Maverick Country Music Magazine

1 May 2023

March saw the return of Country 2 Country, arguably the biggest event in the U.K. country music calendar and what a weekend it was! You’ll find a full review of the event in this issue along with a number of interviews we captured across the four days including an exciting chat with hit songwriter Ashley Gorley for our Behind the Song feature. MainStage artists, Lindsay Ell and Mitchell Tenpenny had a quick chat just moments before stepping out to entertain crowds of around 20,000 people. I also thoroughly enjoyed my chat with Amanda Shires who divided opinion at the festival but for me, that was one of my favourite sets on the pop up stages. Not only do I greatly admire Shires solo work but her work with The Highwomen too and after previously speaking with her fellow band mates about that brilliant record they brought out in 2019, I was keen to get Shires take on it all. However, C2C was just the start of festival season and we look ahead to The Long Road and Black Deer in this issue. One of my favourite artists and songwriters of all time is Brandy Clark. I have had the privilege to talk to her on many occasions but she has just had potentially the biggest year of her career to date. The Broadway opening of the musical she’s been writing for the past ten years happened last month and she has just released her self-titled album produced by Brandi Carlile which is a great contender for record of the year. Clark is performing at this year’s Black Deer festival. There are also a couple of Octagenarians in this issue, Engelbert Humperdinck and Pat Boone. Pat has a new single out, soon to be followed up with a 25 song album and he was excited to tell me his hopes for this next chapter in his career. He also reflected upon his friendship with Elvis Presley. Chris Janson thoroughly impressed me back in 2019 when I headed to Nashville for CMA Fest. He performed at the Opry twice whilst I was there and he seemed like a real entertainer. It was wonderful to catch up with him ahead of the release of his new album which comes out in June. I also gently reminded him that a trip to the U.K. was long overdue, so fingers crossed he may start looking into flights!