Rolling Country 2009 Thread

Okay (comments to follow
Don Allred’s CMCP Ballot
intro: whatever other genres it may pass through and vice versa, country has to have a certain feel, but the main thing is a certain obsessiveness (no matter how cheerfully, how brightly presented) “Beat” as in “Man I’m beat” and “beatitude” too: blues and blue sky. Paul Goodman observed, “William Faulkner is Beat too, in a complicated way.” Nik Cohn’s mid-60s mention of country’s “elaborate sentimentality” also still applies, despite the no-b.s. inspections and reports delivered tolerably often these days.
Top Ten Albums
(just in the order they come to mind)
1. David Hidalgo & Los Cenzontles (with Taj Mahal): Songs of Wood & Steel
2. Carrie Rodriguez: Live in Louisville
3. Hot Club of Cowtown: Wishful Thinking
4. The Flatlanders: Hills and Valleys
5. Patterson Hood: Murdering Oscar (and Other Love Songs)
6.Willem Maker: New Moon Hand
7. Tim Easton: Porcupine
8. John Doe and the Sadies: Country Club
9. Ha Ha Tonka: Nouveau Sounds of the New South
10. Deer Tick: Born on Flag Day
Singles:
1. Gary Allan “Today”
2. Toby Keith “Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song)”
3. Jamey Johnson “High Cost of Livin’”
Top Reissues:
1. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys: The Tiffany Transcriptions
Best Male Vocalists:
1. Willie Nelson
2. John C. McCauley (Deer Tick)
Best Female Vocalists
1. Emmylou Harris
2. Dolly Parton
3. Elana James (Hot Club of Cowtown)
Top Live Acts
1. Willie Nelson with Asleep At The Wheel (Austin City Limits concert)
2. Taylor Swift (CMT Crossroads with Def Leppard and other TV performances)
Best New Acts:
1. Sarah Jarosz
Most Pathetic (song and video)
1. Toby Keith "American Ride"
2. John Rich "Shutting Detroit Down"

