Rolling Country 2010

I'm a little more country than THAT.

(consults urbandictionary, throws drink in forksclovetofu's face, eagerly looks up song on youtube)

kekekeke

My emusic Merle Haggard review (scroll down):

http://www.emusic.com/album/Merle-Haggard-I-Am-What-I-Am-MP3-Download/11911349.html

Listened to the imminent Dierks Bentley album Up On The Ridge this morning and...I dunno. trad bluegrass move, feels kind of clinical and stiff but then most trad bluegrass moves do, to me. Guests: Alison Krauss, Chris Thile (of Nickel Creek), Vince Gill, Del McCoury, Kris Kristofferson, plus Miranda Lambert and Jamey Johnson on the same song, which didn't jump out at me the first time. Dierks covers "Pride (In The Name Of Love)," interesting because I've definitely heard U2 in his guitar sound before and because it's about MLK, maybe a mildly brave statement in the Obama age (at least people thought so when Brad Paisley made his MLK statement), but I'm skeptical. Also covers a Buddy & Julie Miler song, plus Dylan's "Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power)" (from Street Legal, an album I've never actually heard); potential sympathy-with-immigrants/anti-globalism statement maybe? Though I'm conjecturing that just from its title, no idea about the song itself.

Leaning toward deciding the new Elizabeth Cook album only has one song I really care about ("El Camino"). New Bill Kirchen album has less.

Water vs Rain neck-and-neck on Country Songs chart this week:

19 24 25 14 Water, Brad Paisley
F.Rogers (B.Paisley,C.DuBois,K.Lovelace )
Arista Nashville DIGITAL | 19
20 22 23 15 Rain Is A Good Thing, Luke Bryan
J.Stevens (L.Bryan,D.Davidson )
Capitol Nashville DIGITAL | 20

Vaguely curious about these, for their song titles mainly:

50 46 41 16 Jackson Hole, James Wesley
D.Frizsell,R.Clawson (R.Clawson,M.Criswell )
Broken Bow DIGITAL | 41
52 NEW 1 Pound Sign (#?*!), Kevin Fowler
D.L.Murphy (D.L.Murphy,J.Collins,T.Martin )
Lyric Street PROMO SINGLE | 52
57 NEW 1 Hard Hat And A Hammer, Alan Jackson
K.Stegall (A.Jackson )
Arista Nashville DIGITAL | 57

Me on the new Shelby Lynne album (which I liked more than I would have guessed, though I doubt I'll be returning to it much):

http://www.emusic.com/album/Shelby-Lynne-Tears-Lies-And-Alibis-MP3-Download/11900277.html

Hmmm...(No idea what this single is, but still).

60 NEW 1 Here Comes Summer, LoCash Cowboys
J.Steele (J.Steele,S.Minor,C.Lucas,P.Brust )
Stroudavarious PROMO SINGLE | 60

Country album chart this week is more interesting, though:

8 NEW 1 Chicken & Biscuits, Colt Ford
Average Joe's 216 | 14.98 8
62 53 67 20 Live From The Suwannee River Jam, Colt Ford
Average Joe's 214 | 14.98 45
67 56 63 26 Country Is As Country Does, Colt Ford
Average Joe's 212 | 13.98 CD/DVD 41

Rap album chart, meanwhile:

4 NEW 1 Chicken & Biscuits, Colt Ford
Average Joe's 216 | 14.98 4

Working on something longer about the guy; stay tuned.

