Rolling Country 2016

Starting this with one of the comments which will have been blog-linked from the Rolling C post of my Nashville Scene ballot (when the Scene's annual round-up is published):

Elana James, Black Beauty: Hot Club of Cowtown’s fiddling chanteuse brings the back-and-forth of both principal instruments to this second solo set’s selection, sequence and sound of songs, which sometimes veer from Hot Club-ready, steamy and starlit vintage visions, into contemporary covers and originals, often powered by serious playfulness (careful if ye be wishing for truly elfin charms). She wraps “The One Who Loves You More” and the bone(s?) of contention in her own dream, which is just passing through, floating into place, like a cape and/or a sheet. Who else could or would glide and ricochet directly from a cover of double entendre chestnut “Telephone Man” to the musical setting for “Hey Beautiful: Last Letter From Iraq (US Army Staff Sgt. Juan Campos),” in which the soldier deftly spices understatement into intimate reserve, where lines and spaces can be lit just so. There’s also a rippling version of Hunter-Garcia’s sneaky “Ripple,” for instance, along with an occasional reminder of Hot Club’s tendency to random selection, though pretty sure they wouldn’t majority-vote for “Hobo’s Lullaby.” Her self-titled debut might be the solo EJ to start with; it’s concisely covered here: http://www.villagevoice.com/music/a-dylan-co-conspirator-swings-out-of-the-past-6425494

I'll be doing this MUCH different this year, but if you want to follow along:
ILM's Rolling Country Thread 2016

Forks, how different is MUCH different? Any details?
(My first grand plan of 2016 is to follow your rolling playlists avidly, so yeah, I'm a bit concerned atm, lol)

ha, sorry. my plan is to update each playlist at or around the start of each month with everything that's been posted prior. So maybe push your grand plan back till early February? Sorry if that mucks up your resolutions but the past year of doing this triggered some serious OCD behavior and I need to dial it back.

On the other hand (and I'll post a thread on this shortly), I have my own ridiculous grand plan to listen to an obscene 7k playlist of 2015 music culled from all the last year's threads and I'd like some company with that... want to join?

Ha ha, I'll certainly do my best. Can't promise that I'll follow through, but I'll try.

cool; i'm still finishing compiling last years playlists so will post when that list is ready and starting to be cleaned... I started in late December and am already up to Agent Sasco in my alphabetical artist order so that's like 120 songs down.

My SECOND grand plan is to contribute more to these lists and at the very least enough to get a rolling soca thread going for 2016. If you would care to playlist that it would make my year.

absolutely!

Great!

New Trace Adkins song, his first after his second rehab stint. It is called... "Jesus and Jones."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD3IVvPJUYs

I like that one a lot - is "jones" common slang?

RIP RED

http://theboot.com/red-simpson-dead-dies/

Red Simpson, a pioneer of the “Bakersfield sound” and an icon in the sub-genre of country trucking songs, has died unexpectedly. He was 81.
According to the Bakersfield Californian, Simpson had suffered a heart attack on Dec. 18, after returning from a tour. Family friend Gene Thome tells the paper, “He seemed to be doing better,” but on Friday night (Jan. 8), Simpson went into cardiac arrest and could not be revived

Henley's surprisingly good Cass County incl. cover of Tift Merrit's "Bramble Rose," title song of her first alb, now reissued:

Originally released in 2002, Tift Merritt’s debut album, Bramble Rose, was named one of the year’s best by The New Yorker and garnered rave reviews worldwide. Fourteen years later, and long out-of-print, Yep Roc Records will reissue a limited edition, remastered, vinyl-only LP February 19. Pre-order here.

Don Henley recalls of its title track, “I’d wanted to record that song ever since I heard it”, before releasing the song on his 2015 album Cass County (featuring guest vocalists Miranda Lambert and Mick Jagger).

http://yeproc.11spot.com/media/catalog/product/cache/12/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/t/i/tiftmerritt_bramblerose_ri_cover.jpg

Taking a rare moment to reflect on the album, Tift and her band will perform Bramble Rose in its entirety in a special, one-night only performance at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro February 26. A select number of pre-sale tickets for the show will include signed vinyl. Produced by Ethan Johns, Bramble Rose features 11 original compositions and was recorded with her longtime band.

Mountain Stage
A big thanks to NPR Mountain Stage for including Tift's appearance in Grand Marais, MN as part of their 'favorite performances of 2015' list! You can listen to the performance here: http://wvpublic.org/post/mountain-stages-favorite-performances-2015

Sundance ASCAP Music Cafe
Next week, Tift heads to beautiful Park City, Utah for Sundance Film Festival. If you're in town, stop by the ASCAP Music Cafe to catch her and Eric playing some new tunes, January 23rd & 24th.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61OmaUcdO4L.jpg

Willie performs classic songs written by George and Ira Gershwin on his brand new album 'Summertime,’ available February 26.

1. "But Not for Me" by Willie Nelson
2. "Somebody Loves Me" by Willie Nelson
3. "Someone to Watch Over Me" by Willie Nelson
4. "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" by Willie Nelson feat. Cyndi Lauper
5. "It Ain't Necessarily So" by Willie Nelson
6. "I Got Rhythm" by Willie Nelson
7. "Love is Here to Stay" by Willie Nelson
8. "They All Laughed" by Willie Nelson
9. "Embraceable You" by Willie Nelson feat. Sheryl Crow
10. "They Can't Take That Away from Me" by Willie Nelson
11. "Summertime" by Willie Nelson
Watch the new video:
http://www.vevo.com/watch/USSM21502502?syndicationid=bb8a16ab-1279-4f17-969b-1dba5eb60eda&shortlink=2n4TlL&country=US

So the minor key melody of "Summertime" can seem like depths of irony waiting in the creek, depending on your circumstances.

Which reminds me

https://light-in-the-attic.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/release_image/18153/image/large_550_tmp_2F1451500388861-fl5dfbh97o1lwhfr-708c17df57241f53de3b90f0bde7b4e2_2F0934334403988.jpg

more info, audio here:
http://lightintheattic.net/releases/2203-hillbillies-in-hell-country-music-s-tormented-testament-1952-1974

4. "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" by Willie Nelson feat. Cyndi Lauper

Lauper has a country album due out later his year, fwiw. I adore her generally, but I thought she sounded terrible on her traditional blues album from a few years back. Will be curious to see if she fares any better in a country milieu.

yup this Nelson album has me v interested

same here! Willie's gershwin prize ceremony is being broadcast on pbs tomorrow night; set yer dvrs
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/willie-nelson-sings-theres-room-for-everyone-in-america/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjT5EKskTYY

^new Miranda, Brandy Clark, Jamey Johnson

looks cool!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/meet-the-brothers-osborne-the-embodiment-of-country-musics-evolution/2016/01/20/b8d0ffda-b950-11e5-99f3-184bc379b12d_story.html

Washington Post writer and Xchuckx E like this Maryland duo who work and write with Nashville songwriters and have had their long-delayed album finally released

the Brothers Osborne find themselves in the unlikely spot of being at the forefront of a shift in country music. John and TJ are part of the progressive Nashville clique that also includes the much-lauded Kacey Musgraves and up-and-coming Texas singer Maren Morris. They’re all on a group text chain — one that TJ jokes would be very incriminating if ever released — along with other young singer-songwriters.

“We used to all hang out before we had s--- going on, so it’s the only way we can keep in touch,” TJ said.

cross-posting brandy clark's fantastic new single here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9lDtvaGQio

the hair metal signifiers threw me on the first listen but the lyrics pull this out of the fire in a big way imo
"if you want the girl next door /than GO next door" is a fucking awesome line

WHAT'S WRONG WITH HAIR METAL SIGNIFIERS???

I'm all for the return of Lita Ford.

just seemed incongruous and not quite in line with what i'm looking for out of her i guess. but you're right, nothing inherently wrong.

xpost speaking of Willie; here's some bits from his latest newsletter:

To start, Willie wanted to clear some things up since he's been hearing/seeing some things from fans. He has NOT been sending any personal emails, Facebook/Twitter private messages, or any other messages through social accounts asking for money, giving money away, or anything that sounds too good to be true. You should report those pages or you can reply to this email with a link to their profile so we can take care of it. He only posts to his official social pages publicly and this newsletter.

Willie loves his fans and does not appreciate these scammers!

In more exciting news...a new show date was announced, Willie and others will be honoring Kris Kristofferson, and he is featured in some new music!

New Show Date Announced
A new show date was just announced, 3/8/16 at Sharon L. Morse Performing Arts Center in The Villages, FL. Tickets go on sale to the public on Wednesday, January 27th.

Premium Packages and presale tickets for Club Luck members are available starting tomorrow, January 23rd at 10am ET! Not a Club Luck member? You can join today: fanclub.willienelson.com

Premium package includes:
A Prime Seat Location* to the show (most seats are located within First 10 Rows!)
An Exclusively Designed T-Shirt
An Exclusively Designed Picnic Blanket
An Exclusively Designed Canvas Tote Bag
An Exclusively Designed Trigger Lapel Pin
A Red Willie Nelson Bandana
An Exclusive Keepsake Laminate
A One Year Membership to the Official Club Luck Fan Club
A Digital Download of the Live Show you attend**
*Unless the show is General Admission
**There are some cases where the live show download for your show is not available, in those cases you can choose any other Live Willie show available.

Honoring Kris Kristofferrson

Willie and others will come together for 'Life & Songs of Kris Kristofferson' a concert honoring Kris. Tickets are available tomorrow at 10am CT, get details below.
Get Details Here

I Long to See You

Charles Lloyd & The Marvels new album is out now. It features Willie, Norah Jones, and Bill Frisell.

Get your copy today!
is KK fixing to check out? That's what tribute concerts to the living often mean, in this neck of the woods (don't download the John Hartford trib; it was atypically dire, considering the line-up, and he was there, but with bigger things on his mind).
A local DJ spun Charles Lloyd's groovy 60s hit Forest Flower in its entirety last night---he became something of a Fillmore fixture for a while, I think, but has long since established himself as a quality-over-quantity guy, who goes away when he isn't feeling it. Nelson's made some fun albums with the post-pretentious Wynton Marsalis. Norah Jones is a cool, blue light (not too lite, or it doesn't matter)refreshment on a couple of 'em too. Frisell may or may not add too much of a snooze factor (bringing out NJ's "Snorah" tendencies?), but he's good sometimes, and I'd to hear his humming,tilting, panning-for-ambience guitar next to Nelson's jagged Django interjections.

Ho! Dunno why this particular track should do *this* well, but it's good and so is album:

THOMAS RHETT’S “DIE A HAPPY MAN" MARKS FIRST SIX-WEEK NO. ONE
ON THE BILLBOARD COUNTRY AIRPLAY CHART SINCE
TAYLOR SWIFT’S “OUR SONG” IN 2008

The PLATINUM Hit Consistently Maintains Position As Best-Selling Country Track
and Tops Billboard’s Hot Country Songs Chart for 11th Week

NASHVILLE, TN – Jan. 25, 2016 – Multi-PLATINUM singer/songwriter Thomas Rhett declares the top spot once again on the Billboard Country Airplay chart this week as his megahit “Die A Happy Man" spends its sixth consecutive week at No. One. The last artist to hold the same reign over the chart was Taylor Swift exactly eight years ago with “Our Song.”

"I seriously can't believe this song has spent six weeks at No. one,” said Thomas Rhett. "When you put a song out there as personal as this, you hope it connects and resonates with people. But I could never have imagined it would connect like this! And to mirror an achievement not seen since Taylor Swift - someone I really respect as a songwriter, performer and entertainer - is just mind blowing."

“The biggest country song in the nation right now" (Omaha World-Herald) continues to serve as the best-selling country digital track and simultaneously tops Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart for an 11th week. Thomas Rhett continues to bring his signature "sizzling fusion of soul, funk, R&B and country as his own" (Rolling Stone) to his live show as direct support for Jason Aldean’s WE WERE HERE 2016 TOUR, where he has proven he knows “how to please a full house” (City County Observer). For more information and for a full list of upcoming tour dates, visit www.thomasrhett.com.

I really enjoyed a mid-60s paperback, Paths In The Unknown: The Best of Soviet Science Fiction, which had 0 editorial & translator credits (intro by noteworthy American SF anthologist-author Judith Merrill, who is amazed by short-term quality leap in Soviet SF as represented here, but she's frustrated by some of the translations, which I had no prob with, as a total ignoramus). I talked about several of these stories on the older (b. 2011) Rolling Science Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative etc. Also check out

Damn, wrong thread, wrong board, obv! Sorry!

That Brothers Osborne album is pretty good.

Amazed nobody has linked to the (seemingly belated) Nashville Scene poll that came out today yet:

http://m.nashvillescene.com/nashville/results-of-the-2015-nashville-scene-country-music-critics-poll/Content?oid=6325160

And my own ballot, for old times' sake (though I really only care about the first two categories):

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2015:
1. Eric Church – Mr. Misunderstood (EMI Nashville)
2. Toby Keith – 35 MPH Town (Show Dog)
3. Cam -- Untamed (Arista Nashville)
4. Clint Black – On Purpose (Thirty Tigers/Black Top)
5. Kacey Musgraves – Pageant Material (Mercury Nashville)
6. Maddie & Tae – Start Here (Dot)
7. Thomas Rhett – Tangled Up (Valory Music Co.)
8. Brett Eldredge – Illinois (Atlantic)
9. The Mavericks – Mono (Valory Music Co.)
10. Reba McEntire – Love Somebody (Starstruck)

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2015:
1. Haley Georgia - Ridiculous
2. Brothers Osborne – Stay A Little Longer (Extended Version)
3. Blackberry Smoke – Too High
4. Laura Denisse – Sigo Enamorada
5. Cam – My Mistake
6. Eric Church – Like A Wrecking Ball
7. Miranda Lambert - Little Red Wagon
8. Beseech – Highwayman
9. Thomas Rhett – Crash And Burn
10. Lee Brice – Drinking Class

TOP (ONE) COUNTRY REISSUE OF 2015:
1. Dr. John – The Atco/Atlantic Singles 1968-1974 (Omnivore)
COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2015:
1. Toby Keith
2. Eric Church
3. Thomas Rhett
COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2015:
1. Cam
2. Haley Georgia
3. Reba McEntire

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2015:
1. Eric Church
2. Toby Keith
3. Shane McAnally
COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2015:
1. Maddie & Tae
2. The Mavericks
3. Blackberry Smoke
COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2015:
1. Cam
2. Haley Georgia
3. Brothers Osborne
COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2015:
1. Eric Church
2. Toby Keith
3. Cam

Anyway, I'm sure this is a glass half-full or half-empty thing (there are obviously a lot of things I like on there, and half of my singles at least made the singles list), but most of the winning album list looks like a No Depression list to me, and inasmuch as I care, I find it kind of...depressing. I have voted for a few of those artists before: Corb Lund in 2014, Ashley Monroe in 2013, Turnpike Troubadours in 2012. But I thought all of those albums were really disappointing; couldn't even get through the Lund or Troubadours.

Yep. Thinking their are some critics who would have voted for non-No Depression stuff who did not participate. Ugh, Chris Stapleton album winner and top male vocalist. Too early 70s barband generic on some cuts for me.

there

Haven't heard Geoff Himes fave from last year:

By contrast, consider James McMurtry's Complicated Game, which to my ears was last year's best album in any genre, perhaps the best album of the decade thus far. It did respectably in the poll, finishing at No. 8 in the Best Albums voting and earning McMurtry the No. 3 slot in the Best Songwriters category. But the record never found a large audience, and thus it remained an individual experience rather than a social one. As a result, even its greatest admirers heard it in an isolated manner quite different from the way we heard the Stapleton and Isbell albums.

I listened one and it didn't grab me. I'm enough of a fan to go back again based on that blurb.

Confused by Ashley Monroe not getting a top 10 spot

I forgot to vote -- first time that's happened -- but I would've boosted the Alan Jackson album.

Although I liked a few tracks,Complicated Game is not up to McMurtry's usual. It's mostly kneejerk negativity, monotonous despite the studied lyrics, delivered in a petulant, quivering snarl. Minority report, maybe: along with Himes, xgau thinks it's one of his best, if not his best ever.

Here's my ballot---also posted, with comments, a lot of 'em based on RC 2015 posts, here:http://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2016/01/marinade-stampede-2015-country-etc.html

just in the order they come to mind (if this were Pazz & Jop, I’d give all Top 10 albums 10 points each)

Best Country Albums of 2015:

1. Cam: Untamed
2. Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell: The Travelling Kind
3. Alan Jackson: Angels and Alcohol
4. Ashley Monroe: The Blade
5. Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard:Django and Jimmie
6. Ryan Culwell: Flatlands
7. Lindi Ortega: Faded Gloryville
8. Gretchen Peters: Blackbirds
9. Shelby Lynn:I Can’t Imagine
10.Thomas Rhett:Tangled Up

Hon. Mentions:
Dwight Yoakam: Second Hand Heart, Chris Stapleton: Traveller, Don Henley: Cass County Deluxe Edition, Donnie Fritts, Oh My Goodness, Allison Moorer: Down To Believing

About Half Good (40-60%, incl x % of this song, y % of that):
Tim McGraw: Damn Country Music, Eric Church: Mr. Misunderstood, Toby Keith: 35 MPH Town, Jason Boland & the Stragglers: Squelch, Striking Matches: Nothing But The Silence

Less Than Half Good (in effect if not percentages)(ditto About Half Good, in some cases):
Old Dominion: Meat and Candy, Kinky Friedman: The Loneliest Man I Ever Met,
Kacey Musgraves: Pageant Material, Dave Rawlings Machine: Nashville Obsolete, Ryan Bingham, Fear and Saturday Night

Countryoid/Americana/Related:
1. Patty Griffin: Servant of Love
2. Zane Campbell: s/t
3. Rhiannon Giddens: Tomorrow Is My Turn
4. Whitney Rose: Heartbreaker of the Year
5. Bob Dylan: Shadows In The Night
6. Jason Isbell: Something More Than Free
7. Iris DeMent: The Trackless Woods
8. Brandi Carlile: The Firewatcher’s Daughter
9. Mavericks: Mono
10. Elana James:Black Beauty

Hon. Mention:
Tami Neilson: Don’t Be Afraid, Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin: Lost Time

Reissues:
Roscoe Holcomb: San Diego State Folk Festival 1972
Legends of Old-Time Music: 50 Years of County Records
Buck Owens & Buckaroos: Buck ‘Em! Vol. 2---The Music of Buck Owens (1967-1975)

Hon. Mentions: Joe Bussard Presents The Year of Jublio---78 RPM Recordings of Songs From The Civil War, The Winding Stream: The Carters. The Cashes and the Course of Country Music, Vince Matthews and Jim Casey: Kingston Springs Suite
Jimmy Rabbit and Renegade: The Texas Album
Related: Kentucky Headhunters with Johnnie Johnson:Meet Me In Bluesland,
Rough Guide To Country Blues, Rough Guide To Blues Songsters

Best New Artists:
Cam
Chris Stapleton

confused by Ashley Monroe not getting a Top Ten spot

In the Scene poll? The Blade is # 3.

Just Xchuckx and Dow's list are spelled out here. The Scene poll is at the link

Ah took xhuxx's list as the poll results

yeah that threw me off at first too, like 'wow toby keith is still that well regarded?'

Maren Morris, mentioned upthread in the Brothers Osborne article, is blowing up with the single "My Church" right now but the whole EP she released in November is pretty good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enEZjjk77Nk

playlist is up to date with the thread. back in a month.

ILM's Rolling Country Thread 2016 Spotify Playlist

very psyched for the new mary chapin carpenter record http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/hear-mary-chapin-carpenters-incisive-something-tamed-something-wild-20160203

Not familiar with her work, could you recommend me something that will get me psyched as well?

Come On Come On was her breakout album; I'd start there. That was just a huge singles-generating album for country radio in the early 90s, which seems kinda flukey now. Almost immediately after that, she fell off country radio completely and into more of the Lucinda Williams/Americana-type vein. (She covered Lucinda's "Passionate Kisses" on Come On Come On.)

Incidentally, I read a while back that Dave Cobb -- who produced MCC's latest and seems to be the King Midas of this little corner of the musical world -- identified Sheryl Crow (who also happened to have an album called "C'mon, C'mon") as the artist for whom he'd most like to produce. Surprised that isn't happening as we speak (to my knowledge).

Listening to Come On Come On in the office now, good stuff and I am now also looking forward to the new album!

pretty into the brothers osborne album!

yeah Bros. Osborne's "Pawn Shop" sounds like NOW THAT'S MUSIC Fat Possum Edition in a really awesome way

The seven year gap between albums hadn't registered ('rithmatic makes me sick):

http://d31hzlhk6di2h5.cloudfront.net/20160205/94/de/7c/c7/d6ab59a728f4886aa5fb972f_440x375.jpg

Lee Ann Womack Goes To The West Coast--
2nd Wave of GRAMMY Nominations, Tour Kicks Off in LA 2/17

(Nashville, TN) — February 5, 2016 — With The Way I’m Livin’ receiving a second wave of GRAMMY nominations – 2015’s Best Country Album nod is followed by 2016’s Best Solo Country Vocal Performance and Best Country Song for Hayes Carll’s “Chances Are” – Lee Ann Womack embarks on a West Coast tour, starting February 17th at the Roxy on Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip.
“We have had such a good year, and such an amazing time with this album,” says the woman “who sounds as if she’s making up for lost time,” according to The Wall Street Journal. “We’ve gone places I’ve never been – MerleFest, the Emmylou Harris Tribute Show in D.C. singing ‘Pancho & Lefty’ with Steve Earle, PBS specials with the Fairfield Four and McCrary Sisters. It proves this kind of music does have a place. And before I start working on another record, I wanted one more chance to play these songs for people. As long as I’m going to the GRAMMYs, I figured what better time to play some dates to real music lovers.”
Kicking off GRAMMY week, Womack will be part of the Americana Music Association’s annual show at the Troubadour on Feb 13, and will attend the GRAMMY Awards on Feb. 15. After the Feb. 17 Roxy show, Womack will hit the road, with stops at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, CA Feb 18-19, the Chandler Center for the Performing Arts in Chandler, AZ Feb 21, the Belly Up in Solana Beach, CA Feb 22, Great American Music Hall in San Francisco Feb 25, the Win River Casino in Redding, CA Feb 26 and the Coyote Valley Casino in Redwood Valley, CA on Feb. 27.
“We have Luke Bulla in the band this year, and the guys have really taken this music to a whole other place,” the 6-time CMA and GRAMMY Award-winner marvels. “This is a show for people who truly love music, and love the way great players can explore a song right there before your eyes. Every night, to me, is a miracle, and I love that I get to be a part of it – and watch these songs unfold.”
For Lee Ann Womack’s The Way I’m Livin’, an album seven years in the coming, it was a work of love, courage and putting the music first. With a Country Album of the Year nomination in 2015, the little record that could has brought the progressive hard country chanteuse two more 2016 Grammy nominations: Womack for Best Country Solo Performance and Hayes Carll for Best Country Song, both for “Chances Are.”
The Way I’m Livin’ also scored Womack a 2015 Americana Music Association Album of the Year nomination, as well as her first Artist of the Year nod. In addition she received what many considered a surprise 2015 Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year nomination and a pair of CMT Video Music Awards nods for Female Video for “The Way I’m Livin’” and Performance for “Crossroads” with John Legend.
Following her heart turned out to be a good thing. USA Today gave The Way I'm Livin' a rare five star (out of five) review, while Rolling Stone offered Livin’ “feels like something Merle Haggard or Waylon Jennings would have crafted back in the Seventies,” SPIN called it “the best of her career” and Garden & Gun proclaimed, “Nashville is filled with artists making ‘the record they were born to make.’ With Livin’, Womack is one of the few who actually deliver.”
Lee Ann Womack
The Way I’m Livin’ West Coast Tour

Feb. 13 The Troubadour* Los Angeles, CA
Feb. 17 The Roxy Los Angeles, CA
Feb. 19 The Coach House San Juan Capistrano, CA
Feb. 21 Chandler Performing Arts Chandler, AZ
Feb. 22 The Belly Up Solana Beach, CA
Feb. 25 Great American Music Hall San Francisco, CA
Feb. 26 Win River Casino Redding, CA
Feb. 27 Coyote Valley Casino Redwood Valley, CA
* part of the Americana Music Association Pre-GRAMMY Salute

Self-titled debut of Wynnona And The Big Noise feat. some (not too much) writing and performance input from Americana stars, maybe all younger than her--she's--fffifty! Fifty, freakin ye-ahs ol-l-l-d, like Molly Shannon's SNL character, which means yes, she can *kick*, and she also *stomps all over* the first half, and so does the band (despite tasty licks and other touches at times), and (although I do like "You Make My Heart Beat Too Fast," for inst) things get kinda ponderous and awkward at times, what my Granny would call "bundlesome." But in the second half, or anyway starting with "Jesus and The Jukebox" (they both keep her goin' "carryin' the cross down to the bar" and were the same to her 'til very recently), she and the production find space to focus and build on and around the tunes, not trying to ornament as much as add a little atmospheric vividness to the details and nuances. This version of the Poco-era Timothy B. Schmit ballad "I Can See Everything" does get a tad snoozy, but makes me want to listen to early 70s Poco (with a big coffee). Most of the material seems like it's from today's Nashville and Memphis:
http://www.npr.org/2016/02/03/465278085/first-listen-wynonna-the-big-noise-wynonna-the-big-noise

Carrie Rodriguez, Lola: songs in English, Spanish, Spanglish, combining country, conjunto, ranchera, other, in shifting shades and tones of saudade (doesn't always play her fiddle, but it def informs her writing and arranging)--also considerable vitality, but she's among the young and restless still, more than ever, really. "T dreamed I was Lola Beltran, and you were Javier Solis" could be blissed out, but it's in a foreboding minor key, like she knows how it will be when she wakes up. How sad 'n' sexy songs can change when you're living them. But she's proceeding, and ready to school Nashville on latina blends, even wants to "tell country where to stick the 'e'." Is this a drug song?
http://www.npr.org/2016/02/10/465752516/first-listen-carrie-rodriguez-lola

Playlist is updated.

ILM's Rolling Country Thread 2016

Kacey Musgraves nicely does Miguel's "Waves" with him, on a new Miguel "Waves" remix ep

wow, file under "did not see that coming"

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/arts/music/loretta-lynn-mines-a-legacy-of-heartaches-and-high-notes.html?_r=0

Still busy recording at 83. Don't mess with her either--article mentions her punch directed at her too drunk husband many years back.

Yeah, I heard her version of "These Boots Are Made For Walking" on American Routes last night: nailed it.

Article is pretty interesting. Lynn has a bunch of legal pads in a safe with scribbled ideas for lyrics on them. She is intending to do a bunch of recordings as her legacy. But I don't think she's gonna do a version of Miguel's "Waves." But who knows.

Reasonably appealing, fair-minded presentation on the face of it (WH sometimes leaves stuff out, but he did note "Kurt Cobain's beloved 'In The Pines,' " cos yeah that's where Leadbelly got it):
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/loretta-lynn-full-circle-20160222

Well gosh, wasn't expecting this much of a spark. Other than Sheila Jordan, can't think of an octogenarian who sounds this youthful, though never callow, o' course. So into it she even tends to rush the beat on some ballads, which is fine by me--well, mainly notice it on "Secret Love," which is appropriate: "My secret love's no secret any more," awright. Never hasty, and always very up front: last night she lay in a warm bed with her husband and baby, now she's lying on the cold cold ground beside her Blackjack Davy, not sounding rowdy, but ready for the next chapter, w no regrets (so far). More about love/martial conflicts, warnings and logged crashes, some other perspectives. Good duet with Willie as finale. Still prefer Van Lear Rose for new original songs, but this has several chestnuts I hadn't heard. Good stuff.
http://www.npr.org/2016/02/25/467670269/first-listen-loretta-lynn-full-circle

Weird! Had no idee these guys were so popular. Guests and esp. quote about just wanting to do songs meant a lot to 'em growing up, maybe regardless of genre/taxonomic etc., and not insisting on writing/co-writing everything, all incline me towards checking it out---from TheBoot:
The Randy Rogers Band are celebrating a musical milestone: The band has now sold more than one million albums since the beginning of their career.
The milestone is a big one for the independent band, which has earned five consecutive No. 1 albums on the iTunes Country Albums Chart. Their most recent record, Nothing Shines Like Neon, debuted at No. 2 on the iTunes All-Genre Chart and inside the Top 10 on the Billboard 200. The Randy Rogers Band have maintained their success since forming in 2000 without much radio play thanks in part to their loyal fan base, which packs auditoriums across the country to hear the group perform live.
The band’s reputation for their commitment to traditional country music brought a number of famous friends to the studio for Nothing Shines Like Neon, including Alison Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Jamey Johnson and Jerry Jeff Walker.
“It’s country,” lead singer Randy Rogers tells The Boot of the project. “It’s a record that maybe focuses on the stuff we were brought up listening to, those records that we liked, all of us, as kids. (Guitarist) Geoff (Hill) wasn’t necessarily the biggest country music fan, but he’s a fan of music and was influenced by a lot of country albums.”
The band writes the majority of their own music, but Rogers says that they aren’t against using someone else’s work if it makes for a better recording.
“I’m in the mindset (that) I’m always looking: I want to hear the best. I want people to play me the best that they’ve heard. So I listen to everything anybody sends me,” he says. “… I think, as an artist and as a songwriter, if you’re cocky enough to just only cut your songs, you’re a bada–, and I think highly of you, because that’s something I can’t do. I love writing songs, (but) I’m not the best at it, so when I hear something that I really dig and I think I can make it my own, I’m willing to swing.”

