Rolling country 2007 thread

I posted this on an RL Burnside R.I.P. thread but in case you missed that, I am adding it here:

http://www.nmshillcountrypicnic.com/07_press_release.htm

2nd annual North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic celebrates the legacies of departed North Mississippi blues legends including R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and Othar Turner

Extended to Two Days, June 29-30, 2007

Last July’s inaugural North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic was a resounding success, drawing over 1,000 people to a rural site in Potts Camp in Marshall County. The festival demonstrated the vitality of the contemporary blues scene in North Mississippi, and in light of the tremendous public response this year’s event has been extended to two days. Potts Camp is located off of Route 78, about halfway between Memphis and Tupelo.

The festival celebrates the legacies of departed North Mississippi blues legends including R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and Othar Turner, and the festival will once again feature many of their children and grandchildren. These include Duwayne Burnside, and his band the Mississippi Mafia; the Burnside Exploration, featuring Cedric and Garry Burnside; David Kimbrough; the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band, led by Othar Turner’s 17-year-old granddaughter Sharde Thomas.

Other "second generation" acts returning to the event include Kenny Brown, R.L. Burnside’s longtime guitarist and "adopted son;" and the Reverend John Wilkins, son of pre-WWII recording artist Robert Wilkins, whose song "Prodigal Son" was covered by the Rolling Stones. Also returning to the festival are soul-blues legend Bobby Rush, Jimbo Mathus and Knockdown South, T-Model Ford, Cary Hudson with Blue Mountain, Jocco Rushing with Fried Chicken & Gasoline, and John Barnett.

100% agreed on the Isbell, dow, I just got it a few days ago but I'm already thinking top 10 for the year possibly. he's just such a creative lyricist (I love the premise behind "Shotgun Wedding" and "Dress Blues" is beyond-words good, hard to think of too many better songs about soliders EVER), a fine singer, and unlike Patterson Hood and (sometimes) Cooley, he can write a damn tune.

Indeedio on all counts, Nashville Scene Top Ten for sure, and strong possibilty for others. Not many songs continue to unfold in thought like his.While writing the review, I went back and listened to the ones he contributed to Truckers albums; all good, but the breakthrough to current level seems to have been "Goddammed Lonely Love." Actually, he may be past that now: no actual need for every line to jump at you, like in "G.D.L.L.," cos of unified effect. Could use a little more noise, but maybe that's just me. I don't think anything ends too abruptly, like several songs on A Blessing And A Curse (The title track, for inst). was just thinking about the album where they back Betty, Edd, and I think she's the one I heard interviewed, who grew up in a bawdy house or something, and who makes a point of a secular POV, and further adapts (changes words of)contemporary material to accentuate: the opposite of Blind Boys' adaptations of Waits, etc.

As somebody who once used to have to wear dress blues to certain parades and other formal officer functions (and who hated it), I'll be surprised if I don't like Isbell's soldier song. And as somebody who has had very little use for everything the Drive By Truckers have done post-Decoration Day, I'll be surprised if I wind up liking the rest of his album much. But (if and when a copy falls into my lap), I hereby promise to keep an open mind.

Otherwise, I wound up like Tumbleweed Junction more than Shoestring Strap. Even though their song "Hot New Country" makes me cringe as much as any country song, famous or otherwise, I've heard this year, TW get a real Montgomery Gentry-like mean-old-neighbor get-offa-my-lawn gravitas into most of the tracks on Outlaws Forever, and hard guitar chords to match (though better recording would make them kick harder), and they sing convincingly about being working men and getting laid off and then getting lazy and trying to get their wives to go back to work instead, not to mention running from the law and whatnot. Shoestring Strap are a lot more laid back and apparently emotionally healthy, and it seems the only time they're running is when they're running down the road trying to loosen their load (though it's never that exciting, and you don't get the idea they drive too fast), and the only workingmen they seem to aspire to be are the ones on Workingman's Dead, and there are moments when that influence helps their strings and slides jam almost as fluidly as say Tea Leaf Green, but more often they get too laid-back ethereal indie-rock alt-country for their own good. Though again, I do like the strung-out cocaine song. And they also have a 20-second regional Mexican snippet called "No Estoy Correcto (Ahorita)," which is gratuitous but nice.

(Not to suggest that being strung out on cocaine is emotionally healthy, but maybe I like them better when they hint they might not be.) (And speaking of apparent drug fiends, this has nothing at all to do with country, but I've actually been liking the new A.R.E. Weapons LP, after hating their second one.)

I aspire to be like the workingmen on Working Man's Dead too, insofar as that involves customized Porches and Hippie Chick Nation (As for the rest,"Heroin's something to look forward in the rest home," said Garcia, after he supposedly got scared straight.)Otherwise, I'd probably like Tumbleweed Junction better. Holy carp, this You're Gonna Miss Me soundtrack is basically a lazyman's trip to the canon, in terms of familiar titles, but listening grabbed me by the neck and slung me down the bowling lane, one more tyme in thee be here NOW. (80s tracks keep invading 60s and unidentified decades, in a totally effective way.) "Two Headed Dog" or "Bloody Hammer" would be perfect mixmates with "Dress Blues"(even though the latter is country), in terms of all the frustration and futility and blood in the corner of the eye of everything, and soulfulness too, busting of the country(As in genre and we the people.)I gotta go see Roky on tour. (That collection, on Trance Syndicate, maybe? Came out a year or two ago, seemed to make a case for him as a father of acid folk,in terms of 12-string tapestries of anguished devotion detoured into itself, but plenty moving)

"customized Porches"? "Porsches"? Ah'll take either.

