Marty Brown was an up and coming country music writer and performer in the 1990's but his fourth and most recent major record label CD, Here's to the Honky Tonks, was released way back in 1996. Since then, many have wondered if Brown was still making music. The truth is that he has never stopped making music, even as major record companies have continued to ignore…

In the last few weeks, many have focused on Bruce Springsteen's new album, Wrecking Ball. All of the news reminds me that there was already a great album with the same name from seventeen years ago when Emmylou Harris released her own Wrecking Ball in 1995. The Daniel Lanois production and the atmospheric effects on the album created a career-changing sound.…

Because Woody Guthrie never got to make his own music video of "So Long It's Been Good to Know You," singer Rob Tepper helps us imagine what one might look like. Tepper is an actor who does a one-man show portraying Woody Guthrie.  He appears in the short film Been Good To Know Yuh – a Woody Guthrie Story.  Check out his performance of Guthrie's song:

 Guthrie originally called the…

This time of year seems like an excellent time to revisit one of the great country music concept albums of the last few decades, Marty Stuart's The Pilgrim (1999). Although we often associate the word "pilgrim" with the English colonists who sailed on the Mayflower ship, settled in Plymouth, and dined on the first Thanksgiving meal, the word in its broader meaning applies to any traveler or more specifically, "one who embarks on…

Willie Nelson recorded a version of Coldplay's "The Scientist" that is used in this excellent short film for the restaurant Chipotle. Yeah, it is a commercial, but it also makes a good point in a soft-sell kind of way about factory farming. The cool animation is by Johnny Kelly.

The short film, which will be shown in movie theaters, is part of Chiptle's "Food…