Rolling Country 2010

It's like a giveaway trait of the stupid: You become a newborn hand-wringlingly sincere amateur
historian who has just discovered paintings of the founding fathers on Glenn Beck, particularly if you're from the south, were one of those guys asleep in class in high school and are now really really chapped over the guy you didn't vote for.

Sadly, Worley has a recording contract and enough money to still have some bigtime songwriters helping him out.

"This video is for every American who were doing fine without the 'change.'

Go get 'em, Darryl. This'll do it.

'And 90 percent of them said,'The bottom line is the nation is really angry right now, and we don't think there could be a better time in history for your song.' Yeah, I can just see the Life of Darryl multitudes chanting that. But he really is convincingly nice, and not in a disgusting way, when not getting so into politics per se. "Have You Forgotten", trying to wring tears of guilt from those who had any qualms at all about impending invasion of Iraq, was really the worst, but that album he released right after Bush's re-election was frankly qualmsy about everything. But he's like people I've known,correspondences I've let lapse cos never know about getting sandbagged by sudden rants (even aside from obviously titled, fwded bogus news, petitions, etc)

Singles Jukebox reviews of:

Dierks Bently "Up On The Ridge"

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=2601

and Luke Bryan "Rain Is A Good Thing"

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=2594

Both of which did better than I figured they would (and figured they deserved to).

I dumped on Luke Bryan upstream way before:

Two songs on water, Luke Bryan's "Rain is a Good Thing" which has gotta have the worst lyrics I've heard in a long time. Cracked out the rhyming dictionary for whiskey and frisky for that slice of
retard rock. And Paisley's thing.

And this ain't aimed at xhuxk but one ought to at try to be a little less obvious in their usages since everyone's at the cocktail party is cherry-picked from this one.

Huh, Worley or his record company had YouTube yank the audio on the teabagger vid for his "Keep the
Change" tune.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4302299/behind-the-scenes-with-darryl-worley/?playlist_id=87261

Worley on a Fox News web only production -- they threw him a bone in connection with an appearance on Hannity I didn't see.

It's obvious they're trying to take "Keep the Change" to the Fox News/Tea Party crowd. However, Worley discusses his problem at about 2:40 in. Country music dropped it because it's about bashing the President, something Worley denies, not very convincingly.

Generally, though, I do agree with dow. He seems like a genuinely nice fellow. Just not very perceptive, or purposely playing thick, on how his song will be or is used/perceived.

Here he's talking about it to the Kalamazoo Express Gazette before country music stripped it. According to Lex-Nex, he was able to do only two pieces of publicity on it when it was released and while it was low in the country charts.

Songwriter concerned about country's values

Special to the Gazette

ST. JOSEPH -- When you hear Darryl Worley's latest single, "Keep The Change," at the Venetian Festival, pay attention to the lyrics.

Although Worley says he's patriotic rather than political, he appears to be making a social statement with "Keep The Change." He's concerned about the state of the nation and the overall emotional well-being of its people.

"It's scary," Worley said. "I don't think anybody knows where we're heading. We are getting further from basic principles and core values that the country seems to have been based on and founded."

Worley says the title is not intended as a jab at President Barack Obama.

"We (co-writers Jim "Moose" Brown and Phil O'Donnell) pick song titles because we know they'll stir up a stink. That's what I do as a songwriter. It's my job to figure out what will create the biggest reaction. The changes that we see in society are changes that have been in the making for 40-50 years," he said.

Worley debuted "Keep The Change" in Detroit this past spring. Its first test in front of a sizable crowd was a positive one. It relates to a blue collar core but also transcends political ties.

"A big portion of the population is fed up with the way things are going, and they don't know why," he said.

The song, he says, is the "voice of a lot of those people." Worley's songwriting skills resonated well with country music fans and the general public at large with 2003's post 9/11 anthem, "Have You Forgotten?" Several years later, Worley still remembers and honors those who serve our country.

He recently returned from a tour in Iraq where he performed and signed autographs for thousands of soldiers throughout the Middle East. Entertaining the troops, he says, is "his way of sharing a little bit in the responsibility and doing my part."

======Rest cut

He does emit the sincere whine of the wounded Tea Party types who see themselves as patriots (and therefore always necessary to point it out, too) and -- the politer ones, anyway -- who become dumbfounded when other people who outwardly look just like them point out their image isn't so pristine.

And only a hardened charlatan or stone fool could possibly insist such a song "transcends political ties" without smirking.

The changes that we see in society are changes that have been in the making for 40-50 years.

And this is rubbish, who knows where it comes from. The new right article of faith that the New Deal
and Great Society were for commie losers?

Forty to fifty years ago we had economic fairness and a social contract for the betterment of the middle class. It didn't start getting really thrown to the dogs until the early Eighties. He's just noticed ore more recently.

