Rolling Country 2016

curmudgeon, thanks again for posting. What a great write-up. Made me revisit The Bird & The Rifle (better than I'd remembered). Had totally glossed over "Old Men Young Women" and the line Christgau notes: "You want the lights off/He wants the lights on/So you can pretend/And he can hold on, hold on." !

Hi Indexed, xgau got inspired by the new 'un and covers five McKenna albums here, a unique Expert Witness special so far:
https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/robert-christgau-lori-mckenna-expert-witness

playlist updated.

Jon Pardi has a number #1 country song "Head over Boots," and another popular song called "Dirt on my Boots." I like the hit one better. Catchier, better use of fiddle, guitar solo is not as long and bothersome.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/magazine-feature/7357935/jon-pardi-on-head-over-boots-hit-traditional-country-music-interview

“Head Over Boots” is a shuffle, but it’s more of a Motown laid-back shuffle than, say, a Dwight Yoakam shuffle. We met in the middle: the swing and soul of traditional country, but modern at the same time.

2 song titles with "boots" and one with "hat"

McKenna's "Bird and Rifle" has its moments, but didn't wow me. May try some of those earlier albums when I get around to it.

Last year Chris Stapleton was the outsider pick for Grammy album of the year, and this year its Sturgill Simpson

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/grammys/7603835/who-is-sturgill-simpson-grammy-album-of-year-2017

country part of Grammys nominees

Best Country Solo Performance:

"Love Can Go To Hell" — Brandy Clark
"Vice" — Miranda Lambert
"My Church" — Maren Morris
"Church Bells" — Carrie Underwood
"Blue Ain't Your Color" — Keith Urban

Best Country Duo/Group Performance:

"Different for Girls" — Dierks Bentley Featuring Elle King
"21 Summer" — Brothers Osborne
"Setting The World On Fire" — Kenny Chesney & P!nk
"Jolene" — Pentatonix Featuring Dolly Parton
"Think Of You" — Chris Young With Cassadee Pope

Best Country Song:

"Blue Ain't Your Color" — Clint Lagerberg, Hillary Lindsey & Steven Lee Olsen, songwriters (Keith Urban)
"Die A Happy Man" — Sean Douglas, Thomas Rhett & Joe Spargur, songwriters (Thomas Rhett)
"Humble and Kind" — Lori McKenna, songwriter (Tim McGraw)
"My Church" — busbee & Maren Morris, songwriters (Maren Morris)
"Vice" — Miranda Lambert, Shane McAnally & Josh Osborne, songwriters (Miranda Lambert)

Best Country Album:

Big Day In A Small Town — Brandy Clark
Full Circle — Loretta Lynn
Hero — Maren Morris
A Sailor's Guide To Earth — Sturgill Simpson
Ripcord — Keith Urban

PANDORA'S MOST THUMBED UP COUNTRY SONGS OF 2016

1. Die A Happy Man, Thomas Rhett
2. H.O.L.Y., Florida Georgia Line
3. Tennessee Whiskey, Chris Stapleton
4. You Should Be Here, Cole Swindell
5. Came Here to Forget, Blake Shelton
6. T-Shirt, Thomas Rhett
7. Somewhere on a Beach, Dierks Bentley
8. Think of You (Feat. Cassadee Pope), Chris Young
9. Home Alone Tonight (Feat. Karen Fairchild), Luke Bryan
10. Drunk On Your Love, Brett Eldredge
11. From the Ground Up, Dan + Shay
12. Head Over Boots, Jon Pardi
13. Middle of A Memory, Cole Swindell
14. Different For Girls (Feat. Elle King), Dierks Bentley
15. Record Year, Eric Church
16. Lights Come On, Jason Aldean
17. Fix, Chris Lane
18. Church Bells, Carrie Underwood
19. Snapback, Old Dominion
20. Parachute, Chris Stapleton
21. Nobody to Blame, Chris Stapleton
22. Humble & Kind, Tim McGraw
23. Used to Love You Sober, Kane Brown
24. Peter Pan, Kelsea Ballerini
25. Burning House, Cam

Its rough for women performers on Pandora . Chris Stapleton is all over that list

Stapleton seems to be the only act on that list who doesn't get much radio play (not that this is good or bad)

was Lambert's album too late for Grammy eligibility?

The album will be eligible next year, but "Vice" was nominated for Country Solo Performance and Country Song.

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/lists/40-best-country-albums-of-2016-w452950

Maren Morris followed by Miranda L. and then Margo Price and then Drive by Truckers and then Sturgill S for the top 5

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/lists/25-best-country-songs-of-2016-w455405/margo-price-hands-of-time-w455414

Toby Keith said in an interview that if you'll pay him, he'll appear anywhere.

