Rolling Country 2006 Thread

Yeah, I'm kinda amazed that hasn't happened to Shooter yet!

Avett Brothers *Four Thieves Gone: The Robbinsville Sessions* makes me sick to my stomach. What is it, "old timey" music for Barenaked Ladies and Moxy Fruvous fans or something? Or maybe the singer got drunk and is wearing a lampshade on his voice. God this thing sucks.

Let's see, according to the bio on his Webpage, "Before he even graduated [high school], he was in pop queen Teena Marie's band." Then he did whatever he did, which included producing "Breathe" for Melissa Etheridge (I don't even think I've heard this song, but my general feeling is that Melissa oversings songs to their ultimate demise), and from there started writing, playing, producing for a whole lot of others, including co-writing co-producing "Steve McQueen" for Sheryl Crow, a song that is nice but ho-hum in comparison to most of what she'd done previously. Anwyay, songs he's written or produced that one could vaguely call country-related include SheDaisy's "Come Home Soon" and Stevie Nicks' "Trouble in Shangri-La" (which I used to own and right now can't recall, so I don't know how country it is, but it's, you know, Stevie), and maybe can include Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway," which could have been country if it hadn't already been something else. And - now this is where Shanks starts to have a serious country impact - Keith Urban's "Somebody Like You," which lived at number one on the country charts for a couple of months in 2002. Shanks wrote but did not produce it; being Urban's, it's done with an easy touch. Just skips along, rides a nice breeze, probably a lot harder to do well than it appears, but only catches fire for me during Keith's guitar rave-up at the end (which I suspect most radio listeners didn't get a chance to hear). But then, it's not trying to catch fire. It's way more palatable than most sap in the pop country range. Nice. But it has little to do with why I'm now trying to find out whatever I can about Shanks. The why is "Fly" by Hilary Duff, which would have been my single of the year in 2004 if I'd been giving Duff much attention; "La La" by Ashlee Simpson, which was my number three this year and would have been number one if Shanks and Simpson hadn't tried too hard to make it sound tough; and a whole bunch more: all of the crucial Ashlee tracks, and the woman has yet to put out a bad or merely so-so single; "First" and the other tracks that broke Lohan onto the radio; "Come Clean," Duff's first great single; and back in 2001, Michelle Branch's "Everywhere," which preceded Pink's "Don't Let Me Get Me"* and Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" onto the airwaves and helped to set a pattern: personal (or personal-seeming) lyrics but with, no matter how pensive the rest of the song, a chorus that wails. So far Shanks seems to do best with the young women (and when Kara DioGuardi is on board as one of his co-writers); he doesn't have just one sound. He's gotten delicate beauty from Hilary and hot fire from Ashlee. I'm not sure what to make of his Bon Jovi involvement. I'd call "Have a Nice Day" below-average for a Shanks single, but Shanks has done worse. He's still a subject for further research.

(*On his Webpage he gives himself credit for "additional production" on Pink's "Don't Let Me Get Me," but this is not listed on the album notes, which credit Dallas Austin.)

Shanks-related songs I haven't so far heard include Fleetwood Mac's "Peacekeeper," Vertical Horizon's "I'm Still Here," Alanis Morissette's "Everything."

http://gritz.net/

but their new record
is quite fun and bluegrass-pop
I am in favor

*e.g. The opener is a bluegrass hoedown about a hangover ("Poison / Get thee out of me") that calls puke and/or the runs "bubblin' crude", the closer is another hangover song called "Let Jesus Make You Breakfast"; the midtempo AAA-friendly boogie is surprisingly upbeat in tone considering it's about the framing and incarceration of Leonard Peltier; the gospel song with the jordanaires is actually predicting failure ("I know the devil in me will do me in"); etc. I'm in heavy favor of this.

