Rolling Country 2006 Thread

"she is her boyfriend's husband" - er, now that would be interesting; but "she" is merely her boyfriend's wife.

David Cantwell on the new version of "I Hope" on the new Chicks' album: "This is like trading in the Roman Candle you bought to celebrate our nation’s independence with a pack of those goofy charcoal snake pellets."

He goes over the top on the single, but right about the rest of the album, I think: http://www.livinginstereo.com/

That's excellent, Anthony. What's "Left Hip"?

from teenpop thread (though i just noticed that her myspace inflences list is much less country than her cdbaby influences):

vaguely country-leaning (i.e., her cdbaby page lists miranda lambert as one reference point, though hardly the only one) teenpop singer-songwriter music from an asian-american girl (album title: *american girl*) who apparently grew up in oklahoma and the phillipines and is now based in l.a. (i thought hawaii figured in there somewhere too, though i'm not sure how i got the idea -- oh wait, i guess it's the hawaii t-shirt she wears in the CD booklet); frankly, most of the CD isn't hitting me (her voice is smaller than i wish, for one thing), though i'd be curious to hear what the more shemo-tolerant (/vanessa carlton tolerant/michelle branch tolerant) of y'all think. closest thing to a great song seems to be "i'm in the way," about being drawn to bad boys (and it's got a really familiar pop melody i can't place); "2nd street" has the most r&b in it; "405" seems okay too:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/mylin

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=70795638
---------------------------------------------------------------------Actually, her cdbaby page says "Sheryl Crow and The Wreckers meets Miranda Lambert and Keith Urban," which makes her at least 75 percent pop-country supposedly, but she only sounds maybe 20 percent pop-country if that. I don't think I hear much Miranda, Sheryl, or Keith in her sound. She sounds how I would IMAGINE the Wreckers (who I haven't heard) might, though. Her look is maybe a much softer Pink.

Diana Trask looks lovely on the cover of her Tex-t.

Hacienda Bros. new one, just thought I'd mention it. Country-soul, pretty pro forma, but quite pretty in spots. They do not do badly with "Cowboy to Girls" (Anthony, just think of the gender-fuck time-travel possibilities of this one if someone came along and gayed it up...it'd be the real companion to Keith Anderson's tale of jailed pedlophilia "Clothes Don't Make the Man.")

And they put an accordion in producer Dan Penn's "Cry Like a Baby," which they sound too old to sing. Gaffney and Gonzalez aren't the world's best singers. This would've made a nifty EP--it sounds really good, really warm, and I do quite like about three/four songs, including their nice take on Charlie Rich's "Rebound" and one they wrote themselves that's the title track, and I like their approach to tempo. They're good, but they never quite transcend the notion of soul-with-pedal steel, and they could sound a little more greasy and stoned, I guess, and get into real Sir Dougas territory.

New Guy Clark, "Workbench Songs," isn't bad, either--he writes a real sly one called "Cinco de Mayo in Memphis" and plays the blues on "Walkin' Man." What's interesting about Clark is that he doesn't seem to draw conclusions, and sometimes I think his narratives are uninflected. Hard to pin down what it "means." I actually think his singing has improved since the days of "Texas Cooking" (which is a really fine record). I guess I just wish his music were less received, more interesting, but he's just not interested in that.

xhuxk - and any others interested - I finally got to the new Trent Willmon, and it's great, definitely my country album of the year so far. It's cut from the same cloth as his debut, only much better. The songs are stronger - that's the main thing. Single "On Again Tonight" is kinda limp on CMT, but in the context of the album sounds great. Album kinda alternates a little annoyingly between rowdy-ish lovin'/drinkin' songs and ballads, and admittedly it trails off a bit at the end. But then there's the surprise smack dab in the middle, track 6 (of 11), titled (whaddaya know) "Surprise." I first heard it on my discman on the train home from work, and actually sat there with my eyes bugged out to the point where at least one person was staring at me. Trent's subject arrives home to find his wife playing the dominatrix to his best friend - I'm not kidding, he even references leather and spikes! - and then he takes up with his buddy's (now ex-)wife. It's the kinda song that Toby wouldn't do because, I think, it goes too far even for him. (Maybe, considering "Stays in Mexico," I'm wrong.) This is the country single (if it was a single, which I doubt it'll ever be) of the year. xhuxk, you really owe it to yourself to at least hear this one song, though I recommend the whole album heartily. (Great production from Frank Rogers, too.)