On the first day of their father’s administration, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. will be glad-handing at an “Opening Day” party in Washington for hundreds of wealthy well-wishers.

Details about the bash — which is separate from the official events hosted by the Presidential Inaugural Committee — are still being worked out, the event’s organizer tell us, though he confirmed that the proceeds would go to unspecified conservation organizations.

TMZ this weekend posted an invite detailing the admission prices, including a $1 million package that included, among other perks, a private reception for 16 with newly sworn-in President Trump and a “multiday hunting and/or fishing excursion for four guests with Donald Trump Jr. and/or Eric Trump, and team.” According to the document, the event will have a “Cuff Links & Camouflage” hunting-and-fishing theme (“jeans, boots, and hats are welcome”) and country acts Toby Keith and Alabama are set to perform.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/events/year-in-music-2016/7624580/best-country-singles-2016

no NPRish or alt-country or folky stuff here

Except for his lyrical reference to James Brown, Eric Church's "Record Year" song is so formulaic. But I kinda like it anyway. Something about his voice and the melody.

Chely Wright, I Am The Rain: the title doesn't mean she cries all the time; it's a line from "You Are The River", which, in a classic country way, develops logically and poignantly and selectively from the observable physical relationship of rains and rivers. She takes realism inside "Blood and Skin and Bone": "I'm like a guillotine that's lost its point in a room of petty thieves/I'm like a teenage boy with a rake in his hand, starin' up at the leaves." And that is because "nothing around here makes since you've been gone." And the title is because she's a hunk of physical reality going to waste, "after God went to all the trouble to make me this way" (incl. "gay", as inferred here from a context subtly but never coyly provided on this album, as on 2010's Lifted Off The Ground, where she and producer Rodney Crowell provided a new country mainstream, or the old one updated: personal expression via personalized signposts pointing toward the familiar, incl. stuff maybe not talked about too much, or talked about too much, but the discipline of music can create the balance, externalizing without generalizing too much. And the careful clarity of writing and performance is never hesitant (if she doesn't know where or if she's going, she just says so), never murky (the sound is grounded in shades and planes of bass: maybe upright, and/or fretless electric, with just as much unobtrusive, non-chamber-y clarinet, occasional notes from the left side of an electric piano; steel, 12-string, other guitars glint and glide just fine, passing through).
Scenes shift: "Mexico" is from the POV of a truckstop waitress just this side of the border: "Every shift is different and the same....long-distance truckers, runaways and thieves...they're all headin' for the promised land...the dusty TV blares the local news." No complaints: it pays okay though she's away from her dangerous husband, but sometimes she wonders about "heading further South". in a good way, of course. "Where Will You Be" seems at first like it could be about the Rapture---"when it happens, will you be driving your car?"---and maybe it is, but mainly it's about "when you realize what the mess you've made." Tough, but she gets more empathetic in a sequel: "You're fighting battles in your head...we messed up what God said"---which is even more reason to give the singer a call sometime so they can has it out.
"You" might often mean "I", judging by her autobiography, rather than the traditional gender-avoiding gay usage of the second person; she doesn't change "lying by her side" covering Dylan's "Tomorrow is A Long Time"--the best version of this song I've heard, other than Elvis P.'s. (And she pays tribute to a cosmically beautiful female "born at midnight...Haloma, Princess of the Prairie Rain", who also brings fire, but no complaints (so could be about clearing the underbrush, like Mother Nature intends).
But "you" doesn't always mean herself, or doesn't seem to in the sad 'n' sexy "Next To You", though she might be talking to the mirror in a house divided in "Holy War", a spooky modern descendant of Willie Nelson's "This Cold War With You", recorded by one of his strongest influences singing-wise, Floyd Tillman (and seems likehe may have written some with Tillman's vocal phrasing in mind):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQbT8BOOfRc

Should be "it pays okay *and* she's away from her dangerous husband."
Also: "so they can *hash* it out."
(PS: Crowell shows up on this one too, occasionally singing backup [ditto Emmylou] and co-writing, though Joe Henry is the producer this time [and another occasional co-writer]).

Aggh! Should be "Nothin' here makes *sense* since you've been gone." No more long spontaneous posts this year, I swear.

xpost not"This Cold War With You" was written as well as first recorded by Floyd Tillman, fairly early in the CW:
Floyd Tillman [1949]
This Cold War With You
(Tillman)
Columbia 20 615-4

jeez, disregard "not" in that, sorry

from comments for Nashville Scene ballot:

