Ya’ll for the Hall

By Craig Havighurst, Music City Roots Producer

Since Year One in the Loveless, we’ve treated this show as a major event, calling in favors with killer artists and doing our best to pack the hall with friends and family. It’s that time once again, and this year we’ll be celebrating the Holidays with stories and soul.

Two years ago when Jimmy Hall took the stage on Thanksgiving Eve, I truly didn’t know what to expect. His most famous band Wet Willie had never made a huge impression on me. I knew Jimmy had respect around Nashville as both a singer and writer, but I didn’t have that visceral sense that comes from the live show. Well I do now. None of us will forget the scope and power of his voice, his crafty songs or his swamped up harmonica playing. Consider that Hall’s regular gig is touring as part of Jeff Beck’s band and you get a sense for the bar he can clear as a musician. But it was his command as a front man and his singing, easily in the same stratum as Delbert McClinton’s, that really completed the package. Last year he was inducted into both the Alabama and Georgia Music Halls of Fame. It’s little wonder guitar master Guthrie Trapp says Jimmy is his favorite gig these days.

Ashley Cleveland is similarly positioned as an exceptional soul vocalist with boundless passion who’s not as well known nationally to Americana fans as she is inside the discerning Nashville community. That said, she does have a loyal and loving constituency developed through years striding the gap between rock and Christian music. Her first record deal was with Atlantic in 1991 and she’s won three Grammy Awards in the Rock Gospel Album category. A check in reveals the good news that she’s in the final stages of a Kickstarter-supported album release, scheduled for the coming weeks. With husband/producer/guitarist Kenny Greenberg working with her, it’s a sure thing. There’s also word of a documentary coming next year about the Knoxville born artist. As Cleveland proved in her memoir Little Black Sheep, hers is a fascinating and uplifting story.

Another of our artists this week is all about story. Radney Foster has said “there’s a long, long history of yarn spinning in Texas, and I like to think I come from that tradition.” And he surely has done so on his many solo and duo albums. Now he’s here with his first volume of short fiction. In the album/CD combo For You To See The Stars, Foster pairs stories and songs. The counterparts don’t literally track one another but rather evoke the same ideas and themes. One of my favorites involves an embarrassing episode from childhood being soothed by the father singing songs to the kids at bedtime. The song paints a vivid picture of Foster’s family picking parties that were pivotal to his life path as a songwriter. “You can’t put a price on what those nights were worth,” he sings. “It was the greatest show on earth.” Radney always puts on a great show and it will be a joy to welcome him to Roots for the first time in years.

And completing the night with smooth delivery and a ton of country heart is John Berry, who’ll be ushering in the Christmas season because that’s one of his specialties. In 1995 he released a holiday album titled “Oh Holy Night” (now it’s one of his signature numbers) and for or 20 years since, Berry has been leading a Christmas tour and spreading good vibes at this time of year. All indie in the 80s, he won a hard-earned record deal and became one of the hit male country singers of the 1990s. His parallel passion for gospel music bestows him some interesting parallels to Ashley Cleveland’s career.


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