Yes, this is wrong. Cantrell is country.

and I dunno, Cantrell is kind of a folkie, but she covers Wynn Stewart honky-tonk stuff. but I think she'd sell better out of the folk section, or the Americana section, altho at Grimey's here she's right in with Can and Captain Beefheart.

xps

Albums

1. Lee Ann Womack: There’s More Where That Came From (MCA)
2. Rodney Crowell: The Outsider (Columbia)
3. Robbie Fulks: Georgia Hard (Yep Roc)
4. Marty Stuart & the Fabulous Superlatives: Souls’ Chapel (Superlatone/Universal South)
5. Gary Allan: Tough All Over (MCA)
6. Brad Paisley: Time Well Wasted (Arista)
7. Dwight Yoakam: Blame the Vain (New West)
8. Mary Gauthier: Mercy Now (Lost Highway)
9. Patty Loveless: Dreamin’ My Dreams (Epic)
10. Miranda Lambert: Kerosene (Epic)
11. Bobby Bare: The Moon Was Blue (Dualtone)
12. Dierks Bentley: Modern Day Drifter (Capitol)
13. Martina McBride: Timeless (RCA)
14. Neil Young: Prairie Wind (Reprise)
15. Gretchen Wilson: All Jacked Up (Epic) 16. Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell: Begonias (Yep Roc)
17. James McMurtry: Childish Things (Compadre)
18. Merle Haggard: Chicago Wind (Capitol)
19. John Prine: Fair & Square (Oh Boy)
20. Deana Carter: The Story of My Life (Vanguard)
21. Trisha Yearwood: Jasper County (MCA)
22. Jimmie Dale Gilmore: Come on Back (Rounder)
23. Nickel Creek: Why Should the Fire Die (Sugar Hill)
24. Bobby Pinson: Man Like Me (RCA)
25. Shooter Jennings: Put the O Back in Country (Universal South)

Singles

1. Lee Ann Womack: “I May Hate Myself in the Morning”
2. Brad Paisley: “Alcohol”
3. Miranda Lambert: “Kerosene”
4. Dierks Bentley: “Lot of Leavin’ Left to Do”
5. Gary Allan: “Best I Ever Had”
6. Shooter Jennings: “4th of July”
7. Patty Loveless: “Keep Your Distance”
8. Toby Keith: “As Good as I Once Was”
9. Mary Gauthier: “Mercy Now”
10. Trisha Yearwood: “Georgia Rain”
11. James McMurtry: “We Can’t Make It Here”
12. Gretchen Wilson: “I Don’t Feel Like Loving You Today”
13. Dwight Yoakam: “Blame the Vain”
14. Rodney Crowell: “The Obscenity Prayer”
15. Gretchen Wilson: “All Jacked Up”
16. Robbie Fulks: “Georgia Hard”
17. Keith Urban: “Making Memories of Us”
18. Bobby Pinson: “Don’t Ask Me How I Know”
19. Merle Haggard: “Where’s All the Freedom”
20. Sara Evans: “A Real Fine Place to Start”

Reissues

1. Charlie Poole: You Ain’t Talkin’ to Me (Columbia/Legacy)
2. Johnny Cash: The Legend (Columbia/Legacy)
3. June Carter Cash: Keep on the Sunny Side (Columbia/Legacy)
4. David Allan Coe: Penitentiary Blues (Hacktone)
5. The Band: A Musical History (Capitol)
6. Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways: The Very Best of Emmylou Harris (Warner Bros./Reprise/Rhino)
7. Doug Sahm & the Sir Douglas Quintet: The Complete Mercury Recordings (Hip-O Select)
8. Various Artists: Good for What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows, 1926-1937 (Old Hat)
9. Rosanne Cash: Seven Year Ache (Columbia/Legacy)
10. Shel Silverstein: The Best of Shel Silverstein: His Words, His Songs, His Friends (Columbia/Legacy)

