Rolling Country 2009 Thread

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.)

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.

Apparently it is being released next month as a single--so maybe in the '09 poll.

Whoops

Single release date Feb. 17 according to Jamey Johnson's myspace.

I'm back, after an extended period during which I worked on some bigger projects (liner notes for the forthcoming Caroline Peyton reissues of Mock Up and Intuition, out next Tuesday), took a vacation to visit Mayan ruins in peninsular Mexico and snorkel amid Cozumel reefs, and hung out in New Orleans' Bywater district. The shrimp half-loaf at Mandina's on Canal was just as good as ever and the shrimp remoulade was even better than before, you can eat that stuff just soaking up the sauce with the french bread they give you as a side. Met my sweetie's parents and hundreds of Extended Family on a trip to Brookhaven, Miss., a town where everyone has a grand piano and an opera score in their house (everyone except the domestic help, who dig mostly gospel). Turned 50 and I got a party, and meeting your true love at 49-and-holding is something else, so I'm here, happy, and trying not to get fat on said sweetie's excellent southern cookin'. Moved to Brentwood, south of Nashville, so far they've let me walk the streets as it were.

Anyway, I took a break for various reasons, not from writing, but kinda from thinking a lot about country music. Part of that was just doing the liners for Mock Up and Intuition, which took a lot of time, part of it was my life in general, and part was the feeling that country didn't matter as much to me in the year of Obama. I ended up listening to Jamey Johnson's record a good bit and I did a story on Jan Bell, who is one of the Good People. And wrote something on Holly Golightly for the Nash Scene, saw her and Lawyer Dave play here and they was quite relaxed, Holly never stopped smiling. Did some work for Those Darlins, who are going on to be pretty popular all over the country. I like them, love those girls, wish they sang some harmony, they do tend to stand up there sometimes and just sing the same notes.

Have been listening to Jason Isbell's new one. Music signifies more than the words but the stuff about the seductive bartender, she of the alto voice, and the mutterings of getting older and diminished expectations, are quite good in their way and the music really is detailed. Sounds like he been learning some new chords. I've also always liked the name, Gurf Morlix, but his new one is all about how he's losing his edge, only one great song, well, sort of great--one concerning all the time-wasting strategies a songwriter can employ instead of writing songs, wasting one's talent, being a general bum. I know what he means. Good to see y'all again.

as for Chuck Mead's new one that Chuck mentions upthread, I listened to it once the day I got it, and remember noting something like "does well with readymade place-name songs" and my usual Stiff Records comparison. Seemed loose enough to me. As for Malo (Raol, not the old-time Latin rock band), I suppose I hear the Claudette Orbison Effect somewhat but as you can see from his beard and general air of ass-manliness on the cover, he has his fans because of the Voice, and it's a good one.

Curious about the Dailey and Vincent record. Live, they are reckless Christians and play off the tall/hair and short/bald comedy inherent in their act, and they, er, inhabit they idiom, I mean they're good. They gave me two intense, short, Capitalist Christian interviews last fall when I did a bluegrass roundup, I also praised Cadillac Sky's Gravity's Our Enemy back then and still think they do progressive 'grass real well indeed.

Interviewed Tony Rice for the now-defunct Knoxville Voice. Turns out he, like my Texas superhero Johnny Bush, had dysphonia, but Rice's was muscle-tension, while Bush (and Linda Thompson and actually a famous voice teacher [!], Marge Rivingston) had spasmodic. Rice said he was on stage in 1994 in Pennsylvania and the voice just went. Anyway, Rice seems to me the best of all those neo-grass guitar players, in that he's deeply influenced by jazz, uses space, and always appears to be thinking. Not that bluegrass ain't about chops and headspace just like jazz, but that it's a music of too MUCH flow and not enough, which is why the broken structures and relative indecision of the Cadillac Sky record appeals to me. Rice is in Krauss' DVD, A Hundred Miles or More.

I mentioned Those Darlins above and another all-girl band who does their shtick maybe as well or better is the Bridges, whom I caught opening for Matthew Sweet back around Xmas time. Clearly, the New Seekers or whoever (watched Steve Coogan in the movie of Tristam Shandy last night and his wife was playing Bach for an infant, and Coogan said, "I got the New Seekers and look how I turned out...") are such a big influence on today's neo-folk.

