The Nashville Scene's Country Music Critics Poll

I almost won tickets to see him.

(Matt, you're being unnecessarily rough on gabbneb.)

xpost:
Well, the p/j poll definitely indicates more enthusiasm for things alt/indie than anything else in particular (half the top 10 albums, FF topping the singles poll, etc.).

gretchen wilson's is a solid honky tonk album that might actual deserve the hype, b/c she actually can sing a cheating song and a drinking song, skills that have been lost to minimalls.

the drive by truckers are most defintley country, and this was my album of the year, its v. good, v. hard to listen to emotionally, v. well performed, and v. much informed by the history and the present of country (see carl perkins cadilliac)

i think alan jackson sings v. well, one of the best voices in country, the songs need work, esp. remember when

alsion kraus has got to figure out if she wants to play blue g rass or be the next faith hill, if she decides on faith hill (which i think she is headed to) shes not worth the time, if she decides on blue grass she will be as good as jean richie

dont know wha to think of the new steve earle, a bit too obvious, a bit too agit prop, and there were some really strange racial politics on his condi song which kind of ruined the album for me

much to my shame i havent heard the tift merrit or the cherry bomnbs.

am pleased as punch about julie roberts, am bored to tears by kieth urban, think tha iris dement should be given all of the heartbreaking hard solos that emmy lou harris has been given--esp. by bright eyes.

neko case is v. v. v. good, and her albums go from strength to strenght and this one, with its incidnary (sp) cover of rated x needed to be much higher

singles

red neck women--the scary thing is there are 4 or 5 tracks on this album that are btter then red neck, and a couple of singles.

whiskey lullaby is kind of silly when you think about it, but the way the voices work together, and the way things are pulled apart--it proves that brad paisley is deeply under rated as a solo artist, and needs to be pulled higher

alan jackson bothers me, and i think its because i feel worn out--nostalgia is the achilles heel of this shit, and done badly it just aches, which is a bother, because i think his is a voice thats amazing.

sara evans is the best single of the year for me, hands down.

tim mcgraw can now fuck off and look pretty, much like his wife--this is a truck commerical and his ego is getting in the way

the mindy smith i am wrting about for the jesus book, and i owe someone a biblio so if they want to get back to me i will mail that out.

i love the teri clark single, and love her in general, but her new one seems ill advised (dui convictions proably dont need a drink)

josh turner will return the basso profundo to the right place, if god is just and the world is willing

lee ann womack is the closest we've gotten to patsy in years, and it breaks my heart and its clever enough withou being too clever, and im really really glad she is going in the direction she is going

can someone explain kieth urban to me ?

kenny chesney needs to sing more, and he needs to sing more ballads because his voice is just so beautiful, but i could do with out the product placement (though i am glad he is moving onto the age approite)

Anthony E: I don't agree with every one of your points, but damn if you don't hammer that nail pretty nicely.

This was my ballot in the poll just so everyone knows where I'm at, sorry if I've posted this before:

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2004:
1. Allison Moorer, The Duel (Sugar Hill)
2. Los Tigres del Norte, Pacto de Sangre (Fonovisa)
3. Charlie Robison Good Times (Dualtone)
4. Gretchen Wilson,, Here for the Party (Sony Music Nashville)
5. Big & Rich, Horse of a Different Color (Warner Bros.)
6. Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose (Interscope)
7. Joni Harms, Let's Put the Western Back in the Country (Wildcatter)
8. Mark Chesnutt, Savin' the Honky Tonk (Vivaton)
9. Polo Urias y su Maquina Nortena, En La Cumbre (Fonovisa)
10. J.J. Cale, To Tulsa and Back (Sanctuary Records Group)

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2004:
1. Los Tigres del Norte, "Jose Perez Leon" (Fonovisa)
2. Anthony Hamilton, "Charlene" (Arista)
3. Sara Evans, "Suds in the Bucket" (RCA)
4. Big & Rich "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" (Warner Bros.)
5. Gretchen Wilson, "Redneck Woman" (Sony Nashville)
6. The Notorious Cherry Bombs, "It's Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night that Chew Your Ass Out All Night Long" (Universal South)
7. Marco Antonio Solis, "Mi Mayor Sacrificio" (Fonovisa)
8. Trent Willmon, "Beer Man" (Sony)
9. Gretchen Wilson, "Here for the Party" (Sony Nashville)
10. Tracy Lawrence, "Paint Me a Birmingham" (Dreamworks)

I dunno, I think Alison's made it pretty clear that her choice is somewhere between those. Even her early albums had covers that leaned toward Adult Contemporary. She seems to be comfortable where she is -- too comfortable, but that's more my problem than hers. I'd love her to cut loose a little more, in either direction (or both): make a straight-up fiery trad record, and then do a Mutt Lange production. But I don't think either of those are really in her. It's kinda too bad, because I do think she's one of only a handful of really great singers on the market right now -- but I guess that just means she'll remain someone whose singing I love more than her material.

