Tag: country

Throwback: Happy 89th Birthday, Glen Campbell!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 89th anniversary of the birth of Glen Campbell.

New Video: Dominque and the Diamonds Share a Patsy Cline-Styled Ballad

Led by Colombian-American frontwoman Dominque Gomez, Los Angeles-based country band Dominique and the Diamonds can trace their origins to back to last year, when the band came together on a whim after Gomez was asked to perform a country set local summertime series, The Grand Ole Echo.

Friends from cosmic country outfit Caravan 222 and rock band Triptides were asked to perform as a backing band for Gomez and over the course of the year gained buzz locally for a sound that channels Linda Ronstadt, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Townes Van Zandt and the Laurel Canyon sound — but with a contemporary feel.

The Los Angeles-based country outfit’s Glenn Brigman-produced debut EP, For a Fool is slated for a June 13, 2025 release. Recorded using a mix of analog and digital equipment in Brigman’s Crestline, CA-based studio, For a Fool EP channels the golden age of classic country with the material touching upon tried-and-true themes of romance, lonesomeness, revenge, drunken playfulness while anchored around the old school song-as-story. And the material sees the band weaving the experiences of the contemporary world, too.

“I write country music and love to sing country songs, but I’ve always associated myself with the Colombian half of my identity more than the white side. My Dad and his immediate family immigrated to the US from Colombia in 1966 and they’d endured so much struggle in the process,” Dominique and the Diamonds’ Dominque Gomez says. “Then, you have my Mom’s side who were small town farmers in Minnesota and Southern trailer park girls. When you look at me, you see a brown girl, and I fucking love that. And when I was younger, I felt like I was forced to fit into a category, but I was too white to be Latina and too Latina to be white. It’s a beautiful thing to have the wisdom now to embrace both and just be me.”

The EP’s first single, EP title track “For a Fool,” is a Patsy Cline-styled ballad of heartbreak, despair and uneasy acceptance anchored around some gorgeous pedal steel and Gomez’s Linda Ronstadt-like vocal. Inspired by the modern “situationship” phenomenon and Gomez’s experiences dating in Los Angeles, the song describes a bitterly common scenario: dealing with a love interest you really dig, who’s an unserious time waster that’s playing with your heart and emotions. And while the song’s narrator is heartbroken, she clearly recognizes her time and her worth, offering a bit of wisdom for anyone who encounters this sort of lover — leave that fool alone before you get played for a fool.

“I was 28, single, and could finally see through these types of guys so clearly,” Gomez says. “I actually started to feel bad for them at a certain point. You’ve got to be real sad deep down to just use a person to satisfy your own loneliness and boredom.”

Directed by the band’s Hamilton Boyce (bass), the accompanying video for “For a Fool” was shot at Bar Flores, a Latina-owned tequila/mezcal bar in Los Angeles’ Echo Park section, known for having predominantly female bartenders of color behind the bar, including them and’s Gomez. And throughout we see Gomez in a series of flashbacks, presumably falling in love — and then in the present, proudly telling off an off-screen love interest.

New Audio: Sarah Lake Shares Ernie Lake’s Nu-Disco Remix of “Soul Shaker”

Lake relocated to Nashville back in 2017. And since then she has released music that has been featured on Tidal, Apple Music and a variety of Spotify playlists. As a songwriter, the Canadian-born and now-Nashville-based artist has written songs for The Voice Season 13 finalist Moriah Formica, Ms. America Betty Cantrell — and Reba McEntire took her song “Amen” into the studio in 2018.

And although as a songwriter, she continues to write material across a range of formats and styles, as an artist, Lake’s work has firmly in the realm of Americana/folk.

Her latest songs “Devil in My Head” and Messy” have been featured on Nashville-based radio station Lightning 100. “Missing Home” has been added to several Apple Music playlists. And the video for “Wide Eyed Girl” was added to CMT online.

Released earlier this year, the Everette and Lake cowritten “Soul Shaker” is a hook-driven and anthemic bit of country pop — or perhaps pop country? — that captures the swooning sensation of love with a folksy and lived-in earnestness. Recently, Ernie Lake, who remixed Pink‘s “Get The Party Started” and Taylor Swift’s “Willow” among a lengthy list of others, remixed “Soul Shaker,” turning the track into a summery, Stevie Nicks “Stand Back”-meets disco heyday-like bop featuring wah-wah pedaled funk guitar, soaring and cinematic bursts of strings, conga, and a relentless funky groove — all of which seem to serve and emphasize Lake’s easy-going soulful delivery.

Lake hopes that the song will take listeners to a happy place and back to simpler times of roller skating rinks and dance floors.