Rolling Country 2009 Thread

"Ya sing about Johnny Cash/The Man in Black woulda whipped your ass" -- in a song about "one hit wonders" and "boy bands." "I'll see you again when you're laying in the bargain bin." Plus your usual kiss-the-ass-of-the-past horseshit about how Waylon and Hank wouldn't've done it this way, as if I care. I dunno...nothing new there, I don't think, except the explicit wishing of violence on another country star (and who won't end up in the bargain bin at this point, assuming there still is one?) Also, Aldean's Cash song rocked fairly hard itsownself as I recall. But Church does seem to do better stuff (some of it more rocking than the rest. Also, can't swear there's more rocking stuff this time than last time, but most of what's here sounds good.)

new Flatlanders album ...some decent song in there somewhere that runs off a list of small southwesten cities

Okay, found it -- "After The Storm." I think Gilmore's singing, and I like it. Real good existential homeless hitchhiker-country ballad with very pretty pedal steel. So that makes two songs, at least. "If I'd taken that job in Santa Fe, I never would have lost what I lost today...You're in Baton Rouge, I bet, or maybe Lafeyette, Houston, San Antone, it's all the storm." People tell him the storm has passed, but it's still raging in his mind.

"it's all the same," I meant.

Next song starts with somebody (Hancock I'll guess) standing at the crossroads in the rain, then quoting the Book of Revelations. Beginning sounds a bit too much like Cat Stevens' "Moonshadow" for my tastes. I like the verse about shattered glass all over the floor (and leaving something on the fridge??), but not so much the chorus about wishing for rainbows.

Then "No Way I'll Ever Leave You," somewhere between tejano and zydeco; Gilmore again? Okay, this album is better than I was suggesting above, I guess.(And those southwestern cities in the storm song clearly aren't as small as I thought they were, either.)

Kelly Clarkson's new single, "My Life Would Suck Without You In My Pants With A Butcher Knife," is vaguely countryish at the start in that the melody of the opening couplet is lifted from "Desolation Row" (then the melody of the next couplet is lifted from "You Can't Hurry Love"). Overall, the track is a bit more obvious than one would expect, at least in comparison to the subtle gradations and gentle lyricism of other recent Dr. Luke productions such as "I Kissed A Girl" and "Girlfriend."

Church's Carolina was originally set for Aug. '08, so an additional 8 months to get it out. Wonder what took so long.

wait -- "Desolation Row" had a melody? whoa.

Taylor Swift is selling, as today's New York Times reports:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/31/arts/music/31swif.html?ref=arts

she's affiliated w/ Universal Republic thru Big Machine, who have offices on the Row. Interesting, I recently interviewed Courtney Jaye, a sort of garage-pop-country artist who once had a major-label deal (with Island) and has recorded a new one that includes a duet with Band of Horses' Ben Bridwell. She had cut a deal with Universal Republic to work just one single from her forthcoming, which is gonna be called The Exotic Sounds of Courtney Jaye, as well as shoot a video and work a tour. Apparently this was under the aegis of something called Republic South, and Jaye expressed doubt that the deal was gonna work as well as she or UR/RS might've hoped. Anyway, the Swift piece was interesting and I would guess that Radio Disney had a lot to do with her success, too. The numbers are good but in comparison to what a number-one record was selling 9 years ago, sobering.

x-post on Church's Carolina: It seems like labels are hesitant to release an album these days if they haven't already gotten a single from it into the top ten. Church has already released two or three songs from the new record & I don't think any of them has been a hit yet.

Lots of major label country albums have been pushed back almost into oblivion in the past couple years -- Phil Vassar came out maybe nine months or so after it was supposed to (with a slightly changed track list), and others (Bombshel, Ashley Monroe, Terri Clark) never came out at all, as far as I know. (Wasn't there even some Lee Ann Womack album that was shelved a couple years ago? Or did that one just wind up being reconfigured somehow later?)

Taylor Swift is selling

Well, sort of. Point of the piece seemed to be that, for an album that's topped the Billboard chart for eight weeks, Fearless really hasn't sold all that much (compared to previous albums that have performed similar feats) -- just 2.4 million. Not surprising given industrywide sales downturns, and the fact that nobody much buys music in January anyway. The piece did, though, have Billboard chart honcho Keith Caulfield saying those buying her album aren't just teens, but also "older people, like moms and dads." Which reasserts some claims made upthread.

Not sure I hear the Dylan and Supremes that Frank hears in that Kelly Clarkson song, but I do think the guitar opening has some country or rockabilly in it. I think the song sounds pretty good until Kelly starts yelling at me, and then I'm out the door.

I think you're right about the Womack album-- a single came out, tanked, and then the album was pulled and all new songs recorded.

And I think Terri Clark was dropped from her label & is now concentrating on the "Canadian market."

Womack released a summer 2006 single, "Finding My Way Back Home," which scraped into the Top 40 before dying. She shelved her whole project and started again.

Very similarly, Clark had a pair of (bad) singles bomb at radio in '07. Unlike Womack, she couldn't agree at all on material with her label. In November '08, she wrote on her website that she'd asked out of her contract with BNA. Given that the statement said she was going indie because she couldn't (wouldn't?) fit into Music Row's rigid philosophies, I'm guessing the decision was two-sided.

Eric Church's debut showed promise, but the new single is a complete waste. He loves his cold beer, his kick-ass truck, and mama's cookin', but not as much as his beloved. Some way to woo a woman.