Something I wrote about the new Trace Adkins album:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2010/08/cowboys-back.html

Hey here's a prodi-gal prodigy (and seasoned pro) prob be in my Nash Scene Top Ten, though her beat-rushing chronicles may take some getting used to (got of a lot if it on first listening, but may be we're similarly wired, in this instance)Shitty field recordings on YouTube, but can check her
http://www.myspace.com/lydialoveless
and that of her tempestuous family New Wave band
http://www.myspace.com/carsondrew although it's sadly RIP (her dad's still drumming in her own band, though).
Here's my show preview:
Veteran Columbus,OH teen Lydia Loveless sometimes includes the Replacements’ intensely frustrated “Answering Machine” and Def Leppard’s dynamically mesmerized “Hysteria” with her punky tonk combo’s deliveries, unstoppably tumbling up, down and onto life’s thrilling, killing, chilling and flat moments. Loretta Lynn’s points of departure are extended and twisted through Loveless’ compactly epic, self-written debut,The Only Man, as desperately wired sexual power struggles zap the void in passing: “Girls suck/They suck and suck and never get enough,” wails one contender, but it’s time to ricochet off another incisive epitaph.

My more organized thoughts on the Worley thing:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/2010/08/11/on-pandering-country-music-style/

Great post, George. Didn't realize there were so many "Keep The Change" songs. And Worley has clearly been disconnected from reality at least since linking Bin Laden to Iraq back in "Have You Forgotten."

As for this:

the country charts have largely shied away from this type of inflammation if we don’t include the short period after 9/11 when it granted a dispensation for those who liked the idea of getting our war on. (Chuck, you can correct me if I’m way off.)

I think you're basically right, though that doesn't mean a certain kind of class resentment didn't stick with country through the '00s; just wasn't as blatant as right after 9-11. It seems to have cooled down lately, though that may as much to do with timidity on radio's part as anything else. And obviously there have been recent inflamatory exceptions, like for instance Toby Keith's "American Ride" last year. Wrote more about country's tea-party-like backlashing through the decade here:

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2009/11/countryteaparty.html

In other news, Singles Jukeboxers on Uncle Kracker's "Smile":

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=2625

Though on second thought, "timidity on radio's part" might be wrong. I get the idea that, in the, uh, Obama/Paisley/Taylor era, Nashville in general doesn't seem to be leaning as drastically rightward as it seemed to be just a few years ago. Not sure why that would be (maybe a business decision), or why it even strikes me that way. But it's not exactly like John Rich has been tearing up the charts lately. And I even get the feeling Toby -- whose politics were always fairly confused and/or confusing in the first place -- has been sort of shunted to the side somewhat over the past couple of years.

Though then again, maybe I'm citing country radio's timidity because country radio has struck me as really timid this year -- in a year when country albums haven't really been striking me as timid at all. (Though that could have something to do with Austin's commerical country station being more reined in than other places', or could just have something to do with me not listening to country radio as much. Real chicken-and-egg conundrum: Does country radio seem boring to me because I'm tuning into it less, or am I tuning into it less because it seems boring to me? Both, maybe.)

FOX News, 2003: "They're criticizing the President! Get them off the radio!"

FOX News, 2010: "He's criticizing the President! Get him on the radio!"

Re your Obama/Paisley/Swift observation -- I was thinking about Paisley, in particular, prior to finalizing that Worley thing because his album came out just as the economy was collapsing, succeeding despite it. And I felt he was kind of the voice of the Wall Streeter who doesn't see anything wrong, his kickoff tune being about the wonders of getting everything from everywhere else in the world but here on a Saturday night. Without questioning for a second where and why all the jobs went. But it succeeded grandly and his "Water" is still being pumped, so there's certainly an industry appetite for his genial fantasies as long as he executes them so well. Truth is I have more grudging respect for Worley's song because at least it's truying to capitalize on a very real rage in the social climate.

As for John Rich, he's either mixed up or he mixes me up. The Detroit single comes out -- and then he winds up being one of the "stars" at the profoundly inimical to labor Massey Energy and its labor day farce a year ago. And now it's back to the party scene. And didn't Brooks & Dunn -- or at least one of them -- get a bit prickly when Obama used one of their songs at his big do prior to election?

In other matters, from the sound of "Ala-Freakin'-Bama," I think I'm going to have to get the Trace Adkins thing. I listened to "Marry for Money" again and, honest to God, the guitars are doing a Status Quo thing in it.

And Worley gloms onto at least two big myths in his thing. (1) That Uncle Sam takes half his labor.
And (2), that Obama did the Wall Street bailout when it was a Henry Paulson/GWB thing and so had nothing to do with 'change.' Plus, he throws in the Tea Party thing which has to do with its perception that the president slights those who pledge allegiance and pray. Which is pretty nasty when you get right down to it.

Another thing I remain curious on is the male country-wide breast-beating thing over honoring the troops.