Read More: Randy Rogers Band Reach Album Sales Milestone | http://theboot.com/randy-rogers-band-one-million-albums-sold/?trackback=tsmclip

http://d31hzlhk6di2h5.cloudfront.net/20160304/7a/96/b7/2d/3b3532823b2120805d3a980b_560x560.jpg

THE BO-KEYS ANNOUNCE HEARTACHES BY THE NUMBER
Country meets soul on this inspired collection of jukebox singles featuring Stax and Hi Records originators, producer Scott Bomar, roots guitarist John Paul Keith, and Al Gamble of St. Paul & the Broken Bones
street date set for April 29.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Bo-Keys, a contemporary soul music group that signifies both tradition and innovation, celebrates the release of a third studio album, Heartaches by the Number, on Electraphonic Records via Omnivore Recordings on April 29, 2016. Heartaches by the Number is an exploration of the intersection of country, folk and soul, combining stunning originals with inspired interpretations of jukebox classics from Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan, Swamp Dogg, Charlie Rich, and Ray Price.
Recorded entirely on analog tape at Electraphonic Recording in Memphis, the set perfectly captures the classic country-meets-soul feeling birthed within the musical triangle of Memphis/Nashville/Muscle Shoals. The core group comprises legendary Al Green drummer Howard Grimes, keyboardist Archie “Hubbie” Turner, horn players Marc Franklin and Art Edmaiston of the Gregg Allman Band, bassist/producer Scott Bomar, saxophonist Kirk Smothers, organist Al Gamble, and guitarist Joe Restivo. On this country-soul journey, special guests including celebrated Hi Records artist Don Bryant, Hi Records and American Studios vocal group the Masqueraders, and roots singer-songwriter and guitarist John Paul Keith join the Bo-Keys in the studio. Front-and-center is Bo-Keys lead vocalist Percy Wiggins, who comes by the groove honestly — in the 1960s, he cut sides for RCA and ATCO alongside future Band of Gypsies musicians Billy Cox and Larry Lee at Bradley’s Barn, Nashville’s eminent recording studio.
Heartaches by the Number is a genre-bending release that sounds like the jukebox roster at a honky-tonk bar or Mississippi juke joint. Merle Haggard’s “The Longer You Wait” is reinterpreted with propulsive horns and a searing organ riff, while the band inserts grit and funk into their interpretation of the Swamp Dogg-penned “Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got),” first cut as a soul single by Freddie North before country hit-makers such as Johnny Paycheck, George Strait, and George Jones added twang and swagger to the iconic dive-bar lament.
Heartaches by the Number builds on the Bo-Keys’ past catalog and adds a new dimension to the group’s potential by metaphorically traveling beyond the Memphis city limits to explore an often-overlooked subgenre of music popularized by Arthur Alexander, Swamp Dogg, Solomon Burke, and Bettye LaVette. The release will also bring new audiences to the Bo-Keys — fans of Adele, St. Paul & the Broken Bones, and the Alabama Shakes will find music that speaks to them on this album.
Whether or not you recognize the name, you’ve seen or heard the Bo-Keys: That’s the Bo-Keys setting the mood in TV episodes of Scandal and Scorpion; on the big screen playing the original score for the Oscar-winning film Hustle & Flow and backing Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac in Soul Men; and performing on Cyndi Lauper’s Grammy-nominated Memphis Blues album. Since 1998, the Bo-Keys have kept the spirit of classic Memphis music alive while simultaneously penning a vital new chapter for the sound and style that are etched into the very fiber of American consciousness.
“Where many revivalists pale compared to the originals, the Bo-Keys would have fit right in next to legendary Memphis musical crews the Bar-Kays and Booker T. & the M.G.s,” raves the Associated Press, while The New Yorker notes that a recent Manhattan appearance was “one of last year’s tightest, funkiest, happiest shows.” Although the band hasn’t released a studio album since 2011’s Got to Get Back!, the Bo-Keys have stayed busy, performing on John Németh’s Blues Music Award-winning Memphis Grease album (for Best Soul Blues), and placing music in the film Grudge Match and on TV.
Heartaches by the Number was produced by Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated Scott Bomar, the Bo-Keys’ bassist (who also produced Memphis Grease). His other career highlights include working as assistant engineer on Al Green’s 2003 Grammy-nominated comeback I Can’t Stop and its follow-up, Everything’s OK; producing the Grammy-nominated Anthony Hamilton track “Soul Music”; and producing and engineering Lauper’s Memphis Blues, which topped the Billboard blues chart for 13 weeks. In 2005, Bomar composed the score for Hustle & Flow, followed by serving as executive music producer and composer on Black Snake Moan. He won an Emmy for Best Original Music for the documentary I Am a Man: From Memphis, A Lesson in Life and most recently scored the film Mississippi Grind, which features Ryan Reynolds and debuted at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
Look for tour dates and more info on Heartaches by the Number at http://www.thebokeys.com
Track List:
1.Heartaches By The Number 
Feat. Don Bryant 

2.Set Me Free 

3.I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry 

4.The Longer You Wait 

5.I Threw It All Away 

6.Learned My Lesson In Love 

7.Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got) 
Feat. The Masqueraders 

8.I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For 

9.Wasted Days And Wasted Nights 

10. Last Date 


# # #
Listen now! Elmore magazine premiered the track "I Threw It All Away":http://bit.ly/1QSLqRY"> http://bit.ly/1QSLqRY
Watch (and feel free to post) the trailer:
http://youtu.be/DhaMTVUBMnw

Aubrie Sellers, New City Blues: As must always be mentioned in front, she's the daughter of Lee Ann Womack, stepdaughter of Frank Liddell, producer of Womack, Lambert, Pistol Annies, and of this, which also incl. writing input from her biological, Jason Sellers, but she doesn't seem that anxious about the pressure. Maybe over-counters it some, though, when her opening "garage country" tag seems applied a tad too literally, as a whole roomful of heavy sounds can make her voice seem a bit anticlimatic, But when she's singing in front of vivid rhythm tracks (varied just so, and discreetly in check on a strong, flexible leash), with thee guitar effects as judiciously applied framing devices, she's got the presence to make it all work, rather than seem like some kind of trendy faux-indie applique on suburban mall denim (we'll probably get the latter from someone else).
Also, she seems implicitly to acknowledge her apprenticeship with some speculative glosses on the tried 'n' true, but nothing overused: "Dreaming In The Day" combines sinuous verses and a sensuous chorus with crisp beats; "Liar Liar" doesn't bother to set yore pants on fire like the younger, pyro Lambert did, because they already are, in her level gaze, 'til she drops you (so she sounds more like the present Lambert, solo or w Annies). "Humming Song" brings convergence and reconfiguration like recent Ashley Monroe. "Like The Rain" even sounds a bit like Mom, but Womack is probably never going to be this young-girl optimistic about a bad boy again (even a few Beach House/The xx fluttery-heart arpeggios toward the end, for more generational irony, if you want to take it that way).
And somehow, most of the album comes off as distinctive and satisfying, so far. Helps that her point of view, despite the co-writes, provides a convincing, unity: no striking insights, but like the title says, here's some new, some city, some blues. The young voice of experience.

Meant to end say that "Dreaming In The Day" combines sinuous verses and a sensuous chorus with crisp beats like early Rosanne Cash.

Dang, thought I might like this.

The "garage country" thing is a goofy bit of self-branding that is irksome to me only because I'm meh on the album. Nice-enough voice; not as distinguishable from mom's as, like, Hillary Scott's or Wynonna's.

Maybe the "I'm different from other girls and don't share their frivolous concerns" undercurrent is something she'll outgrow, but "Paper Dolls" in particular sounds like a less creative version of something Taylor Swift might have written in her weakest pre-Red moment.

Yeah, "Paper Dolls" sounds solemn and monotonous so far, so haven't really heard the words yet, but out of 14 tracks, I like about 7, 8, maybe 9, initially. Might lose or gain a few (jeez, 14 of these really are too many, either way).

Randy Rogers Band, Nothing Shines Like Neon: Mostly not terribly hooky, although "Old Moon New" and "Meet Me Tonight" are back-to-back exceptions, being Toby Keith-worthy prom ballads. Rogers doesn't seem to have the vocal range of Keith, but he knows he can finesse it, so doesn't strain. And that's how it all works out: journeyman smarts and skills, with an insistence that doesn't oversell, just finds familiar ways, fresh enough here, to get through more gray days and nights, especially nights, with another dance, or another sway, limber and tight enough. Lots of restlessness, discontent, wry self-awareness, "Things I Need To Quit," and "Take It As It Comes,"the one song about being satisfied and even laidback, for the moment, is also the most cranked-up. Guest Jerry Jeff used to spend all his time "chasin' life, but tonight I'm livin' mine"---before mentioing "ridin' deranged" rather enthusiastically, like he might be working his way back to that (he's sitting down, but not still). On "Actin' Crasy," Jamey Johnson does his best Merle---but that's about it; this ain't no guestfest ---okay, Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski show up on another one, but these unoriginal stalwarts never get upstaged.

"Acting Crazy," that is; they don't get too cute with words, although "Pour One For The Poor One" is a good-enough last call.

Summertime: Willie Nelson Sings Gershwin: No surprises, but in a good way. Voice and guitar are relaxed, but always right there for every turn and shade of words & music. He knows when to play the old man card for just a little more vulnerability, also humbly grateful/ready for appearance of Sheryl Crow on "Embraceable You." Good off-handed on-point duet with Cyndi Lauper on "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off," where Paul Franklin's steel guitar seems to fill in for reed instruments during the b-sections; usually, he brings a suggestion of western swing or that Hawaiian trend in country & pop (from the 40s, was it? A friend's greatuncle's band played a lot of that in Alabama and Georgia back around then).
Willie's bluesy, sometimes corrugated picking and strumming keeps things from getting too smooth (Dean Parks' guitar is just smooth enough for nice contrast), and the small combo turns on a dime of course: we get sister Bobbie's and Matt Rollings' acoustic and/or electric pianos, with occasional Hammond B-3s, Muckey Raphael's harmonica, Jay Bellerose's brushes & kickdrum, and a couple guys' bass guitars sounding acoustic. Limber ballads and up-tempos; the seemingly performer-proof title track seems like the deepest thing here, prob cause it is, as written (and performed).
Re lack of surprises, not quite a morning buzz, but fortifying.

Think the follow-up album was said to be relatively disappointing? But good options, and I'll prob check the whole box, at least on spotify:

https://gallery.mailchimp.com/bf141dbbd818f4f933816b13a/images/6f48d1d2-7d66-4408-9722-34238513f52f.jpg

DOLLY PARTON, LINDA RONSTADT, AND EMMYLOU HARRIS:
THE COMPLETE TRIO COLLECTION

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DOLLY PARTON, LINDA RONSTADT, AND EMMYLOU HARRIS:THE COMPLETE TRIO COLLECTION
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Scott Adkins sc✧✧✧@webste✧✧✧.c✧✧ via mail15.suw11.mcdlv.net
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Dolly Parton Media Contact:
Scott Adkins, sc✧✧✧@webste✧✧✧.c✧✧, 615-777-6995 x224
Kirt Webster, k✧✧✧@webste✧✧✧.c✧✧, 615-777-6995 x226

For Trio, Contact:
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ARTWORK: media.rhino.com

DOLLY PARTON, LINDA RONSTADT, AND EMMYLOU HARRIS:
THE COMPLETE TRIO COLLECTION

TRIO
Both Legendary Albums Recorded By The Female Country Holy Trinity
Newly Remastered For Three-Disc Set Packed With Rare And Unreleased Music

Three Different Versions Will Be Released On September 9 From Rhino

LOS ANGELES, CA (March 14, 2016) – Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris have three careers unparalleled in music history. Together they have sold over 200 million albums worldwide and performed for decades in front of countless fans around the globe. It’s no surprise that when their three voices united to release their debut collaboration, the results were remarkable. The threesome released two albums together, Trio (1987) and Trio II (1999), which have combined to sell more than five million copies worldwide and win three Grammy® Awards.

Both of these classic albums have been newly remastered for a three-CD collection packed with rare and unreleased music. Produced by Harris, THE COMPLETE TRIO COLLECTION will be available on September 9 for a list price of $29.98.

On the same date, a single-disc set will also be available entitled MY DEAR COMPANION: SELECTIONS FROM THE TRIO COLLECTION, featuring a mix of songs taken from the three-disc set, as will FARTHER ALONG, a double-LP set of all the bonus material from THE COMPLETE TRIO COLLECTION. Trio II will also be released on vinyl for the first time.

Even though Parton, Ronstadt, and Harris began recording together in the 1970s, a full album proved elusive. When the stars aligned and the friends were finally able to record a full album, a powerhouse sound of country and Americana was born. The results were remarkable. Trio arrived in 1987; sold more than four million copies; won two Grammy Awards; and topped the country album chart for five consecutive weeks. Among the standout tracks are “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” “Wildflowers,” and “Farther Along.”

It would be more than a decade before the group released a follow-up, but when Trio II arrived in 1999 it did not disappoint. The album won a Grammy Award and peaked in the Top Five of the country album chart. It sold more than one million copies worldwide on the strength of tracks like “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?” the Carter family’s “Lover’s Return” and a cover of Neil Young’s “After The Gold Rush.”

The bonus disc is loaded with 20 songs, including alternate takes of album tracks like “I’ve Had Enough,” “Making Plans” and “My Dear Companion.” Also featured are 11 completely unreleased recordings from the trio spanning both album sessions including “Waltz Across Texas Tonight,” “Pleasant As May,” “Are You Tired of Me,” and the gospel standard “Softly And Tenderly.” Among the unreleased material is also an alternate version of “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?” featuring Parton on lead vocals and a stunning acapella version of “Calling All My Children Home.”

THE COMPLETE TRIO COLLECTION
Track Listing

Disc One – Trio I
“The Pain of Loving You”
“Making Plans”
“To Know Him Is To Love Him”
“Hobo’s Meditation”
“Wildflowers”
“Telling Me Lies”
“My Dear Companion”
“Those Memories of You”
“I’ve Had Enough”
“Rosewood Casket”
“Farther Along”
Disc Two – Trio II
“Lover’s Return”
“High Sierra”
“Do I Ever Cross Your Mind”
“After the Gold Rush”
“The Blue Train”
“I Feel the Blues Movin’ In”
“You’ll Never Be The Sun”
“He Rode All The Way To Texas”
“Feels Like Home”
“When We’re Gone, Long Gone”
Disc Three – Bonus Material
“Wildflowers” (Alternate Take unreleased 1986)
“Waltz Across Texas Tonight” (Unreleased 1994)
“Lover’s Return” (Alternate Mix – Unreleased)
“Softly and Tenderly” (Unreleased 1994)
“Pleasant As May” (Unreleased 1986)
“My Dear Companion” (Alternate Take 1986)
“My Blue Tears” (Unreleased 1998)
“Making Plans” (Alternate Take 1986)
“I’ve Had Enough” (Alternate Mix 1986)
“Grey Funnel Line” (Unreleased 1986)
“You Don’t Knock” (Unreleased 1986)
“Where Will The Words Come From” (Unreleased 1985)
“Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” (Dolly Lead – Alternate Take 1994)
“Are You Tired of Me” (Unreleased 1986)
“Even Cowgirls Get The Blues”
“Mr. Sandman”
“Handful Of Dust” (Unreleased 1993)
“Calling My Children Home” (Unreleased Acapella Version 1986)
“White Snow” (Unreleased 1986)
“Farther Along” (Alternate Mix 1986)
MY DEAR COMPANION: SELECTIONS FROM THE TRIO COLLECTION
Track Listing
“The Pain Of Loving You”
“My Dear Companion”
“To Know Him Is To Love Him”
“Telling Me Lies”
“Farther Along”
“ Lover’s Return”
“After The Gold Rush”
“The Blue Train”
“You’ll Never Be The Sun”
“When We’re Gone, Long Gone”
“Waltz Across Texas Tonight” (Unreleased 1994)
“Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” (Dolly Lead – Alternate Take 1994)
“Wildflowers” (Alternate Take 1986)
“Calling My Children Home” (Unreleased Acapella Version 1986)

Still making up my mind about that Maren Morris pop-country ep

yeah i'm kinda underwhelmed. looking forward to the brandy clark, though; "girl next door" has grown on me.

heard the Lauper/Nelson duet on the rolling Spotify list, very nice!

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/arts/music/dave-cobb-wrangling-rough-country-beasts-toward-nashville.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&rref=arts/music&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Music&pgtype=article

Chris Stapleton,Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell producer

Mr. Cobb is an unlikely country music power player. Born in Savannah, Ga., and raised from his teenage years in Atlanta, he grew up on classic rock — Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles — and played in bands inspired by that music. After one such band, the Tender Idols, signed what he called “a bad record deal” then broke up, Mr. Cobb moved to Los Angeles, where he initially found work producing fledgling alt-rock bands before meeting the outlaw country scion Shooter Jennings — Waylon’s son. Mr. Jennings kick-started his interest in classic country, which he then consumed with the voracious zeal of a new convert.

“Meeting Shooter and learning about country with him, that’s why I’m here in Nashville and have a career,” Mr. Cobb said. The two worked together on five albums, starting with Mr. Jennings’s 2005 album, which spawned the radio hit “4th of July

Seems like a typical background these days, rather than an "unlikely" one

Yep, and you've reminded me to check out his Southern Family, more of a compilation than a concept album. with contributions from Isbell, Mr. and Mrs. Stapleton, Miranda Lambert, Brandy Clark, and many omore of his famous and not-so-famous clients and other colleagues. John Paul White starts it with a farewell, but also a promise not to cry anymore, or not forever, being neither martyr nor saint, and most of the rest is a lot earthier, faster, funner and even funnier (with no lack of feeling) than I'd half-feared, while reading some of the song titles. I would like Zac Brown's track, "Grandma's Garden," to be shorter---we get it Zac, also lose the strings,please, and although Jamey Johnson's tendency to sound like Merle is getting handier, with the original sometimes fraying on his '15 duet album with Willie, JJ's "Mama's Table" unwisely invites comparisons with Hag classics like "Mama's Hungry Eyes" and "Mama Tried," not to mention Willie's "Family Bible."
But then young Anderson East pops up with "Learning," showing what he's learning from Sly Stone---only the good things, that is. (Which reminds me, as a Southerner: no mention of drugs, car crashes, title pawns, casinos, tanning parlors, fracking---although Isbell's narrator does mention a relative going to "work way up North, where the weather goes berserk," which could be about the great Alaska Pipeline of the 70s or more recent eco-adventures). Shooter Jennings leads a stream-of-consciousness hoedown though a lively childhood, apparently; pretty good variety overall:
http://www.npr.org/2016/03/10/469693102/first-listen-dave-cobbs-southern-family-compilation

The milestone early 70s music doc Heartworn Highways* is streaming (for free) til 4 PM Eastern, March 19, on youtube, link and more info here (incl re National Record Store Day ltd. ed. monster box) http://pitchfork.com/news/64203-outlaw-country-documentary-heartworn-highways-to-stream-on-pitchfork/
*With Townes VZ, Guy Clark, Coe, Crowell, Earle, Charlie Daniels, Larry Jon Wilson, and several more, incl Steve Young (RIP just now)

89 minutes, the first 32 of which have mostly been immersive. Back to it.

ya know, i actually like this carrie underwood song that's all over the radio right now, "heartbeats." it's not what you'd call lyrically inventive (and her voice tends to obliterate nuance, anyway) but, i dunno...something about it. with country it is sometimes thus.

noticed that co-writer zach crowell also co-wrote "break up in a small town," which continues to be my jam. (somehow this seems like more of a sam hunt connection than sam's actual backup vocals on the track, which to my ears are barely there.)

So like I was saying last year, the degree to which Stapleton can seem like (a more upfront-theatrical) Jamey Johnson, also (I'd say) Bob Seger, who sometimes sings country, like "Blame It On The Moon," can come in handy when you're jonesing for the originals, who aren't exactly prolific---also, as I recently mentioned, the actual Johnson's tendency to sound like Merle can come in handy, considering how raggedy Haggard sounds on some of Django and Jimmy---but Margo Price finally gets a record out--- just as the original Loretta Lynn checks back in.
Oh well---if you can get used to the predictabilty, she's certainly got the pipes, the confidence, the atttitude (young but been around, onstage and off), the taste and feel for detail, in lyrics and arrangements: not that original, but sparky "You wouldn't know class if it bit you in the ass" and "They say it's not who you know but who you blow that'll get you in the show," and this last from what seems like might be personal experience (she's a still-youthful veteran), of going out for drinks with Col. Parker-wannabees, "old enough to be my father", and just sign here darlin' and (she admits she's fallen for this). Also a "Weekender" who did a little too much crack, now sitting in jail cos can't afford the bail, but what's this about somebody in Cellblock C and "the man on the front desk"---anyway, it's pretty good as far as it goes (and less trad, more "now" than LL's latest, of course, maybe closer to Van Lear Rose [and it's even on Third Man]. so worth a listen). I especially like the poignant gloat (with hint of 60s girl groups) of "How The Mighty Have Fallen" ("back into my arms"--but she sounds sensitive; she'll take good care of----them---sticks to plural).
http://www.npr.org/2016/03/17/470558268/first-listen-margo-price-midwest-farmers-daughter

Django and *Jimmie*, that is (I should have looked at the whole thing before posting, sorry).

Haven't listened to Margo Price yet but hope she's more than NPR retro country. Will give a listen this weekend

I like the album well enough, but some of the praise for Price is pitched way above what the material actually can support. She has a strong traditionalist bent that leans as much on honky-tonk as it does on Outlaw aesthetics, and the writing is often clever if a bit too self-consciously so. I also just don't care for her voice, which is too thin to carry some of the rowdier cuts and which goes noticeably flat when she tries to project much volume, as much as I would like to. In a similar vein, I'm liking Dori Freeman's self-titled album; not one of the songs overstays its welcome, and it skews traditional without being fussy about it.

Playlist updated through March.

ILM's Rolling Country Thread 2016

also, this was posted in the artist specific thread and i am pretty much not feeling it but seems worth dropping off here for reference: Sturgill Simpson's cover of 'In Bloom'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpDYfkymaSE

such a weird cover, makes it seem like he has poor judgment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/03/31/why-are-these-country-singers-openly-admitting-their-songs-lack-substance/

Singers say they have to do bro themed party tunes to get on the radio

Scotty McCreery didn’t appear completely comfortable with his new single “Southern Belle,” a bouncy ode to ladies from the South (“Saturday night with the red lipstick…Sunday morning with the honey biscuits”) and a far cry from his more innocent songs. “This is probably about as far left as we’ll go,” he assured his fans.

lol

(forks, plz don't corrupt your playlist w/ the song above.)

doesn't this seem like a down year for country, though? been listening to more folk than usual cuz I guess I gotta fill the void somehow.

lol, i can pass on Southern Belle for the playlist but i gotta give this a listen.

Just saw Thomas Rhett sing his 2015 song "Die a Happy Man" on the ACM Country Music Awards tonight, and I heard it on the radio today. Alfred S praised it in 2015, but I am just getting to it. I like it too. A bit sappy but it works.

Yeah, his album ended up in my Nashville Scene ballot's Top Ten. Surprised myself with that, 'til I thought about it some more in the comments section:
Thomas Rhett, Tangled Up: Really like the horns x beats behind his swaggering presentation of "South Side," the suggestions of Van Morrison (maybe "Crazy Love" in particular, but not too close) in the guitar etc. of "Die A Happy Man," the Pink ("Get This Party Started") in "Vacation," the cold bones country in "The Day You Stop Lookin' Back," also there in (but getting warmed up by)"Playing With Fire," the duet with Jordan Sparks, the modern sounds all around but never oversold, although lyrics of "I Listen To The Radio," have the r. telling him things he never ever thought of before, like he should go and kiss that girl.
if Rhett is bro, he's pitching and setting a very appealing example/standard: frisky, but not boorish (or bland). Also, he's good for a whole album, unlike most designated bros. I try to keep an open ear and mind; only Florida-Georgia seem hopeless, but maybe only because I can't stand to listen long enough to get to the good stuff.

"Die A Happy Man" a nice song, although it's weird that something so unremarkable is country radio's biggest song of the year. Nelly's cover of it is currently climbing the Top 40 charts. i personally thought Rhett's second album was awful outside of the singles.

It likely has a tad more appeal to older folks than a Florida, Georgia Line song, yet is still hooky enough to appeal to a Florida, Georgia Line fan

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/04/04/acm-awards-2016-complete-list-of-winners-best-and-worst-moments/?tid=pm_pop_b

Ever think you would hear David Bowie at a country award show? In the middle of performing his new single “Record Year,” Church took a minute to play snippets from four of his musical heroes who died recently: Bowie, Scott Weiland, Lemmy Kilmister and Glenn Frey.

my gf's mom called me last night to bitch about how all they were playing at the CMAs was rock music

Miranda Lambert and ZZ Top and Keith Urban did do Tush together(and there were other rock leaning ones), but she might have liked Dolly Parton's duets with Katy Perry...

she did! i didn't...

that eric church record-spinning breakdown was just so weird and clumsy and formless.

also, this may be me reading waaaay too much into things, but there was this weird blake and miranda sadness that seemed to be clouding everything in the show. they both seemed lost every time they were on camera, until she finally snapped out of it with that zz top moment late in the show. and the director of the show seemed lost without having the two of them to cut to in the crowd. showing blake's entire number during the opening segment without a single shot of the audience seemed like some kind of pointed commentary, or confession, or something.

did not watch last night, but i noticed at a previous awards show that the producers were seemingly respectful to them about reaction shots and such. i guess i assumed that was something that was pre-negotiated.

in any case, i'm really excited for miranda's next album. blake hasn't interested me since he covered that conway twitty song.

xp just heard that Thomas Rhett song back to back w/ the new Florida Georgia Line, and tbh I preferred the latter. Swap out Rhett's accent and that's just an Ed Sheeran song to my ears.

Willie turns his St. Louis concert, which was to have been with Merle, into a quickly arranged tribute, enlisting Jamey Johnson, Ryan Bingham, and Lee Ann Womack(joining son Lukas, sister Bobbie, other stalwarts)---sure hope somebody recorded it all:
http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/music/reviews/willie-nelson-s-st-louis-shows-goes-on-despite-merle/article_7fdf7f14-9f13-5f7f-94a7-689e3b9309a3.html

The Honeycutters, On The Ropes---something of a---I don't quite wanna say "antidote"---but a refreshing change from the derivative though enjoyable limits of Margo Price's debut. Amanda Anne Platt doesn't sound like anybody else I can think of: she and her bandmates (especially the drummer) grab my attention right away, in a straight-forward yet detailed way; obviously they've been around, gaining the confidence not to oversell the pictures from life's other side, and their well-traveled set list. However, her plain voice could use a bit more of her good overdubbed harmonies (some harmonies are also credited to the musicians, but I haven't noticed male voices yet). And she should leave more room (shut up more often) for solos, though the accompaniment gets breathing room, even swirling room at times, without things getting crowded--except, done this way, her songs can seem wordier than they might in a different kind of production. Still, track by track, I already like and am intrigued by most of it--well def keep listening, which seems to be the plan.
(One exception: will prob keep fast-fwding past the sole cover, an exceedingly long-ass version of L. Cohen's "Hallelujah"---enjoyed Willie's version, but jeeeez Rufus Wainwright's, Jeff Buckley's, who knows how-many others...this is not one if your more performer-proof songs.)

Also could use a little more variety in the arrangements, or anyway time signatures; give the drummer some more!

Sturgill Simpson's A Sailor's Guide to Earth starts with "Welcome To Earth (Pollywog)" some kind of basic training, initiation ritual, hazing, pop quiz, agility test for the ears: all over the place, and think fast in them headphones. "Breakers Roar" is the pop narcotic, an invitation to oblivion, rapture of the deep, hang yore head over, Billy Bob, while protesting that "it's just a dream." And it is, like the dutiful jive you recite in "Keep It Between The Lines, " while you and the night and the music also signal what the military calls "Insubordination of Manner." But still, you keep on with it, so it's mixed signals too. Then "Sea Stories" brings a bold old salt, hopping over the waves to Waylon's tradmark eat-shit, eat-shit bass lick, just fine 'n' dandy 'til your hick accent mangles all those foreign names you're bragging bout having been through. Some guys are like that, no matter how far around the globe they trot---maybe a take-off on "politically incorrect" Duck Dynasty etc professional rednecks, but considering the title of the album, maybe a note to self as well. Ditto the neurotic hipster pegged in "In Bloom"---but then a couple of romantic tributes, sincere, not sappy, no strain--with the early 70s Waylon-Van Morrison vocal elements going more to the latter: no scat-singing, but hard short bursts, of notes, clearly conveying the lyrics and tune (or tunefulness).
Plenty of gusto in all the layered tracks, suggesting at times Norman Whitfield's psychedelic soul productions of the Temptations, but also Waylon's eat-shit bass going to psychedelic soul disco, kind of? But also steel guitars, and other things that show he's been listening to all that crossover, all that back-and-forth, really, of the late 60s and early 70s, of Elvis, Tony Joe White, the aforementioned artists, maybe some Lee Hazlewood too, and cratedigger bait as well. The can't-be-satisfied lyrics, in terms of what's up front and implied, find musical release anyway, but a very restless kind. And the romantic tributes, all two of 'em, are followed by the bellowing "Call To Arms"-- all this attitude, yet commentator Ann Powers says he isn't a punk; supposed to have something about the birth of his son? Not reading much of that backstory stuff yet; I always try to let the music do the talking, and it's a lot to take in.
Anyway, it's still posted here for now---comes out Friday---oh, and he wouldn't let NPR give us the usual option to play it track by track, gotta listen to the whole thing in one stream (only 38 minutes though, and "In Bloom" works better this way than as a single)
http://www.npr.org/2016/04/07/473237504/first-listen-sturgill-simpson-a-sailors-guide-to-earth

doesn't this seem like a down year for country, though? been listening to more folk than usual cuz I guess I gotta fill the void somehow.

