Rolling Country 2009 Thread

Eight best songs on Jamie O'Neal's Shiver (Mercury, 2000), which I bought for $1.00 last year:

1. "There Is No Arizona" -- the hit!
2. "Frantic" -- bluegassy bubble-rap!
3. "No More Protecting My Heart" -- super boppy pop!
13. "To Be With You" -- hot spacey Spanish-guitar sex fantasy!
8. "The Only Thing Wrong" -- suburban working-woman blues!
9. "I'm Still Waiting" -- big booming AC ballad!
11. "Sanctuary"
1. "When I Think About Angels"

(Oops, I swtiched from numbers-of-preference to CD track numbers three songs in. Should be 1 through 8! Also, I probably should have stopped at five or six.)

Five best songs on Joe Dee Messina's self-titled album (Curb, 1996), which also cost me $1 last year:

1. "Heads California, Tails Carolina"
2. "You're Not In Kansas Anymore"
3. "Walk To The Light"
4. "He'd Never Seen July Cry"
5. Lots of songs tied for fifth place

(Oops, heads and tails were the other way around for those two "C" states. And the coin was a quarter. And the Kansas song might be even better - It's close, and they're both totally great.)

Also, judging from both of those albums, I really like country women who sing songs about states.

(FIVE states among the three best songs, total, if you count both North and South Carolina separately.)

Chely Wright Let Me In (MCA, 1997), also $1 last year I think, not as good as aforementioned O'Neal or Messina albums, plus there's no track nearly as excellent as Chely's '99 "Single White Female" on it, so marginal overall, but I kind of like "Shut Up And Drive" (Drifters rhythm under girl talking to self, maybe or maybe not as good as Rhianna's song of the same name); "Emma Jean's Guitar" (a '50 Gibson which Pat Green would like since it came from a pawn shop); "Feelin Single And Seein' Double" (cover of rockabilly tune that I know as being George Jones's, though apparently Emmylou has done it too, not sure whose is more famous.)

9513's ridiculous list of the top 50 best country songs of 2008:

http://www.the9513.com/the-best-country-songs-of-2008/

I'm sorry, you can't have the Groundhogs' James Road thing and NOT at least one album or collection by Savoy Brown. And where's Ten Years After? "I'm Going Home" is the sword in the stone of the genre. Now, technically, Foghat was Savoy Brown minus Kim Simmonds and Chris Youlden, but SB's most successful US boogie record was Street Corner Talkin' which came right after Foghat was replaced by a new band.

Here's Edd Hurt's list from that No Dep poll. (I post it not only 'cause I respect his writing but 'cause I'd wondered, after he stopped posting here in September and his email address only got bounces, if he were still alive. Presumably this is proof that he is. Either that, or he's got a lot of sway with the postal service up in heaven.)(Also has been getting published in various Nashville papers, another possible sign of being not dead.)

Jamey Johnson, That Lonesome Song – 10
Chuck Prophet, Dreaming Waylon's Dreams – 9
Randy Newman, Harps And Angels – 8
Ross Johnson, Make It Stop – 7
Various, Thank You Friends: The Ardent Records Story – 6
Linda Perhacs, Parallelograms – 5
Walter Becker, Circus Money – 4
Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs, /Dirt Don't Hurt – 3
Como Now: The Voices of Panola Co., Mississippi – 2
Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It – 1

Hadn't heard of the Perhacs. A Google search reveals this to be the second reissue of a gentle psychedelic album from 1970 by a Topanga Canyon dental hygienist/folkie. In an interview with Andy Beta she says she was depressed when she heard the album because the sound compression got rid of the highs and lows and made it sound dead. Don't know if that was rectified in the reissue (the writeup on her MySpace implies that it is but isn't altogether clear on the subject.) My Web browser is being a pain about loading the songs from her MySpace, so I haven't listened yet.

Nice to know Edd's alive and well (and also that he voted for the same two Johnsons that I did!)

George, you are probably right about Savoy Brown and/or Ten Years After belonging on that Spin boogie-rock list. What can I say? Limiting those Essentials things to eight albums is tough. And the Groundhogs are such an entity unto themselves that I wanted to include them. (Anyway, you should cut me a break despite my neglect, since I finally got around to listening obsessively this week to that pub-rocky Big Balls And The Great White Idiot CD-R you sent me last year. It was definitely worth drinking a few beers to.)

Edd's been real busy, for inst writing notes for a couple of worthy Caroline Peyton reissues. He turned me on to Thank You Friend, which I would have listed, but not quite country enough even for my ballot (I don't go afield on purpose, just slim pickins in mainstream--the flashing rise and mebbe peak of Chicks! Keith! Wilson! Big & Rich! Lambert! Etc!-seems like a dream now). Also turned me on to that Chuck Prophet, which almost seemed a little too VU Loaded for country, but too good for the list to resist. I turned him on to der Perhacs, and yeah its sonics are much improved, track list much lengthened, and she writes a lot of pleased, icky-positive notes, almost the whole thing is is icky-positive, with her proudly genteel folkie voice very centerstage (you can tell she thinks she's the sultry cosmic handmaiden). I do like a couple tracks not so voice-centric, but guess that's why they're outtakes.