Critics - at least the ones most likely to vote in a poll such as this one - are more likely to be sent a Drive By Truckers advance than a Randy Travis advance, I think, since DBTs depend more on critics to get their word out, and critics are more likely to do them some good.

Edd, I don't understand your Tift Merritt comments. I thought the album was OK, Sheryl Crow its nearest reference point (though without Sheryl's hooks and songwriting). Given Emmy Lou and Eagles, don't see why she and Moorer wouldn't count as contemporary country w/ an alt "edge." And soul's been a crucial ingredient in a lot of country (Charlie Rich and on) since whenever. Blue-eyed soulsters like T. Graham Brown wouldn't have a market if not for country.

Call me old-fashioned; I prefer country with a screwed-up edge and Tift is just so bland. Again, no urgency, just well-crafted pop music (and she has only an elementary understanding of what made that Muscle Shoals/Stax music so interesting). To my ears, it's just a typical, perhaps generational thing: she came to "soul" thru Van Morrison or someone, or Bonnie Raitt. She talks about the influence of Dusty's Memphis sessions, but even "Dusty in Memphis" isn't really "soul" music, it's a fairly specific Memphis-style take on soul and pop, and Tift's backup doesn't approach the spareness and obliquity of the American Studios backing. Anyway, I don't really care about labels that much, if someone wants to call it "country" I say, sure--she is from North Carolina. I want something with a bit more give to it myself.

also, ps: I don't remember ever hearing "remember when" (or the george strait song or songs that placed, assuming any did), though maybe i did. and i was amazed that so many people liked the tragic maudlin tim mcgraw song about skydiving with a bull named fu manchu. (i like tim a lot, and think most of his albums are pretty solid, but the only song i like much on his current album is the new single, "drugs or jesus.") and i wonder how many people voted for "over and over." and brad paisley has never left any impression whatsoever on me either, though that song about mud is okay i guess. and i wish edd would tell me whether blake shelton's previous albums are as good as his new one, which as i said already on the 2005 rolling country thread, i would have voted for in the country poll had i listened to it on time (and i would have listened to it on time if i hadn't thought he was the same person as ricky van shelton, who iv'e never had any use for.)

xp

i will have to hear the big and rich song again, i might have too soft a spot for moosh.

(and you havent talked to me about big and rich wrt to genre)

hrmmm. i dunno, depends on what you're implying by the word "dull". if you mean it's the least "adventurous" or most "typical", i'll agree. but fuck, their harmonies mesh beautifully and soar like nowhere else on the album. for my ears, which may be mooshy as well, it's the best song there, and i *love* the rest of it (except for the jimmy buffet one, which is just eh).

way more about b&r & genre here (and also, in my review at villagevoice.com) than you'll probably ever need, anthony:

Big & Rich: Album of the Decade?

and yep, michaelangelo, "big time" counts as an '05 single.

Well, there's a nice, vaguely exploratory guitar solo now and then (more on his previous album, which had three or four entertaining tracks, than his current one.) and, um, there's that sexy australian accent (which he doesn't sing with), I guess (though at least one website I've seen mentions a rumor among country fans that he and little kenny are a couple, and one of them even bought the other one a motorcycle for a present recently. seems kinda far fetched from my perspective, but who knows? it's a very fun rumor, either way.)

Actually, I saw a Buddy Miller video on CMT recently...right before that newish one of Shania's in which she's ridin' a horse through, what is that, a field of agave? Looks good on a horse.

Because it sucks?