To be honest, Ted Nugent -- in particular, does this big time, too. And it seems to me that if a few of these guys actually felt the way they say they do, the would have thrown down their guitars on 9/11 and marched quickly down to to the local recruiting station, like Pat Tillman. But, of course, we know they all didn't -- despite being as able bodied. In fact, this seems to be a real big component of Tea Party-ism.

So all the play for the troops and advertise it work, which is fine, smacks me as overcompensation and a psychological guilt work-off over not having the stones to actually do what they publicly believed ought to be done.

There's a conspicuous absence of songs about bringing them home now after almost a decade of war,
right?

"Keep the Change" is obviously a swipe at Obama--the guys up on the hill can't see that things are going wrong? Just give me the big money I deserve and need and you guys keep the change. I bet the songwriters were real proud of themselves. As usual, this is just insubstantial to the point of disappearing, as analysis. That bad ol' liberal Paul Krugman wrote recently in the bad ol' Times about the crumbing of our infrastructure, which I myself would be more concerned about that whatever Worley seems to think is wrong. One thing country used to do well was think in practicalities that sure, were all about the individual--politics being in my book a mass phenomenon, a way for people to Pull Together, and so forth, that country has always exploited but never actually taken to heart. Because the classic country artists felt excluded, just like the blues performers.

I do think that it's a biz decision, the fading away of Toby (who left his big label, remember) and the new stuff taking over, which is a bit more apolitical. John Rich supported the nut-job candidate for Tenn. gov., Zach Wamp (who didn't win in the recent primary). I believe Nashville is scared of tapping into the Tea Party rage, all it's gonna do is erode their market share with the people they want to reach--people like me, more or less, Southerners who basically like country music but who are liberals or at least skeptical about the right wing. I know a lot of people like that.

But the big guy with the slide is cool, in the Huckabee clip, and Huck himself acquits himself nicely on bass. I mean could James K. Polk play the banjo?

I tried to like the Jerrod Neimann record, Judge Jerrod & the Hung Jury, and while I kind of noticed the rock-opera aspect of it (note the subtle Pink Floyd Dark Side guitar chord allusion in the first number, I found it kind of ridiculous. That stupid song about going to Mexico and not feeling down. Guess I'll give it another try.

Duds: Clarie Burson's Silver and Ash and Eden Brent's New Orleans piano record. Brent is skillful and there are a few moments of nice rockin' on it. She can play in that Prof. Longhair mode, but her vocals--approaches everything just the same and tries so hard to sound like she's on a riverboat in 1923...annoying.

I bring up Brent just 'cause I know that this appropriation of an idiom--the skill involved in what she does, which is undeniable--may not be preferable to what Taylor Swift does. Just to let you guys know I think about this stuff. When you're calculatin' your aesthetics and all it's very difficult to sort this stuff out. My objection to Swift is that it's not musical, the actual elements of it have nothing much to do with music in its deepest psychological sense. The voice, the stance, the pathos of being young and the lyrics, that may have some merit but I need more, myself. Far be it from me to deny the people their pleasures in this. But one thing an old fart like me, cognizant at least of the niceties of "idiom" and so forth, can say is that country music used to be at least psychologically sound it its simplicity. This is not to decry the modern but merely to make an observation. Now do I prefer Swift to Eden Brent? I dunno--I am skeptical of both roots and rootlessness, as permanent states of being.

Swift Boat: the scuttlebutt here in town for a while, which may not be true, but the people who've said this to me are credible, is that Swift has never written her own stuff without help, or maybe not at all. Has had the guidance of a well-known songwriter whose daughter is a young alt-country nymphet. Probably untrue, but interesting.

The best thing I've heard in the last week is Riley's Grandma's Roadhouse, an early Gary Stewart project done with Owen Bradley in 1970. The local label Demore put it out. This may have been mentioned upthread in the posts I still haven't gotten to. It's what you wish country-rock--Marshall Tucker--would have sounded like, or what the International Submarine Band might've been with more balls, or what Doug Sahm might've done had he come to Nashville. Really great songs about drinking, weed and the pleasures of country life in a tar-paper shack, done with rock dynamics and guitar, but with a very interesting overlay of wistful? glazed? stoned? harmonies a la the Everlys and songforms post-Beatles for sure. Stewart wrote about half the songs and sings them. It's remarkable and as a confirmed Stewart nut I love it, but the whole band is great.

and reading up thar, right, Marcus is full of it re Jesse Winchester and "rockabilly." Last year the Scene asked me to write about Winchester, who was appearing here in town and whom I'd never seen or really listened to very much in years. So I dug out all his stuff I could find and spent a few days with the man.

