Maverick Country Music Magazine

1 September 2022

Well, this summer has been an enjoyable one with glorious sunshine beaming down on festival season. Some of country music’s finest artists have travelled to the UK to grace our stages and tour the country, also letting the spotlight shine on our homegrown artists in various ways from inviting them on stage for a song or taking them on tour to open for them. It seems like much of the same will happen over the autumn with artists touring and attending Country Music Week in London. We managed to catch up with many talented artists at the festivals such as Jess Moskaluke, Lindsay Ell, Sam Williams and Everette. Meanwhile, Gretchen Peters announced her retirement from touring but left us with a parting gift of a beautiful live album recorded here in the UK featuring a lovely string quartet. We managed to catch up with Gretchen about that and of course her decision to retire. Mitchell Tenpenny is one of the most exciting artists on the scene right now as he brings out his new album which is packed with a punch. I’d love to see him over here in the UK soon, perhaps C2C next year? Meanwhile, Ty Herndon recently opened up about his struggles with mental health and addiction as he brought out his most personal album to date, ‘Jacob’. It was a pleasure to catch up with him to talk through the record and how he is impacting and changing the lives of others now. Perhaps the most interesting and exciting album we got to feature in this issue comes from Ashley McBryde. Her record is so unique, in fact I’m not sure anyone’s done anything like this before in the genre but the songwriting and storytelling is some of the best I’ve heard all year. There’s plenty of humour in the lyrics and in our interview too! Though we’re looking forward to the upcoming tours and new music on the horizon, we also had a chance to look back at a timeless classic with Don McLean. ‘American Pie’ celebrated 50 years this year and it still plays on radios, record players and mp3s across the globe and across generations today. It was an honour to catch up with him and dive into the journey that this song has been on.