"now where do i pick up nasty nashville gossip"

well, there's a bar downtown, 12th and Porter, people are always talking there, and you can pick up any number of things there, not always salubrious. I think it was my buddy who works at BMI Nashville who told me about that Kenny/Urban thing, actually.

http://www.celebstation.org/picture/33606/Kenny_Chesney

am i the only person who thought gretchen's voice sounded really thin and small in that skynyrd medley (though she started out okay i guess)? (and who was her t-shirt paying tribute to?) urban's guitar parts were nice and vaguely exploratory (like i said!), but does he earn his last name or what? tim mcgraw has a very very pretty voice but i prefer elvin bishop's fashion sense.

when will a nashville star come out ? what will need to happen.

havent heard gw yet, as it starts at 9 pm here.

though you wouldn't have known it from his boring-assed grammy performance of the fu manchu bull song or the dead-assed lines he did in "across the universe" (which i never knew was called "across the universe" before. or at least, if you would have asked me two hours ago which beatles song "across the universe" was, i wouldn't have been able to answer "the nothing's gonna change the world one." which song i never much noticed before anyway.) but anyway, i still think tim's skynyrd lines sounded purty indeed.

xp

I wasn't that inspired by the Tift Merritt, was just reacting to Edd's idea that its inclusion in a country poll would be considered strange.

Keith Urban baffles me: His playing is expert and he has the sort of "lite" voice that's emotionally dexterous without calling attention to its technique; I get the sense that if this guy had any musical restlessness whatsoever he could be an interesting Lindsey Buckingham type. But his song choice is utterly blah, and sans restlessness he comes across as generally forgettable. There was one track that reached me on the most recent album: I think it was called "She's Gotta Be": They put the emphasis on the two AND rather than on the backbeat; this through the song off-kilter enough to give it unexpected intensity.

Frank, wasn't the first Tift Merritt album produced by Chris Stamey? I think I heard some of it, and will probably need to revisit it. I am admittedly somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to that soul stuff. I listened to "Tambourine" some last night and I guess maybe she does have a reason to sing, everyone has a reason to...even me. I guess in my heart of hearts I believe anyone doing that kind of thing should go to Malaco or see Willie Mitchell and Teenie Hodges about it, just do it up. Which is contrary and so forth, that's just me. But then I don't want Tift to get big from eating that good barbecue, it's a horrible, confounding trade-off.

I don't think "Exile" is overrated but I see why many would say that. I suppose it is responsible for the kind of thing Frank describes, I suppose it's where the Stones get a bit discursive. I think it's a groove and I just go with it; shit, though, I listen to "Metamorphosis" more than any Stones album these days just because I love "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind" and "Downtown Suzie" so much.

and wow, i just remembered that in "when i come around" a few years ago, green day basically swiped the chords of "sweet home alabama"!

I didn't mean to like throw down the gauntlet, it's just I was going through your list downloading stuff and it sounded like R&B to my ears. Love to hear why it's country.

and Matos OTM about "Lucille," my favorite song on that record...but even that one is more prog-folk than country. trife says Ant Ham is an Al Green wannabe but I think he's the best songwriter in America maybe

I'm playing the top 20 singles playlist, sounds great so far (I'm very much a country dilettante).

But you're right, there are some great singles on the chart; four of my top ten got in the top six, something which has never happened in Pazz & Jop.

Chuck Eddy's Nashiville Scene Poll Ballot, 2005

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2005:
1. Miranda Lambert - Kerosene (Epic)
2. Deana Carter - The Story of My Life (Vanguard)
3. Gary Allan - Tough All Over (MCA Nashville)
4. Jamie O'Neal - Brave (EMI/Capitol)
5. Shooter Jennings - Put the O Back in Country (Universal South)
6. Lee Ann Womack - There's More Where That Came From (MCA Nashville)
7. Dallas Wayne - I'm Your Biggest Fan (Koch)
8. Big & Rich - Comin' To Your City (Warner Bros.)
9. Elizabeth McQueen and the Firebrands - Happy Doing What We're Doing (Freedom)
10. Little Big Town - The Road to Here (Equity Music Group)

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2005:
1. Shooter Jennings featuring George Jones - 4th of July (Universal South)
2. Miranda Lambert - Kerosene (Epic)
3. Dierks Bentley - Lot of Leavin' Left to Do (EMI)
4. Kentucky Headhunters - Big Boss Man (CMUJ Entertainment)
5. Erika Jo - I Break Things (Universal South)
6. Deana Carter - The Girl You Left Me For (Vanguard)
7. Toby Keith - As Good As I Once Was (Dreamworks)
8. Brad Paisley - Alcohol (Arista Nashville)
9. Tim McGraw - Drugs or Jesus (Curb)
10. Shannon Brown - Corn Fed (Warner Bros)