Got Chuck Mead's record here, Journeyman's Wager (suitably modest title) and now I remember liking "She Got the Ring" and "Albuquerque" the best, of course he's got to do "Old Brown Shoe" (while moving I found a picture I saved from the Memphis Commercial Appeal at Carl Perkins' funeral in Jackson, Tenn. with a ravaged-looking George Harrison commiserating with Jerry Lee Lewis at the funeral). Chuck's a nice guy, I run into him frequently and he's been writing with lotsa people these days, I hear.

this should be linked now to my e-mail address...

make that Raul Malo, of course. Also dig Chuck Mead's "Out on the Natchez Trace," that is an historic road as well as a road that takes you out of Nashville to the southwest and Mead's smart, that's a classic place around here for people who want to End It All or Start Over Discreetly to end up dead by the side of the road or out in the woods, although I never understood why more people don't jump into the Cumberland River here, there are several new pedestrian bridges.

Speaking of suicide, the new issue of the Oxford American is worth buying for the great shot of Gary Stewart (back page) scoping out reading matter in Elder's Bookstore on Elliston Place, 1978.

As for ND, Chuck, it's pretty much the same folks. I've done some reviewing for them--Nimrod Workman, Jim White, Linda Perhacs actually, Frank, and some other stuff--and what can you say, ND's end-of-year lists...well, look at mine, I liked Randy Newman's record even though there's something undeniably airless about the fucking thing even as I so, so admire his craft and all that, I mean I recently saw the Nashville production of Sweeney Todd and Randy Newman makes Sondheim look bads, plus Randy's always been interested in racism and nookie and so forth. His takes on New Orleans and his rueful tales of young girls he still don't understand, and his orchestrations, speak to me but now I'm officially old. At least one can age gracefully like Ross Johnson, who, I believe, speaks to the ages if anyone did last year.

"Out on the Natchez Trail," it should be, and Sondheim look bad not bads...actually the Angela Lansbery version of Sweeney Todd has its dissonant moments and like Newman Sondheim is interested in some extreme states of being, but whatever.

so what's the deal with Joey + Rory: they have their own restaurant or something...?

yay, edd's back!!!

also, if anyone wants this great Homer and Jethro comp my buddy Dave Duncan made, lemme know offline. they're great artistes and masters of comedy. easily as good as this Manilla Music band we caught on the Carnival Cruise ship; four short guys from Manilla dressed in Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles outfits playing Beatles tunes, just excellent, and Homer and Jethro do what I think is the greatest Beatles cover of all time, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," '64, plus "No Hair Sam" and you won't believe "Winchester Cathedral."

Welcome back, Edd!!! And wow, when you are back, you are back. Now the rest of us all have some catching up to do.

By the way, Edd was my "most similar voter" in Pazz & Jop, with a score of 3.93, whatever that means, seeing as we both voted for two albums by guys named Johnson. (Second-most similar to me was Corey Du Browa, who also voted for one Johnson and a Knux.)

My new favorite ballot (well, for right this second anyway) came from somebody I never heard of before named Bill Holmes, whose favorite single was "Dynamite," my favorite song on the Mother Truckers album, and who also voted for "Elsie," my favorite song on the Boss Martians album, both of which I'm just happy to see somebody else listened to (though Boss Martians did get at least one other singles vote, for a different song, apparently.) Bill Holmes also voted for a single by the Paul Collins Beat, who I had no idea existed anymore:

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2008/685403

Anyway. I liked both the 3-song Those Darlins EP and 4-song (two of them the same) Those Darlins demo I heard last year (favorite song: probably "The Whole Darn Thing," which is about eating every part of a chicken), though not enough for them to make my top 150 album list (like both Mother Truckers and Boss Martians did). Had I expanded the list to 200, the EP probably would have made it (as would have the Trailer Choir and Big N Rich EPs from last year, though that's getting pretty marginal admittedly.) And I look forward to hearing a whole Darlins album.

Btw, the URL for my Rhapsody blog has mysteriously changed as they've overhauled that portion of the site, and the URL for my '07 lists with it. So here:

http://72.47.254.75/chuck-eddys-chuck-it-all-in/

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/12/chuck-eddys-best-albums-of-the-year-countdown-part-3-numbers-1---50.html

'08 lists, I meant. (Still writing '08 on my checks, too.)

Listening to the new Flatlanders album in the background now, and liking it more than I expected. Some fairly didactic songs about the bum economy and immigration, maybe, but those seem well-personalized and geographically pinpointed and the melodies and singing are frequently grabbing me. Noticed what sounded like a stinker of a Joe Ely song too (I assume that was him anyway), and other sections are blander than I wish, but I'll keep it on for now.