Ballot comments (and some on albums not listed)
mostly thumbnail sketches for show previews
Justin Townes Earle
So far, singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle's post-rehab albums
don't have the range (or ranginess) of his father Steve's own prodigal
peaks. No problem: the reflective alertness and hopeful smoothness of
Midnight At The Movies strongly suggest that the younger Earle is his
own kind of escape artist, thankful for the breathing room he's
earned, and the floor plans he's committed to memory. He’s learned not
to get too crazy, and thus distract himself from the female spirit who
always shows up to hold his hand, then “leaves before the credits
roll”, on Midnight...'s title track. More expansively, on 2008's The
Good Life Earle is striding through honky-tonk neon shadows,
thoughtfully singing to passing lovers and friends, while exercising
his still-young lungs with that bracing night-life air.
Phosphorescent
Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck loves his rolling psych-country
imagery, while he and the band also know their way to and through the
end of a line, adding beats and syllables, even to a monosyllable, as
needed. Such sure footing on a cloudy staircase helps Phosphorescent’s
album of Willie Nelson songs, To Willie, find another mellow mental
ghost town, in the dusty sunshine of lost love. And why not? As with
Houck’s more complicated compositions, Nelson’s songs hum like old
houses, still ready to be slipped into, as Phosphorescent investigate
both sources on tour.
Tim Easton
"Woke up this mornin' with a sranger in your bed/Those boots were haunted/The sheets were burgundy red." For Porcupine, current Joshua Tree CA chrocnicler Tim Easton re-enlisted early Columbus OH cohorts like New Bomb Turks drummer Sam Brown, who does extreme housecleaning on "Burguny Red", Porcupine's opener. Meanwhile, Marty Stuart/Lucinda Williams' touring guitarist Kenny Vaughn's deepening twang keeps echoing through discreet conversation with "The Young Girls."
Tim Easton can get pretty denin-jacket folkie on some sets, but here be pacemakers and jumper cables for his
compulsively mobile characters, who mostly fear getting "too cold to
sweat the dark out", as Easton says of himself. Mainly, you don't need
to catch all the sly-to-wise-to-blunt words to get the points of
Porcupine (cute little critter)
Willem Maker
Willem Maker's not much for burying meanings. They might poison him
like the dioxin dump did in Georgia, before he reached his Alabama
mountainside trailer. He's got one song specifically about that, but
it's as short as the others. Bare facts have to be quickly
re-gathered, re-twisted up the neck of his guitar, peeled by his slide
into images flying by, all around the rising gravity of Maker's "New
Moon Hand." He's also gnarling sonic sense through charred
impressions, somwwhere between Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison,
backcountry Kevin Coybe and young Gregg Allman (more lockjawed
eloquence than moan) Chewing the juice loose again, cryptically vs,
the crypt, "Saints drink wine" and other info. He's singing his truth
through bad and good dreams: learning to "leave the fever in the
past," starting at the end of the line.
Jason Isbell and the 440
The Drive-By Truckers’ Jason Isbell went solo with Sirens of the
Ditch, where poignant, sometimes tragicomic situations rolled their
ow gravelly grooves. On Jason Isbell and the 440, Isbell’s road-tested
band drives further into the cloudy electric horizons of “Sirens”,
still piloting by the lights of homely detail. Isbell’s restless
people are even more souled on stoneful memories (“She’s down deep in
me still/Rolled up like a 20 dollar bill”), but the music knows the
way. “Maybe I’ll flag down a car/I’m not going too far/And I’ve got
cash.” Good plan!
Deer Tick (this is before Born On Flag Day came out)(see followup
email for that)
Deer Tick is the tag applied by John McCauley to himself and his
band—appropriately so, judging by the tenacious midnight bite of his
recently reissued 2007 debut, War Elephant” Points of disorder spark
the leather-lunged lyricism that can harsh his mellow campfire
strumming into toasted constellations. Buckskin-fringed flurries of
fury keep the dust flying, no matter how persistent it it is (damn
persistent) Mr. Tick also knows how and when to propose that you
“Spend The Night”: “I know you’ve heard it all before/But not from me”
rings and rasps gently true. Ditto the Vegas anthem, “What Kind Of
Fool Am I?” It’s no longer a rhetorical question.
Joan Baez
“Every day that passes/I’m sure about a little less/Even my money
keeps tellin’ me/It’s God I need to trust/And I believe in God/But God
ain’t us.” “God Is God” sets the unsettled tone of Joan Baez’s latest
album, “The Day After Tomorrow”. Producer Steve Earle seeks to keep
the Queen of 60s Folk Music’s quest on a solid spirit level, with
compact cadences and carefully selected songs. Further along, Patty
Griffin’s “Mary” is “covered in roses…covered in slashes”, finding her
(and/or Her) way through the story’s edits, somewhat like everybody
else.
Gypsy Dave and the Stumpjumpers
Stumpjumpers are what some residents of far northwestern Pennsylvania
call each other. On A Bucketful of Ghosts, David Washousky takes his
pensive Pennsy roots and their distance along, while sharing his name
in art (and "wandering faith") with an archetypal folk figure. He
sometimes gets a little too fascinated with old people, but his voice
and guitar, times the Stumpjumpers' fiddle and bass, slip tunefully
and thoughtfully through all weather, as "The right slips by, in the
moving light/Of paintings and suppertimes." Is that political? Either
way, "A black 'n' white/Violet summer sky" gently/boldly follows,
bonding differences sensuously. (Stumpjumping indeed, by cracky!)
Ha Ha Tonka
Ha Ha Tonka takes its name, and some of its duties, from a Missouri
State Park in the Ozarks. Listeners get strange tours. "Buckle In The
Bible Belt" bounces taut and twangy, through twists of fate and
choice. The drawl of "Up Nights" shadows a tired parent beating his
kid; the "Falling In" falsetto traces a lovelorn, low-gravity mood
swing (at least). Their new "Novel Sounds Of The Nouveau South" ups
the ante and the amperage, wiring the weather vane into a lighting
rod: "Violence in the crowd/We bled it out!"
The Devil Makes Three
The Devil Makes Three make the kind of pre-bluegrass, mountain-bred
music that traveled through vaudeville halls, carnivals, radios,
alleys and less hygienic vantage points. On DM3's Do Wrong
Right,ragtime bounce and contemporary commentary ride boxcars with the
eerie likes of "Working Man's Blues." The workingman's steadfast, even
militant, though subterranean musical undercurrents may be undermining
(and/or guiding) this miner. Even on less inspired tracks, preachiness
always arrives with some generation of devilishness, often ramblin'
'round leader Pete Bernhard's sense of moral and verbal limits.
Carrie Rodriguez
On young singer-songwriter Carrie Rodriguez's new "Live in
Louisville," atmospherically detailed stories are told boldly, as
variations of key phrases veer through the resolutely shivery delivery
of her violin and other instruments, including the evocative electric
guitar of current accompanist Hans Holzen. Rodriguez also steps up to
the Loretta Lynn-worthy "I Don't Wanna Play House," and briskly
uncovers sexy subtext in Bill Monroe's magisterial "You Won't Be
Satisfied That Way." Micro-epic outbursts and mercurial ballads never
chase the nice clouds away, or the slow male she's usually addressing.
The Flatlanders
"With a backpack full of yesterdays/On a freeway full of smoke and
haze/Where the power lines and fault lines double cross." From country
cliché, to California evening news, to righteous wordplay that
eventually slips deeper, the dustbowl soul of the Flatlanders' Hills
and Valleys rolls on, through all zones. Alternative country icons
Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock, mostly writing
together, are philosophical scavengers, poised and antsy. Years and
miles definitely (sometimes densely) add up, but meanwhile, "If time
is money/Space is credit/They're talkin' 'bout it all over town!"

xp Speaking of those last two pathetic songs on Don's ballot, here's something I wrote about backlash/tea-party country in the '00s:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2009/11/countryteaparty.html?pcode=RN&rsrc=null.null&cpath=CNT

Also want to mention that, despite keying my emusic Charlie Robison review around his Dixie Chick divorce, that autobiographical theme really does not figure much, if at all, into my own liking the record either. (And I've yet to hear a better album by the guy, though I'm not sure how many I've even tried. Liked Good Times from '04 okay.)