(Although he and Peyton and everybody else whose opinion I'm aware of loves it.)

Marty update!
"THE MARTY STUART SHOW"
CONTINUES TO CELEBRATE
TRADITIONAL COUNTRY MUSIC IN 2009
NASHVILLE, TENN - Jan. 12, 2009 - Country music icon Marty Stuart continues to pay tribute to traditional music this year as he begins
taping The
Marty Stuart Show with episodes airing every Saturday at 8pm on RFD-TV. Performers set to appear include John Rich, Dierks
Bentley, Gretchen Wilson, The SteelDrivers, Mel Tillis, Buck Trent,
The Oak Ridge Boys, Chris Scruggs and Chuck Mead, Del
McCoury, Connie
Smith and The Sundowners, Wanda Jackson, Duane Eddy, Kathy Mattea,
Quebe Sisters and more.
"I love this show," said Stuart. "It's everything that country music was designed to be and it is such a joy to be a part of. As I
suspected, there
is a world of people out there waiting on this kind of entertainment and the response has been off the charts."

Stuart's other ventures include his renowned private country music memorabilia
collection entitled "Sparkle and Twang: Marty Stuart's American
Odyssey" on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio through March 1, his recently-released second photography book titled
Country
Music: The Masters, and his weekly XM Radio show titled "Marty Stuart's American Odyssey" that explores music unique to the United States.
To watch clips from the show, visit www.youtube.com/user/MartyStuartVideos.

Surprisingly good: Connor Christian & Southern Gothic, 90 Proof Lullabies -- with that title and band name I was expecting drab alt-country, but it's got hooks and he's got a radio-friendly (not necessarily "great" but certainly not indie) voice. Southern Gothic is a pretty hot band, nothing fancy but some sting in 'em nonetheless. Bad idea to cover "One Toke Over the Line" (always a snooze to me) but forgiven for good songs like "Sunday Suit" and "Let Ya Slide."

Lots of discussion of the rural/country end of late '70s German schlager pop in the past couple days here:

I Have Never Heard Entire Albums By These Bands Who Have Excellent Songs On Late '70s/Early '80s European K-Tel-Style Compilations

For instance, posted by me this morning:

Super 20 Hitparade (Ariola West Germany, 1977)

WENCKE MYHRE "Lass Mein Knie, Joe" (Deutsch cover of Bonnie Tyler's great "It's a Heartache," not sung in a ravished Rod Stewart-like voice but still good. Pretty sure I liked a 45 by Wencke on that Metal Mike thread. And pre-heart-eclipse years of Bonnie Tyler herself are another topic for future research. She was from Wales; probably in the Abba-country ballpark.)
ROLAND KAISER "Sieben Fasser Wein" (oompah fur bier trinken)
BENNY "Skateboard" (Awesome. Seemingly takes its "ooh-ah-ah" hook from David Seville's "Witch Doctor," one of my favorite songs of my grade school years, which as far as I know has never influenced any other music in the half century since its existence. Also, this is a song about skateboards!)
MARTIN MANN "Strohblumen" (Catchy guitared and whistled country-pop tune)
GUNTER GABRIEL "Komm Charly Fang Mich Charly" (Dark-melodied talk-rhythm country with girlie-girl backup singing; possible Johnny Cash influence?)
ROBERTO BLANCO "Wer Trinkt Schon Gern Den Wein Allein" (another ale-hoister for the Hofbrauhaus, as its title makes clear, but this one with Mexican-music-like "ay yi yi" interjections, especially interesting given Blanco's possibly Spanish surname and the fact that, in his picture, he seems to be a black man. Which doesn't add up to Mexican, obviously, but what the hell do Germans know? Also makes me wonder about the connection between German music and regional Mexican music, which is also frequently based on polka rhythms, and has its own internal urban pop-vs.-rural trad culture division.)

All in all, probably the most "country" Schlager comp I've heard. There's also a German cover of Kenny Rogers's "Lucille" by MICHAEL HOLM, plus two more songs that seem to be trying to combine Latin or Caribbean rhythms with German ones -- one by LENA VALATIS that starts out quasi-Latin, goes oompah, then comes back, and one actually called "Tanze Samba Mit Mir (Liebelei)" by REX GILDO. Maybe there was a Latin fad in Germany then or something.

Also, if anybody's interested, I got in a cranky pissing contest about current country with the 9513 blog guy in the comments section here last Friday:

http://idolator.com/5127490/the-9513-works-hard-to-prove-country-music-still-has-a-pulse

Limiting those Essentials things to eight albums is tough. And the Groundhogs are such an entity unto themselves that I wanted to include them.

Granted. Next time suggest to design they limit the pic/art to less rather than hog a third to half of the space on the page. Anyway, the James Road comp is an oddball. I liked it but it's definitely from the less traveled part of the Groundhogs catalog -- the time after McPhee had broken up the original band, then found out he couldn't draw as much under his own name, and brought back the name and concept for a more mannered and traditional sound. Of all Groundhogs material, it's probably the most rustic.