Found it: on Shout!Factory, I Have Always Been Here Before, two discs, and it includes "You're Gonna Miss Me" etc. etc., as well as the compulsively privatized (yet musically attractive)outreach mentioned above.

hi everyone, happy Freedom Day! Don, I had the Roky 2-disc a couple years ago, and you know, I like the Elevators stuff but frankly found most of the later Roky kinda like John Fogerty with no money--certainly no Porches or hippie chix (altho the doc makes it clear that he and his mom were pretty, er, bonded). but then I hear he's terrifying, and good, live, still is. but maybe I am wrong about the later stuff.

enjoying Bluegrass Elvises by Shawn Camp and Billy Burnette. They pull this off, rock on out, and I guess actually remind us forcefully that EP turned into everything and nothing but was specifically post-country in '54 except no one talked like that back then. They sing great, and they don't really sing bluegrass, and they play blues licks, great ones, on stuff like "Hound Dog," so perhaps I like it simply because it doesn't try to be bluegrass. The CD insert features a shot-out TV set.

I actually prefer Roky's metallic turn of the '80s stuff (circa "Bermuda"/The Evil One/The Runes) more than anything but the very greatest (i.e., "You're Gonna Miss Me" or "Fire Engine") 13th Floor Elevators songs, but he lost me after "Don't Slander Me" in '85 or so, and I never really got his Buddy Holly/Tex-Mex type stuff. That 2-CD set is useful though, if only because I stupidly purged too many of his earlier records whilst previously moving.

Playing new Gogol Bordello now; sounds really good, and I was under the impression that they'd started to spin their wheels. Maybe not, or maybe they're just spinning them so fast and drunkenly that I don't mind. Favorites so far include "Wonderlust Kids," "Alcohol," "American Wedding" (Eugene Hutz seems perplexed by crazy American tradition of having to get up so early to prepare) and twirling dervish East-European instrumental "Super Taranta!" I'm still waiting for a Borat collaboration, however.

Crossed from Rolling Metal:
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Speaking of Nugent, another Tom Werman-produced act from the salad days of arena rock, Molly Hatchet's Flirtin' With Disaster -- Live is halfway decent. Considering half of the original band's dead. But the leader, Bobby Ingram, who wasn't in the original line-up but who discovered Danny Joe Brown, has taken over and carried on the name, which was apparently not very nailed down. Kind of proves it wasn't so much the personnel as the style and vibe. Find someone who can still do Frazetta-style covers and you're set.

Comes with a DVD, so you can see the audience, middle-aged white people, no one under 21, shot through with a share of the kinds of chix who always respond to show-us-your-tits (although none do here, it's family entertainment) recommendations. Dave Hlubek, who must weight 350-lbs., still plays guitar, his size seemingly not getting in the way.

They play all the hits perfectly and the middle includes some material veering into old Marshall Tucker territory so this could be just as well on the country thread were it not for the wall of guitar attack. Heavier than new Skynyrd, less corny which wasn't the case originally, and if someone wanted to take a chance on CMT, which they don't, MH would be Crossroaded with Big & Rich or Montgomery Gentry or maybe Keith Urban who professes the great love for playing gee-tar.

Grubbier than some of the melodi-Euro metal I've been hearing this year. Hit list: Whiskey Man, Flirtin', Bounty Hunter, Beatin' the Odds, Dreams I'll Never See.

-- Gorge, Wednesday, July 4, 2007 7:12 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

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Molly Hatchet seemingly made for a July 4 festival, the singer going into the pledge-of-allegiance at the end of one song, much to the hysteria of the Kentucky audience. Plus they play Dixie and the theme from Pier Gynt.

Ha, Eugene Hutz and his handlebar mustache singing about "My Strange Uncles From Abroad" on now, neato!

Black Angel's O'Santabarbara (called O'SantaBabylon on its back cover) turned out to be either as good or better than their O'California from a few months ago, making them probably the first band I've come across to put out two great albums of new material so far in 2007. Also, I can't think of anybody who has ever pulled off such a dead-on and single-minded approximation of late '70s country-leaning (think "Dead Flowers"/"Wild Horses"/"Fool To Cry"/"When The Whip Comes Down"/"Far Away Eyes") Rolling Stones. Highlights of the new one include "Waylon's Song (You Can't Keep A Good Man Down)", "Brown Califonia Hills" (in which early on the singer requests "a Heineken, I like those the best), "I've Been Bad," and "Chemical Man" -- the latter of which is a 7:46 epic that starts out "chicks like you shouldn't worry about the ozone layer" and then talks about the MTV Top 20 and Madonna's new hairdo in People magazine. That said, the album is really really way too fucking long -- 17 songs, including two more over five minutes. At very least, they should have canned the three completely gratuitous and pointless Stones covers ("Honky Tonk Women," "Stray Cat Blues," and "Brown Sugar"), not to mention most of the equally gratutious parts where lady soul singers chime in the background just, seemingly, so the band can say, "hey, we know some black girls" -- I swear, that's how it seems, and I didn't even get that feeling from Mellencamp circa Lonesome Jubilee, so I have a high tolerance. On the other hand, it's nice that the band knows some black girls, I suppose. And for the most part, the album's great.

(Oops, Sticky Fingers not late '70s, obviously. But I think people know the sound I mean.)

Was it 70s at all? (Hey fellow geezers, did yall see the current Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary Issue, with xgau and Fricke on the Top 40 Albums of '67? Surprised to realize that all those were from that one year, and embarrassed to realize I'd owned almost all of 'em, mostly pretty soon after they were released! What a spoiled little shit I was. But those were all good-to-great, except I later decided John Wesley Harding gets over more on its consistently good-to-great gloss of Harry Smith's Anthology and prob those records Dyl stole from Paul Nelson, and what he'd learned about banding from The Hawks-to-Band--more on the music, I mean, than the words, with a few brilliant exceptions.Still haven't heard The Hollies' Evolution, or the first Procul Harum; how are they?) Dave Hlubek, briefly/intriguingly interviewed in Creem, once got to display his Florida-Polish-All-Amercian-Catholic steadfastness (Pro-proto-metal, anti-"Satan Shit!") "Dixe" and "Peer Gynt"! Aye, and so Jewish Ukraine Gypsybillies are true Rolling Country you betsky (lots more good music on the You're Gonna Miss Me DVD, which also way updates the film, and also adds more Mom Gothic and Roky's spoken-word bullseye, the unedited version of "I Know The Hole In Baby's Head.")

"Jewish etc": that is, Gogol Bordello, to those who haven't checked 'em out--do so!