more of Don Allred's Country 2009 comments:
Deer Tick, Born On Flag Day:Great title, because Mr. Tick does have
some of that ravaged bravura of book and movie of Born On The Fourth of July,
but his testimony and attitude and cadence and imagery are closer to young
Bobby D.s "Ma Rainey and Beethoven once unwrapped a bedroll/Tuba players now
rehearse around the flagpole, " the combination of youth and what Virginia's Tom
Wolfe ID'd as "those old jack-legged chants" from the mountains-but Deer Tick
(John C. McCauley III x his band) are already way into Dylan's later and
recurrent romantic obsessions, in a Southwestern Gothic way, also reminding me of
Townes Van Zandt, who (as with Dylan) and McC's only namecheck, Hank Williams
(McC studied the singles) had the tunes and catchiness as spry, watchful
little beasts of burden for his words; plus, Tick's got this voice that's always
waiting to squeeze through and erupt from his old man shit: it's the musical
equivalent of the incandescent mcguffin found when the funky old trunk gets
prised open in Repo Man and Pulp Fiction-we just see/feel the effects, as even
Tarentino's scuzzers are awestruck by its beauty, and Repo Man's rats are beamed
up through the smog into sweet nothin', by its mighty light. It's articulate,
and when it does devour the form always belches the spirit of his words, but
as a force of nature as much or more than poetic justice (which is why maybe it
isn't catharsis for him, except maybe for the moment, but his shadows come
creeping back, either way).So if I let myself get much into comparisons as
high-concept formula in print, I'd say something like "Roky meets Townes," and
indeed Tick might've also studied that two-disc Roky comp that from a few years
back, with so much of Roky's folk-rock side. But "Flag Day, " his second album,
departs from Roky re less grotesque and otherwise reflexive/refracted
imagery, and his tendencies in
that direction never did seem as compulsive as
Roky's.
Otis Taylor, Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs Otis Taylor is one of
the most (one of the few) creatively distinctive blues singer-songwriters
today. He adapts country blues, with a more regular beat than Delta blues, but it's
an adjustment of that, more than a John Lee Hooker boogie drive. His phrases
are repeated, seeming fragments of memory that gradually meet up and accrue,
sometimes skewed or elliptical narrative, but the ear has to spot the spaces as
well as the connections, just has to do that, when it works out right, as
words and his shifting tone and volume move around his driving (sometimes
shifting) picked and strummed rhythm guitar. This is the basis of the new album, his
first collection of love songs (with some wars back in there, like the title
also says), which, like P.Hood's new set, develop through implication of
detail and atmosphere, and both sets can come to seem like developed
photographs, more than movies. But the figure is the ground, at times, as Otis further
develops deep focus via his own voice being joined by his daughter Cassie's
younger and even more flexible, looping through the jazz of Jason Moran whose
piano knows how hip-hop accents blues and jazz, here, as on his own great Same
Mothers set) and cornet player Jason Miles; while the drum kit of Nasheet Waits
is ground for African percussion figures, or sometimes vice versa (plus,
occasional passing cello, violin, whatever fits the view). Even without Jason's
surname and horn, I'd be thinking "Miles," not that Jason imitates him, but just
this whole approach (which is also a less wordy version of Dylan's and Deer
Tick's deep co-ordination of elements and functions: ensembles, yo, not
entourage.) Can trave
l way into those musical snapshots, way into the travelling
itself, but it's a train, not a showboat.
On Patterson Hood's Murdering Oscar, the narrator of the first and title song celebrates his
victory over Oscar and those who proffered/remonstrated re salvation, "I
saved me, and life forgave me." He may be on Death Row or wherever, but he still
insists, a little too insistently somehow. Ah yes, the well worn Unreliable Narrator device, but it works here.Notes stretch and trail and hold.
He can't let it go, can't let cruel Oscar go, and vice versa. It' an
Oscar-winning performance. Clear enough, but more subtle/subject to interp than
expected, and the dramatic stasis that Hood evidently tends (so often) to go for on
Truckers albums works here, the sense of somebody rattling his chains and
shivering his freezeframe, as we're kept watching the figure's deep focus/fixation.
Which is overtly the point of the next track, "Pollyanna", and Hood (with
another surprise move, making seemingly unprecedented use of his voice's high end,
by simply chirping) goes from rolling Neil Truckers doom of "Oscar" to Who
Sell Out pop scenario over expansive, open-G-sounding Stonesiness, as Pollyanna
rolls on(or has rolled on, since all of these songs are aftermath, ho get it
Stones/Aftermath), having gathered his mossy heart. "It's a little sticky,she's
a little sticky, I'm a little sticky too, I was just something stuck to her
shoe, now I'll have to find something else to stick to." His characters are
always doing or getting themselves ready or not to do the aftermath, and "Pride
of The Yankees" in a third stylistic change, starts as a ballad raising a mug
to Lou Gehrig, then w
ithout a blink to King Kong falling off the building, to
passing mention of 9/11, and wishes he could go hide in the mall, and indeed he
sounds like he's swaying along in an echoing mall with a hole (and a nice
breeze) in it, talking to his little daughter about carrying, clutching "packages
so shiny, and you're so tiny," and it's all the tenderness and fuckedness of
and in the world, in him as he's somehow unsurprised(it fits with the
fuckedness previously experienced, after all or a while) if in a bit of aftershock,
afterglow, afterlife, half-life; the next sudden transition being the next song
o course."I Understand Now" is shorts-deep in the midst of domestic
battlegrounds, old and moldy and comfortable for the moment anyway, as the narrator
gets some kind of 40 watt insight, and really the cumulative thing in just these
first four songs also has me thinking of foo like "9/11 changed everything"
and "All is fair in love and war" and how they're part of the wadding of
changes and transitions, not that all his situations x moments shown don't have
their own internal detail and framing distinctions/lifespans, as characters try to
get creative in doing the aftermath on the train or frame or sidewalk crack,
or playing in bedhead traffic etc It's all about their and their creator's
wise use of familiar and strange elements, reshuffling or ripping or lurching or
padding or jangling along.(Those last two just listed: "She's a Little Randy"
is the stealthy passage of a cougar and the male person studying her, getting
her number sympathetically and then some, as Hood makes good use of the high
voice again, not chirping this time but like a little tight, mostly dry
smoker's voice, with some rheum around the corners, emph by guitar, as he squints
over his cig, and maybe drops it to approach her after that last line (steps out
of his frame, as can be tricky/lacking in Hood songs) "Foolish Young Bastard"
ruefully/hopefully jangles along with a banjo almost hitting him in the nuts,
empty cantee
n percussion def tapping his butt (a bit envied perhaps, by the
somewhat exasperated but unsurprised, family-type person watching him go) then
"Heavy and Hanging" and "Walking Around Sense" are expressive but stuck inside
a way too familiar Neil Truckers doom (which the title song redeemed and
"Range War" took to maybe non-doom,[as expressed in playing]more about rich
shifting currrents of tenderness/fuckedness and war again) Like "Heavy and Hanging"
and "Walking Around Sense" heavy up because he thought he needed something
between "Foolish Young Bastard" and the young heart who sings about writing you
a love song in the "Back of a Bible" (not to be eveel, but cos "there were
some blank pages") A shuffle mainly suggesting white boys of 50s til builds
seamlessly to a solo that obliterates the pro forma of the past two tracks, and in
call and response with other instruments. This final passage is brief but
deep, like the best bits of most of the other songs ("Screwtopia" trails the
afterglow through basically obvious faster/softer recurrences, and makes it work;
makes me think of the traces of "Grandaddy" 's innocently plotted future and
"Belvedere" 's twisted past, and the other character's traces, notions, smoke)
Didn't think he'd carry a whole album without other writers, but he does,
given that it's also got a couple of duds like Truckers albums, and most of the
Truckers are here, and that certainly helps, and he's seamlessly joining a set
of songs from 1994 to much more recent ones (each set or subset benefitting
from proximity to the others, for the most part) with accumulated experience as
writer, player etc as well as other aspects of life, and that comes across in
the adjustments, inclu disruptive moves, within the plot lines and
performances of songs (Oh yeah, this album also features really apt and startling use of
piano which he says startled him too)

