The Decade In Roots Rock

Although it's the musical equivalent of rednecks or obese people, ie the genre everybody feels okay making fun of, it's been a pretty solid ten years for roots rock.

What are your favorite roots records of the last ten years? And if you're here to make fun of us roots rock fans, you can uh, suck my musical dick.

so what are some of YOUR favorites? put up or shut up!

Also, please define terms. (Not being sarcastic -- "roots rock" means different things to different people.)

my favorites:

http://www.ronstadt-linda.com/adieu3.jpg

http://dkpresents.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/plant-raising-sand.jpg

and this too:

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/d/deana-carter/album-the-story-of-my-life.jpg

i've decided to make up my own definition of roots rock.

Gore Gore Girls - "Sweet Potato"

wait, do the freak folk types count as roots rock? they like old stuff. if so, then espers, vetiver, and cerberus shoal made stuff that i really liked.

And what about The Roots? (They didn't make anything I totally loved, but they were pretty good, and some people will probably want to vote for them.)

and if the gore gore girls count then amplified heat and the dragons made stuff i really liked. and the first gris gris album.

and what about roots rock reggae groups? they should stand up and be counted.

the rolling stones probably did some good stuff this decade. not sure though.

Also, ZZ Top, Mescalero. That's a shoo-in, right?

wikipedia is nice and broad:

Roots Rock is "a style of rock music that draws material from various American musical traditions including country, blues, and folk." [1] The term is sometimes used in a broader sense to encompass other genres of Americana, including early rock and roll, country rock, and other related forms.

watson twins album is my current fave rootsy thing, but it doesn't come out till 2010. my second fave is by the living sisters. also 2010 though.

honestly, this is probably my favorite roots rock album of the decade:

http://www.vampster.com/images/gallery2/tonynaima_dismember.jpg

if the gore gore girls count then amplified heat and the dragons made stuff i really liked. and the first gris gris album.

But did they actually do any songs about roots? (Or tubers, at least?)

Anyway, if it's a broad definition, I would probably just list country albums once I got past the Gore Gores and ZZs. (Unless Red Swan count; they had a great one. And maybe a White Stripes or Drive By Truckers album -- but only one each -- if I was feeling real generous that day.)

white stripes had great album covers. not very rootsy covers though.

that tom petty live box wins the decade though. lock thread.

Nah, no way that beats all those Count Bishops reissues a few years ago.

i love count bishops, but the petty thing is really good! and i'm not a live album fanatic. or even a petty fanatic.

and he does good rootsy live covers too. like the count bishops.

Everyone on Austin City Limits who did albums in the last ten years.

About 50-60 percent, mebbe more, of the guys and gals in guitar trade mags.

Alvin Youngblood Hart Motivational Speaker

Whatever that Savoy Brown album was which was my first review for the Voice. Or was that late 00? I dunno, but that was a good album. I still drag it out and guzzle a six pack in 40 minutes to it once a year.

60 or 70 percent of the stuff on CDBaby, in one way or another.

Everything Ben Harper did I never listened to.

Lenny Kravitz doing his best Caleb Quaye in Hookfoot or Frank Marino as a pop star
imitations.

Sheryl Crow doing "The First Cut is the Deepest", most of the stuff on her 'greatest hits' album.

Aerosmith's Honkin' on Bobo, the album which came with a toy harmonica. Really, that wasn't very good, though, only "You Got to Move."

Boy, there's literally no end to it.

Oh yeah! CDBaby, duh! Electric Boogie Dawgz!!!

i can't stand steve earle. sorry. i like john hartford and david allan coe and billy joe shaver and jerry jeff walker and jerry reed and jerry van dyke and townes van zandt and ronnie van zant, but i can't stand steve earle.

Fuck year, Electric Boogie Dawgz! Alligator Stew! The last five Aynsley Lister records, he's from Leicester. 80 percent of the stuff published 2000-2009 and pirated on el blog de archi 2.

gorge!!! you need this roots rock reissue:

Grong Grong Reissue! (amazing early 80's australian insanity a la birthday party + flipper)

didn't know if you saw the thread. dunno where you can find it. maybe i could burn it for you? i don't burn things - except dinner - but i could probably figure it out.

you know what i ask myself sometimes? whether or not i need a government mule or derek trucks album in my life. i'm just not sure. i probably don't though.

so what are some of YOUR favorites? put up or shut up!