Artists of the Year

1. Lee Ann Womack
2. Marty Stuart
3. Brad Paisley
4. Alison Krauss & Union Station
5. Rodney Crowell
6. Keith Urban
7. Gary Allan
8. Gretchen Wilson
9. Dierks Bentley
10. Patty Loveless

Male Vocalists

1. Gary Allan
2. Dwight Yoakam
3. Marty Stuart
4. Brad Paisley
5. Merle Haggard
6. Dierks Bentley
7. Alan Jackson
8. Robbie Fulks
9. George Strait
10. Rodney Crowell

Female Vocalists

1. Lee Ann Womack
2. Gretchen Wilson
3. Patty Loveless
4. Martina McBride
5. Trisha Yearwood
6. Alison Krauss
7. Miranda Lambert
8. Sara Evans
9. Mary Gauthier
10: (tie) Shelby Lynne / Caitlin Cary

Live Acts

1. Keith Urban
2. Alison Krauss & Union Station
3. Marty Stuart
4. Brad Paisley
5. Big & Rich

Duos and Groups

1. Big & Rich
2. Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell
3. Alison Krauss & Union Station
4. Brooks & Dunn
5. Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives

Songwriters

1. Rodney Crowell
2. John Rich
3. Robbie Fulks
4. Mary Gauthier
5. James McMurtry

Instrumentalists

1. Jerry Douglas
2. Brad Paisley
3. Chris Thile
4. Kenny Vaughan
5. Keith Urban

New Acts

1. Miranda Lambert
2. Shooter Jennings
3. Sugarland
4. The Wrights
5. Hanna-McEuen

Albums

1. Lee Ann Womack: There’s More Where That Came From (MCA)
2. Rodney Crowell: The Outsider (Columbia)
3. Robbie Fulks: Georgia Hard (Yep Roc)
4. Marty Stuart & the Fabulous Superlatives: Souls’ Chapel (Superlatone/Universal South)
5. Gary Allan: Tough All Over (MCA)
6. Brad Paisley: Time Well Wasted (Arista)
7. Dwight Yoakam: Blame the Vain (New West)
8. Mary Gauthier: Mercy Now (Lost Highway)
9. Patty Loveless: Dreamin’ My Dreams (Epic)
10. Miranda Lambert: Kerosene (Epic)
11. Bobby Bare: The Moon Was Blue (Dualtone)
12. Dierks Bentley: Modern Day Drifter (Capitol)
13. Martina McBride: Timeless (RCA)
14. Neil Young: Prairie Wind (Reprise)
15. Gretchen Wilson: All Jacked Up (Epic) 16. Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell: Begonias (Yep Roc)
17. James McMurtry: Childish Things (Compadre)
18. Merle Haggard: Chicago Wind (Capitol)
19. John Prine: Fair & Square (Oh Boy)
20. Deana Carter: The Story of My Life (Vanguard)
21. Trisha Yearwood: Jasper County (MCA)
22. Jimmie Dale Gilmore: Come on Back (Rounder)
23. Nickel Creek: Why Should the Fire Die (Sugar Hill)
24. Bobby Pinson: Man Like Me (RCA)
25. Shooter Jennings: Put the O Back in Country (Universal South)

Singles

1. Lee Ann Womack: “I May Hate Myself in the Morning”
2. Brad Paisley: “Alcohol”
3. Miranda Lambert: “Kerosene”
4. Dierks Bentley: “Lot of Leavin’ Left to Do”
5. Gary Allan: “Best I Ever Had”
6. Shooter Jennings: “4th of July”
7. Patty Loveless: “Keep Your Distance”
8. Toby Keith: “As Good as I Once Was”
9. Mary Gauthier: “Mercy Now”
10. Trisha Yearwood: “Georgia Rain”
11. James McMurtry: “We Can’t Make It Here”
12. Gretchen Wilson: “I Don’t Feel Like Loving You Today”
13. Dwight Yoakam: “Blame the Vain”
14. Rodney Crowell: “The Obscenity Prayer”
15. Gretchen Wilson: “All Jacked Up”
16. Robbie Fulks: “Georgia Hard”
17. Keith Urban: “Making Memories of Us”
18. Bobby Pinson: “Don’t Ask Me How I Know”
19. Merle Haggard: “Where’s All the Freedom”
20. Sara Evans: “A Real Fine Place to Start”

