Rolling Country 2006 Thread

"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.

An indie hipster countrypolitan (between inverted commas no doubt) revival, if that's what Edd's post about L.A. is predicting above, sounds like potentially the most annoying thing since the indie hipster Esquivel revival of the mid '90s, but I will keep my ears open and try my damnedest to stay awake, I promise. I guess the indie hipsters like how unmacho and emo countrypolitan is? And I guess some people liked that album last year by Bonnie Prince Billy or whatever his name is. And didn't Ween make a "countypolitan" album once? God I hate that kinda shtick. Don't hate countrypolitan, but there are many things I like more, I gotta say. Still, definitely a subject for future research. Been listening to this new Time Life compilation CD *Classic Country: Sweet Country Ballads,* and it seems like a nice little overview of the subgenre; I already knew and liked the Eddy Arnold, Ray Price, Charlie Rich, Glen Campbell, Bobby Bare, Don Gibson, Skeeter Davis, and Bobby Goldsboro tracks (make the world go away for the good times behind closed doors by the time i get to phoenix detroit city i can't stop loving you the end of the world honey), but for a bunch of those artists it's the only song I know by them, and the only one of them I've ever investigated in detail is Glen Campbell, who had tons of hits I love. I used to own a couple Charlie Rich LPs; stupid of me to get rid of them. Never have connected with Charlie Pride, whose "I Can't Believe You Stopped Loving Me" is on here; probably my loss. Bobby Goldsboro had better hits than "Honey" (i.e., "The Straight Life," hey what I can say, I like crackers and beer) but I had no idea he was ever considered country, if he in fact ever was. Favorite track I don't recall hearing before so far: "Abeline" by George Hamilton IV. Didn't know he was country, either. Dates range from 1958 to 1970; when did "countrypolitan" (the sound and/or word, which Time Life doesn't use in its title by the way) actually start?

Either way, I'm afraid right now I'd rather listen to the the Little Big Town album, which is more pop than earthy no matter what Don thinks. Sounds better every time I listen; if I did my Nasvhille Scene list over again, I'd definitely list it a few slots higher than #10; possibly even as high as #3. Anyway, Frank: Song credits in the CD sleeve (with copyrights ranging from 2002 for "Stay" -- wait, is that cover? authors don't seem to be people in the band -- to 2005 for most of the rest) don't seem to list lead singers, for some reason; just (session, I assume?) musicians. (Also, Frank, you seemed to say above that they'd been dropped from Sony; was there an earlier album? Or did Sony never put one out?) The slush guy singing in both "Bring it On Home" and "Stay" DOES sound more Eagles than Fleetwood Mac to me --actually, he sounds a lot like Don Henley, and yeah, these are definitely a couple of the lesser tracks, as is "Fine With Me", the melody of which starts out reminding me of some Lionel Richie countryish song (ie "Stuck on You" or "Sail On" or maybe "Easy" I guess) then turns into something else obvious I can't out my finger on. The tracks emphasizing girl voices are definitely better than the tracks without them. But it's not just the harmonies that remind me of Fleetwood Mac - it's also some of the melodies, and I swear there's Lindsey Buckinghamness in some of the guitar parts. One day maybe I'll sit down and take notes and pinpoint where. (Also, it turns out the one line in "Mean Streak" - still my favorite track - I coudn't pinpoint on the '05 thread is "like a frat boy at Hell Week." I can definitely see these people appealing to a frat/jam audience, if such a crowd heard them; they're for sure more rock than Nickel Creek, who I get the idea said crowd already likes.) (Though they're not as earthy as NC, Don! And maybe that would bug the fratters?)

Finally, Povertyneck Hillbillies again: They sent a DVD as well as their CD, and it's quite entertaining, especially the documentary about them coming together in Western Pennsy and winding up with the biggest song on Pittsburgh's "Froggy" commercial country station a summer or two ago off a self-released CD they sold from the back of their tour bus; supposedly, in Pittsburgh, according to a radio station guy on the DVD, they're as big as Montgomery Gentry or Alan Jackson or Kenny Chesney, and the live shows on the DVD seemed to kinda confirm that, though sometimes it was hard to tell to what extent this was staged. I prefer to think of them as a musical equivalent of minor league baseball, which is a pretty cool idea when you think about it. Said local hit is the superdupercatchy love-the-one-you're-with/you're-all-I've-got-tonight "Mr. Right Now" (as in I may not be Mr. Right but I'm Mr. Right Now), and it's more loveable on the DVD than on the CD, as is "Hillbilly State of Mind," since that one shows just about everybody in the audience (including all the pretty girls and a couple less pretty ones who were apparently all urged to stand in the front row during filming plus two little girls in cowboy hats the band brings on stage) doing this completely silly hand-jive dance where they make deer antlers with their hands and show the corn growing up and pump their fists in the air and stuff. DVD has a couple songs that aren't on the CD as well, and the concert on it ends with a nice healthy guitar solo at the end of "Any Road." Singer wears a snazzy black cowboy shirt with a crucifix-shaped cross on either side of its chest, but there's no other Christian imagery I notice. A whole lot of off-roading, fishing, and clay pigeon shooting, though.

I was wondering the same thing this weekend. David Cantwell, who is working on a book about the Nashville Sound (tentatively called Make the World Go Away), isn't sure either, but the term probably dates from the '50s, though it's since been used mostly for the '70s, which is kinda interesting. I'm guessing Billboard put it into circulation but can't find a ref.

Playing new Shooter Jennings album, *Electric Rodeo* now. Sounds great, though sometimes he still sings like Kid Rock. Doubt there's a song I'll love as much as "4th of July," but overall, I'm thinking right away that it's the way more consistent album of the two. The title/opening track and "Bad Magick" are as heavy metal as anything on the debut. Also like the (non Nazareth) hangover head-holder "Hair of the Dog," the cocaine lament "Little White Lines" (where you hear Shooter sniff in the middle and a cop stops him and he seems to refuse a breathalizer then the cop asks him the shave something but he never says what), "Alligator Chomp (The Ballad of Martin Luther Frog Jr") (total Jerry Reed "Amos Moses" swamp-funk rap-neck racial allegory); and at least the hoedown choo-choo chug opening of "Manifesto No. 2" (where he also catches his woman with another man so he shoots her with a shotgun) and the country jazz conclusion of "(The) Living Proof" (dumb question, but is that his daddy's song? Seems familiar, but I'm no Waylon expert.) Also, plenty of winding-road Allmans boogie, and a few goofy lines in "Aviators" (one of a couple Kid-Rock style clumsy ballads) where he takes a date to waffle house and he shoots her dog and slashes her dad's tires but she just don't understand his strange kind of wit.

Tom Keifer hair-metal CMT ballad I mean (hence its inclusion on this thread.)

Related question: Did Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive" sound at all country or southern rock in 1988? If so, I sure never noticed. But Shooter seems to swipe its riff in one of the Allmansy tracks on the new album, and a couple country acts (Montgomery Gentry and Chris Cagle) have covered it. So is it possible that it always sounded Southern rock, and nobody noticed at the time? Or did the cowboy on steel horse and stuff just inspire country people to reinvent it, the way, say, early '80s punks claimed and reinvented "Time Has Come Today" by the Chambers Brothers, and mid '60s punks claimed and reinvented "Louie Louie" and "Hey Joe"? Either way, it's a clear influence on the modern CMT sound.