The country music world was shocked when Sturgill Simpson/Johnny Blue Skies dropped his forthcoming album, Mutiny After Midnight, on YouTube two weeks before it was set to release. Now, just as quickly and mysteriously as it appeared on the online video platform, it has vanished. Well… it’s just been set to private and isn’t accessible anymore, but “vanished” sounds more dramatic, does it not? Originally, fans of Sturgill Simpson and Johnny Blue Skies were patiently waiting for Mutiny After Midnight to release on March 13. Not only that, they were preparing to listen via physical media, as the original announcement of the album said that fans would only be able to get their hands on vinyl, cassette and CDs – A.K.A. no digital or streaming option. Then Johnny Blue Skies went and “leaked” the entire album on Sturgill Simpson’s official YouTube channel, and left this message on social media to guide all of his fans to the early release “Ooops…. might’ve just posted the whole fuk’n album on YouTube…. for the real ones.” And that he did. For an entire week, Sturgill and JBS fans were able to stream the album they were previously told would be un-streamable, and it was glorious. I personally listened through it a handful of times, and the last time I visited the pages, hundreds of thousands of others had done the same. We even released a power ranking of the craziest lines from the album, and dove into the hilarious comment section of the YouTube video where fans were having a field day as they listened to Mutiny After Midnight. The new album was a wonderful experience all around, and it was made that much better by it’s early release. That being said, the move to share the album digitally (and for free) after previously saying Mutiny After Midnight would exclusively be available through physical media did come with some criticism. Why tell fans there would be only one way to listen, encouraging them to buy it, only for the entire album to be posted online? To be fair, some of the team here at Whiskey Riff got their hands on vinyl copies early so maybe Stu was just getting out in front any leak potential by doing it himself? Just for a limited time? Hard to say for sure. For the time that the album was up on YouTube, that was the viewpoint held by many. Now though… physical media owners are getting the last laugh, because the sophomore Johnny Blue Skies album is no longer available on YouTube. It seems like the plan was to make it available digitally for a week, and then make the video private. So now, once again, that March 13 release date holds some importance. That’s less than a week away, and I’d highly doubt the YouTube video of the album is going to pop up before then. There’s a chance it doesn’t ever appear again… and the early release was just to give people a taste, then take it away. Thus, the only way to consume Mutiny After Midnight from here on would be through physical media. Just another example of Sturgill Simpson – A.K.A. Johnny Blue Skies – doing things in his own, unique way. Don’t cry because it’s over… smile because it happened.The post Welp… Sturgill Simpson’s New Johnny Blue Skies Project, ‘Mutiny After Midnight,’ Is No Longer Available On YouTube first appeared on Whiskey Riff.

Lainey Wilson isn’t going to stand for any small town slander. Simply put, the “Heart Like A Truck” singer has slowly but surely become one of the biggest names in country music. I only say slowly there because it did take quite a while for Lainey Wilson to break through (15 years or so). But once she did, life has been a whirlwind for Wilson. She even named her 2024 album Whirlwind because of that. And in a recent interview on the No Filter podcast, the 33-year-old country music superstar spoke about how she stayed true to herself and committed to her music career amidst the early struggles. The singer admitted that there were times where even she thought it was crazy to not be packing things up and moving home. Now, armed with hindsight, Lainey is thankful that she stuck with it. But if she would have moved home, it would have been back to Baskin, Louisiana. It’s basically just a small farming community, and only about 170 people live there. She described in the interview that there’s not much too her hometown… not even a stoplight: “Where I’m from, it’s really just like a big farming community. Like my daddy farms corn, wheat, soybeans, oats. Very blue-collar town. We don’t even have a red light. We have a caution light.” That’s about as small town as it gets. Because of the limited population of Baskin, Wilson says that pretty much everyone knows each other in the town. She described it in the interview as a blessing and a curse: “Everybody knows everybody… It’s like, the best thing and the worst thing. It’s like they’re there when you need ’em, and they’re there when you don’t. They’re just there.” Though the community could be considered “too tight knit” at times, Lainey Wilson was adamant about Baskin, Louisiana and other small towns out there being filled with some of the kindest people you’ll ever meet. Host of the No Filter podcast, Kate Langbroek, suggested that a lot of people think that people that live in the country are not accepting. She argued that in reality, country folk and people from small towns are often times some of the most accepting. Lainey agreed: “Oh, 100%… And my folks, especially, they’re the kind of people who would get a call in the middle of the night, and they’d go help the neighbor. I mean, they would give you the shirt off their back. That’s the kind of people that I’m from.” And that’s typically the type of people you’ll find in most small, country towns… despite what the coastal media would have you believe. I’d say that Wilson should pen a song about people in small towns, but country music star Jason Aldean might advise against that (though he certainly stands by his “Try That In A Small Town” song). Probably better to just stick to speaking highly of small town populations like hers in Baskin, Louisiana, any chance she gets. There’s certainly a stereotype of small town residents being unaccepting, and Lainey is doing her part to change that narrative. You can listen to her talk more about it in the video below: The post Lainey Wilson Hits Back Against Stereotype That Small Towns Are Not Accepting: “They Would Give You The Shirt Off Their Back” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.

