April 26, 2017 w Sam Bush, Stray Birds, Front Country, Chris Jones

05/03/17 • 108 min

It’s not as easy to go to Merlefest as it used to be in my footloose, sleeping-on-the-ground-is-fine days. So it’s wonderful to annually have a mini-Merlefest of our own at Music City Roots. The sampling of Merle-bound artists always refreshes and always seems to spotlight the very best of progressive traditional music. This week’s heavily attended show was no exception.

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April 19, 2017 w Sunny Sweeney, Rev Peyton's Big Damn Band, Blackfoot Gypsies, Bella Hardy

Historians can and do debate the circumstances under which rock and roll was born, but there’s no debating the fact that modern-day rockers who capture the excitement of that initial blast are rootsy as all get-out, nor that said beginning was propelled by a mix that included plenty of blues and hillbilly progenitors. This week’s show covered a couple of bases with Sunny Sweeney’s nothing-but brand of country and Bella Hardy’s evocative British folk, then took a turn into the front porch blues shouting of Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band before landing in Blackfoot Gypsies’ primal rock and roll. Lineages notwithstanding, it was roots everywhere you looked.

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May 3, 2017 w Great American Taxi, Dori Freeman, Colter Wall, John Carter Cash

So did y’all catch that news about the Fyre Festival? As good people, we try not to indulge in schadenfreude, but sometimes man, wow, it’s hard. In short, a rap celebrity and a dudebro with a track record of over-selling and under-delivering promised a glamour-packed, celebrity-stoked par-TAY on a remote island and promoted it by paying other celebrities to post on Instagram about it. It was a fiasco, not because the whole premise was culturally bankrupt and morally suspect (which it was), but because they didn’t PLAN. You have to plan, folks. For example, on the same weekend, two other festivals – much bigger ones – came off without a hitch. Merlefest in North Carolina and JazzFest in New Orleans actually served up authentic music, genuine community, good food and good times for fans who don’t need to feel like they’re winning on a reality show and who aren’t measuring their lives in bikini access and Twitter followers. So for this week anyway, it’s Real Culture: 2. Celebri-crap Culture: 0. Well done, roots music.

MCR had to do a bit of extra planning and demonstrate resilience in the face of challenges as we had more late-breaking lineup shifts this week than maybe ever before. Here’s the superb final tally: Rising Virginia-based folk star Dori Freeman makes a long-sought MCR debut. John Carter Cash brings a family music legacy that’s second to none. Colter Wall is our deep voice of hard country. And we welcome the return of one of the most fluent, flexible roots rock bands in the good old USA.