Crystal Shawanda, Wade Bowen, Daryle Singletary and Ray Wylie Hubbard All Ready New Projects

Crystal Shawanda

Crystal Shawanda, Wade Bowen, Daryle Singletary and Ray Wylie Hubbard all announced various stages of new projects this week.

I did an interview with Crystal Shawanda earlier this year where she announced that she'd be going a little different direction with her new album this year, veering from straight-up country to a little more blues inspired fare. This week, she announced on her Facebook wall that The Whole World's Got the Blues will be coming out on 9/30:  "So freakin happy we have an official release date for my new blues album "The Whole World's Got The Blues" it will be in stores September 30th! Yesterday I sat on my parent's porch, back on the Rez, writing my thank yous for the album, and it just made it for real! We've picked the single, video plans are in the works, and it's all really happening! I've been preparing for the release for months, performing the new songs, listening to mixes from the road, sneaking in a studio every chance, and now I'm rushing to Nashville to put the finishing touches! This has been such an amazing summer, beautiful friendships were born, and nurtured, and I was even blessed to have down time with my family! My nieces and nephews are growing too fast, and I can never spend enough time with my parents, who are literally my best friends! Being back home in Wikwemikong always feeds my soul, I love my community, and how we always just pick up here we left off! Have a beautiful day lovely people xoxo." Shawanda's debut album “Dawn of a New Day” was released in 2008, was Billboard’s highest charting album by a Native American, and sold 400,000 copies that year. A CMT six-part documentary also aired in Canada called “Crystal: Living the Dream”, giving fans an inside look at Crystal’s life in Nashville.  In 2009, after five hit singles in Canada including the title track, “Try”, and “My Roots are Showing”, and a massive tour with Brad Paisley and Dierks Bentley, Crystal was named the Canadian Country Music Association’s Female Artist of the Year.

Texan Wade Bowen will be releasing a self-titled album on 10/28. Wade Bowen marks a new beginning, the turning of the page to a place where the music becomes a little bit freer, a little bit looser, and a lot more intimate. This is the sound of catharsis, of Bowen released from major label bonds to find himself on his own again. A staple of the Texas Music charts, and a notorious road warrior, Bowen has sold over half a million album in his short career, sung duets with the likes of Will Hoge and Brandy Clark, and been featured on compilations alongside the likes of Charlie Daniels, Old Crow Medicine Show, Eli Young Band and The Blind Boys from Alabama. His Wade Bowen Classic golf tournament has raised over 1 million dollars to benefit children’s charities across central Texas. “The focus was to talk about what I’ve been through. – to get personal,” Bowen says of writing these new tracks, “everything I’ve been through lead me to this.” Wade remarks, “I just started analyzing the road and my passion to put up with so much to “make a dream fly!” I’m still here! It’s like I tell people, the road has tried to get rid of me but I’m still here!”

It sounds as if traditional country will be alive and well as country veteran Daryle Singletary is back in the studio putting together a yet-to-be-named and yet-to-be-given-a-release-date project. This came from Wes Hightower, a musician friend of Singletary: "For my diehard country music friends... I just got to sing bgvs on a new record being recorded by Daryle Singletary. My thoughts???? Anyone who thinks country music is dead should search this record out the day it becomes available. One of the most gifted country singers alive today... #TooLateToSaveTheWorld."

Texan legend and near-philosopher and sage Ray Wylie Hubbard has been in the studio as of late and while he doesn't have a name or a release date as of yet, he does have this to say about the new forthcoming project, "Went in and listened to what we recorded a few weeks ago..it stands up on its hind legs and makes a fist. You may not like the singer or the songs but you will like the way it sounds... I really don't know where these gnawed off pieces of obscureness come from and sometimes I even wonder why I can't write somewhat remotely close to mainstream commercial popular type songs that maybe somebody else ...might record some day but then..I get a headache thinking about that and I quit and get grateful that as an old cat at least my songs aren't metaphor deficient and I still can lay down a groove that make the hip bones wanna do the shaka shaka boom boom ugha ugha whomp whomp. Hmmm...ego or self esteem talking there.. whatever. make no dif. its said and done. I believe it."