I think you're right about Clark's voice, Edd, and I love "Cinco de Mayo in Memphis," which could be an album cut for Chesney or whoever. Didn't he write that one with Chuck Mead? (I think the BR549 album will make my top ten country albums of the year. So light and quick and the songs are really good.) But man is that "Analog Girl" or whatever it's called song a stinker.

xxpost thanx for the Rhino contact, Edd, and I just emailed you about that (everybody, be sure to read the faq at rhino.com/media before trying to get anything from theeyumm) Great, Anthony, and that's a classic description of a kind of honorably confused or at least conflicted 90s/00s country album, usually under the wire, as far as good descriptions go (also sucesswise, except for small followers, many of them bargain hunters, God love us).

and I just finished, anyway delivered the Jerry Jeff piece. His collection of songs from his Tried & True label, 90s/00s is a model of how to put something like that together, to carry the lesser songs via sequencing and context, and they've all flowing (smoke-cured) shades 'o blue.(Although I've never listened to him, or to this kind of album, much before, and maybe I'll get sick of it.) Just wish he still picked some nervier covers, like that Susannah Clark upthread.

edd
can you digitize and send those two songs by any chance? (i know i owe you a mix, its a commin')

don
thanks

Where's that gonna JJW piece gonna be, don?

man you guys are some great writers and thinkers, I cant imagine not knowing you and getting to benefit from your intelligence and passion for this music

after just almost a full listen, I'm going to say that Darrell Scott's The Invisible Man is probably my album of the year, it's deep and folky and smart-without-being-too-smart like he gets sometimes and there is no better storyteller in country music today, and the melodies are three kinds of gorgeous. (cue Chuck to tell me 'those melodies are unmelodic and his lyrics are crap', usually seems to happen when I love something like this.) plus he covers a Stuart Adamson song and takes shots at the war (again) and SUV-driving callous assholes and all that, wonders whether God or the devil or true love will care when he dies, oh a great record indeed.

well either that or the Dixie Chicks (whom Scott has written for) album or maybe something else.

wow, I guess I need to listen to Scott's album again. It made no impression. I almost always like his songs and I have a pretty high tolerance for "old coot" singersongwriters.

Speaking of which, this Eric Taylor (Nanci Griffith's ex-husband) record, The Great Divide, is killing me right now. Mickey Newbury and Lightnin Hopkins and Pall Malls are the sources. It's my old coot album of the year.

Roy, the Jerry Jeff shorty will be in http://www.charlotte.creativeloafing.com on July 12. Some recent longer, but also relatively well-behaved things (later loosened up for thefreelancementalists) are archived on there too: Chatham County Line (not yet blogged), Shooter,etc. Yeah, Darrell Scott contributed to the Chicks' Home and maybe earlier, I'll have to check out his album.

well, guy clark's no one is frankly sort of jokey. light. i hear him as a really fine songwriter circling around meaning. it's a pretty laid-back record; i'm not sure what else there is to it. i'm not sure how much analysis his stuff can stand, or needs. i'm probably rarely in the correct mood for it, or for townes van zandt either. but those two clark RCA records are pretty choice, i must say.

i have trent right here, and now am going to put on "surprise." i've always suspected there was some dominatricks being performed in the new south exurban, hot summer, endless night; a vein of rich comedy is right here amongst us. i mean i'd probably be happy if all country music was about wife-swapping or at least serial matrimony among the two-boat, three lawn-mower and two-SUV set (and two votes for republicans, don't forget those two).

and right, don, you gotta read rhino's FAQs, get yo-self a password...

well Mr. Edd, are you acquainted with "Margo and Harold"? They just keep coming over to visit their neighbor,Patterson Drive-By Hood, on Pizza Deliverance and Alabama Ass-Whuppin', which further distends butt does not disturb the evening vibe. They are adjusting to the erosion of old age (fiftysomething!), "horny and loaded," and, although fortysomething sprout Patterson's whiney little voice is very appropriate here, turns out he has shared Tupperware with them previously, so they may be uninvited tonight, but should not be unexpected...