His first LP is a classic and it's more or less a sui generis singer-songwriter essaying the lyric, as in lyrical, side of basic rock 'n' roll and a little country, a little sentimentality. The insane balls-out of rockabilly isn't there at all. What Marcus was hooking into was the expat aspect of a Memphis/Mississippi artiste feeling lost but still horny and ready in a cold country. Winchester's later stuff is nice with particular props to Nothing but a Breeze. One sly motherfucker indeed. His last album, Love Filling Station, uses newfangled oldfangled acoustic-bluegrass tropes and is very nice too. One great song tucked away in there about how Southern women are disappointed in their men and how the money sustains it all despite said man's fecklessness, daddy got him a job at the bank. A subject I find irresistible, since I know some mighty Steely Magnolias and some mighty feckless men named things like Ferdy...but Winchester I did catch at the Nashville show, just so mellifluous and subtle and sly in the vocal approach, and "Biloxi" and "Mississippi You're on My Mind" (done to a T by Stoney Edwards) are A plus songs, man. But rockabilly... no.

I believe Nashville is scared of tapping into the Tea Party rage, all it's gonna do is erode their market share with the people they want to reach--people like me, more or less, Southerners who basically like country music but who are liberals or at least skeptical about the right wing. I know a lot of people like that.

This is an interesting observation, thanks, ed. I saw this fellow named Mudcat Saunders on the television the other day, MSNBC talking about how Jim Webb won, and he seemed to be in the same vein.

Swift Boat: the scuttlebutt here in town for a while, which may not be true, but the people who've said this to me are credible, is that Swift has never written her own stuff without help, or maybe not at all. Has had the guidance of a well-known songwriter whose daughter is a young alt-country nymphet. Probably untrue, but interesting.

To be honest, I don't give a hoot either way. Nothing is more tedious than the way that writing your own songs in isolation is held up as the mark of a TRUE ARTIST.

Anybody got any Top Ten bait? I don't think I've even heard ten 2010 release country albums (yet)Pretty sure the aforementioned Lydia Loveless and Halestorm gonna be in my TT, but otherwise...

Yeah, the results are what count, talking about Taylor Swift.

So the Jerrod Neimann record should've been called The Eclectic Spanking of Judge Jerrod. When Nashville wants to make a concept record making fun of concept records, they really do it right. This record makes Bobby Bare Jr.'s new one sound positively moribund and ranges over a lot more territory. One tune features Funkadelic guitars circa One Nation Under a Groove and backup singers and occasional wah-wah; there's one about Tiffany a.k.a. Bakersfield from Bakersfield; a Jimmy Buffett imitation with bongos in it; some very odd arrangements including one that alternates strings with some kind of weird keyboard part; a joke-ending of an ending song just like Roger McGuinn used to favor; and the clincher, a song about how he's a throwback to the days of hat acts that alludes to payola, with piano part signifying the glorious past. He sings well enough, overdoes it by my lights but that's part of the concept. Hmm. As I say, the Bare Jr. record sounds anemic by comparison, merely reshuffling some moody alt-country concepts and Bare Jr. sounding dead on his feet throughout most of it.

Wow...Rolling Country is rolling again, I guess. Need to absorb George's and Edd's posts more, but to answer Don's question, my country Top 20 albums for 2010, at this point, would look something like this (with much shuffling likely between now and the end of the year):

1. Jace Everett – Red Revelations (Western Boys/Hump Head)
2. Luther Lackey – Preacher’s Wife (Ecko)*
3. Jamey Johnson – The Guitar Song (Mercury)
4. Flynnville Train – Redemption (Evolution)
5. Laura Bell Bundy – Achin’ & Shakin’ (Mercury)
6. Chely Wright – Lifted Off The Ground (Vanguard)
7. Colt Ford – Chicken And Biscuits (Average Joe’s)
8. Tim Woods – The Blues Sessions (Earwig)*
9. Lee Brice – Love Like Crazy (Curb)
10. Jerrod Niemann – Judge Jerrod And The Hung Jury (Sea Gayle/Arista Nashville)

11. Shinyribs – Well After Awhile (Nine Mile)
12. Merle Haggard - I Am What I Am (Vanguard)
13. Trace Adkins – Cowboy’s Back In Town (Universal)
14. The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band – Wages (SideOneDummy)
15. Elizabeth Cook – Welder (Thirty Tigers)
16. Randy Houser – They Call Me Cadillac (Show Dog)
17. Jason Boland & The Stragglers – High In the Rockies: A Live Album (Apex Nashville/Thirty Tigers)
18. Legendary Shack Shakers – Agridustrial (Colonel Knowledge)
19. Stone River Boys – Love On The Dial (Cow Island)
20. Andy Cohen – Built Right On The Ground (Earwig)*

* -- These ones may well stretch the definition of "country." (Technically more blues or soul.)

And Edd, if you didn't notice, I linked to my own review of that Neimann record upthread, sometime in the past few weeks. Didn't even try the Bare Jr. album; have hated what I've heard before by the guy.

Shack Shakers might stretch the country definition as well, I guess.

And I find Taylor Swift's music pretty darn musical, myself.

Shinyribs and Rev. Peyton borderline too, maybe? I dunno, y'all decide.