Reissues

1. Charlie Poole: You Ain’t Talkin’ to Me (Columbia/Legacy)
2. Johnny Cash: The Legend (Columbia/Legacy)
3. June Carter Cash: Keep on the Sunny Side (Columbia/Legacy)
4. David Allan Coe: Penitentiary Blues (Hacktone)
5. The Band: A Musical History (Capitol)
6. Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways: The Very Best of Emmylou Harris (Warner Bros./Reprise/Rhino)
7. Doug Sahm & the Sir Douglas Quintet: The Complete Mercury Recordings (Hip-O Select)
8. Various Artists: Good for What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows, 1926-1937 (Old Hat)
9. Rosanne Cash: Seven Year Ache (Columbia/Legacy)
10. Shel Silverstein: The Best of Shel Silverstein: His Words, His Songs, His Friends (Columbia/Legacy)

Artists of the Year

1. Lee Ann Womack
2. Marty Stuart
3. Brad Paisley
4. Alison Krauss & Union Station
5. Rodney Crowell
6. Keith Urban
7. Gary Allan
8. Gretchen Wilson
9. Dierks Bentley
10. Patty Loveless

Male Vocalists

1. Gary Allan
2. Dwight Yoakam
3. Marty Stuart
4. Brad Paisley
5. Merle Haggard
6. Dierks Bentley
7. Alan Jackson
8. Robbie Fulks
9. George Strait
10. Rodney Crowell

Female Vocalists

1. Lee Ann Womack
2. Gretchen Wilson
3. Patty Loveless
4. Martina McBride
5. Trisha Yearwood
6. Alison Krauss
7. Miranda Lambert
8. Sara Evans
9. Mary Gauthier
10: (tie) Shelby Lynne / Caitlin Cary

Live Acts

1. Keith Urban
2. Alison Krauss & Union Station
3. Marty Stuart
4. Brad Paisley
5. Big & Rich

Duos and Groups

1. Big & Rich
2. Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell
3. Alison Krauss & Union Station
4. Brooks & Dunn
5. Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives

Songwriters

1. Rodney Crowell
2. John Rich
3. Robbie Fulks
4. Mary Gauthier
5. James McMurtry

Instrumentalists

1. Jerry Douglas
2. Brad Paisley
3. Chris Thile
4. Kenny Vaughan
5. Keith Urban

New Acts

1. Miranda Lambert
2. Shooter Jennings
3. Sugarland
4. The Wrights
5. Hanna-McEuen

just scanned Geoffrey's essay--here's his main point, I suppose...

*....they returned country music to its roots. No matter what its instrumentation, country has always distinguished itself from the conformist optimism of mainstream pop and the rebellious optimism of rock ’n’ roll, the religious pieties of gospel music and the secular pieties of folk music by embracing the weaknesses and wounds of human nature. By and large, only the blues have shown a like honesty.*