― dc, Thursday, 31 March 2016 12:40 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

not sure if posting it here is cool, but i would be curious to hear what good new folk is out there, its totally out of my wheelhouse to hear regularly.

i haven't clicked with any albums this year, i think my favourite singles this year are...

Maren Morris - My Church/80s Mercedes - I think she pulls off the genuflection of My Church well, could have been a real piece of shit in the wrong hands. 80s Mercedes is just a great song, fun.

Old Dominion - SnapBack - big step up from anything else they have ever done, didn't think i would ever like anything of theirs

Jon Pardi - Head Over Boots - love this one, feels really 90s, could hear alan jackson singing it back in 92 or 93.

also been liking the 2015 radio jam Fix by Chris Lane

really sick of Cole Swindell

also i dig the new Florida/George Line, did not think they could make anything sympathetic

tbh I found "dirt" by them affecting. ("you came from it; someday you'll return to it": pretty good line imo.) could imagine tim mcgraw singing it instead.

re folk: the post-fahey thread has a lotta great stuff in it. instrumental pieces don't necessarily scratch the same itch as country does for me, though. been revisiting stuff by patty griffin, lydia loveless (who i guess verges on alt-country/rock), and jennifer castle.

Also from the post-fahey thread (maybe last year's, of they've started over), maybe try Joan Shelley's 2015 Over and Even: kind of any early spring, grey and green, vibe-y atmosphere---she's still young, but been around, reflecting on her life without getting weepy, having absorbed Joni Mitchell's influence pretty well. Accompaniment is mostly her and Nathan Salzburg's guitars, acoustic and (I think) hollow-body electric. he's got several albums too, picking traditional and originals.
Ilxor tylerw enjoyed Shelley's album so much that he had her and Salzburg perform in his house:living room audience was very big and attentive, judging by pix.

I mostly knew Lonnie Mack from his invigorating album with Stevie Ray Vaughn, and as occasional bassist for the Doors, until Edd Hurt turned me on to his country-soul-blues ballads---not really a whole-LP guy in that respect (to my taste), but very fine for cherry-picking. Good coverage here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/lonnie-mack-guitarist-and-singer-who-influenced-blues-and-rock-acts-dies-at-74/2016/04/25/5c581f3c-0a44-11e6-bfa1-4efa856caf2a_story.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/see-the-dixie-chicks-remember-prince-with-nothing-compares-2-u-20160425

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/country/7348345/country-radio-programmers-slow-songs-spring?utm_source=twitter

Country radio programmers discuss whether its good or bad there are lotsa slow songs on country radio now

article cites twenty-some performers -- all dudes. tempo likely not the biggest issue w/r/t homogeneity.

a bold clam: Beyonce's "Daddy Lessons" will be one of the year's best country tracks

familial/romantic pride mixed with acts/threats of violence has been a recipe for success for some of my favorite country ladies, so why not

It is so goddam good

Playlist updated through April.

ILM's Rolling Country Thread 2016

Been touring Europe (see Prince cover upthread), bout to do the same for homeland; a preview:
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7350378/dixie-chicks-beyonce-daddy-lessons?utm_source=twitter

RIP Guy Clark. More on the Guy Clark thread, including ilxor Edd's nice profile piece from a few years ago

Guy Clark thread.

Yep, and sadly not too surprising, sadly enough, since he mentioned (with trademakr terseness) having cancer during an interview, mostly promoting his last album, 2013's My Favorite Picture of You.
My 2011 take (slightly tweaked) of a CG trib, which might be a good gateway; invigorating supplement for sure.

This One’s For Him: A Tribute To Guy Clark

With a sharp, springy, never showy house band, led by a ditto vocalist always ready for non-pushy duet duty, and many guests whose distinctive phrasing and sheer lung power take these songs places their distinctive writer/co-writer’s wry, dusty, workingman’s storytelling minimalism implies (or not), this loving, lucid tribute mostly accentuates raging or talking back to or riding out or getting the hell out of the way of or otherwise dealing with the dying of the light, to the extent anyone can. All in the commons, sometimes stepping just far enough beyond the limits of likely conversation to drive home the details of each lot, succinct and fluid. Clark’s people got business to ‘tend to. And no matter how picturesque and empathetic and mellow things may sometimes get, “son of a bitch’s always bored me” is never too far away.

God those typos in the intro; so sorry again. From Nashville Scene ballot comments:

[/i]Guy Clark: My Favorite Picture of You[/i]

Right off, “Cornmeal Waltz” is right on, even before his hallowed sense of word gets to display itself: the guitar picks the waltz out on a long walk, on as long a pier as possible before being reeled back in for the words, the balance of balance and release and other differences drawn together and wheeled around and through the music: title track of a moment and also something that goes on forever in the frame and the memento and the gaze and what will maybe outlast it, a thing in the real enough world, visible enough to others, whoever can see and hear it----illegals and heroes and the lovelorn maiden stuck in a process if seem too fatalistic or tenuous, cos “Good Advice” incl “preaching between the lines” so hard to take, and again let the realness be, respect the people in whatever place they’re really in, because he’s one of ‘em resisting the way things are, while finding affirmation and some release in it, yet the tension of that, so the waltzer back again with lights in his fingers, hands in his pockets, waltz for the woman lying beside him and her picture on the wall when she’s gone, a waltz for the rodeo riding him, a waltz for the walls and/or the waltz itself, the way it’s sung(this is the only cover, by Lyle Lovett, but fits perfectly, with all these collabs; the co-authors often also playing and/or singing).
He always craves a higher inspiration (and needs it, esp. several tracks which decay into collections of manners, but he’s known to keep tweaking for live renditions); one with wings “no strings, even better”, the muse down the hall calling, “Hey, let’s get high”, cos he can’t ever abandon the literalness as a starting point (also maybe the weed), escape maybe even into the accomplished failure which he isn’t, as far as we can tell, re “I’ll Show Me."
Then again, note to self is also inferred by this self in “Some go to Heaven, some go to Hell, Sis Draper went to Arkansas.” And that’s all he wrote, aside from way she was
poisoned by a waitress, jealous of the way Sis’s fiddle struck the waitresses’ man, and Sis’s guitar player Sue wept for her: so hate and fear and maybe love (Sis and/or Sue in love? Possibility of irony, re the jealous wife): the path and wages of enduring, tracing the realness again.
Yes friends, we’ve all gotta end somewhere, especially in writing/co-writing sessions, when the studio clock looms large. Although, as he’s assured us, the aforementioned traditional edits for shows will continue.as long as the shows do (mentioned cancer, w CG brevity, while promoting this). Realness is also fuel, at whatever emotional cost/benefit, for the cool groove and understated fervor of the title track, built around an ancient snapshot: just the love and pride of his life, the recently deceased artist and songwriter Susanna Clark, so pissed at him (and Townes).

guess cobb produced the new lori mckenna album; dude really is everywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9HAXNgopQM

"girl next door" kinda reminds me of this old kenny chesney tune (another mcanally co-write). would welcome more of this vibe on country radio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n56hFE9Aquc

Now that the bro-country movement is finally winding down, the question becomes: Which of the bro-country stars will make a successful transition to what comes next? The easy answers are Eric Church and Dierks Bentley, but they never fully committed to the movement in the first place. Of the full-fledged bro-country stars, the best bet is Brantley Gilbert, a much better singer than the guys in Florida Georgia Line and more likely than Jason Aldean to take cues from Chris Stapleton. There were hints on Gilbert’s last album, “Just As I Am,” that he was capable of more ambitious music. His tour and next album will reveal if he takes that next step. -- G.H.

Geoff Himes in the Washington Post announces that the bro-country movement is finally winding down. Hmmm, is it?

That's from a summer concerts preview story, with Himes re Gilbert's upcoming gig

insofar as Dierks Bentley and Blake Shelton's okay to good new albums experiment with subtler production and electronic midtempo.

Eric Church was never bro country in the way Jody Rosen defined it, and he made a clean break in 2013 anyway.

Gilbert's an odd one because he's the most blustery of them all but "Bottoms Up" and "One Hell of an Amen" are the best of the bro country numbers.

and ugh who the fuck wants to take cues from Chris Stapleton?

Writer Himes' weakness for barband rockers

oh well, I know this isn't going to change minds, but I like Stapleton's preoccupied sociability---lotta dark thangs he's been through, stuff he could say, but he'll just say this, share a vibe, a drink, and move on. No grim doughboy Game of Thrones slogfest, like the labored sounds of Chris Cornell, Eddie Vedder, David Clayton Thomas, Scott Stapp (in descending order of tolerability). He's got sonic (and some emotional) range: squeezes notes cos he's got notes to squeeze, but when he does so, doesn't mess up the song (he's got songs)---like Bob Seger. So yeah, there's your barband connection, and Seger covers country sometimes, like "BLame It On The Moon." Jamey Johnson with more notes (than JJ wants bother with, anyway)(could use some of JJ's dry humor).
Also there's an appeal I associate with some metal, or related, like Wino's semi-acoustic sets of Townes Van Zandt's Death Valley CVS cowboy visions and compatible originals. Not that CS tries to cut as deep as TVZ's best, writing-wise---if he did try, results might well be labored. But he knows he's got that sound, and when to shut up and move on (so far).

Yeah I dig him too. Funny I heard about him as an antidote to the "real country" scene.

you guys, how good is the maren morris album

never thought i'd enjoy a country artist singing the words "me and diddy drippin diamonds like marilyn" so much

My Brandy Clark review: http://www.spin.com/2016/06/review-brandy-clark-big-day-in-a-small-town/

did notice a tendency of clark's to give a lot of reba-like knowing/sideways looks in performance.

tough influence to live up to, in terms of drama and presence. not that she needs to. she writes good characters, whereas reba embodied them.

i def need to check out the maren morris album

Yeah, I missed her on Tonight Show last night, but Miranda's recently tweeted playlist, looking like The Complete Works of Maren Morris So Far---plus some preliminary comments on here----have me curious.
Alfred's review is otm, especially re Clark's tendency to otn writing and recording, now, as he says, mostly compensated for.
I haven't stayed interested in the first three tracks yet (though I like how the first one is a more cheerful and sardonic incarnation of the Kinks' "Everybody's In Show Biz," just which it built/sustained more musical momentum), and all three basically give us the whole thing in the first verse and chorus---that Music Row thing---but "Broke" finds fuel "drinkin' generic" and econo-gas bass, while still-narrowly selecting from familiar materials, like the previous songs. Starting here, though (maybe earlier; I'll keep listening), she seems to trust the pickers and herself (as lyricist, melodist, co-writer, whatever, also as singer) to let the sounds find more meaning in and under and around, even in front of the words.
And yeah, now her tendency to undersing can pay off better, especially in the candid closer, where she advises her long-dead, still much-missed Daddy that he checked out right on time: "Since you went to Heaven, the whole world's gone to Hell." Good election year song, but seems personal enough, like my faves, "You Can Come Over": "I'd put on that record/You'd give me enough," with strong, gently persistent bass and drums vs. stern "You can't come in." Also "Daughter" builds from familiar materials, with just the right details (not detail as significance itself, a tendency Alfred pegs), incl. the last second twist of the punch line.
http://www.npr.org/2016/06/02/479446410/first-listen-brandy-clark-big-day-in-a-small-town

"I'd put on that record/You'd give me that look" is the right line---sorry, Brandy and everybody else!

"now, as he says, mostly compensated for"--or *more* compensated for---I did enjoy some of the tracks on the debut, like one confiding one woman's secret way of dealing with mundane miseries (weed), but then o course gotta have a Drugs Are Bad number. But, as he also says, the writer's workshop self-policing is still there.

"Big Day in a Small Town", the single, is GREAT
I am excited by this album.

that song has some of the same progressions and DNA as Ashley Monroe's "Bombshell"

Thanks, dow!

Here are reviews of Blake Shelton and Dierks Bentley; the latter's album would've hit #1 on the Billboard charts had it not been for Mr. Graham.

Oh yeah, I liked Bentley early on, then he got solemn and tear-jerky, but a new track seemed to have the old spark. Haven't heard a whole Shelton album yet...

MUSICIAN/PRODUCER BRUCE ROBISON
MERGES PAST AND PRESENT, EYES FUTURE WITH
THE NEXT WALTZ,
A NEW WEB SERIES AND MULTIPLATFORM MUSIC CONCEPT
LAUNCHING JUNE 17
Jerry Jeff Walker leads list of legends, up-and-comers sharing insights
and recording new music with top session talents
for release as video, streamed/downloaded singles, playlists, podcasts, etc.

AUSTIN, Texas — The Last Waltz was a momentous, one-time collaboration, but that event eventually led to Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble recording sessions — and both helped inspire The Next Waltz, a new web series and multiplatform music delivery concept created by renowned Austin singer-songwriter and producer Bruce Robison. Featuring top country talents telling their stories and recording new musical chapters with handpicked session players, The Next Waltz references a beloved moment in musical history while presenting a forward-thinking vision of audience engagement.
Launching June 17, 2016 with Jerry Jeff Walker, The Next Waltz takes viewers and listeners inside Robison’s Lockhart, Texas, studio for interviews and recording sessions with veteran artists such as Rodney Crowell and Jack Ingram, and up-and-comers including the Turnpike Troubadours and Sam Outlaw. The content, distributed via a dedicated website, YouTube, online media outlets, music-streaming services and social media, includes a newly recorded song; a recording-session music video; a “short biopic” of the artist discussing his or her work with Robison; podcasts and blogs offering more background and insight; “mixtape” playlists containing songs that inspired the artist or provide context for his or her work; and quick-peek social-media clips. The songs will be available to purchase via iTunes. (Sneak-preview Walker’s new recording of the Crowell-penned “Song for the Life” here.)
“We’re focusing on great songs, and what it means to make music without the BS and the hype and the tricks,” says Robison, whose credits include writing the No. 1 hits “Travelin’ Soldier” (Dixie Chicks), “Wrapped” (George Strait) and “Angry All the Time” (Tim McGraw), in addition to recording and performing solo and with his wife, Kelly Willis.
Content for each featured artist rolls out in three-week periods; supplemental content may include additional songs and videos from those artists or others invited to record at Bruce’s Country Bunker, an old-school analog studio where engineer James Vollentine creates master-quality recordings with 16 tracks and 2-inch tape, without a computer in sight. But video director Spencer Peeples uses state-of-the-art digital gear to capture these sessions, which he edits into gorgeous visual statements. Using both black-and-white and subdued color images while artfully incorporating blur, lens flare and other techniques, he gives a candid feel to these clips that enhances both words and music.
Though Robison calls himself “a fanboy,” his ability to engage artists on a peer-to-peer level allows him to draw out stories in a way most journalists can’t. As with Jerry Seinfeld’s web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, there’s a feel of just-hanging-out camaraderie. But Robison’s curiosity and quest for deeper insights produces some extraordinary moments, such as Crowell recounting when his former father-in-law, Johnny Cash, had to help him find a Jamaican resident who could arrange a dead-of-night flight to get a sick child to a hospital.
“They’re happy that somebody asks them about their lives, not just their career,” Robison says. “We’re doing Seinfeld’s show, but we end up with this amazing new piece of music.”
That music is cut live in a relaxed setting that looks a bit like a paneled gameroom — except for the crystal chandelier providing a touch of elegance. Interviews are taped in the studio or on the rustic 5-acre property; Robison’s dog, Lucky, likes to wander into shots.
“It’s all about just performing the song and seeing where it takes us,” says Robison, “and having great players in a real collaborative atmosphere. And then showing that to people.”
That’s the simple explanation; more specifically, the plan involves taking advantage of multiple music distribution methods to:
Tell the greatest stories of country music through peer-to-peer conversation and collaboration;
Create an online community of passionate country fans — not just fans of the music, but the culture; and
Make creating content and distributing music a fun, profitable and carefree process again for artists of all experience levels. 

“I think this could be the new way people put out music,” Robison says. Instead of trying to hustle cash to record and release CDs independently (or via a label), he envisions artists using The Next Waltz to engage current fans and attract new ones, in tandem with sponsors who want to align their brands with quality music and appreciative audiences. (Robison even suggests that brand partnerships might evolve into a new label model.)
As for the session musicians, cream-of-the-crop regulars include fiddler Warren Hood (the Waybacks, the BoDeans) drummer Conrad Choucroun (Bob Schneider, NRBQ), keyboardist Trevor Nealon (the Band of Heathens), pedal steel player Geoff Queen (Hayes Carll, Robison and Willis), bassist Dominic Fisher (Wood & Wire), guitarist David Grissom (the Dixie Chicks, Bob Dylan), and backing vocalist Kelley Mickwee (the Trishas).
Citing L.A.’s Wrecking Crew, Muscle Shoals’ Swampers, Nashville’s A-Team, Stax’s Mar-Keys and Booker T. & the MG’s and Motown’s Funk Brothers, Robison intends to form Austin’s version of a history-worthy house band that carves out its own sound. (That is, after all, more or less how the Band evolved, though they started onstage.)
“In the ’50s, they tried to pair a great song with a great artist and a great band, and we’ve gotten away from that,” Robison notes, adding that his intent is not to idealize the past, but draw from it.
That’s expressed perfectly in the simple Next Waltz tagline: “Where country music still lives.”
The Next Waltz links
http://www.thenextwaltz.com/
Http://www.facebook.com/thenextwaltz
https://twitter.com/thenextwaltz
https://www.instagram.com/thenextwaltz/
Rolling Stone Country premiered the video of Jerry Jeff Walker's "Song for the Life," the debut release from The Next Waltz:http://rol.st/24zgwFy"> http://rol.st/24zgwFy
# # #
Soundcloud (Audio Only)
https://soundcloud.com/thenextwaltz/songforthelife/s-HgVsv
YouTube (About Us)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHuF8QSFo-I&feature=youtu.be
YouTube (Biopic)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVCvqZk3OY8&feature=youtu.be
YouTube (In-Studio Music Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avClS72SHEg&feature=youtu.be

Speaking of Jerry Jeff, here's a thingette I wrote a while back, in the context of culture wars and war wars, hence cute wistfulness at end---but "still swingin' on a Lone Star," yeah (last time I checked):
http://clclt.com/charlotte/keep-texas-beautiful/Content?oid=2140399

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/06/09/cmt-music-awards-best-and-worst-moments-tim-mcgraw-wins-in-an-upset/?hpid=hp_no-name_hp-in-the-news%3Apage%2Fin-the-news

Maren Morris and the Brothers Osborne.

Sure, they got only a minute on the side stage to show off their hits (“My Church” and “Stay a Little Longer,” respectively) before the show cut to commercials, but it was refreshing to see new faces during a night when most of the famous singers had very predictable performances.

Colvin % Earle: Her gentle voice, sometimes in-one-ear-and-out-the-other solo, seems to draw out the tune-friendly side of his, compatibly enough with the tuneful tunes he (as usual) writes, and their co-writes are thoughtfully straightforward, sometimes with unexpected nuance in the performance: first verse of "Tell Moses" slyly promises "milk and honey on the other side," then shifts to exhorting Selma-to-Montgomery marches---nice jump, although it just now led me to fleeting connection w MLK's love life: truly, truly perish the thought. But there might be some subconscious Goodbye Earle link he's making between his own, frequently outspoken idealism and even longer history of zig-zag wandering between the sheets and divorce courts (not to mention child-support schedules).
(Colvin's proximity may also have something to do with the old coop-flyer actually bearably singing "Don't question why she needs to be so free," while waving a wet hankie at departing "Ruby Tuesday.")
The best in the writing-advanced-by-singing class is also best in show: "You're Right (I'm Wrong"), which is succinctly confessional, but also prowly, even Stonesy without taking the "Miss You" booty call suggestions----even "I'm missin' you tonight," with just a tad of thirsty harmomica----too much past the furtive urgency of tempo (no disco, heaven forbid) and headphone Easter eggs of certain notes played by Earle and producer Buddy Miller (who never gets to noodle like on some BM albums).
Also! "The Way That We Do" so far seems like a good Cobain ballad, though without the KC moan. "You're Still Gone" is good too. But sometimes the gentler side can seem the wimpier side of folkie summer camp, maybe being reconciled to your own emotional range involves too leads to too much resignation,too much writing, mebbe (although the other covers, of "Tobacco Road" and "You Were On My Mind," are not as spirited as they should be either).
Anyway, several keepers so far for sure.

jeez, blake shelton is increasingly unbearable. "you put the hang in hangover"? doesn't even make sense. or else I don't get it. of all the current attempts at tabloid tie-ins, his has got to be the worst.

hmm maybe you hang out hung over?

This Guy Clark bio looks promising. The author instigated the Guy Clark tribute album mentioned here; tribs are rarely so good. (Speaking of the Clarks' "circle of friends," check their house party in hte 70s-made doc Heartworn Highways)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — When Tamara Saviano began working on Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark, her no-holds-barred biography of the beloved Americana music icon, she already knew Clark’s peers and fans loved and respected him. She’d also heard that profiling still-living subjects was harder than chronicling those who’d departed. But she was still surprised that every single one of her 200-plus interview subjects checked with Clark before agreeing to talk.
He gave them all the same answer: “I’m not out to rewrite the truth. Just tell her everything. Don’t hold back.”
And so they talked candidly, during countless hours of conversations she recorded starting in 2008. Saviano’s 406-page book, completed just before Clark passed away on May 17, takes an honest look at one of America’s most revered musical storytellers and his relationships with two key figures: his wife, Susanna, and her soul mate, Townes Van Zandt — who was also Clark’s best friend. Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark...is a title in the John & Robin Dickson Series in Texas Music, sponsored by Texas State University’s Center for Texas Music History.
...Clark and Van Zandt...wrote songs popularized by members of the outlaw country movement as well as more traditional artists; Clark’s contributions included classics such as “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “The Randall Knife,” “She Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” “L.A. Freeway” and “Texas, 1947.” Always keeping the focus on the song, not the performer, Clark’s poetic lyrics sketched characters both fictional and intensely real, using slice-of-life imagery to peel away external layers and carve into the deepest reaches of human souls. Though he released only 13 studio albums in his lifetime, his work has been recorded by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Ricky Skaggs, Jerry Jeff Walker, Emmylou Harris and countless others.
His long list of friends and admirers included Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Rodney Crowell, Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely, Rosanne Cash, Jack Ingram and others, many of whom shared insights for the book. Saviano also includes 113 photos from all phases of his life and storied career.
In Texas and later in Nashville, Guy and Susanna, a formidable songwriter herself, attracted a circle of friends and acolytes who loved nothing more than sharing songs (and substances) together. Clark, also a luthier, and Susanna, a visual artist, met when he was dating Susanna’s sister, Bunny. When she committed suicide, Guy and Susanna bonded over their grief. Saviano delves into details of their relationship, aided by Susanna’s own journals, as well as interviews with family members who also gave her unfettered access to documents, photos and memorabilia.
“It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. I went back to every part of Guy’s life and found the people who were there at that time,” Saviano says. “I learned details that nobody else knew, including his closest friends.”
But the book is far from straight biography; in the third section, Saviano herself becomes part of the narrative. She was managing editor of Country Music magazine when she met Clark in 1998. In 2006, she became his publicist for the album Workbench Songs, a role she repeated for 2009’s Someday the Song Writes You. In 2011, she produced the Grammy-nominated album This One’s For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark, which was named the 2012 Americana Album of the Year by the Americana Music Association.
“I had no idea that I was going to grow to love the old curmudgeon, but I did,” Saviano says. “I felt I needed to make it very clear that I was not only a reporter. We had become good friends and Guy confided in me about many things. I’m not sure it was a typical relationship for a biographer and subject.”
Advance praise for the book is already rolling in. Says Joe Nick Patoski, author of Willie Nelson: An Epic Life and Stevie Ray Vaughan: Caught in the Crossfire: “Tamara Saviano hasn’t just written the definitive biography of the definitive Texas singer-songwriter. She goes deep in unfolding the intimate relationship between Guy Clark, his wife and creative muse Susanna Clark, and their best friend, the other definitive Texas singer-songwriter, Townes Van Zandt.”
Saviano is also at work on a documentary further exploring the relationship among Guy, Susanna and Townes, whose death in 1997 sent Susanna into a spiral from which she never recovered before passing away in 2012. (Clark’s love song “My Favorite Picture of You” became the title track of his final album, released in 2013.) But as Van Zandt’s son, J.T., notes in the book, the two men spurred each other on as songwriters. “I don’t think that either one of them could’ve made the impact that they did on music without the other one, as best friends, in the time that they did it,” he says. “… The fact that they both … existed together is not a coincidence. It was meant to be.”
About Tamara Saviano: Saviano moved to Nashville in the 1990s to work in radio promotions at Capitol Records, then segued to Country Music magazine, where she became managing editor. Moving to TV, she became operations manager/producer at the Great American Country cable network, and has since served as a publicist, project manager and artist manager for some of Nashville’s top talent. Her credits include producing Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster, which won the 2005 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album, and The Pilgrim: A Celebration of Kris Kristofferson, a 70th-birthday tribute album.

Not as wowed by Maren Morris as I had hoped.

Has anyone checked out the new Elizabeth Cook record, Exodus of Venus, done after she split with longtime husband Tim Carroll (who played guitar on her breakthru records Balls and Welder) and, apparently, her manager? It's been bruited as the record on which she leaves country, but I hear it as her most conventionally (contemporary) country record to date. I like the song set in London and am interested in the new way she sings.

I'm also interested in the Guy Clark biography--Tamara Saviano was the person who got me my first interview with Clark, 10 years ago. I was able to interview him 3 times, and Clark was a very canny operator who I think felt as though he never quite got his due from Nashville (he never got rich, apparently), even though he's been a Legendary Figure for decades. I would say that Clark is about as good a songwriter, and obviously an inspiration for, the Go-Betweens' Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, same kind of stripped-down approach. But I never much liked Clark's solo records, not even the early ones, thought his voice just wasn't interesting enough to activate the material. When I interviewed him a couple years ago, I mentioned Gary Stewart's (to my ears) definitive reading of what may be his greatest song, "Broken Hearted People," and I think Clark was actually a bit lukewarm on that. (Steve Young, who also passed this year, did a cool rearrangement of that one on his 1976 Renegade Picker album.)

oh well, I know this isn't going to change minds, but I like Stapleton's preoccupied sociability---lotta dark thangs he's been through, stuff he could say, but he'll just say this, share a vibe, a drink, and move on. No grim doughboy Game of Thrones slogfest, like the labored sounds of Chris Cornell, Eddie Vedder, David Clayton Thomas, Scott Stapp (in descending order of tolerability. I like that formulation, "preoccupied." For me, the singing is ordinary and the songs repeat effects, but what puts him over is that he really doesn't try too hard. Now whether that's intentional or just the way he's build, I honestly can't tell.

Will check out the Cook record. Didn't realize she also did this as I don't have Sirius/XM radio

For the past nine years, Cook has hosted her own show, called "Apron Strings," on SiriusXM's Outlaw Country channel. She plays classic country, Americana and Southern rock, and in between songs, discusses anything and everything that comes to mind.

http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2016/06/23/elizabeth-cook-triumphs-over-tragedy/85863360/

Miranda is here to save us.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XxQz2P6X9Fg

playlist is updated.

I will use Miranda as delayed gratification, the carrot at the end of the stick, after I write about a couple of xpost dark thangs:

The first being that xpost Elizabeth Cook album, Exodus of Venus: If she has indeed experienced triumph over tragedy, re the headline in curmudgeon's link, that's great, but part of the artistic triumph or effect of the album itself is that you wouldn't know it, if looking for triumphant or coming-into-the-light themes---well, there's one, "Dharma Gate," which sure sounds like a cosmic transition point, where you might die and go to drug heaven, and then whatever comes next, if anything, or come back for another chance---or just where the penny's dropping, a moment of lucidity: "What are you doing? The chance, the choice is Now"--but that's more implied by the musical undercurrents than any upfront therapyspeak. It seems to come from and be personal experience, something ongoing, or a fresh memory, like the rest of the album.

She seems to be trying to make sense of chaotic scenes, pictures from life's other side, without reducing them in anyway, incl. exploiting what's obviously melodramtic enough already. A couple of tracks still seem too even-handed, monotonous, as E. Cook reports again from the battlefield, over burnt-dry, steady rolls, with periodic guitar solos providing equally dry, electronic heat lightning: effective jolts, but they work better when she doesn't rely on them so much. Mostly, she lets the spare, somewhat metal-associated beats flex a bit more, even get to a kind of New Orleans hip hop rattle at times, and the guitars get to flex too, nothing musclebound.

Her voice eventually gets too flex some too, taking the band out for a run in "Straightjacket Love," which alternates a high lonesome hillbilly (nasal) walts, with meth bursts: "Look out look sugar, Mama needs her drug, better come and save her, with yore/Straighjacket Love." Also, she chirps like Dolly Parton while taking her first tour of the methadone clinic, where Dr. Feelgood is all squeaky-clean and "socialistic," no bad boy appeal atall, but oh well, showing up for regular no-drama doses "adds some structure to the week," and she can sell what she doesn't use up.

Prob be some argument, but to me, this is a country album: the pitch and cadence of her voice, the turns of phrases, as written and sung, guide and shadow the grooves, bringing out the bluesy elements of crossroads sounds, without trying to pretend they're pre-digital; the subject matter, layers of atmospheric consistency---the fixations of an addict, recovering enough for perspective on same---though getting the fix, "getting straight," as they used to say, can provide enough detachment for moments of insight even inside the thing, as "Dharma Gate" and others suggest---all merge with certain classic themes of country, even if she's not meditating on a shot glass all of the time.