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2005:
1. *Good For What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows: 1926-1937* (Old Hat)
2. *You Ain't Talkin to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music* (Columbia/Legacy)
3. David Allen Coe - *Penitentiary Blues* (Hacktone)
4. *The Dukes of Hazzard* (Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax)
5. Rosanne Cash - *Seven Year Ache* (Columbia/Legacy)

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2005:
1. Gary Allan
2. Toby Keith
3. Kenny Chesney

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2005:
1. Miranda Lambert
2. Deana Carter
3. Shannon Brown

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2005:
1. John Rich
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Deana Carter

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2005:
1. Big & Rich
2. Little Big Town
3. Odyssey Band

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST INSTRUMENTALISTS OF 2005:
1. James "Blood" Ulmer
2 Leroy Powell
3. Shooter Jennings

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2005:
1. Miranda Lambert
2. Shooter Jennings
3. Shannon Brown

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2005:
1. Miranda Lambert
2. Deana Carter
3. Big & Rich

Hardest part of my *Nasvhille Scene* ballot, like always: "Best Songwriters," which I'm horrible at determining, since I tend not to read CD booklets as often as I should (or at least I tend to skip the names in parentheses).
Best song I never identified: The (I assume current) country hit with a high ethereal male voice saying the same borderline-incomprehensible thing over and over again on top of what sounded *exactly* like a loop of a great guitar progression from "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger (which *maybe* a little "Night Moves" tossed in, I'm not sure.) I heard it once, on the radio in Pennsylvania. Any help would be appreciated
2005 country albums I still haven't heard that I may well have liked: Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney (the real one with Stones riffs and stuff, not the acoustic beach-bum one), Carrie Underwood, Keith Anderson, Sara Evans. Any of which I might have wound up voting for had I listened to them, just like last year, when if I hadn't let *Blake Shelton's Barn and Grill* sit around 'til early January without listening to it, it easily would have made my 2004 country top ten. My favorite track, even more than "Some Beach," turned out to be "What's On My Mind." Biggest revelation, though, was that Blake Shelton and Ricky Van Shelton are not the same person.
Alt-country single (and most rocking suicide song) of the year: "Callin' In Dead" by Mazey Gardens & the Brick Hit House Band, disguised (all the way down to the attic-wrinkled-for-three-decades generic 7-inch sleeve) to look like a reissue of a minor country hit (on the apparently phony Åmbassador Records) from 1972. Koch and Sugar Hill did an okay job in helping me not completely hate alt-country this year, too, so kudos to them.But one thing I noticed about my country listening this year is that most of the more alt-country-leaning stuff I liked (Duhks, Donna the Buffalo, Maybelles, Patrcia Vonne, Hacienda Brothers, Reckless Kelly, Billy Don Burns) wound up being shelved for future reference after initially knocking me out (maybe I'm just impressed that alt-country finally seems to be acknowledging that music should have some rhythm in it?), whereas the stuff that kept growing on me and revealing new things about itself seemed mostly to be from Nashville (which is dancing more than it used to these days as well, obviously.) So my top ten, as usual, wound up way more pop than alt, again. But nobody can say I didn't try for the other side. Still: Switching off one summer night between new albums by apparent alt-country Missourians the Domino Kings and the Morells (both on Hightone), I was thinking "not completely horrible as alt-c&w goes", until Van Zant's new album came up next in my CD player by accident, and it totally trounced them with its eyes closed and mine closed too. (Good thing it wasn't on a computer, though.) And then there's Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell's *Begonias*: Listened to this 'cuz Bob Christgau said I should. He loves the opening track, a sort of lamenting-our-open-marriage duet, and i guess it's pretty nifty as blando alt-country with vaguely pretty singing and a decent melody and no other music to speak of goes. I like the song where some girl escapes halfway to Califonia better, since lyrics about California let alt-country bands have hooks that aren't otherwise allowed. And the one about waiting for some girl named June in January was slightly clever. But still: way too NPR, way too genteel, way too afraid of the messiness of life and afraid of life in general. Bob seemed seemed to think it's kinda sexy; I think it's kinda sexless. Caitlin used to be in Whiskeytown, right? Don't remember if I ever heard them.
