CMT Blog: Marty Stuart

Linden, Texas, isn’t generally thought of as a music Mecca, but one of its native sons — Don Henley — went out of his way this past Sunday (Aug. 3) to catch Merle Haggard’s appearance at the Music City Texas Theater. Henley’s trip is detailed in a story that ran in the Dallas Morning News, but the gist of it is that he spent Saturday night in Canada, caught a flight in Boston early Sunday morning, flew to Dallas and then drove 150 miles to Linden.

Read more…

Dierks Bentley knows how to put the “fun” in “fundraiser.” This fall, for the third year in a row, the singer-songwriter plans to host the Miles and Music for Kids Celebrity Motorcycle Ride to benefit Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville.

“We do a motorcycle ride that ends with a concert,” says Bentley. “It’s a really fun ride. We’ve had anywhere from 1500 to 3000-plus bike riders in the past. It ends with a down-home concert where you hear stars in a setting that you’ll never get a chance to see them in again … just jam sessions. Last year, we played with Shooter Jennings and Marty Stuart — all three of us up there on stage. Big Kenny came out, and Jason Aldean and James Otto. The fans really dig it because they get to see people play in the most intimate settings.”

Read more…

Write this down: The first Sunday of every month, Robert’s Western World on Lower Broadway in Nashville, 2 to 6 p.m. Be there — absences will not be tolerated… If you can’t get there you’ll miss a true living legend of country music. Don Helms, who was Hank Williams‘ steel guitar player, performs with Nashville musicians David Tanner, Jesse Lee Jones and Chris Scruggs. This is your chance to hear the man who played the intros to “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Cold, Cold Heart.” I went to see him earlier this month and it honestly sent a chill down my spine to hear him play those classic lines.

Read more…

The CMA Music Festival gets under way officially tomorrow (June 5) in Nashville, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that some memories will be made for many of the 30,000-plus fans who’ll be visiting for the event, whether it means seeing a once-in-a-lifetime onstage collaboration by two favorite stars or meeting a favorite artist for the first time.

People who’ve never attended the festival — or Fan Fair, as it was previously known — might not realize the heft of the event. But one way to understand how significant it is would be to simply look back at some of the highlights of Fan Fairs past.

Read more…

Merlefest is probably the world’s largest Americana and roots music festival. I was at the very first Merle Watson Memorial Festival (as it was called in those days) 21 years ago. The first concert featured jams with Chet Atkins, Doc, Earl Scruggs, Mac Wiseman, Jim Shumate, Sam Bush, Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas, Grandpa Jones, Marty Stuart, Newgrass Revival, John Hartford, Mark O’Connor and others inside the Walker Center and outside on a flatbed truck stage. I remember sitting on hay bales outside watching the whole thing go down. A few years later, I was playing Merlefest as a member of Alison Krauss and Union Station. One particular year was memorable because the mainstage show consisted of us and Ronnie Milsap, who just murdered the crowd with a solo guitar version of “Knoxville Girl.”

Read more…

It was short but sweet for The Infamous Stringdusters this weekend. A last minute call to play on the Opry forced a hasty retreat from Merlefest, but that didn’t stop the band from packing four days’ worth of picking into two. On Thursday morning, we played a middle school for the school outreach program (Go Falcons!) then dashed down to the festival for our 5:45 mainstage set. That was our only set of the day, so I got a plate of Southern cooking and a good seat for Marty Stuart and the Fabulous Superlatives. It had been awhile since I had seen him, but Marty did not disappoint. I put him at the top of my must-see list for this summer.

Read more…

Aside from my several visits to the Stoli Fountain of Youth, the best part of the Sony BMG boat show during last weeks’ Country Radio Seminar was watching video clips of Kellie Pickler interviewing football players for Jay Leno. Can that girl talk! Her approach is simple: Say the first thing that comes to mind — and then ride the waves. Flirtatious, impulsive and fearless, she reminds me of Dolly Parton, even though she’s yet to match Parton’s skewering wit.

Country music has had lots of great talkers, people who are smart, skilled and self-confident enough to turn a routine interview or press conferences into pure theater. Of these, Parton is the most entertaining. Her mind is so quick and her view of life so droll that all you have to do is give her a mic and surrender. I never met Roger Miller, but those who knew him agree he was country’s undisputed master of one-liners. Legend has it that during his first flush of success, he walked into a room filled with cronies and asked, “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?”

Marty Stuart brings a poet’s sensibility and a historian’s eye for detail to his enchanting stories about the country stars he’s known and the surreal worlds they inhabited. He couldn’t be boring if you put a gun to his head. Kathy Mattea is an elegant, thoughtful conversationalist whose subdued sense of humor is more likely to elicit grins than guffaws. You don’t leave an encounter with her without feeling somewhat improved by it. Vince Gill, as we’ve seen, could have a second career as a standup comic and perhaps a third as an essayist on the human condition, which, he would readily point out, is a study in the ridiculous. He has integrated his patrician background so seamlessly with country music’s blue-collar leanings that he can poke fun at the follies of both — and regularly does.

