Two award-winning country artists are partnering up to offer two opportunities for Gulf Coast residents to enjoy a night of socially distanced live entertainment. Jamey Johnson and Randy Houser will bring their Country Cadillac Tour to the Mobile Saenger Theatre on Friday, February 19 and Saturday, February 20! Tickets are on sale now.

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 ACM.

His 2008 album, That Lonesome Song, was certified platinum for one million in sales, and his 2010 ambitious double album, The Guitar Song, received a gold certification.

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.

In 2012, the Alabama native released his fifth studio album, a tribute project to late songwriter Hank Cochran. The GRAMMY-nominated Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran paired him with Willie Nelson, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Ray Price, Elvis Costello, George Strait, Vince Gill and Merle Haggard.

In 2013, The Nashville Scene’s 13th annual Country Music Critics’ Poll named it the year’s best album. (Two years earlier, the same poll named Johnson’s The Guitar Song as the year’s best album, and Johnson himself as best male vocalist, best songwriter and artist of the year.)

Randy Houser’s most recent album, Magnolia, which was released in 2019, features a new approach to his music – a stripped-down, back-to-basics method that keeps Houser’s remarkable voice front and center. This new approach was the guiding force for the 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.”

In 2013, Houser released the triumphant How Country Feels album, which spawned four Top Five singles and followed up with a touring marathon that saw him playing to sold-out arenas on the road with Luke Bryan. Fired Up followed in 2016, a record which, looking back, Houser feels suffered from being rushed.

Listeners got their first taste of Magnolia with the release of “What Whiskey Does,” which Rolling Stone immediately dubbed “a classic tears-and-twang drinking song.” (Though Houser concedes that “Whiskey” was the right choice to introduce the album, he admits that he was pushing the dramatic “No Stone Unturned” as the lead single; “I still think that song is something special,” he says.) He also points to “No Good Place to Cry,” one of the older compositions on the album, as a highlight. “I wrote that about ten years ago… during a terrible time in my life,” he says. “It stands out because I was able to take myself back to that place, and I think you really can feel it.”

The album pushed Houser to new heights as a guitarist; he plays the lead part on many of the tracks. And even recording his vocals, one of Nashville’s most acclaimed singers was more relaxed this time around. “I never felt like I had anything to prove vocally,” he says. “I wanted to serve the songs rather than just show out – to sing them well, but to interpret the lyrics the way I heard them in my head. And it was easy because I was recording my own songs.”

“I’m the one that felt these things,” says Houser. “I wasn’t trying to play a character. This is stuff that came from my soul and my own stories.”

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