Nashville Scene poll results are up:

http://www.nashvillescene.com/2009-01-15/news/the-ninth-annual-nashville-scene-country-music-critics-poll-jamey-johnson-captured-the-critics-taylor-swift-topped-the-charts-and-sugarland-conquered-them-both/

"Never before has a newcomer dominated the Country Music Critics Poll the way Jamey Johnson has this year's edition."

Here's the actual results, they've got some funny link issues going on:

http://www.nashvillescene.com/2009-01-15/news/the-ninth-annual-nashville-scene-country-music-critics-poll-the-results/

Albums
1. Jamey Johnson: That Lonesome Song (Mercury)
2. Hayes Carll: Trouble in Mind (Lost Highway)
3. Lee Ann Womack: Call Me Crazy (MCA Nashville)
4. Sugarland: Love on the Inside (Mercury)
5. Patty Loveless: Sleepless Nights (Saguaro Road) 2
6. Lucinda Williams: Little Honey (Lost Highway)
7. Taylor Swift: Fearless (Big Machine)
8. George Strait: Troubadour (MCA Nashville)
9. Alan Jackson: Good Time (Arista Nashville)
10. Kathy Mattea: Coal (Captain Potato)
11. Rodney Crowell: Sex & Gasoline (Work Song/Yep Roc)
12. Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson: Rattlin' Bones (Sugar Hill)
13. Brad Paisley: Play: The Guitar Album (Arista Nashville)
14. The SteelDrivers: The SteelDrivers (Rounder)
15. Randy Travis: Around the Bend (Warner Bros.)
16. James McMurtry: Just Us Kids (Lightning Rod)
17. Emmylou Harris: All I Intended To Be (Nonesuch)
18. Dolly Parton: Backwoods Barbie (Dolly)
19. Ashton Shepherd: Sounds So Good (MCA Nashville)
20. Charlie Haden Family & Friends: Rambling Boy (Decca)
21. Willie Nelson: Moment of Forever (Lost Highway)
22. Glen Campbell: Meet Glen Campbell (Capitol)
23. Shelby Lynne: Just a Little Lovin' (Lost Highway)
24. Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis: Two Men With the Blues (Blue Note)
25. Carlene Carter: Stronger (Yep Roc)
26. The Drive-By Truckers: Brighter Than Creation's Dark (New West)
27. Mudcrutch: Mudcrutch (Reprise)
28. Darius Rucker: Learn to Live (Capitol Nashville)
29. Robert Plant/Alison Krauss: Raising Sand (Rounder)
30. Justin Townes Earle: The Good Life (Bloodshot)

Singles
1. Jamey Johnson: "In Color"
2. Lee Ann Womack: "Last Call"
3. Miranda Lambert: "Gunpowder and Lead"
4. Hayes Carll: "She Left Me for Jesus"
5. George Strait: "Troubadour"
6. Trisha Yearwood: "This is Me You're Talking To"
7. Carrie Underwood: "Just a Dream"
8. Darius Rucker: "Don't Think I Don't Think About It"
9. Ashton Shepherd: "Sounds So Good"
10. Randy Travis: "Dig Two Graves"
11. Trace Adkins: "You're Gonna Miss This"
12. Kid Rock: "All Summer Long"
13. James Otto: "Just Started Loving You"
14. The SteelDrivers: "Blue Side of the Mountain"
15. Little Big Town: "Fine Line"

Reissues
1. Hank Williams: The Unreleased Recordings (Time-Life)
2. Johnny Cash: At Folsom Prison: Legacy Edition (Legacy/Columbia)
3. Willie Nelson: One Hell of a Ride (Legacy)
4. Roy Orbison: The Soul of Rock and Roll (Monument/Orbison/Legacy)
5. Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs (Columbia/Legacy)
6. Toby Keith: 35 Biggest Hits (Show Dog)
7. Reba McEntire: 50 Greatest Hits (MCA Nashville)
8. Ernest V. Stoneman: Ernest V. Stoneman: The Unsung Father of Country Music 1925-1934 (5 String)
9. George Jones: Burn Your Playhouse Down: The Unreleased Duets (Bandit)
10. Various artists: More Dirty Laundry: The Soul of Black Country (Trikont)

Male Vocalists:
1. Jamey Johnson
2. Alan Jackson
3. Brad Paisley
4. George Strait
5. Randy Travis
6. Trace Adkins
7. Hayes Carll
8. Keith Urban
9. Willie Nelson
10. Toby Keith

Female Vocalists:
1. Lee Ann Womack
2. Patty Loveless
3. Miranda Lambert
4. Alison Krauss
5. Trisha Yearwood
6. Taylor Swift
7. Emmylou Harris
8. Jennifer Nettles
9. Kathy Mattea
10. Lucinda Williams

Live Acts:
1. Robert Plant/Alison Krauss
2. Brad Paisley
3. Miranda Lambert
4. Sugarland
5. Keith Urban
6. Kenny Chesney
7. Lyle Lovett
8. Willie Nelson
9. Cherryholmes
10. Little Big Town