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift - Fearless (Platinum Edition)
2. Ashley Monroe - Satisfied
3. Martina McBride - Shine
4. Pat Green - What I'm For
5. Brad Paisley - American Saturday Night
6. Miranda Lambert - Revolution
7. Collin Raye - Never Going Back
8. Holly Williams - Here With Me
9. Willie Nelson - American Classic
10. Charlie Robison - Beautiful Day

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2009:

1. Love And Theft "Runaway"
2. Jamey Johnson "High Cost Of Living"
3. Taylor Swift "You Belong With Me"
4. Sarah Buxton "Space"
5. Lady Antebellum "Need You Now"
6. Caitlin & Will "Even Now"
7. Sarah Borges And The Broken Singles "Do It For Free"
8. Taylor Swift "White Horse"
9. Brooks & Dunn f. Reba McEntire "Cowgirls Don't Cry"
10. Jack Ingram "Barefoot & Crazy (Double Dog Dare Ya Mix)"

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2009:

--

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:

1. Ronnie Dunn
2. Toby Keith
3. Jamey Johnson

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Jamie O'Neal

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2009:

--

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift
2. Ashley Monroe
3. Brad Paisley

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2009:

1. Brooks & Dunn
2. Caitlin & Will
3. --

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2009:

--

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift
2. Ashley Monroe
3. --

I don't stand by my albums list, since most everything after the McBride has only four or five tracks I like more than a little. Might possibly have rated Collin Raye as high as three, for being the most interesting, but then my ballot would have looked too much like Xhuxk's. And I wouldn't normally have rated something so non-audacious as the McBride as high as three, except I was fed up with everyone else's inconsistency. Wish I'd gotten around to listening to more of what the rest of you recommended.

Actually, the Pat Green album is pretty good from start to finish. I never got around to the Dierks Bentley album, but Green did well in the congenial rocker category. Has more sociological restlessness than Dierks.

My ballot ended up looking like this. Skipped a few categories that I just couldn't decide on an answer for -

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2009:

1. Brad Paisley, American Saturday Night
2. Those Darlins, Those Darlins
3. Keith Urban, Defying Gravity
4. Miranda Lambert, Revolution
5. Carolyn Mark and NQ Arbuckle, Let's Just Stay Here
6. Ashley Monroe, Satisfied
7. Luke Bryan, Doin My Thing
8. Eric Church, Carolina
9. George Strait, Twang
10. Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel, Willie and the Wheel

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift "You Belong With Me"
2. Living For The Night - George Strait
3. Jamey Johnson, "High Cost Of Living
4. Brad Paisley "Welcome To The Future"
5. Keith Urban, "Sweet Thing"
6. Love And Theft "Runaway"
7. Kenny Chesney "Out Last Night"
8. Do I - Luke Bryan
9. Caitlin & Will "Even Now"
10. Toby Keith, "Lost You Anyway"

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:

1. Brad Paisley
2. Jamey Johnson
3. Keith Urban

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Ashley Monroe

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift
2. Brad Paisley
3. Jamey Johnson

o god should i get the taylor swift album?

Yes.

Judging from Frank's comments, I probably used his all-albums-are-EPs rule on my Nashville Scene list more than he did this year.

Jon Caramanica put Justin Moore's debut album in his '09 top 10 in the NY Times. That's the guy who did the country back-that-thing-up song (with country back-that-azz-up video) last year, if nobody remembers. The single or two by him I heard since went in one ear and out the other, but I'm curious now if anybody else heard the album. (I didn't.)

Caramanica's writeup:

9. JUSTIN MOORE (The Valory Music Company) Modest but by no means dull, the debut album by the Arkansas country singer Justin Moore has traditionalist bones holding together bursts of wry cowboy humor and eyebrow-raising salaciousness. Mr. Moore isn’t winking while playing to type; rather he realizes that there were always winks to begin with, and everyone else has forgotten.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/arts/music/20caramanica.html

He also calls San Fran indie band Girls' album "country rock," which makes no sense judging from the song or two I've heard (neither did the comparisons people make to Elvis Costello and Graham Parker), but maybe it still excuses linking to the Singles Jukebox review of "Laura" here:

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=1506

He also calls San Fran indie band Girls' album "country rock," which makes no sense judging from the song or two I've heard (neither did the comparisons people make to Elvis Costello and Graham Parker), but maybe it still excuses linking to the Singles Jukebox review of "Laura" here

I like that band a lot, and I like country music a lot, and I hear no connection. For what it's worh I hear no Costello or Parker in them either. It's more dream-pop/JAMC/shoegaze from people who also listen to a lot of '50s vocal pop, teen idol ballads, Beach Boys, etc

A poll:

2009 country #1's

On which thread an interesting question is raised:

is the co-ed country band (sugarland, lady antebellum) a relatively new phenomenon? i'm trying to think of precedents. i guess it's an outgrowth of the long history of duets, but in terms of an act that has both men and women i can't think of many.

