Photo: Chris J. Zähller To the general public, the current face of country music is dominated by GQ models with chiseled, square jaws who are more proud of their frosted tips and designer Western-wear than their music. But not the outlaws of Norman’s Empty Bottles. Not now, not ever. “As a personal preference, I just […]
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Pop goes the shop
Brown will bring his mid-century modern wares to a new audience hopefully ready to shop for the holidays. “We wanted to do something different,” he said. “It was affordable, so we thought we’d give it a shot and thought it would be fun to be a part of, too.” RetrOKC is one of 30 vendors […]
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Music Made Me: Mike Hosty
Photo: Mark Hancock Leon Redbone, Double Time (1977) I stayed up late and watched Saturday Night Live and saw Leon Redbone sing “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” At first, I thought it was a joke, but there was something about the song and the delivery. His finger-style playing technique led me to discover Blind Blake, Jimmie Rodgers and […]
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Stone cold country
Stoney LaRue isn’t much of a studio junkie. The Red Dirt pioneer has only produced two studio albums since he began playing bars around Stillwater and Norman more than a decade ago, and there was a six-year gap between his debut The Red Dirt Album and 2011 hit Velvet. Yet the Oklahoma native routinely sells out many of the […]
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Nina Medley — Red Dirt Redemption
Well, I can say that I’m pretty sure she’s found it. Her smoky, soulful vocals slink around the archetypal blues riffs, but beneath every song is that homegrown, Red Dirt, roadhouse rocking ’n’ rolling that draw immediate comparisons to Janis Joplin. “Drive Right Through Memphis” has a down-and-dirty groove that’s as playful as it is […]
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Better off Red
Nathan Cross of Grady’s 66 Pub Photo: Mark Hancock However, as many artists are wont to find out, the music remained in his blood. And that’s how Grady’s 66 Pub, 444 W. Main in Yukon, was started. “I wanted to still be involved in the music business, wanted to still be surrounded by the music […]
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No Justice — America’s Son
For the record, the film is a back woods action-revenge thriller starring Kevin Sorbo. That perfectly suits the bluesy-rootsy tune with lines like, “Who you gonna call when it gets rough” and “Where you gonna run when the river runs dry,” sung with a passion that would go great with a couple of roundhouse kicks. […]
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Radio gets ‘Red’ again
Roughly eight years ago, The Red Dirt Radio Hour got its start on KVOO-FM 98.5 in Tulsa. The program specialized in spotlighting Oklahoma bands like the Red Dirt Rangers, whose unique sound can best be described as a mash-up of rock, folk, country and blues. Rangers member John Cooper helped found the program. However, he […]
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At bat
Curtis Grimes’ life reads like your classic country narrative: A promising baseball prospect ditches his chance at a shot in the big leagues for a girl, only to come away heartbroken a short while later. But instead of picking up the bottle, he picked up a guitar, and what sounds like the character in so […]