Duos and Groups:
1. Sugarland
2. Robert Plant/Alison Krauss
3. The SteelDrivers
4. Little Big Town
5. Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson
6. Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis
7. Lady Antebellum
8. Montgomery Gentry
9. Dailey & Vincent
10. Joey & Rory

Songwriters:
1. Jamey Johnson
2. Hayes Carll
3. Rodney Crowell
4. James McMurtry
5. Brad Paisley
6. Taylor Swift
7. Dolly Parton
8. Bruce Robison
9. Miranda Lambert
10. Alan Jackson

New Acts:
1. Ashton Shepherd
2. Lady Antebellum
3. The SteelDrivers
4. Jamey Johnson
5. Darius Rucker
6. The Zac Brown Band
7. Justin Townes Earle
8. Hayes Carll
9. Randy Houser
10. Joey & Rory

Artists of the Year:
1. Jamey Johnson
2. Sugarland
3. Robert Plant/Alison Krauss
4. Brad Paisley<
5. Alan Jackson
6. Taylor Swift
7. Lee Ann Womack
8. George Strait
9. Miranda Lambert
10. Kenny Chesney

Actually think the comments this year are generally pretty good (and the results aren't bad either -- has commercial Nashville stuff ever done so well in that poll? I guess 9513 is alt-country's last gasp.)

Surprised to see Ashton's "Sounds So Good" score on the singles list, rather than "Takin' Off This Pain." Was really under the impression that the latter was her signature song; am I wrong, or do people just have short memories? Figured her album would do better, to (though I didn't vote for it.)

What did Deep Purple do at CMA Awards? (Maybe some band started playing "Smoke On The Water" as an intro or something? First I've heard of that.)

Ernest V. Stoneman: The Unsung Father of Country Music 1925-1934 (5 String) sounds cool! I'd never heard of that reissue before. Really like my old thrift-store vinyl copy of Ernest V. Stoneman and His Dixie Mounataineers 1927-1928 (on Historical), and compilation tracks I've heard.

Also, what do the SteelDrivers sound like -- bluegrass, Southern rock, what? Never heard them.

Still not getting what people hear in that Darius Rucker song. (I know, he's a black guy, which is wonderful, but I swear I hear more soul music in Toby Keith. I may have heard more in Hootie and the Blowfish, too, to be honest. Didn't hate the Rucker album, though; it was pleasant, and he's a competent enough singer. If it actually had an interesting song or two, it might not even have bored me.)

Joke of the poll: Mudcrutch.

Btw, also from that reissue list, not as good as it sounds (I had hopes, which were dashed): George Jones: Burn Your Playhouse Down: The Unreleased Duets (Bandit)

From a different list universe, a email Don forwarded me the other day:

Club (Nashville, TN - Jan. 14, 2009) Marco Club Connection has announced its list of the ten most requested and played country dance club songs of 2008.

For the fifth consecutive year, a panel of more than 215 nightclubs and dance instructors throughout the country were surveyed during the last four weeks of 2008 to compile the data.

#1 - Alan Jackson "Good Time" - Jackson's G-O-O-D T-I-M-E was the runaway favorite for 2008, garnering up to three spins a night during the peak of the song's popularity in the summer last year.
#2 - The Zac Brown Band "Chicken Fried" - Interest in this song grew from its initial support in the Southern clubs and spread nationwide within weeks of its release.
#3 - Kid Rock "All Summer Long" - This mash-up of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" was an instant success on country dance floors.
#4 - Matt Stillwell "Shine" - Stillwell's debut single has remained on club playlists for more than six months as interest in this newcomer continues to grow.
#5 - Toby Keith "She's a Hottie" - Clubs were ecstatic to have a new up-tempo Toby Keith song last spring. The success of this single reserved Keith a spot in the Top Ten Country Dance Songs for the fifth year in a row.
#6 - Lady Antebellum "Love Don't Live Here" - This fresh new act exploded on the dance club scene last February with their unique fusion of country and rock.
#7 - Sugarland "All I Wanna Do" - Jennifer Nettles' catchy vocal hook and pop appeal made this song destined for success in the clubs.
#8 - James Otto "Just Got Started Lovin' You" - Otto struck a chord in club patrons across the country with this soulful breakout hit.
#9 - Adam Gregory "Crazy Days" - Gregory's dance remix of his first U.S. single, "Crazy Days," was used in clubs for a classic line dance called "walk the line."
#10 - Craig Morgan "International Harvester" - Morgan chugged into the #10 spot with this heartland hit.

So who are Matt Stillwell and Adam Gregory? And does "International Harvester" have a "tractor dance" that goes with it? That'd be cool, if it does.

What did Deep Purple do at CMA Awards? (Maybe some band started playing "Smoke On The Water" as an intro or something? First I've heard of that.)

Yeah, Brad Paisley and Keith Urban threw part of "Smoke on the Water" into their "Start a Band" thing at the start of the show. Part of "Layla" too I think.

Pat Green "What I'm For" title track...reminds me a lot of Alabama's "40 Hour Week (For a Livin')"

Bizarrely, another song it's been reminding me of is "Manifesto" by Roxy Music ("I am for a life around the corner/That takes you by surprise...I am for a life at time by numbers/Blastin' fast and low"), but a way mushier version -- like, if Dan Fogelberg covered it or something. Album is hitting me as mooshier in general, in fact. Definitely has some okay Mellencampy parts here and there, though.

