Jamey Johnson & Randy Houser

Jamey Johnson
Eleven-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Jamey Johnson is “one of the greatest country singers of our time,” according to the Washington Post. He is one of only a few people in the history of country music to win two Song of the Year Awards from both the CMA and ACMs.In addition, he won two Song of the Year Trophies, for “Give It Away” and “In Color,” both from the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association. He has received tremendous praise from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal and other publications, many of which have hailed his albums as masterpieces.

Randy Houser
Using a stripped-down, back-to-basics approach—keeping Houser’s remarkable voice, which the New York Times describes as “wholly different, thicker and more throbbing, a cauldron bubbling over,” front and center—was the guiding force for Magnolia, Randy Houser’s fifth album and a return to the rootsy sound he grew up hearing and playing in the tiny town of Lake, Mississippi. It’s a bold direction from an artist with four Number One hits and more than five million singles sold, as well as a CMA Song of the Year nomination for “Like A Cowboy.” But Houser wasn’t interested in using that same formula for success.

“I wanted to find unique sounds,” he says, “which was tough—I recorded some of these songs several times to find the right sound. But I’d reached the end of my rope musically, with the expectations of the world I was in, and it just didn’t feel genuine. The only way to make music I feel like I can be comfortable with is just to dig in and start writing.”