WHAT TO KNOW

Veronique Medrano speaks about upcoming Freddy Fender exhibitions and events.Lately, I’ve taken note of how artists are giving credit where they feel it’s due and connecting their work to musical and cultural lineages that were around before them.  

Take Veronique Medrano, a Mexican-American singer and songwriter from Texas. In the 2010s, she began developing a repertoire that combined Tejano and other Mexican regional music styles with country and Americana. One of the many classics she’d play live was the bluesy 1975 Freddy Fender smash “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” number, only she’d worked up her own bright, insistent, cumbia-style version. 

It became a real crowd-pleaser. And the more Medrano learned about Fender’s career – the hits he had across decades and the mark he made as a Mexican-American star – the more importance she placed on educating people about Fender and many other Latin country performers who came before her. How else, she reasoned, would people understand where she fit?  

Medrano even got her masters from the University of North Texas and became a trained historian, advocating for his induction in the Country Music Hall of Fame and assembling exhibits on Fender. Roughly a year ago, she was even brought on as the official archivist of his estate. Her commitment was to “preserv[ing] history the right way, so that somebody can be seen to their fullest and understood as not just kitschy and pandering, as though they’re just singing in Spanish for this and that. Freddy may not have been exactly the first, but he definitely wasn’t the last. 

“You have to understand how impactful he was,” she goes on, “to better understand why Latinos and Mexicanos will always be an integral part of country music. The thing is, there was a face to it.” 

The full Key Changes story also explores how Kacey Musgraves and Gillian Welch are honoring musical traditions and originators they treasure. Dive into it today. Read Key Changes

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On today’s episode of the NashVillager podcast 
with host Nina Cardona 🎙️ 

How did a boy from Belle Meade become a notorious drug runner? An abandoned plane leads to the colorful story of a Nashville man who broke bad before finding God. Plus the local news for April 20, 2026 and grassland restoration. 

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MORE TO KNOW

• Tennessee’s Supreme Court is not sending you texts or emails. The state’s highest court has issued a warning that there’s texting or email scam that claims to be from that court. The messages relate to outstanding parking or toll violations. The message also includes links to a QR code that leads you to a fake website. Chief Justice Jeff Bivins issued a statement that says the state courts do not send text messages or emails out regarding past due tickets. Cybercriminals use these phishing scams to steal sensitive information by masquerading as trustworthy entities. If you do receive one of these scam messages, do not respond to the message and do not clink on links or scan the QR code. Report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. And then delete it.  
   
• Democratic state senators are blasting Republican leadership of Tennessee, namely how few jobs they’ve brought in recent years. Dems are citing newly revised data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics which show Tennessee had 0% job growth last year. Behind that figure is a little nuance. Combining all the jobs added and lost in 2025, Tennessee netted just 1,400 positions. That figure, compared to the previous year’s job number worked out to a teeny-tiny fraction of a percent: four-millionths of 1% to be exact. Originally, the data had painted a much rosier picture of Tennessee’s economy. The revised figures also erased most of the gains seen in 2024.  [The Tennesseean]
   
• Nashville Electric Service wasn’t ready when Winter Storm Fern knocked out power to nearly half of NES customers in January.  In fact, the utility’s emergency plan had only looked at impacts of up to 50,000 customers. The deadly ice storm left more than four times that many without electricity.  That’s one finding of an independent consultant’s initial review released last week. The report, based on NES data, documents, and staff interviews, is not final. It’s also separate from a commission  former Governor Phil Bredesen is chairing to review how NES handled the ice storm. NES says it’s already working on improvements. [Nashville Business Journal]

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