The other dark thang is Lucinda Williams' The Ghosts of Highway 20, which is similar to Cook's album conceptually, incl. the sonic grid, although here we get up to four guitars---Williams regular Val McCallum, with guests Bill Frisell and Greg Leisz, who plays acoustic as well as joining the electric mesh, along with Willams' own strings (think she's credited with some acoustic too): intricate treble skeletons, sometimes whole nervous systems, though never too detailed, more like instant afterimages, visions already falling away---what her voice and words would say if they could, if they weren't bound to testify down here on earth, in the dry and moist and funky shadows of the barn (the voice, not slurring as much as on some previous albums, but occasionally decaying, as all things must, especially when "all of my thoughts turn to dust"; also also the bass and drum kits and hand drums are funky shadows etc.).
But the guitars are light through holes in the roof, and also big blowing chunks of her family tree on the title track, for instance, and she's not trying to grab hold of those, just be mindful of them and dodge and otherwise work around them. Like several of the lyrics are about different kinds of solace. The thoughts turning to dust are from her father's notes (he died with Alzheimer's), about what he gets when he might expect tears, and the guitars burn that dust, instead of having to sling around tons of sobs, so it works out pretty well, musically, anyway. And Woody Guthrie's "House of Earth" channels a witchy woman, who will show you how to make better boys, also you will take this back to your wife and she will make better girls--she foretells this, in a stoned lullaby sway, while sometimes sliding into him---"you will leave drops of honey" on the couch, she/he will leave money---although (there's a punch line of sorts).

Yadda yadda, some of it doesn't work, but another effective use of vocal clarity-to-decay comes in "Louisiana Story," and also I like the effects of two extended grooves, "Doors of Heaven" (kind of parade gospel, she gets in There and struts her stuff), and "Faith and Grace," (a big ol storefront church on Main Street, for Exiles, but not for choirs, or handclappers) remind me, as does Cook's album, of the pitch for this promo I haven't listened to yet: supposedly, it's metal and associated atmospheres for recovering addicts doing yoga, who aren't scared of triggering sounds, who don't want the sweety-pie BS of New Age.

Too long, but mostly keepers.

This is the press sheet for recoverers' yoga music--guess you could do yoga to the Cook and Williams albums too, though some say music is distracting; the movements must be exact):

This October (2015), Screaming Crow Records will release the first ever BLACK YO)))GA CD/DVD. Created by 200-hour RYT-certified instructor, Kimee Massie, BLACK YO)))GA is vinyasa style yoga set to drone, noise, stoner metal, ambient, industrial, space doom, and other traditional meditation music. It incorporates basic poses in a relaxed environment, while focusing on safe body mechanics. It’s a traditional yoga class in practice, however darker than what you may typically associate with the practice in the Western world.

Since 2012, the music for classes has been a series of mix-tapes. This particular recording — Asanas Ritual, Vol. 1 — was performed and created by the BLACK YO)))GA Meditation Ensemble, an eclectic group of metallic hippies and doomlords, headed up by Kimee’s husband, Scott Massie. With members involved from Storm King, Veniculture, Agnes Wired For Sound, Moonstation Burning, Vulture, Deathcrawl, Complete Failure, Hero Destroyed, Filth On Demand, Secant Prime, Emay, Crown Of Eternity, Torrential Bleeding, and more, this ensemble has produced a soundscape tailored to create a heavy meditative space in order to spread the benefits of yoga to people within their own art and music communities: people who may battle depression, anxiety, alcoholism, drug addiction, trauma/PTSD, phobias, dark passengers, etc.; those who may not feel they fit into typical yoga classes; the people who, in all rights, may most need the balance and release of yoga to return to and lead rich, fulfilling lives.

This project consists of two releases. The first will be the BLACK YO)))GA DVD/instructional video, Asanas Ritual Vol 1, directed by Joseph Stammerjohn of Eyes To The Sky Films, containing a full one-hour yoga class, stylized and set to their original score. The second release will be a CD version of the soundtrack on its own. Both releases contain plenty of bonus features and will be available in stores and online by the first of October via Screaming Crow Records.

Asanas Ritual, Vol. 1 Track Listing:
1. A Wandering Through
2. The Dark Places In Our Lives
3. Carmentis
4. Hungry Ghosts
5. Negative Confession
6. Lament
7. Nest Of Thorns
8. Loopholes In The Universe

I only have the audio part of the promo, will have to visualize.

Dow, haven't heard Lucinda's record. As for Cook's, I think it drops off some over the last couple-three songs, but is paced really well previously. "Slow Pain" and the London song and "Methadone Blues" are my favorites, so far, and while I like the way the sonics often support her inward vision, I'm not sure that the outward part of it registers as strongly as it could, though I like the bit about the "famous rock drummer" in one tune, if I'm hearing that right. "Straightjacket Love" works because of its structure--she's a humorist--but don't know if it cuts as deeply as she intends it, which I could say about the whole record. The obvious antecedents are Emmylou and Lanois, seems to me, and the third Big Star record, which she probably heard back when she was with Tim Carroll. But overall, this is her best record to date and represents a leap forward, though, again, the songwriting per se is perhaps second to the aural design. Sings really well but I don't really hear these as "songs" even in the contemporary-country sense. Could "Slow Pain" make it on reg'lsr country radio? Dunno. No doubt this will top the Scene's country poll next year.

Kinda diggin Paul Cauthen's "Still Drivin'," another entry in the Sturgill/John Moreland/Margo Price '70s-country sweepstakes. Cauthen's old group, Sons and Fathers, pulled typical "eclectic" faces at 'Mericana (soul,rock 'n' roll, country-rock) but got weighed down by the harmony singing, with David Beck. "Still" has a lotta musical detail and a groove unafraid to be not-quite-all-out, and Cauthen makes something of his Waylon-isms, Tommy Overstreet geetars, wherever this comes from. Album, My Gospel, is out October. Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGCPVL5QDG8

Wrote about a couple of country thangs this week. Water Liars, who have just gotten better over the last 2 records, here. And two old guys, Dale Watson and Reverend Horton Heat.

Will check out Cauthen, and speaking of John Moreland, he plays Newport Folk tomorrow at 1:15 PM Eastern, on NPR's live stream: http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2016/07/22/486910594/were-off-to-newport-folk-festival

I do like the Cook album; with her voice and instincts, I think she would have to try awfully hard to make a record that wasn't identifiably country, even if under a broader alt- umbrella. But I don't hear it as any less country than the Maren Morris album, which I like but find overpraised to a pretty absurd degree. I can't imagine Cook, who remains pretty far under the radar even among the other country music writers I know, topping the Nashville Scene poll ahead of Sturgill Simpson (also drawing some traditionalists' ire for its production), the Margo Price album (with much higher-profile press and promo), or that Dave Cobb compilation album (which I found, unsurprisingly, too timid in Cobb's production choices). And Miranda's album is due before the year's end, so I'd imagine that everyone is fighting for second place, anyway.

Lucinda's album is my favorite of hers probably since Car Wheels or Essence, but it also seems to have been forgotten already because of its early release date.

Have seen quite a bit of chatter about this having been a weak year for country. I only sort-of agree. There have been plenty of albums that I've thought were worthwhile, but nothing that I've found to be truly outstanding.

One of my Nashville friends turned me on to Kelsey Waldon. She just dropped a new single yesterday. Paired with the last one, I have some pretty high hopes for the album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVmVOISzqeA

Jon, ao you think Margo Price has more fans among writers than Elizabeth Cook does? I honestly don't know; my impression is that Cook has been a cause celebre since Balls back in '07, and that Welder, which made #3 in the 2011 Scene poll. I think the poll contains a lot of Americana stuff, with Jason Isbell at #2 this year and Rhiannon Giddens, James McMurtry, Emmylou and Rodney, John Moreland, Joe Ely, Dave Rawlings Machine and the Bottle Rockets all making the list. I did see a big Margo Price billboard on the interstate outside Nashville, too, so there's that. Americana is big business.

I've got a few thoughts on Cook and Price and country: So far, I rate what Cook did on her new one a bit higher than what Margo Price does on Midwest Farmer's Daughter, which just seems like a well-done re-creation of an idea of '70s country. I suppose this is my common complaint about Nashville's attempts to do up country for a new era with the work of Sturgill and Margo and Elizabeth Cook, too, that there's a built-in deflector in the music, if you find it underwhelming then you're not on board with the noble project, if you like it immoderately you're guilty of making a fetish out of that old stuff. What Jason Isbell sings about has something to do with what younger folk, in the South and maybe elsewhere, see as a vexed populist tradition, just as what McMurtry sings about has links to the critique of macho that I suppose had something to with old-time country, too, but neither one of them has much to do with what the core audience of country wants today, which includes the (kinda soft-edged and not very specific) music of Chris Stapleton, seems to me. I like Isbell and McMurtry, but musically they're working so far in the realm of readymade that I can't connect totally with either one (though McMcurtry's last one did take some musical chances). So I guess what Cook does on her new record is a kind of intellectualized version of the sonic and musical ambitions of current country and that's what makes it interesting, along with her ability to write lyrics that play off her "celebrity" and "troubles being famous and the attendant rehab of it all." And as usual, the very idea of country music in this era is part of the problem Price and Cook have--it would take a genius to figure out just how much the limitations of country help these two and how much they impede them in their search for some kind of new expression.

Meant to say above, that Cook's Welder, which made #3 in the 2011 Scene poll, was also considered a real breakthrough, and in some ways it was--whatever you made of the ballyhooed production by Don Was (retro retooled, in my estimation, not uninteresting), the songwriting was pretty sharp and funny.

Going for what I called her "sonic grid"---that dark, spare, hard-edged but flexible framework for the throughline of her narrative themes---has some of the same appeal as Stapleton and Erich Church's recent albums, something of a Jamey Johnson atmosphere too, but I doubt that she expects as much radio play as they've gotten. The main challenge is writing about this stuff at all, without going into lurid imagery or therapyspeak, or seeming evasive. Her current solution seems to be just to begin in the middle, to tell it like she might have told it then, in her most self-aware, lucid and candid moments. And maybe she's still in the middle of it, for all we know--but I have the impression (because the self-awareness etc is so sustained here) that she's been through some kind of therapy, with whatever lapses experiences or still possible, and of course the idea is to know yourself to be a recovering addict, present tense, no matter how long you've been sober. So, while these songs may not be the deepest, as Edd prev. mentioned, this is how far she's gotten writing-wise (with anything she'd want to show us now, at least).

"with whatever lapses *experienced* or still possible", I meant.

@Edd

Personally, I like Cook's album more than Price's; I don't think Price's voice is strong enough to carry some of her rowdier material, and the production overpowers her at times. But, at least among the writers I follow and interact with, Price has significantly more buzz. She's also received far more attention in the general music press and has had more noteworthy promo gigs (all of the late-night shows, SNL), and her team has actively been promoting her among Grammy voters. It seems to me that she is really being embraced as this year's country act (along with Morris) that non-country writers are going to bat for. I'd be legitimately shocked were she to place below Cook on the Nashville Scene poll.

I agree whole-heartedly about Isbell's aesthetics; he's my favorite contemporary songwriter by several orders of magnitude, and I love his singing voice. But I preferred the production on his first three solo / 300 Unit albums to that of the two that have been embraced by a fairly large audience. I certainly don't begrudge him the success and voted for both of those albums on my Nashville Scene ballots in their respective years, but the sameness and safeness of the production among him, Stapleton, and the majority of these Americana troubadour guys has been boring me for years. Acts like Lambert, Church, and Little Big Town typically take more interesting risks in that regard, and "Vice" is a good example of that.

prefer isbell's more (sorry, but) "literary" songs. decoration day, live oak, etc. last record was forgettable but for a couple songs that were memorable only for being too maudlin for even me.

really like miranda's voice on the new one.

Price's album is okay for a while, but the Loretta Lynn gloss gets to be more distracting than retro-gratifying especially since the actual LL popped up with a sparky new album (incl. robust chesnuts), inconveniently and prob unexpectedly enough. Maybe MP will modify her approach next time. Surprised at some of the enthusiasm, like xgau, who can be pretty good on country, preferred her debut to Cam's, for instance.
Speaking of xpost Dave Cobb, conceptual compilations are not quite his best move (are they anybody's?). but as usual, he tailors the production to the artist on Lori McKenna's The Bird and the Rifle---title track may be more sparse than spare, but that's the way she wrote it. More often, the arrangements and sound design are just polished enough to reflect emotional undercurrents (and tunefulness), carefully guarded by candid, succinct, sometimes blunt, occasionally harsh (but going for judicious, not kneejerk-judgmental) words.

The arrangement is timed to go with emerging, perhaps reluctant degrees of empathy w both fules in "Old Men Young Women": kind of a head-shaking, been-there perspective---she's, what, 47 now, after all.

Not that she's incapable of sentiment---would have been interesting to hear her version of "Girl Crush", which she wrote; she does include "Humble and Wise", a hit for Tim McGraw (didn't somebody on Nashville cover this set's opener, "Wreck You"? If not, they should). And in "All These Things" she lets the shiny imagery run and run through her fingers. But soon enough, she's waking up early enough to slip away from a reunion, leaving a couple of good goodbyes, especially "If Whiskey Were A Woman, " which is also a note to self, to get real about her own limitations.

How did I miss her all this time? Powers' intro cites Bittetown as a particular focal point of creativity and critical acclaim, way back in '04. And here's xgau:
Unglamorous [Warner Bros., 2007]
Sobriety can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially in a Nashvillian who claims in so many words she expects ecstasy. If she joked around or liked to party, it might give her country goodness the wiggle room every way of life needs. But she does like to rock, and there's no denying her eye for out-of-the-way details or her ear for a decent tune. Of several believable love songs, I'll take the full-bodied "Witness to Your Life" over the spartan title tune. Of several believable unlove songs, I recommend "Drinkin' Problem" to Al-Anon. A-

Anyway, this is still here 'til the 29th:
http://www.npr.org/2016/07/21/485899363/first-listen-lori-mckenna-the-bird-the-rifle

Bittertown, that is. And "Girl Crush" is a co-write (with the same team who worked with her on one of those good goodbyes, as Powers points out).

Greil Marcus on a Nashville singer, Tomi Lunsford, from his Real Life Top 10 column:

4. Tomi Lunsford, “Go to People,” on Come on Blue (Speedbank) From a Nashville singer, on an album where her steps sometimes seem hobbled, a tune that could have been written by Guy Clark: with Pete Finney on pedal steel as if he’s less playing the song than overhearing it, a where-are-all-my-friends lament that’s sultry, delicate, sly, even sinister.

And an old No Depression review of her High Ground.

"Go to People" is pretty sly. I hear what the No Depression reviewer was getting at when he compared Lunsford to Terry Garthwatie--the almost-jazz, conversational aspect of her singing.

obsessed with this lydia loveless song

http://www.npr.org/2016/07/26/487352477/songs-we-love-lydia-loveless-out-on-love

obsessed with this lydia loveless song

That is a remarkable song. The melodic contour of it really gets under the skin.

Listening to xpost Tomi Lunsford's Come On Blue on Spotify, and so far have 0 clue why Marcus hears it as "sometimes hobbled", though with 12 unhurried tracks in 37 minutes, there's a lot to take in: the turns in her phrases, arrangement and maybe rhythmic sense(s) have kind of an oops upside the head effect, which seems deliberate, though maybe something about impulse control too, another theme. See, right off, she's cheerfully acknowledging that things get kinda wild around her, but she's hoping you'll keep an open mind and come see her again, the good Lord willin' and whether the creek rises again or not during tomorrow night's cocktail hours. The playful and versatile aspects of her musicality do remind me of some Terry Garthwaite tracks on her solo debut, more than with Joy of Cooking, but the voice and lyrics make me think about what if Janis Joplin had reached middle age, bumping along in her dusty urban sprawl country excursions, the ones she began near the end, via "Me and Bobby McGee" and "Mercedes-Benz."
"Go To People" finds her noting that the light's green but she's sidelined, not used to driving, but all her go-to people are gone; for instance, she had "a couple in town, but one got married, and the other got drowned." Oh well, take a headache pill, check her dog in the backseat, he's turning into a cat and giving pithy advice, so seems like he can be go-to too, at least for now.
But she's socially concerned as well, wants to see all dreamers taken care of, and reminds us that "Jesus Was A Union Man", a jumpercablestronica affirmation.
What a trip. Back to listening.

Speaking of xgau on McKenna, now there's a whole new column(didn't realize she's got ten albums):http://noisey.vice.com/blog/robert-christgau-lori-mckenna-expert-witness
His Spotify list for The Bird and the Rifle only shows the title track, but I heard the whole thing on there this week (his Spotifys for some others do incl. all tracks, apparently).

I like McKenna's record. Very detailed singing, and the co-writes prove they're all working real hard to be observant. Far better than Margo Price's record, which just traffics in rather stale '70s rock-country modes--McKenna makes something of the restraint of country.

Another thing I picked up on via Marcus' "Real Life Rock Top 10" column--a truly fucked-up 2015 interview with Steve Earle. I've never understood the appeal of Earle, but I've also recognized some of his undeniably good ideas, his ambition, and I also kind of liked his recent blues album (which has elements of old-school Jansch-style folk-blues guitar in it, and also benefits from his undeniably crack band). Anyway, he makes this rather amazing claim about the origins of blues--this sounds like someone from 50 years ago, before anyone did the research:
"As far as we know, and it’s the beginning of recording so there wouldn’t be recordings that predated it, but there is tradition and people have done the research and I’ve done the research.
There aren’t earlier versions of those Robert Johnson songs that anybody knows about, so as far as we know, the entire genre of the blues as we know it, every bit of it, is based on one Robert Johnson song or another, which is pretty mind-blowing when you think about it. There’s not one single thing that’s not really based on a Robert Johnson song. I mean the whole twelve-bar, sixteen-bar modern blues thing—it’s all based on Robert Johnson."
The entire thing is here.

Wow, pretty cray, and I don't mean Robert. He talks a lot, and much of it's posted, but never seen/heard him that off before. Typically overdoing the research, I listened to most of his albums up through I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive. when covering his tour behind that record and the same-titled novel: liked most of what I heard, and a fair amount since; settling into the autumnal makes the scroungy vocals even more noticeable, though they're countered and blended fairly well on Colvin and Earle.

The first Trio album is the best, right? Haven't heard much since, but kind of interested in this box, incl. prev. unreleased.

https://gallery.mailchimp.com/bf141dbbd818f4f933816b13a/images/6f48d1d2-7d66-4408-9722-34238513f52f.jpg

Much more info here:
http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=bf141dbbd818f4f933816b13a&id=c1e6b695f9&e=2d74d5e1e7

and here's the new video of "Wildflowers" (alternate take)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeDTV487S5c

Sunny Sweeney says she's got new music on the way---Thank Hank, cos my likely Nashville Scene ballot Top Ten still has *several* vacancies:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BIqsSFHAZTg/

Kelsey Waldon's album is streaming at NPR. It's damn nice.

http://www.npr.org/2016/08/04/488238618/first-listen-kelsey-waldon-ive-got-a-way

Couple of Nashville guys getting some attention in the 'Mericana side of things: Bill Eberle, who's been cited as up-and-comer by Rolling Stone, got a new one you can hear here. Best track so for is "Trayvon Martin Blues," which takes ramblin' as first principle and doesn't nosedive too much by the end of its five minutes. Reminds me a bit of fellow folkie Jake Xerxes Fussell or maybe Nathan Salsburg, but Eberle does wear his heart on his sleeve.
Similarly, Andrew Leahey--a journalist for RS and others--takes Rhett Miller's aren't-women-somethin' shtick and turns it into Tom Petty, sorta. His new one, Skyline in Central Time, is a bit soft around the edges, aims to please but has interesting flecks of "angst," and I'm not sure the riffs-meets-songs aspect of his music is fully worked out, which may mean, as with Eberle, it's not pointed enough to really engage me. "Little in Love" is tol'able Rhett Petty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dyNx1XB8pg

Not big on original Rhett or Petty will check, def also Kelsey Waldon. Folk-country duo Kacy & Clayton pretty appealing so far on Pickathon live stream:
http://livestream.com/pickathon/events/5911922?origin=stream_live&mixpanel_id=138c362e53432-0be39e05d-6f1b264b-c0000-138c362e535e&acc_id=4906583&medium=email

Now they got a band behind 'em: kinda Great Speckled Bird---Ian & Sylvia w Nashville cats, mixed results---also reminding me to remind yall that Henske & Yester's Farewell Aldebaran is finally being reissued legit & remastered (my fave track is the tuff cosmic folk-dronin' "Raider").

Got some groovy hooks, need to invest in electronic tuner for faster modulation however

Slow-singing x fast-waltzing "Nottumun Town"--it works!

Okay, gonna have to check their 2016 album

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2644526771_10.jpg

Dow, I do like some Rhett solo stuff, Petty not so much. Peoples ought to remember that Judy Henske took Billy Edd Wheeler's "High Flyin' Bird" into the charts a couple years before Richie Havens turned it into a hippie jam.

And can't say I ever really got into Henske and Yester's Farewell--though I do like Judy Henske in theory and in the movie Hootenanny Hayride and on the live 1966 album she did with Jack Nitzsche.

"High-Flying Bird"! Really?! During recent discussion of her on Hipster Kisses thread, I linked some Unterberger liner notes for Whiskeyhill Singers etc., but didn't notice that info. Wow.

xpost jeez, bad shade of orange, sorry----now they're covering Sir Doug's "Dynamite Woman", sounds cool

Here's Brent Cobb, Dave's cousin, doing "Solving Problems" from forthcoming Shine On Rainy Day. Yikes. Sententious and contemptuous of the common man in one mumble-peg-sung package set to a post-Mr.Bojangles Genteel on My Mind acoustic guitar sequence. "As they come and go/Like those wannabes on Music Row," of course he's read T.S. Eliot. His cousin produced.

Here's the Brent vid, in the Tennessean's story.

Kelsey Waldon's album is streaming at NPR. It's damn nice.

http://www.npr.org/2016/08/04/488238618/first-listen-kelsey-waldon-ive-got-a-way

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever)
Yes indeed. Although don't agree w Powers' intro: "deadpan"? She's right that it be a pan full o' feeling, but Waldon sounds pretty upfront emotional, without ever emoting---she's still indignant when she thinks about people who have fucked with her, or tried to, but mainly impatient, cos she's on her way, so get out of it---unless you've got some endearing young or old charms; she can take a detour while looping back to where "Life Moves Slow", although she's only passing through and doesn't slow down that much herself, and what she really likes about it is it's where "folks still speak their minds": her true roots, or the ones she wants to claim.
Although, like zpost Lori McKenna, she can still relive-live the spooked early displacement in a hometown, like "I couldn't be what my friends wanted me to be"---even aside from what her parents etc. expected. This is "There Must Be A Someone (I Can Turn To), where she's reaching way back to perhaps commercially, even culturally premature country-to-rock-folk etc crossover tendencies of the Gosdin Brothers' original, from an album they made before the one with Gene Clark. This would've been good on that, but anyway, as Powers mentions, the Clarkless Byrds did cover it too:
(who sings on this track?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymX4CWXwwas
Whole thing has spare, denim jacket, Byrdsy, pre-Eagles, electric country-folk appeal, not too trad and certainly not too fancy, though as with Honeycutters, who I talked about upthread, could use a little vocal variety, like occasional duet or harmonies. Steel guitar and maybe 12-string, sometimes, for the rhythm guitar---especially like that they both get more to do on "Travelin' Down That Lonesome Road", over a dark drone, and Waldon's voice is fuller and more projected than usual. Bass and drums always good, esp. on headphones.
As with xpost Tomi Lunsford's album, this is in the old LP ratio: here we get 11 songs/38 minutes and change---doesn't get me going like Lunsford's, but it's pretty good.

(Powers thinks Waldon's own "Dirty Old Town" is a honky-tonker whose title must have been inspired by The Pogues. Yeah, they did a good version of the late-40s-written Ewan MacColl song, but it was already a folkie staple.)

Uh-oh, that Gosdin Bros. LP w original "There Must Be Someone" *might* have been commercially premature for proto-country rock-folk etc crossover from the country side (in terms of back-and-forth radio play), for lesser known artists, anyway--but it was from later than I thought, and *after* the album with Gene Clark---even got Clarence White on here, and other good rhythm--better than the Byrds' cover (good sound for Youtube, especially it really is from the 7" shown here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qBzdUXstl0

So how about that new Toby Keith song "A Few More Cowboys"....

Didn't wow me on first listen. Lyrics include :

If the White House was in Texas, man, we'd get a straighter answer
If they'd let us smoke what we want, we'd have a lot less cancer
There'd be a bunch more daddies, sons could be proud of
We'd have half the crime, we'd have twice the fun

With a few more cowboys, be a lot less outlaws
With a few more amens, be a lot less bad calls
With a few more yes ma'ams and a lot less yes man
This world would be a better place to live in
With a few more cowboys

If we did it with a handshake, we'd save a lot of paper
That'd save a lot of trees we're shippin' overseas to make her
If we stood by our word, took care of our own
Bought it made in the USA, we'd keep it here at home

With a few more cowboys, be a lot less outlaws
With a few more amens, be a lot less bad calls
With a few more yes ma'ams and a lot less yes man
This world would be a better place to live in
With a few more cowboys

If we had a little more grit, less politics, and more fist fights
Met 'em at high noon, hell, it's about high time
We looked 'em in the eye, got our head out of the sand
Hit 'em with a big John Wayne, by God they'd understand

With a few more cowboys, be a lot less outlaws
With a few more amens, be a lot less bad calls
With a few more yes ma'ams and a lot less yes man
This world would be a better place to live in
With a few more cowboys...

http://www.metrolyrics.com/a-few-more-cowboys-lyrics-toby-keith.html

I agree with Dow, Waldon is not deadpan--she's operating on the edge of deception with fadeaway phrasing and what could sound like undersinging. But it's not, because nearly every song features a moment when you realize she's really trying, where she adds just a little bit extra to make the vocal just a little bit more outgoing. Reminds me of a more technically proficient Gram Parsons, in a way. Also, whoever is playing pedal steel is killing it and defines the whole record. You get a sense some kind of "modal" underpinning guides her vocal approach and her songwriting, too, on my favorite, "All by Myself." This is kinda what Margo Price really ought to be doing, seems to me, and a better record. Yeah, that Gosdin Brothers record is from about '68, innit, and I think it's a transitional thing between the folk-rock-country of the mid-'60s and something more like outlaw, and I remember some amazing Clarence White solos throughout. As far as the Toby Keith tune goes, everyone knows John Wayne used to put on makeup and parade around in a dress behind the doors of his Hollywood mansion. Maybe Toby can shed some light on the way big agriculture has allowed the cowboy ethos to flourish in the United States.

half-cocked political anthems obvs toby's bread and butter; they completely overshadow the more personal songs he's actually okay at writing and singing. kinda reminds me of brad paisley and all those dumb novelty songs. or blake shelton and whatever drunken stupidity he seems to keep putting out there.

so negi in this thread but it's only cuz i care lol

dammit, whatsup with ilx's ability to show prev. posted videos today?? That there Toby op-ed anthem is so goofy it fits with the novelty songs, thus with the ongoing autumn leaves portion of his program (advantage of finally hitting it big in early middle age). Keep smokin' TK, and hopefully you too can be Haggard like never before.

(advantage being you can get philosophical/novelty-tending when, for instance rah-rah for Iraq Invasion eventually makes you look like a sucker, and you might as well salute a "Red Solo Cup", before or after the Red White & Blue)(and then another "boot in yore ass")

Keep smokin' TK, and hopefully you too can be Haggard like never before

sure maybe yeah but that tune is no "fightin' side of me." and it's no "red solo cup" either. he's smarter than this. (and i'm not talking politics. i'm talking songwriting.)

he's def smarter; he's pandering, and doing an increasingly lazy job of it. politics aside, "courtesy" at least had striking imagery and a strong melody. the way he stretches out certain syllables for no good reason on this one makes it sound like he wrote it in ten minutes.

true; even a sometimes surprisingly interesting twilight (on the past two-three=more? albums) can't compensate for just plain robo-phoning it in, rather than building covertly jaded, professionally clever or at least efficient songs/tracks around seemingly DOA ideas/angles (and doing better than that just barely often enough to keep me hangin' on).

"covertly" when he's even pretending to give more of a shit than he still does, or sounds like he thinks he should give more.

Also, whoever is playing pedal steel is killing it and defines the whole record.

No kidding. I like every song on the record on its own merits, but that stuff is an amazing garnish.

So until this video thang gets straightened out (Video Problems thread on Moderator Request board indicates it's happening on other sites etc), I wanna repost the link to xpost Gosdin Brothers' "I Need A Someone (To Turn To)":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qBzdUXstl0, with Clarence White's picking creating a groove which is not *too* happy, lest it distract from sad song (still pretty frisky, considering). Man, if McGuinn had gotten the Gosdins' voices and songs into the Clarence-era Byrds, that could have been something.

Won't even post it as a mere link?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qBzdUXstl0

"There Must Be A Someone (I Can Turn To)" is the correct title, and it's on YouTube, with (most of?) the rest of the original LP, The Sounds of Goodbye, posted as individual tracks, I think (but also a playlist comes up if you search on the album title there)

I tried to trick it, putting the https youtube link in italics, but no.

from Video Problems thread just now:

trying it from vimeo, random choice of vid
https://vimeo.com/178395776

― dow, Friday, August 12, 2016 10:56 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oho! Better than a vertical monad. Now, with the "s" removed:
http://vimeo.com/178395776

― dow, Friday, August 12, 2016 10:58 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Still, I'll settle for a link. Now, if vimeo could just add tracks from 1968 Gosdin Brothers country-folk-rock LP The Sounds of Goodbye, feat. Clarence White (in other words, is it mainly/all something about pasting YouTube content, which plays fine on Tube itself---maybe it doesn't want us pasting from it no more?)

― dow, Friday, August 12, 2016 11:02 AM
I should add that not everybody is experiencing this, on ILX or elsewhere: some posters on Video Problems thread report that their Windows 10, iPad, other setups are working fine.