Tom T. Hall (when he’s in the mood), Harold and Don Reid of The Statler Brothers, the eternally feisty Jerry Reed; ribald Maxine Brown of The Browns; and sly Brad Paisley are all first-rate talkers who rivet audiences with their observations, memories and verbal vamps. So as we rejoice in their music, let us never forget their life-enhancing gift of gab. That’s show biz too.

It’s reassuring to now and then see a singer exhibit a social conscience. Kathy Mattea does so masterfully with her upcoming CD Coal, due Apr. 1. Mattea, a coal miner’s granddaughter, grew up in West Virginia, which was the scene of bloody coal mine wars in the early 20th century when miners began trying to unionize. I myself grew up in Texas, where I saw the effects of the oil business on people and the land, but knew nothing about the coal industry. Until, that is, I married a woman from a small coal mining town in Kentucky. Then I learned pretty quickly about coal and its history.

Mattea was moved to record this album by the 2006 Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia, which killed 12 miners. Coal includes songs from the pens of activist Hazel Dickens, the late Kentucky legend Merle Travis, Utah Phillips, Darrell Scott and others. Marty Stuart produces and Patty Loveless sings on one cut. Good stuff.

Did you know that Mattea graduated from Nitro High School? The school and its little town of Nitro were named for the nitroglycerin plant built during WWII near her hometown of Cross Lanes.

Here’s the question I am probably asked the most: “Have you heard anything good lately?” And if you’d ask me that now, I’d have a lot of recommendations for you.

Lately I keep going back to Tift Merritt’s Another Country (due Feb. 26). Her voice is wonderfully soothing, and she makes sure that every word counts. I like her perspective too - taking risks and getting past the bumps in the road. She’s a native of North Carolina, but now living in New York City - much like Ryan Adams. Ryan and I are the same age, but when his band Whiskeytown released the album Strangers Almanac in 1997, I didn’t quite know what to make of it. What can I say, I was really innocent back then, which makes me even more enthusiastic about the double-disc reissue (due March 4), with a bunch of bonus tracks I’d never heard before. My favorite cuts are “Dancing With the Women at the Bar,” which I consider one of the best songs in his extensive catalog, and a sturdy cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.”

Two of my favorite country artists from my high school days are back with solid albums too. Carlene Carter’s Stronger (due March 4) shows her songwriting is still in peak form. I was relieved, too, because I used to play her big hit, “Every Little Thing,” all the time. This was when I was just getting into country music, and Kathy Mattea happened to be one of the first country concerts I saw. When I heard she was making an album about coal mining (Coal, due April 1), I figured I’d listen to it once and file it forever. Surprise! It’s really good. Marty Stuart lends his expert producing skill.

Also in my pile, I just received Kathleen Edwards‘ new album, Asking For Flowers (due March 4) and Ricky Skaggs‘ tribute to Bill Monroe, Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass: Tribute to 1946 and 1947 (due March 25). Just in time for a weekend road trip. Farther down the road, I’m looking forward to Dierks Bentley’s Greatest Hits (due May 6) as well.

In case you missed it, here’s a playlist of some pretty cool songs I’ve heard lately.

http://blog.cmt.com/2008-01-29/my-favorite-songs-of-the-year-so-far/

Gather ‘round, chillun, and place your bets on who’ll be the next members of the Country Music Hall of Fame. They’re making the announcement on Feb. 12, but don’t ask me how the voting process works or who’s involved in it. I’ve no idea. But I do have it on good authority that the electors wear purple masks to ensure their anonymity and are capable of curing sexually-transmitted diseases. They’re a mighty powerful bunch. Anyway, I’m rooting for Emmylou Harris. Besides making gorgeous, emotionally luminous music, she’s been a model of good citizenship, valiantly supporting the Country Music Foundation and an array of progressive social causes — from lobbying for the humane treatment of animals to the outlawing of landmines. She should have been in the Hall ages ago.

And what about Kenny Rogers? Did anyone stand taller or stretch the boundaries of country music wider than he did in his long and hit-filled heyday? Nor dare we forget the Browns – Maxine, Jim Ed and Bonnie — the celestial vocal trio that set the standard for smooth, cosmopolitan country. Then there are all those bluegrass brothers — the Stanleys, the Osbornes and Jim & Jesse — who helped keep the genre alive when history seemed intent on passing it by. Not only did they endure, they proselytized, embedding this most visceral form of country music into the cultural bloodstreams of truck drivers and grad students alike.

Like me, my list of worthies goes on and on: Barbara Mandrell, the Stonemans, Dottie West, the Oak Ridge Boys and, before too long, I hope, Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart. If we can’t get all these folks inducted in one big sweep, let’s at least hand them Hall passes that say they have a right to be there. Give them the rose while they live.