Country ad of the year: The ASCAP Award one in *Billboard*, where John Rich, who apparently won the "Songwriter/Artist of the year award," is pictured (among plain old regular so-what headshots of 50 or so other stars and industry luminaries) wearing an "I Heart PETA" T-shirt while eating a (veggie or not) burger and wearing a (veggie or not) fur coat. I guess he wants to have his meat and eat it too.
Country fashion spread of the year: The *New York Times* Thursday style section one the week of the CMA Awards, condescendingly chronicling female country artists' newfound obsession with designer labels. For instance, did you know they don't leave price tags on their hats anymore? Well, they don't, so there! Actually, the most interesting thing about the piece was the graphic that compared Faith Hill's, Martina McBride's, and Leann Rimes's down-home mid '90s CD covers to their much more fashionable (and way hotter, though it doesn't say that) recent ones. And the piece even mentioned Leann's "heaving bosom"! Take that, Minnie Pearl!
Best standup comedy: The Duhks on stage, saying they'd "married" their friends in the Canadian agit-folk band The Mammals, and would now be called the Platypi. I totally guffawed out loud, but judging from everybody turning around to glare at me, I think I was the only person at Joe's Pub who got it.
Mathematic inequality of the summer: Shooter Jennings "4th of July" > X "4th of July" > Martina McBride "Independence Day" > um., whatever the Springsteen and Van Morrison ones were called
Bubblegum country song of the year: Charlie Poole's "Sweet Sixteen," literally about a teenage girl fond of chewing gum.
Cool drink of water, such a sweet surprise: "Key Lime Pie" by Kenny Chesney, best country cunnilungus song since Brooks and Dunn went down in memory town.
Best title pun by a frequently annoying band: "Easy Does It" by Hot Apple Pie, which totally gets its sound from Lionel Richie in his eternally underrated "Stuck on You"/"Sail On" soul-country mode. Get it?
Big new secret country influence: Counting Crows in their Van Morrison mode, but mainly only when the words are about Californina. Pat Green's album last year had a song like that; so did Jon Nicholson's this year. And "California Rain" on Philly-bred Buck Cherry-style Sunset Strip sleaze-rock revivalists Silvertide's album, which George Smith identified as their CMT move, sounds kind of like Counting Crows too! Counting Crows may be the most influential band on "songs about California" since the Beach Boys. Or the Eagles. Or Guns N' Roses. Or somebody.
Not as much of an influence as country pretends: AC/DC. Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband (who also sadly sound nothing like Bootsy) list AC/DC among their influences, but damned if it's audible in their Toad the Wet Sprocket riffs. So when, exactly, did AC/DC turn out to be the all-purpose okay hard rock band for country guys to say they like? When Joe Dee Messina's band played the riff from "Back in Black" live a couple years before Montgomery Gentry borrowed it, maybe? And then there's "Soul Shaker" by Big & Rich, which despite their claims that it's the hardest-rocking country song ever is really basically just a straight boogie, not as heftily kicking a one as Montgomery Gentry or Shooter Jennings or the Kentucky Headhunters might do, and not even close to to the hardest-rocking *Big & Rich* song ever actually, but still good. I was wondering why it reminded me of AC/DC, and then i realized, duh, the title! (Also the Cult, though i always thought Ian Astbury was yelling "SALT shaker!")
Most over-the-top '70s disco on any country album, maybe ever (or at least since, like, 1980 or so): "Good Ole Days," track #8 on the new Shannon Brown album, which isn't out yet, but which would've been my third favorite country album of 2005 if it was. The song that sounds like Bachman-Turner Overdrive is even better! (Take that, Hank Williams! Honestly, though, I *like* that country radio all sounds like '70s hard rock and '80s John Cougar now, so why not Gloria Gaynor, too? I'm 45 years old, from the Detroit suburbs. So sue me.)
Jody "Joe Dee" Messina's "My Give a Damn's Broken" took its music straight from Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry" and its sentiments straight from the Eagles' "Get Over It": Please don't tell me about your victimhood no more. Victim of love, you're just a victim of love. I could be wrong, but I'm not.
Has anybody else noticed that Lee Ann Womack's "I May Hate Myself in the Morning" sounds an awful lot like "Little Green Apples" by O.C. Smith? Ot at least its string break does. I'd forgotten what a great song "Little Green Apples" was, though it's pretty creepy when O.C. goes into that minstrel blackface "when myself iz feelin low" part. (Also, how come so many black country singers had names like O.C. Smith, O.B. McLinton, and O.V. Wright? Or is that just my imagination?)