Liked the new album by some Brooklyn alt-country group called the Defibulators more than I thought I would, too -- energy and humor helps a lot. And the new album by the Greencards less than I thought I would (polite Duhks-style worldbeat delusions are boring me quicker this year, apparently), though one song at least had sub-Little Big Town (sub-sub-sub Fleetwood Mac) harmonies mixed into its bluegrass.

And yeah, I've been liking the city songs on that Chuck Mead album, which I should probably play more despite my reservations about his apparent lack of an interesting voice. Thought the more Rockpiley tracks were "She Got The Ring" and "I Wish It Was Friday," and he does wanderlust ("Albuquerque") and wistfulness ("A Long Time Ago") pretty well. "Up On Edge Hill" seems to have a good plot about the sort of folks who live up there, and "Out On The Natchez Trail" is a decent go-west song, and I like how "Gun Metal Gray" sound kind of like "Ode To Billie Joe."

Speaking of wanderlust and heading west, the big news in my life is that it increasingly looks like we'll be packing up and moving to Austin before springtime -- in fact, my Texas-born better half is down there as we speak, scouting out possible dwellings. So if anybody reading this knows anybody down there who I should alert of my impending arrival (especially but not only if they're the kind of person who loves helping unload lots of boxes of records off moving trucks), by all means email me.

What else? New Neko Case album coming out soon, apparently, and I've never remotely paid attention to her, and I'm thinking now that maybe I should, since I heard a song by her in Starbucks a couple months ago that I have to confess sounded way better than most of the other songs I hear in Starbucks, plus she comes off charming (not to mention cute) in this new cover story in Paste I just read in the bathroom. Even halfway considering subscribing to this magazine called Hobby Farms that she recommends: "Who likes to read about goats? I do! You know, the Caprine subfamily? Lowline cattle, anyone? Weeder geese? Guinea hens on tick patrol? Draft horse logging? That's what I'm talking about."

Interesting piece by my former Farmington, Michigan middle school classmate R.J. Smith in tomorrow's NY Times about the resurrection of King Records in Cincinnati: Another key to King’s success was its racial pragmatism. It’s probably a stretch to call Mr. Nathan a progressive, but he was colorblind in his pursuit of the widest possible audience. He didn’t just record both white and black acts; he had his ace R&B studio band playing on country records, and his country bands trying their hands at black pop hits, an almost unthinkable practice at the time.

The Stanley Brothers, for instance, did a version of Ballard’s “Finger Poppin’ Time,” and the African-American shouter Wynonie Harris covered the honky-tonk singer Hank Penny’s “Bloodshot Eyes.” It was a way of getting the most out of a hit, and perhaps it was Mr. Nathan’s stubborn nature to argue to those who told him blacks and whites would never like the same records how very wrong they were.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/arts/music/25smit.html?ref=arts

And oh yeah, speaking of the New Seekers (as Edd was earlier today, though I know basically nothing about them), here's something I posted on that German 45s Metal Mike Sent Me thread a few days ago:

Daliah Lavi "Wer Hat mein Lied So Zerstort, Ma?"/"Akkordeon" (Polydor West Germany, year unknown) Figured out the title was an Aryanization of "Look What They've Done To My Song, Ma" (always secretly loved that song ever since my secretly emo childhood, though for some reason I keep thinking it's by Melanie or Yvonne Elliman when really it's by the New Seekers) just by reading the sleeve; good for me! And long-haired pensive beauty Daliah schaglerizes it wunderbar; some dark Nico ice-queen cabaret stuff in there, neat. Also deduced that the B-side would somehow involve accordions, but didn't know it would start out like a cross between "Love is Blue" and, well, either "The Windmills Of Your Mind" or "As Tears Go By" I guess. Which is to say...dark! depressive! in the afternoon! yikes! And actually, the accordion is way back in the background, though it's there.

then later:

Daliah Lavi's New Seekers cover thankfully balances its ice-cold Nico schtick with warmer Al Jolson phrasing (if Al Jolson was German and rolled his r's), at least whenever she says "mama." And her accordion song has a palpable...wurlitzeriness? hurdy-gurdiness? caliopiopity? or something to its rhythm. None of which might come from the squeezebox (which doesn't do a whole lot til the song's end.)

There's a also a nice Neko Case interview in the new Oxford American music issue (and while I enjoy reading it, am I the only one who thinks the types of Southern musicians they cover has become a tad predictable). Little of it is online btw.

