Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Americana
Music is life… if you believe the hashtags. I certainly believe music is one of the finer points of life: The Pursuit of Happiness. Or in my case, the Pursuit of Americana. The blog here at JCShepard.com is a bit of a sandbox, where I share my professional and creative interests, as well as family […]
I saw Alison Krauss & Union Station play in Bozeman, Montana, back in the year 2000. They recorded their LIVE release in 2002, recorded at the beautiful Louisville Palace. I absolutely love Alison Krauss. She grew up around Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and was probably around the area when I went to the University of Illinois back […]
Music is the foundation for much of our culture, as it has from ancient days. Music is all about the pursuit of happiness. I listen to a lot of Americana music–roots music melded together from traditional folk, country & western, and blues traditions. Once upon a time, 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to […]
The jcshepard.com blog took a break this year as we worked out some technical details… and worked through the COVID-19 pandemic. We moved to New Mexico the first of the year, then went to work from home in March. August was a tough month personally with my mom passing on and with the site servers […]
Corb Lund put on an amazing show on Central Avenue–Old Route 66–in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Sunday March 8th, 2020, just before we all went into nation-wide lockdown. Corb has a new album coming out, Agricultural Tragic, and I scored a pre-release copy at the show. Yeah band merch. Too many “country” artists are all […]
Dale Watson doesn’t much care for the “Americana” appellation, so he went and dubbed himself “Ameripolitan”. That’s a nod to the old “Countrypolitan” style of Chet Atkins’ 1960s’ Nashville Sound. Now I’m not much of a Chet Atkins fan of orchestrated pop country, but it’s still better than anything in 21st Century pop country. Dale […]
The Year in Music for 2019 was dedicated to Guy Clark and Susanna Clark, with a coda for the late, great Townes Van Zandt. As soon as I heard about Steve Earle’s project to dedicate an album of covers to Guy Clark’s memory, I knew this would be my favorite recording of 2019. GUY held […]
No Depression magazine started out covering “Alt.Country…whatever that is”. As such, they still cover, well, Alt.not-country but we’re not quite sure whatever that is”. No Depression isn’t an “Americana” magazine, but it isn’t NOT an “Americana” outlet either. Mostly, though, No Depression (like the namesake album by Uncle Tupelo) covers the sorta music I like […]
Hayes Carll and Good Companions Hayes Carll’s album What It Is took the top spot for most spins by Americana Radio in 2019 (through 12/17/19). Denver’s very own The Lumineers’ cut “Gloria” off III was the single most spun single in 2019. Contrast this, as usual, with the Grammy’s complete lack of recognition of the […]
The Recording Academy announced their 2020 nominations for the 62nd Grammy Awards last month. While I could pan their General Field nominations as the typical generic, awful ear candy (in particular the controversial NasX-Billy Ray Cyrus fiasco), I won’t. Life is too short to rehash the basic fact that Pop Music Sucks. Moving on. Drilling […]