A good mixtape follow-up to xpost Gosdin Brothers' sad-grooving "There Must Be A Someone" is a rippling, kinda Charlie Rich-style single---search it on the 'Tube via this listing Hangin' On , Vern Gosdin with Emmylou Harris, 1976 Vinyl 45RPM
Vern & Emmylou did several others; check a TV duet of "Love Me Right To The End", with a good dobro player, it (and more!) are also on yon 'Tube...

Yep, this is the performance I meant (from 1977, I think): Emmylou Harris & Vern Gosdin : Love Me Right To The End

Now back on Firefox, with YouTube HD add-on, also YouTube Flash add-on I think, so here's Hangin On:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxpU2tp9JnE

And here's "Love Me Right To The End" (a weeper, duh, but good 'un)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_FoDFdegHg

And here's Vern and Hillman w the pre-Byrds Hillmen, perkin' up young Dylan's revenge fantasy (reminder that in Chronicles, Mr. D. credited Brecht & Weill's "Pirate Jenny" as crucial influence on his songwriting):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTjjszaG4c4

"Hanging On" is one of an elite band of songs which have tremendous country, soul and reggae versions: that Vern Gosdin cut on it is great, Ann Peebles and Joe Simon did their different deep soul things with it, and I recommend David Isaacs' early reggae version produced by Lee Perry (released as "Just Enough", it turns up on the Upsetters' "Double Seven"LP, it has amazingly woozy tuning and I love it). I'm sure there are lots of other

(The Gosdin Bothers cut it in '67 on Bakersfield International too, if I recall correctly? Think it wasn't on their LP but was not he CD that came out a few years ago, has some great Clarence White business on there as I remember.)

O hell yes---thanks for the tip!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK4rM8sTI_c

Lot of intriguing stuff carefully tracked here, some of it on the 'Tube:

http://www.adioslounge.com/clarence-white-and-the-rise-of-nashville-west-1966-67-part-3/

Rolling Country denizens, I hope you'll check out this Western Centuries record ... it is great, and they played one of the best sets I saw at Pickathon last weekend:

http://www.westerncenturies.com/music/

Thanks so much, alpine static, I'm totally smitten with this! Even the rueful philosophical response to life's funky details with is part of the honky tonk catchiness--just bite the token and roll with it, son. And daughter.
Whole thang's on youtube: hitp://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=western+centuries and Spotify and I'm fixing to order it anyway.
Along with xpost Kelsey Walson's album, another unexpected source of cool steel guitar.

dammit hitp://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=western+centuries

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmb_RVPqTMAqOfa5-jvM03hzjPmQlw9Js

Western Centuries got a fleet, fleeting sound--little hints of bluesy disconnection in the backing, and I like the lyrics a lot. Very good.

glad y'all dig it. I'm a longtime HUGE fan of Cahalen Morrison's work, back to his folk duo with Eli West ( http://cahalenandeli.com/ ) ... those guys had/have a sort of interesting/unconventional way with melodies, and they can sure pick. I guess they're still together, but Cahalen's clearly been putting more time into his country music the past few years, first under the name Country Hammer ( http://www.cahalen.com/country-hammer/ ) ... they put out a really good record last year, I think. But it seems they must've added a significant member or two and changed the name to Western Centuries. At least that's my understanding ... one of y'all more patient learners may be able to read up and find out more.

I didn't know they'd changed the name, though, until a couple days before Pickathon, when I went to try to investigate some of the bands I wasn't familiar with and realized this was a Cahalen project. Loved the songs I could find online, bought the vinyl at the fest merch table, saw the band, was blown away ... I went from having no clue about Western Centuries to having a favorite new country band in the span of about 5 days.

here's a graf from their bio. Donna the Buffalo connection here:

Comprised of Seattle-based country musician Cahalen Morrison, jam band veteran Jim Miller (co-founder of Donna the Buffalo), R&B and bluegrass-by-way-of-punk rock songwriter Ethan Lawton, pedal steel player Rusty Blake, and bassist Dan Lowinger, Western Centuries are clearly a diverse bunch. The band is collaborative in nature, but they are – albeit subtly – helmed by Morrison. After years of performing in prominent roots duo Cahalen Morrison & Eli West (whose music made fans of Tim O’Brien, Jim Lauderdale, Dirk Powell, and BBC Radio’s Bob Harris along the way), Morrison formed and led the band Country Hammer, made up of members who have mostly crossed over into Western Centuries.

Yeah, the philosophical asides from daily-nightly rounds def. go w Donna The Buffalo inclinations, though all three songwriter-vocalists interact pretty seamlessly. I figure they bond via primo Hunter-Garcia x country jukebox staples (incl. yer better b-sides).

brandy clark playing NYC's Mercury Lounge on Nov 11, presale tix available now if you buy with amex
https://www.ticketfly.com/purchase/event/1287215

My country tastes definitely fall squarely in the trad camp, but for some reason I decided to listen to Jon Pardi's current album and...I like it? It's got all the songwriting hallmarks I hate about contempo country, but is somehow better.

Playlist is updated.

Only listened to the Pardi album a couple times and felt it starts strong but gets somewhat monotonous after a while; I have to give it another shot. IMHO, at its best, it's the guitar work what prevents it from going down the Luke Bryant road.

Anyone listened to Aubrie Sellers' New City Blues? She's Jason Sellers and Lee Ann Womack's daughter and stepdaughter of producer Frank Liddell, who produced her album.
Somewhat similar to Elizabeth Cook on her Exodus--mangy guitar and out-front drums Singing not quite as assured as Cook's, but she's about 25.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDNJX30r2WY

Yeah, I liked her alright, should listen more:

Aubrie Sellers, New City Blues: As must always be mentioned in front, she's the daughter of Lee Ann Womack, stepdaughter of Frank Liddell, producer of Womack, Lambert, Pistol Annies, and of this, which also incl. writing input from her biological, Jason Sellers, but she doesn't seem that anxious about the pressure. Maybe over-counters it some, though, when her opening "garage country" tag seems applied a tad too literally, as a whole roomful of heavy sounds can make her voice seem a bit anticlimatic, But when she's singing in front of vivid rhythm tracks (varied just so, and discreetly in check on a strong, flexible leash), with thee guitar effects as judiciously applied framing devices, she's got the presence to make it all work, rather than seem like some kind of trendy faux-indie applique on suburban mall denim (we'll probably get the latter from someone else).
Also, she seems implicitly to acknowledge her apprenticeship with some speculative glosses on the tried 'n' true, but nothing overused: "Dreaming In The Day" combines sinuous verses and a sensuous chorus with crisp beats; "Liar Liar" doesn't bother to set yore pants on fire like the younger, pyro Lambert did, because they already are, in her level gaze, 'til she drops you (so she sounds more like the present Lambert, solo or w Annies). "Humming Song" brings convergence and reconfiguration like recent Ashley Monroe. "Like The Rain" even sounds a bit like Mom, but Womack is probably never going to be this young-girl optimistic about a bad boy again (even a few Beach House/The xx fluttery-heart arpeggios toward the end, for more generational irony, if you want to take it that way).
And somehow, most of the album comes off as distinctive and satisfying, so far. Helps that her point of view, despite the co-writes, provides a convincing, unity: no striking insights, but like the title says, here's some new, some city, some blues. The young voice of experience.

― dow, Tuesday, March 8, 2016 1:31 PM

"Somehow"? Seems like I had some underlying reservations or more likely just lack of being grabbed--so unlike most of the Cook album, in that crucial regard---but obviously, right away, it's enjoyable and sturdy. Should let it grow on me, though.

"apprenticeship", for sure, but not bad.

Sturgill Simpson vs. Nashville:

Many years back, much like Willie and Waylon had years before, Merle Haggard said,
"Fuck this town. I'm moving." and he left Nashville.
According to my sources, it was right after a record executive told him that "Kern River" was a bad song. In the last chapter of his career and his life, Nashville wouldn't call, play, or touch him. He felt forgotten and tossed aside. I always got a sense that he wanted one last hit..one last proper victory lap of his own, and we all know deserved it. Yet it never came. And now he's gone.

Im writing this because I want to go on record and say I find it utterly disgusting the way everybody on Music Row is coming up with any reason they can to hitch their wagon to his name while knowing full and damn well what he thought about them. If the ACM wants to actually celebrate the legacy and music of Merle Haggard, they should drop all the formulaic cannon fodder bullshit they've been pumping down rural America's throat for the last 30 years along with all the high school pageantry, meat parade award show bullshit and start dedicating their programs to more actual Country Music.

While Im venting about the unjust treatment of a bonafide American music legend, I should also add, if for no other reasons than sheer principal and to get the taste I've been choking back for months now out of my mouth, that Merle was supposed to be on the cover of Garden & Gun magazine's big Country Music issue (along with myself) a few months back.
They reached out to both of us in October of last year while I was on a west coast tour. Merle was home off the road so I took a day off and traveled up to Redding.
He was so excited about it and it goes without saying that I was completely beside myself along with my Grandfather who has always been a HUGE Merle fan. We spent the whole day of the interview visiting in his living room with our families and had a wonderful conversation with the journalist. Then we spent about two hours outside being photographed by a brilliant and highly respected photographer named David McClister until Merle had enough...he was still recovering from a recent bout of double pneumonia at the time and it was a bit cold that day on the ranch.
But then at the last minute, the magazine's editor put Chris Stapleton on the cover without telling anyone until they had already gone to print. Don't get me wrong, Chris had a great year and deserves a million magazine covers...but thats not the point.
Its about keeping your word and ethics.
Chris also knows this as he called me personally to express his disgust at the situation. Dude's a class act.
The editor later claimed in a completely bullshit email apology to both Merle's publicist and ours (Chris and I share the same publicist) that they didn't get any good shots that day.
David McClister..
2 hour shoot..
no good photos..
OK buddy,..whatever you say.
Anyway, Merle passed away right after it came out.

Some days, this town and this industry have a way of making we wish I could just go sit on Mars and build glass clocks.

Sturgill

hear hear

Margo and Sturgill passed over by CMA shockah

And for the industry viewpoint.

More discussion on the Sturgill thread.

meanwhile, in the upcoming NY Times Sunday newspaper, but online today, a different issue

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/arts/music/country-male-female-duets.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-4&action=click&contentCollection=Music®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article

A version of this article appears in print on September 4, 2016, on page AR11 of the New York edition with the headline: Bro Country Duets, but With Pop-Star Gals

More to the point, you wouldn’t expect Ms. King to be singing this song with Mr. Bentley. And yet their duet is a hit on country radio — still the major driver of mainstream country success — and it’s not the only head-turning matchup receiving airplay right now: On the most recent chart, a duet by Kenny Chesney and Pink rose to No. 12, and one pairing Brad Paisley and Demi Lovato had just slipped out of the Top 20.

Miranda's finally dropped---a release date. Video of her announcement here:
http://www.ew.com/article/2016/09/13/miranda-lambert-new-album-weight-wings

for those who go "ewwww" @ew, it's 11/18.

Listening to Austin Lucas' Between the Moon & the Midwest. He cut a pretty good rock-country album in 2013 in Nashville, Stay Reckless, for New West, who declined to release his latest after Lucas finished it in late 2014 because they didn't "hear a single." So Lucas had to buy it back. The Arkansas indie label Last Chance Records put it out early this year. I didn't get around to listening until I noticed he was going to be one of the acts at this year's Americana festival.
I think it's one of the best records I've heard in quite a while--superior to Sturgill Simpson or John Moreland or Margo Price. Works in the same "cosmic" dimension as Sturgill, and in fact Lucas has told interviewers that, had New West released it in early 2015, he would've benefited from the comparison perhaps more than he has been. It's a fleet, quick study of guitar licks that cascade and comment on the main action, reminding me of the Byrds, Steve Gunn and some kind of country-bluegrass that hasn't been invented yet. Most tunes have an out-of-the-box harmonic shift or two added to structures that seem slightly, intentionally, loose around the edges but firmly in the mode of all the country you've heard before, and Lucas' post-bluegrass vocals are slightly Yoakam-esque, very controlled in their melismatic pitch and roll. Subject matter includes infidelity on the most rock 'n' roll song on the record, "The Flame," and vocal support by Lydia Loveless, Moreland and others doesn't hurt. Really impressive, and when he decides to include a little finger-picked acoustic figure, it's also different from what his contemporaries would do, that much more mordant ("Kristie Rae"). Son of Indiana bluegrass-folk musician Bob Lucas, who wrote tunes for New Grass Revival and Alison Krauss and was part of the old Bar-B-Q Records-Mark Bingham scene in Bloomington in the '70s. (Bob's '70s freakazoid country-folk-grass album The Dancer Inside You is a worthy obscurity, but his son, who has played crust punk [whatever that is] and metal and folk as a wanderin' troubadour in Prague and Portland and all points in between, seems to have moved Beyond).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mu3KWx6mf4

Wow---New West "didn't hear a single"? Not "Wrong Side of the Dream" or "Pray For Rain" or "The Flame", among others? Were Loveless etc. not on there yet? True that his own voice is pretty plain, sorta Sturgilly without SS's Waylonisms, but it's expressive enough and (increasingly) transparent enough for the writing and arrangements and overall sound quality, even with out the other singers, who come in just enough; he's not riding their coattails:
https://soundcloud.com/lastchancerecords/sets/austin-lucas-between-the-moon-and-the-midwest

And "William" is one of the best tracks, with just his voice and acoustic.

(Closer “Midnight” the follow-up maybe to “William” as well as “Kristie Rae”, which also involves William.)

Thanks Edd!

Yeah, "Wrong Side" and "The Flame" seem plenty commercial to me. And this is way better than his previous record, cut at Beech House in Nashville with some of the same folks, but also with Chris Scruggs, Hoot Hester and other somewhat less adventurous players. The producer on the new one has led a Nashville folk-pop-rock group, Glossary. I hear him as a very good singer, very controlled, owning the melismatic high-lonesome bluegrassy mode, like Yoakam, in a way. He's 37, so I hear a lot of experience back there and a ton of musical smarts that no one I can think of in "country" music has at the moment, at least not in this mode of post-Byrds, post-rock guitar moves. The analogy I keep coming up with is Steve Gunn's last two records, which take a similar roots-rock-country mode and goose it up. But where Gunn is abstract and vocally blank, Lucas is heated and writes narratives. Lucas is known for being very good live, too, which points to his long experience playing punk and metal and so forth. So I hope he gets at least the recognition that John Moreland or Aubrie Sellers or Margo or Lydia Loveless garner, because I hear a total conception here, not just words-music, that implies a future for country that I had kinda given up on ever hearing. It's truly avant-garde while being completely accessible, and the soloing is unfettered enough to appeal to adepts of virtuosity in the bluegrass manner. Best interview I've read here.

And, he's a truly schooled musician--opera lessons, vocal lessons, years singing in a choir. Again, I can hear it--he's coming from a different place than any current country musician I can think of and certainly outpaces any Americana eclectic I can recall.

So I find Lucas addictive, already--the sonics and the intricate but integral guitar interplay, listen for that to repeat again, pleasure principle. "Kristie Rae" takes an approach to song form that is in itself addictive, bracing. Hearing something of an analog to the last Drive-By Truckers album, esp. the Cooley songs, but somehow Lucas is reaching something here the Truckers seem a little too modest, or earthbound, to quite get to. Lighter, airier, something like that.

yes, this one is worth a listen

throwback to last year via the listening list but thanks for corb lund and courtney patton; both have been rewarding!

my previous post was insufficiently effusive; i'm in love with this album.

Lucas is heated and writes narratives.

otm. heat is just what i've been missin.

like, so much recent stuff is kinda sexless. this ain't that.

Revisited Lydia Loveless' Real after hearing her on the Lucas album. So is she basically a country PJ Harvey? Or has she been listening to the Go-Betweens and Aztec Camera? The compression of the songwriting and the blur of the guitars. "Heaven" is pretty great. How country it is, though, I dunno--as country as Wussy, maybe?
Also revisiting Robbie Fulks' Upland Stories. Wish the arrangements had a bit more detail, but a couple of great songs: "Needed" and the one about the new old man who doesn't like Scruggs-style banjo picking. But I haven't heard his collaboration w/ the Mekons.

You should def check her previous albums ( and we should both check the EP Boy Crazy). The country elements come through more consistently, more variously, maybe more compatibly than on the new full-length, which I hear (compared to previous) as indie rock, for lack of a better term: personal expression, but in a more or differently familiar context---also she quotes the object of her romantic challenges etc. to the effect that he's wise to her emotional fireworks now, so she's trying something different, sometimes cool, sometimes uncertain, but up front about that too, and--despite outbursts, there's now something along the lines of: "Think it, feel it, all the way through---but then: hold onto it, squeeze it, make it bleed, if it can, and then send it thisaway"---wouldn't surprise me if she's thinking of PJ Harvey. This is also the first album that hasn't grabbed me by the back of the neck on first listen.

Also check the thread about her, incl. some pastes of my early coverage for Columbus alt-weeklies, and other people's good comments too ("Sounds like it was recorded in a barn." "The classic Bloodshot sound." Yes!)

"country pj harvey" sounds like the stuff of my dreams.

i don't really consider lydia to be country at all, though she sounds great on the lucas record (and i love real). wish he was opening for her on the tour.

she's identified the replacements as an influence on the album (which, yeah, i kinda hear it).

Well, The Only Man is her most consistently country-per-se album, but there's a lot of punk (and some old alt-rock and country in her saga; she def belongs on the same label as the Mekons and Fulks and, lately, Freakwater. Since you like her and the idea of a country PJ Harvey, you might like Whitney Rose's Heartbreaker of the Year. which is revolving ballroom showdowns at last year's Senior Prom, still savored: kinda Twin Peaks, but that was a country town too.

Kewl, I did check the Lydia thread and will do so again now with renewed attention.
I just did a shortie for the Scene in which I got down with Carrie Underwood's last album, which I'd heard and kind of dismissed. I still dismiss it, but I have to admit that "Smoke Break" is a purty good song about class and that "Mexico"'s intro reminds me oddly of Tom Ze or something, if Ze were let loose at the Wild Horse Saloon on a Thursday night with the overflow crowd from Tootsie's nipping at his heels. And that "Church Bells" is awful--the parvenu gets beaten, for which I have the utmost sympathy, but she married big, in the big mansion, presumably has a credit card and a car, so leave! Already. But she poisons the brute's whiskey in a way "no law man's gonna find" and takes refuge in the Baptist church. Detective work and forensics both tell us attempts to use "undetectable" poisons don't work too well. I can't hail such a thing as some sort of breakthrough for the plight of the southern woman.

leavin ain't always easy! but, yeah, to some extent it's "goodbye earl" without the humor.

if we're talkin plot holes, though, someone please explain to me why the narrator allows her own brother to be executed in "the night that the lights went out in georgia."

Because his getting framed wasn't necessarily part of her plan, and better he take the blame than confessing to the crime herself? That's never been a song I could get into.

Harvey's influence is definitely all over Loveless. She's country enough in her lyrical tropes and vocal phrasing for my liking, though it isn't hard to hear why genre purists bristle at her. To which: Whatever.

I've wanted for years for Miranda Lambert to cover Harvey's "This Is Love." And for Ashley Monroe or Maren Morris to cover Tori Amos' "Playboy Mommy," for what it's worth.

she's so wrapped up in her brother's personal life that she commits a double murder on his (apparent) behalf, but somehow he gets put to death without her noticing. it's baffling.

Piece from the Guardian on Heartworn Highways and The Last Waltz. I think it's typically overstated in the "Nashville was different because of Dylan" department--yeah, Dylan's influence on today's country is immense--and sorta neglects the intertwining of folk and country before Dylan. I guess HH is still somewhat unknown. What's up with the Guardian's editing? Piece is here .

xpost re Lydia: don't know if she's mentioned PJ Harvey, but has namechecked Robyn, maybe an influence on this track (my take from the Lydia thread): "Heaven" has slightly shuddering bassheart core, with very spare electronics occasionally flickering, checking in, whole thing pulling me in through the silence around it (in space no one can you scream). Plus of course the recharge of ongoing, self-confident resets of expression she might be getting from listening to Robyn.

Here's hoping for remixes!

Elizabeth Cook interview, on Exodus of Venus, backstory etc
http://www.npr.org/2016/06/19/482706211/elizabeth-cook-says-exodus-of-venus-is-an-album-of-extremes

Decent Cook interview. Her ex-husband plays regularly in Nashville and did guitar on a new Charlie Rich tribute album, Feel Like Going Home, produced by Boston guitarist-songwriter Michael Dinallo.
I still haven't seen any truly substantive reviews of Cook's record anywhere. Christgau so far hasn't reviewed, neither has Pitchfork. Don't believe the Nashville Scene has devoted any space to the new record. Kind of interesting. How truly successful the record is aesthetically I'm still unsure of, anyway, just not convinced that the arrangements really add that much to her basic shtick.

my two cents from upthread---now I think it might end up in my Countryoid etc Top Ten (gratuitous category hacked into my Scene ballots), cos might be more rock than country---or as much---re overall sonics vs. "basic sensibility":
Exodus of Venus: If she has indeed experienced triumph over tragedy, re the headline in curmudgeon's link, that's great, but part of the artistic triumph or effect of the album itself is that you wouldn't know it, if looking for triumphant or coming-into-the-light themes---well, there's one, "Dharma Gate," which sure sounds like a cosmic transition point, where you might die and go to drug heaven, and then whatever comes next, if anything, or come back for another chance---or just where the penny's dropping, a moment of lucidity: "What are you doing? The chance, the choice is Now"--but that's more implied by the musical undercurrents than any upfront therapyspeak. It seems to come from and be personal experience, something ongoing, or a fresh memory, like the rest of the album.

She seems to be trying to make sense of chaotic scenes, pictures from life's other side, without reducing them in anyway, incl. exploiting what's obviously melodramtic enough already. A couple of tracks still seem too even-handed, monotonous, as E. Cook reports again from the battlefield, over burnt-dry, steady rolls, with periodic guitar solos providing equally dry, electronic heat lightning: effective jolts, but they work better when she doesn't rely on them so much. Mostly, she lets the spare, somewhat metal-associated beats flex a bit more, even get to a kind of New Orleans hip hop rattle at times, and the guitars get to flex too, nothing musclebound.

Her voice eventually gets too flex some too, taking the band out for a run in "Straightjacket Love," which alternates a high lonesome hillbilly (nasal) walts, with meth bursts: "Look out look sugar, Mama needs her drug, better come and save her, with yore/Straighjacket Love." Also, she chirps like Dolly Parton while taking her first tour of the methadone clinic, where Dr. Feelgood is all squeaky-clean and "socialistic," no bad boy appeal atall, but oh well, showing up for regular no-drama doses "adds some structure to the week," and she can sell what she doesn't use up.

Prob be some argument, but to me, this is a country album: the pitch and cadence of her voice, the turns of phrases, as written and sung, guide and shadow the grooves, bringing out the bluesy elements of crossroads sounds, without trying to pretend they're pre-digital; the subject matter, layers of atmospheric consistency---the fixations of an addict, recovering enough for perspective on same---though getting the fix, "getting straight," as they used to say, can provide enough detachment for moments of insight even inside the thing, as "Dharma Gate" and others suggest---all merge with certain classic themes of country, even if she's not meditating on a shot glass all of the time.

― dow, Wednesday, July 20, 2016

"trying to make sense of chaotic scenes" and/or just report and get through them again, without "reliving" them more than necessary/backsliding, for inst.

Just gonna drop this off here
https://blog.longreads.com/2016/09/13/girlhood-gone-notes-from-the-new-nashville

Felts' essay gets at some of what has made Nashville, and its music industry, is so difficult for critics to understand or deal with in any sensible way, as Sturgill's screed demonstrated recently. But the essay in general is a lot like the stuff you often read in the Nashville Scene, for example, a recent piece about how a new hot-chicken franchise that is upscale, or at least has a proper dining area, takes away from the innovations of the black Nashvillians who invented hot chicken at Prince's out on Dickerson Pike northeast of town. The Scene piece on chicken made the analogy between black invention of hot chicken and black invention of rock and roll, a banal point that no one seemed to challenge, judging by the comments the piece brought forth.

Holly Gleason wrote this on the Great Credibility Scare of the '80s, here. Christgau memorably characterized the same era as when "the folkies took over the establishment," which may discount the non-folkiedom of it but kinda gets at why Rodney Crowell and Lyle Lovett, for example, made Holly's list.

i sure would like some Prince's right now (tho' i like the hot fish sammich better)

i'll also just drop this off here as well
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/us/following-its-country-music-nashville-may-loosen-up-on-marijuana.html

Actually, why is there no rolling Nashville thread?

Never been a fan of Gillian Welch (some of the Dave Rawlings-Welch records are sorta interesting). But here's Welch in the apparently unedited Paste--"maritian"??--talking about Americana and punk and stuff, which validates to some degree my long-held theory about post-punk and the impetus behind Americana.

Paste: It would be an understatement to say that you pioneered this [new Americana] movement. You’ve been making this music for 20 years and now… this is what’s popular. This isn’t weird.
Gillian Welch: I’m no longer a maritian. Now I’m part of a scene, which is a nice change.

Paste: So how have you witnessed the genre evolve over the years?
Welch: You know, the coolest thing… I feel like this scene has grown out of a lot of the best aspects of the old time music. And a lot of the stuff that drew my partner and I to it in the first place… there was something about a certain kind of folk music that was almost too soft for us. What I’ll call the “pretty folk.” And at the time when we started, that’s what folk meant. Not to put anybody down, but folk was in a very different place in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, and I didn’t identify very much with folk. Because it was very pretty, very clean in its way. So I always gravitated toward… old time and bluegrass music, and mountain music because the first time I heard the Stanley Brothers, I immediately understood its relationship to the Velvet Underground, and all this other punk stuff that I was listening to. And I think that’s what this entire scene understands and loves, is there was nothing in its way “softer” about this music. It’s sometimes quieter, but it’s not softer. So all the angst, and all of the frustration, and all of the strangeness and outsideness that I felt, and that any person growing up in this age might feel, I was able to connect with this music. Also, it’s worth saying… the darkness and the tragedy of the stories that are so commonplace in this type of music that Dave Rawlings and I’s music sprung from. I remember feeling really liberated early on, like, “oh there’s nothing I can’t talk about. I wanna talk about morphine addiction? Fine. I wanna talk about rape? Fine. I wanna talk about suicide? Fine. It all comes out of this tradition. I felt total permission to vent anything I wanted to through this tradition… I’m pretty much a shy girl, and didn’t want to talk about what was going on with me, ever, but through the music it was all okay. That’s like everybody. That’s like every artist. There’s a reason why you express yourself through art, because there’s some way which you can’t do it.

I haven't gotten that much into her albums---she and constant companion Dave are better live---but if she finds finds the use of old time to be more of an inclusive outlet than a filter, good for her, She did say that she didn't like what she was writing for several years, so subsumed herself into Dave Rawlings Machine--also better live, esp. vs the most recent album---and eventually emerged somewhat refreshed (that Dave is some congenial guy onstage).
"Rolling Nashville"? Like Nashville isn't central enough here? I like to think of Rolling Country as rolling through different centers of gravity, as lower-case country always has trouble doing, but creative tension yall---Americana's welcome (to be judged) here too, far as I'm concerned.

Todd Snider's Eastside Bulldog is Nashville, not country, not that Snider ever was, but he's certainly referenced Nashville and country in his career, written with Kix Brooks, as he told me in 2011 when I interviewed him at an East Nashville location I think he felt nervous in, somehow. Alter ego Elmo Buzz comes up with Frankie Ford meets Las Vegas Grind rock 'n' roll grooves and writes toons that employ bare-light-bulb prosody in surprising and funny ways, and the band steps on their own feet just enough to make it sound real. The anti-music that virtually no one else in the Nashville Metro Area would ever think to put on tape, in fact I can think of no one doing anything like this anywhere. Not a Nashville Like Flies on Sherbert, more like something you'd capture in a dressing room or for aesthetes of a certain slant, Bob Johnston's 1966 Moldy Goldies, but played mod-ren. Frat-country, a record that should come with its own Breathalyzer kit, and Snider sounds all pinched and dishonest like Mel Tillis on "Are You with Me," took me a second to figure out who he was imitating there. Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/thirtytigers/sets/todd-snider-eastside-bulldog/s-qVNw3

Snider's next logical step is recording with Bocephus and getting down to it for real. He's the only true genius in all of Nashville, I've long felt, the one who makes the mostest with the very least, and his mind goes in too many directions to count, whirlagig, the most sympathetic yet the most is-he-really-there inetrview subject I've ever had.

Oh yeah,some good live sets posted here and there, also I liked several albums: East Nashville Skyline, Live: The Storyteller, Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables, and Time as We Know It: The Songs of Jerry Jeff Walker (though not like JJW doesn't sing his own oldies anymore). Heard a mostly lousy-to-meh live set by his roots-rock group, Hard Working Americans, which put me off checking their studio album, though it got good reviews.
Speaking of Americana, got this from Folk Alley---wouldn't mind hearing William Bell sing Woody Guthrie:

Americana Awards Show Tonight, 9/21
We will offer you the choice of listening via Folk Alley’s internet radio stream (audio-only) OR watching the live video webcast via FolkAlley.com.

CLICK HERE to LISTEN http://www.folkalley.com/music/listen/
starting at 7:00pm ET/4:00pm PT
with “pre-awards show” artist interviews by NPR Music’s Ann Powers and veteran Americana DJ, Jessie Scott.

OR, CLICK HERE to WATCH the LIVE video webcast of the awards show via FolkAlley.com, starting at 7:30pm ET/4:30pm PT. (didn't get that link, but it's also on folkalley)

The awards show is hosted by Jim Lauderdale and always features an all-star house band, led by Buddy Miller. Additional performances will include Bob Weir, Shawn Colvin, Alison Krauss, Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, George Strait, Jason Isbell, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats and The Lumineers.