1) the rockabilly isn't always all THAT hi-octane, or all that raw, or all that metal, or all that pervasive. Just sometimes.
2) my favorite songs so far: "i can always count on you (to let me down)" ("gimme three steps" times "who shot sam" or one of those rockabilly george jones songs); "civil war rock" (ubangi stomp boogie woogie in a ubangi style); "confederate money" (as in "your love is like confederate money"); "i rode with j.e.b. stuart" (hard-kicking metal boogie with a manly sore throat -- "sabers and roses" is the same genre, but doesn't kick as hard, though it goes into a nice dobro or mandolin or dulcimer or something break in the middle); "ghost ride" (punk rock stretching toward boogie, and it mentions hagerstown, the maryland city that kix and the left came from, and this sounds more like the left than kix, and has somebody riding their ghosty horse into town and yelling "hurrah for the confederacy!" in the middle. also, it is track #11, not track #10 as erroneously stated on the cd sleeve); "Custard's Luck" (more catchy slimey stones-riffed biker rock; what does "come on you wolverines" mean in a civil war context?). Also there are okay Stones slimers about rebel girls from new york and Southern girls. Some of the more trad and stately and sometimes acapella'd history-lesson stuff is good too ("shadow of the south" is lovely), but i am a rockerist if not a rockist when it comes to country and it will probably take that stuff longer to sink in.
3) the hooves don't clip-clop; they gallop. and there are probably muskets on there somewhere as well.
4) i still can't tell if there are any songs about being a yankee.
5) in "brown sugar" mr. reb ANNUNCIATES, so you can tell she tastes good not just dances good, and he's not a schoolboy but he knows what he likes. still...um, interesting cover choice, to say the least.
6) "maryland my maryland" must be old because it says "the gentlemen were gay" and rhymes that with "philadelph-i-ay."
7) oddly, 22 songs is not nearly as excessive as I at first thought.

In other news, Michaelangelo Matos emailed me this link last night. I never heard of this guy before, and I'd have thought it impossible, but when it comes to keeping up with country, this guy may well leave everybody on this thread in the dust:

http://countryuniverse.blogspot.com/

*"Custard's Luck" (more catchy slimey stones-riffed biker rock; what does "come on you wolverines" mean in a civil war context?)*

ah, I remembered this from my LSU days reading about the Late Unpleasantness (so Custer becomes Custard!):

The name James Kidd (1840-1913) is not altogether unfamiliar to Civil War aficionados, particularly to those with an interest in Union cavalry operations. A twenty-one-year-old University of Michigan student from Ionia, Michigan, Kidd enlisted in the federal army and managed to recruit a company of cavalry that was accepted as Company E, 6th Michigan Cavalry, with himself as captain. Brigaded with the 1st, 5th, and 7th Michigan cavalry regiments, the Michigan Cavalry Brigade distinguished itself under the leadership of its first commander, Gen. George Armstrong Custer. "Custer's Wolverines," as they were popularly known, gained renown as one of the finest volunteer cavalry units to serve in the eastern theater, fighting in more than sixty battles or skirmishes. By war's end, the Wolverines had served in the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac and under Sheridan in his Army of the Shenandoah....

CDbaby.com is the future of music, I swear.

Remarkable, isn't it. Beats hell out of myspace even though a lot of the acts are kind of forced into doing duplicate pages for that service by the tyrannical hype of its benefits.

If tweren't through CD Baby, it would have been missed. I don't think I saw a copy of it anywhere in meatspace.

Fourth song "I Can Make It On My Own" on that great Redhill EP is lyrically a post-breakup survival anthem a la, well, "I Will Survive," or "No Guilt" by the Waitresses or somebody: "Saw you with your new hootchie mama/Have you introduced her to your head-case traumas?," sung to a Diddley beat (go ahead, sing along). The drums and guitars at the start are Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy" into George Michael's "Faith" (both of which were Diddley chillun all along).

By the way, this has been discussed before, but looking over the top 500 singles of the '90s to '05 on that countryuniverse.blogspot site, and I've only begun to do so, I'm kind of surprised by how many singers I now associate with alt-country apparently had actual radio country hits in the early '90s when I warn't paying attention. Carlene Carther, Leeroy Parnell, I forget who else. He's making me curious about lots of singers and songs I never heard or never thought about before. Don't always agree with him (his interpretation of "Gimme Shelter" in his #2 album of 2005 Kathy Mattea blurb is completely nuts, and he apparently has no use for Miranda Lambert at all), but he's got lots of interesting ideas. So who the hell is he?