Definitely agree with Edd's theory, by the way (and this is what I meant above about Nashville's apparrent slight left turn being possibly a biz decision) that Music City's current target audience seems to be veering more upscale, sophisticated, urbane, maybe even liberal -- mainly, it's who can afford albums and concert tickets. And more extreme forms of tea-party-like rhetoric might well turn lots of such folks off, so maybe the labels and radio figure it's best to be cautious about such stuff.

Krugman wrote recently in the bad ol' Times about the crumbing of our infrastructure

And oh yeah, this was a pretty ominous column, btw, for anybody who missed it. Krugman's really been on a roll the past couple weeks. His column about Paul Ryan reviving Newt Gingrich's fuzzy math, and that being the closest the G.O.P. has to a plan for the future, was pretty horrifying as well. Fwiw:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/opinion/09krugman.html?ref=paulkrugman

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/opinion/06krugman.html?_r=1&ref=paulkrugman

And oh yeah, before that, the one about high, long-term unemployment becoming an accepted part of the future American economic landscape:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02krugman.html?ref=paulkrugman

To what extent have country songwriters addressed these issues? Not much, I don't think.

Edd's theory...that Music City's current target audience seems to be veering more upscale, sophisticated, urbane, maybe even liberal

Okay, looking back, this isn't literally what Edd said. But I do think our theories overlap somewhat (which isn't to say that Tea Partiers on average have less disposable income than urbane liberals or moderates -- the opposite may well be true. But I do think class comes into the equation, somehow or other. Maybe it's more that the urbane types are who the country radio's advertisers want to reach.)

And by "urbane" maybe I just mean "college educated"? Or something.

I want to talk to a few people here in town to test this overlap Chuck and I are experiencing. I'd love to get some harder evidence of what's happening with the last, say, 3 or 4 years.

Agree also on Jace, Jamey and Cook in your top ten. Rev. Peyton I'm on the fence about. The Jerrod record, as I say above (and I'll read your review, Chuck, thanks!) is...real interesting and perhaps even symptomatic of what this demographic outreach is all about. Country as production value as opposed to individual song? Dunno. I hated it the first time I played it, wasn't in the mood for its humor, but I've gone back to it several times.

And yeah, Bare Jr. is generally pretty bad. He tries hard. Not a great singer at all.

Will write more about the amazing Riley record I mentioned above. Got to be one of the year's best reissues.

Something I kinda like, speaking of reissues, is this twofer by Texas singer Tony Booth. At 48 minutes and two LPs, it's short...and Booth is a kind of Johnny Bush-style singer who isn't as operatic as Bush. These records were done around 1970 and contained hits, like "The Key's in the Mailbox" which is also the title track of the first record. I quite like "Down at the Corner Bar" which mentions "some old floozy" and swings really nicely. Produced by Buck Owens' guitarist, Don Rich, and with several songs by Buck himself--"Second Fiddle" and the great "Congratulations, You're Absolutely Right." Also some nice material by Justin Tubb and Tony himself. "Somebody Called L.A." is a kind of precursor to Jerrod's song about Tiffany also known as Bakersfield. "It's just a nightmare/Somebody called L.A./From a Georgia farm we came to this town a year ago," also like "Streets of Baltimore." I know that Bush's vocal approach is an acquired taste, but Booth isn't as histrionic and the songs are models of concision. I believe the other hit was "Lonesome 7-7203" which is the title of the second LP collected here. The L.A. song kinda helps explain the difference between old country and new--the city used to be the Great Alien Place, now Jerrod hops from Nashville to San Jose to the Bay Area with no sweat. Times do change.

Also, before I go, want to mention that I saw Georgette Jones, the daughter of George and Tammy Wynette, at the Midnite Jamboree a couple weekends ago. Nondescript but not unattractive woman about 40 and as good a singer as Tammy if not George, and she did a lot of the material associated with both, including a fine "D-I-V-O-R-C-E." Deceptive: she stood up there and sang quite well, but didn't do anything all that impressive. But at the end of almost song she suddenly rared back and hit some amazing high notes perfectly and in flawless emotional logic, so I was pretty damn happy to have seen her.

OK, the reviews I read of Jerrod, at Rhapsody and at Singles JB, make me feel good to have thought that Jerrod did indeed do all them bg vocals himself. That's interesting to me. Yeah, he does wake up with a topless teacher! He's definitely outta diapers!

Tony Booth was actually from Florida and got onto Capitol thru the good word of Buck Owens, and Tony was another Bakersfield guy. But he sang like Johnny Bush, which is why I thought he was a Texan. (The guy who sounds most like Bush today is Justin Trevino, who is big in Texas and unknown just about anywhere else.) His first charted hit seems to have been 1970's "Irma Jackson," which is a Haggard song. He hit in '71 with "Cinderella" and again with "The Key's in the Mailbox" which went to #15 country. And in '72 with "Lonesome 7" which hit #16.