In addition to the awards ceremony, this year's Lifetime Achievement Award honorees include Bob Weir, Jim Lauderdale, William Bell, Billy Bragg and Shawn Colvin — they will all pay tribute to folk music legend, Woody Guthrie.

more info on nominees etc. http://www.npr.org/event/music/494562331/the-2016-americana-honors-awards-ceremony

Hard working Americans is a good record--I didn't expect it to be, but they do justice to the songs, even given (or perhaps because of) Snider's desperate-sounding vocals. I did a Scene piece on them, here.

I will check it sometime---Folk Alley link above isn't working, but NPR's stream is flowing--currently: "Desperadoes Waiting On A Train", performed by Steve Earle (not w Colvin, despite her being listed for tonight, but then they didn't do this'un on their album)

Margo Price wins best new artist at Americana awards show.

John D. Loudermilk dies at 82. "Tobacco Road" and "Road Hog" and "Break My Mind." My obit, and Bob Luman doing his "Interstate 40." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7fLxgkn6VM

Looks like the folks who define and give out those Americana awards, basically only consider "Americana" to be alt-country and folk-rooted stuff. William Bell got a lifetime achievement award, but other than that little recognition of African-Americana. NPR streamed the show and Bob Boilen and Ann Powers were there for NPR covering it I think.

Why Americana is necessary and why it will always fail is the unintentional subject of this typically Millennial view of "Nashville" and "country music," the former he may underatand the latter he doesn't know what he's talking about (since the LACK of ambition is what made country music great, for goodness' sake, how can you not see that). Piece is here. But maybe he's right, the town should've picked on Taylor Swift a lot more.

How did lack of ambition make country music great? (past tense only? Is there a different way of greatness now, or is it no longer ever great?)

I almost wrote something about the death of country, which Americana seems to take as a subject or an object to strain against. I was reading about Chet Atkins and John D. Loudermilk yesterday, after Loudermilk died, and came across an anecdote where Chet tells John about how he's gotten too into jazz recently and needs to get back home. But what Seth is saying in his piece is that Nashville needs to not get back home and to explore new avenues of music, which is the opposite of what Chet and every country musician in the postwar era believed. Which is the strength of the music. They were ambitious to sell records but not ambitious to stretch the boundaries of the music, which isn't to sat they didn't stretch them at times. Seth's piece is looking at music from a global perspective, but the stretching that Willie and Waylon and Tompall did in the '70s existed in a Nashville, parochial sense. Americana is paradoxical because it's got a built-in deflector from some of these issues--they can have it both ways, be new and old. Country still hasn't figured out how to reconcile the two to anyone's satisfaction, except to its fans, so I'm also talking about critics' theories of country. I can't help thinking about it all in these admittedly simplistic terms, because country seems singularly resistant to Theory. It's confusing.

Yeah, I think of country as a state of mind and body, more a way of life, or an influence on it, than a genre---so Lucinda, often the auto-example of Americana, can seem country as hell to me, when she's got the fixations, the good x bad times lined up and at home, between certain perimeters, on the emotional and musical range, with strenuous blends of local and other purgatives, like on The Ghosts of Highway 20(Frisell's from the jazz world, but he's in her world now).
More than conceptualizing, I refer to road maps: country's always had to co-exist with other forms of popular music, at least starting in Asheville, before Nashville, as a center and launching pad of vaudeville-era etc (Emmett Moore getting bluesy-jazzy in blackface when deemed appropriate, ditto related patter introducing songs on 78s). the career adaptations of perfomers who started in that era and outlasted Hank; the whole live radio thing, before and alongside the dominance of records on radio, effects of live, local, other TV etc.
Guess you could say lack of ambition, in terms of putting more and more weight on self-expression--via "undersinging", and just doing whatever seems right to their own ears, and letting every one else catch up, confident that enough will to pay the bills---is what kept Willie and Merle great, when they were great, and not so great at other times.
But also, not too far from the end, Merle was quoted as saying he was still working mainly because he didn't want to cause problems for the people who worked for him, not because he really wanted to make new albums etc.---yet the albums were still pretty good. Maybe because the sense of obligation and stoicism and autopilot and some still-evident capacity for rising to the occasion all go pretty good with country.
Which also makes me think of this take on Waylon Jennings, by his bud from way back, Dave Hickey:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/his-mickey-mouse-ways/

I'm about halfway through my first listen to the new Dwight Yoakam (bluegrass re-recordings of his old songs, plus a version of "Purple Rain") and I'm 99 percent sure there'll never be a second. I like bluegrass about as much as I like polka - which is to say, one song every 5-10 years is plenty - and hearing songs I love transformed in this way is more off-putting than exciting. And "Purple Rain" is a boring song no matter who's singing it, or how it's arranged.

xxpost self-expression in terms of what you feel like you'll feel like doing, whenever the next session's booked (tonight or next week, next month) or the next record is kinda-sorta due, however it works to work with Willie. No more big concept albums mebbe, but still likes Gershwin, still misses Ray Price, so hey.

what to even say about this, really. the video looks like it was produced by a chamber of commerce:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s9gAXwYZtfk

unless I missed it, randy travis appears briefly but doesn't sing.

Yoakam ruffled feathers when he compared bluegrass to punk in a Rolling Stone piece. I think he meant that the old bluegrassers, like Jimmy Martin, were as crazed as the punks.

To this day the only truly great bluegrass I've heard live is Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, who had the insidious timing, the bite, of great in-the-moment disciplined extrapolation of received form that you hear in the greatest black American music--Monk, Ulmer, etc. Truly amazing, musicians playing at the edge of what they knew and doing it up. I understand why bluegrass fans love the music, because I feel the same way about jazz. I haven't heard Yoakam's record yet, but he generally does better out of his own head than on, say, his tribute to Buck.
And, god damn it, the video dc links to above, I knew it was out there and was frightened to view it. It's scary--all those buildings rising and deliquescing and shit. It doesn't jibe with what the South actually feels and looks like, at least in Middle Tennessee, which is being torn up and rebuilt and rejiggered daily, with outlying areas of Nashville split between increasingly black-hispanic-Asian enclaves with failing school systems and plenty of social ills, megachurches, demographic change. It'll cost you a pretty penny to go back home to country roads around here and do it in style, but the outlying counties still fly Confederate flags, have a Dollar General store in the middle of daycare centers and cornfields, still feels like Rebels vs. the World. None of which makes it into country music unless you're McMurtry, who details that stuff pretty well in things like "Choctaw Bingo." And McKenna and Brandy Clark do get at some of that, as does Margo, and it's significant that women seem to have a handle on this aspect of dirty reality better than men do via their long-time oppression and marginalization. Americana vs. country goes right back to J.K. Toole's point in Confederacy of Dunces about the way working and struggling middle class opts for Entertainment while intellectuals, like the hapless Ignatius, see the class struggle for real but can do nothing about it. Americana, which does embrace Brandy and Elizabeth Cook and Lori and quite a few others these days, does try to get at that stuff, esp. Hood and Isbell (who else?) in a way that country just won't, because its core audience doesn't want that information since they live in the middle of it.

and xpost, Randy Travis is in the video on the porch, while Willie stands neath the Eiffel Tower, but he can't sing because he's had a stroke. Don't think he can speak, though I believe he's getting the therapy that might help that. Tragic fate for a great singer.

(but I guess the video does jibe with something about the South that is disappearing and, they believe, just hiding, it'll be back, re all those buildings rising and falling)

Amen brother (except---Ignatius does do something about it, something weird, and people get into it, not all of whom are the people you'd think, or that I'da thunk anyway). Hey have you read that Hickey on Waylon piece I linked above?
(Speaking of links, back to Beale Street Caravan's re-broadcast of Low Cut Connie from last year, can also stream/download here:
http://bealestreetcaravan.com/listen/shows/2016-09-21)

(Can imagine Alex Chilton getting into them.)

Jeez, I'd heard about some behavioral health issues but didn't realize he's without speech.

This gulf between music made about, versus for, the country demo (however defined) sometimes discomfits me.

When Ashley Monroe played DC last year, she mentioned something to the effect of, "who'd have thought you'd have to come to the big city to find people who want to hear real country music." Maybe she said "traditional" instead of "real." In any case, while I don't malign the statement, I could practically feel the crowd congratulating itself for its superiority in terms of cultural appreciation or whatever. Granted, this feeling was surely at least 70% rooted in my own class anxieties about being in, or at least adjacent to, a demo that's nothing like the one I come from. But anyway, it's hard to intellectualize let alone romanticize poverty when you're in it.

When my family says put on some music, they mean put on some country. And by country they don't mean any of those Brandy Clark songs about pills and foreclosure. Like Edd said, they're in the middle of it. They want me to put on "Snapback" or "Pontoon."

Debating the limits/contours of various genres doesn't generally interest me so much; that debate with respect to country/Americana just happens to correlate with my own personal identity crisis. Not a critical stance, obvs.

I forget who wrote "Love of the Common People"--John Hurley? I could look it up. That's a song that couldn't be written today, a very late-'60s kind of thing, like Medium Cool's Verna Bloom West Virginia subplot. Back then, the good and beautiful got killed because that's the price you pay for being so in America. A country song that I'd like to hear Margo or Sturgill do; I bet Sturgill even knows the song, since the Everly Brothers did it. Dave Hickey's piece, which dow linked to above, has Waylon uttering the phrase; I can't remember if he did it, probably did. I should've asked Jack Clement more about Waylon Jennings while I had the chance, that's for sure. Anyway, today, to be good and beautiful means never being poor; that doesn't ennoble you; country music writ large in the commercial sphere can only allude to poverty and cultural dislocation as a thing of the past; everybody is connected now in ways the '60s melancholists of destroyed youth could only dimly imagine, in an era of telephones and cars. And dow's right, I had forgotten just how much Ignatius, in Toole's tortured fiction, did influence the world around him in the cause of class struggle. No one to this date has been able to make the movie of that book, and it would still say a lot about the way populism gets twisted in America.

Yeah dc, I can see how if I lived in the semi-decimated countryside I might find or expect songs about meth, poverty etc. to be superfluous bummers.
Unusually enough, Angeleeana Presley's debut has some pretty plausible observational detail, and turns the camera around to depict herself as a sometimes self-mocking ("Knocked, Up, my, my"), frankly somewhut fucked-up daughter of the mostly decimated coal country, not entirely escaping local cliches w that big belly etc. on the one hand, and also faithfully conveying the range and litany of her dear Daddy's grievances, legit and bullshit and dubious and all, and also sometimes seeming self-reproachful for having ever left his side and gone off to college and Nashville Babylon and becoming a Pistol Annie.

But speaking of range, although the way she conveys all this can be enjoyably artful, in a non-fussy way, she doesn't really convey what makes life back yonder bearable, the good times x band times perspective I mentioned recently as something I look for in country, without going from tearjerkers to yeeehaaaw and back *too* mechanically. Toby Keith can seem like a creaky ol' robot now, but that's become part of the interest: he's a lawwng-time resident, seen it all, kinda jaded, but can still get het up to a certain extent, for the moment anyway, which may or may not last for the running time of this track or that.

And then there's the strenuous, haunted crackerbox ex-family home barn sweat lodge bad times good times of xpostGhosts of Highway 20 20's threnodies x guitar work-outs.

(Sweat lodge---reminds me that I think I once read that Waylon's version of "Love Of The Common People" was a favorite of his Native American fans, always a highlight of his shows on the rez. I think that was the song---in an early 70s Creem piece where John Morthland or Ed Ward went around with him on a pre-peak tour.)

Yeah, Toole saw and felt what was already coming, past the overground represented in Robert Stone's also 60s-written Hall of Mirrors, as mentioned in the New York times review, still online--Reinhart is an alcoholic ex-musician from New York: In New Orleans, Rheinhardt is in a terrible way rehabilitated, selling his marketable skills to a far- right-radio station (WUSA), where he puts together the highly selective, highly inflammatory news broadcasts, and disc-jockeys a pop music show

zpost or I might be thinking of "Poor Folks Stick Together", by Stoney Edwards, also mentioned as rez fave in early 70s.
Highway 20 20 would be a cool title, but there's currently only one 20.

also mentioned rex fave in early 70s another issue of early 70s Creem, that is.

these are good conversations.

Playlist is updated for September.

So apparently T Bone Burnett gave a "keynote address" at "AmericanaFest" (never heard of it before, but I can guess) and holy fuck, it is some jabbering fucking nonsense. Read it if you think your stomach's strong enough. Does anybody here know that dude, and can they tell him, in Zappa's words, "Shut up 'n' play yer guitar" (or whatever he plays when he's composing achingly sincere "roots music" soundtracks to movies and high-end cable shows)?

Malcom Muggeridge? Dr. Dre? Time was, in the Alpha Band and on his first couple albums (Truth Decay, T Bone was good.

just took my first spin w the xpost new Yoakam, and like it pretty well. He's high lonesome, but not thin nasal or too tight, got that bluesier side of bluegrass, flexible enough for all the twists and turns of yonder Hollywood and Beverly Hills, also almost a bit of blue yodel, at appropriate intervals. Like the occasional guest voices too, would like more or any females, since female voices have kept me listening to conteporary bluegrass, somewhut (also to contemporary punk-new-wave-etc).

Took me a couple of tracks to focus, but particular faves so far incl. "Listen", which is a little slower than usual and has kind of an Everlys feel, also "Two Doors Down", with the barstool as tombstone and/or urn: seems like that honky tonk bluegrass I've always wondered about (title of an early Ricky Skaggs album, but considering how pious he got and maybe already was, hard to picture him in such a place). Good if not strictly necessary revamp of "Guitars Cadillacs and Hillbilly Music", also, fave of all so far is "Purple Rain", now with a brisker, still pensive bluegrass cadence, reminding me a little of Hindu Love Gods' version of "Raspberry Beret."
(Would like to hear Willie sing "Purple Rain" at the original tempo.)
(Also him and/or Yoakam doing "Pale Blue Eyes", but that's another matter.)
http://www.npr.org/2016/09/15/493781215/first-listen-dwight-yoakam-swimmin-pools-movie-stars

x-post--Malcom Muggeridge?

Had never heard of him, but I see that he committed to Christianity late in life, and Burnett's self-proclaimed Christianity (is he born-again, does he identify w a certain church) gets discussed on occasion

Of all the people to reference, Malcom Muggeridge has to be the weirdest. I bet there weren't 2 people in the audience who knew who he was. Famed for railing against the swinging '60s. Can't imagine anyone read him now, but he was a well-known journalist (and author) from the '20s thru the '80s.
Wrote an obit for country singer Jean Shepard, who died yesterday in Nashville. Passably weird country singer who drew out the last syllables of her songs in a distinctive way, and she hated pop-country with an ornery passion.
http://www.nashvillescene.com/music/nashville-cream/article/20834914/remembering-jean-shepard

Intriguing profile of Jean Shepard. Speaking of songs that often explored the limits of what women could endure,, this morning on Cody's (streaming)WSM show, his nocturnal colleague Eddie Stubbs called in to talk about about her, like how poor her family was before they said wtf and moved to California, and how he drove all night to catch her act in some dive in the backside of Pennsylvania: "She was backstage putting on her make-up in 100 degree heat...getting through it like nobody else would or could", and how she said it all went back to that first solo single, "Crying Steel Guitar Waltz", covered by Kitty Wells while Shepard's version sank without a trace, and "She said she was sitting on the edge of her bed crying, a teenage girl...her other came in and said, "If you don't have confidence in yourself, how on earth can you expect anybody else to?" And that became her note to self and others. (Stubbs' own show is going to incl. spotlight to her sometime this week, he said, but not seeing anything about it on wsmonline yet)
Judging by the songs you describe, she had a good range, will check her out. Thanks for the tip.

Her *Mother* came in

Shepard wasn't as weird a singer as Kitty Wells, but there was something eerie about the way she bore down on lyrics. I think her post-'73 stuff for United Artists is some of her richest work, when she did kinda grapple with some notion of pop-country (covered "Snowbird," as did everyone else, for example). Very tough cookie--kept right on going after Hawkshaw crashed and probably never looked back, and sounded really good up until almost the end (unlike Jeannie Seely and Connie Smith, whose vocal timbre deserted them in the '80s).

(And, xpost, I've heard Eddie Stubbs tell that story. Stubbs is the Great Gray Undertaker of Country History, the man believes in it and it's really amazing to witness).

Willie Nelson's For The Good Times: A Tribute To Ray Price----thought it might be a mite solemn, with him thinking of his late great early boss, longtime colleague---they made some good duet albums, though the one where they added Merle was a bit too solemn, or so I thought at the time--but no, it's fun, without getting happy in the wrong places, and though Willie's voice is worn, he's focused and intense, without overdoing it, of course. The Time Jumpers are ace, and even more (unfussy) detail is added from time to time by Jim Horn's reeds, Charlie McCoy's vibes, Mickey Raphael's harmonica---even get some countrypolitan strings, conducted by Bergen White, also on backing vocals---Edd got me into him, diggin' deep---they glide behind and occasionally among Willie and the Jumpers, never getting in the way. 12 songs, 40 minutes, like this oughta be. (Dunno if Ray himself recorded every one of these, like Willie-writ "It Will Always Be". but they all meld with his sound and feel).If I were a vinyl man I'd buy the LP, if I were a drinking man I'd crack a cold one now---shine on, Indian Summer pre-Harvest-Moon noon.

I guess Willie and Johnny Bush are among the very few old Price associates still standing. Sounds good.

Speaking of digging deep, dow (and others), I'm not sure if I ever posted what has to be the rarest country record of any consequence ever made, 1974's Presenting the Country Cavaleers, a record that no one except one guy I know in Nashville has ever even seen, let alone appreciated.

Having seen the Cavaleers on a rerun of the Wilburn Brothers' TV show, I found their very obscure records (one single on MGM, one Jack Clement-Motown covers 45 on a vanity label, some others on a nothing label out of Maryland, one wacko live album recorded around 1977 with illiterate liner notes by greaseball country singer-songwriter Jimmie Helms) and interviewed one of them, James Marvell, and then managed, one magical day, to catch up with the other Cavaleer, Buddy Good, who was long retired from the stage and working at a car dealership in Middle Tennessee and who told me stories of Ernest Tubb, Jean Shepard, Willie, the Wilburn Brothers and others marvelling at their stage act, and said the master tapes of the above album perished in a house fire. Jason Gross at Perfect Sound Forever was the only person courageous enough to publish my subsequent and for all intents and purposes definitive article on the Cavaleers, who remain perhaps the most intriguing of all country-music footnotes. http://www.furious.com/perfect/countrycavaleers.html

Buddy Good then vanished after his wife passed away, back to Tampa, I heard, where the Cavaleers hailed from in the late '60s.

So, anyway, this is still up on Soundcloud, my hi-quality transfer of their album, and at its best (opener of side B, "Turn on to Jesus") and the track after that (reminiscent of Rubber Soul-era Beatles), as well as a couple of equally Beatles-esque-Love-like garage-rock country essays on side A, they really had something.
Side A https://soundcloud.com/chick-xulub/cavaleers-side-1
Side B https://soundcloud.com/chick-xulub/presenting-the-country-cavaleers-side-a

A piece of boilerplate on Americana from New Orleans writer Alison Fensterstock, who ought to know better than to perpetrate this bullshit. Americana, like country, defeats all attempts to write intelligently about it, by which I mean critically--of course, there are some writers who try to be critics of country, but no one at Americana cares what Frank Kogan has said about it over the years, and I'd argue that both genres are supreme examples of the poptimist-rockist debate. Kogan took apart Geoff Himes' piece a few years back that patted Scene country poll voters for voting in the edgier Miranda Lambert in favor of the pop-friendly, and therefore relatively useless Carrie Underwood, and of course this kind of thinking is alien to Americana. (Over the years, they've been expedient about giving out their various awards, including their, ah, humanitarian award which they've given to Don Henley (!) and Stephen Stills (!!).( Nashville is fond of patting itself on the back for being so inclusive when it comes to music, and while the populace contains many fans of many things and the local scene contains electronica and rock and some passing strangeness, I don't think Americana will be honoring, say, Lambchop--well, maybe someday they will, but they better get on it, because Kurt Wagner is almost 60. When will Americana give a hand-made juke joint-painted piece o' wood to Swamp Dogg?? Or George Clinton??? What is an Americana? A handful of organic blueberries on your Eggo frozen waffle. Piece is here http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1304-whose-america-gets-to-define-americana-anyway/

She names off all of Black musicians who got to perform at the event, but doesn't note that there were many many more alt-country types. Bobby Rush got to perform but didn't win an Americana award, only William Bell did (of folks whose music is rooted in an African-American traditional style). And yea, I guess they left out the weirder Americana as well as the pop Americana (be the artist rooted in r'n'b or country).

But of course in the Pitchfork world, the type of southern soul that Daddy B. Nice blogs about, and that Alison is aware of and has written about elsewhere (and that is mentioned here on ilx on the Chitlin Circuit thread) doesn't even exist

Also, at NPR , Ann Powers who lived recently in Alabama and now I think lives in Nashville, write about St. Paul and The Broken Bones, but not Ms. Jody (Ecko label out of Mississippi)

Will have to check out Ms. Jody---great name, considering the tradition of Jody songs. the new St. Paul album is frustrating, because it's settings for social commentary, and the frontman is better at squawking, not this well-behaved, nasal, generic neo-soul delivery. The horns have no prob w layered moods for cratediggers, but it seems like a producer's (and/or wannabee Roots x Mavericks) record, and on the whole I prefer them live, with more of a mid-60s rock soul roadhouse/teen club sound.

Fensterstock knows better, but the gig for the Pitchfork piece was to finesse the contradictions inherent in an inclusive/non-inclusive blanket term for a lot of American music and make it seem as if Americana Association is working on getting more black musicians in the fold. They're not going to acknowledge something like Bishop Bull Winka or any of the auto-tuned hip-hop-soul amalgams coming out of the South these days, even though that music is where soul music ended up. Personally, I think St. Paul and the Alabama Shakes are pretty nothing bands, but they're young and salable and that's what Americana is looking for. (Dow, I agree St. Paul are better live, but I can't abide the singing.)
Piece from current Nashville Scene on Chelle Rose: http://www.nashvillescene.com/music/features/article/20835198/chelle-rose-returns-to-her-appalachian-roots

Oh yeah, Bishop Bull Winka, the Alabama guy who did "Hell 2 da Naw Naw"...

I'm not a Alabama Shakes fan either (well based on an earlier album and seeing 'em live once and a video or 2--the band doesn't wow me, and sometimes the singer's vocals are too Janis Joplin over the top)

Was listening to relatives discuss a recent Jason Aldean, Thomas Rhett, 1000 Horses show. Realized I didn't know the opener, who apparently get some radio play.

"kinda place you can't wait to leave but nobody does" is such an unintentionally grim lyric taken outta context from that new florida georgia line song

as a dixie escapee, it seems appropriately grim imo

Todd Snider channels Mel Tillis and Frankie Ford (high and dry in East Nashville, where gentrification and singer-songwriters have replaced working-class Bocephus culture, though some people still walk to to the liquor store), from this week's Nashville Scene:

On his new album Eastside Bulldog, Nashville singer-songwriter Todd Snider creates one of the funniest records to come out of Music City since 1966’s Moldy Goldies, in which producer Bob Johnston inveigled a crew of Bob Dylan’s sidemen to wreck a set of that era’s pop hits. Snider wrote and performed Eastside Bulldog as Elmo Buzz, a resident of zip code 37206 and a longtime Hank Williams Jr. obsessive who blames Snider for creating a warm environment for folk singers in the neighborhood. Snider's Buzzed music synthesizes frat rock, Las Vegas grind and New Orleans, and he sounds like a crazed Mel Tillis on “Are You With Me.” Bocephus lives — this is a record that should come packaged with a home Breathalyzer kit. EDD HURT

Which kinda reminds me: here's Light In The Attic's ltd. ed. of Jim Dickinson's notorious Dixie Fried, with seven bonus tracks

https://light-in-the-attic.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/artist/1466/header_image/JimDickinson.png

“People like Stan Phillips thought I was scary, that I was over the top – but I could play rock’n’roll.” -Jim Dickinson

The late Jim Dickinson is one of the most eclectic personages rock n’roll has ever thrown up: a musical maverick. From Sun Records and Ardent Studios in the 1960s, to sessions with the Rolling Stones, Ry Cooder and Bob Dylan, significant productions of Big Star and the Replacements, and the twisted roots rock of his own Mud Boy & The Neutrons, the man was never, ever predictable.

A solo album had not been at the forefront of Jim Dickinson’s mind then, but once the idea was put in place by Jerry Wexler at Atlantic, he reacted conceptually, and with gusto. Dickinson always shot from the hip. He could be coarse on a rocker like “Wine,” or dignified and joyous when celebrating “The Strength of Love.” Inebriated laments like "Wild Bill Jones” contrast sharply with the carny talk of “O How She Dances,” and a shifting, indignant anti-war recitation entitled “John Brown.”

As a music maker who could relate equally to both the intellectual and the visceral aspects of popular culture, anything Dickinson lent his hand to was at least interesting and frequently rewarding. Such is the case with Dixie Fried, his solo debut from 1972. Unsuccessful upon release, the record now is now a cult item that, for many, mirrors the deliciously unexpected twists and turns of Dickinson’s subsequent career.
more info, audio: http://lightintheattic.net/releases/2430-dixie-fried

And a pretty good-looking shopping list:
http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?id=5021&name=James+Luther+Dickinson

More detail on one of those:
http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/rs/dickinson-07.php
re

In the spirit of Dickinson, even Alex Chilton, xpost Alabama Shakes' always restless, idiosyncratic take on "roots" keeps familiar associations all shook up for personal reasons on Sound & Color, and I like it pretty well.

I have all the solo Dickinson except the spoken-word Fishing with Charlie and the Delta Experimental series. The posthumous live I'm Not Dead, I'm Just Gone is good, even if he's sounding a bit rough-voiced (more than usual). Could be that Killers from Space is his best solo; "Roly Poly" is fucking beautiful (thanks to Luther's stunning guitar break). But I like all of them. One of the best things I saw in Memphis was him doing "Never Make a Move Too Soon," a (I think) Stix Hooper tune that B.B. King cut in the '70s. The Snider record is about as close as Nashville can get to Like Flies on Sherbert, too.

I also got access to a bunch of singles Dickinson did, '60s stuff, that I was able to compile--work solo, w the Jesters, etc.--and some enterprising fellow should put it out.

The comment upthread about rap as Americana came back to mind when reading xgau's very favorable Expert Witness review of the American Honey soundtrack: says half of it is Southern rap, with Mazzy Star and the Raveonettes providing indie rock that is "hazy" and "buzzy" respectively, while Steve Earle's "Copperhead Road is a reminder that "Earle has never allowed consonants to impede his flow", so we get what he tags "flyover drawl." Sam Hunt, Razzy Bailey and a lot of other folks he (and I) never heard of are on here too, so no worries about trolling for big ol' names (ditto re casting the movie).
Also, like the characters in and apparently the makers of the movie, I think Americana should mainly be what you make of it, from what you're looking for and what you come across, in any event. As with true cratedigger and trashdiver Harry Smith putting together The Smithsonian Anthology of American Folk Music, or more likely, something like this:
Some Saturday nights there were barn dances, way out in Elgin or Sonoita. In barns. Everybody from miles and miles would go, old people, young people, babies, dogs. Guests from dude ranches. All of the women brought things to eat. Fried chicken and potato salad, cakes and pies and punch. The men would go out in bunches and hang around their pickups, drinking. Some women too, my mother always did. High school kids got drunk and threw up, got caught necking. Old ladies danced with each other and children. Everybody danced.
Two-step mostly, but some slow dances and jitterbug. Some square dances and Mexican dances like La Varsoviana. In English it's "Put your little foot, put your little foot right there," and you skip and whirl around. They played everything from "Night and Day" to "Detour, There's a Muddy Road Ahead," "Jalisco no te Rajas" to "Do the Hucklebuck." Different bands every night but the same kind of mix.
Where did these raging wonderful musicians come from? Pachuco horns and guitar players, big-hatted country guitarists, bebop drummers, piano-players that looked like Fred Astaire. The closest I ever heard anything come close to those little bands was at the Five Spot in the late fifties. Ornette Coleman's "Ramblin'." Everybody raving how new and far-out he was. Sounded Tex-Mex to me, like a good Sonoita hoedown.

------Lucia Berlin, "Homing"

Was reading hype for Adia Victoria asserting she was melding blues, country and PJ Harvey all together, but she sounds like NPR indie-folk to me, mostly,

Yeah, idg her.

Paul Cauthen's album came out Friday. I wish it was better than it is, but his future is promising.

I wrote about Adia Victoria a couple-plus years ago, saw her then-band play and they were garage-rock (but good and effective) in the mode of Love and the usual suspects. She's been on the edge of being the next big thing out of Nashville for a while and I guess this is her time, and no doubt she's gotten less interesting as she makes those moves to reach out to the world (doesn't have to be that way but it happens a lot). Here's my Nashville Scene show review from early 2014 (with William Tyler and dead Phil Everly in there too):
http://www.nashvillescene.com/music/article/13052010/william-tyler-and-band-wadia-victoria-and-lylas-1413

Perhaps she rocks more live (I did not go to her W. DC gig last night) but the album on Spotify is largely pleasant but not passionately delivered folk-rock. She is getting lots of both NPR and Afropunk attention...African-American female from the south who namedrops Sister Rosetta Tharpe. I just wish her album brought a little Tharpe...

http://d31hzlhk6di2h5.cloudfront.net/20161018/03/b7/e6/f2/6f7450124766ed8a411e92b7_602x602.jpg

A “BUCKAROO” MOMENT AT OMNIVORE RECORDINGS:
BUCK OWENS’ THE COMPLETE CAPITOL SINGLES: 1957-1966
AND DON RICH AND THE BUCKAROOS’ GUITAR PICKIN’ MAN
COMING IN DECEMBER
Owens package contains 56 A- and B-sides on two discs, out December 9th,
while Buckaroos bandleader Don Rich’s guitar and vocal work from 1963-70 is spotlighted in 18-track collection, out December 16th.
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — From the radio to jukeboxes to turntables to television, country legend Buck Owens and the “Bakersfield Sound” he pioneered became part of American music’s fabric. For the first time, Omnivore Recordings, in conjunction with the Buck Owens Estate, is proud to present Buck Owens and the Buckaroos’ The Complete Capitol Singles: 1957-1966.
Taken from the original mono single reels, The Complete Capitol Singles: 1957-1966 collects all 56 sides from that period, including 13 #1 hits, in their original and chronological form. Street date for the collection available on CD and digitally — is December 9, 2016, a week ahead of Buckaroos bandleader Don Rich’s own collection, Guitar Pickin’ Man, coming from Omnivore on December 16, 2016.
Newly remastered, and featuring liner notes from Buck’s autobiography (written with Randy Poe), plus an introduction by musical disciple Dwight Yoakam, The Complete Capitol Singles: 1957-1966 presents the golden age of Buck Owens in an entirely new way. Featured are such hits as “Above and Beyond,” “Foolin’ Around,” “Under the Influence of Love,” “Act Naturally” and “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail” — among many other chart-toppers.
According to Yoakam, “To say that Buck Owens was a singularly unique figure in country music would be light years beyond cliché. There have been four, maybe five, other artists in the history of the entire genre who have left as indelible a sonic imprint on so many millions of listeners’ ears. This collection of music should introduce new listeners and reacquaint old fans with just how cool country music can be.”