Did you know Ashley Cooke's actually got a family connection to Hollywood? Continue reading…

The other side of the story. This past week, Kelsea Ballerini’s exes stirred up some drama online, after her ex-boyfriend Chase Stokes, the actor best known for his role as John B. in the popular Netflix series Outer Banks, called out her ex-husband, Morgan Evans, in a bizarre social media outburst that now has the country singer trying to show off his masculinity. It was somewhat surprising to see Evans even acknowledge it because he’s been pretty quiet when it comes to anything relate to Ballerini, which makes sense because they’re divorced, but even when they went through the very public split, he stayed pretty quiet for the most part… key phrase being “for the most part.” For some backstory here, Morgan is an Australian country singer, and he and Ballerini got married in 2017 before announcing their divorce in 2022. And it’s safe to say that the two didn’t exactly split on good terms, because they’ve both taken some not-so-subtle shots at each other in their music over the past couple years. After the divorce, Morgan released a song called “Over For You” that pointedly questioned when Kelsea decided that their marriage was over, after he had said that he was “blindsided” by the divorce: “I would have searched the whole world over for you Took a flight through the night to be that shoulder for you.” Ballerini responded by adding a new verse to her song “Blindsided.” “Now you’re singing it loud on the radio You couldn’t say it to my face You would have searched the whole world over? Yeah, sure, okay” She also released her Rolling Up the Welcome Mat EP that really seemed to call out her ex for the issues in their relationship, while Evans debuted a new song called “What Does That Say About You?” and introduced it by throwing some shade at his ex-wife: “I’d like to dedicate this one to anyone with an ex that won’t stop talking sh*t about them.”  Overall though, it seems like Evans has been fairly lowkey since the divorce, despite taking a lot of heat from his ex-wife’s fans – though he did say during a 2023 interview that it was “sad” to see Kelsea talking about him in public while he had hoped to keep their issues private. “It’s really sad for me to see this person, who I spent so much of my life with, and loved with all my heart, saying things that aren’t reality that leave out what really happened. She knows I’m not the type of guy to speak on those things publicly. If this is what she needs to heal, I hope it helps. All I ask is that if you’re on pages, please don’t be mean. Don’t be mean to Kelsea, don’t be mean to each other. Life’s too short.” The drama with Stokes started after Evans appeared on an episode of The Bobbycast, where he discussed opening up about the divorce on his new album Steel Town, which drops later this month, and during that conversation, he did share a little bit about his perspective and what he went through with the divorce, which is more than I’ve ever heard him say about it. He was very respectful and didn’t get too into the weeds on all of it, so to speak, but he did say it all happened in the span of three or four months, and he signed the divorce documents in the parking lot of the Ryman: “It all happened super quick. From finding out that that was what Kelsea wanted to do to getting a lawyer and having a prenup and having three calls or four calls or something with the lawyer and signing the documents in the parking lot of the Ryman in the rain to going home. That all happened in three and a half, four months or something like that.” It sounds like lightning speed, honestly, but Evans explained he might’ve been “naive” to the fact that Ballerini wanted out, recalling a conversation with her about it that took him “by surprise”: “Maybe that was me being naive. I don’t know, but I definitely wasn’t and it took me by surprise. But yeah, that whole time is such a blur. It almost feels like somebody else just from where I’m sitting now.” He also commented on the public scrutiny and comments from people who really knew nothing about their relationship or divorce, and obviously, it wasn’t all true and he felt like he got painted in a certain light that didn’t really represent who he is or the type of man he is in a relationship: “…In my case, it didn’t feel like it necessarily had a lot to do with me. I think maybe I was presented or made out to be or became an archetype for any guy that had done any woman wrong during that period of time. And some of the stuff was just like, ‘What is this? That didn’t even make sense?’…I’d read stuff like, ‘What? What are you even talking about?’” Kelsea has actually called out her own fans on occasion at shows when they’ve shouted negative stuff about Morgan, and I think for a while now they’ve both tried to move on, though I don’t think either one of them thought Chase Stokes would be the reason this whole thing has been stirred up again… And while it is somewhat surprising to hear Morgan address the divorce, even though it was a very small and quick part of the conversation, in a post on Substack, he explained that he knew it would be the “elephant in the room” for the entirety of this press run for his new album, Steel Town, and so he wanted to acknowledged that, yes, the divorce is part of the story of his new project, and he didn’t want to “dance around it” every time he does an interview: “Those three years were a wild ride, parts of it public, most of it personal. The public side hit WWE levels. I stepped out of the ring. But as I stepped back into press for this record, I could feel the elephant in the room. If I didn’t acknowledge it, every conversation would just dance around it. So I did. It’s part of my story. And it shaped a part of this record.”  I doubt he’ll say much more about it, honestly, but I think this is a smart strategy which will hopefully make moving forward a lot easier.The post Morgan Evans Says Divorce From Kelsea Ballerini Happened VERY Quickly: “That All Happened In 4 Months” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.