One upcoming album I've been liking more, for what it's worth, is The Man of Somebody's Dreams, a tribute to the Hacienda Brothers' late Chris Gaffney due in March on Yep Roc, with renditions of his songs by lots of notable names: Joe Ely, Boz Scaggs, Los Lobos, Dave Alvin, James McMurtry, Freddie Fender (recorded a few years ago I assume), Alejandro Escovedo, John Doe, etc. So far, I prefer it to any of the Haciendas' albums I've heard, though I'm not sure which tracks are my favorites yet. On first couple listens, oddly, one that jumped out at me was "Get Off My Back Lucy" done by the Iguanas, who I've paid no attention to at all before.

You know, 74 voters isn't a lot for a national poll, so some of the lower-rated results might not be all that meaningful (there were 41 voters in the Poptimists poll, and two high votes for "Duri Duri" were enough to get it into the top twenty).

Geoff's not being altogether stupid when he's saying that Taylor isn't country, since what he means by "country" is pretty ancient (context must be rural, neck must be red or collar blue, or at least you must be speaking on behalf of those collars or necks7), but he's still very wrong, and you have to decide not to count Tim McGraw, Deana Carter, the Dixie Chicks, Jamie O'Neal, Garth Brooks, and scads of others that you guys could probably list more readily than I could. Taylor's eighteen and she's already done two retrospective songs about what it was like to be a teenager, "Tim McGraw" being the fiftieth or five hundredth variation on Deana Carter's "Strawberry Wine" (and McGraw himself had sung a couple of those variants, "Red Ragtop" and "Something Like That"). And teen heartbreak in country wasn't exactly unknown to Skeeter Davis and Brenda Lee way back when. I doubt that Taylor'd be scoring so high on the country charts if she was getting not only the teen girls but also the suburban housewives and the small-town, divorced, blue-collar wastrels who Geoff thinks need country as their very own genre and whose experience of love I'd wager isn't too far from Taylor's, actually. In fact, the difference between Jamey and Taylor may have less to do with a difference in experience than with Jamey writing more of the behavior and the outer details in order to evoke what's going on inside while Taylor writes more of the emotions and inner monologue. In other words, he's the strong silent type on a weep, while she's, you know, a girl. But it's not like Jamey doesn't do the inside and Taylor doesn't do the outer, and "I start a fight because I need to feel something" is a line that could have come from either.

I think that country is getting more singer-songwriterly in its lyrics, and this is hardly strange.

My good friend Leslie says that I'm just being Miley is a huge George Strait fan who travels down to New Mexico or wherever she can to hear Strait in concert, and she saw Taylor Swift opening for Strait a couple of years ago and has become a Taylor Swift fan too - she's a structural engineer and her boyfriend is a rugged man's man who's lived something of a Jamey Johnson life and I don't think it has occurred to her to think that Strait and Swift don't belong in the same genre. She's from the Michigan 'burbs and now lives in the a working-class 'burb north of Denver, but she's in business for herself, so I don't know whether or not she counts as the stereotypical country fan, but just who do we think listens to and buys the stuff? The 'burbs and the cities are where people live, and the 'burbs are where the consumers of country live, by and large.

I doubt that Taylor'd be scoring so high on the country charts if she was getting not only the teen girls but also the suburban housewives and the small-town, divorced, blue-collar wastrels who Geoff thinks need country as their very own genre and whose experience of love I'd wager isn't too far from Taylor's, actually.

Sentence is long and complex and I think I left out a "not" or something: I doubt that Taylor'd be scoring so high on the country charts if she wasn't getting not only the teen girls but also the suburban housewives and the small-town, divorced, blue-collar wastrels etc.

And the Scene just has its head up its ass when it runs a little chart that shows that Miranda Lambert and Jamey Johnson got critical but not commercial success.

(But they're like this every year.)

Hadn't realized that the Raconteurs did a version of "Old Enough" with Ashley Monroe and Ricky Scaggs. I'm still frustrated that no Ashley Monroe album was ever released.

Stephen Deusner comparing Jessica Lea Mayfield to Taylor Swift inspired me to go to Mayfield's MySpace, where her album is streamed. I'm four tracks in and don't know if I'll stick much longer. I don't hate it, but she's got a Lucinda Williams drawl-of-tragedy voice recorded in a Mazzy Starr clinical-depression soundscape, and my eyelids and earlobes are drooping.

and you have to decide not to count Tim McGraw, Deana Carter, the Dixie Chicks, Jamie O'Neal, Garth Brooks, and scads of others that you guys could probably list more readily than I could

I mean Geoff has to decide not to count these people in order to make his argument, which means he's discounting a whole hunk of trends in country since, oh, you all can tell me better but I'd say since 1954, if not 1914.