Holy fuck what a *stomp* "Kerosene" by Miranda Lambert is. Totally 1986--riffs from Screaming Blue Messiahs, title from Big Black, rocks harder than either. Also, it's about burning things. And the Erika Jo song I voted for is about breaking things. 2005: The year country gals got their appetite for destruction on (again).
"Montgomery Gentry? They're punks for sure," Frank Kogan says, "and I don't mean that altogether as a compliment." I agree--.especially considering their libertarian treatise "You Beat Your Brat (I'll Beat Mine)."
I like "Monday Morning Church" okay; I've liked a handful of Alan Jackson songs in the past, too (the 9-11 one, the Daddy let me drive one, the Chatahoochie one, etc.), but mainly the guy's even more of a respectfully personality-free goody-two-shoes snoozecase than Randy Travis or George Strait. He no doubt deserves a good 10-song best-of album; but he's a "superstar" (and humble my ass), cough cough, so he'll never get one. (I guess that's what CD burners are for, right? One of these years I'll buy one.) Have *never* understood people who call Alan (or even Randy or George) great singers, though; lots of people do, so I'm probably missing something.. To me they just sound tasteful, totally reined in. And more or less average, when you get down to it. Still, at the CMA Awards in New York this fall, when Alan covered "Wonderful Tonight" by Eric Clapton, he sang it better than Eric used to. (But is that song *supposed* to sound totally suicidal and cynical and sarcastic, like the guy is totally tired of life despite his gorgeous wife of apparently several decades, or am I nuts? Always kinda hit me that way when Eric sang it too. ) Meanwhile, same night, George Strait sounded, uh, okay in his straight way I suppose; decent voice, sure, and the arrangement was vaguely jazzy, and there was possibly even a chord change in there somewhere, and the song (advice to a male friend in love with a "high toned woman" who's out of his league) was kinda intriguing, but despite all that, damn, what a fucking *bore*. I don't get it. All the *elements* are there, but it just goes by as "another George Straight song, just like hundreds of others." Alan and George have this way of singing words without remotely embodying them, or something. How can people get excited about these guys? Maybe their fans are the kind of people who don't *like* to get excited?
Keith Urban is fun. He's fun to look at. He doesn't wash his hair. Or okay, I know, he looks like he just got off his surfboard and it's still wet and so are all the ladies screaming for him. What a himbo! And he was named the CMA's male country singer of the year, which is ridiculous, because he's got like the most average voice on earth. At the award show, his beat sounded more disco than Big & Rich's. The music was total late '70s Starbuck/King Harvest/Little River Band soft afternoon rock; in theory I should *love* it, but his songs never have an effect until he takes a guitar solo, which he never does anyway near long enough...since perhaps it's assumed his audience demographic does not like guitar solos? Could be. A shame, because he can play. I think all he needs are better songs, but maybe since he always just rolled out of bed or off the waves he's too sleepy and lazy to hunt around for good ones.
So did I misread something somewhere, or did Garth Brooks actually make people buy a limited-edition six-disc box set available for only, like, one Tuesday afternoon at Walmart just to get that one (admittedly rocking) song about Chris Ledeux, who most of his fans had probably never heard of? Wow, Garth: still shameless after all these years. Or at least that's the idea I got from an ad I saw in the *Times* during CMA week, when he played live from Times Square because, uh, he was too important to walk ten blocks south to the Garden or whatever. Though I much prefered the patriotic pro-union Walmart vs. America full-page ad the day before, with Walmart moneybags doing a tug of the war for the Yoonited States against Unca Sam. Hope it also ran in papers read in places where people actually shop at Walmart.
Sugarland's drummer *killed* at the CMA Awards; what does everybody have against that band? They rock. But the drummer's not in the band per se, and neither is the totally scraggly looking long-hair rock guitarist dressed in black. Their dykey looking big girl and nerdy looking skinny guy *are* in the band-per-se', though, and it pisses me off how often TV monistors only show Jennifer Nettles, as if they're a solo act not a trio; what the hell? They've become big stars from the grass-roots up; has Nashville decided the two cool oddball looking members are liabilities? If so, to hell with Nashville.