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 22 December 2009 20:23

xp Well, Trick Pony was one. And now there's also Little Big Town, and Gloriana, and Jypsi. (Probably plenty of others, if I give it a little more thought.) But yeah, there do seem to be more out there lately.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 22 December 2009 20:30

And actually, obviously, the co-ed country band is a tradition dating back to the Carter Family, and there have definitely been family acts in recent decades (for instance, The Whites). Curious whether anybody else has opinions on whether it's a legit trend or not now in Nashville.

I finally tracked down a copy of Bobbie Cryner today in a second-hand store, an album I haven't heard in 15 years. Holy...if there was a better trad country record made in the 90s, I'm unaware of it. "He Feels Guilty" and "I Think It's Over Now" are devastating, and the Buck Owens cover with Dwight beats the original.

I've never heard it, but Xgau was a big fan:

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=bobbie+cryner

Speaking of '90s country, I killed that country #1s thread last week with the following spiel, which will probably prove just as un-fruitful here, but then again maybe somebody'll have thoughts on it, who knows:

I honestly think what's missing in most discussions of the evolution of Nashville country (and this goes for me too) is that there's this huge historical gap where almost nobody who writes about rock and pop music was keeping tabs on the stuff. Outside of Garth and Shania and a couple others, I'm still fairly clueless about most pop-country from the mid '80s to early '00s -- when, I assume, lotsa evolving was going on.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:07 AM

I sort of have this theory that Garth and Shania figured out how to make real consistent and varied country albums, like rock bands had been making for years (and had pretty much stopped making my the mid '90s to my ears), and once they did it the rest of Nashville caught on. Which would explain why so many of my favorite '00s albums were country. But it might be just as likely that great pop-country albums were being made in the late '80s and '90s, and I just wasn't hearing them. Not that I've had much luck trying to figure out what they were.

― xhuxk, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:17 AM

I mean, obviously there were great country albums before Garth and Shania, going back to the neo-trad and outlaw eras and way beyond. But I definitely got the idea in the '90s (or maybe at least starting back with the urban cowboys in the early '80s?) that even most albums with a catchy single or two on them just tossed in nine perfunctory filler tracks and got it over with. But somehow, for me anyway, that changed. (One change may have been that country started sounding more like the hard rock I grew up with, but going back now and listening to say the Kentucky Headhunters, I'm wondering if that was new in the '00s at all.)

― xhuxk, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:23 AM

I'd pretty much concur with your theory; I'm having a tough time thinking of 90s pop-country albums where any artist's personality was allowed to shine beyond a couple of tracks. Terri Clark, Martina McBride maybe. A lot of that had to do with the more restrictive (i.e. "uplifting") lyrical themes that radio was demanding.

Justin Moore self titled album reminds me of Gary Allen or Jason Aldean in many ways, except for the lack of any ballads. Almost every song is an assertion of County livin'. Not enough songs about broken hearts for me.

County=country

Not that affriming ones country roots and way of life in music is a bad thing, but a whole album gets tiring.

Speaking of '90s country, I killed that country #1s thread last week with the following spiel, which will probably prove just as un-fruitful here

Yes, I predict that this thread has but a few days to live.

there's this huge historical gap where almost nobody who writes about rock and pop music was keeping tabs on the stuff. Outside of Garth and Shania and a couple others, I'm still fairly clueless about most pop-country from the mid '80s to early '00s -- when, I assume, lotsa evolving was going on.

Yes. John Morthland's Best of Country Music Guide came out in 1984, and I don't know if any other rock critic tried anything like it subsequently, or what or where Morthland's been writing since then. His book is very good, but on the evidence of it he's probably not the one to appreciate current Nashville trends.

There's a Rough Guide to Country Music that was published in 2000, according to Amazon, and the All Music Guide to Country was in 2003. I've never looked at them. You might want to ask Doug Simmons or Eric Weisbard, since they'd have been keeping their eye out for people to potentially write for the Voice about country in the late '80s and late '90s, respectively. One of the first things Doug asked me when I started submitting stuff to him in 1987 was whether I listened to country.

My source in the '90s for what was happening in country was you, basically, since I wasn't spending much time listen to country radio.

wasn't spending much time listening to country radio, that is

Anthony Easton posted his overall ten bests on my livejournal, included only two country items, Lyle Lovett's Natural Forces album and Corb Lund's "Losin' Lately Gambler" single, which I assume is an alternate title for "A Game In Town Like This," which looks like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITyn99Oa3u4

Seems more bohemian folkie than actual country, which is to say that its aural mannerisms peg it as literary even before I pay attention to the words. Of course, some of my favorite Bob Dylans and Holy Modal Rounders were bohemian folkies at some point in their careers, but it's not a style that's held on for me, even if a Charlie Robison or a James McMurtry makes my country ballot every now and then. Here's what Anthony wrote about the Lund song:

Corb continues to add to the narratives of classic country--as the last album worked through new soldier songs and new horse songs, this one has farm songs and card songs. This is the card song, and it is about betting on home and therefore need to bet from going away. Aside from the world weariness, the sadness of the vocals, the perfect guitar work, there is a processing of the domestic and local over the international. He lives in Alberta, which is losing money and people, and where the money is disappearing, and where the recession is hard. Best song about the disaster of imminent poverty.

