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    • No argument here. I cannot play this song, with it’s chorus- ending line, “And may all your favourite bands stay together.” without my wife, (who also loves them,) yelling, “but you didn’t, did you?” This is a reference to keyboard player, Tay Strathairn, who quit the band immediately after the album came out.
      To be fair, his replacement, Lee Pardini, is a brilliant player, and they are a much better band with him in it.

  9. The Highwaymen wasn’t the first time Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings joined forces.
    They’d previously joined forces with Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser for Wanted! The Outlaws.
    Here’s a delicate country ballad from Tompall – Put Another Log On The Fire

      • I have the “Live at Smith’s Olde Bar’ CD by Shaver (Billy and Eddy) and it’s a great, great album. Eddy used to use a 100w Mesa Boogie Mark II dimed, thus his very ‘rock’ sound (It’s the same amp Metallica used for the Black album). I have a 60w version of this amp and can’t even imagine the volume he must have had.

        He backed up Waylon Jennings, Dwight Yokham and a few others in his short career.

  20. Marty Stuart has a great band including the stupendous Cousin Kenny Vaughan on guitar. Looks like a nerd, plays like a boss. Plus a guest appearance from a table steel player. I know it says Chris Scruggs but it is quite clearly Dave King from the Hairy Bikers

  22. When I posted this, a few years ago, I got stick from the Country purists.

    Feck ’em.

    It’s a brilliant story-song, brilliantly told.

    And, I’ll say it again. If you only have 12 seconds for the guitar solo, you’d better make damn sure it’s as good as this.

  24. The Garth Brooks documentary, The Road I’m On, (Netflix) is terrific. The story of how he first came across this, his most celebrated song, is wonderful.

    I first came across it when he sang it on Later, just him on guitar, and Jools playing the piano. It was spellbinding. It used to be on YouTube but, no longer.

    The lyric is everything I love about the best Country music.

  26. The Big Hat contingent?

    We can’t have those low down varmints stopping us from having a party on a Friday evening.

    We’ve been out all day on our John Deeres, now it’s time to have some fun.

    That Chuck Prophet really hit the spot. A new name for me.

    I still can’t believe it. @DuCo01 and I were once lucky enough to catch Laura Cantrell live in Stockholm at an odd little venue that I had neve heard of before or since. .She did not disappoint. What a fine band she had with her!

  29. Let’s travel back to 1973 and a bunch of scruffy British blokes, in a small studio in London.

    I could have picked Country Boy but, there are a million versions of that song.

    This is much more difficult to find.

    This is an unholy, runaway train of a noise. TURN IT UP!

  30. And, if the the Big Hat Brigade, wanna stomp all over me for Keith Urban’s Cop Car, (above,) then this should reset the balance.

    On the night of Live 8, 2nd July, 2005, after the Hyde Park gig had ended, they cut to the Philly gig. On stage was this guy, and his brilliant band. This was the song they played, before killing another 3 songs. I had never heard of Keith Urban but, by the end of their set, I was in love, and have been ever since.

    • Husband and wife British duo? Here’s another. the estimable My Darling Clementine. This is the best track from their Steve Nieve augmented 3 eps of Costello covers. Which, handily, are re-released as a single cd next week.

    • British husband (Big Dave), American wife. I believe they went to U.S. for a few years, then decided they wanted to raise children in U.K. In Norfolk last I heard.
      “Lonely Won’t Leave Me Alone” is another fine track. Saw them many years ago at a pub in Moseley, Birmingham (- wife, at home with sick child) – Excellent!

      • That’d be the Ceol Castle. I was there too. Still a good gig. Brilliant music pub back in the 00ties. Saw loadsa bands there, usually with about 20 people ever in the audience. Now reverted to Old name of Castle and Falcon but the gigs tend to be fit youngsters, but saw Rural Alberta Advantage there a year or three back.

    • Steve is British, but Stephanie is American.
      Sadly they have given up performing as The Arlenes. Steve still is involved in the music business and in the organisation of Come On Down and Meet The Folks.
      However it was at a CODAMTF session a few years ago that he suddenly announced that “This is our last gig”.
      It’s Monday lunchtime, so this is a bit late, but this remains one of my favourites from The Arlenes:

    • I see no reason why Saturday night cannot also be country night, @Badlands.

      Do please feel free to treat us to some more favourites.

      I feel like some Rodney Crowell.

      An old favourite revisited and given an acoustic makeover.

      Here he is with Emmylou, I think they are both enjoying themselves.

      Are any of you also having a Smalltown Saturday Night?

      If so, you will enjoy this song from the wonderful Otis Gibbs.

      What a goy! I will never forget the evening when, at the very last minute, I managed to book him to come and play at Björkhagen School.