The Jerrod record, as I say above is...real interesting and perhaps even symptomatic of what this demographic outreach is all about. Country as production value as opposed to individual song?

A good chunk of it is also literally about college (or at least skipping classes and getting drunk with frat buddies), which is obviously a theme guys like Kenny Chesney and Pat Green have touched on in recent years, though not as much, I don't think, and with them it tends toward nostaliga whereas I think most of Jerrod's college stuff is in the present tense (just like Lee Brice's getting rowdy wild after the high school football game stuff). Country about college has got to be a recent development, right? Hell, in the '70s, even in rock music, just about the only people who ever sang about college were Steely Dan! And yeah, obviously too, Niemann's album is a kind of concept record, designed to be played start to finish (with all the skits); probably the last couple Paisley albums have hinted at that sort of thing, but I can't think of any previous country albums that have been so over the top about it. Could become a total fucking annoyance (as in other genres), if it caught on, but now it's a neat novelty. And obviously one economic imepetus for designing albums that way these days would be so fans would want the whole thing, rather than downloading just the individual cuts.

Speaking of individual cuts, curious which ones these are, Edd (tho if I invested more time, I might be able to figure it out myself): (1) One tune features Funkadelic guitars circa One Nation Under a Groove and backup singers and occasional wah-wah; (2) one that alternates strings with some kind of weird keyboard part (3) a joke-ending of an ending song just like Roger McGuinn used to favor.

Speaking of individual cuts, curious which ones these are, Edd (tho if I invested more time, I might be able to figure it out myself): (1) One tune features Funkadelic guitars circa One Nation Under a Groove and backup singers and occasional wah-wah; (2) one that alternates strings with some kind of weird keyboard part (3) a joke-ending of an ending song just like Roger McGuinn used to favor.

let's see, I was working off a promo with no song titles...the one that reminded me of George Clinton is "Come Back to Me," track 11. And the really interesting cut with the string arrangement and that nagging little keyboard (elec piano) and synth? part is "I Hope You Get What You Deserve," track 17. And then the jokey one, "For Everclear," where her shirt comes off, track 19. You're right, it is kind of about college, "My Old School" would've been a great cover.

You have to know that the first serious articles on on the crumbling infrastructure showed up in the Wall Street Journal and the LA Times. Krugman, in a well done piece, emphasized it again. More power to him.

Tea Partiers on average have less disposable income than urbane liberals or moderates

Well, they don't. Most of the surveys I've seen show they skew older and more well off. They are not the bottom-out-of-sighters. So Worley is trying to hook into an older audience. And it matches the Fox News demographic which totally fails with the younger. The younger would give him the finger.

It's a gamble on Worley's part. And if the country music industry is looking to a future, it may indeed, be very nervous about doing anything for that demographic. There's money in it, but ... {fill in the blank)

It's also Ted Nugent's problem. His politics and beliefs destroy his audience. So he's stuck with the diminishing marginal returns I've described on my blog, in his summer tour of dumps/casinos.

The audience coming to see his shows is not the same audience that reads his two and three columns per week in the WaTimes, the stuff that totally shits on the middle class.

Getting back to the country breast-beating on the military thing. The US military is far more diverse than
country music. And an entire rainbow of acts play for the US military overseas.

But it's the country acts which go overboard about there devotion to it the most.

For example, Joan Jett -- who is openly gay -- does a lot of this stuff. But it's not in any way a big part of her shtick.

On the other hand, it's a huge part of Worley's shtick, of Keith's thing, of Nugent's, of Montgomery Gentry's, etc.

It continually strikes as this overcompensating fucked-up semi-educated white boy guilt trip. Some fantasy built off a vague idea about duty, WW II and Sgt. Rock comic books. (Which I had.) You can work off your stupid jingoism by doing penance playing free or semi-free gigs in Afghanistan and Iraq (or Kuwait,
Quatar, and the United Arab Emirates.)

They feel subconsciously slimey -- and they should -- for avoiding what they indicate they believe needs to be done. And it's the only demographic that continually shows imagery of people with medals and ribbons all over chests.

And I would be genuinely interested in talking with Worley -- as would any real journalist, not the random sissies that have been assigned to him. He's not Ted Nugent or Hank Williams Jr. Or John Rich.

Why does he want to work at monetizing bigoted rubbish?

New Taylor Swift single, "Mine," leaked eight days ago without anyone telling me. Heard it an hour back and I'm still humming it, but also had the same thoughts running across my mind that I had when I was still underrating Fearless: the sound is too samey and the vignettes are summaries not stories.

When Fearless finally did hit home what had been sameness now felt like a passionate reverie, stillness atop great feeling, and plenty of nuance and shifts of tone within it. But "Mine" rolls along fine; what's too much the same is the ringing, chiming guitar. Think an acoustic version would be better, with Taylor's voice sounding all vulnerable. Of course, the streams I'm getting on the 'Net have poor fidelity, some thin and deliberately sped up. Right now the song's a 7, but we'll see what happens when I hear a good rip.