Liking this album too, actually:

27 NEW 1 High In The Rockies: A Live Album, Jason Boland & The Stragglers
Proud Souls/Apex 7060385 | ThirtyTigers | 12.98 27

Chuck wrote upthread:

revenge songs seemingly directed at the same guy who maybe dumped her and she sounds very pissed about it, the former a simple primal perhaps Miranda Lambert-inspired stomp, the latter more shimmering Suzanne Vega/Amy Grant '90s pop sung in a little voice since Chely's "that little voice inside your head" reminding you "you can get away with treating people like shit" -- direct and unguarded emotion, these two

Was the song gender-specific about who was dumping her? According to TMZ, Chely comes out as a lesbian (or as the TMZ URL says, a "gay lesbian country singer") this Wednesday in People.

http://www.tmz.com/2010/05/02/chely-wright-gay-lesbian-country-singer-coming-out-people-magazine-today-show

Jennifer Knapp, a singer-songwriter who was big in Contemporary Christian Music in the late '90s/early '00s and then abruptly walked away from her career, came out early this year and will resume performing. I'd never heard of her until two weeks ago, when Anthony Easton brought her up on my livejournal. I like the one song I've heard by her, her CCM hit "Undo Me." She's got an Alanis gargle, but without Alanis's gratingness. I should listen to more. Should also listen to more Chely Wright for that matter, since I only really know "Single White Female" and "Bumper Of My SUV" and the two or three tracks by her that were on her MySpace when we were talking about her last year (or was it the year before?). I quite like "Single White Female."

My not-well-informed impression is that evangelical Christianity is a lot less united on this issue than it'd been a couple of decades ago, younger evangelicals less likely to understand why Jesus would want them not to be gay or would want them to discriminate against gays.

(This takes us even further from country music, but I highly recommend Jonathan Bogart's long Tumblr post regarding his Christian rock childhood. While I'm on the subject, my current favorite teengothpop Contemporary Christian Music singer is Krystal Meyers, my favorite song of hers being "Beautiful Tonight.)

Hey Frank, I was just reading *Real Punks...* just like five minutes ago and noticed you posted to this thread. So I thought I'd say hello!

Was the song gender-specific about who was dumping her?

"Damn Liar" no; "Object Of Your Rejection" no. (Just checked the lyric sheet.) So I may well have been presumptuous about their being directed at "some guy." Think I do note some gender-confusion in regards to the song "Like Me" upthread, but I stupidly figured the conflicted person she was singing about was male, not female: "Who's gonna end up holding your hand? A beautiful woman or a tall handsome man?" At any rate, I like how she timed her coming-out to coincide with the album release.

Btw, if anybody's interested, I've played the new Mindy McCready album (I'm Still Here on indie Iconic Records) and new Joe Dee Messina EP (Unmistakable: Love on Curb) one time each, and nothing much has hit me, although a couple of Joe Dee's songs seemed catchy. (Hers mostly seem to be long-successful-marriage songs, as far as I can tell.)

Wright is the first major country artist ever to come out.

What, k.d. lang doesn't count? Though I have no idea when her coming-out happened in relation to her temporary country stardom. Or maybe she doesn't count as "major," though it's not like Chely Wright has had a ton of huge hits herself.

This is a big deal in the country world. Chely is rolling the dice on her career ... it's unclear how traditionally-conservative country fans will react.

Well, given that she hasn't had a single hit the country Top 40 since 2004 or the country top 20 since 1999, it's unlikely that country fans, conservative or otherwise, would've been racing to stores to buy her new album anyway. Maybe now more will. (Maybe the book will help, too.)

Anyway, I've been listening to lots of old albums this weekend. To wit:

Statler Brothers The Best Of (Mercury 1975): Lukevalentine brought them up upthread, and I was curious so I pulled this off. Great album, really interesting. I should probably read more about them one of these days, but I get the idea that their harmonies often shake out somewhere in between gospel jubilee and barbershop (Four Freshmen? how would I know?), maybe with occasional hints of doo-wop; they switch voices line-by-line/pitch-to-pitch alot, like doo-woppers (and, later, old-school rappers) did; the bassman voice often hits me as ridiculous, which might be intentional (were bassmen supposed to be funny, by definition?), or may be a generational thing. What's definitely a generational thing is that four songs out of 11 are list songs, all wondering or bemoaning lost days of yore -- movie stars in "Whatever Happened To Randolph Scott," early baby-boom/post-war/mostly-early-'50s pop-culture fads in "Do You Remember These" (kinda reminds of of Robert Klein's 1973 comedy album Child Of The '50s, especially since there's nothing especially rural about what the Statlers are remembering); classmates who went on to do all sorts of things (including one who kills himself and one who winds up in a mental hospital) in "The Class of '57"; a couple's old photo-album pictures (hence sort of a precursor to Jamey Jonhnson's "In Color") in "Pictures" -- and, especially in the movie star song (which actually calls Hollywood "the industry") and the pop fad song, there are tons of references I don't get at all, and not only because these guys race through their lists really fast. Those kind of songs are clearly precursors to the Bellamy Brothers too (think their "Old Hippie" songs), as probably are the Statlers' humor, and their harmonies. Favorite two other songs are "New York City" (the woman a guy got pregnant goes to NYC and has her baby who the guy apparently never meets and the kid grows up thinking the dad's a real louse and the guy doesn't seem to argue the issue) and, of course, "Flowers On The Wall," which I still can't tell whether it's sung form the point of view of a guy who's cracking up or just a really lonely slacker in denial. (For people who don't know it, he stays up all night playing solitaire with a incomplete deck, and smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo and counting flowers on the wall.) The rest of the songs are mostly good, too; "Susan When She Tried" is kind of weird, because you never quite figure out "when she tried" what -- to leave the singer heartbroken, I guess. Also, 10 of 11 songs -- all but "Flowers" -- are either credited or co-credited to one "D. Reid."

Hank Thompson A Six Pack To Go (Capitol 1966) Another really good one by this guy, maybe not quite up there with Smoky The Bar, but close. On the cover he's pictured six times, on six cans of beer; album subtitle is "...and the Brazos Valley Boys with a program of their beer-drinkin' hits." So that's pretty much what the songs are about obviously, though each side has an instumental polka in the middle ("Beer Barrel" and "Bartenders.") Two songs, "The Wild Side Of Life" and "Anybody's Girl," like "Girls In The Night" on that other album, are about women who make the sad decision to live their lives in bars, often leaving a better life behind. As do the guys, but they usually get funnier songs. Though Hank does do his "St. James Infimary"-styled "Drunkard's Blues" here again. And there's maybe a Western Swingish tint fairly often, but nothing I'd call Western Swing per se'.

Buck Owens The Best Of (Capitol 1964) Has "Act Naturally," which is immortal, but otherwise I'm still not getting what's supposed to be so awesome about him. He always sounds okay, a real distinctive singer, but he always sings more or less the same, and rarely excites me or pulls me in. Part of me thinks he just didn't have Grade A material; or maybe I'd be less bored if he was more rockabilly. Presents kind of a sad-sack persona, but never makes me laugh much. But maybe somebody else can explain what I'm missing. (I've always liked his '88 "Streets Of Bakersfield" with Dwight Yoakam and Flaco Jiminez, if that helps.)

Also, Sylvia's Just Syliva from 1981; posted some notes on it here yesterday:

(vintage) country-disco

Okay, just checked Wiki; sez the Statler Bros "named themselves after a brand of facial tissue (they have joked that they could have turned out to be the Kleenex Brothers[2]). Don Reid sings lead and is the younger brother of Harold Reid, who sings bass. The other members are baritone Phil Balsley and tenor Jimmy Fortune, who replaced original Statler Lew DeWitt in the early 1980s due to the latter's ill health...The band's style is closely linked to its gospel roots. Harold Reid said of the group's style 'We took gospel harmonies and put them over in country music'." Dewitt is the guy who wrote "Flowers on The Wall," and co-wrote a couple other of the hits on the best-of album, which apparently runs from 1965 to 1974. "Sissy, a #75 hit in '68, didn't make the cut.

Lots of typos in that first long Statlers spiel; still halfway comprehensible regardless, I hope.