This one goes out to xhuxk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkkXpoObF40&search=Fulla

wow, that rules, rockist, thanks! (country and western on rai? well, probably not rai. but country/mid-east fusion has tons of potential! Where is that from, and is the country thing new for Fulla?)

i am also somewhat coming around/giving in to the trent willmon album. i swear he still sounds really staid, in some way (though not nearly as staid as that new guy clark album sounds; i'll never get these guys who have such an aversion to putting, uh, some MUSIC in their music -- too bad, because Guy's songwriting is often good.) anyway, i like "surprise" (though it doesn't strike me as THAT outlandish -- maybe it would've if I hadn't received prior warning though, I dunno) and "so am i" and "sometimes i miss ya" and the blues gloomer "lousiana rain" and probably more. i just wish Trent had more surprise in his SOUND. Or color. Or maybe even leather and whips. There's just something real held-back about him that bugs me.

He's a decent singer, though, and I was wrong about him being totally humorless. "Sometime I Miss Ya" is on now, and it started with a good yeee-haw and now he misses her high heels and big city lovin' and he's laid up on a creek bank with a cold one in his hand, and the whole point is usually he *doesn't* miss her. So: almost clever. And so maybe I'm wrong about him being staid, too; I'm still deciding. (Speaking of cold ones, though, his album starts with a song called "Good One Comin' On", and it's not a fraction as good as Montgomery Gentry's "Cold One Comin' On," but then few songs are.)

(and actually what the arabian-or-whatever* squaredance video that rockist linked to most reminds me of is border-cowboy mexipop songs and videos by people like jenni rivera, which brings us back to the whole latin/middle-eastern crossbreed that's been happening forever.)

* - and duh, the notation beside the video does indicate it's arabic. also indicates she's a bad singer, though, and as usual with arabic music, i don't really understand why, unless i just like bad arabic singers. video also brings rednex's "cotton eyed joe" to mind.

Actually it says she's denouncing bad singers. I only accidentally discovered this while looking for Karnatak music on youtube. The singer is Algerian. I haven't really heard too much by her. Judging by the clips I've listened to, I don't think I'd like the style of her songs too much, but I think she has a good voice and seems to have good vocal chops.

(xpost "almost clever": that really seems like what a lot of radio bait is going for--wanna whet the appetite, but if they got really clever, would raise expectations, and they'd have to get clever again, if not cleverer, the whole thing would get outta hand) No doubt has to do with power of suggestion, but now that yall mention it, easy enough to hear something African/North African-to-Iberian-to-Latin-across-the-Gulf-and-up-the-River in this song on "Jugs, Jukes & Jazz," (local radio program) right now, as I read this: the way Jack Carter of the South Memphis Jug Band rolls while he bends and stretches his notes this way and that,unable to get comfortable, singing like he's got a harmonica stuck in his throat, complaining bout this "Cold Iron Bed."

got this too late to give you the rhino hook-up, don, but where is your bit on willie running? i wrote one in a denver airport, though it came out here: http://www.citypages.com/databank/27/1334/article14484.asp

i can't recall where i put the diana trask which edd mailed me last year (it's not alone, tho i just found another edd burn, Two Yanks in Egnland just recently), but it's hard to imagine wanting to listen to anyone else sing joe's songs. perhaps it's in inverse proportion to wanting to hear joe cluelessly sing "ode to billie jo;," the part about billie joe putting a bullfrog down his pants is just so wrong. most days though, i feel like edd does about lee dorsey AND joe tex.

So how stupid was I to pass on a sealed copy of Charlie Rich's 1975 Pickwick Records grab-bag/outtake/whatever-it-was album for $2 at The Thing in Greenpoint yesterday, while spending $50 total on a huge pile of other stuff by Juice Newton, Freddie Fender, Captain Sky, Marcus, and lotsa other people*? (Pretty stupid, I'm guessing.)

* -- listed entirely on the "recent purchases" thread, if you really wanna know.