Haven't looked at Reynolds' post (yet?) owing to my getting ever-more-irritated at his tendency to project ideas onto people that they don't actually hold, but as for what Xhuxk said about having more-and-more reservations about the albums on his list as he goes further down, my reservations about the albums on my list start with the album I listed at number one (Danity Kane Welcome To The Dollhouse). There are rarely good albums that I don't have reservations about, given that most good albums (and most mediocre albums and most bad albums) are made by people with sensibilities very different from mine. Also, I love some albums lower on my list more than I love the Danity Kane (Scooter's Jumping All Over The World and CSS's Donkey, for instance), since I took the poll to be about what albums I thought were best, not what albums I loved the most. "Best" and "love" are different concepts.

xp Yeah, and this whole platitudinous idea that country is suddenly being listened to by suburban moms (see also my debate with that 9513 fellow) is really specious, given that the U.S. population has drifting toward suburbia ever since the end of World War II if not earlier, and the fact that country has been incorporating suburban-style pop just as long. How long has it been since, say, farming was the dominant subject of country songs? (Was it ever? If anything, Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers sang more about moving on to new places, as I recall.)

Also, I'd be surprised if, say, Lucinda Williams's audience doesn't lean at least as much toward so-called soccer moms as Faith Hill's audience does.

A possibly dire prediction for '09 country, from Ken Tucker (the Billboard one) in Billboard's Best Bets issue, which came out Friday: "With fewer opportunities at radio due to cutbacks on the on-air and programming side, country music, which relies heavily on radio for exposure, will not produce a new breakthrough act -- one that sells more than 300,000 units, for the sake of argument. Already spread thin, programmers will have less time to listen to new music, resulting in safer choices. And with more time slots being syndicated, listeners will hear more recent chart-toppers and greatest-hits standards on their local stations."

The issue does mention a new Tim McGraw album due out later this year, though, with possible collaborations from Chris Brown and T-Pain. That could be interesting.

Btw, if it sounds like I'm setting up a strawman (or straw-woman) by arguing with claims about soccer moms, it's because those claims don't come from Geoffrey Himes but from Jim Malec at 9513. Agree with Frank, though, that Himes's implication that Taylor Swift's audience is all suburban girls and no blue-collar divorcee's is quite a leap of faith. You don't do Taylor Swift sales numbers from just teenage girls, especially not these days.

Also, still don't get Himes's identification of Lee Ann Womack as primarily a traditional artist, "clearly most at home in the hard-country milieu that her East Texas DJ daddy raised her in," who has simply made occasional popwise detours now and then. Still don't see how anybody who ever heard her first two, clearly crossovery, albums can make that assertion without being completely willful or amnesiac about it. (And I still don't understand how her last couple sound all that honky-tonky, either.)

Anyway, beyond all that, my basic understanding is that "country music" has been a commercial marketing concept pretty much since the beginning -- at least back to early '20s Opry star Vernon Dalhart, the slumming opera singer whose 78 of "Wreck of the Old 97" supposedly sold 6 million copies. As for since then, here are David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren in Heartaches By The Number: Country's 500 Greatest Singles: "As much as any form of popular music, country tends to its fences. The genre is constantly building and shoring them up, mending and diverting them, and there are always those fans quick to declare this new record or that new sound to far afield, 'not country.' Even so, those criticisms have rarely, if ever, stopped most country fans from eventually warming to those 'not country' styles, whether in the form of Jimmie Rodgers recording with Louis Armstrong, a Tin Pan Alley ballad from Gene Autry, the dappled variations of producer Owen Bradley worked on the Nashville Sound, or down-home equivalents of Motown and Philly Soul that auteur Billy Sherrill crafted in the countrypolitan area." Why Taylor Swift would not fit into this tradition is something I just don't get.

Also, I just checked: Hard Times Come Again No More: Early American Rural Songs of Hard Times and Hardships: Classic Recordings of the 1920s and 30s (a Yazoo compilation I've been listening to lately) does contain a handful of songs about farming on it (usually sharecropping on tenant farms and owing your soul to the company store) -- "Down On Penny's Farm," "Price Of Cotton Blues," "Got The Farm Land Blues," "Boll Weevil," etc. But even on that album, they're not in the majority. And on '20s/'30s country compilations I've got that are less explicitly geared toward Great Depression songs (the Charlie Poole box set for instance), I'm barely finding farming songs at all, for what that's worth.

re: Soccer Moms

I've heard this diss on radio country before (it's certainly not original to Jim Malec) and it does have some grounding--programmers targeting suburban/exurban listeners (not just women) who live outside the South, playing songs about little kids/how the glow you get from seeing your kid smile is worth all the crap you have to put up with at work. But Country has long been the format that acknowledged that people's lives tend to stretch past the age of 25 and that they end up having families and illnesses--so it's not all that strange that adults in the suburbs might respond to it.

It's also (and this was my point) not remotely new that adults in the suburbs might respond to it, since adults in the suburbs have been responding to country music's grown-up themes as long as any of us (and Milec and Himes too, I'm sure) have been alive.

Beyond suburbia and into urban bohemia, I have been trying to listen to the upcoming album by rustic-sounding Oakland indie band Winfred E. Eye. and I've been consistently liking one song -- "Lil Peck," apparently about moving away from your parents' home and drinking a lot. Or something like that. (Actually, the press release claims it's a family reunion.) But the rest of the album so far has been making me as sleepy as the band appears to be.