Oh yeah, also meant to mention Charlie Rich's Rollin' With The Flow from 1977 -- finally, a Charlie album I don't absolutely love! Do love the title track though, which is amazing -- super easy rolling #1 C&W hit about watching everybody else your age mature while you manage not to, for better or worse. (Apparently Mark Chesnutt covered it a few years ago, though I've never heard his version.) Rest of the Rich album though is mostly string-soaked Billy Sherrill sapsucker-ballad mush that reminds me why so many people hated countrypolitan so much; not unlistenable, just ignorable. Only possible warmblooded exceptions I could pinpoint might be "Somebody Wrote That Song For Me" and "Night Talk," both also on Side One with the title cut, which both remind me that the distance between late '70s/early '80s countrypolitan and smooth jazz and quiet storm r&b probably wasn't always so great. Which is cool, and I'd hang onto the LP for the title song alone, but still.

The Statler Brothers were my dad's favorite group, probably because he had a deep voice and liked to sing the the bassman's lines.

Film review in the NY Times this morning about some documentary about the mountain-dancing, murdering, pill-popping White family of West Virginia; says that, after a TV movie about Jesco White in 1991, lots of country songs were written about him. I remember him being name-dropped in a song on Big N Rich's second album, but that's it. Never heard of him before that; had to look him up. So, what other songs?

Which also makes me wonder whether any great country songs are being written now about Nashville's great devastating flood of 2010. Seems like archetypal country subject matter, and if the Ryman and Dierks Bentley's houses are all wet then it's clearly hitting close to home. Maybe even some good economics puns about houses being underwater are in order. Assuming that's not too depressing a country topic these days.

Meanwhile, Singles Jukebox multi-reviews of songs by...

Drive-By Truckers

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=2212

And Mallary Hope

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=2254

As far as older Country goes, does anyone know anything about a guy named Lee Clayton? Looks like he played w/ a lot of the Highwaymen and wrote one of my absolute favorite tunes "If You Could Touch Her At All" which was done by both Willie and Waylon. Allmusic says he put out a couple of albums in the early 70's, but all I can find on Youtube are these kind of terrible sounding Dylan ripoffs. Did he do any straight up country albums?

Wright is the first major country artist ever to come out.
What, k.d. lang doesn't count? Though I have no idea when her coming-out happened in relation to her temporary country stardom. Or maybe she doesn't count as "major," though it's not like Chely Wright has had a ton of huge hits herself.

or what about kristen hall, founding member of sugarland? not sure if she ever specifically came out inasmuch as i'm not sure she ever was in the closet in the first place. but does she count?

I just now posted on the comment thread to those Jukebox reviews that Chuck linked of Mallary Hope's "Blossom In The Dust" (which I don't like as much as Martina McBride's "Wild Rebel Rose," speaking of Rose's in the dust). I basically agree with Jonathan Bogart's and Michaelangelo's social critique of the song, it just doesn't make me dislike the song in the way it made them.

Jonathan elaborates on his thoughts over on his Tumblr - says his first impulse had been to give the song a 10.

I rather like it tho' it starts out so much like Fifteen I'm still often confused when it plays.

I still love it, despite almost as many reservations as anybody else. Just added a comment to that thread.

Jon Caramanica on Chely Wright, Mindy McCready, and moonlighting Dixie Chicks the Court Yard Hounds, and what they're all up against:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/arts/music/06country.html

Hi Mordy!

er, you belong to me, not fifteen.

Via email:

KE$HA ANNOUNCES NASHVILLE FLOOD BENEFIT CONCERT ON JUNE 16TH
( New York - NY) - Global pop superstar singer/songwriter and Nashville native and resident Ke$ha has announced a flood benefit concert on June 16th at Limelight in Nashville , which is located at 201 Woodland Street . Tickets go on sale on May 6th at 5pm CST and are available starting at $30 at http://bit.ly/Kesha4Nashville.
Says Ke$ha, “I'm thrilled to announce that I will be playing a show to help benefit Nashville , my hometown. 100% of the profits from ticket sales will go to help the victims of these devastating floods. Nashville helped shape me as an artist and as a person and my love for this city is beyond words. I will continue to do anything I can to help rebuild this city and support the families and animals who have been affected by this tragedy."

