January will be this blog’s 13th birthday. Obviously, lots of things have changed since 2011 and my life is no exception! Since launching Rainbow Rodeo earlier this year, I’ve found it’s just not possible to update both sites daily. But, with so many Americana outlets ceasing to exist or cutting their budget, I feel a sense of responsibility to continue my work here.
(But a sign of another amazing change — there are so many queer country and Americana artists now that it is possible to have enough news and music to update Rainbow Rodeo daily!)
So once again, it’s time to reinvent things here a little bit. Podcast editing is so much easier than when Von and I were doing it, but I don’t think I can commit to doing one every week. So, I’m bringing the playlists back. With the upcoming changes to Spotify, independent artists need all the support they can get on that platform — and who knows what’s going to happen to Bandcamp? I’ll make a mirror list on Tidal, too, of course, but if it’s like my Rainbow Rodeo playlists, there’s just not that many people using Tidal for that kind of thing.
More importantly, this blog is one of many that feeds HypeMachine. 13 years in, I don’t know what that is or why Adobe & Teardrops was ever selected, but HypeMachine aggregates playlists and posts. Songs with a lot of posts in HypeMachine outlets get posted to their Spotify playlist, which presumably gives them more of a shot of being included in official playlists. In a funny twist of fate, being listed on HypeMachine has given Adobe & Teardrops more attention than it probably should, and HypeMachine’s parent company also owns The Boot, a country and Americana site for whom I did some of my best writing before we were all purged in the Great Media Layoff earlier this year.
If you’re an artist who’s been waiting since, like, September 2022 for me to review your album, you’re going to find it up there within the next few months, and you’ll also see a brief review of your album. I wish I had the capacity to write an album review a day — or even two or three — but I’ve been trying since I finished grad school in August to do it that way and, well, it’s just no happening.
Throughout the week, I’ll post about each artist on the playlist individually, so everyone will get a chance to shine. I will also continue posting Q&As, premieres, and Hey! Listen columns as those opportunities arise. And I’m sure I will come across some albums that move me enough to spend a lot of extra time with them.
So I’ll see you at this bat-time, in this bat-place, for a roundup of everything that’s coming out today (the 10th) and the 17th — there’s a bunch of great music coming and I hope you’ll enjoy it with me, and I’m grateful for all the time you’ve spent with me.