>Mattea has the moral authority to cover "Gimme Shelter" and "Down On The Corner" - she's been a walking illustration of the virtues of peacemaking and creating art for pure joy that those songs respectively celebrate.<

Rape, Murder. It's just a shot away.

and been listening steady to Townes Van Zandt. I suppose I like the talking-blues aspect of him best of all, he basically talks his way thru the London concert from mid-'80s, and he's really charming, even turning the Elvis movie tune "Song of the Shrimp" (which Frank Black did sorta cool and sorta half-assed on last yr's "Honeycomb") into a mock dissertation on songwriting ("I can't believe this, now it gets worse...Jesus, just let me finish the thing...what were they thinking, now the shrimp is talking??") and talking his way thru "Pancho and Lefty." but there's something in his singing and speaking voice that gets you after a while, something basically good-humored and bemused at his own obsession with mortality, which somehow seems like a joke to him. at the same time, he's a bit boring, a bit samey, and I'm not sure about his allegories and poker tales, altho he has one strange sorta Hawthorne-like death song about a witch living in a hole. so I haven't quite gotten to the point of making up my mind--I do know the damned tempos are too slow for my taste--but I'm basically won over. and shit, Townes is the granddaddy of alt- as much as Gram or Gene Clark or Don Everly or the Flatlanders or...

Yeah! I'd forgotten that's where it dated back to; I've got in on one of those New Orleans compilations on Rhino, now that you mention it. (The Yardbirds did cover it though, right? Or am I just dreaming?)

& Joy Lynn definitely has way more music in her music than Amy Rigby.

the Yardbirds did do it. everyone did those "Naomi Neville" Toussaint songs--like "Fortune Teller," gosh, everyone from the Stones to the O'Jays to Ringo Starr have done that one. I love those New Orleans guys so much--Smiley Lewis, Chris Kenner, K-Doe, Benny Spellman, Lee Dorsey...

speaking of New Orleans, the mayor should've thought hipper and said something about a "café au lait" city. Jeez, what I wouldn't give for a real Progress Grocery muffaletta right now, and a cold Abita beer.

Just noticed his previous one placed #30 in their '05 poll. So, yeah.

1 - "hold my breath until next Wednesday" - I assume this one's "Wednesday" agreed that it's rote alt-country but not entirely unpleasant
2 - refrain is "don't be so easy on yourself" (Isbell sings this one, I liked it)
3 - "Blessing and a Curse" - not very memorable
4 - Gravity's Gone - Cooley sings it, lyrics about handjobs I think and waking sunny-side-up, this one's good
5 - "left w/o saying goodbye" - assume this one's "Goodbye" lyrics sound pretty treacly but I liked the bass on this one, hope it sounds as good on record
6 - "Daylight" (I think Isbell did this one, oh wait yeah this is the one where he's all full-throated screamy, I guess that's where you're getting the Radiohead/MMJ comparison from)
7 - "Feb 14" - slight but decent
8 - something like "wonder why it's taking me so long" also think I heard something about getting dirt off your good name, Cooley sang it and I'm fairly certain it wasn't an old song and hopefully not a cover b/c I really liked it, acoustic and very evocative
9 - "World of Hurt"

so really I guess I've figured 'em all out except 2 and 8.

Feb. 14
Gravity's Gone
Easy On Yourself
Aftermath USA
Goodbye
Daylight
Wednesday
Little Bonnie
Space City
A Blessing and a Curse
A World of Hurt

though lots of times it just settle for just choogling somewhat lazily (which is fine, too.) and i won't absolutely swear they do anything as funky as the gator song on shooter's CD, or the jerry reed song where amos moses becomes gator bait. that'd be a close contest.

switching gears, i just noticed that in my second book i attribute "up against the wall redneck mothers" to bobby bare. amazing song, but i forgot that he'd done it, and i don't remember it being mentioned in all the bare talk in the past year. is he the one who had the biggest hit with it, or was that somebody else? was it an outlaw move for him, or what?