I keep forgetting that Ke$ha's from there. Could well bode well for the future of country music. A duet with Colt Ford would be cool. (He's apparently a big fan of his daughter's Lady Gaga album.)

By the way, to answer Moreno's question above, I don't think I've ever heard Lee Clayton. He apparently never put an album on the country chart, and is mentioned only once in Bob Allen's Recorded Country Music, as having written a song (unnamed in the book) for Jerry Jeff Walker. You've apparently checked AMG; I haven't, but I do have the AMG Country print edition, and the entry for him in there seems to suggest that his 1978 album Border Country is more country, less rock than '79's Naked Child. Not sure whether that corresponds with what AMG now has on line or not, though I'm guessing it does. (Also says his most famous song was "Ladies Love Outlaws," for Waylon.)

Haven't mentioned that I've been sort obsessed with C.W. McCall lately, especially now that Colt Ford covered "Convoy." Have a Greatest Hits LP, plus Wilderness from '76, the latter of which went to #9 on the country chart, with two Top 40 country singles ("Crispy Critters" about a town taken over by hippies who look like shaggy dogs and the narrator can't stand #32, "There Won't Be No Country Music {There Won't Be No Rock'n'Roll}" about a country destroyed by polluting corporations #19) even though almost nothing on the album was actually sung -- almost all talk-rhymed like "Convoy" was, though there are movie-music jig instrumentals ("Telluride Breakdown"), a very rap-like but brief 35-second poem about McCall's cat done only to Jews Harp accompaniment ("Roy"), Dylan-like talking blues done in a blackface voice ("Silver Iodine Blues," about fake snow), and enough string bombast for a Meat Loaf LP. Almost all the songs, as the title suggests, are about being in the backwoods, specifically the snowy northern prairie west (also songs called "Jackson Hole," which I like a lot, and "Columbine" {!!} in addition to the Telluride one -- btw, I also like James Wesley's different, currently chart-climbing country ballad "Jackson Hole," about being stood up at a ski resort in the dead of winter.) "Riverside Slide" is another good, gruff one. Makes me wonder whether more "Western" country hit in the '70s, also to what extent ecology was a popular country song subject at the time (John Denver scored on both counts, right? Never liked him much myself); also whether McCall was the most consistently rappy country star ever -- Charlie Daniels talked a lot too, obviously, and there must be other guys I'm not thinking of.

Joel Whitburn: "Born William Fries on 11/15/28. The character 'C.W. McCall' was created for the Mertz Bread Company. Fries was an advertising man. Elected mayor of Ouray, Colorado in the early '80s." In "Crispy Critters," fwiw, "the mayor was a space cadet." Interesting that McCall hated (or pretended to hate?) hippies so much when I always had the idea hippies were at the forefront of the '70s environment movement that McCall clearly latches onto. (John Denver must have had a certain post-hippie following to some extent, right?) Though more likely, especially given the "long-haired friends of Jesus in the chartreuse microbus" in "Convoy," McCall just thought they were funny.

Uh, "backwoods" might be wrong -- maybe I just mean "mountains"? (Upper prairie west is one of the parts of the country that I've barely set foot in, so I obviously have no idea what I'm talking about. My wife said Jackson Hole, Wyoming's the coldest place she's ever been, though.)

And Jerry Reed was definitely another guy who may have talk-rhymed as often as he sang (though I'd guess his balance wasn't tipped as overwhelmingly toward the former as McCall's was.) Commander Cody too, maybe? And obviously they're all part of country tradition that dates back at least to the white country blues of the late '20s/early '30s.

