We have commented twice in recent weeks about the forthcoming McCoury Music release Moneyland. Now I can report that Del McCoury flies to New England this week to appear on the popular A Prairie Home Companion radio program to further promote the hard-hitting, multi-artist Moneyland CD.
Heard by more than four million listeners each week on some 580 public radio stations and abroad on America One and the Armed Forces Networks, the appearance by The Del McCoury Band will be broadcast live from Tanglewood – the Koussevitzky Music Shed in Lenox, Massachusetts, at 5:45 pm (EST) on Saturday, June 28.
McCoury will bring more than new music to the stage of A Prairie Home Companion, he will bring a new attitude destined to shake up the right, left and center. He doesn’t claim to have the answers to America’s problems, just hopes that “Somebody a lot smarter than us will hear a song that moves them and decide to take action.” The producers of the project add in the liner notes. “Not only do we believe it un-American for Washington to be blind to the problems of small towns and rural areas, we believe it to be immoral.”
Noted music journalist Craig Havighurst has written, “I think when this album hits for real, it’s going to shock lefties and righties alike with its candor and its understated moral outrage.” The Austin Chronicle adds, “The album is equal parts empathetic consolation and political outrage at a government that has left the common folks behind.”
Moneyland is to be released on July 8 and features songs by The Del McCoury Band, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Bruce Hornsby, Chris Knight, Patty Loveless, Marty Stuart, Dan Tyminski and Mac Wiseman and includes special guest appearances by Rodney Crowell, The Fairfield Four, Tim O’Brien, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
For more information, please visit www.mccourymusic.com.
Editor’s note: It will be interesting to see if Del explains on PHC just what sort of governmental inaction has contributed to the plight of small town and rural America. PHC host Garrison Keillor is a well-known advocate of an interventionist federal government, so a discussion between he and Del could be enlightening, both as to how they see that such problems came to be, and how they might be addressed.