I've never owned the first Procol record, Don, but I believe it's the next one, A Salty Dog, which is the best--they rewrite "Whiter Shade of Pale" as "Pilgrim's Progress" and it might be just as a good a song. The Hollies' Evolution is real acid-in-your-teacup stuff, some of it just dreadful, a couple-three good straightforward songs like "The Games We Play" which is all about wanting to, er, sneak-fuck a female who is perhaps too young to s-f, thus dramatic tension is introduced.

Osantabarbara sounds amazing--3 Stones covers! I will track this one down.

Good summer reading is Colin Escott's Roadkill on the Three-Chord Highway. Y'all might know this one already, but I just read it, and just amazing pieces on Wynn Stewart, Orbison, even Jim Reeves. Funny, a little cynical, and well reported to boot.

Listening to Darryl Worley's Here and Now since one of the cable music video channels was playing his Nothing But a Love Thang and I decided to bite. Reminds me of a Georgia Satellite record, more dumbshit-and-meathead lyrics which makes it unintentionally funnier and more entertaining than the Satellites past album #1.

"Jumpin' Off the Wagon" about playing drunk and getting admonished for it by label. Advocacy of going back to smelling of strong drink being better for the career. Reinforced by "Whisky Makes the World Go Round" and a drunk joke sound effect.

"Free" is the best hard rock tune, hitting that Bad Company Holy Water greatest-standard-mean-equals-hard-rocking-modern-country style. xhuxk might like about half of this thing.

Still has the Do You Remember-for-the-vets shtick, too. Is it possible to make a country record like this without genuflecting to the military?

Ah, I see, big album from -2006-. Next.

that Worley record had a jumbly geetar-mix thing happening, kind of blues on a Thursday nite in Dyersburg, Tenn., after a few beers, this kid has a good little band. nice dueling blues guitar effect, and "Just Came Back from a War" turned out to be a not-bad, sorta naturalistic even, war song.

Yeah, you're right about the -geetars.- Mostly why I like it, I think.

I still need to hear that Darryl Worley album. (Actually, don't think I've ever listened to any Darryl Worley album all the way through -- may or may not have ever owned one, even overnight. I thought the word is that he'd become cynical about the war since the days he was equating Bid Laden with Hussein at the top of the chart; is that wrong? Either way, the geetar descriptions sound enticing.)

New Gogol Bordello album just sounds better and better -- possibly even their best ever, and I've been listening to them since the beginning, when they were on Rubric Records or whatever it was called and Eugene Hutz was cosack-dance deejaying until the wee wee hours at the Bulgarian Bar 416 B.C. on the corner of Broadway and Canal every Saturday night. Or maybe I just never listened close enough the songwriting on their earlier albums? More likely, he's either his writing or the way he puts songs together or both have gotten more coherent -- I just don't remember ever connecting with so many of his words before, and it doesn't seem like it's because he's wimping out singer-songerwriter stylesky or anything. First line of opening song starts "there were never any good old days," and the rest fulfills the promise and the Ukraine-rock stomp rarely lets up: song about woman wanting to be a model ("Zina-Marina"), song about not reading the bible ("Super Theory of Super Everything"), more or less self-explanatory "Harem in Tuscan," "Forces of Victory" which appears to be Gogol Bordello's idea of mythic pomp-and-circumstance viking-style metal, "Your Country" which gets its funk from "Tramped Under Foot" by Led Zeppelin and tells how your country will go down the tubes like all the other countries (sounded excellent on 4th of July!), "American Wedding" which turns out not to be about getting up early to prepare as suggested above but it's 1 a.m. and people are still on the dancefloor staring at their shoes even though they have to get up early the next morning and "she has a boyfriend" though Hutz never says who "she" is (the bride? one of the bridesmaids) and either way it's just a notch or two lower on the wedding-song ladder than "You Never Can Tell" by Chuck Berry or "I Knew the Bride" by Nick Lowe. And otherwise the more I listen, the more I'm hearing.

I was playing Worley and the Foghat Live II thing last night and they went together like mustard and a hotdog, or a shot and a beer, or something. Worley apparently had his tour underwritten by George Dickel so he sneaks in a reference to the brand on one of his drinking tunes.
They are not, thank heavens, about being a sensible tippler although he endorses the whisky maker for promoting responsible drinking in the fine print.

For some reason, I found this quite hilarious.

Lotsa typos as usual in my previous (Bin Laden, Tuscany, listen close enough TO , extra he's, etc.)

Anyway, I'm not saying there are no comparative slow spots (not necessarily tempo-wise -- "Alcohol" is slow and good) on the new Gogol, and remember I can tend toward hyperbole in such raves, so caveat emptor as usual. But I can't think of a previous Bordello LP (not even the Tamir Muskat J.U.F. dub one, though perhaps I should go back and check that out again) that had a shot at my top ten, and right now this new collection of back-in-the-U.S.S.R. two-beat oompah-rock fiddler-on-the-rye Balkan-beat gypsy-punk tanz party muzik sure does. Honestly, this is how Tom Waits would sound if he was any good. Also better than any Legendary Shack Shakers album I've ever heard, for what that's worth. Also, I left out that there are lyrics about pickled herring and "scarecrows in hometowns."

Also been liking Blasters-like Boston eclectic roots trio Cold Cold Heart's cdbaby album Blue Collar Attitude these past few days, even if their more jumpbluesabilly cuts "That's Not Fair" and "Eight Days in Dallas" have a bit too much Royal Crown Revue '90s swing revival in them, and I'm still not sure what being "a white collar worker with a blue collar attitude" means, especially when the apparently middle-aged band members are standing in a garage in the CD booklet (yuppies playing biker on weekends, on "street machines" as next song says?) Favorites so far are the better-than-Los-Lonely-Boys (who I kind of like) mariachi-horn soul of "Walking Away Wounded" and the uncharacteristically dark "Sergio": They seem to be better downbeat.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/coldcoldheart

Gogol made my Top Tens a couple times, but Tamil Muskat Vs. J.U.F. was half brilliant, half slack (the drummer suddenly remembered he was from a band called Big Lazy). Can def see how Eugene's J.U.F. subsets made for reportedly killer "interludes" in the midst of Gogol gigs, and this is still an EPworth of greatness. OMG, on LiveEarth: Keith Urban's doing the oooo-oooo intro to "Gimmee Shelter," on his guitar! Aleysha (sic) Keyes is singing the Merry Clayton "Baaabe, BURN ON, it's just a shot away" part; Keith: "Floood, threaten the very Earth to-day"--yeah, and drought too, in Europe as it is in the Heartland (now they're doing something else that's more like Bon Jovi, but he's playing better than Sambora--when will he do a live album? Getting toward toward Dickey Betts' more lyrical moments now. How was his band, The Ranch, or something like that, before his solo career?)