Will think more about the lyrics in few days when I write the song up for Yet Another Year In America; I like the line "You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter," seems to have a whole story within it, but this song doesn't tell that story.

Was just listening to "Fearless."

This is just weird. From the Irish Times newspaper. I've never even heard of any of these acts besides Nugent.

Conservativism and neo-liberalism simply don’t get a foot in the record company door unless attached to a certain type of country music performer – or Ted Nugent. The latter was last heard of when at a recent show he referred to Hilary Clinton as a “worthless bitch” and Barack Obama as a “piece of shit” before holding up what appeared to be an assault rifle and saying he told Obama “to suck on my machine gun”.

Nugent, though, represents the outlaw right wing in music terms and is very much out there on the margins. What is emerging with a real force in the US, however, is “Tea Party Music” where rock musicians are finally engaging with the right-wing agenda.

They’re tapping up a new and fervent fanbase – usually baby-boomer types long ago alienated by rock’s liberal, bleeding-heart sentiments.

These Tea Party musicians (such as Krista Branch with I Am America, Jeremy Hoop with Rise Up – dedicated to “all American patriots” – and many others) have been galvanised by the emergence of the Tea Party political pressure group. In simplistic terms, the Tea Party are anti-Obama and pro-Palin – they’re a type of Republican Party with attitude.

For a certain generation, these musicians are their Dylan, Joni Mitchell etc. They sing about “reclaiming” the US from the Democratic movement and lyrically get quite specific about Obama administration policies such as the stimulus package and healthcare reform.

And these aren’t banjo-playing rednecks, this is MTV-friendly music – slick, well-produced and eminently chartable. But such is the fear of the music industry’s antipathy to right-wing music that some of the Tea Party musicians remain “closeted”.

Consider the case of Tea Party poster boy Jon David, whose American Heart song is much loved by Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich. He always performs wearing a large baseball cap and a dark pair of sunglasses.

Jon David is in fact Jonathan Kahn, a Hollywood scriptwriter, who has only recently “outed” himself. His fear for a long time was that he would lose his career in Hollywood because of his political associations: “Being a conservative is the kiss of death there.”

Now that he’s out and proud, he sings his heart out on anthems about cutting taxes and shrinking government.

David/Kahn is a totemic figure for the Tea Party movement – almost a Harvey Milk type if you like. Conservative websites and bloggers laud him for “throwing off the shades and fighting the good fight” and openly talk about “many other right-of-centre sleeper agents all over Hollywood who should declare themselves and try to reclaim a piece of the Hollywood/ pop-culture pie for pro-American and pro-liberty ideals”.

In many ways this is beyond bizarre. That a group of politically motivated musicians are so frightened by the left-liberal entertainment “elite” that they are now using the international language of struggle and oppression.

A right-wing Stonewall is coming – and a Hard Right is Gonna Fall.

The journalist seems to think there's a shortage of music acts which appeal to baby-boomers, that hippie music is still popular.

You have to just laugh and shake your head at a line like "A right-wing Stonewall is coming ..."

He seems to have missed the obvious, that -- yes -- the Tea Party types do whine about being oppressed, but they do it in terms of being oppressed by the 'tyrant' in the White House, while they insist they are taking inspiration from Martin Luther King, Jr. Not Harvey Milk.

Ray Stevens is another guy who has made pro-Tea Party music. I interviewed him earlier this year and was struck by the vehemence of his opposition to Obama.

The image of a "ring-wing Stonewall" is quite amusing, since I would bet most right-wingers and "rednecks" would have no idea what Stonewall means.

You may find this 2009 Washington Post piece on the country audience and the Internet instructive. Excerpt below:

As traditional retailers continue to disappear and even Wal-Mart, by far the largest seller of country music, devotes less floor space to CDs, Capitol Records Nashville President and CEO Mike Dungan says that what worries him is, "if a sizable portion of our audience has no access online, then we're out of business."

Dungan thinks he has mitigated that risk somewhat by signing such artists as Lady Antebellum, Dierks Bentley and Eric Church, who appeal to a younger fan base raised on the Internet. Nielsen research shows that the older people are, the less likely they are to be online.

That fact is borne out in online sales as well. For example, 27.3 percent of the revenue from Lady Antebellum's self-titled debut album comes from digital sales, says Dungan, whereas only 10 percent of the revenue from Adkins's "X" comes from online sales. The three members of Lady Antebellum are in their mid-20s; Adkins is 47.

ha, "right-wing" Stonewall, ring-a-ding-a-wing...

The other fly in the ointment is the US descent into third world nation economy. Then country, and eveyr other genre, has to sign artists that appeal to the haves who spend. In terms of the future, that's a
really crimped potential audience left for country. Paradoxically, if the country industry actually catered to the Tea Party crowd and its political beliefs, and everyone in that demographic got what it wanted in terms of a president and congress, then the industry would have its throat slit.