And lots of trucker songs are part of that tradition too, obviously. (I've never heard much Red Sovine -- get the idea he might have talked a lot, too.) AMG seems to suggest that trucker songs are mostly what C.W. McCall did, and there are a few on the albums I have, but I wouldn't say they're the main thing. (Have never heard '75's Wolf Creek Pass, which has "Old Folk Home Filler-Up An' Keep On Truckin' Cafe," which he apparently wrote for the bread company and won a Clio Award with, or '76's Black Bear Road, which has "Convoy.") AMG also says McCall had a fine arts bachelor's degree from University of Iowa, and was a graphic designer who worked as art director for an Omaha ad agency in the early '60s -- so basically, he was a Mad Man, albeit not on Madison Ave. And not surprisingly, the environment was his pet issue when he when he went into small-town Colorado politics.

And btw, also checked out "Here Comes Summer" by LoCash Cowboys (which entered the country chart at #60 last week) a couple days ago; seemed passable, just your usual innocuous and forgettable forced fun, but they looked like they might potentially be interesting, if only because they (they'e a duo) dress pretty goofy (maybe supposed to look like "party guys" or something? hard to tell -- lots of rips in their jeans and weird headwear) and they claim to be influenced in part by Justin Timberlake and '80s r&b as well as c&w; album (not yet out I don't think) is said to have touches of country rap. Of course, all of that stuff could also add up to horribleness; time will tell, I guess.

Uh, "backwoods" might be wrong -- maybe I just mean "mountains"? (Upper prairie west is one of the parts of the country that I've barely set foot in, so I obviously have no idea what I'm talking about. My wife said Jackson Hole, Wyoming's the coldest place she's ever been, though.)

Well, I'd think "upper prairie west" would be defined by the absence of both woods and mountains (with not much in the way of hills, either), though often you'll get some mountains in the background, in case you're wondering what way west is and the sky is overcast so you can't judge by the sun (though allegedly the skies are not cloudy all day, so this may not be a problem).

Oops, good point. I think I meant "Prairie" as a region, or even a time zone, though, not a terrain feature. Which might not make sense, since the time zone is Mountain Standard Time, not Prairie Central Time, but whatever. (McCall doesn't actually use the word himself, I don't think. Definitely seems to spend a good deal of time in high elevations.)

Is it worth spending the eight bucks on the new Hag album? I just heard the title tune on YouTube and it's ehhh.

I need to listen to it again, so take this with a grain of salt, but his voice bothered me on the new one. He sounds like he's been screaming at a football game and has lost both ends of his range. Listening actually caused me some psychosomatic discomfort in my own throat. So if you value his mellifluous sonorities above all, you might be disappointed. Tunes seemed pretty solid, though--like I said, I need to listen again.

And weirdly enough, this scratchy, compressed-range quality has never bothered me with recent Dylan, maybe because I don't have the same expectations with him. And incidentally, Ke$ha says in Rolling Stone that "Nashville Skyline" is her favorite album OF ALL TIME.

Weirdly (and I posted a link to my emusic review on this thread within the past couple weeks), Haggard's newly haggard voice didn't really bother me much, though I tend to find, say, recent Dylan extremely hard to listen to and recent Randy Newman unbearable. I like the album, and like its title track. Wouldn't call it my favorite country album of the year anymore, but it's up in the top four or five at least. But Alfred asked whether it's worth paying $8 for, and truth is I can't remember the last time I paid that much for any album. So I'm probably not the one to ask. At any rate, I'd rank it below Hag's Like Never Before from 2003, but not necessarily below If I Could Only Fly from 2000, which lots of people loved, but I never thought was so amazing beyond "Wishing All These Old Things Were New." Does that help?

