Rolling Country 2006 Thread

Price had been recording with orchestras since at least 1964, so the overall approach of "For the Good Times" was well established for him by 1970. It's the first track on side one of the album of the same name (Columbia 1970), I think the first Kristofferson song he recorded, with "Help Me Make It Through the Night" the first track on side two. In the late '60s, what really starts to change, at least to my ears, is his singing: He's in complete and total control of his voice, and so he's figuring out more and more about the kind of singer he can be, what country music means to him (turns out, it means more the bedrock rhythm and the melodic concision, as opposed to themes or twang or whatever), sculpting and caressing notes, drawing out phrases like the longest bow on the longest string, then seamlessly returning to the deep spoken lines. Throughout this period he's negotiating sonic country signifiers--some tracks have more pedal steel or fiddle or pronounced acoustic guitar (the track that follows FTGT, "Gonna Burn Some Bridges," opens with pedal steel lick and twin fiddles) others, like FTGT, have only that insistent, steady underlying Nashville Sound rhythm. But by 1970 country audiences were ready. "For the Good Times" went #1 Country and #11 Pop. The whole album is really good. He reinterprets "Crazy Arms" and "Heartaches By the Number" in full Sinatra mode. If you haven't heard his version of "Help Me Make It Through the Night," you'll be surprised at how fast it is. He doesn't get the song the way Sammi Smith did. But "Cold Day in July" is totally crushing.

"Country music is often called music for grown-ups, and no record better illustrates the point than Ray Price's 'For the Good Times'. The foundation is Kris Kristofferson's song, which is every bit as complex and conflicted as any real-life adult breakup.

'Don't look so sad,' Price begins. You figure he's comforting a woman to whom he's just delivered bad news. But as the scene unfolds, you learn that he's getting the bad news; she's leaving him, and the song is his attempt to get her to go to bed with him just once more. You know, 'for the good times.' Price could have delivered these lines in all sorts of ways. He could have sung as if the man were unable or unwilling to let go. He could leave the man wallowing in self-pity or nostalgia, or he could have let the man believe he just needs someone to help him make it through the night. It could have been a last ditch effort to get her to stay, or maybe he's just a creep who wants to get laid. The miracle of Price's delivery--he croons elegantly in one breath, all pathetic in the next--is that he never allows us to choose between these interpretations. Kristofferson's words and melody and Price's delivery combine to let the man be all these things at once. No wonder Price has frequently gone out of his way to identify 'For the Good Times' as among the best songs he's ever sung.

The reason he even has to point this out at all is the record's arrangement. Its clopping drum and tic-tac bass are unmistakably country in feel, but the problem for some listeners is the Cam Mullins string arrangement intertwined with that pulsing rhythm--as every purist knows by heart, string arrangements don't belong on country records. Whatever. There's really no accounting for such reactions, particularly to a record like 'For the Good Times', where the strings so clearly aid both the singer and the song. It's true that on some records strings are needlessly stitched onto perfectly serviceable country rhythm sections (think of those Frankenstein monster overdubs of Hank Williams's hits), but that's not the case here. 'For the Good Times' was clearly conceived with an orchestra at its center. As a result, the strings give the song its mournful tone and sonic thrust; they suggest, in their call-and-response with the singer, all the history that stands between this couple. Most of all, they assist Price in his seduction even as they point to the man's inevitably lonely future.

Because she's going to tell him no, right? 'Don't look so sad', he begins. Every time you hear Price sing those lines, you wonder anew just what it is he has done to make her give him that look. Has he moved to hold her in his arms as she was packing to leave? Touched his lips to her neck as she pulled away? 'Make believe you love me,' he purrs, then pauses ever so slightly before adding 'one more time'. And that's where you finally understand why her eyes have filled with tears--she's remembering all those nights when making believe was precisely what she had to do." -- David Cantwell

I must say this sounds like a good mix of self-congratulatory and wretched.