      On my birthday! What a total treat!

      And why not the much missed John Prine and Nanci Griffith

      One more from Nanci

  44. Lots of Daniel Tashian on this thread and while this isn’t more of him, he does have a couple of co-writes on this album and he plays on it too.
    Josh Rouse – My Love Has Gone

  49. Nice work, Lemon and Fitter. You were on a very agreeable run there!

    How about some Tiny Desk Lyle Lovett for Sunday morning?

    And as Lyle mentions her daughter, here’s Iris…

  50. I think that very rum cove, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, deserves a mention here.
    There are so many different sides to him. All of them very wacky.

    Here he is with dawn McCarthy from their Every Brothers tribute album; Whar the Brothers sang.

    Omaha

    Just to see my Holly home

    Strange form of life

  54. A blast from the past from Mary Chapin Carpenter. An exquisite bit of song-writing.

    Slightly more recent, Band of Horses: Is there a ghost? Stupendous song from a great live band. They look like a country band anyway.

    • This track from MCC’s most recent album is a beaut, the guitar solo from around 3.40 is tremendous, it builds and builds and takes the track to a whole other level.

  58. Emmylou and Mark Knopfler play beautifully together but it is not a combination I would have expected. Then again, Nick Lowe’s brief period as as Johnny Cash’s son-in-law was not somethin I would have predicted either.

    A brief clip of the Man in Black at the RAH.

    Here’s the former Mrs Lowe in fine form with Dave Edmunds: Baby Ride Easy

  60. Honest, last til lunchtime, but there has to be this archetypal offering from the good Commander and his boys. I’m choosing this version as I was there: recorded at Hammy Odeon, and the late great Norton Buffalo was on harmonica duties.

  66. We seem to have forgotten Canadian country artists! Such as ….

    Cowboy Junkies

    k d lang

    Fred Eaglesmith

    Fred is a really entertaining raconteur.

    And there are many more!

  68. You did well here, Niall!

    I’ve been greatly enjoying listening to a lot of new artists that I’ve never heard of Such as Skyline Motel

    and Stephen Bruton

    And then revisiting some old favourites and remembering how good they are.

    I’ve never heard this version of Someday Soon before. Judy Collins performing with Ian and Sylvia whose song she covered.

    Another song you will all know from the Canadian country duo.

    Now that is a country song and a half.

  75. I also definitely bought a few compilations which opened my ears to new talent.

    Like Mary Chapin Carpenter, mentioned above. Glad you also rate her, Lemon.

    Let’s have a few from the ladies in the house.

    MCC makes it clear that the cowboy boot is on the other foot now.

    Elizabeth Cook on the importance of spherical objects.

    Gretchen Peters is a songwriter in a class of her own.

    And our first Australian artist, the very wonderful Kasey Chambers.

    Tough, articulate women are nothing new in country music: here’s Kitty Wells

    And here is one of my favourite singers, Laura Cantrell, paying tribute to her idol.

    One more from Laura? Yup, you’re right. We must!

  76. Glad to hear that you also like two seconds @lemonhope.

    When she played if here, Laura Cantrell asjked the audience if anyone knew who had written it. I didn’t but do now. The Volebeats’ version is also excellent.

    Lovely jangly guitars, superlative songwriting, this Detroit band ought to be better known.

    Matthew Smith is the driving force of the band.

    https://www.straight.com/music/436921/creative-matthew-smith-sometimes-wears-other-musicians-out

    • Great work, James! Friday Night has now lasted to Friday morning!

      Kasey is as country as they come. I became aware of as she was emerging from her mum and dad’s combo: the Dead Ringer Band.

      She had a pretty extraordinary childhood:

      “Kasey Chambers was born in 1976 in Mount Gambier, South Australia to Diane and Bill Chambers.[1][2][3] Her older brother, Nash Chambers was born in 1974.[4] From July 1976 the Chambers family travelled around the Nullarbor Plain, where the parents hunted foxes and rabbits for pelts during seven or eight months a year, spanning nine years.[5][6] During the “hot months” (generally from November to March) they returned to Southend, South Australia,[4][5] where her family owned a fish and chip shop for a time.” (Wikipedia)

      When Mrs KFD saw her live, Kasey told some great stories about her younger days in the outback.

  79. It’s Friday afternoon. Time for me to pour myself a stiff tequila and play some desert rock.

    Howe Gelb is known as the frontman of Giant Sand.

    Sometimes Giant is not big enough..

    Joey Burns and John Convertino met while playing in Giant Sand, They went on to form Calexico. ere they are again, this time with Mariachi Luz de Luna who toured with them in the early days.

    And what wonderful gigs they performed!

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