Rolling Country 2006 Thread

http://home.comcast.net/~eddycee28/

no, I don't remember that it did. it seemed a bit hazy and incomplete on his family history, actually. and it seemed to gloss over the conflict over the rights to his music (between Eggers and his family), too.

"Sunlight Breaks In" and "Just Like Me" (off *Tracks* by Uncle Billy's Smokehouse from I guess Worcester, Mass, or thereabouts) are like Guns N Roses crossed with Alice In Chains doing country-rock fit for CMT; the guy's high register actually pulls off its Axl attempts.
(The rest of the album is excellent too, but more hard rock than c&w.)

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Josh Turner is not an alt-country guy; he projects his voice, and it's a warm booming baritone, I guess (inasmuch as I know how to identify "baritone"). Still not sure how much I like it. He did that long black train song last year that lotsa people loved but which, for me, was more like "lookit me I'm doing a long black train song, how dark is that, huh?" It was okay, though. So's his new album that's coming out, *Your Man,* or at least the 9 songs I've listened to so far --well, not all of them, not even most of them. But "No Rush" is a truly sexy lover-with-a-slow-hand song that reminds me that the Pointer Sisters had their country moments too (not that it remotely sounds like them). And there a song about buying "Loretta Lynn's Lincoln" that drops lots of classic country names that, okay, well, it sort of annoyed me so far I guess. And one called "White Noise" that's a duet with some familiar country voice from the '80s (John Anderson, maybe? Or maybe not) who isn't mentioned on my advance CD; the idea is that country music is "white noise" but one line's a disclaimer about how this ain't a question of black and white, it's about Johnny Cash and Charlie Pride, so I have no idea what the "white" part IS supposed to mean. And there's another duet with some way older country guy (Ralph Stanley, maybe? these are totally wild guesses mind you) called "Me and God"; first line argues that anything's possible with me and God, but at first I swore Josh was saying anything was possible with a MEAN God, which would of course be a much scarier yet more interesting idea, but no dice. So, um....at least ONE good song, the "No Rush" one. But maybe more. (And I am gonna be embarrassed when I figure out who I confused with John Anderson....okay, I'll check the internet: Gulp, it IS John Anderson; Josh co-wrote it with him -- I passed the blindfold test, yay! And "Me And God" IS Ralph Stanley!! I'm shocked I got those right.)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 23rd, 2005.

New Josh Turner winds down to a song about gravity that's sadly more metaphorical than scientific followed by the rote "Way Down South" that ends with some nice jaunty picking of "Dixie". Just remembered there was also an earlier tune about feeling out of place in the big city. If this was an *Entertaiment Weekly* review, I'd give it a B.

-- xhuxk (xedd...), December 23rd, 2005.

Actually, you kind of CAN sift through bands at CD Baby proper. Searching by subgenre seems to pull up a lot of chaff (though some of it inevitably looks interesting), but there's one search engine function where you can look for bands who theoretically sound like, oh, "Montgomery Gentry" or "Blackfoot" or "Johnny Taylor" or "Opeth" or "Teena Marie" or "Rick Springfield" or whoever else you plug in, and this links to their websites...I just started doing it in the past couple days, and it gets addictive. Will reveal results when I have some.

(They are also what Sufjans Stevens's Michigan album should've been.)

Pedant alert: They were a one-hit wonder, but not with that song. (It was never a commercial single and so never charted.) They followed it up with the Top 20 "Out of My Head," a disposable ballad that is to them what "Look What You've Done" is to Jet. They later did some stuff I really liked but nothing that clicked like "The Way."

P.S. Western PA is an underrated source for indie music today imho.

The numbers are fundamentally astonishing. They come in loads -- 200 at least per week, often as many as 800 some, through the end of the year as the entire catalog is moved on-line for download. Very few of these acts, thousands, get even the slightest mention in even the fringes of the media. Since so many are classic rock and the genres that the writing class likes to shun, it's predictable. Plus these are often bands so clueless they don't even know how to market to the urban slum genre pubs.

But that's where most of my good new listens to are coming from in the new year so far. Electric Boogie Dawgs, for instance, from California, have a name so terrible it's good (like Billie's Smokehouse), but their album is sure a lot better than the gobbler just issued by the Shack-Shakers. And I did like the latter's a year ago.

