GALLEYWINTER

As a music fan the past two decades have been revolutionary.  Any song that has ever been created is now at our fingertips.  There’s no clunking around a large CaseLogic full of cd’s or placing a distractingly large faux wooden tower of them in the living room next to the entertainment center. This isn’t some plain nostalgic waxing about the good ol’ days.  It’s merely to point out that we used to have to work much harder at being a fan.  You had to actually go to a record store and purchase an album.  At the height of cd’s, that

Wade Bowen delivered us some joy over the Labor Day weekend by dropping a new EP he’d secretly been working on during the lock downs. At first, I didn’t know what to make of the track list for The Waiting. It was kind of like peeking into a bag of Halloween candy and seeing familiar favorites (shout out Three Musketeers) mixed in with a few surprises. Even Bowen admits, “This EP is all over the place. The six songs don’t really fit together, which I like… and I did it on purpose. It’s almost like an encore on stage.” Here’s

The house band faded out from a mostly accurate cover of a Gary Allan song just in time for Luke Combs “Beer Never Broke My Heart” to swell from the house PA. The lights were bright.  The smoke was nonexistent.  A noticeable number of chairs had been removed. And a sea of trendy, masked bandit look-alikes strolled around the grounds of the world’s largest honky tonk as if the past six months hadn’t happened.  Aside from the smaller crowd and masks on every face, it really did feel quite…normal.   As the concert experience in Texas continues to strive for a

The genre of southern rock had been moribund and dormant until the ascendance of bands such as Cross Canadian Ragweed, Whiskey Myers and Blackberry Smoke. Despite the best efforts of bands such as Copper Chief and Midnight River Choir, the sub genre has ebbed and flowed around these parts as it has throughout much of the country. Those bands got country and funky to break through. Southern rock has mostly been relegated to the novelty, county fair, discount bin of the music world as bands like Skynyrd shed original members but kept playing the same songs.  The freshness of the

Hey folks, it’s been a while. Like most of you, I’ve spent the last several months hunkered down, protecting family, busting my tail to stay gainfully employed in these uncertain times. 2020 went plaid months ago and without live music, those COVID Blues snuck in. It’s been hard to get energized about much of anything, except maybe scoring a 24-pack of toilet paper or buying hand sanitizer from a local distillery. Like many, when sanity started to wane I retreated to nostalgia. As a GenXer I spent my tween years glued to MTV, and in the last few months I’ve