There are many reasons Buck Owens and his Buckaroos were the hottest band in the world in the 1960s and 1970s, but one is certainly the work of multi-instrumentalist Don Rich. As evidenced on the 2013 reissue of That Fiddlin’ Man, Don certainly knew his way around four strings (he began as the band’s violinist), but his twangin’ guitar work was his calling card.
Guitar Pickin’ Man showcases Rich’s skill and innovative playing by collecting 17 tracks from 10 releases from Buck and the Buckaroos, and adding the previously unissued title track recorded in 1973 for and during their time on the television classic, Hee Haw. Sadly, Rich was killed in a 1974 motorcycle accident.
Not just an ideal primer for the uninitiated but also a fantastic aural journey for fans, Guitar Pickin’ Man features notes from Don’s sons Vance and Vic Ulrich as well as photos from their personal family collection.
Owens once said of his right-hand man: “The reason my Capitol records sounded the way they did — real heavy on the treble — was because I knew most people were going to be listening to ’em on their AM car radios. At the time, nobody else was doing anything like that, but it just seemed like common sense to me. And it was one more reason that you knew it was a Buck Owens record as soon as it came on the radio — because it just didn’t sound like those other records.”
Experience the work of Buck Owens’ bandleader, friend and musical trailblazer, Don Rich — the Guitar Pickin’ Man.
Both collections compiled by Grammy® nominated producer Patrick Milligan (in full cooperation with the Buck Owens Estate) and mastered by multiple Grammy® winner Michael Graves.

Buck Owens and the Buckaroos: The Complete Capitol Singles: 1957-1966
Track Listing:
Disc One
1. Come Back
2. I Know What It Means
3. Sweet Thing
4. I Only Know That I Love You
5. I’ll Take A Chance On Loving You
6. Walk The Floor
7. Second Fiddle
8. Everlasting Love
9. Under Your Spell Again
10. Tired Of Livin’
11. Above And Beyond
12. Til These Dreams Come True
13. Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got A Heartache)
14. I’ve Got A Right To Know
15. Foolin’ Around
16. High As The Mountains
17. Mental Cruelty – Buck Owens & Rose Maddox
18. Loose Talk – Buck Owens & Rose Maddox
19. Under The Influence Of Love
20. Bad Bad Dream
21. Nobody’s Fool But Yours
22. Mirror, Mirror On The Wall
23. Save The Last Dance For Me
24. King Of Fools
25. Kickin’ Our Hearts Around
26. I Can’t Stop (My Lovin’ You)
27. You’re For Me
28. House Down The Block

Disc Two
1. Act Naturally
2. Over And Over Again
3. We’re The Talk Of The Town – Buck Owens & Rose Maddox
4. Sweethearts In Heaven – Buck Owens & Rose Maddox
5. Love’s Gonna Live Here
6. Getting Used To Losing You
7. My Heart Skips A Beat
8. Together Again
9. I Don’t Care (Just As Long As You Love Me)
10. Don’t Let Her Know
11. I’ve Got A Tiger By The Tail
12. Cryin’ Time
13. Before You Go
14. (I Want) No One But You
15. Only You (Can Break My Heart)
16. Gonna Have Love
17. Buckaroo
18. If You Want A Love
19. Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy
20. All I Want For Christmas Dear Is You
21. Waitin’ In Your Welfare Line
22. In The Palm Of Your Hand
23. Think Of Me
24. Heart Of Glass
25. Open Up Your Heart
26. No More Me And You
27. Where Does The Good Times Go
28. The Way That I Love You

http://d31hzlhk6di2h5.cloudfront.net/20161018/63/96/55/ba/7451f4b9b0248e239c6a38ac_602x602.jpg

Don Rich and the Buckaroos: Guitar Pickin’ Man
Track Listing:
1. Guitar Pickin’ Man (Hee Haw Version)*
2. Chaparral

3. Wham Bam

4. Bossa Nova Buckaroo Style

5. Out Of My Mind

6. I’m A-Comin’ Back Home To You

7. Chicken Pickin’

8. Down At The Corner Bar

9. Hello California

10. Meanwhile Back At The Ranch

11. Take Care Of You For Me In Kansas City
12. Aw Heck

13. Number One Heel

14. You Bring Out The Best In Me

15. Happy Son Of A Gun

16. Ensenada

17. One More Time

18. Sally Was A Good Old Girl

Omnivore's ace 2013 collection Buck 'Em! The Music of Buck Owens (1955-1967) incl. some non-Capitol material, and to my ears eventually suggests how he and the Beatles were hearing each other, maybe kicking it back and forth a bit. Bakersfield cats.
Buck ‘Em! Volume Two: The Music Of Buck Owens (1967-1975) incl. some jaded, possibly Hee-Haw-damaged petering out, but several keepers along the way.

that collection cover is awesome

Playlist is updated.

ILM's Rolling Country Thread 2016 Spotify Playlist

Been listening to country radio in the car and Brett Eldredge "Wanna Be that Song" (#14 on Billboard country song chart) is growing on me (despite or maybe because of its sappy melodrama) more than Kenny Chesney & Pink's #1 hit "Setting the World on Fire" that starts off like a U2 slow song before becoming, well, a Chesney with Pink one

The Singles Jukebox on the Chesney hit: http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=21994

A few weeks back the Washington Post's music critic Chris Richards (who was in 90s Dischord punk band Q & not U) weighed in on the state of rap and proclaimed it a "golden era" now. Today he weighs in on country ( as the 50th annual CMA Awards are on next Wednesday) and says who he likes (Maren Morris and others), why some pop-country is real life, etc.,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/still-think-todays-country-music-sounds-fake-get-real/2016/10/27/1ac01d76-9abe-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html

Yes, country is polluted with far too many generic songs about missing ye old whutever, but there are better ones, like Alan Jackson's "The Little Man", reminding us that change isn't always for the better (and how that works), and yes Florida-Georgia sing about "real things", real bikinis etc., but what do they have to say about them, and yes their songs will be classics to somebody someday, but what won't, and if Morris looks forward to consoling herself with prestigious goods (to be followed by can't-buy-me-love when it's time to make Grown Up Woman music), this is of course empowering: country marketing and country starlets and media apologists now finally following rap and r&b in this phase of the pop process, as country always does eventually play catch-up, after a decent interval. Which doesn't mean her album is bad---still haven't heard it----but this kind of rationalization doesn't add any motivation to my own catching up, though I know it's needed.

You're right re the Florida Georgia Line sentence.

I'm listening to Maren Morris' pop-country now. Need to hear it some more.

It's a terrific album (so is "Little Man"). I approach Chris Richards with....extreme caution.

That the big country audience has no idea in hell who Sturgill Simpson (subject of an interesting if somewhat shallow cover story by Adam Gold in this week's Nashville Scene) is seems like something you could mention instead of praising Maren, who yeah has mastered pop modes in the usual manner but who as far as I can determine says nothing with them or about them, unless you're just really disposed to think showing off your allure which you bought with a credit card and have embodied in your car is some kind of triumph of, ahem, country music, which was never about that in its classic era. As dow points out above. Change means a bland-out and a disappearance of certain ragged-but-right traditions I know quite well as s southerner, and while Maren drives in her Mercedes and gets down with the radio, certain realities are erasing other realities that country music, being the dishonest form that it (can be) (not always) (sometimes) is, has shown little interest in during this latest era ; Stapleton avoids the topic of change altogether, while Sturgill Simpson at least tries to describe what country music means to him as a somewhat disaffected bluegrass fan who happened to switch into a mode that, to him, coexists in real time with a lot of other modes Maren and her claque of producer-songwriters have boiled down to Consumerism. (But I don't dislike her record at all while noting the absence of a real vocal style or attitude, and the pros know what they're doing as usual. Sounds fine as I travel down I-24 from Tenntucky toward Nashville city limits.) But country fans know Maren's record is a quality product made by Smart People in Nashville! Which is why the country audience likes it, because they don't care if something is country or not; only Sturgill and Margo Price and the Americana folk do! And bluegrass fans! Maybe Chris Richards knows this, maybe not.

I hate Maren Morris's album as a country product the same way I'd hate it as a Top 40 product, because it's full of songs that sound like they were bought at Target.

i like "my church" and "80s mercedes" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

haven't heard the album, it's been on my to-listen list that i am pitifully slow at working through despite not being very long at all

I hate Maren Morris's album as a country product the same way I'd hate it as a Top 40 product, because it's full of songs that sound like they were bought at Target.

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Sunday, October 30, 2016 4:08 AM

I will take Morris' pop-country product over Stapleton's bar-band product

Are there folks who look back at Garth Brooks era fondly as a golden period? (Richards suggested that there was some sort of positive consensus in the article above, and I am not so sure). I think Geoff Himes once write a what was good, what was not so good retrospective piece about Brooks

wrote

If you want something on Garth, read long-time Nashville journo Beverly Keel's piece on him here . The last thing Garth Brooks needs is more praise from anybody, which doesn't mean I don't appreciate his music. His shtick killed off country music as it existed, which may not mean anything to some people, but I feel bad whenever I see some National Geographic thing about an extinct species no matter how ugly it was. And remember that '91 is when Soundscan revealed how big country really was, so there's that, and recall that in '91 Reba, Alan, Marty Stuart, Pam Tillis, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Diamond Rio, et al, were on the charts, and Kathy Mattea, so call it the end of the folkie-singer-songwriter-giitz era of country, the end of the New Traditionalists.

I think Austin Lucas' Between the Moon & the Midwest, which has gotten a fraction of the press that Maren or Sturgill or Chris or Margo has received, is the best country record I've heard this year by a mile. The only one that really looks forward while remaining true--and I'm no authenticity nut--to something old, since he sings in a bluegrass mode that is attractive and "honest," yep, while he makes no attempt to prettify his voice, which is a trained voice that nonetheless doesn't sound so. Lucas' record takes musical chances, operates in real time, says something about dislocation, and so forth, in ways the above, more lauded performers, can't do, because all of them are too beholden to...Nashville, fighting against Nashville, and all that jive. Whereas Lucas is from Indiana, his father is a fairly successful bluegrass-folk-theater guy, and while Lucas records in Nashville, he avoids the resentment Simpson, Price, Elizabeth Cook (whose latest studio confection got, curiously, relatively little critical comment compared to the hosannas her 2010 Welderreceived, a sign that what she did that seemed revolutionary has become accepted practice at this point), Stapleton (not him, but his fans and again, the mostly clueless country-music critical establishment, who either go Super-Poptimist for Maren Morris or, like Richards in his latest piece in the WP, about Lady Gaga, holds up Will Oldham as an example of what a true pop "freak" should do, tries to situate country (and pop) in a mode of authenticity that misses as usual just how inauthentic folk-pop-country has always been, hasn't written beans about Lucas, who tours constantly in Europe, where he as a fairly big audience, and whose record got shelved by New West (who meanwhile pushes a hyped non-entity like Nashville's Aaron Lee Tasjan as a savior when all Tasjan is a Monkee-ized Nesmith East Nashville Traveling Wilbury with a line on well-made studio-bound "ironic" pop-country that doesn't say as much about normal guyz' needs (he likes Lucinda Williams and he wonders about Judee Sill) as Billy Swan did 40 years ago without trying). I don't mind Maren's record, but I'm turning 58 next week, I am interested in morality and its relationship to art, call me old-fashioned, and I am not sure how moral it is to go whole-hog about Maren's odes to herself and her ability to get the good life, and I ain't go no problem with hedonism and consumerism when it's in its proper place, but I don't see this country, or country, addressing those moral problems very well at the moment.

it's full of songs that sound like they were bought at Target.

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever),

this is only a problem if you hate Target

x-post

Here's Geoff Himes on Garth recently (although he spoke more highly of Garth sometime in the past0:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/music/what-garth-brooks-is-doing-now-hitting-the-road-with-a-hits-heavy-show/2016/01/20/b2e91be2-bb0e-11e5-99f3-184bc379b12d_story.html

During his nine-year run of dominance from his 1989 self-titled solo album to 1997’s “Sevens,” Garth Brooks completely transformed country music — for better and worse. Each of his seven studio albums sold at least 7 million copies in the United States alone, shattering expectations for what a country record could do. If nothing else, the singer with the big-brim cowboy hat and a degree in advertising from Oklahoma State knew how to market records and concert tickets.

He incorporated into his country records the broad gestures of his favorite rock bands, such as Kiss and Queen, as well as the heart-on-the-sleeve sentimentality of his favorite singer-songwriters, such as James Taylor and Dan Fogelberg. Then he added the smashed guitars, smoke bombs and hydraulic stage risers of arena-rock concerts to his shows. Country fans had never encountered anything like it, and they ate it up. More than a few critics, though, bemoaned the diminished nuance and tradition as Brooks and his fellow “hat acts” took over the genre.

I was in high school in the south during garth's reign and remember how ubiquitous he was. I hated country at the time and he was usually the target of my rage. I secretly did love a couple songs like "low places" but not much else. I don't know of any friends who were listening to him at the time who listen to him now though

I've always had problems with his voice but I recognize the achievement. His single ain't bad.

Well, Tim McGraw and Terri Clark were also striking figures in Hat's glory salad days, and they've hung in there, not always consistently but always worth checking out---though it does plausible that Brooks' integration of the arena rock and singer-songwriter traditions (also what he learned from that "worn-out tape by Chris LeDoux", the latter being a suave Western gent who envisioned what he described as "Aerosmith in a cowboy hat" as something to be) made GB a Plastic Jesus Dylan Springsteen figure enabling Toby Keith and the Dixie Chicks as creative x commercial exemplars and overachievers of the Late Hat era, the New New Traditionalists for a new century, as country marketing continues playing catch-up with its audience, real and imagined ---along with glorious flashes in the pan like Montgomery Gentry, and those mainstays who tweaked the BG template more cautiously, like Chesney and Paisley and Urban.
Another leading descendant, by way of TK and the Chicks, is Miranda Lambert, considering especially the last time I saw her on Austin City Limits, raking her guitar army with hard backcountry vocal raunch---veteran waitress on a Harley, etc.-- sometimes shifting gears to translucent ballads, even before and after the Pistol Annies materialized for a while.

Are there folks who look back at Garth Brooks era fondly as a golden period?

Despite all those Entertainer of the Year awards, I thought he was pretty terrible the one time I saw him play in the 90s. Agreed that his voice was never the greatest. That era is certainly recalled fondly as a golden period, but imo less due to Garth and more due to his contemporaries. Folks Edd mentioned, Wynonna, Patty Loveless, Randy Travis, and guys like Alan/Vince who are still at it (albeit w/out radio). Brandy Clark very much recalls that era.

I don't mind Maren's record, but I'm turning 58 next week

I guess I'm closer to the target demo for this than some of y'all (30s, lady); I don't mind it on the radio, but it doesn't make me feel anything.

But if we're kvetching about recent articles, lemme say that the unnecessary Sam Hunt dig in the Sturgill profile mentioned above was pretty dumb.

I am interested in morality and its relationship to art, call me old-fashioned, and I am not sure how moral it is to go whole-hog about Maren's odes to herself and her ability to get the good life, and I ain't go no problem with hedonism and consumerism when it's in its proper place, but I don't see this country, or country, addressing those moral problems very well at the moment.---Edd

I haven't dug that deep into her lyrics yet. I just enjoy the Nashville row pop-country melodies so far.

She co-writes some of her lyrics with her co-producer --

Raised in Arlington, Tex., Morris hit the state music circuit after her parents bought her a guitar when she was a tween. In between high school and college classes, she recorded three albums by the time she was 21....
She signed a publishing deal within a year and soon had cuts on Tim McGraw and Kelly Clarkson albums.

On a writing trip to Los Angeles in early 2015, Morris — stinging after a bad breakup — took a drive to see the ocean. A sense of peace washed over her as she listened to music in her car. She thought, “This is my version of church.” The next day, she had a scheduled co-writing session with producer Mike Busbee, who has written songs for Garth Brooks, Shakira and 5 Seconds of Summer, among others. She told him she had a title for a song: “My Church.” The line ended up as the chorus, and they wrote the song in an hour. The process for “80’s Mercedes” was similar. Morris came in with the title, eager to pinpoint the feeling of getting ready to go out for the night. Then Busbee offered a killer hook: I’m a ’90s baby in my ’80s Mercedes. Morris, born in 1990, took the lyrics from there, penning an easy candidate for an upcoming song of the summer.

“My initial thought was ‘Really? I think it’s cool, but what would we do with it?’ ” Busbee recalls a year later. But he had been eager to work with Morris since the first time he saw her sing at a Nashville writer’s round, where writers perform their songs. He threw out an idea: “Can I get a Hallelujah/Can I get an Amen?”

“I love love songs, but sometimes it’s okay to just be young and talk about something other than getting married or falling in love,” Morris said. “There are so many fun things that you live that you can write about and people of all ages can connect to.”

(“When this wonderful world gets heavy and I need to find my escape/ I just keep the wheels rolling, radio scrolling, til my sins wash away”).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/maren-morris-isnt-trying-to-be-a-country-music-savior-but-shes-just-what-nashville-needs/2016/03/14/a0d465b0-e7aa-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph9NQ8ASmX4

Taylor Swift joint, they say.

can see why she'd let someone else have that one

50th annual CMA Awards on ABC tonight Wednesday

can see why she'd let someone else have that one

― dc, Tuesday, November 1, 2016

To sabotage them? It's at best a mediocre tune.

If they said "Sorry Taylor, we don't want it", would she have sent her fashion model pals and others out to get them

def falls well short of both "all too well" and "dear john" in the blamey missives department

i initially overrated it, which is how much i miss speak now-ish taylor

Listened to some of Austin Lucas' Between the Moon & the Midwest, the album Edd mentioned above. Not hearing any pop in it yet, but I see how he can be described as more forward thinking and less full of resentment than the cocky Sturgill Simpson

wouldn't describe it as overly poppy, though "kristie rae" for example has kind of a propulsive, pop-punk feel once the drums kick in. such an excellent album, in any case.

watched some of the cma performances this morning. beyonce the obvious standout, as always.

really can't stand that dierks song, but at least "vice" offered a kind of rebuttal.

dvr'd it, but haven't watched yet (want to see Beyoncé w/ Dixie Chicks) .

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/11/03/cma-awards-2016-complete-list-of-winners-best-and-worst-moments/

Songwriter Lori McKenna broke down when she won song of the year for Tim McGraw’s “Humble and Kind.”

Carrie Underwood and Maren Morris sobbed as they picked up their trophies for female vocalist and new artist, respectively. John Osborne wept when he accepted the prize for vocal duo of the year with his brother, TJ, who was trying not to cry. Kenny Chesney looked a little teary during his Pinnacle Award speech. Even Dolly Parton could barely keep it together after a group of female country singers paid tribute to her most famous songs.

The much-loved Chris Stapleton took home two awards (male vocalist and music video), which was the most of anyone; the other prizes were pretty varied. While unstoppable Florida Georgia Line could have feasibly won the vocal duo of the year trophy until the end of time, acclaimed Maryland sibling duo Brothers Osborne shocked the room when they were awarded the prize. No one was more surprised than they were

Happy for McKenna. My wife and I listen to her album from this yr a lot

Yeah, that's a good 'un. xgau did a very appealing round-up of her albums recently; gotta check 'em all out (somehow didn't realize she had done all that, though what I've heard is fits with my long-time interests).
hyped non-entity like Nashville's Aaron Lee Tasjan as a savior when all Tasjan is a Monkee-ized Nesmith East Nashville Traveling Wilbury with a line on well-made studio-bound "ironic" pop-country that doesn't say as much about normal guyz' needs This made me want to listen! And I like his pop sense--right away, he's bouncing me back to Shel Silverstein and Nilsson and any number of other whacky early 70s Top Forty maestros, incl. def incl. denim-jacketed one-hit wonders--but the only irony or "irony" I'm catching so far is the pop knack being married to discontented, self-and-other-observant lyrics, which can be trenchant--he knows he's hung up, not just an alienated depresso Americana-retro dreamer, warning of the urge to "lose yourself in refugee blues". but also sometimes finds himself wanting to "sleep through my dreams", which might be even worse! Although we all need a good night's sleep. And just like he warns us and himself, sometimes he does get lost in the spoon-June-goon-mooning, when the early 70s thing gets to early Eagles. But for instance "12 Bar Blues" is even intentionally funny, also discontented of course, pop and kind of barthought freeflow, and he's too restless to gets bogged down for *too* long---though I would cut a few of these tracks, but even they fit with the warts 'n' all self-portrait.

He should go up the block and roll another number for the road with the cool couple known as Shovels & Rope: they've been where and maybe what he's been, and they can still write from there, and even being a really cool couple with lots of friends all over, some of whom get to tell their own fave stories on Little Seeds, sometimes means, like after gruesome cop-civilian encounters, notes to self-and-others can incl. "Get together and share the bread/Let's get together and share the dread" and even the lovely "St. Anne's Parade" can incl. feeling like you're pinned in place, even when you've made the right turn, even when/because you keep a-goin--but hey, just keep a-goin', through the strangest feelings and the occasional slips, like recycled invocations of Gram Parsons and Tom Joad and "The Last Hawk"--"flyin' over Wood,stawk"--nooooo! But said Hawk seems to be Garth Hudson, who comes across as sly to possibly squirrelly in rare interviews, and this one does eventually land and takes off his boots and walks around and disappears down some side street after exploiting the high-flown Americana stuff one more time, so it all works out in character, as usual.
Opening track is instant classic, from somebody in the crowd, or maybe S&R's professional rival, or maybe them to rival: "Ah know exactly who yew think yew are/Ah found the little notebook yew left layin' on the bar"--also been to all of the same shows, dug in the same crates, took the same drugs prob'ly: "Call it even, call it even..." but maybe not in the best way, considering the tone.) A few duds too, but the good stuff gets better the more I listen.

Reminds me I want to get back to some of those Delaney & Bonnie records, especially Motel Shot, without most or maybe any of their famous Friends, such as Clapton and Allman and Harrison.

Beyonce DC is A+ btw; takes a minute for everyone to get on the same page but by the time the bari sax kicks in YOW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OabYYlhuxxE

the "good job, b!" at the end is cute

i loved her dress. kind of a combination of her last two met ball dresses (both of which were rad). and natalie's hair!

also, tim and faith are good at wearing clothes.

these have been my fashion appraisals.

Dow, glad you got something out of Tasjan! I think he's not there, but yeah, some parts of what he does grab me, and he does do it well. I just think he's being hyped as meaningful when I hear another pop trickster, which ain't the worst thing you can be. Been listening to Maren Morris on repeat lately. One called "Second Wind," about stardom, is real good, and it's a high-quality effort for sure. I don't buy her big tune about country music being a church, though, I mean I think there should be a moratorium on songs about Hank and Cash's holy aura.

And Dow, the Delaney & Bonnie track I think is really great is "Ghetto," from their first album, produced by Leon Russell (or arranged, at least, and he plays piano on it). And here's what I wrote in the Scene about Aaron lee Tasjan:
[FACING REALITY]
AARON LEE TASJAN RECORD-RELEASE
Since I’m a pop fan, I like the way ambitious musicians with a flair for form can seem to make pronouncements on reality while gracefully avoiding it, and I think Nashville singer-songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan does that perfectly. My favorite line on Tasjan’s 2015 full-length In the Blazes is either “Guess I forgot to buy my boat shoes” from “The Dangerous Kind” or “Send one down for your old friend Blaze Foley” from “Lucinda’s Room,” which may be a song about writing songs about songwriters. I also like his paean to ‘70s songwriter Judee Sill, “Judee Was a Punk,” but it doesn’t offer this long-time Sill fan any new insights--everybody knows show business is a bitch. Still, Tasjan is a marvelous pop formalist who has mastered numerous Nashville-to-Los Angeles country-rock clichés, and his new record, Silver Tears, continues his quest to become an East Nashville Traveling Wilbury. 8 p.m. at 3rd and Lindsley EDD HURT

And wow, did you realize Jonathan Edwards had such a Nashville-country career (worked w/ old friend Emmylou Harris a lot, and cut a pretty damned good wimp-country 1989 album featuring his covers of Nanci Griffith and others, has a new one out last year w/ Alison Krauss and Vince Gill, produced by Americana-grasser Darrell Scott, in the Scene this week:
[DUES I BEEN PAYING]
JONATHAN EDWARDS
As music critic Robert Christgau wrote about folk-pop-country singer Jonathan Edwards’ 1971 self-titled full-length, “There are worse wimp-rockers.” There certainly are, and you probably know the Minnesota-born Edwards’ great hit from that year, “Sunshine,” a song that showed off his winsome voice and gift for music that seemed summoned from the great American subconscious. I like his 1989 Nashville-recorded full-length The Natural Thing, which featured Edwards’ version of Nanci Griffith’s “Listen to the Radio” and his moderately amazing pseudo-Celtic country-pop-folk reading of Tony Haselden and Stan Munsey’s “We Need to Be Locked Away”--a minor country hit. Edwards cut the 2015 collection Tomorrow’s Child in Music City with a brace of guest stars and pickers that includes Vince Gill and Alison Krauss, and his cover of North Carolina eccentric Malcolm Holcombe’s “Down in the Woods” isn’t wimpy at all. 9:30 p.m. at Bluebird Café EDD HURT

https://soundcloud.com/beyonce/daddy-lessons-featuring-the-dixie-chicks
this would be the version that everyone should vote for as song of the year imo

Tennessean runs a piece on the Beyonce-CMA flap. TMZ is the source for the reports that maintain the CMAs took down the vid after being scared by the racist comments on their social media platform. The TMZ piece isn't professionally reported, says only "we were told" and includes a lot of editorializing also not based in any reporting. Brian Mansfield, a reliable country journalist, says he thinks there's no way the CMA would book Beyonce and then back off from showing her video, and points to her camp's restrictions on photos and material from the awards show as the source of the supposed, uh, blackout. Certainly exposes some of the contradictions in current country music. Piece: http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2016/11/04/cma-disputes-beyonc-controversy/93274924/

Good day for kuntry news. I almost always find Betsy Phillips' Scene writing odd, and this piece on the Ken Burns series on country, which local university Belmont will supposedly underwrite, is kind of perverse--the reason country lives in Nashville is song publishing and, to some extent, geography, and she also must not know many ordinary people or rednecks or good old boys and girls from around here. Why is "myth" more important than truth when there's plenty of myth to go around and not enough truth? Anyway, here it is: http://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pith-in-the-wind/article/20840758/why-should-nashville-or-belmont-subsidize-ken-burns-documentary

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/cmas-beyonce-daddy-lessons-dixie-chicks-country-music-awards-race/506375/

and though it may be self evident, I would point out that the choice of DC's song to interpolate was very much a thumb in the eye of contemporary lockstep pop country

"They sound tired but they don't sound Haggard; they got money but they ain't got Cash; they got Junior but they ain't got Hank, I think, I think, I think, I think" seems intended as a serious reminder that the real legends swam upstream against the culture and didn't hide behind the flag, the pickup and xenophobia

The thing that bothered me about that song when it first came out was that they didn't seem to acknowledge the timely pop qualities in the best radio hits of their idols and their own singles---except, come to think of it, you could say they implicitly acknowledged it by keeping the chorus you quote from sounding overly emphatic and self-righteous, it's more like they're tweaking the whiskers of the tired ol' play-it-safe suits, still the cute sharp daughters, sisters, cousins---but in a way their pop-goes-the-country sound (via which they smuggled in unconvential songwriters like Patty Griffin, and even omg banjos, a pop-country radio no-no for quite a while) became a problem, because getting that many pop-country listeners meant getting a significant number of people who weren't yet ready to voice criticism of the Iraq War, if they ever were (and even some of those who eventually did couldn't forgive the Chicks for doing it first, and On Foreign Soil, and some of that came up the other night, along with complaints about Beyonce being on there with them, re her support for Black Lives Matter, the "Formation" video etc.). Not to put down the Chicks for their sound, which was always deeper inside, given their choice of songs.

And the way their sound *suited* those songs--- rather than turning Home, for instance, into a turgid Americana recital, as it could have been.

(And of course, it may have been more about the fear of said suits, times the ire of Conservative Ubersuits, back when media massives Clear Channel pretty much took over the concert business for a while, for instance...)

this is the part where i confess that when the dixie chicks were in the heyday of the late 90's, i was stridently "hipster nashvillian twentysomething who DON'T LIKE THIS NEWFANGLED COUNTRY" so i am gonna tackle a best of album this week to see what I think of their music.