Anyway, one of the fellows is going out with a girl and her pop is a local country artist. He's so sincere and earnest he instantly inspires nausea. The kid plays electric guitar and does freeform emo Xtian metal which I couldn't stand either but might be someone else's bag if he got on Myspace or something. Heck, maybe he is in on Myspace.

I saw the first episode of "Country Boys.* Not sure if that one kid's student newspaper ever came out. Wonder how long it'll take for the other kid's goofy christ-metal song to inspire a wiseass cover of it.

elieen carey *hearts of time* on now. nashville-based, i think, but she put out the CD herself apparently. first two songs are pop-country backed by stones music, very mellencamp. and a couple of the slower songs that come later ("someone like you," "blue collar man" --nope, not a styx or BTO cover, but that's okay) are just as good.

It's a compilation from Loose Music a UK alt-country label that seems to lurve Canada, lots of covers, which gives the whole thing a nice sense of novelty. Track by track thoughts:

1. Roger Dean Young & The Tin Cup – Stettler - I'm a big RDY & TTP fan, so I was rilly excited to hear this, and it's okay, but it's just a noisy instro, and what I like most is RDY's voice & lyrics.
2. Old Reliable - No Unmaking - Very trad, very earnest.
3. Steve Ketchen & The Kensington Hillbillies - Straight To Hell - More trad, tradder than trad when the "How's about an English jig and reel" line hits.
4. Two Gallants - Nothing To You - Who are these guys? This is a great song, very raw and piercing, like old Mtn Gts. "I'm gay as a choirboy for you"
5. The Only Children - Sky Begins To Storm - Not sure which song this is.
6. Justin Rutledge & The Junction Forty - Too Sober To Sleep - Ryan Adams-ish lament-rock, sure to be a crowd pleaser, in as much as downer songs can be crowd pleasers (which is not too rare in alt-country).
7. Augie March - Little Wonder - Another song I'm not sure about.
8. By The Fireside - Battle Fields - Hey, wow. Is this a cover? It sounds like it might be a Wall-era Pink Floyd song, only with emotions and stuff. Fantastic dreamy soundscapery.
9. The Idaho Falls - Country Song - V. good song, gets to why people like music, but doesn't dwell on it.
10. Charlemagne - Angel Of The Morning - I love Charley Pride, and I love dreamy atmospherics in my alt-country, so this is a winner. Sounds like it was always supposed to be a psychedelic song.
11. Jim Bryson & Jim Cuddy - Somewhere Else - Best Jim Bryson I've heard in a long time, but maybe that's the Jim Cuddy part? Truth be told, I didn't even know Cuddy (Blue Rodeo) was on the track until I cut and pasted the tracklist from Amazon.
12. Langhorne Slim - Loretta Lee Jones - Dizzy rave-up, Modest Mousish/Buddy Holly bluegrass.
13. The Pink Mountaintops - Sweet ’69 - Not country, not even alt-country, Stooges fump-a-whomp. Good fun.
14. Ox – Surrender - Mmmmm, Ox is v. Oldhammish, and so this is Palace covering Cheap Trick. As it was always meant to be.
15. Megan Reilly - On A Plane - Decent.
16. Anders Parker - Feel The Same - Throaty, earnest. Skip forward.
17. Jason Molina - Division St. Girl - Even though Molina's getting to be a really good singer, and his voice is pretty interesting, it's not a very interesting song.
18. Elephant Micah - Dream Feedback - Dino Jr-ish feedback country that's v. pleasing in this song.
19. Blood Meridian - Soldiers Of Christ - I don't know about this one. A little too boiler-plate a/country.
20. The Parkas - Start Your Own Country - I like them Parkas, and this one of their best songs, even though there's nothing about picking fights, unless you count starting wars between nations, which they're only really talking about metaphorically anyway. Still, good metaphor, great harmonies.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/riverside

I suck at predicting things such as commercial viability (so is Sony-Monument, apparently, who dropped these people several years ago and now gets to watch as the indie Equity label harvests the lettuce), but my guess is that if (1) "Mean Streak" is chosen as a single, and (2) some adult contemporary or hot AC station takes a chance on it, these guys go platinum or double and their music becomes ubiquitous.