I enjoyed reading the posts and I am looking forward to perusing the archives. I try to listen to as much different music as possible and I'm hoping you guys mention some great stuff I missed.

Thanks for the nice words about my blog. I want to clarify the Mattea comment I made because I think I didn't explain it clearly in the original post. From my point of view, Mattea took two classic songs that aren't easily covered, and I wanted to make the point that the songs are consistent with her musical identity and not just a cheap ploy to sell more records. With the attitude toward the war souring, and never having been very positive to begin with, there have been an avalanche of posturing music stars singing peace songs old and new. Mattea has been recording songs in that vein for a long time and I wanted to make the point that she has the moral authority to sing a song like "Gimme Shelter" because she's always had that worldview and incorporated it into her music; she's not like, say, Madonna suddenly adding "Imagine" to her set list last year.

With "Down On The Corner", which celebrates singing music for pure pleasure, there are few contemporary country artists who can truly claim to be doing that. I think with Mattea walking away from a major label deal (it's a little-known fact that Mercury prez Luke Lewis didn't want her to go) and now recording self-produced albums with her road band that are crafted while playing small venues across the country, she seems to be as close to the spirit of that song as reasonably possible.

I still don't know if that explains things any better, but "moral authority" just meant, to me, that she has the credibility to sing both songs with conviction and not seem like she's just doing a trendy cover or glorified karaoke.

I might or might not have more to say on this subject. I think it's possible Himes has read Robert Warshow's excellent essay "The Gangster as Tragic Hero." Himes is raising interesting issues; he's just not willing to turn the searchlight onto the voters or onto himself.

I surprised myself with how much I ended up liking the Jamie O'Neal album, which I'd badmouthed a lot during the year. I'd say that Gary Allan has generally stronger songs, and he's a beautiful singer, but what works for him is to figure out how to approach a song and then to just follow that approach, consistently. I finally rated O'Neal higher because her music breathes more freely. In the midst of her dramatic story of the stripper - "Devil on the Left," best song on the album - she breaks into scat singing for no particular reason, but this works, as if the dance in her singing correlates to the striptease. And this is important because it's the music and not the lyrics that makes the case for the stripper's dance.

It's a cliché but accurate to say that country & western is split emotionally between a desire for home and family on the one hand and the urge to range wild and free on the other. This can either be a profound paradox or a lazy inconsistency depending on the artistry involved. Shannon Brown's "Corn Fed" is very catchy but appalling in its stupidity: on the one hand she says that in her happy heartland they leave doors unlocked so as not to keep anybody out, on the other she brags that there ain't nothin' but country on the radio. The average eight year old can see the hypocrisy in that one, and for an adult to write such a song and not notice its bullshit requires a deliberate deadening of the intellect. (Gawd, if there were an actual community that said this about itself, how would its teenagers avoid growing up insane? By listening to Young Jeezy records, perhaps, and dreaming of being gangstas.)

But it's the emotional split asserting itself, the gap between one ideal (wild and free, everybody welcome) and another (everybody united in values). Jamie O'Neal's got the split too, which she avoids confronting directly. Her mom-is-a-hero-in-the-home lecture is in one song, her girls'-night blowout is in another. In "Devil On the Left" - where the two ideals co-exist - the words sidestep just what is supposed to count as the angel's dominion and what the devil's: you assume that the strip show belongs to the devil, but does this mean dancing and pleasure belongs to the devil as well? There's a hint in the song that the preacher who prays for her is the one who eventually marries her and takes her to the corn-fed picket-fence land of the happy ending. But in marrying her he gets the carnal dance she'd previously sold to everyone. (The most touching of the many touching moments on Deana Carter's album is where she in effect asks the angels for permission to have a love affair.)

