The LoCash Cowboys Stay Focused for the Long Haul

By LORIE HOLLABAUGH © 2013 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc. The LoCash Cowboys have been down on their luck more than a few times during their 10-year career. But the high-energy, fun-spirited duo is still betting that the odds are in its favor as it prepares to release its first [...] Read More

New Artist Spotlight: Tate Stevens

By Bob Doerschuk © 2013 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc. Tate Stevens’ triumph on Season 2 of The X Factor confirms that Country Music is stronger than ever. More important, it heralds the arrival of a performer whose music is in step with what America wants to hear. Read our [...] Read More

New Artist Spotlight: Kacey Musgraves

By Bob Doerschuk © 2013 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc. One strength of country music is its ability to mirror real life. Rarer is the artist whose stories come to us not washed in neon but raised from a deeper, dreamier place. Kacey Musgraves is one such anomaly. Born in [...] Read More

Ashley Monroe Finds Her Own Way

By Erin Duvall © 2013 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc. Though Ashley Monroe is hardly a newcomer to country music, many fans will hear her for the first time on her own with Like a Rose – her first solo effort since she achieved visibility as a member of Pistol [...] Read More

50 Years After the Crash – Remembering Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas & Hawkshaw Hawkins

By Eileen Sisk © 2013 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc. The Grand Ole Opry suffered the biggest loss of talent in its 87-year history when a small plane carrying Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins, along with Cline’s manager Randy Hughes, crashed on the evening of March 5, 1963, [...] Read More