Oh, it's on. I like this kind of party....

Roots rock artists of the past ten years whom I enjoy include, the Drive-By Truckers, The Mendoza Line, Conor Oberst, and Chuck Cleaver, who had a particularly butt kicking decade of roots rock with the Ass Ponys & Wussy.

2006 was the roots rock year of the female, with dynamite records from Neko Case, Jenny Lewis, Cat Power, Amy Millan, The Dixie Chicks & The Knife.

Alltime favorite roots rock band: The Vulgar Boatmen. Honorable mention goes to the most meat & potatoes roots rock of all, The Volebeats, who make the Bottle Rockets seem like Klaus Nomi.

xpost
The Volebeats OTM, Mosquito Spiral & about half of Country Favorites are excellent.

Missed the last Vulgar Boatmen disc, is it as good as You and Your Sister?

Honorable mention goes to the most meat & potatoes roots rock of all, The Volebeats, who make the Bottle Rockets seem like Klaus Nomi.

Love this comparison.

songs about roots? (Or tubers, at least?)

Because, remember: Woody Guthrie sang about b-e-e-t-s. Not b-e-a-t-s.

There's this guy named Bob Dylan who's put out a few decent roots rock records.

better than The Beat Farmers Live At The Spring Valley Inn?

Most likely not. My brother said he suxored at State College.

Hank Williams, Jr., for single-handedly doing all those iterations on the Monday Night Football on all his rowdy friends coming over tonight tonight which perforce must include many rednecks and obese people.

Hank III for that last album I wrote about for xhuxk which generated all the hate comment from altie rednecks and obese people, the album with a song about how the best friends are made in prison, as if he'd know, among other things.

A lotta the records I reviewed for PYW, all now sent to the glue factory.

Beats listening to John Mellencamp singing about our country during a commercial for full-sized pickup trucks. That's the best I could come up with for Blanche's "What This Town Needs" on V2 Records

Jesse Sykes’s voice goes from hoarse to whispery, lugubrious the rest of the time, like a distraught frog if there were such a thing. 'Those were happy times,' she sings, sounding unsure of her convictions. -- from a review of Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter's "Like Love, Lust & etc"

Face it though, you don't want to be buying albums of just the corny old-timey trad stuff when -- ho-ho-ho -- on Christmas you'll be watching porn on the net in the morning, masturbating alone and watching a third-rate bowl game over a few six packs to make the afternoon short. If lucky, by evening you'll have blacked out. -- On Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison's “Please Daddy Don't Get Drunk” from a CD entitled "Happy Holidays."

Hmm, wait, that's PTW -- not PYW.

Boy skot, I went out to that mentaltorture band page on Myspace. What a fabulously irritating page! It started trying to download about eleventy YouTube videos through the browser window at once and it started some dumb Johnny Cash tune and then it was time to kill the process before it hung the computer. So I guess that was them telling me what they were like?

jeez, sorry. the videos on the myspace are all latter-day reunion things. so don't bother with those anyway. but the old songs played for me okay when i tried yesterday. don't know where you can get aussie imports where you are, but these guys were for real. make nick cave and the birthday party sound like klaus nomi.

2006 was the roots rock year of the female, with dynamite records from Neko Case, Jenny Lewis, Cat Power, Amy Millan, The Dixie Chicks & The Knife.

Okay, now I'm really confused. (Especially by the Swedish electro-pop duo.)

when i listen to the girly roots stuff that they play on public radio and other stations that play a lot of the alt/roots stuff i sometimes think that the biggest influence on roots music of the last 20 years was susanna hoffs.

Bob Neuwirth - Havana Midnight
Chuck Prophet - The Hurting Business
Matthew Ryan - Concussion
James McMurtry - Childish Things
Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Ease Down The Road