The New Seekers were an updated version of the kind of groups parodied in A Mighty Wind, except the NS were a hip, '70s version who covered (on the one LP I still own) both Roy Wood's "Tonight" and a Richard Thompson tune! And I think they did a Coke commercial, maybe the one that rips off Jobim's "Waters of March."

I didn't even participate in Himes' Scene poll this year. I guess I didn't even want to think about Taylor Swift, whom I interviewed late last year and whose actual music I find...what's the word? Nugatory? Evanescent? Her devotion to writing I admire and she has a way with words, but the music itself just evaporates, not to mention the "settings" which are so anonymous, lacking in character, as to be positively offensive. She's a case where I definitely think I could take it all better if she were to just play the damned things on just a guitar. But she obviously has an audience that goes beyond 14-year-old girls, and of course, I think Himes states the blindingly obvious when he starts talking about the "suburban" audience for country. That's been happening since Tom T. Hall sent up suburbia in "Harper Valley P.T.A." Who bought all those '80s country records?

There is, btw, a New Orleans version, with James Black on drums, of "Harper Valley" by a singer named Mary Jane Hooper, that is fucking amazing. The guitar player, George Davis I believe, does the best African-American impression of Nashville guitar you could conceive, and Black is always worth hearing no matter what the context.

Still writing about plenty of Euro-country (not to mention Eurodisco, schlager, glam-rock, and what not) over on that other wacky thread I started a couple weeks ago; here's the latest country-leaning tracks I talked about, but honestly, you folks should peruse the thread -- maybe even post on it. (It's getting kinda lonely over there these days.)

PEGGY MARCH "Oklahoma" (Real nice quasi-country sung in German -- so does that mean formerly "Little" Peggy wound up shooting for stardom there once her star faltered in the U.S., as somebody said above that Roger Whitaker did? Not that I know all that much about Peggy March to begin with, beyond her great 1963 #1 "I Will Follow Him" at 15 years old; looks like she had two other, much smaller Top 40 hits later that year, after which her career took a quick nosedive. Really, the main thing I know about her is that Richard Meltzer includes her in a genre called "march rock" in Aesthetics of Rock.)
TRUCKSTOP "Die Frau Mit Dem Gurt" (Took me mere seconds of listening to this fast country talker to realize country-rock Canadians the Road Hammers did it as "Girl On A Billboard" on their album last year. But I don't think a "gurt" is a billboard. No idea what the original version is. Or who Truckstop are for that matter, but they sound sehr gut.)

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

So man, this new Flatlanders album (due out late March) starts with a great great great song, possibly the best New Great Depression song anybody has managed yet; its ingenious idea is to flip-flop Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl ballads, so a guy whose granddad headed out to California from Oklahoma after the crash of '29 is now heading back: "I lost my home when the deal went bust/To the so-called Security and Trust/I ran my life the way they said I should...," and the song's got the dank dusty wind-blown melody and singing to pull it off. "There's refugees from Mexico behind an abandoned Texaco," and they're the same as him. Title is "Homeland Refugee," writing credited to Ely/Hancock/Gilmore on the press bio, and I'm pretty sure that's Joe Ely singing, though I wouldn't bet my 401-K on it.

Problem is, for the most part, the album seems to go really flat and flimsy real quick after that. Never thought Hancock or Gilmore were anything in the way of vocalists, and to be honest it's been so long since I listened to them that I can't tell who's who without a scorecard (New West Records didn't send one). Which one's the guy with the halfway-to-Willie Nelson high voice? Anyway, I feel like there's some decent song in there somewhere that runs off a list of small southwesten cities, but I'm not sure which one it is. "Borderless Love" seemed promising, but comes off pretty heavy-handed to my ears: "There's no need for a wall," ba-dum-bum. "Just About Time," I think it is (also Ely I think) quotes "Brother Can You Spare A Dime" and has some Jew's harp bloiings in it, but still doesn't strike me as especially memorable. I dunno though; maybe more will sink in.

Liked the new album by some Brooklyn alt-country group called the Defibulators more than I thought I would

Not nearly as much as I want to, though. They seem to be trying for the same kind of old-time barn dance craziness that the Woodbox Gang pulled off last year. But while they get an okay swerve going now and then (in "Honey You Had Me Fooled" for instance), and while (except when their girl singer goes straighter alt-country on occasion like in "Wandering Eye") they're not as prissy as say Hot Club Of Cowtown, they still don't come off half wild-haired insane or drunk enough, and they never even hint at the Woodboxers' punchlines or hooks or rhythm section with all those incidental gypsy extras tossed in. (Still, not bad for Brooklynites.)