Now on LiveEarth, stompin' with bluesy electric fiddle, sax, bass, drums, geetar: Nanatuk, five scientists, live from Antarctica, and good too.

"Nunatak," that is.

Charity case stuff, not even much liked by penguine, from Antarctica. What happened in Anarctica should have stayed in Anarctica.

Pitiless flamenco dancing by Gogol Bordello guy on Madonna stage answers my question on whether or not I'd like them.

Wouldn't particularly expect you'd like Gogol Bordello, George (and sometimes I surprise myself that I do.) But I will say that Sergio Leone pomp interludes of "Dub the Frequencies of Love" on their new album (which song is not reggae or dub, really, though it is apparently about the music of one small island taking over the world, and the drums sound vaguely Caribbean) bring to mind the band Babe Ruth at least momentarily. There's also this cornball stage-musical aspect to a couple of the new album's cuts ("Harem in Tuscany," I think, and maybe "My Strange Uncles From Abroad") that I find a bit disconcerting. Most of the rest, I like. But yeah, I can see why others might find them irritating.

Dan Colehaour's Straight To the Highway showed up in the mail with Springsteen and Mellencamp comparisons in its press bio, and I was skeptical -- he's from Iowa, looks like a folkie -- but turns out the album sounds real good, like the midpoint between John Waite's Rounder album and the last Keith Urban maybe; same sonic space as the last couple Pat Green albums as well -- plus some Jackson Browne in his singing, actually. No idea why he's being billed as a singer-songwriter, seemingly for the NPR crowd -- If he staked a claim in Nashville, he might actually have a shot. Some good details in the lyrics, too, like the pregnant girl in "The Likes of Us," I think it is, whose uncle in Dearbon Heights gets her a job that gets her out of the milltown. (Dearborn has perhaps the biggest Arab-American population in the United States, by the way; not sure about Dearborn Heights.) And the singer goes to jail for "Another Man's Crime" in the song of that title, and the kid in the "Quarry Town" joins the Army. Gets too sappy too often (in "My America" -- guess that's the Mellencamp influence -- as anybody could predict; in "Your Secret's Safe With Me," though that's the one where the guitars kick in.) But there's a good voice, hooks, melodies.

Hmmm, actually, according to his myspace page, he IS based in Nasvhille now. Which seems a smart move:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=20188269

Tom T. Hall's Sings Miss Dixie And Tom. T has dead small-town soldiers (in "A Hero in Harlan," a real good one that's about how people romanticize the war but doesn't do so itself) plus another song about a funeral ("A Headstone for Harry"), and I'm really liking "Pretty Green Hills" and "Once Upon A Road" and especially "Leaving Baker County" too, and the part in "Jimmy Martin's Life Story" where you're not allowed to sing hard-drinking blues songs at yet another funeral, and Tom T is generally in good voice (talking more than singing, but he's always been a great talker) after all these years. Some of the rest is just bluegrass where Tom's going along for the ride, or old folks complaining about not fitting in with young folks anymore, but that's okay.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/tomthall

"Walking Away With You," the song I compared to Los Lonely Boys on the Cold Cold Heart album I mentioned a couple days ago, actually sounds more like the Drifters, which is good. (Its mariachi horns also quote some famous oldie explicitly, but I can't place it.) Album also has a good droney prison doom folk song called "Warden Please." Whole CD is nice, though it does grate a little when they go into Cherry Poppin Daddies mode in "That's Not Fair," which is about having a bad credit rating I think.

And oh yeah, "Street Machine" and "About Next Weekend" on the Cold Cold Heart are decent rips of some classic-rock-radio blues-rock classics, blatant enough for me to recognize that something's being ripped but not enough for me to identify what it is.

I wrote a Nashville Scene piece you can probably find somewhere that talked about Worley's last one and Dierks' too, in light of the guitar interplay, basically. Band dynamix. The Worley record seemed obviously post-blues, West Tennessee if you will; the Bentley seemed post-bluegrass, East Tennessee. Or something like that.

How did the Tom T. Hall sneak by me? Is it him relaxing bluegrass-style or what? He sang on the Charlie Louvin record, you can hear him briefly on "Blues Stay Away." Sounds OK to me.

Is it him relaxing bluegrass-style?

Yeah, mostly. It's brand new; just out this month on an invisible label. And the album seems a little too thin -- too often, Tom relaxes too much -- but maybe half of its 12 fairly short songs are real good.

Was that really Eugene with Madonna? I like Gogol's albums a lot more than him plus her. Maybe if she did a guest shot with them, or a mashup of their and her music (or if she did a J.U.F. mix with them?), that could work. Good to know Tom T. is back. Josh Love and I were talking about Jason Isbell's (which I'm mailing you today, xhuxx), and here's my review (the "Try" guy is "antihero," not hero, and a couple other things got dislodged during shipment, but on other hand, he came up with "character actor," which made me think of "b-movie beatitudes," so basically cool).http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0728,allred,77190,22.html

