Pocketful of 90s

"It would be painful, just knowing what we know now after being in the business for eight years — it would be hard to forfeit that, even for the price [of] whatever may be on the other side of the door. We’ve built this team, from booking agents to management and our business manager. It’s like family." 

(Charlie Muncaster [Muscadine Bloodline] / billboard.com, Februar 27, 2023)

If you are currently looking for an entry on Muscadine Bloodline on Wikipedia, you will come up empty-handed. For even if the music duo from Alabama has been making music in Nashville for nearly 10 years by now, it obviously has not been enough to get them one yet. Even though their music cataloge has by now racked up close to 180 mio. streams on Spotify alone.

It follows the fact, that they also have not been signed by a big Nashville label. A circumstance however, that both artists seem to worry less and less about. Instead they have earned themselves such confidence that they have been starting to decline first requests of interest from the industry. "We’re flattered by that, but it’s just not the right thing for us at this point", they insisted when talking to Billboard Magazine. "We want to keep our team small and take care of those people well."

On February 24, 2023 they self-released their most ambitious project to date. The album is titled "Teenage Dixie" and holds 15 self-written tracks, plus a short introduction for 'Devil Died in Dixie', a song Gary Stanton wrote as a sequel to the legendary 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia' by the Charlie Daniels Band from 1979.

Lawrence Specker of Alabama Life & Culture summarize the new project from Muscadine Bloodline by saying: "You get 16 tracks of raucous, rowdy, rough-around-the-edges guitar-driven country that is written for people who are ready to have a good time right now."

Once again collectively produced with Ryan Youmans, the two musicians tell their stories over mostly unabashedly blustering guitars and drums, conveying authentic live atmosphere with indications from bluegrass all the way to the blues. "We finally found what we’re supposed to be doing sonically and what we’re trying to say", says primary songwriter Gary Stanton.

Although their single 'Me On You' from last year temporarily appeared on the charts, the music of Muscadine Bloodline reminds one more of Zach Bryan than of Luke Bryan. In other words, it does not sound like the current typical mainstream country radio hit. A fact, that the duo seems to have taken as a motivator for the song 'Pocketful of 90's Country, which lets them comment: There's a lot of folks like me that gave up on the radio, they been wearing out the CDs of the solid country gold.

In accordance with the song's title, it lets them bring up names of well known country stars from the 1990s (such as Brooks & Dunn, Tracy Lawrence, Sammy Kershaw and John Michael Montgomery). But even though the sursprise-ending of the entertaining video for the song lets them stress again, that Muscadine Bloodline (for the time being) does not care for a major label deal, in the end it still casts a longing look at radio and its hits, that so often remain life-long loving memories for people all over the world.