BY PHILL BARNETT
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN
AREA CODE (606) – The beginning of February saw several great music releases from eastern Kentucky artists including the Laid Back Country Picker of Fallsburg, Brit Taylor of Knott County and Sundy Best of Prestonsburg. Each of these artists’ albums joined the already long list of albums by eastern Kentuckians topping the charts.
According to iTunesCharts.net, LBCP’s “Go West,” Sundy Best’s “Feel Good Country Music” and Brit Taylor’s “Kentucky Blue” were all amongst the top sellers on Apple Music for several days or longer.
On Saturday, Feb. 4, eight spots on the 40 top-selling country albums on Apple Music were occupied by albums by eastern Kentuckians. As of this writing, Sundy Best’s new album reached the Top 10 before leaving the charts, Laid Back Country Picker’s third installment made it to No. 16 before falling off, and Brit Taylor’s “Kentucky Blue” reached at least No. 32 shortly after its Friday release and stayed in the top 40 until Tuesday morning.
In addition to these new releases, Tyler Childers’ first full-band album “Purgatory” and his recent triple-album “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?” as well as Chris Stapleton’s “Starting Over,” “Traveller” and “From a Room” volumes 1 and 2 have all occupied spaces on the top 40 country album charts for weeks.
Larry Cordle of Lawrence County has also had chart-topping success this week as his single “East Kentucky Blues” is currently sitting at No. 3 on the Bluegrass Today weekly airplay chart, having reached No. 1 at the start of the year.
Jason Carter of Ashland currently occupies eight of the top 16 spots on the same chart. His best-performing single is “Hoedown for My Lowdown Rowdy Ways” featuring Dierks Bentley.
I spoke with Larry Cordle for a while at last year’s Septemberfest in Louisa. We had met a few times in the past and I had even taken the photo that became the cover for his Gospel record “Give Me Jesus.” Not to mention, we’re from the same county.
He and two other headliners at the festival, Ricky Skaggs and Noah Thompson, are all from the same holler, up Brushy Creek near Blaine in Lawrence County.
I asked Larry how he thought that tiny little holler was able to produce such a magnitude of talent, to which he simply replied, “That’s all we ever did up there was play music.”
With such a rich tradition for porch pickin’ and honky tonk swarpin’ it’s no wonder eastern Kentucky consistently produces top-quality music.
We should all take pride in knowing our region is being well-represented by great artists on both independent and major labels.