Darryl Worley had one, think it was self-titled (I wrote about it, should remember), that was strikingly sober, with the non-fretful but sanely apprehensive "If Something Should Happen," the relentlessly logical "I Drink", lots of others way past the hideously maudlin early hits like "I Miss My Friend" and "Have You Forgotten." What I tastefully dubbed The New Unease, as in "YEEHAWWW, we re-elected Bush! Uh-oh...." as the war continued downhill, for inst. This of course got to the point where the taxidermical Uncle Dave Lee Roth figure in Trick Pony 'splained to the CMT interviewer, "Aww, ever'body else had a corpse in their video, so we had to too." But good to know Darryl is still doing his thing, judging by yall's descriptions. So are Area Code 615, ca. 1972 A.D., judging by a track I just heard, "Devil Weed And Me." Much more urban and even urbane '72 than I expected, esp. with that title; anybody heard their records? On the dayjob, they were A-list Nashville Cats, rat?

the 2 Area Code 615 records were repackaged around '73. good stuff, instrumentals, one of their songs got used by Old Grey Whistle Test, the UK music TV program. they were A-list sessioneers, some from the first Muscle Shoals rhythm section, like David Briggs and Norbert Putnam. Buddy Spicher, who fiddled with Ray Price's band, was in it, Mac Gayden, Wayne Moss...
have we talked about the Sarah Borges record, Diamonds in the Dark? I'm really enjoying this. I was expecting another Boston half-folkie, half-country record, but she really owns a big and complicated voice, and has something to say about the life of a musician, too. her band plays it big but not too loose, and every song actually has a big, to-the-point hook that seems poised perfectly between sincerity and self-parody. as on "False Eyelashes," a country sorta song about how she had one song that got played on the radio in her home town, everyone thinks she's in tall cotton, but of course it turns out she's down at heel, drives a clunker, but she does own a nice pair of false eyelashes. real nice.

I'll have to check her out online. So far, despite Gothic Americana tag, what I've heard on Marissa Nadler's micespace makes her seem like a hardy immigrant, whatever she preys on. So far, Billy Joe Shaver's forthcoming Everybody's Brother tends to seem a bit drawn out, even when I like the writing (songs to his wives, in Heaven and on Earth). Duets with John Anderson are also little long, but worth hearing for Anderson, one with Johnny Cash if you like Cash (and the backing band is pretty reliable).None of those songs are all that hot, though. One with Marty Stuart steps smartly, still a little long (despite being like 2:37!)One with Bill Miller's Native American music starts strong, also too long. One with Kristofferson is a disgrace; K. sounds like he's doing a *bad* imitation of Leon Russell's beard-chewing Hank Wilson familiar. Best duet (both voices, writing, arrangement) is the droll, Noo Orleens-tonk "Played The Game Too Long," with Tanya Tucker. "The Tough Get Going," where he mentions cracking a vertebra at his recent Las Vegas wedding, is his best (or funnest) solo. He doesn't allude to the dude he shot, but there's a thread about that (he does get the faith-as-fuel bits in, and they sound more engaging here than on the attempts at straight-up, slowed down professions of faith, etc)Basically a pop guy(art-pop or not) or that's the forte of his old-schoolin', as much as anything.

Basically, he shouldn't rely on the words so much,even if they are re J.C. Have more faith in the music. Listen to the Staple Singers, dang.

Okay, after much convincing arguing from George, I finally returned to the Big & Rich record, and guess what? George is right, sort of -- the album, or a lot of it, is much better than I gave it credit for; you just have to think of it as studio-rock craft and stop looking for punchlines or Cowboy Troy or whatever. You need to forget whatever once seemed to make Big & Rich an unheard of proposition, and just listen to the dang songs. B&R do show off their skills on this thing, though, and I'm starting to like more than I ever expected I would. Some notes: (1) "Lost in the Moment" is a waltz sung explicitly as blue-eyed soul; my Lonestar comparison above was basically bullshit (unless Lonestar were more soulful than I'd remembered); (2) My favorite songs are probably "Between Raising Hell and Amazing Grace," "You Never Stop Loving Somebody," and especially "Faster Than Angels Fly," which must have thrown me at first by not flying fast ("some souls only know one speed," and the speed B&R mostly know on their new album is slow), but now its Coronado Street and crucifixes made in California gold driving Mother Mary insane over a subtle Latin lilt are sounding real Catholic to me and somehow sort of reminding me of something Warren Zevon might have done in the '70s. George's Tom Petty and Don Henley comparisons are ringing true for many of these cuts as well. (3) Then the album gets too sluggish for me, with "Eternity" -- is that the one Christgau calls the wedding song? I'm guessing it is but it still hasn't held my attention enough for me to make sure --- and "When Cocaine In the Mirror I Mean The Devil Gets The Best of Me," so I tend to skip those. (4) "Radio" is still real catchy, though I can still take or leave its intro, and "Please Man" is real catchy too though I can still take or leave Wyclef, preferably leave. (5) "High Five" is okay, I guess, and the album ends fairly lamely. Though the AC/DC cover is at least a great song even if it's done pointlessly and "Loud" is at least loud if ditto.

But but but, here's the weird thing....Big & Rich album of the year (more beautiful two-part harmonies, weirder and more rocking rock, funnier punchlines, higher spirits, more fluid rhythms, and almost entirely about being caught between raising hell and amazing grace, so they can smell Saturday's liquor on your breath when you're in the pew on Sunday and all that) turns out to come from, get this...THE BELLAMY BROTHERS! Who really did set the template for B&R; they put out a frigging album called Country Rap in 1987, for crissakes! Anyway, how can I start explaining Jesus Is Coming? How about with "Grandma's God," a five-minute Middle Eastern psychedelic drone-rock epic (think the Byrds or Yarbirds, in the way their music was updated, say, in "Pepper" by the Butthole Surfers, which I swear this song reminds me of), with a lyric that quotes both "Eight Miles High" and, at the end, for the hallulujahs not the hare krishnas, "My Sweet Lord," and talks about growing up in the '60s on the Beatles and Stones and philosophy and psychology from Socrates to Freud (rhymes with void) and sorting through lots of other gods (rhymes with did not spare the rod) before settling on the diety Grandma worshipped. Similar theme: update of "Old Hippie," a character which I just realized is to the Bellamys what Rabbit Angstom is to John Updike, only this time it's "Old Hippie (Saved)," which sounds creepily unpromising but they actually pull it off, and not just because "he won't be preaching to you like some born-again old fart." Meanwhile, "Jesus is Coming and boy is he pissed" about what's happening to the homeless and the planet and all the lawyers and politicians on the make, over an explicit reggae rhythm with gospel choruses, and that one segues into a reggae-riddimed "Gospel Mix" (ha!) of "Let Your Love Flow." And there's more. "Spiritually Bankrupt" has a real good '70s Jackson Browne mood and I think melody and a dark lyric about all the times they should have died; "I Ain't Going To Hell" is a real holy roller stomper about all the cities they're going to go to instead of Hell; there's a lovely version of "I'll Fly Away" (a bluegrass standard the wife tells me but I'm kind of clueless about it) and uplifting originals called "Wings Of The Wind" and "Faith Came Back To Me," plus oh yeah "Lord Help Me Be The Kind of Person (My Dog Thinks I Am)," where your pooch buries your hooch in the backyard. And I didn't even mention "Drug Problem" yet! As Christian-country moves go, this is astounding, and absolutely unexpected. One of the best albums they've made; could make my top ten.