Tom Lane, "Country Gets The Pazz & Jop Shaft"

http://tomlanesblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/country-gets-pazz-and-jop-shaft.html

(Lane contradicts himself all over the place in that short post -- does country get shafted every year, or doesn't it? -- and "a year that produced 2 of the year's best Country albums" is a pretty goofy phrase, but thought I'd post the link regardless.)

Seven favorite songs on that Chris Gaffney tribute album on Yep Roc, in approximate order (not necessarily what I would have predicted):

1. Dave Alvin "Artesia"
2. Tom Russell "If Daddy Don't Sing Danny Boy"
3. Alejandro Escovedo "1968"
4. James McMurtry "Fight (Tonight's The Night)"
5. Chris Gaffney "Guitars Of My Dead Friends"
6. The Iguanas "Get Off My Back Lucy"
7. Joe Ely "Lift Your Leg"

Still wish Escovedo, McMurtry, and especially the totally blank Iguanas guy could convey more character with their singing, though. (Iguanas sort of make up for it with good Tex-Mex-organ bouncing and lyrics about a nagging wife.)

Dullest songs are sung (though actually not much sung at all) by Calexico, Robbie Fulks, Jim Lauderdale, John Doe, and -- hate to say it, but -- Dan Penn (not necessarily in that order).

Not familiar with the Haciendas song Tom Russell covered and had to check it wasn’t one of his own, sounds so much like something he'd write. Haven’t been able to listen to the Calexico all the way through yet, which is not unusual but I can’t help loving the Freddy Fender. Tributes are so much better when you’ve never heard the songs before.

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?

Frank may have answered this on that "vintage country disco" thread last year, actually:

Texas Lightning's "No No Never" (Germany's voyage in 2006 to a strange land called Eurovision) is a country song that doesn't disguise its Europop heart.

So there may well be at least 30 years of the stuff (Country-and-Western-German, I've been calling it), which somebody should probably document someday.

there are several country-identified critics missing from the Pazz & Jop ballots--folks like David Cantwell, Bill Friskics-Warren, et al., I don't believe either Barry Mazor or Jewly Hight have ballots either.

Holly Gleason had Lee Ann Womack as her #1 record, and also voted for Rodney Crowell, Allison Moorer, Kenny Chesney and Lady Antebellum. And J.D. Souther, whose record was touted as a master musician's flirtation with jazz in a country context but left me cold.

I swear I never realized until last year that any critics had any use for J.D. Souther at all, but in the past few months his name has come up a few times (elsewhere on this board, too, I believe, plus I found out a record store guy I'm close friends with in Philly is a big fan.) Someday I'll listen to him.

Didn't Holly Gleason also vote for a Michael Stanley album? Yep, just checked ...Just Another Night, tenth-place on her list. That's pretty cool, though the one Stanley album I heard in the past couple years (can't recollect whether it was that one or not) was pretty bleh singer-songwriter fare, I thought; didn't rock like his old Stanley Band LPs George burned me a CD-R comp of a few years back. Don't think it told me anything real interesting about Cleveland either, but maybe I just missed it.

I've never been able to hear the appeal of Rodney Crowell at all -- well, except for this reissue a couple years ago of an old alblum by this pub-rocky side project band called the Cicadas that he did in 1997. Picked up a copy of one of his solo albums -- self-titled one, maybe? -- at Princeton Record Exchange for a couple bucks a couple years ago, and I thought it was total snoozeville, like they guy couldn't write or sing a hook to save his life. But in this morning's Times, cabaret guy Stephen Holden reviewed a Crowell live gig, and mentioned some songs whose subject matter seemed intriguing:

Crowell led off his acoustic set with “The Rise and Fall of Intelligent Design,” a scathingly witty broadside from his newest album, “Sex and Gasoline,” in which he imagines himself as the first female president, then inveighs against the barbarous inhumanity perpetuated in the name of organized religion.

Two wrenching dramatic monologues performed back to back — “I Wish It Would Rain” and “Wandering Boyd,” both from his 2001 album, “The Houston Kid” — explored the bond between twins, one of whom has AIDS. The first was sung from the point of view of the ailing brother, a gay hustler on the streets of Los Angeles; the second by his twin, to whom he returns to live out his final days.