Anthony had talked a little bit about Corb Lund a few months back, in the comments section of some folkie's Singles Jukebox review (actually, one wherein Frank had inquired of Anthony about current folk music, but the singer's name slips my mind.) I got the Lund album in the mail, and really wanted to like it -- the idea of some guy (allegedly, anyway) detailing the minutiae of hardscrabble Alberta and Saskatchewan life in his songs really appeals to, uh, the Northern Exposure fan in me I guess. Problem is, as far as I can tell, like so many recent alt-country folkies who may well me good songwriters in recent years before him, Lund sings with no expression whatsoever. He just sounds really wooden and dry -- to my ears, anyway. And like so many good alt-country folkie songwriters with bored demo-singer voices before him, maybe I should have given him more of a chance. I liked a Si Kahn album once, after all. (At least for a year or two, anyway -- Home, from 1979; Doing My Job from 1982 also said to be worthwhile.) But more likely, I'll never latch onto a Corb Lund song until somebody from Nashville covers one. Which may be a doggone shame.

I'm having a tough time thinking of 90s pop-country albums where any artist's personality was allowed to shine beyond a couple of tracks.

I can think of a handful, beyond the obvious Shania and Garth: Mindy McCready If I Stay The Night (1997); Tim McGraw A Place To Land (his best album, 1999); Collin Raye Extremes (1994, just heard it this year); Kentucky Headhunters Electric Barnyard (1991); maybe Joe Dee Messina Joe Dee Messina (1996) and I'm Alright (1998); maybe Brooks & Dunn Hard Workin' Man (1992). Toby Keith Dream Walkin' (1997) is pretty good, if not close to many of the '00s albums. Probably a couple others I'm not thinking of.

Just got into Aaron Tippin (who is basically a honky-tonking hard-country neo-traditionalist I guess, but still) this year, and wrote about him upthread somewhere; his Greatest Hits...And Then Some is really good. But I've never heard any of his regular issue albums.

My favorite country album from the '90s is probably K.T. Oslin's Songs From An Aging Sex Bomb (1993), another best-of. But most if not all of its tracks date from the late '80s, so it shouldn't count.

One guy who wrote pretty well about country in the early '90s, fwiw, was Ken Tucker (the future Entertainment Weekly/NPR Ken Tucker, not the future Billboard Ken Tucker); he did a one-time country-only Consumer Guide in the Voice that I really liked, and wish I still had a copy of. (He was the first critic I read who actually wrote interesting things about Brooks & Dunn.) Also wrote a very entertaining lead Voice review called Country's Sophomore Class: Flex Them Neck Muscles, Boys, rounding up Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle -- but that was 1987, a little early, and those dudes aren't exactly "pop"-country.

Suspect James Hunter wrote some smart things about country back then, too. And in the early/mid '80s, at least, maybe also Davitt Sigerson, when not recording great Xmas songs for Ze. ("It's a Big Country" on the Ze Christmas Record, 1981 -- if you haven't heard it, you should. I play it several times every year around this time, and it always choke me up. Never heard his album, which came out in 1984.)

But it wasn't until Metal Mike Saunders did a roundup of CMT videos for me (around 2000, I guess) that I obsessively started paying attention.

And uh...how good were Leann Rimes's '90s albums (and does her personality shine through those?) I've always assumed that her albums improved drastically when she sold out to dancier pop structures in the '90s, but I'd be willing to hear somebody try to convince otherwise.

Also, Dixie Chicks' Wide Open Spaces was 1998 and Fly was 1999. so those count. (Have never heard their earlier bluegrass albums.)

"...sold out to dancier pop structures in the '00s," I meant. (Albeit very early '00s, apparently -- Coyote Ugly soundtrack, with "Can't Fight The Moonlight", came out in 2000.)

Really like Confederate Railroad's 2000 best-of Rockin Country Party Pack too, fwiw; they had a bunch of ace hits in the '90s for sure. But don't think I've ever heard any of their regular albums from then.

x-post Speaking of Travis, Yoakam, etc. Those neo-trad guys may not have been pop-country, but they--along with Clint Black, George Strait and others--sold a ton of albums in the late 80s. I'm not positive, but I think Storms of Life might have been the all time biggest selling Country (non-greatest hits) album at one point. Perhaps when Nashville saw that they could make as much money off of albums as they did from singles or compilations they started taking the LP more seriously. And Garth definitely started out in the neo-trad vein.

I suppose the idea of having artists put out an album packed with five or more potential singles became popular in the 90s because some of the artists were becoming international superstars and needed more time to tour the world before they could go back to the studio. The record companies could keep releasing single after single to radio in the year or two it took for a new album to be readied. It seems the norm today, but I don't know how many artists got that luxury in the 90s.

xp McGraw's 1999 album was actually A Place In The Sun, duh. (Title I listed above belongs to Little Big Town, eight years later.)

Also like The Tractors' debut album, from 1994. (Not sure where they fit into this. Seems like there might've been some kinda mini/semi/lite-Western-swing-rock revival on the country charts in the early/mid '90s. Which reminds me I also don't know the Mavericks' individual albums, but their Super Colossal Smash Hits Of The '90s best-of is good.)

In pre-'90s news, here is the very approximate order of how much I've (so far) liked a bunch of old vinyl country LPs I bought for $1 each in the past six months or so:

1. (Various) Motels And Memories (Warner Special Products 1981) (100% country cheating songs, from the mid '70s to early '80s)
2. The Delmore Brothers - The Best Of (Starday 1975)
3. Charlie Rich - I Do My Swingin' At Home (Epic 1973)
4. O.C. Smith - Hickory Holler Revisited (Columbia LP, 1968)
5. David Allan Coe - Longhaired Redneck (Columbia 1976)
6. George Strait - Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind (MCA LP, 1984)
7. The Forester Sisters - Perfume, Ribbons & Pearls (Warner Bros. 1986)
8. Georgia Satellites - Georgia Satellites (Elektra/Asylum, 1986)
9. Gene Watson - The Best Of (Capitol 1978)
10. Jason & the Scorchers - Lost And Found (EMI 1985)
11. Billie Joe Spears - Blanket On The Ground (United Artists 1975)
12. Billy Swan - Rock N Roll Moon (Monument 1975)
13. Merle Haggard and the Strangers - I Love Dixie Blues (Capitol 1973)
14. Bobby Bland - Get On Down With (Dunhill LP, 1974) (w/ covers of Merle Haggard and Charlie Rich songs)
15. Keith Sykes - I'm Not Strange I'm Just Like You (Backstreet 1980)
16. Rattlesnake Annie - Rattlesnake Annie (Columbia 1987)
17. Gary Stewart - Your Place Or Mine (RCA LP, 1977)
18. Dobie Gray - From Where I Stand (Capitol 1986)
19. Hank Thompson - Movin' On (ABC 1974)
20. Gary Stewart & Dean Dillon - Brotherly Love (RCA 1982)
21. Marshall Chapman - Marshall Chapman (Epic 1978)

