This weekend, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum hosted a songwriter round honoring singer-songwriter David Olney. The program included tribute performances by Steve Earle, Mary Gauthier, Jaimee Harris and Jim Lauderdale.
Singer-songwriter Olney, who died in 2020, released more than two dozen albums during his five-decade career as both a solo artist and a member of the Nashville Jug Band and the X-Rays. His songs have been recorded by Kieran Kane, Del McCoury, Linda Ronstadt, Townes Van Zandt and Country Music Hall of Fame member Emmylou Harris. New West Records recently released Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney — a tribute album featuring Earle, Gauthier, Lauderdale, the McCrary Sisters, Buddy Miller, the SteelDrivers, Lucinda Williams and others.
In the early 1980s, he recorded two albums for Rounder Records with The X-Rays. The group appeared on Austin City Limits, opened for major acts, including Elvis Costello, and broke up in 1985.
Olney died of an apparent heart attack during a performance onstage at the 30A Songwriter Festival in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, on January 18, 2020, at the age of seventy-one. He was in the middle of his third song when he stopped, apologized and shut his eyes, according to fellow musician Scott Miller, who was accompanying Olney.
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