Rolling country 2007 thread

I think the KE and LW comparisons are misplaced. The sound has crossover potential though she's too old and outside the machine for it too happen. As an homage to CE, here's what I wrote on RC06:

Has Gina Villalobos been mentioned yet? I just heard her new record "Miles Away," and a lot of it kicks, not unlike Miranda or Gretchen, but with a scratchy still wide-open voice. "Somebody Save Me" would sound great on country radio.

The Sara Evans show itself was very good, but a bit short. She's a great performer though, she was working the crowd very nicely. I was worried she'd be touring her latest, not-as-good album, but it was pretty much just a compendium of all of her hit singles. Which means no "Bible Song" :(. Huge crowd reactions: "Born To Fly" (whatever, not her best), "Real Fine Place to Start" (she brought Radney out to sing this with her), "Cheatin'" (Heh, for obvious reasons), and "Suds in the Bucket" (of course). The girl next to me started crying during "There's No Place That Far". Playing her newest singles in the context of her older ones kind of highlighted how much stronger albums Restless and Born to Fly were. From her first two albums she played only "There's No Place That Far"; the show focused heavily on her last 3 albums.

The show highlighted how great a singles artist Sara Evans has been (in my opinion at least), even if her albums aren't consistently great. Anyways, worth the money despite the brevity.

That is as willful, and skillful, a misreading of Johnny Cash as I've ever heard.

xp:

Or starting to not hate "You Always Get What You Always Got," at least. Partly because, as a Dad with sons, I kind of relate to it. And I wasn't typo-ing with those two "staid"'s. Dale's telling the kid to stop burning the candle at both ends because if the kid doesn't he's gonna get burned, and you sure get the idea the kid's living a more exciting life right now than Dale is. So who's the one stuck in place, Dale or his kid? And it's the stick-in-the-mudness of the album's sound that still stands in my way, and pisses me off.

(My favorite Cash moment, for whatever it's worth, is the part in "Wanted Man" where he goes the wrong way into Juarez with Juanita on his lap. Nothing staid or humorless about that at all, obviously!)

I used to listen to Cash a lot as a kid but that's because I liked funny songs and thought he was funny--"The One on the Left."

i think chuck has a point, that cash for american music, seems patriachal, a pater familias, and how people respond to that, seems to be how they respond to daddies in general.

on other things:

i havent bought anything new country wise this year yet, i went in yesterday to buy aliasdair roberts, and picked up bridget bardot instead

ive been listening to devandrah barnhardt from the library, three or four albums, and there is something that annoys me deeply at the same time as i want to keep listening. I think he has a v. pretty voice, but his arrangements seem to impart more eccentricity and depth then he is, there is a diference between visionary and deep vs crazy and cryptic, and hes not even crazy enough to be interesting, or droney, or folky, but maybe something there? is the whole freak folk movement rooted in any country sound at all?

i got tickets to josh ritter in two weeks, 17 days. im thrilled. 11 bucks, tiny venue, shitty sound, but i really like him, and cant imagine him working in a big venue at all.

listening to lyle lovett as well, and no irony there at all is there, for someone who is assumed to be a jaded, semi ironic hipster, he seems to sing what he actually belives. the country/jazz interpolations remind me of kdlang and chris isaak, two artists who i lvoe but dont seem to be well respected.

Joey Wright is a bluegrass jazz guy from Canada, his new record Jalopy doesn't have much wank on it, and his "Blues for Motown" is pretty fun.

But I kind of get the same thing from Diana Krall, and I don't think of her as "ironic" at all. hmmm...

He sounded better on a Sessions at West 54th in the late 90s with Allison Krauss singing backup.

(xp)

This is turning out to be one of the greatest threads ever! I definitely associate Cash (and a lot of country/country-folk music) with my father, above all else, Pete Seeger, who I would probably hate otherwise, but I can't bring myself to hate my father, so that tells you something about the depth and unresolvedness of my complex. It's interesting that xhuxk's favorite song is the one where Dale sings with his Haggard-voice, a bit higher, even throwing in falsetto at the end. But I don't hear the sound of this record as staid at all--there's too many twisted and to my ears semi-comic choices made, in the sound, which Cash, obviously, also did.

And Ramon OTM.

Los Staitjackets have, um, Mexican wrestler masks, right? I saw them once or twice in Philly, and didn't get it. Historically they've mainly just done instrumentals, right? And didn't even distort them like they understand Link Wray, wtf? The albums I've tried to like have been even more boring, but I haven't heard the new one that Matt is talking about, and he makes it sound promising. So who knows?

As for Johnny Cash, whatever I can say for my dad at least he did not name me Sue. So here's my question about JC and his sense o' humor: Are there Cash fans out there so humorless they think of "Boy Named Sue" (which I love by the way) as the moral equivalent of "My Dingaling," given its frivolity and commercial success? It seems there would be, somewhere, but I can't recall ever confronting them.

kd lang wasnt torch on angel...but was on smoke (as torch as anything)

you dont like low key "polite" jazzsing do you xhuxk?

I liked that Alan Jackson album last year! But he had warmth.

I always thought the whole post-1971 rock scene was more about dress-up than necessary, and Johnny monochromed 'em all, out-Marc Bolaned, David Johansened, 'em all, more on a Robert Mitchum, pot-bust level. The Man in Black, you have to admit that's good.

But I really think he's a sort of novelty artist from the gitgo, a conflicted pillhead novelty artist with a decent budget and presumably artistic control. "Chicken in Black" was his deal-breaker for CBS in the '80s--people forget how completely out of favor he was except with his hardcore fans. Or was he? At any rate, that song is about changing identities, expressed in pretty stupid terms, but I like the real thuggishness of its conceit, esp. when he mutters the line about "give me your watches and rings." Obviously, Nashville's coffers denied to him is the bank he robs, but as *someone else*. And the chicken just keeps on pumpin' out "Folsom Prison Blues"--a damnable, adaptable rooster (it would have to be, but "rooster" is too virile for Johnny, he's all washed up), a precursor to today's hat acts.

xps

("T.R.O.U.B.L.E." is playing now; a good solid Jerry Lee-style rocker; it's one I've heard before, of course.)

whats the new watson called, and where is it being released?