"Bobby McGee" question: Why the heck does she carry a *harpoon* in her dirty red bandanna? Is she gonna hunt whales, or what? That's so weird.
Nominees for the Grammys' "best contemporary folk album" category: Springsteen, John Prine, Nickel Creek, Rodney Crowell, Ry Cooder. So basicially, Triple A radio I guess. Does this mean people figured out once and for all that Bruce is a folk not a rock artist? Though interestingly, Alison Krauss is apparently nominated in the country category instead, which means they apparently don't think of *all* bluegrass as folk. Intriguing. And honestly, Nickel Creek and Crowell *are* more folk than country, seems to me.
Still, as far as genre taxonomy goes: Do the Warsaw Village Band (on World Village Records) count as country? Instrumentation includes cello, dulcimer, "plock fidel," violins, hurdy gurdy, xylophone, etc; song titles include "In the Forest" and "Woman in Hell" and "When Johnny Went to Fight the War" and "I Slayed the Rye" and "Polka from the Sieradz Region." First song samples Grandmaster Flash scractching Chic's "Good Times."
"Best of Luck" is the only even *possibly* great track on the Nickel Creek album, and I'm not even positive about that one. The only other fast songs are instrumentals -- why are bluegrassers these days so afraid of talking fast over fast jig rhythms like all the guys on that Charlie Poole box used to? (Kind of a problem with the Duhks, too, actually.)
My favorite track on the new Big & Rich album might still be "Filthy Rich," the jazzy one in the middle that sounds like the Hoosier Hot Shots and seems (first verse at least) to be a blatant protest against social security privatization (Grandma's been saving up her money, now some big man in a big building is going to take it away from her); second verse is about a greedy TV preacher. But mainly I like its *sound*, which totally gets that proto-Western-swing local-yokels-trying-to-be-the-Memphis-Jug-Band groove *down*, sax solo and all. Dance party music for a Great Depression, not a moment too soon, even if its real old-timey influence is Queen or Jimmy Buffet. Also neat how it balances out the Jesus-in-the-sky-with-diamonds Christian mysticism that John and Kenny spout in songs like "Leap of Faith" and "I Pray for You."
Am I the only person who googled "Jessica White" after hearing B&R's "Comin' To Your City," only to find out she's a model I never heard of before, then only to be told later that they're actually talking about Jesco White, a clog dancer I never heard of before? I am so out of it when it comes to all these high-fallutin' celebrities.
Also noticed this year that one guy in Trick Pony sure does look and dress a lot like Big Kenny. Did he always look like that? If so, is it at all possible Trick Pony were proto-B&R? Would that explain why I kept thinking they were called Trick Daddy instead?
Followup-to-unbelievable-breaktrough-album *Comin To Your City* most wound up reminding me of: *Use Your Illusion*, with "8th of November" as both "Novemeber Rain" *and* "Civil War." (Which is to say: good in theory, but uh, really really long.)
So can somebody please tell me why Gretchen Wilson does ballads? What did her first album have, one memorable one maybe? And her new one has fewer than that.
Cowboy Troy is a total fucking cornball, but so what, that only makes him more fun. The last cut on his album, where he raps in several languages especially Mandarin Chinese while Big Kenny sings the chorus to "Jesus Loves the Little Children of the World," should have been all over Radio Disney, but sadly it wasn't.
And oh yeah, before some Maroons start whining about how "corny" or whatever it is that B&R quote/interpolate Nelly instead of, say, Bun B or MF Doom, they should explain how, say. Jay-Z collaborating with Linkin Park instead of Lifter Puller or Tupac sampling Bruce Hornsby instead of Peter Laughner is any less corny. The nature of guys from one genre incorporating music from another genre is that, big whoop, they might not incorporate the absolute hippest or most up-to-the-minute stuff out there. And I'm really not convinced country is any more guilty of that than hip-hop or metal or any other genre is. Though I still wish Big & Rich would sing over a Timbaland beat or a RZA beat or a Mannie Fresh beat sometimes as well as those Bo Diddley beats. But then, I also I wish David Banner had a working knowledge of recent Kenny Chesney and Dierks Bentley melodies. So yeah, I can dream.

It's interesting that Nevermind Me has become a bit of a hit. On one email list I'm a part of, some of the students that were involved in writing that song (through the Priceless Edge Mastercard internship) were pissed off and even talking about lawsuits. I think it all blew a way when they realized what tenuous legal ground they were on (having signed away rights and not having a lot of documentation on bringing a lot to the song to begin with).

I wonder if they'll ever record Limo Larry...