Marshall Chapman and Stewart/Dillon went right into the "sell" pile; still on fence about the (presumably way past his prime, and not nearly Western Swingy enough) Hank Thompson. The rest appear to be keepers.

Oops (again), actually that Chapman LP (on which she lifelessly interprets both "I Walk The Line" and Bob Seger's "Turn The Page") is called Jaded Virgin; just hard to tell by looking at the cover.

And Stewart's Your Place Or Mine might objectively deserve to be higher on that list, except that I've owned its two best songs (title track and especially "Ten Years Of This") on his 1981 Greatest Hits (one of my favorite country albums of all time) for decades, and most of the rest doesn't leave as much of an impression as I wish.

I'm almost positive Marshall Chapman was marketed primarily to mainstream pop and rock. I remember seeing that LP cover in ads in many places.

Produced by Al Kooper
Album of the Year - Stereo Review

It sez on her website. Not much kindness meted out by Christgau, even on the follow-up in
1979. Course that means they might actually, in fact, rock.

The one I bought sure doesn't. (Interesting, though, who Xgau compares her too: "a lot more confident, clever, and animated than such Northern counterparts as Ellen Foley and Ellen Shipley, but she's a fairly one-dimensional conservative compared to Pearl E. Gates or Chrissie Hynde." But apparently she was based in Nashville, and I'd say she sounds more country than rock -- though I'm saying that with 2009 ears, of course.)

One guy who wrote pretty well about country in the early '90s, fwiw, was Ken Tucker (the future Entertainment Weekly/NPR Ken Tucker, not the future Billboard Ken Tucker); he did a one-time country-only Consumer Guide in the Voice that I really liked, and wish I still had a copy of.

I lurk/skim this thread and I was thinking of mentioning that Ken Tucker was writing about country back in that period you mentioned, but then I thought, nah, they probably don't like the way he covered it or something.

I'm confused by your comment though in regard to whether or not he is still active. I thought he was, but maybe I've been seeing this other Ken Tucker? There are two? I remember Ken Tucker from way back when Fresh Air first started up. I used to listen to it after school, in high school. (Thank god I was doing something intelligent instead of wasting my time feeling up high school girls or going down on them in their parents' garage!)

Sorry to burst in as a "country hater" and everything (although one who will be voting for Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift in this year's ILM poll, which is more than I can say for any rock acts).

Yep, definitely two Ken Tuckers out there -- (maybe even three or four!) And as far as I know, they're both still active (don't think I ever said otherwise, though maybe something I said was ambiguous.) I'm not sure whether the EW/NPR Ken still writes about country, though.

Trisha Yearwood and Lorrie Morgan a couple more '90s country stars who compiled best-of CDs worth keeping in the '00s. (Trisha's is more consistent than Lorrie's, but I was a big fan of Lorrie's '90s "Send In The Clowns"-bombastic marriage-on-skids cabaret-country wardrobe-closet ballad "Something In Red", and also her cover of Journey's "Faithfully" and her new wavey Roxette haircut. Didn't hate the albums I heard at the time, but also didn't like them near enough to hang on to them. But even more than Trisha she was clearly going for the desperate exurban housewife demographic, whose tastes I should probably bend to more.)

John Morthland's Best of Country Music Guide came out in 1984, and I don't know if any other rock critic tried anything like it subsequently

David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren put out Heartaches By The Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles in 2003. It's a good book, and definitely includes assorted late '80s and '90s records, and they make good cases for pop crossover throughout (though they have a definite grudge, it seems, against the Urban Cowboy era.) So there's that. I'd also be surprised if there weren't certain country critics writing intelligently about country; more like, I just wasn't following them. And country records -- especially the more pop kind -- certainly weren't doing very well in, say, the Pazz & Jop poll at the time. (They're still not, but they do better than they used to.)

Relistening to that Corb Lund gambling song from the video that Frank linked, I'm thinking his singing is not as incompetent and wooden as I implied above. It's...functional. But plain, kind of lazy, and not exceptional in any way. He sounds more or less in the same category as any of the (right, mostly folkie/bohemian) "red dirt" guys that I hear on the more alternative-leaning country stations in and around Austin --Jason Boland, Robert Earl Keen, Randy Rogers, Ryan Bingham, those sorts of cowpokes. If I heard that song on the car radio (and around here, if he was from Texas, that'd be possible), I might be less bored by it.

Only '90s LeAnn material I've heard is the stuff on her Greatest Hits, which, to my surprise - it being a hits record - isn't as good as her regular '00s albums. I do like "Blue" and "How Do I Live" and "Can't Fight The Moonlight (dance mix)," which are the first three tracks on Greatest Hits. And as you say, "Moonlight" is 2000, and maybe even 2001 for the dance mix.

Amazingly (to me anyway), Billboard says that Taylor Swift being 2009's Billboard artist of the year (based on cumulative success on chart positions throughout the year) makes her "the first solo female or country act to earn the honor since 1997. That was when Leann Rimes, then herself a young country crossover star, took the honor home."