In general I like music that overspills its container, though for this to work well there has to be a good container in the first place. So that's my version of the split (Nietzsche's melding of Dionysius and Apollo, I suppose, though I haven't read Birth of Tragedy in thirty years so don't really know). Anyway, alt-country - alt anything, actually, including the Nashville Scene and New Times and the Village Voice - has its own version of this paradox/inconsistency: it claims to ride free - to be alternative, to overspill its container - and at the same time it turns "we overspill our container" into a container itself, a niche for the likeminded, and without a lot of motion in the niche. Really, Jamie O'Neal's music has way more splish and splash than Mary Gauthier's does, even if the latter claims to be an emotional cascade.

I'm pretty sure Jerry Jeff Walker had the biggest hit with "Up Against the Wall (Redneck Mother" -- written by Ray Wylie Hubbard, who is still underrated outside of Texas. xhuxk and others might prefer Ray's uber-substance-abused outlaw stuff from the late '70s and early '80s, though I think it's all out of print. He's become a friend, so I won't plug his post-substance Rounder albums too much (they're probably too singer/songwritery for this thread, though would it were more country-folkies had his humor and guitar chops). He's got a new record coming out in the spring. And he's become kind of a godfather to the Cory Morrows and Pat Greens of Austin. Oh, his "Conversation With the Devil" says Satan won the fiddle duel in Georgia. When Ray does "Redneck Mother" live he turns it into a frickin hilarious song-effacing genesis tale of outlaw country itself. I can YSI that if folks want to hear it.

Two Nietzche and country connections in less than a week. We need to get Greil over to this thread.

Frank's basically right about Geoff Himes's essay, I think. Even though I listen to way more Nasvhille country than a few years ago, and to my ears I *do* believe it's improved, I definitely don't think it's improved, as I think he implies, by moving toward alt or "getting back on track" (not a direct quote, but the gist of his argument); I'm not so sure I buy that it ever really got off track in the first place. And if it did, that stupidly smug and typically dull Alan Jackson kvetch he mentioned about not-quite-country two-minute love songs was probably more a SYMPTOM of its getting-off-trackness than a solution or answer to it (same with whoever did the dumb murder on music row one -- that was Alan and George, right? Compared to those two guys, most country was *right* to head more popward.)

I guess I should note that Mattea drops the "rape, murder" part of "Gimme Shelter" and by doing so, the song works perfectly as a metaphor for a country on the brink of war. It's not so much a peacemaking song as a stark warning that peace is about to be broken and bad things will come because of it, I suppose.

Regarding country music's quality, I've posted a few times on my blog that I think the genre has suddenly had an artistic resurgence in the past two years, with 2005 being the first truly great year since 1996 or 1997. I suspect, however, that this is just a perception in my head, because access to a lot of different music suddenly opened up through iTunes (for me) and it's so much easier for me to go hear an album that's getting great reviews. For example, "Begonias." I never heard of that album until it started popping up on Best of 2005 lists, but I went and sampled it, bought it, and it popped up on my own list in the end.

This easy access reminds me of the golden era of CMT, when they used to play solid videos 24/7 and everybody had close to equal rotation. So many albums I bought and artists I discovered because of CMT. Remember the first Lari White, Sara Evans, Shania Twain, Martina McBride & Mavericks albums that flopped? I bought them because of CMT. I discovered Bruce Robison, Bobbie Cryner, Joy Lynn White, Mandy Barnett, Johnny Cash's "American Recordings", Willie Nelson's "Spirit" and "Teatro", Emmylou Harris' "Cowgirl's Prayer", Carlene Carter, Matraca Berg, Pirates of the Mississippi, Radney Foster, and even Todd Snider on CMT. I never cared much for radio. I got my music fix from the videos. The new digital delivery methods have opened up the doors again for me to hear a lot of great new music, much like CMT did a decade ago. I worry that maybe 1998-2003 weren't bad years for country music, but rather I just happened to miss a lot of great music that came out.