Jennie Arnau talks about her favorite day job, the best payment found in playing music, and the lie that fear can be debilitating.
Kalyn Fay on Alliteration and Working as a Museum Curator
Oklahoma-based singer-songwriter Kalyn Fay talks about being gentle in spirit and song and offers some tax season advice.
Monday Morning Video – Tom Petty “You Got Lucky”
I have to admit that I was long jaded by the original video for Tom Petty’s “You Got Lucky” as it had little, if anything, to do with the song. Once I got past that, however, the song became a fave among faves within the Petty catalog. The song is, at its core, a pointed […]
Now & Then: Drayton Farley’s A Heavy Duty Heart and the reach of Trace
Drayton Farley’s A Heavy Duty Heart arrives like the sound of a songwriter stepping out of the dim room and into the bandstand without giving up the bruises that got him there. Released March 27, 2026, the record was cut live to tape in Nashville with his touring band and produced again by Sadler Vaden, which matters because these songs are still built on Farley’s plainspoken honesty, but they now hit with more lift, more room, and more faith in momentum. For the “Then,” Son Volt’s Trace from 1995 makes the most sense. Not because Farley sounds like Jay Farrar in some copycat way, but because Trace helped define how alt-country could carry working-class weariness, road-dusted poetics, and rock-band force in the same frame.