Anyway, here's a description of the LP; Pickwick was obviously not to be trusted, but that doesn't mean it's not worth $2, duh....

http://www.mmguide.musicmatch.com/album/album.cgi?ALBUMID=1409502&AMGLENGTH=full#review

didn't see the actual songs on that pickwick link, chuck. but sounds like it's his groove sides (groove=rca's brief r&b subsid, for whom rich recorded '63-'65, with chet atkins producing. koch's "big boss man: the groove sessions" is worth tracking down, but like most koch stuff, not terribly easy to find. the smash stuff, which i actually prefer, is on mercury's '94 "complete smash sessions." for the sun stuff, i've seen repros on cd of those records, like "lonely weekends." varèse sarabande has a really compleat "complete sun sessions plus" that came out in '03. AVI's '96 "lonely weekends: the best of the sun years" is harder to find and the better buy, more concise.

"feel like going home" is the 2-disc set from sony, and a good overview. it leaves off stuff like "memphis and arkansas bridge," which appears on the "boss man" reissue of the '70 epic LP of the same name. if you gotta get just one rich disc, the koch reissue of "boss man" is the one to get--he does a great version of "nice 'n' easy" and one of his most desolate drinking songs, "i can't even drink it away," his greatest and most truly outré and rockin' story song, "memphis and arkansas bridge," and "i do my swingin'at home," his best stay-at-home-with-the-bottle-baby song.

there's an 2-LP set from '74, "fully realized," that covers his mercury/smash years very, very well--it still floats around out there.

i love his RCA stuff--i love pretty much all of it, and the willie mitchell/hi record he did of hank williams songs is supposed to be great--i don't believe i have ever heard it. if i had to pare it down to the very essentials, i guess i'd go with that "feel like going home" 2-disc set and the koch reissue of "boss man."

i am sure that pickwick LP is worth $2, though.

second "feel like going home" though i wished that some of the slicked gospel had been replaced with this one song i have on mp3 somewheres called "Don't Tear (Let?) Me Down" that i can't seem to find on any "Best of..." anywhere. it's really soulful though. Rich may suffer the most from having his catalog spread across so many danged labels that they may never be under one stable roof anytime soon.

on kenny chesney's summer time:

have heard his new single, four times in the last two weeks. Once in the c ar back from a family renuion, once when swimming, and twice while eating. When I reviewed the album for Stylus a couple of months ago, I liked it better. Now the time has come for it to be on the radio, there are several reasons why it should be destroyed:

1. The lyrics are really banal. Not only banal, but designed entirely in a lab to be an authentic expression of how the warm months affect the good ol boy in all of us.
2. As for the above, it is shameless in its attempt to enter the canon: Perfect song on the radio/Sing along because it’s one we know
3. None of the really excellent things about summer (ie drinking, all of the copius amounts of flesh on view) are mentioned.
4. Who the hell drinks YooHoo in the middle of July (Alan Jackson, who understands summer hits, knows what to eat from mid June to eary September, in the last great summer song: “Well we fooged up the windows in my old chevy/I was willing but she wasnt ready/So a settled for a burger and a grape sno-cone” ) Listening to Chattahoochee again, reminds me of how pure Chesney is his benders are n Greasy Cheeseburgers as opposed to whiskey, he doesnt really mention beer at all, and any fucking he does is of the wistful lovemaking variety, When Alan Jackson can out dirty you, theres a problem.
5. The closest Kenny Chesney has been to a swimming hole is the local municpal swimming pool (the second time ive heard this, was reading Alison Bechdel’s Fun House, and watching all the boys with very little clothes, wandering around the local outdoor pool, nestled in the river valley, with perfect aqua water and phone booths shaped like plastic shells–there was also a girl with the words paradise lost written in florid pink on her brown bikini bottoms; why the swimming hole, when the light reflects on such chlorinated paradises)
6. I keep wondering when people will notice how calcuated his work is, but they never do. In this weeks People, there are a dozen or so pictures of hsi summer tour, and it looks like Beatlemania, just as in several of his videos (the concert ones, as opposed to the ones shot on a caribbean beach) begin wiht crowds of hungry women, and Kenny annointing them, like the Pope or the Queen. I know that this is one of the functions of modern celebrity, and post Garth its something that we have expected in Country superstars and it should be deconstructed, and Kenny is so good at riding the wave, that hes not the one to do it but I’m bored.
7. Thats the crux of the matter. He is astonishingly popular, and beloved. America laps him up. So there must be something there, aside from his brilliant manipulating of audience expectation, but what is there are simulacrcas of down home pleasures—like Dollywood if Dolly didnt ever write songs about poverty or death.
8. Maybe thats the problem, Kenny is country music for the south of metastized suburbs–and there needs to be work like that. Sure Hank wouldnt ahve done it this way, but Hank’s lost highway is found and paved over. The problem is that though we need texts about the suburbs, written by people in the suburbs, describing the joys people find there, Chesney isnt this man.
9. Or to put it another way, how can you trust a man who claims to be of the people, when he spends 60 per cent of his time in a yacht somewhere near St Barts.
10. So I guess what annoys me the most, here, are silly things that I should have stopped caring out, personae, role, authentic voice, banality, and desire. Things that would have been a virtue on Britney or Rachel Stevens are gratingly plastic in Chesney. If I stopped considering him country and started considering him pop, maybe the previous 9 points would be rendered moot.
11. But his single from last summer: Anything But Mine is one of the great singles of country music, a tender and broken examanation of lost innonce, the longing and desire of first bloomings destroyed by time and geographical inconveince.
12. The song still annoys me.