Not something I'll listen to a lot. It ain't party music but it's effective.

http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/shawnmullins/albums/album/246377/rid/5941940

Don't own the album anymore, though. May listen to his new one; may not. (By the way, 9th Ward Picking Parlor in New Orleans is also where Jan Bell records sometimes, I think == can't remember whether that Maybelles album from last year was recorded there or not.)

the Maybelles did record their album at 9th Ward. I think if I remember right that Jan Bell mentioned to me that the owners of 9th Ward PP had moved operations to Kansas? Iowa? someplace like that. I like the Maybelles better than Mullins, altho I kinda keep playing it in the changer to see if I like it more than I do right now.

listened to the Hayseed Dixie records--yawn, not really all that much fun. they were fun live, not as fun as this Memphis Jug Band/blues-with-snare/acoustic geetar/standup-bass act I caught at Billy Block's Western Rodeo revue: many of their songs were about twelve-step programs and women who love you even when you drink too much, I think they were called something like Delta Southern. Gus Cannon becomes a Friend of Bill. and right, they did "Kirby Hill" which was the best thing I heard. just one of those things that don't translate onto record, and pretty one-joke.

Rhett Akins, "Kiss My Country Ass" begins well--great slide and acoustic guitar that's ominioso and pretty rockin'. but, "I ain't scared to grab my gun and fight for my land/If you don't love the American flag, you can..." basically, it puts me in mind of a band of total drunks going off to fight terrorism, which might not be a bad idea come to think of it. but, some fine slide/guitar solos, great Stonesy piano licks, some great post-Allmans flatted-fifth riffs snaking around. basically, the record really swings and rocks, and I actually quite like "I Love Women (My Mama Can't Stand" which mentions "Daytona tans" and "redneck women who ain't afraid of Jim Beam" and uses a modified chicka-boom two-beat structure. one thing about Nashville records, you generally get a lively rhythm-section dynamic, and here the steel/guitar combination is light and not overbearing. good 'un. and in general, almost every song has a really good riff, like "The Trouble with a Woman," except I am not sure if his out--the trouble with a woman is gen'l'y, usually, a man--means that he's just on the make or if he cedes power. and the rest of it talks about bird dogs and how playing sorority parties made him realize that he's not the kind of guy to take orders from suits, altho he's fine with taking orders from George W. Bush.

I'm not sure, I might find Rhett more authentic outlaw than Hank III, which I am still absorbing. but he's going for a thin sound, he has a thin and weird voice, and he uses a lotta echo and reverb to I guess cover up the fact it seems to have been recorded in a room with wooden floors and walls. starts out with a brief reprise of the Louvin Bros.' "Satan Is Real," and so far I find it a bit samey over the long haul. haven't yet listened to the second disc.

xps

the Maybelles did record their album at 9th Ward. I think if I remember right that Jan Bell mentioned to me that the owners of 9th Ward PP had moved operations to Kansas? Iowa? someplace like that. I like the Maybelles better than Mullins, altho I kinda keep playing it in the changer to see if I like it more than I do right now.

listened to the Hayseed Dixie records--yawn, not really all that much fun. they were fun live, not as fun as this Memphis Jug Band/blues-with-snare/acoustic geetar/standup-bass act I caught at Billy Block's Western Rodeo revue: many of their songs were about twelve-step programs and women who love you even when you drink too much, I think they were called something like Delta Southern. Gus Cannon becomes a Friend of Bill. and right, Hayseed/De-seed did "Kirby Hill" which was the best thing I heard. just one of those things that don't translate onto record, and pretty one-joke.

Rhett Akins, "Kiss My Country Ass" begins well--great slide and acoustic guitar that's ominioso and pretty rockin'. but, "I ain't scared to grab my gun and fight for my land/If you don't love the American flag, you can..." basically, it puts me in mind of a band of total drunks going off to fight terrorism, which might not be a bad idea come to think of it. but, some fine slide/guitar solos, great Stonesy piano licks, some great post-Allmans flatted-fifth riffs snaking around. basically, the record really swings and rocks, and I actually quite like "I Love Women (My Mama Can't Stand" which mentions "Daytona tans" and "redneck women who ain't afraid of Jim Beam" and uses a modified chicka-boom two-beat structure. one thing about Nashville records, you generally get a lively rhythm-section dynamic, and here the steel/guitar combination is light and not overbearing. good 'un. and in general, almost every song has a really good riff, like "The Trouble with a Woman," except I am not sure if his out--the trouble with a woman is gen'l'y, usually, a man--means that he's just on the make or if he cedes power. and the rest of it talks about bird dogs and how playing sorority parties made him realize that he's not the kind of guy to take orders from suits, altho he's fine with taking orders from George W. Bush.