(Don't mean the Butthole Surfers comparison to be at all misleading, and I'm honestly not being perverse by making it -- it's not "Grandma's God"'s lyric or its personality that remind me of "Pepper"; it's the drone itself. It sounds like "Pepper", somehow. Though no doubt that means the Bellamys and Buttholes just have some similar sonic influence -- again, the Yardbirds and Byrds come to mind, but uh, the Beatles and Stones did that sort of thing too, right? Not sure who invented that particular drone.)

Actually, "Jesus Is Coming" has a waltz rhythm, not reggae, oops. Still real good though: "Soon the love in his heart will the rage in his fist." But he's pissed for excellent reasons, as far as I can tell --the Bellamys' Jesus is clearly a liberal, which is cool. Maybe even an old hippie.

will BE the rage in his fist.

Okay, we're going to go find an Irish bar with a Latin DJ, so I can stop anal-compulsively correcting myself every two seconds. But first I want to quote my favorite lines from the new Luke Bryan album:

"Your little ipod loaded up with Hoobastank/Don't be a tapeplayer hater honey, we're groovin to Hank."

(I may be wrong about the "honey" part, but who cares. It still made me laugh out loud.)

I haven't heard the Bellamy Brothers album--though I'm completely intrigued now--but are you sure Jesus is a liberal on it?

I'm thinking of this press release from a couple years back:

NO LOVE FLOWING HERE:
THE BELLAMY BROTHERS ARE MIFFED BY THE USE OF A RE-RECORDED VERSION OF THEIR CLASSIC 1976 HIT “LET YOUR LOVE FLOW” ON TV ADS RUN BY CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE PHIL ANGELIDES
* * *
The Florida Based Legendary Country Duo, Loyal Republicans Who Have Performed The Song Numerous Times In Support Of President Bush, Have Offered To Perform It Live For Angelides' Opponent, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

Legendary country duo The Bellamy Brothers may be registered to vote in Florida, but they've offered to perform their classic 1976 pop hit “Let Your Love Flow” for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in response to its unauthorized use in TV ads for Scharzenegger's opponent Phil Angelides.

David and Howard Bellamy are lifelong Republicans who performed the song for President Bush in support of his campaigns in 2000 and 2004 and at other times for Vice President Dick Cheney and Florida Governor Jeb Bush. The siblings are upset that Angelides, California's Democratic nominee for governor, is using an unauthorized, re-recorded version of the song in an ad that takes the state's voters through the highlights of his life and career.

“We don't mind our song being used for political ads,” says Howard. “We just wish it was by our own party's candidate. A real winner would have used the original version.”

David adds, “We're not California voters, but since we have been associated with the race with our song, we'd have to say we throw our support behind the Terminator.”

In response to Angelides' commercial, The Bellamy Brothers emailed Governor Schwarzenegger's office on Wednesday to inform him that the ad was a re-recorded version of “Let Your Love Flow” using different singers. They made clear that they do not endorse Angelides for governor, and have offered to perform the song live for Schwarzenegger at any time during his campaign—“the original version by the original artist.”

Although The Bellamy Brothers song makes the TV ad shine, Angelides couldn't have picked a bigger supporter of President George W. Bush to highlight his campaign. The band performed at multiple rallies for Bush in 2000 and 2004, and sang the National Anthem at the Liberty Ball during Bush's 2005 inaugural. The Republican Party of Florida honored the band for supporting Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Interesting. I had no idea about the Bellamys' party leanings til now, but yeah, their Jesus (at least relatively, compared to the sort of Jesus I've tended to detect in country songs over the past few years) sure seems liberal (not that that's a prerequisite for me liking songs about him, but it still strikes me as refreshing). He's not even complaining about, say, being left out of public school curriculums, for instance. There are of course all sorts of possible explanations for the seeming discrepancy (maybe the Bellamys' party allegiances have shifted like lots of other Republicans recently, since that article was written; maybe they're smartly bending over backwards to present a Jesus who might reel people to the left of them in instead of repelling those people away -- though I don't hear "being over backwards" in the music, that's for sure, even if there's nothing especially perceptive or risky about saying that homelessness or the trashing of the earth or lying politicians are bad things; maybe they're just really really moderate Republicans; maybe something else.) But it is interesting, yeah.

And actually, the current country current-events song that's been pissing me off for its wishy-washiness is "What Happened," on the imminent Merle Haggard album The Bluegrass Sessions -- as in "what happened to America?", as in the country doesn't really exist anymore, and the best reasons Merle can come up with are that gas prices and taxes have gone up and there's "crap" (he uses that word) like Howard Stern on the radio and Wal-Marts have replaced five-and-dimes. I dunno, I have no idea what party Merle votes for these days, but he's done a couple smart songs about the war and the Patriot Act in the past couple years; you'd think he would have mentioned Guantanamo or something, but he just sounds to me like he didn't want to offend anybody. (I do kind of like the line about waking about that morning to see the towers fall then going back to bed and dreaming of hell, though -- not easy to do any song remotely about 9-11 these days that doesn't make me wince, and he did okay there -- so I may be underrating the rest of the song so far, I suppose.)