Chip Taylor's double album, Unglorious Hallelujah / Red Red Rose (And Other Songs of Love, Pain, and Destruction), isn't half bad, considering dude (who wrote "Wild Thing" fer chrissake) cain't saing to save his life. He namedrops Townes and Guy and John on the same track, then does songs called "Christmas in Jail" and "The Trouble With Scientists" and "Daddy, Why'd You Take My Guitar Away?" There should be more Carrie Rodriguez here, although it's always great to hear her come in on harmony like a soft breeze on a hot day.

xpost "almost clever": see Dierks' "How Am I Doin'," too. (Which I like better than "Sometimes I Miss Ya," but they're clearly cut from the same cloth.)

Gonna be a Dierks live set on CMT Sunday night, I'll watch that, and maybe Skyn on Sat, Bocephus on Fri, unless it's the other way around for these two, but def Dierks on Sun. So glad they're still working those tracks from his ancient album, sound sooo nice this summer. Yeah, Fully Realized got its title from Peter Guralnick's opinion of those tracks, he led a lot of us back to all the good Rich 50s-60s stuff, though of course "Behind Closed Doors" got him the ink to do so, like in Rolling Stone. But I dunno if those were the *most* or most of his fully realized work, cos still haven't heard all from that era. The later stuff seems pretty erratic, but the gospel album Silver Linings is pretty good, and its "Milky White Way" is indeed one of Charlie's best ever, like G. says."But I'm bored." Yeah, that's wy nobody bothers to take Chesney for a ride to the autopsy, although I think you and I sawed on him some during one of the previous Rolling years. Think of him as pop, it won't help. Andy, I'd already checked your "Full Nelson," cool. How's that unreleased live album they included?? (PS: xpost Darrell Scott and his Dad were on "Fresh Air" the other night. Mostly good talk, but their own tracks[no duets] sounded okay, except for some of Darell's lyrics, and he's produced an album for Dad, whose name is Wayne, I think)

the thing is, he is capable of great power our friend chesney--and hes huge enough that someone has to critically roll him, but even my desire to fuck him is leaching out--and i have a desire to fuck a slew of dumb good ol boys...

I'm getting down to the wire on this Guy Clark piece I'm working on. I guess my fave of all his stuff is the Chips Moman-produced "Texas
Cookin'." The new one seems a bit willfully insubstantial, and I just can't get past the flatness of the music itself. Talking to him (thru a haze of some, er, "gage" as they once called it, except this stuff made me realize why I have to be careful around "mezz" as they once called it), I got a sense of a guy who is simply not telling you what he knows, and then calling it art. And it is art, I think so, but damned if it doesn't dissipate like those insights you get once the "muggles" s they once called it goes away and you're left with an empty Oreo container. And apparently, his very first cut was by the Everly Bros. on their "Pass the Chicken and Listen" LP, which my buddy's digging out for me this weekend.