Maren Morris, Hero: First heard as a single, out of the album’s context (unbidden, uncomfortable insights, updates, reminders: notes to self & others), radio bait “My Church” seems like it’s county in ways perhaps not altogether consciously intended by those who put together the100% Bona Fide Certified Yessireebob Country celebration up front: here we have the tradition of show biz congratulating itself via the artist-as-fan-surrogate, namechecking the safe, placeholder icons while (since it’s still now, not yet quite Springtime for Cheetos),plugging into a received, expertly performed carefully filtered version of “gospel”, waving hands in a slo-mo, laidback way, because this is a secular, love song-based sort of “Church”: a conceit (in more ways than one), so let’s turn it up for a minute yet not get too excited, folks. Right on cue, thank y’all.
As first read about, reviewer-bait and clickbait “80s Mercedes” seems like another auto- controversy: is she another naive young bling head, or seeking/preaching Empowerment?
But as actually heard, it’s convincing: Morris is seeking and savoring the quest, as much as the object of her desire and release---which might be out of her financial league, and that of many if not most other “90s bayyy-bies” she’s singing for, but hey life is a journey so ride on, dream on, you go girl--- this good song, and even “My Church”, are best understood as brief necessary detours and pit stops, from and versus. the overall sense of hard-won, still struggling awareness of how relationships work and don’t work: how the sausage gets made, in both cases.
And the stress comes not just from realizing you’ve been had by a sweet-talker, the most adept one yet, and not even from realizing the self-deception, the self-sweet-talking, but also realizing you aren’t just warning and testifying for other young women---you’re also, still, lambasting the sweet talker, who may not even still be around, at least for the moment, but you’re still hooked. And you keep coming back, whether that person does or not. Not just in your mind, either----there is this newfangled thang called a cellphone, with whatchacall a speed dial.
Aside from being hooked on That Person, “I could use a love song”, sung like someone might sigh, “I could use a drink”---”to take me back”, to before she knew. So yeah, she is a country fan, in the age of Beyoncé, for instance, who makes wised-up music, about having your foundations shaken and figuring out how and when to slam the doors and move on. Beyoncé, with her own circuits of self-awareness, of being trained by tough “Daddy Lessons”, about how to deal with/be wary of men like Daddy: lessons based on his own stated sense of self-awareness.
But, That Person aside, there is also another (not trying to be weird about gender, but sounds like she addresses that other as “girl” initially, later says “boy” more clearly), screwed over by another woman, thus (in part because observably not invulnerable) a suitable case for treatment: she explains, suggests, anyway, to this other person and herself “How It’s Done”: could start with, for instance clasping hands as if in a movie----as also suggested sometimes in acting classes: instead of trying to relate to the character from your own experience, generating and then figuring out how to externalize a feeling---instead, you might go through the right motion, act as if you feel, and then you might indeed begin to feel it---so, encouraged, and becoming aware of your improved acting, you feel and act more---and the process continues, as you become more of a pro, hallelujah.
Not so say that she doesn’t keep a sense of suspense going, right to the end--will it work this time, has she continued the spiral beyond her still-accruing powers and responsibilities and stakes, beyond her depth, her range, her potential, her luck? This is the question as she climbs the staircase to knock, one more time, in “Once”--the question she leaves us with (after and perhaps self-deluded/made overly hopeful by the joyful relief of “Second Wind”). Stay tuned, as the voice-over hosts of serials used to say (and what is country without history, as astute student and compulsive seeker Morris would surely ask).

more from the ballot: 2016 Reissues---

Merle Haggard’s Live In San Francisco 1965 opens with a series of endings, which work pretty well: the last 48 seconds of “Devil Woman” is about all I can take, especially since he clones the hair-oil sanctimony of Marty Robbins’ original delivery---then make way for the exciting climaxes of “Movin’ On”, “Orange Blossom Special”, and “Love Is Gonna Live Here Again”! First full-length (2:58) is a very fine “Blue Yodel”, with Johnny Gimble’s blue fiddle swinging out and back into a tensile combo of early Strangers (later, Bonnie Owens is the effective singing actress on “Lead me On”, and caps the uptempo “Cowboy’s Sweetheart” with her own, Swiss-tending yodels, while the rhythm guitarist enjoys working at “Harold’s Super Service”, except for the big guy who always wants like the sign says for a little bitty amount of gas, even at the Pearly Gates). Mostly we get Reader’s Digest editions of mostly original early highlights, some already classic, all quite fresh, as is the Hag’s voice, yodeling and all---the more striking after last year’s collab with Willie, Django and Jimmie, where his always right but economizing sometimes ragged delivery made it not that much of a shock when he checked out with respiratory problems. But the deft terseness of his final round is accentuated here too, making the candid pictures, cards from life’s “other” side. cut just right: ain’t that it, often as not. “Okie From Musgokee” and “Fightin’ Side of Me” have yet to show up, but/and “A Soldier’s Letter” certainly works as a sign-off. 16 songs. 30 minutes.

x-post --Maren Morris' "I Could Use a Love Song" has been growing on me