So once again Last Train Home was passed over by the Grammy nominating committee. Can you believe it?? "Wait'll next year!" the crowds cry.
But hold on: The word is out from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (the folks who put on the Grammies) that Lloyd Green was just nominated for a Grammy! And what's that to you? Listen up: Lloyd Green is perhaps the world's greatest pedal steel player (it's an ongoing debate in places like the "Steel Guitar Forum"), and LTH singer Eric Brace (okay, i confess, that's me, the guy typing this...) had the great good fortune a few months ago to make a record with Lloyd Green. It's called "You Don't Have To Like Them Both" and it's a duo CD from "Eric Brace & Peter Cooper" and you can find it at www.redbeetrecords.com starting Monday Dec. 8. It's also available from CDBaby right now! Get it for the stockings of all your friends. Seriously. If only for the steel playing of Lloyd Green (there's more reasons, but that's the one I'm talking about right now...)

But Lloyd isn't nominated for this record, he's nominated for a track on the most recent Jerry Douglas record... the song is called "Two Small Cars in Rome," and it's nominated for "Best Country Instrumental." J.Douglas says he wrote it "expressly as a setting in which to conduct an instrumental conversation with the esteemed Lloyd Green."
When Jerry was the Artist-In-Residence at the Country Music Hall of Fame here in Nashville, he gave a series of performances, and at the first one he invited Lloyd to join his band on stage and play "Two Small Cars in Rome." (It was the best part of the night, says me.)
As he introduced Lloyd, Douglas said: "As far as I'm concerned, he's the best steel player that ever lived, Douglas said. When I was playing with the Whites, I would really study every move Lloyd Green made, on all those Don Williams songs, and every record by Charley Pride, Warner Mack, all those things. I would listen to how he phrased, and how he framed-in the singer and would make the singer better every time. I think Lloyd Green had a lot to do with shaping country music." He's got that right.

So let's wish Lloyd luck and cross our fingers on Grammy night.