The new country album I've been loving this week is Well After Awhile by Shinyribs, the alias of Kevin Russell, who is apparently in the Gourds, who oddly enough never did a thing for me (though I probably only tried a couple of their albums, maybe not the right ones.) At any rate, here he's doing a very funky Leon Russell/Dr. John kinda country soul thing, ten mostly smart songs that stick with me -- my favorites so far being "Country Cool" and "Poor People's Store." Also does okay by a cover of "Change Is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke at album's end Based in Austin; I should probably catch him live sometime. His MySpace:

http://www.myspace.com/shinyribs

Also, three newly charting songs maybe worth investigating:

56 59 2 While You're Still Young, Montgomery Gentry
M.Knox (J.Collins,T.Martin,W.Mobley )
Columbia PROMO SINGLE | 56
57 1 Summer Thing, Troy Olsen
T.Olsen (T.Olsen,B.Hayslip,J.Yeary )
EMI Nashville PROMO SINGLE | 57
58 NEW 1 Wildflower, The JaneDear Girls
J.Rich (S.Brown,V.McGehe,J.S.Stover )
Reprise PROMO SINGLE | WMN | 58

Saw the Felice Brothers this weekend and really enjoyed it. Never got into their albums much, but they bring it for the live show. They've got a fiddle/washboard player and a guy on the keyboard and accordian so I feel safe posting this on a Country thread... though they seem closer to Dylan w/ the Band Basement Tapes era. They bring a nice drunken, punk enthusiasm to the songs live that doesn't translate as well on their albums.

Thanks for the response re: Lee Clayton xhuxk. Gonna keep my eyes out for Boarder Country.

Over on poptimists, Mark Sinker asks us which musiccrit-type writers we'd point an intelligent outsider towards. So far I'm the only one who's answered, so you guys might want to add some pointers. Also has a question about music movies, which some people did join me in answering. This Is Spinal Tap seems to be a favorite.

By the way, has anyone heard from Edd? Wondering if the flooding had any impact on him. (I have no idea if he lives near to or far from the water.)

I didn't care much for If I Could Only Fly either (I'll add "Bareback" to the keeper pile, along with "Wishing All These Old Things Were New." But as of yesterday morning I found on used copies of the new one. Thanks, guys.

Re: Merle Haggard's new one. I find it really enjoyable, though at first I was itching to file it in that johnny cash template of aging country singer sings about mortality. Difference is probably that he's still writing solid songs, and his singing is relaxed in a way I enjoy, not overly serious. Still don't love the album as a whole but I do enjoy it.

Actually, here's the piece I wrote about it, for what it's worth - http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/123964-merle-haggard-i-am-what-i-am

And if I'm posting links to my own stuff I figure I'll mention I've starting trading off months with another writer on a country-music column for popmatters. I wrote two so far, one on Toby Keith (on the idea of his 'arrogance' and the way it works within his music) and one that went up today about Taylor Swift, sort of stemming from seeing her live last month, and using that as a jumping off point to write about all sorts of things.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/column/121185-the-arrogance-of-toby-keith/
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/column/124985-things-will-change-what-taylor-swift-represents

Nice job, Dave!

I think some of us on a previous year's RC thread agreed that Merle's usually good on every other album, and I don't remember the one just before this, so dunno what to expect (except even approving reviews make it seem pretty run of the mill).Nobody hates it, apparently which might or might not be a good sign (might be just okay for apathetic acceptance, like a lotta) But I'm sure I'll check it out. Meanwhile, somebody enjoyed a Felice Bros show upthread, and here's a a preview I recently wrote, that might indicate some of their appeal (mad telegraphy, but mad word limit too)

The Felice Brothers
Wednesday @ Rumba Café

On Yonder Is the Clock and Mix Tape, the young Felice Brothers follow Dylan and the Band's rural Basement Tapes quest in reverse, back to the city of dinosaur dreams. Echoing through subway hayrides, they cheer trains bound for Heaven and everywhere else, while moodily and shamelessly waltzing around the "Ambulance Man." He's patient, but the Felice Brothers know he doesn't have all day. Equally vivid is "Boy From Lawrence County," whom they know they could track (if they knew you'd pay), because "He's a friend of mine."