Okay, I'd probably hate the songs, but who knows. Or maybe I'd like them if somebody else sang them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/arts/music/27song.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/H/Holden,%20Stephen

Edd, I owe you an email; I'm horrible at getting around to personal emails, but yours was totally welcome. Will eventually respond in kind, I promise.

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?

Frank may have answered this on that "vintage country disco" thread last year, actually

If I did, it was probably by accident, since I've never really known what "schlager" is, except maybe Europop that's a bit more florid and weepy than average Europop and it's not sung in English (and supposedly it draws on some Central and Northern European folk traditions, but damned if I can tell, and I'm listening to a kind of discoish Super Schlager Party Mix and it all seems fairly sing-alongy, and I can imagine Boney M occasionally using these melodies and rhythms, but then I can imagine Boney M occasionally using almost any popular style of melody and rhythm*). And half the time I see the term I confuse it with Schaffel, which doesn't mean the same thing at all but has many letters in common. (Schaffel is European electronic dance of about three years ago that uses triplets as if it were swing or early rock 'n' roll or boogie or r&b or T. Rex and Gary Glitter and Slade, which doesn't really narrow down the def'n and it doesn't sound nearly enough like swing or Slade to my ears. People at Poptimists were griping about Britney's "Womanizer" being a Schaffel rehash, which seems a silly thing to choose to gripe about if you're going to gripe about "Womanizer.")

Anyway, I still see the word "schlager" bandied about, so I'd assume that it's an ongoing style, and country being an ongoing trope on Eurovision, I'll bet some schlagerry combos wear cowboy hats.

*Maybe Big & Rich could revive themselves aesthetically by going schlager.

Which one's the guy with the halfway-to-Willie Nelson high voice? Probably Jimmie Dale Gilmore. He's got a distinctive, slightly warbly, high voice.

country being an ongoing trope on Eurovision

See, there you go again, Frank, answering questions you're not even meaning to answer. Anyway, yeah, I obviously cheated by conflating "Europop" with "schlager" in the earlier question and answer; on that (ahem) neglected K-Tel thread I keep whining about, I've consistently been distinguishing between the two (which each generally seem to be relegated to their own separtate K-Tel-type compilations), or at least I've been distinguishing between them ever since somebody corrected me and I stopped called schlagers "lieders" by mistake. (And right, I'm not sure how exactly one would define schlagers, either, though I've generally been defining it like the compilations -- which admittedly rarely explicitly use the "schlager" word in their titles -- seem to, namely something like "pre-rock style German MOR pop for grownups and maybe rural German children that never died, or at least didn't by the time these comps came out.") But ANYWAY, my point is that I'd been wondering on that thread not only whether the country-schlager is still around, but also whether the country-Europop (best exemplified,as far as I can tell so far, by the '70s band Pussycat and a few stray early Bonnie Tyler songs) is still around, the latter which your Texas Lightning mention seemed to indicate it might be. Which was news to me, as is country being an ongoing Eurovision trope (do you know other examples?), so thanks. (Also, seems to my unschooled ears that those schlagery Northern European florid weepies you speak of are all through Europop, most obviously in the melodies of Abba -- the group who pretty much defined was Europop is -- unless I'm missing something. And if those compilations are any indication, there also seems often to be a fine line between Europop and schlager, at least when chirpy upbeat young female Eurovision contestants are involved.)

Poptimists were griping about Britney's "Womanizer" being a Schaffel rehash

Okay, this is getting way out of the proper bounds of a rolling country thread, but that's just ridiculous -- they were complaining that it's a rehash of some kind of music that lasted all of five months three years ago, and that almost nobody even heard? (Actually, for all I know I do the same thing all the time, too. Or is their point that schaffel -- which I've barely heard myself, and when I did, it um, sounded "kind of shuffly" to me, which is the adjective I give to 99% of the European electronic dance music I hear but don't quite get these days -- was never any good in the first place, and therefore not worth rehashing?) It'd be even sillier than complaining that some new country act was just a rehash of early Big N Rich. (Okay, I did what you did. And I'm guessing B'N'R were more popular than schaffel was. And Trailer Choir, who half-heartedly rehashed early B'N'R last year, were merely okay.)

Actually (okay, here's a less forced way to put this discussion back in the c&w ballpark), how Europop-country was the so-called "pop" album by LeAnn Rimes that came out in Europe but not in the States a couple years ago (and which I shamefully never got around to checking out?) And how much commercial success did it have in Europe, for that matter?