Rodney Crowell's career is littered with butterfly-effect decisions that, in retrospect, represent life-altering milestones along the singer/songwriter's star-crossed path. If the Houston native hadn't moved to Nashville at age 22, he wouldn't have been discovered by Jerry Reed or met his greatest influence and hero Guy Clark or enchanted Emmylou Harris, who consistently recorded Crowell's songs and even hired him as her Hot Band guitarist.

Steve Earle pays tribute to one of his mentors and heroes, Jerry Jeff Walker, on "Jerry Jeff," which follows his "GUY" tribute to Guy Clark and "TOWNES" tribute to Townes Van Zandt. Earle has called these projects a necessary form of therapy, as each of these great artists have passed on.

The title track to James McMurtry's "The Horses and the Hounds" plays out like one of those great running songs, namely Merle Haggard's "The Fugitive." "Lord I've been running for so long I just can't find a way back home," McMurtry sings, in that enjoyable deadpan vocal tone of his. When the Haggard song is mentioned, though, McMurtry responds, "I don't really remember.

Back before the world retreated into makeshift fallout shelters for a year of Netflix binging, board games and what Warren Zevon referred to as splendid isolation, Nashville-based singer/songwriter Shannon McNally was invited to play a Music City benefit concert.

By their own admission Track45 hails from a town that is "big enough for a WalMart and a Waffle House, but not a Target or a Starbucks." Ironically, Meridian, Miss. (population (41,148) is the birthplace of the father of country music, Jimmy Rodgers. The harmony-driven sibling trio of Track45 includes Ben Johnson and his infectiously bubbly sisters Jenna and KK.

It was only fitting that Lindsay Ell had Lauren Alaina as a guest on her recent livestream concert. Alaina penned the song "Crashing The Boy's Club." That is exactly what Ell is doing using her Stratocaster as a battering ram. Men have disproportionately occupied lead guitar, vocals