I've had Trent Willmon's record on as I do other things, and every song has struck me. Good singing, really intelligent songwriting, and sharp words. Except for that one about spending a night "six feet unde the ground" to make you appreciate life. I mean, come on--can we not make it all so dramatic? We can appreciate life without being quite so portentous about it, seems like; and I find this kind of trope really fucking dumb. But other than that, I think this is gonna be one of the best country rekkids of the year.

Back to Guy Clark...

I listened to the Trent Willmon, and the only song I care anything about is "On Again Tonight," which reminds me of Bon Jovi's "Bed of Roses" but without the Samboran fervor in the background vocals. Willmon's voice really gets multitracked into a searing force on that number. The rest of the time he's pretty useless, sounds like an investment banker.

That "Surprise" song really isn't all that shocking because he's not participating in the S&M, more just aw-shucksily smirking at it, which is nothing new. Toby's "Stays in Mexico" seems a much more transgressive song, cos it condones (doesn't it?) the bad behavior of the characters. (Not that "SIM" would seem at all transgressive on a pop station.)

And as for that "Six Feet Under" song, I am sick unto death of songs telling me to live like I was dying. I'll live as selfishly and short-sightedly as I want to, idiot country sages. Every time I hear "Live Like You Were Dying," I wistfully imagine Tim McGraw as Luis Bunuel, dismissing the "crowd of imbeciles who find the song beautiful and poetic when it is fundamentally a desperate and passionate call to murder."

That said, Milsap's "A Day in the Life of America" is a little reductive.

Maybe not exactly condones it, but the characters don't suffer the wages of cheatin', they get reassured that it "Stays In Mexico."("Characters" especially because I'm thinking of the video, where they do get stressed out, and sometimes *look* like, "OMG this is the last time Ah swear," but then they get back into it--and sort of an implied possibility of a sequel, or even a longterm arrangement, like in the movie Same Time Next Year, which would be a good subject for a country song: basically it's cheatin', but then again it's stable.)

Paula's wedding was just beautiful, and I got so filled up with appreciation for my life and my family that I nearly exploded like the Fourth of July. Paula is named for her godfather, Paul English, my drummer and best friend of forty years. And when the minister asked, "Who gives this bride?" I cracked everybody up by saying, "Me and Paul." That of course is the name of one of my best songs, which celebrates the forty-plus years Paul and I have been together on the road. Come to think of it, counting Paul, I've probably been married five times. Like I said, cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other. The Tao Of Wille, p. 141

I love that mexico song by george straight, i sould be mildy offended by the colonial aspects, and the fake spanish, but the video and the song are soft spoken and tender

writ by Merle, which fits with the mildly offensive-to-us colonial aspect x the tender (Buffett couldn't get away with it, and neither could Toby,probly?)

Question for NYCers: Are there any open mics in the city that are country friendly? A friend of mine is there for a few weeks, he has his guitar and he's a decent Lefty-style singer and songwriter looking to play out for a night.

Lefty like Fidel or Frizzell? Both? That would be cool. I heard part of a James Talley feature on Nick Spitzer's Public Radio show, "American Routes" (think that's the way he spells it, since always starts with, "You're traveling on etc"). Mostly what I heard was "W.W. Daniel And The Light Crust Doughboys," with James tugging at the rhythm like a well-raised farmboy, tuggin at his father's sleeve, and urging him, not too loud, to please come 'n' see this powerful band over hyere. The Jeffy Jeff micro is in CharLoaf today, with Fred Mills' Rare Grooves column on the Big Mack label, latest in the Eccentric Soul series of Numero, who also brought us Ladies From The Canyon (prob best reviewed by Edd, who also discovered several of the Ladies now living and grooving in Nashville). And(the one of these that's as long as it should be) Grant Britt on the Carolatan Festival, which is Latin rock etc, local and otherwise (good interview with a guy from Los Amigos Invisibles, for inst). You'll see links to those on the left margin of my thingette: http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:52232/

Not really relevant but I thought I'd mention that I bought a good (possibly European) disco version of "Ghost Riders In The Sky" from a record stall in Reykjavik, Iceland on Saturday.

I was listening to that "Ladies of the Canyon" CD when in NYC - a friend of mine is another contributor - and it sounds terrific.