From the same column, a Canadian folkie with some coutry appeal, especially in her best material (Also, was Alanis's pre-debut-album voice teacher)

Lynn Miles was recently spotted on YouTube, leafing through lyrics that list all the things she's tired of, ending with "singer/songwriters." Ho-ho, she knows she's in that game for life, as her steady voice gets deeper and darker, especially on full-bodied, country-tinged coffin-thumpers like "I Give Up." On Live at the Chapel, Miles shifts into bruised cruise control for "Night Drive" and "You Don't Love Me Anymore," a wised-up kissin' cousin to the Eagles' best ballads. Meanwhile, "Black Flowers" bloom so beautifully, as coal dust settles on their petals.

Welcome back into the fold, Don! (Now if only somebody could corral Edd.) And Dave, thanks for linking to those posts; they're really good!

Mentioned Jason Boland and the Stragglers' live High In The Rockies on here last week; very useful document by a tireless Texas road band, recorded in the uh, upper mountain west (Colorado and Wyoming) in January. Fell for their "Comal County Blue," about driving into Austin's night to get away from the rural hardscrabble life, in its studio version on the radio here last year. And for almost the first half of the live album, nothing else much comes close to it -- decent sour-grapes opener about how Hank wouldn't be a star in cookie-cutter Nashville now, cover of Don Williams/Clapton's "Tulsa Time," pretty good rejoinder to a girl with her head in the clouds in "Down Here On Earth," alcoholic song Jamey Johnson could cover called "Bottle By My Bed," all likeable but surrounded by fairly pro-forma stuff. But track 11, cover of a great Tom Russell bordertown rooster-fighting song called "Gallo Del Cielo" I'd never heard of before (in fact, I've barely heard Russell period), things finally kick into gear, and for the next three songs you can really tell you're hearing a working band: tornado-attacking-yokels number called "Blowing Through The Hills" that I could imagine the Legendary Shack Shakers doing except Boland can sing and they can't, "Time In Hell" about soldiers overseas waiting to come home, weird existential country thing called "Jesus And Ruger" that says napalm and Islam mean something to somebody. Boland and the band more or less keep it up for the rest of the album, too; they cover Merle's "Rainbow Stew" and end with a jamming "Outlaw Band," cool. Anyway, here are a couple links, for anybody who might be interested:

http://www.myspace.com/jasonbolandthestragglers

http://www.thestragglers.com/

I've also been getting re-obsessed with current Southern Soul these past couple days, including a Mississippi guy named Luther Lackey who's definitely got some country in his sound. Been binging on what I can hear at Rhapsody. And I talk about it a lot, starting right about here:

Chitlin Circuit Double-entendre -filled Soul 2004 (and onward) Theodis Ealey's "Stand Up In It" is a song of the year

Thanks for the kind words on my articles, I appreciate that. Re: Tom Russell's "Gallo del Cielo" - I'm a big fan of Joe Ely's version of that song, on his Letter to Laredo album (his tex-mex, border-themed album). I like how he sings it better than Russell, though really it's the writing, the story-telling, that makes the song. I'll have to check out the Boland version.

Huh, wasn't aware Ely had done the song; I should check that out. Pretty much stopped paying attention to him after the mid '80s, though I liked last year's Flatlanders album okay, and I posted this about 1984's much-maligned techno-rock move Hi Res a couple months ago:

(vintage) country-disco

Also doesn't surprise me that Ely would sing it better than Russell, going by what little I've heard by Tom (which was, like, one or two albums a long time ago.) He basically has no singing voice at all, right? Which is a shame, because as I recall, he can really write songs.

Anyway, here's me stretching out a little re: Colt Ford, in this week's Voice:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-11/music/colt-ford-renaissance-man/

And (scroll down) Caramanica on Colt Ford in the NYT a couple days ago. (I knew the “Heeeeyyyyy, we want some countryyyyyy!” chant came from somewhere, but couldn't place it; Jon says it's from 2 Live Crew):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/arts/music/09play.html