But even then, it seems to be one of the better tracks on what's hitting me as a fairly dull album.
A couple blues, a couple redone old songs of his ("Mama's Hungry Eyes" -- what period of Merle is that from anyway? I barely remember it -- and "Big City" from the early '80s, which I'd forgotten how much I love, though maybe it's just that right at this moment it mirrors how I feel about wanting to get out of the big city myself, though this still isn't the version I'd prefer to hear), a lot of lackadaisical sounding stuff where you have to sit through boring Marty Stuart mandolin breaks or whatever. Maybe the problem is that I just don't like bluegrass much, but if anything, it's because the noodling keeps me from hearing enough Merle on the record, and he just doesn't sound like he's on the top of his game anyway. Not nearly as songful as, say, the new Tom T Hall bluegrass record (which seems a fairly comparable item to set it up against). I do kind of like "I Wonder Where To Find You," though, where Merle's trying to stalk some woman he's no longer with, checking every honky tonk in town at closing time, then switching to Joe's coffee shop when the last honky tonk closes. Maybe some other songs will click too, but I doubt I'll have the energy to give them much more of a chance.

I'm liking the basically pro-forma dumbass Nashville hackwork of that Luke Bryan album (coming out on Capitol) a lot more, actually. Just a lot of songs where fairly hard, fairly funky beats give a kick to the lies about how everybody in small towns lives on dirt roads and rides in trucks and carries around grandpa's tacklebox and gets muscular arms while working on the farm, if you don't live on the farm you wish you did. (How come there's never any country songs about growing up in a small town and hating to go fishing and hunting, or thinking grandpa's boring to spend time with? Because country songwriters are chickenshits, probably.) Anyway, these are all fun tracks: "Country Man" (the one I quoted about with the funny "tape player hater" line -- then a couple songs later he says "don't believe the hype": finally, country acknowledges Public Enemy), "We Rode In Trucks", "I'll Stay Me" (I think that's the one with the real cool Dixieland skiffle funk beat), "All My Friends Say" (trying to get home at night from the club where you say her with some other guy), "Over The River" (and through woods etc.) And there's an okay slow one where the girl you like is in the car in front of you, and another one about how you've only liked "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Tuesday's Gone" and "Working Man's Blues" before until she plays you your first love song (but wait, isn't "Tuesday's Gone" already a love song, sort of, or at least a song about loved somebody once? That doesn't really make sense.) I'm not sure if this is Luke Bryan's first album or not -- if he's existed before now, I never even noticed.

fascinating, fascinating. I totally agree about Big & Rich's record, except for me it's the sonics and the arrangements I admire, at a distance. My favorite song is definitely "High Five." I think the wedding song Xgau and others have mentioned is "Lost in the Moment." And I still think the John Anderson record is the best thing John Rich has put his name on, to date. And sure, I could hear Big & doing the Bellamy's "Let Your Love Flow." As for Merle, recall that Chicago Wind had a fair amount of filler, even notebook-page stuff he just throws out there, but that I also admire Merle's plain old ornery casualness. But that was also his studio-country move with Reggie Young and others on expert backup, pretty slick.

Mike Farris' Salvation in Lights overdoes the white-boy gospel shit but isn't bad, altho I never want to hear again already his "Oh! Mary Don't You Weep."

As for my country record of the year so far, it might just be the Sarah Borges thing, which really does what Elizabeth McQueen nearly did a while back, but with more muscle tone. Not that McQueen's pub rockery wasn't wonderful, but that Borges just outsings about anybody I can name at the moment, and she makes her own the old Dolly Parton album track--from Parton's first RCA sessions in late '67--"False Eyelashes." Completely takes over X's great "Come Back to Me" and the blues, which I think Canned Heat did a version of, "Open Up Your Back Door." Comparisons to Wanda Jackson and rockabilly in general are on the money but inadequate; there's a depth to what she's doing that's way beyond revivalism of any kind, and her band suggests a mythical house band at Stiff Records, with Attractions-style pumping bass and guitar that makes Dave Edmunds' rockabilly shit sound a bit anemic. And writes great stuff on her own that makes this a concept record about a reformed party girl smart enough to mock herself but not too smarty-pants to reveal some of her soul, all that.

Arthur Alexander's Lonely Just Like Me: The Final Chapter fits here, country-soul done in Nashville shortly before Alexander died in town after a performance in the summertime. How to describe his voice? It's resigned, ghostly, beyond tired and cynical into that zone where all ambitions are thrown out like yesterday's beer bottles. It seems effortless but it's big and just shaky enough, the sound of a big man (he was tall) who's been cut down to size, a very mannerly voice that hides some anger in there but never cuts loose. My favorite is "Mr. John," where Arthur goes to meet the man in the title, who greets Arthur with a gun, and who would not let Arthur's war buddy, who didn't make it home alive, marry his daughter. Of course, Arthur wants to see the daughter to determine just how beautiful she was and is, but that doesn't seem to happen. So, Arthur's doing his bit for Memory but can't resist the desire to peek beneath the Muse's skirt. This is the original Nonesuch record released in the '90s with, apparently, the restored track order.

I guess this kinda belongs here, too: Turbonegro's "Hell Toupée." on Retox. A sort of Quiet Riot/Molly Hatchet rocker, and a song about touring and the coming apocalypse and how rockers hate to go bald!! "I spent my life fighting off the pigs/Drinking beer and smoking cigs/Stealing riffs and blowing gigs/But now I'm stuck googling for wigs," and, "The other night I was doing a bump/Then I found myself taking a dump/It gave me time to contemplate/The state of my hair and its terrible fate." And, "My bio-clock is ticking away." Touring=expending all your testosterone=alopecia="night is falling, heads are rolling" and "the genocide of my hair today." Incredible, and the music's just as great.

xp, starting with corrections of my Luke Bryan post:

where you SAW her with some other guy.
HAVING loved somebody once.
etc.

a couple other things about past folks:

COLLIN RAYE -- Never paid attention to him before; he was on the country chart a lot in the '90s, apparently. New 6-song Selected Hits EP (two new songs and four older hits played live) suggests why I never paid much attention; i.e., he seems to do a lot of ballads with watery melodies that remind me of either Mike and the Mechanics or Peter Cetera or some sapmongers from the '80s like that. Which is potentially interesting, but I don't have time now to work up an interest. There's something mid-60s Dylan-dream-like about the cadence of "That's My Story (And I'm Sticking To It)" (the one hit by him on here I actually remember) though. It's not bad.