>Question for NYCers: Are there any open mics in the city that are country friendly? <

Is that CashHank one still going on? I'm not sure, but it used to be at the Buttermilk Bar in lower Park Slope, so maybe check there, Roy?

I mean, I THINK that's where it was. If not there, somewhere close to there. (I never actually went myself, since I got priced out of lower Park Slope.) Otherwise, this article might give you some ideas:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0545,gottschalk,69776,22.html

Gracias! That def helps....

This weekend: Randy Travis, Travis Tritt, Big & Rich (w/ Cowboy Troy) and Alan Jackson.

my ten-year-old niece's favorite song on her current favorite record, Carrie Underwood's debut, is the one about Carrie scratching up her cheatin' boyfriend's car.

got lotsa catching up to do, as usual; my mother's taken a real turn for the worse, is getting hospice care, and we're not expecting her to live out the month. very bad.

finished writing about Guy Clark. I decided that I did sort of miss what makes him good. I quite like his first record--it's indeed a minor classic--and I am fascinated by the obsessive Chips Moman production, and the way Guy mostly glides thru it, on "Texas Cookin'," which seems a bit overcooked to me, sorta Barefoot Jerry or Little Feat demi-funk-country. not as glaringly wrong for the artist as Chips' work with Gary Stewart, but not right either, exactly. I ended up liking some of "Dublin Blues" quite a bit--the western swing stuff is nice. and I do think he rates pretty highly as a songwriter, in a way, but I guess I still find it boiled down to...what is the point, exactly, of boiling down so much? I found a copy of the Everly Brothers' "Pass the Chicken and Listen" which has the first Clark song cut, '72, "Nickel for the Fiddler." the way the Evs do it, it becomes very abstract, and sort of the dark side of "Bowling Green." what's strange about that song is the way that young and old finally manage to agree on what is country music (it's what's happening in the park, or on the lawn) and the way "everybody's ruined," which I guess means everybody's stoned or drunk. In other words, Clark seems tied to a specific countercultural cozmik-cowboy moment, laconic; so I don't get much sense of expansive life from things like "LA Freeway" but do find his song about growing old on the first record, and yeah, "Desperados Waiting on the Train" (a song so famous now that it never gets mentioned by its correct name!), to be pretty sly, more than meets the eye--ironic, in short.

And when I talked to Guy, he told me a funny anecdote about how Ricky Skaggs, who did his "Heartbroke" and took it to #1 in '82, wouldn't sing "bitch" in that song, "because he couldn't bear the thought of his mama and daddy hearing that word on the radio!"

more on Trent Willmon, I think, is coming--I like that record and want to spend more time with it. And I'm currently trying to figure out if I love or hate Linda Ronstadt's collab w/ Cajun singer Ann Savoy. Genteel?

Really looking forward to your Guy piece, Edd. My thoughts go out to you and your mom.

Elsewhere: I'm liking this Eilen Jewell record, Boundary County, on a sub-divsion of Signature Sounds. Her voice and songs give off a low, soft light, and her blues are more like lullabyes, but I don't mind that. Some might find it a bit polite or minimalist, but those tones and 'tudes have long been a part of country.

so sorry about your Mom, Edd. I know how all that can be. Did you hear Guy on Heartworn Highways, relaxing (and competing) among friends? I really like his pirate song. Aargh, yall! Heard Ronstadt and Savoy on Prairie Home, a bit stolid, would like to hear Ann without Linda. Good Cajun-based ballads were better femme-voiced by Balfa Toujours, although I think they've broken up now. But prob tracks posted somewhere. Saw the Wreckers last night on something, Tonight Show, I think. The focus seemed to favor the blonde, but not emphatically, maybe it's just me, though same impression of the video. I do think Michelle Branch seemed at ease, and well-suited to be part of a band effort, as with Carlos & co. (nice track from his album, and saw them on several shows, promoting it for quite a while). And the present duo gained a lot from their good band. Dunno how the album is, though the songs I've heard seem basically kinda bland, but anybody who likes Little Big Town, Carrie Underwood, the new Dixie Chicks, SheDaisy, etc., might like the album too (me too hopefully)Tim, who do you know that was on Ladies From The Canyon??

I hope it's Shira Small. Her cut on that compilation is so great.