I'm not sure, I might find Rhett more authentic outlaw than Hank III, which I am still absorbing. but he's going for a thin sound, he has a thin and weird voice, and he uses a lotta echo and reverb to I guess cover up the fact it seems to have been recorded in a room with wooden floors and walls. starts out with a brief reprise of the Louvin Bros.' "Satan Is Real," and so far I find it a bit samey over the long haul. haven't yet listened to the second disc.

xps

"1. Um. Pretty. But blah. Pretty blah. 'Underwater daydream, bone dry desert song.' There's a husky something at the end of his phrasing that is interesting. 'Interstellar rainbow on its cosmic whim'? 'I like my daylight to be silver, I like my night skies to be blue/Blue as you." Meaning what?

"2. And now some hard guitars. Which are a relief. 'I lost count of the times I've given up on you/But you make such a beautiful wreck, you do.' 'At the dark end of this bar, what a beautiful wreck you are."

A blue wreck, perhaps? I guess I'll get back to this alb at some point.

"they" = "the words" in above passage. (basically the words don't annoy me yet, but also don't reach out and grab me yet. now they're saying "they say if you love something, let it go" over and over.)

so I listened to the new Kristofferson record with Don Was, and Jim Keltner on drums on a couple. it's good-liberal codgerdom in an intimate setting! KK is concerned about the death of the environment, the way we hate our outlaws, girls who are older than their eyes or is it the other way around, freedom and the highway thereto...and he's maybe the worst singer in history. so, a success...actually, one kind of good track, "Chase the Feeling," which is sort of Sun rockabilly two-step with actual dynamics and so forth, and lyrics: "with a pretty piece of hunger/she was younger than her eyes/on a scale of cosmic thunder/it's a wonder you're alive." and a song about how seeing Willie Nelson onstage chokes him up and makes him glad to be a songwriter, and a human being.

"For me as a person, [The Incident has] completely altered the course I was on. For me to be in country music to begin with was not who I was. I liked Martie and Emily's playing, but I did not grow up liking country music. And I guess I was ignorant to the fact that the stereotypes behind country music were true — and it was disappointing. And so at this stage, I can never... I would be cheating myself and not setting a good example for my children to go back to something that I don't wholeheartedly believe in. So I'm pretty much done. They've shown their true colors. I like lots of country music, but as far as the industry and everything that happened... I couldn't want to be farther away from that. And it's easier when you're financially set, because you can be a little more ballsy, and just do what you want to do. I don't want people to think that me not wanting to be a part of country music is any sort of revenge. It is not. It is totally me being who I am, and not wanting to compromise myself and hate my life.

How do Emily and Martie feel about this?

Um... I don't know. We're all on the same page... professionally. And some of us like country music more than others [Laughs], but nobody's forcing anyone else not to... um... you know, go the direction that we're going. We're all on the same page."

Seems Americana heavy, judging from the names I recognize. I liked some songs on that Paul Kelly bluegrass album, though.

Exene Cervanka and the Original Sinners, *Sev7en*: There was a time, more than 20 years ago, that even her countryish stuff (the stuff with X anyway, not the Knitters crap) didn't strike me as totally mannered and ridiculous. That time is long gone, and I don't know if it's 'cause I got tired of her or 'cause her voice just kept getting flatter. Anyway, I got through about 4 songs this time, then gave up.

So, yeah, much ado about probably nothing, at least until it comes out. It'll be interesting to actually hear the damn thing.

>Also, good article in Sunday's Times about perennial polka grammy winner Jimmy Sturr. I kinda can't stand Sturr's slicked-up sound; haven't really been keeping up with polka lately (a few years ago I listened to all five polka grammy nominees and my favorite was Eddie Blacsconszyk of Chicago, shown flipping panckaes on that particularly CD cover and also quoted in the Times article, but I haven't kept up since - -just did a cdbaby.com search for polkas and mainly what seemed to come up was joke bands or bands for the triple A alt-country crowd, which i don't THINK is what I want but I may be wrong.) Anyway, the article talks about how Sturr's east coast style (he's from Jersey) is actually quite Vegasy and big-bandy (though he's also known to get guest appearances by lots of country stars), where the Chicago style is more trumpet heavy and the Cleveland Slovenian style is where the accordions get emphasized. So maybe I should search "Cleveland polka," I'm not sure...

actually, i just realized that something similar happens when I try to search there for "western swing." am i being deluded or romanticizing too much to wish that there were great bands playing this stuff, um, "for real" and not just ironic revivalists? are there? i'm sure there are (though I'm not sure how to define "real"); I'm just not sure how to find them.