RODNEY CROWELL - Gave the American Beat Records reissue of his self-titled (debut I guess) album (from the '80s I guess, too lazy to check) a chance. It's pretty boring, just like pretty much every other Rodney Crowell album I've ever given a chance to. Theory: people who overrate Vice Gill (who helps out on guitar apparently) overrate Rodney Crowell equally; am I wrong? Anyway, the opening cut "Stars On Water" is okay -- some Ronnie Milsap or whoever type r&b smokiness in that one. Then a bunch of nothing songs I had trouble even sitting through once, including "Blame On The Moon," which Bob Seger wound up covering only slightly less boringly a few years later. But then it ends with "Old Pipeliner," which I always seem to like no matter who does it (favorite version I've heard might be the one I used to own on LP by forgotten '80s country family band the Whites), though I don't think I've ever heard the original, if there is one. (Written by Ray King and Tommy Hill; who are they again? Is the song from the actual rockabilly era, or earlier, or later?) Anyway, that "one eyed cat peeping in a sea food store" line sure is raunchy, isn't it? Filthy. Like something Harmonica Frank Floyd would have come up with. But that line is in other songs too, right?

LOU ANN BARTON -- Old Enough, another reissue on American Beat, also from the '80s. CD cover says she was was in the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughan's Double Trouble and Roomful of Blues, and Rolling Stone gave this album, which was produced by Jerry Wexler and Glen Frey, four stars. I sort of remember that review, and I remember the LP cover, on which Lou Ann looks pretty enough, but I don't remember the music. She's got a fairly rich, husky voice that she doesn't do anything partiularly interesting with. There's lots of bluesish songs of various tempos which I assume had been done by other people years before Lou Ann. "The Sudden Stop" seems like an okay ballad with a musical onomatopoeia in it where Lou Ann suddenly stops singing whilst talking about somebody suddenly stopping caring about her after she cheats on him. Or something. One of the other songs has a hint of synthesized percussion; more of that would have helped. It's not clear to me what people heard in this LP otherwise. (Christgau gave it a C+, which sounds about right):

http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=lou+ann+barton

Just posted this on the chitlin circuit thread:

Pretty good EP from a lady from Tennessee, though the best part of it might be the Bohannon/DJ Hollywood style proto-raps done by some guy at the start and end of her "Southern Soul Picnic," which is my favorite of the three songs even if "bring your own BYOB" is a redundant line (sort of like "ATM machine"). "Telling It Like It Is" has a decent proto-disco groove to it under Miz B saying the other woman might get his honey but Miz B will still get his money. Actually found the warning song "Jody's 1st Cousin" somewhat disappointing, but that may just be because Jody songs get my hopes up:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/mizbtunes

Went and bought B&R's Comin' To Your City to A/B with Between Raising Hell etc and found I still like the new one more. Not coming to B&R first from the so-called "rap," crippled midget as prop fetish and novelty aspects of the act, the second didn't sound radical in terms of anything -- TO ME --per se. Found the freak parade bouncing-ball routine whimsical, always have liked the title tune, Soul Shaker, the ragtime Filthy Rich (a lot) and almost everything else at least a bit, though.

The new one isn't mastered as loud. Didn't put it in my louderizer measurer but it isn't as hard limited, which befits the first few tunes.

I thought B&R could have easily tossed the John Legend intro to Eternity which is a pussy-footing waste of time before getting to the actual number. That's minor, though. I take the CD out when it gets to the AC/DC cover.

When "Lost in the Moment" and the title tune or stripped of the production for the short live DVD that comes with the retail piece, they still sound great.

I just loved that Lee Ann Barton album when it first came out. But I think you're probably right that she doesn't do that much, as a stylist, with the attractive voice she has. I was possibly just deeply in lust at the time. She and Martha Davis were my two early-'80s femme fatale crushes.

On "one eyed cat peeping in a sea food store": I didn't even remember that that appeared on a Rodney Crowell album--I have to pick up that reissue. But it comes from "Shake, Rattle and Roll." Some Googling produced this amusing aside about the filth:

"'"Shake, Rattle and Roll' was a big R&B hit and was covered by the then-country group Bill Haley and the Comets. The suggestive lyrics of the song were changed by Haley for the white market, although the most risque line in the song, 'I'm like a one-eyed cat peeping in a sea food store,' wasn't changed because Haley didn't know what the line meant."

"Old Pipeliner," which I always seem to like no matter who does it (favorite version I've heard might be the one I used to own on LP by forgotten '80s country family band the Whites), though I don't think I've ever heard the original, if there is one. (Written by Ray King and Tommy Hill; who are they again? Is the song from the actual rockabilly era, or earlier, or later?)

It was a hit for Red Sovine around the time of the Beatles' first US hits, probably mid-'64. I believe, on Starday or Starday/King or King. That's the version I know. There's Moon Mullican's "Pipleliner Blues," which is from the '50s. Your theory, Xxk, about Crowell and Gill: I would think Rodney is taken more seriously by people, as he's made various political statements and did that one, The Outsider, where he goes after Mammon pretty smartly I suppose. Whereas, Vince Gill seems more like he just likes to play golf and look at dirty pictures. about the same level of being overrated but different levels of pretension. they're both pretty overrated. Lou Ann Barton, you know I always kind of got her confused with Marcia Ball; the Lou Ann record, was that some kind of notoriously underwhelming Jerry Wexler pet project of making another great smoky soul record by a woman? She was all right looking, pretty sexy if I remember; but I remember I had friends who said the exact same thing about Marcia Ball, who I think has the better name.