Huh. & always felt like at least half of Home was a turgid Americana recital, though its high points ("Long Time Gone," "Travelin' Soldier," both of the Patty Griffin covers) are the Chicks at their best. Saw them in Louisville in September, and it just made me miss their presence at the forefront of mainstream country all the more. Predictably, the most divisive traditionalists are up in arms over the Beyonce / Dixie Chicks performance in ways that are knee-jerk and gross. Playing even a couple of bars of "Long Time Gone" at the CMAs in 2016 is no less ballsy of them than it was to release it as a single in 2001. The studio version of "Daddy Lessons" is just glorious.

I thought 2003's 2-CD Top of the World Tour Live would be the ideal gateway, deep 'n' wide & vibrant, if you like live albums. Otherwise, Essential Dixie Chicks gives you 30 studio originals, and Playlist is cool if you want to ease on in with something shorter.

CMA pulled the Beyoncé & Dixie Chicks video from the show, from Youtube. I was trying to show it to someone, from Ulysses link above.

it pops up again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60aCpaG2S6E

lol@me: i actually HAVE listened to a lot of Dixie Chicks in the past; they're quite good!

What strikes me about the live "Daddy Issues" is that it's basically Americana, and how Americana would probably veto having Beyonce and the Chicks on any show they sponsor. So something very interesting is happening here. The audacity is way beyond anything Americana leaders--though I think, not its fans--would be comfortable promoting. The most important moment in country this year? I know how hungry the country-music establishment is for Liberal Cred, and this provides it, but so what.
I have a problem with the narrative that posits "country musicians of any note swim against the current of Nashville." Historically this just isn't true, though of course it has happened. If George Jones, Tammy Wynette and Billy Sherrill are the most important figures in country music pre-1990 (with all due respect to Haggard), then when did they ever swim against the current? How did the majority of country artists do so? Let's leave out Bakersfield and the Byrds and all that for a moment and get back to the ordinary, workaday stuff most people listened to back then--which I think, perhaps, has been forgotten by fans and critics who concentrate only on the game-changing Waylonisms and Buckings and rebellions and so forth of the past. Perhaps this is a convenient narrative that has played out in the last couple of years with Margo, Sturgill and Isbell and the other Americana artists cited by critics as being the true spirit of country. Thoughts on this subject welcome.

the new Chesney's good.

xp I think you're right, "country musicians of any note swim against the current of Nashville" is just obviously not true (though as you say not unheard-of either).

I suppose you could justify the statement if you squinted hard and said:
(a) country artists of note have to have brought something new to the Nashville sound of their time (vocal, rhythmic, atmospheric, lyrical, whatever) - that's almost a given because how else do you get to be distinctive enough to be "of note" and
(b) the Nashville way is to find and sell stuff which neatly fits the package of whatever's currently popular.

But I don't really believe (b). I think like all pop-industries I know anything about, the Nashville industry maintains a balance of the familiar and the novel at all times, some things they know they can sell mixed with some things they hope they can.

Being distinct from whatever's current in Nashville doesn't equal "swimming against" Nashville for sure, though it must feel that way if you are making a noise you really believe in and no-one in the established industry thinks they can sell that noise.

(IIRC Jones was sufficiently not-against-Nashville that when Pappy Daily told him to record some rockabilly, he insisted on the "Thumper Jones" pseudonym because he didn't want the whiff of rockabilly to sour his Nashville-country credentials...?)

For the most part, I'm really enjoying Robbie Fulks' Upland Stories, especially the way he can shift from credibly translucent-oblique-opaque inner monologue, also something flatter, like an inner take-it-or-leave-it testimony, warning and/or epitaph, to something up front and nuanced. For the latter, "Needed" is sweet, fair-minded, bravely self-revealing straight talk from a youngish Dad to his late-teen son, inevitably a little bit of a guilt trip too, cos hey it's Dad. Could well imagine Tim McGraw or George Strait covering it, though would have to be just for wanting to; they'd probably hear this original version as definitive.
He can be funny too, finding new sprouts on the wooden sounds while picking retro with his widder aunt's stubborn (anti-Scruggs banjo) "new old man", and noting the latter's more practical-minded skillz; as for other aspects of his geriatric appeal, "Awww, I don't wanna think about that!" Later he does a loose-limbed, looser-livin' asshole dance to another inspired coffee breakdown----also a mellow acoustic-electric romantic ballad groove thing that comes off too James Taylor-y for me, and "Alabama At Night" seems way too wordy and awed-tourist-y to be the opener, especially, but most of this is pretty darn good.
I'm also wondering how (the heck) he fits in with the Mekons on their Jura....

Oh yeah, and "America is A Hard Religion" is an ever-timely holler, of course.

Haven't delved into the Fulked Mekons, but I have a feeling he might mesh well with them as they grow older, older, older. Upland may be his best, though--"Needed" is pretty great and I like his narrative flow. Wrote this a while back:

This year’s Upland Stories demonstrates Fulks’ narrative gift and feel for the way life doubles back on itself. “400 miles mean nothing / One man’s troubles are his own,” he sings in the five-minute “Never Come Home,” and the song encapsulates heroic but misguided self-determination. “Aunt Peg’s New Old Man” features a fiddle- playing diehard who doesn’t like “the Scruggs style,” while “Sarah Jane” turns a sympathetic eye to a wanderer who goes to bed in Galveston and dreams of Tennessee. Best of all is “Needed,” a devastating account of youthful indiscretion.

Charlie Daniels, Night Hawk: the title character, that quiet fella over there, lost his wife and babies in a sagebrush fire, so best not mess with him, This here set is at home on the emotional and musical range, so we also get a cowgrass "Big Balls In Cowtown" and Western Swing "Stay All Night"---riding econo, and sounds like he might be playing all the instruments (no drums, that I've noticed yet, anyway---plus a couple of re-done co-writes, "Billy The Kid" and "Running With The Crowd", plainspoken, but more cautionary than preachy, as he keeps a sharp eye on the party (the latter song could be taken as something about runaway populism, as well as reg'lar Saturday nights getting carried away, turning into shoot-outs and necktie parties----I wonder; he's managed to stay out of any political news that I've seen this year, unlike his sometime talk radio colleague, Ted Nugent).
My favorite is "The Goodnight Loving Trail", a real place, main route of many a cattle drive, and name of course ready for implicit irony in this campfire waltz, at first tweaking the beard of the "old woman"---somebody who can't work the range no more, so he's the cook--but the narrator then admits "someday I'll be wearin' the apron too," cos what else can he do? No place else to go, as the desert wind dries him out, first preserves and then scatters his increasing flakiness---I'm paraphrasing, but not by much---also helps that CD's voice is as dry as the wind; no tears. (This is by Utah [Bruce] Philips, AKA "U. Utah Figment", as referenced by the elusive UP's sometime duet partner, Rosalie Sorrels.)
Also "Ghost Riders In The Sky" and "The Old Chisholm Trail" give us more of the cinematic side, while a somewhut self-mocking serenade of a leetle cowboy fan makes for a slightly sly finale, mixing sentiment and sediment (he knows he's old and his themes are too, duh).

Fuck you, country stars, for not a one of you speaking up when it might've made a difference.

Can't get into politics/policy on here, for professional reasons combined with my ever-increasing paranoia. But can't think about anything else. So, dipping out for a while. Keep it up, y'all. <3

stay ridin high in the saddle

come back when you can dc

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/nov/03/country-music-election-politics

written Nov. 3rd

Silence has come to define the current climate throughout the world of country music, a genre that has historically aligned with the Republican party for the past half-century.

In 2016 that allegiance feels as flimsy as ever, but a wide range of factors, namely the harshly polarizing nature of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, have made the 2016 election a taboo topic of conversation in Nashville’s country music industry...

...Nashville’s long been a Democratic stronghold in deep-red Tennessee, but despite the city’s liberalism many estimate that the country music industry still slightly favors Trump. A recent informal survey conducted by the trade publication Country Aircheck showed that 46% of the industry professionals who participated favored Trump compared to 41% who supported Clinton, with 13% supporting Gary Johnson.

“What I’m hearing is that even with the reservations about Trump, the male members of the industry still feel that he’s one of us,” says Don Cusic, professor of country music history at Nashville’s Belmont University.
...“Country music has become publicly apolitical,” says Braddock. “Ten or 12 years ago, you’d hear a lot of super patriotic, rightwing subject material on the radio. You don’t hear that now. There are a lot more young people listening, and I no longer think of the music as conservative or ideological.”

When major stars have expressed any degree of political opinion, near immediate blowback has ensued. “Whether you love him or hate him, he says what he thinks, and he has proven that you don’t always have to be so afraid,” Blake Shelton said of Trump in Billboard, before adding: “I probably wish there was another option, but there’s not.”

“Hillary might make as good a president as anybody ever has,” Dolly Parton said to the New York Times in June. By August, her opinion on the candidates had been modified to “I think they’re both nuts”...

...With not a single mainstream country star expressing unambiguous support for Clinton, the genre appears to publicly lean slightly towards Trump at first glance. Blake Shelton, Justin Moore, Loretta Lynn, Kenny Rogers, Larry Gatlin and Aaron Lewis have all expressed admiration for the candidate.

...Nearly everyone interviewed for this article cited the Dixie Chicks as a primary reason so many singers are still scared to speak their minds politically. “The one thing the Dixie Chicks taught the industry is boy, you go against the prevailing political belief and you’re off the radio,” says Cusic.

One more thing from that:

The biggest country star to release socially conscious music during this election season is Eric Church, whose current single, Kill a Word, is a subtle condemnation of hate speech. “We thought it would be a crime not to put that song out with what’s going on right now,” says Arturo Buenahora, who’s served as executive producer on each of Church’s five albums.

The song also features vocals from singer Rhiannon Giddens, a committed activist-musician whose origins are in traditional roots and folk music.

...I’m normally not a very political boy,” says Radney Foster, who recently released All That I Require, a historical critique of fascism that might be country’s most directly political take this election

Radney Foster, who recently released All That I Require,

Wow---if this doesn't show here, it's worth googling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgAs9sZA-XQ

Leaves out the charm offensive, but got the subtext

Not really "sub" so much now of course, except for the mention in passing of all that he requires (after all the good news)

So I saw the PBS taping last night in DC of Smokey Robinson getting the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize, and the company curating the list of performers paying tribute to Smokey by doing his songs included country singer Kip Moore and 13 year-old country wunderkind Tegan Marie. They were ok-- competent but neither thrilling or terrible. Alas, the bill did not include any of Smokey's fellow Motown artists or other old-school soul acts. The bill also included: Aloe Blacc, Gallant, CeeLo Green, JoJo, Ledisi, Corinne Bailey Rae, Esperanza Spalding, The Tenors and BeBe Winans. The honoree also performed some of his favorite tunes.
Berry Gordy did an intro for Smokey before his acceptance speech.

The show will air in February

Here's a couple from Leon & Willie, promoting their album of the late 70s (as I v. dimly recall, these were the two best tracks).

"Heartbreak Hotel", but steady-rolling (sometimes bouncing) country boogie a tad more than Elvisabilly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6jYhm9Aq_0

"One For The Road", but not *too* much like Sinatry (actually if you keep watching after the end of the "HH" youtube, it'll prob go right to this, but just in case it doesn't)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZrake9yxgs

One more--- Leon's most-covered, mebbe (Aretha also did a well-plotted version)---kinda country&otherpolitan as done here, by him, Willie, and Ray Charles (reminding me a little of RC's Modern Sounds In Country & Western):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UW4ELmVD9M

Aaron Lewis, Sinner: title and theme song doesn't give us the devilish details, nor does Lewis's voice (though common-man robust and expressive, like the production) project the shadow of dark thangs you shouldn't ask about (so he gets a bit upstaged when Willie Nelson shows up occasionally on this track, albeit with an somewhat messed-up voice, alarmingly enough oafter two good albums this year; can go fast at that age). And Lewis is unwise enough to ask for even more comparison with Chris Stapleton by covering "Whiskey and You", this soon after the original release, too. Oh well, this album turns out to be all about a self-destructive man, after all, and about how there's more than one way to detail the damage.
Not that he can't enjoy it, and doesn't have a sense of humor, like "That Ain't Country" is not the usual tiresome sermon, and he does have a point, complaining about "good times and happy endings", at least, I'd like to think, if they're fake, but he (the guy in the song anway) does seem to be a stubborn cuss, who wants it to be all miserabilism all the time--then again he gets so happy with his Christmas misery list ( of tropes as sung by his hee-ros) that it starts to sound (well kind of) like "Twistin' The Night Away."
Also, there is kind of a perhaps accidentally pre-emptive strike/parody/answer song (re xpost Maren Morris on country as church), "Sunday Every Saturday Night", in which "whiskey fills the cracks in my soul...the preacher calls "Last Round"...Jesus says, "Son, you'll be alright", for a little while, o' course. It is whiskey and wry, close enough (and not too close) to deadpan to get banned, so far.
There are several a little too crisply articulate and well-balanced for convincing desperation---again, considering his handy, familiar vocal skills and their limits---but others tilt toward chaos or inchoate just enough---- the guy in "Mama" laments being "pieces glued together" in stead of scattered, and it unsettles me every time---he may be the guy (or a forerunner, John the Baptist) of the self-made, outward success in "Lost and Lonely", who is also a Richard Cory in the making, "an albatross around my own neck", hoping his wife (or maybe the other, previous woman) can hold everything together 'til he gets back, and they can "get back to where we started so long ago, before my demons took over"---a long-distance with a speed habit (among other problems)? A serial killer? Surely something more like the former--"He sounded so normal, Officer."
"I Lost It All" is a very tuneful, graceful, soulful (not over- or undersung) blurt, and his 13-year-old daughter Zoe gets to rush the beat but not over- or undersing "Travelin' Soldier", yay.

"long-distance *trucker* with a speed habit", I meant!

Lewis is unwise enough to ask for even more comparison with Chris Stapleton

hmmmm. Almost stopped reading your post there.

He gets wiser pretty soon.

Perhaps its me, but wasn't sure from your lyrics-heavy description whether you liked the record, or not

I liked the *sound* right away---he recently closed out some late night talk show, you know how they usually put the musical artists right at the end, and I was shuffling by, getting ready for bed, but he caught my attention, held it, and I perked up enough to go google his album title (no idea of the Staind connection, had completely forgotten about them. Liked the sound of the stream right away too: Lewis's voice (though common-man robust and expressive, like the production) quite tasty high generic neurotic grooves, for the most part. I've come to like a few tracks more, a few less than I did early on, but it's worth checking out (especially on free Spotify, but might buy a nice-priced copy for somewhat spooky traveling companion, to keep me on my toes).

I should say I was also glad to find something sustaining yet plainer than much of my recent subtext-laden listening fare, something with yer more basic ups and downs.

I had a really hard time connecting to the Brandy Clark album this year. Tried multiple times. I generally like what Jay Joyce does to bring life to LBT, Eric Church, Zak Brown, etc., but the sound of this record doesn't fit the artist. Exception would be "Daughter".

Missed Alfred's review the first time, but this is otm:

"However, Clark has a couple of bad habits that need modulating. She still thinks like a writer. Creative writing workshops across the land have so fetishized the detail that they have come to stand for realism — the realism of the inventory, the grocery list, the TSA travel advisory. Good singers don’t need details. Intimations, chance remarks, aperçues, doggerel even — singers can inflect them. Color is harder to throw away; it’s gotta mean something. At times the sheer number of details throughout Town is oppressive. Waffle House? Ill-fitting sequined dress? Jeans needin’ patchin’? Check, check, annnnnd check."

Applaud the effort to portray real life America without the typical generic cliches, but this.:

When my family says put on some music, they mean put on some country. And by country they don't mean any of those Brandy Clark songs about pills and foreclosure. Like Edd said, they're in the middle of it. They want me to put on "Snapback" or "Pontoon."

― dc, Saturday, September 24, 2016 11:13 PM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Country songwriter and country-folkie performer Lori McKenna was mentioned upthread. Still need to listen to her. I see Robert Christgau is writing for the Voice again and he interviewed her:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/country-musics-most-unassuming-genius-9400051

"Numbered Doors" is the place to start, IMO. Thanks for sharing.

This is the only contribution I have for this thread:

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/news/see-luke-bryan-slap-fan-at-charlie-daniels-concert-w453237

curmudgeon, thanks again for posting. What a great write-up. Made me revisit The Bird & The Rifle (better than I'd remembered). Had totally glossed over "Old Men Young Women" and the line Christgau notes: "You want the lights off/He wants the lights on/So you can pretend/And he can hold on, hold on." !

Hi Indexed, xgau got inspired by the new 'un and covers five McKenna albums here, a unique Expert Witness special so far:
https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/robert-christgau-lori-mckenna-expert-witness

playlist updated.

Jon Pardi has a number #1 country song "Head over Boots," and another popular song called "Dirt on my Boots." I like the hit one better. Catchier, better use of fiddle, guitar solo is not as long and bothersome.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/magazine-feature/7357935/jon-pardi-on-head-over-boots-hit-traditional-country-music-interview

“Head Over Boots” is a shuffle, but it’s more of a Motown laid-back shuffle than, say, a Dwight Yoakam shuffle. We met in the middle: the swing and soul of traditional country, but modern at the same time.

2 song titles with "boots" and one with "hat"

McKenna's "Bird and Rifle" has its moments, but didn't wow me. May try some of those earlier albums when I get around to it.

Last year Chris Stapleton was the outsider pick for Grammy album of the year, and this year its Sturgill Simpson

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/grammys/7603835/who-is-sturgill-simpson-grammy-album-of-year-2017

country part of Grammys nominees

Best Country Solo Performance:

"Love Can Go To Hell" — Brandy Clark
"Vice" — Miranda Lambert
"My Church" — Maren Morris
"Church Bells" — Carrie Underwood
"Blue Ain't Your Color" — Keith Urban

Best Country Duo/Group Performance:

"Different for Girls" — Dierks Bentley Featuring Elle King
"21 Summer" — Brothers Osborne
"Setting The World On Fire" — Kenny Chesney & P!nk
"Jolene" — Pentatonix Featuring Dolly Parton
"Think Of You" — Chris Young With Cassadee Pope

Best Country Song:

"Blue Ain't Your Color" — Clint Lagerberg, Hillary Lindsey & Steven Lee Olsen, songwriters (Keith Urban)
"Die A Happy Man" — Sean Douglas, Thomas Rhett & Joe Spargur, songwriters (Thomas Rhett)
"Humble and Kind" — Lori McKenna, songwriter (Tim McGraw)
"My Church" — busbee & Maren Morris, songwriters (Maren Morris)
"Vice" — Miranda Lambert, Shane McAnally & Josh Osborne, songwriters (Miranda Lambert)

Best Country Album:

Big Day In A Small Town — Brandy Clark
Full Circle — Loretta Lynn
Hero — Maren Morris
A Sailor's Guide To Earth — Sturgill Simpson
Ripcord — Keith Urban

PANDORA'S MOST THUMBED UP COUNTRY SONGS OF 2016

1. Die A Happy Man, Thomas Rhett
2. H.O.L.Y., Florida Georgia Line
3. Tennessee Whiskey, Chris Stapleton
4. You Should Be Here, Cole Swindell
5. Came Here to Forget, Blake Shelton
6. T-Shirt, Thomas Rhett
7. Somewhere on a Beach, Dierks Bentley
8. Think of You (Feat. Cassadee Pope), Chris Young
9. Home Alone Tonight (Feat. Karen Fairchild), Luke Bryan
10. Drunk On Your Love, Brett Eldredge
11. From the Ground Up, Dan + Shay
12. Head Over Boots, Jon Pardi
13. Middle of A Memory, Cole Swindell
14. Different For Girls (Feat. Elle King), Dierks Bentley
15. Record Year, Eric Church
16. Lights Come On, Jason Aldean
17. Fix, Chris Lane
18. Church Bells, Carrie Underwood
19. Snapback, Old Dominion
20. Parachute, Chris Stapleton
21. Nobody to Blame, Chris Stapleton
22. Humble & Kind, Tim McGraw
23. Used to Love You Sober, Kane Brown
24. Peter Pan, Kelsea Ballerini
25. Burning House, Cam

Its rough for women performers on Pandora . Chris Stapleton is all over that list

Stapleton seems to be the only act on that list who doesn't get much radio play (not that this is good or bad)

was Lambert's album too late for Grammy eligibility?

The album will be eligible next year, but "Vice" was nominated for Country Solo Performance and Country Song.

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/lists/40-best-country-albums-of-2016-w452950

Maren Morris followed by Miranda L. and then Margo Price and then Drive by Truckers and then Sturgill S for the top 5

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/lists/25-best-country-songs-of-2016-w455405/margo-price-hands-of-time-w455414

Toby Keith said in an interview that if you'll pay him, he'll appear anywhere.

On the first day of their father’s administration, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. will be glad-handing at an “Opening Day” party in Washington for hundreds of wealthy well-wishers.

Details about the bash — which is separate from the official events hosted by the Presidential Inaugural Committee — are still being worked out, the event’s organizer tell us, though he confirmed that the proceeds would go to unspecified conservation organizations.

TMZ this weekend posted an invite detailing the admission prices, including a $1 million package that included, among other perks, a private reception for 16 with newly sworn-in President Trump and a “multiday hunting and/or fishing excursion for four guests with Donald Trump Jr. and/or Eric Trump, and team.” According to the document, the event will have a “Cuff Links & Camouflage” hunting-and-fishing theme (“jeans, boots, and hats are welcome”) and country acts Toby Keith and Alabama are set to perform.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/events/year-in-music-2016/7624580/best-country-singles-2016

no NPRish or alt-country or folky stuff here

Except for his lyrical reference to James Brown, Eric Church's "Record Year" song is so formulaic. But I kinda like it anyway. Something about his voice and the melody.

Chely Wright, I Am The Rain: the title doesn't mean she cries all the time; it's a line from "You Are The River", which, in a classic country way, develops logically and poignantly and selectively from the observable physical relationship of rains and rivers. She takes realism inside "Blood and Skin and Bone": "I'm like a guillotine that's lost its point in a room of petty thieves/I'm like a teenage boy with a rake in his hand, starin' up at the leaves." And that is because "nothing around here makes since you've been gone." And the title is because she's a hunk of physical reality going to waste, "after God went to all the trouble to make me this way" (incl. "gay", as inferred here from a context subtly but never coyly provided on this album, as on 2010's Lifted Off The Ground, where she and producer Rodney Crowell provided a new country mainstream, or the old one updated: personal expression via personalized signposts pointing toward the familiar, incl. stuff maybe not talked about too much, or talked about too much, but the discipline of music can create the balance, externalizing without generalizing too much. And the careful clarity of writing and performance is never hesitant (if she doesn't know where or if she's going, she just says so), never murky (the sound is grounded in shades and planes of bass: maybe upright, and/or fretless electric, with just as much unobtrusive, non-chamber-y clarinet, occasional notes from the left side of an electric piano; steel, 12-string, other guitars glint and glide just fine, passing through).
Scenes shift: "Mexico" is from the POV of a truckstop waitress just this side of the border: "Every shift is different and the same....long-distance truckers, runaways and thieves...they're all headin' for the promised land...the dusty TV blares the local news." No complaints: it pays okay though she's away from her dangerous husband, but sometimes she wonders about "heading further South". in a good way, of course. "Where Will You Be" seems at first like it could be about the Rapture---"when it happens, will you be driving your car?"---and maybe it is, but mainly it's about "when you realize what the mess you've made." Tough, but she gets more empathetic in a sequel: "You're fighting battles in your head...we messed up what God said"---which is even more reason to give the singer a call sometime so they can has it out.
"You" might often mean "I", judging by her autobiography, rather than the traditional gender-avoiding gay usage of the second person; she doesn't change "lying by her side" covering Dylan's "Tomorrow is A Long Time"--the best version of this song I've heard, other than Elvis P.'s. (And she pays tribute to a cosmically beautiful female "born at midnight...Haloma, Princess of the Prairie Rain", who also brings fire, but no complaints (so could be about clearing the underbrush, like Mother Nature intends).
But "you" doesn't always mean herself, or doesn't seem to in the sad 'n' sexy "Next To You", though she might be talking to the mirror in a house divided in "Holy War", a spooky modern descendant of Willie Nelson's "This Cold War With You", recorded by one of his strongest influences singing-wise, Floyd Tillman (and seems likehe may have written some with Tillman's vocal phrasing in mind):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQbT8BOOfRc

Should be "it pays okay *and* she's away from her dangerous husband."
Also: "so they can *hash* it out."
(PS: Crowell shows up on this one too, occasionally singing backup [ditto Emmylou] and co-writing, though Joe Henry is the producer this time [and another occasional co-writer]).

Aggh! Should be "Nothin' here makes *sense* since you've been gone." No more long spontaneous posts this year, I swear.

xpost not"This Cold War With You" was written as well as first recorded by Floyd Tillman, fairly early in the CW:
Floyd Tillman [1949]
This Cold War With You
(Tillman)
Columbia 20 615-4

jeez, disregard "not" in that, sorry

from comments for Nashville Scene ballot:

Maren Morris, Hero: First heard as a single, out of the album’s context (unbidden, uncomfortable insights, updates, reminders: notes to self & others), radio bait “My Church” seems like it’s county in ways perhaps not altogether consciously intended by those who put together the100% Bona Fide Certified Yessireebob Country celebration up front: here we have the tradition of show biz congratulating itself via the artist-as-fan-surrogate, namechecking the safe, placeholder icons while (since it’s still now, not yet quite Springtime for Cheetos),plugging into a received, expertly performed carefully filtered version of “gospel”, waving hands in a slo-mo, laidback way, because this is a secular, love song-based sort of “Church”: a conceit (in more ways than one), so let’s turn it up for a minute yet not get too excited, folks. Right on cue, thank y’all.
As first read about, reviewer-bait and clickbait “80s Mercedes” seems like another auto- controversy: is she another naive young bling head, or seeking/preaching Empowerment?
But as actually heard, it’s convincing: Morris is seeking and savoring the quest, as much as the object of her desire and release---which might be out of her financial league, and that of many if not most other “90s bayyy-bies” she’s singing for, but hey life is a journey so ride on, dream on, you go girl--- this good song, and even “My Church”, are best understood as brief necessary detours and pit stops, from and versus. the overall sense of hard-won, still struggling awareness of how relationships work and don’t work: how the sausage gets made, in both cases.
And the stress comes not just from realizing you’ve been had by a sweet-talker, the most adept one yet, and not even from realizing the self-deception, the self-sweet-talking, but also realizing you aren’t just warning and testifying for other young women---you’re also, still, lambasting the sweet talker, who may not even still be around, at least for the moment, but you’re still hooked. And you keep coming back, whether that person does or not. Not just in your mind, either----there is this newfangled thang called a cellphone, with whatchacall a speed dial.
Aside from being hooked on That Person, “I could use a love song”, sung like someone might sigh, “I could use a drink”---”to take me back”, to before she knew. So yeah, she is a country fan, in the age of Beyoncé, for instance, who makes wised-up music, about having your foundations shaken and figuring out how and when to slam the doors and move on. Beyoncé, with her own circuits of self-awareness, of being trained by tough “Daddy Lessons”, about how to deal with/be wary of men like Daddy: lessons based on his own stated sense of self-awareness.
But, That Person aside, there is also another (not trying to be weird about gender, but sounds like she addresses that other as “girl” initially, later says “boy” more clearly), screwed over by another woman, thus (in part because observably not invulnerable) a suitable case for treatment: she explains, suggests, anyway, to this other person and herself “How It’s Done”: could start with, for instance clasping hands as if in a movie----as also suggested sometimes in acting classes: instead of trying to relate to the character from your own experience, generating and then figuring out how to externalize a feeling---instead, you might go through the right motion, act as if you feel, and then you might indeed begin to feel it---so, encouraged, and becoming aware of your improved acting, you feel and act more---and the process continues, as you become more of a pro, hallelujah.
Not so say that she doesn’t keep a sense of suspense going, right to the end--will it work this time, has she continued the spiral beyond her still-accruing powers and responsibilities and stakes, beyond her depth, her range, her potential, her luck? This is the question as she climbs the staircase to knock, one more time, in “Once”--the question she leaves us with (after and perhaps self-deluded/made overly hopeful by the joyful relief of “Second Wind”). Stay tuned, as the voice-over hosts of serials used to say (and what is country without history, as astute student and compulsive seeker Morris would surely ask).

more from the ballot: 2016 Reissues---

Merle Haggard’s Live In San Francisco 1965 opens with a series of endings, which work pretty well: the last 48 seconds of “Devil Woman” is about all I can take, especially since he clones the hair-oil sanctimony of Marty Robbins’ original delivery---then make way for the exciting climaxes of “Movin’ On”, “Orange Blossom Special”, and “Love Is Gonna Live Here Again”! First full-length (2:58) is a very fine “Blue Yodel”, with Johnny Gimble’s blue fiddle swinging out and back into a tensile combo of early Strangers (later, Bonnie Owens is the effective singing actress on “Lead me On”, and caps the uptempo “Cowboy’s Sweetheart” with her own, Swiss-tending yodels, while the rhythm guitarist enjoys working at “Harold’s Super Service”, except for the big guy who always wants like the sign says for a little bitty amount of gas, even at the Pearly Gates). Mostly we get Reader’s Digest editions of mostly original early highlights, some already classic, all quite fresh, as is the Hag’s voice, yodeling and all---the more striking after last year’s collab with Willie, Django and Jimmie, where his always right but economizing sometimes ragged delivery made it not that much of a shock when he checked out with respiratory problems. But the deft terseness of his final round is accentuated here too, making the candid pictures, cards from life’s “other” side. cut just right: ain’t that it, often as not. “Okie From Musgokee” and “Fightin’ Side of Me” have yet to show up, but/and “A Soldier’s Letter” certainly works as a sign-off. 16 songs. 30 minutes.

x-post --Maren Morris' "I Could Use a Love Song" has been growing on me