HEY XHUXX: if'n your fanger ain't broke kindly consult my posts about the Steeldrivers on RC 2008, if you sincerely xpost wonder that is (also can burn em for you)

Also, if you sincerely wonder about polkas in Tex-Mex music kindly consult that list you posted and the CDs from it you prob have of Tex-Kraut and Tex-Czech (whole circuits and generations of that stuff, incl the inevitable should we Youth use these samples or not and how etc) and the soundtrack of Schultze Gets The Blues we both top-rated last year [wonder if that's on DVD playable Over Here?)Germans didn't stop with the border, including the ones invited/recruited by the Emperor before the Mexican Revolution, and others uninvited.

Will definitely go back and check those Steeldrivers posts, Don; should have paid more attention the frist time, obviously. But as for the Kraut/Mex connection, I wasn't so much talking about the centuries-old history, which I'm fairly familiar with and, as you say, I've even written about (Germans bringing accordions and polkas to Texas etc) as uncanny but seemingly coincidental parallels between recent German and Mexican pop. (It's the recent German stuff I know very little about. For instance: though countryish schlager songs are all over those '70s comps that I write about on that other thread, is such music still being made now?)

(Well, I don't doubt it's still being made on some level. But is it still being widely recorded, and reaching any kind of significant audience? Did it ever wind up incorporating country from later than the Kenny Rogers era? Or did its perfomers and audience all pass their sell-by date years ago?)

Also interested in possible influences in the other direction: Mexican pop influencing the German kind.

Don on the Steeldrivers, from Rolling Country '08:

the Steeldrivers, anybody heard their album? Some pretty good (though brief) live sets on radio, but the lead Steeldriver guy's voice is so thick and meaty, like if Hood had Cooley's lungs, and they don't seem to go in for lengthy solos--all in all, I don't see how they fit into bluegrass, but apparently they do. (Sort of like a rougher Chatham County Line, who are also more about the songs than picking)

(mines and mountains, but really more of a stringband than bluegrass, though they're new stars on the circuit): self-titled debut of the Steeldrivers--sort of like if Seger were to make an album backed by the Del McCoury Band, like Earle did--only even less trad(making wise use of P.Domain for copyrights, however) yet non'trad in in a subtle enough way(not counting the nongrass vocals, which aren't subtle, just unaffected)yet not newgrass ect (re today's country as retro rock, something like "Heaven Sent" evokes one of Dickie Betts' higher-flying solos, but it doesn't even have electric instruments, much less solos--the whole album is pretty much unplugged, but moves right along, unhurriedly, yet 10 songs in 36 minutes )Gets better as it goes along, too. The second half kicks in quicer than the first. It's on Rounder

I should probably check them out.

Indeedio, although we hear a lotta stuff diferrently, so I hope you're not too disappointed (think you'll like *some* of it, though may have to grow on you). Yes, as I meant to indicate above, there are Tex-Deutsch or and Tex-Czech bands of diff generations, keeping a circuit alive out West, or so I've read (somewhere on the Web). Don't know about in Germany, but probably, though the Amerikan quality might well be a big part of its appeal by now ( there are German Civil War re-enactors and pilgrims to the South, I've met them, and they were big fans of Karl May, the Zane Grey of Germany[wanna say Tom but I think it's Karl]. These guys were on their way to to meet some of their countrymen by the Alamo)

Hadn't realized that the Raconteurs did a version of "Old Enough" with Ashley Monroe and Ricky Scaggs.

Happened to see a video of this version on CMT. Very nice.

x-post I recently heard an interview with Trent Willmon where he said that the guy from the Steeldrivers is the best singer in Nashville.

Also, still don't get Himes's identification of Lee Ann Womack as primarily a traditional artist, "clearly most at home in the hard-country milieu that her East Texas DJ daddy raised her in," who has simply made occasional popwise detours now and then. Still don't see how anybody who ever heard her first two, clearly crossovery, albums can make that assertion without being completely willful or amnesiac about it. (And I still don't understand how her last couple sound all that honky-tonky, either.)

I agree. In particular I've read many references to "Last Call" being "traditional", which I don't understand, and finally decided it only comes off that way, if it does, because she's singing about being in a bar (though she's not the one in the bar, and the song sounds more like soft-pop you'd be listening to at home than the stereotypical saloon music). There's songs on the album where I understand the 'traditional notion' a little bit more, but only a couple - "Solitary Thinking" maybe, or "King of Broken Hearts", but even on these it's an arguable thing. And not an argument worth having, except that writers do keep describing her music as traditional...

Oh, and on that note of country musicians pulling in other genres...this morning on Philly's country radio station I heard John Rich do an interview and play songs off his new CD. The song I heard was one he described as Hank Williams meets Frank Sinatra, a big-band thing about building a truck with a bar in it so you can drive yourself to drink, or something like that. I didnt get the chance to listen too closely, but I didnt hear much Hank in it, it was very silly, very lounge-singer-esque.