Krugman explained this differently about a year ago, I think. You can have a country that's a plutonomy. It's just a lot less people spending more. And the artist picture becomes completely different, the labels even more shrunken because most of the population can no longer afford standard ticket sales on a regular basis. In terms of non-essentials, one of the things logically axed is entertainment. And there was a piece in the LA Times a few Sundays ago on how ticket sales are off this summer.

Ted Nugent found this out this summer, playing only casinos, really small dumps, and fairs where "600"
is considered a big VIP crowd.

In this, Worley's strategy -- and by extension his label's -- makes some sense. The Tea Party types are older and they have their pile. It's safe for most of them. So they can theoretically spend on him if they choose to. And he can get publicity on Fox, which is where Nugent gets all his, too.

Nugent's pretty savvy about working this. He's in Phoenix this weekend so he had a publicity event
with Arpaio in which he was 'deputized.' Naturally, it got covered. The Phoenix New Times had it with a pic in their blog and the comments, from the younger, are globally condemnatory. But Nugent knows that's not his audience and if it makes local TV news, theoretically he gets some mileage from it.

27.3 percent of the revenue from Lady Antebellum's self-titled debut album comes from digital sales, says Dungan, whereas only 10 percent of the revenue from Adkins's "X" comes from online sales.

Yeah, but what was Arcade Fire's digital percentage last week, for their new album's first week sales -- 62%, I think I read in the Times?? Had to do with being sold at loss-leader $3.99 price on Amazon, apparently, but still -- if you're talking digital sales, country has always been lagging behind (not as much as, say, Regional Mexican, whose fans barely download at all, but still pretty drastically, I think). Though yeah, obviously a younger demographic would at least potentially change that. (At the beginning of the year, iirc, SoundScan was listing Taylor Swift as the top-selling artist for digital tracks in history so far; not sure if that's changed since, or not. If so, with a new album coming out, she'll probably catch back up pretty quick. But I doubt anybody else in country comes close.)

(And percentage of sales is probably not the same as Dungan's "percent of revenue", I guess -- which I assume would also include digital track sales as well as album sales -- but still, he's right: As stores that sell CDs close and reduce floorspace, country is on the losing end of the stick.)

Thing is, in the past decade, maybe counter-intuitively, the industry downturn seemed to hurt country less than any other musical genre, even despite sales within the genre transioniting much slower to digital. And music's biggest new live acts of the '00s -- the only acts in Billboard's list of the Top 20 touring acts whose recording careers hadn’t already peaked before the millennium started – were Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney, and maybe Tim McGraw (whose '90s and '00s seem more or less equal). But that sort of thing can't last forever. And concert ticket sales are hurting this year too, right? (Also maybe makes sense to consider that, like the Republican Party's though I assume not so much {and of course the Republicans seem oblivious to this, except when wanting to gut the 14th Ammendment I guess}, country's fan base is diminishing as a percentage of the overall population. Hence, half-assed reaching out in recent years to black and Latin audiences, to not much avail I bet.)

Oh yeah, just noticed that George had mentioned ticket sales being off this summer, too. Anyway, I've been wondering, given how much concert tickets cost these days -- if Toby and Chesney and McGraw have no problem filling seats (or less problem doing so than most artists of their generation), who exactly is their live audience? They can't be poor. (I guess it's possible they charge less for tickets than comparable rock or rap or pop acts do -- I haven't comparison shopped -- and maybe they just tour more. But that Billboard Top 20 I referred to was based on total gross dollars, not number of tickets.)

Well, as you wipe out the middle class you steadily diminish the audience for popular music, or at least sales of recordings. People will continue to 'watch' the acts on the cheapest network television
stations.

The younger kids, who buy Taylor Swift, are naturally on-line. And they're still greatly shielded from the savage economy by their parents. However, once out of there in a decade, then you see them crash too, with everyone else when they get thrown into it. Or we have a country like Japan, where everyone stays home with their parents and spending tails off.

I think, long term, it's a very grim picture. The plutonomy doesn't need or pay for mass entertainment.
Only things like buying tickets to see U2 at Soldier Field, when you live in the Hamptons, or flying somewhere to see Paul McCartney.

I don't think there's anything good in data that shows Trace Adkins fans buying 17 percent less stock on-line and that therefore Nashville wishes to invest in more teenage acts as an answer. They're overlooking a bigger picture, one that says Brad Paisley's shiny 'future' doesn't include a lot of middle class discretionary spending on entertainments. It's not the middle class that buys the goofy dancing robot in his video. And if you need to replace your chrome spring leg, you'll spend on that before you spend on music if your money's not much and social benefits don't quite cover it.

The point being: When you kill the middle class everything everyone has come to live and know slowly
shrivels up and dies. Except the mansions. And the residences now become flophouses right beside them where the people who are the servant class live. I learned this working the census.