What's amazing about it is that I feel like I was more or less oblivious to Leann Rimes -- and definitely to how huge a crossover star she allegedly was -- in 1997. (This goes along with something Frank wrote this week on his blog, about how, even with really popular music, you can miss it if you don't make an effort to keep up with it.)

Btw, another '90s country star who put out a solid best-of CD in the '00s is Travis Tritt. I suspect he may have made solid albums in the '90s (and ones that presaged this decade's country-rock crossover), but if so, I don't know that I've ever actually sat through any of them.

I still have Billy Ray Cyrus's Some Gave All (1992) on my shelf, though. As I recall, it's not bad. I should put it back on sometime.

Think I still have Kenny Chensney's 2000 Greatest Hits CD around here somewhere, too; he'd apparently put out five albums by then, none of which I've heard. I get the idea that Chesney and McGraw and Keith didn't really evolve their personalities on record until at least the tail-end of the '90s, but they were around for a while before then. So maybe the country audience detected personalities I didn't.

I was oblivious to Leeann back in the 90s too. It looks like in 1997 she had 2 #1 albums of cover songs, one "pop" and the other "inspirational"--so perhaps she was that era's Groban or Buble (or Streisand.)

Also, Montgomery Gentry's debut Tattoos And Scars was 1999. And though they made albums I loved more later, this is still a real good one, and seems like their personalities were in place from the git-go. (First rock critic I know who noticed them was Joshua Clover, who did a short single review of "Daddy Won't Sell The Farm" for me at the Voice.)

And duh, they just keep coming -- Speaking of Leeanns, Lee Ann Womack's Some Things I Know was 1998. Possibly my favorite album by her, though she got way more acclaim and respect later; definitely has my favorite song she ever did, namely "I'll Think Of A Reason Later."

I still pull down the John Morthland book whenever I come across some artist that I'm not familiar with. But even he dismisses the Urban Cowboy era (and that era was still ongoing when his book came out in 1984)and/or Country Pop crossover one. In a section called Countrypolitan, he says not to look for any info on Kenny Rogers, Alabama, Oak Ridge Boys, John Denver, etc. There is a review in his book of Ronnie Milsap and Eddie Rabbitt, mostly praising their early stuff but looking down on the Pop hits.
BTW- the Countrypolitan artists he does like: Crystal Gayle, Anne Murray and Glen Campbell. But that section of the book is very brief.

There's also The Blackwell Guide To Country Music, edited by Bob Allen, from 1994. I use it as a reference on occasion, but keep it on a secondary shelf in another room for good reason. Anyway, I should re-read Allen's "The 1980s And Beyond" chapter (which does seem to include writeups of several recommended albums toward the end) in the next couple days, but to give you a clue, here's how it starts: "The very early 1980s were, at least from a creative standpoint, a period of relative bleakness in country music." Later; this is awesome: "An even more disturbing barometer of how dismal and directionless country's commercial mainstream had become by the early 1980s was the LA-to-Nashville 'bimbo' invasion. During those years, any number of modestly talented but nubile Southern California pop songstresses recorded half-baked 'country' records which, remarkably, made minor dents in the country record charts. (A California singer named Carole Chase even had evanescent success with a Los Angeles-produced LP of 'country-disco' dubiously entitled Sexy Songs)." Ha -- dollar bins, here I come!

hey chuck this isn't country related, but i asked my parents/friends for stairway to hell for christmas, and they couldn't find it. is it out of print or something? i'm just curious, so as to see if i could find it somewhere else

Loooong out of print, but isn't it on Amazon for really cheap still?

Uh, guess it's considered "collectible" now; wtf?? Hey, I'll sell my copy for $133.75 + $3.99 shipping if somebody will pay me that.

http://www.amazon.com/Stairway-Hell-Chuck-Eddy/dp/030680817X

I wonder what dumb people pay for the first edition these days.

Hey $40 (second edition) on ebay. (Amazon's got several a lot cheaper; I just wanted to brag about that expensive one).

http://cgi.ebay.com/Stairway-to-Hell-:-Chuck-Eddy-(Paperback,-1998)_W0QQitemZ341320660834QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20091216?IMSfp=TL091216217001r32542

haha alright thanks, i checked amazon after christmas, and they had used copies, but i wasn't sure how much i trusted that, quality wise, i mean, but they are cheap, so i might just go ahead and buy one of them. thanks

But they are not cheap anymore! That was my point! I'm not sure when the prices went up. It's not my fault, honest.

Back to hillbilly music -- there is a Link Wray album in that book. And sundry '70s Southern Rock LPs. If I were to update it now, though...

Btw, another '90s country star who put out a solid best-of CD in the '00s is Travis Tritt. I suspect he may have made solid albums in the '90s (and ones that presaged this decade's country-rock crossover), but if so, I don't know that I've ever actually sat through any of them.

Tritt's best album was Down The Road I Go from 2000. It's All About to Change from 91 was his biggest seller - it's the one with "Here's a Quarter". Great voice, but I generally found his choice of material pretty bland.

Actually, come to think of it, calling even Tritt's The Very Best CD (Rhino, 2007) "solid" is stretching it -- at 20 songs, including stinkers like "Can I Trust You With My Heart" and "Tell Me I Was Dreaming," it's about twice too long. (My favorite tracks, last time I checked, were "Where Corn Don't Grow" and "Lord Have Mercy On The Working Man.") I might have even liked his indie-label The Storm album from the same year more, actually -- even had a pretty great Nickelback cover, in "Should've Listened." I'm guessing he's one guy who may have been freed up to do stuff more in tune with what he's best at when he stopped having big hits in Nashville. (Kentucky Headhunters, this decade, would be another one, though as I said their turn of the '90s hits were pretty good at the time. And nobody's mentioned John Anderson, who made consistently great albums in the early '80s, and has made sporadically real good ones since, as a star and then as a post-star -- I assume Seminole Wind would have to rank as one of the best country albums of the '90s, though I don't actually own a copy.)