Frank on Poptimists, on that Winfred E. Eye album I mentioned a few posts up:

Winfred E. Eye Til I Prune: Just got it. On their first album they got a good effect by taking a dark bluesy growl and giving it dreamy drifting accompaniment. On this one they go for even more of the dreamy drift, and it's beautiful an' all but I haven't decided yet if the dreaminess is too much; maybe I'll decide it's just right and I'll stop holding against the album that it fits in with modern indie's uncommitted soundscaping. (The first album took several months to really penetrate.)

Also, on the same thread (about good 2009 music so far), Frank mentioned that I mentioned three albums somewhere in this thread, and I answered him thusly:

I actually probably slightly prefer the Dierks Bentley (which has one great song, and a couple more I really like, amid lots of tolerable-or-better mere competence) to the Chuck Mead (which has pub-rock energy and often amusing songwriting with a good schooling in Chuck Berry and Nike Lowe but your usual merely adequate alt-country so-what of a voice; he's a BR-459 almunus, if that means anything to anybody -- it really doesn't mean that much to me, as I never paid much attention to BR-459) As for Megan Munroe, I like her album way more than those other two, but its first half seems to blow away its second half (which may well make her this year's Ashlee Simpson, who knows.)

Some country-(ish) finishers in the Pazz & Jop poll:

27 Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation's Dark
New West Points: 304
Mentions: 28
36 Alejandro Escovedo, Real Animal
Back Porch Points: 243
Mentions: 23
42 Blitzen Trapper, Furr
Sub Pop Points: 219
Mentions: 25
52 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey
Lost Highway Points: 202
Mentions: 22
56 Jamey Johnson, That Lonesome Song
Mercury Points: 170
Mentions: 18
58 Taylor Swift, Fearless
Big Machine Points: 167
Mentions: 18
60 Hayes Carll, Trouble in Mind
Lost Highway Points: 157
Mentions: 17
61 James McMurtry, Just Us Kids
Lightning Rod Points: 155
65 Kathleen Edwards, Asking for Flowers
Zoe Records Points: 147
Mentions: 11
85 Arthur Russell, Love Is Overtaking Me
Audika Points: 125
Mentions: 11
92 Charlie Haden Family & Friends, Rambling Boy
Decca Points: 114
Mentions: 10
95 Jenny Lewis, Acid Tongue
Warner Brothers Points: 113
Mentions: 14
103 Shelby Lynne, Just a Little Lovin'
Lost Highway Points: 105
Mentions: 13

Singles:

32 Hayes Carll, "She Left Me for Jesus"
Lost Highway Mentions: 15
49 Taylor Swift, "Love Story"
Big Machine Mentions: 11
68 Kid Rock, "All Summer Long"
Atlantic Mentions: 8
73 Lee Ann Womack, "Last Call"
Mercury Nashville Mentions: 8
76 Miley Cyrus, "See You Again"
Hollywood Mentions: 8
77 Drive-By Truckers, "The Righteous Path"
New West Mentions: 8
82 Jamey Johnson, "High Cost of Living"
Mentions: 7

If the Voice had carried over the 3 votes that Frank says the Miley single had received last year, it would have finished higher.

If my favorite song of the year "High Cost of Living" had been an actual single, I would have voted for it, and it would have finished higher.

If the Voice website reflected ties (i.e., all singles receiving 8 votes finishing with the same placement) I would have, but they didn't.

Justin Farrar (who says he "limited releases to some vague notion of roots/rock and rock/folk/countryish stuff") posted a link to his ballot on the Pazz & Jop thread. Inasmuch as I know his writing, I think his tastes lean more to what I'd call art-country than alt-country. But the only one of these albums I heard was the one by Brooklyn's TK Webb, which hit me as a not especially exciting and mostly shapeless indie-blues-rock record with no beginning and ends to the songs but some occasionally noisy Crazy Horse guitar blur (and very intermittent Dylan mimicry in the vocals.) Anybody know anything about any other records on his list? (Pretty sure Don's mentioned Chatham County Line before, but I may be wrong):

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685882

So, according to both roughstock.net and Wikpedia (hadn't heard this anywhere else), the second single off of Jamey Johnson's album is, uh, "High Cost of Living." That's awesome (could wind up my single of the year for 2009), but also completely nuts and hilarious. Does anybody have mediabase access, to track whether any country stations actually play this monstrosity? (How long did it take pop stations to pick up on "Like A Rolling Stone" in 1965? But that one eventually went to #2, so who knows?)

http://www.roughstock.com/blog/jamey-johnson-high-cost-of-living

Just checked Billboard's Hot Country Song chart; it hasn't hit the Top 60 yet. (What did make the chart a couple weeks ago, incidentally, was apparently a remix of Rehab's modern-rock-radio hick-hop hit "The Bartender Song" with Hank Jr. on it. Never heard that, though, and I'm not sure I really want to.)

Still no "High Cost Of Living" promo vid on youtube either, as far as I can see. (Strategy obviously could be to attract non-country radio fans -- like, Triple A, maybe? Might happen, especially given all the year-end lists that Jamey scored on.)