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KORT’s Cortney Tidwell Is Gonna Love You Now: Ray Charles’ “Playboy”

KORT is Lambchop frontman Kurt Wagner and solo singer/songwriter Cortney Tidwell, and with covers album Invariable Heartache (City Slang), the duo has recorded a sort of love letter to its hometown of Nashville and the city’s musical past. Eleven of the LP’s dozen tracks were originally recorded in the ’60s and ’70s for the Music City-based Chart Records (a label with huge familial ties for Tidwell), and the 12th song was cut by Tidwell’s mom, Connie Eaton, in 1975 for ABC Dunhill. And while the heartfelt Invariable Heartache is certainly ensconced in Nashville’s storied musical history, it’s a thoroughly modern statement by two of the town’s brightest hopes for Music City’s future being as fertile as its past. Wagner and Tidwell will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with them.

Tidwell: I just watched a bio on Ray Charles the other night, and what struck me was in addition to the depth of the man’s work, which I revere, it included an aside as to what an avid reader of Playboy he was. This just seems to resonate long after and brought to mind that perhaps this man was indeed the foremost authority on what heartache through great art can produce. Time and time again through his numerous works, this is demonstrated in song and discourse. The mind’s image, of his touching the pages of a product designed to stimulate and titillate visually brings me almost to tears. You can hear it in every note and sigh.