2026 GRAMMYs – Who Will, Who Should “Music’s Biggest Night” is upon us. Well, if you’re reading Americana Highways, it’s more like “Music’s Biggest Early Afternoon.” The “GRAMMYs Premiere Ceremony” will stream this Sunday (February 1) at 3:30pm EST (links below). It’s where the bulk of the awards are given out, including the ones we’re […]
Bre Kennedy The Alchemist Nashville’s long been known as a ten-year town (give it ten years, then move on if it ain’t payin’ off), but that decade is rarely a straight line. Evolving, adjusting expectations, self-reevaluations, and probably a list of shitty jobs end up demanding as much time as writing songs and playing music. […]
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Memphis Kee Dark Skies Recent consumer-driven country music suggests that individuals (or, at most, duos) are the way to go – less risk, fewer ego conflicts, and more reward for the all-too-fleeting buck. Memphis Kee – both the individual and the band – don’t subscribe one bit to that theory. Kee himself is the lead […]
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Mon Rovîa “Bloodline” Janjay Lowe has lived the kind of life that most of us have only seen in Oscar-bait movies (and not the kind where everyone plays fancy dress-up – the messy ones). The singer-songwriter, who goes by Mon Rovîa as a tribute to his native Liberia, was adopted out of that war-ravaged nation […]
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Greg Freeman at Globe Hall in Denver I’ve written a lot – some might say a little too much – about indie country this year. What I’ve called “the slightly disheveled city cousin to Americana’s country mouse” has provided some of the best songwriting in both the indie and country spheres in 2025. But there’s […]
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45 RPM (Reasons to Purchase Music) for 2025 Musically, 2025 stands out for two reasons – 1) the indie country boom and 2) being backloaded as hell. Eight of my top albums came out in the second half of the year, and four of them (plus several of my top songs) could comfortably be categorized […]
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Dove Ellis Blizzard Seems like just about every year lately, we music writer types, come December, are ready to put the finishing touches on our year-end lists and close up shop until January 2nd or so, but one spectacular late-year release manages to make revisions necessary (personally, Adeem the Artist in 2022 and Zach Russell […]
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Melissa Carper A Very Carper Christmas Putting together a Christmas album (a good one), particularly with new material, is a difficult needle to thread. Ideally, it needs to be original without being too divergent, sentimental but not sappy, and emotive but not treacly. And, even though she was initially hesitant to take on the project, […]
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Laney Jones and the Spirits I’d like to have you believe that music criticism involves some sort of innate ability to divine, seemingly out of thin air, the next notable band. Trade secret – just as often, it’s seeing the right series of words near the top of a press release that generate some intrigue. […]
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Courtney Hartman With You There are any number of happenings that could have derailed the completion of Courtney Hartman’s latest album, With You. The Wisconsin-by-way-of-Colorado singer-songwriter and her husband experienced home renovation woes, crises both medical and financial (which required money saved for recording sessions to be spent on life’s essentials) and, biggest of all, […]
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