By Rick Kaempfer
RAMBLIN' MAN
I
n 2014, country music overtook Top 40 as
the top radio music format in the country, and that country music audience is
younger than ever. One person who isn't
surprised by that development is US-99's
(WUSN-Chicago) morning man Ramblin'
Ray Stevens.
"When you go to our concerts and look
around you see how young the crowds are,"
he says. "Country music is as cutting edge
as any music these days. You can intertwine
a lot of our music with pop music right now,
and you could hardly tell the difference.
There's a lot of melding now. The guys coming out of Nashville these days aren't necessarily guys that grew up listening to the
Grand Ol' Opry. They're young kids who
have always known computers and the
internet, and they listen to hip hop and rap
something else. I never forget what got me
here. And to think I now have a chance to do
what the guys I loved – Brandmeier and
[Steve] Dahl and Bob Collins and Spike
O'Dell – did, and that people are still giving
me a