Wonder if the unbargained-for success of Jamey Johnson's album has had any bearing on his buddy (or at least sometime on-stage collaborator) Church's album finally coming out. Don't hate that single myself, but it did hit me as a much lesser version of Toby's "I Love This Bar" ("I like my truck/I like my girlfriend/I like to take her out to dinner/I like a movie now and then.") And yeah, can't imagine many women would be wooed by Eric's love of Skoal, or whatever he says. (Seems more likely the idea though is to woo men -- guys saying "hey bro, I love all that stuff, too! So I guess being in a relationship doesn't make me a total wuss, right?"

Anyway, wonder if Johnson's success (though he did have one hit single at least) convinces anybody in Nashville that you might not necessarily need big single hits to sell an album these days, at least as well as all the not-great-selling country albums these days that do have big single hits. In other words, maybe there's a different marketing plan they could use with Church -- if, say, they could figure out how to sell him to rock or Triple A fans (what I suggested might also be happening with Pat Green up above, and might explain why Jamey's new single is "High Cost of Living.")

Actually thought Terri Clark's "Dirty Girl" was fun myself, and "In My Next Life" not that bad either (ditto the shelved album they came from), but I've never been a great predictor of what country fans will go for. (Never heard her as that far from the Music Row mainstream, either, except that she tended toward better material than lots of it.)

Interesting piece on the Big Bopper in Texas Music's 50th Anniversary of the Day The Music Died issue with Buddy Holly's glasses on the cover; had no idea he'd planned to do a record called "Purple People Eater Meets The Witch Doctor" (!), not to mention that (under his real name J.P. Richardson) he wrote George Jones's "White Lightning" and Johnny Preston's "Running Bear," not to mention that some credit him with inventing the term "music video."

Long Pareles piece on Springsteen (new album, Super Bowl appearance, Wal-Mart, etc) in today's Times; claims the new album "often plays like a '60s anthology." Says certain tracks sound like the Byrds and Beach Boys and Ben E. King (and hears Creedence in the title track rather than "Good Eye," which he calls "pyschedelic blues-rock"); I'm not saying that's not there, but how he hears that '60s music under all that vacant Brendan O'Brien BS in beyond me. (I hear way more specific '60s influences in, say, the new Black Lips album due out this spring.)

(Actually seriously doubt I'd hear much "60s Top 40" on Bruce's new record even if O'Brien wasn't involved, fwiw; it just doesn't have the concise hooks or songs for it. And while it's not like Born To Run, say, ever literally "sounded like" girl group oldies or Gary "U.S." Bonds either, at least I could hear how it was influenced by them.)

Biggest country-release ultra-delay of recent years, now that I think of it, was maybe that first Julie Roberts album -- I swear that advances were floating around a good year before it ever hit the stores. (Shelby Lynne may have had one like that too, once.)

(Ed Wards playing fahn fahn morsels from Thank You Friend, the Ardent comp, rat now on NPR--not that country, but since we sometimes talk about power pop etc on RC threads, it's vivrantly relevant)(Greg, there are more ballots, incl mine, on last part of RC 2007)(xhuxx, have you seen the Please Tell Me About Schaffel thread from a few years back; it may have spawned)Posts have gotten meatier since I went away, better do that again. Except I'm a semi-vegetarian (segue scootin to yet another of my show previews)
Ex-Marine, ex-cop, but mainly a songbird migrating between Key West and Ohio's Put-In-Bay, Pat Dailey has a wide, wild range of musical perspectives on human behavior. Perspectives on perspectives, really, because he knows all the sweet, salty and stinky fish stories we tell ourselves and each other, while bumping and sailing along. Dailey's mother wit was sharpened by the late, great songwriter-cartoonist Shel Silverstein, from the "R"-rated banquet (and implied Jimmy Buffett parodies) of "Raw Bars," to their kiddie-songs classic, "Underwater Land," where life in the food chain tastes better than everHe also goes into Gordo Lightfoot/Waylon Jennings vibrato grooves sometimes, but with some articulate, stalwart sentiment, like Stan Rodgers covers.

Xhuxk, when Kelly sings "Guess this means you're sorry, you're standing at my door" at the start of "My Life Would Suck Without You," the melody is an exact match for Dylan singing "They're sellin' postcards of the hangin', they're paintin' the passports brown" at the start of "Desolation Row" (well, Kelly's voice rises on the "ry" in "sorry" while Dylan's descends on the "in'" in "hangin'," but the chord is the same and that's as close to identical as anyone ever gets), then when Kelly follows that with "Guess this means you take back all you said before" that's a near match to "Love don't come easily, it's a game of give and take" in the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love" (different number of words - more in the first half of the Kelly line and more in the second half of the Supremes line - so there's a bit dif rhythm, and slightly different chording in the second half of the line). Then Kelly repeats w/ a couple more lines, same Dylan-Supremes melody combo as before, and that's the verse basically. Then she starts blaring her way to the chorus. And then she does a second verse, same melody as the first. And the third verse is the same melody as the first.

(OK, now that I listen to the Dylan, he starts higher on "They're sellin'" than Kelly does on "Guess you," if that strikes you as a big difference. And "Paintin'" is a third higher than "standin'," too. Melody seems real close nonetheless, at least to me.)

"articulate, stalwart" yadda yadda--okay, he does this one Rodgers song about a sailor who's frustrated because "If I told that kid once, I did a hundred times" not to trust fickle Erie, especially at night; now he can't stop picturing the kid's bereft girl friend, staring into her pillow most likely. And another about a guy watching a cosmic sunset and listening to himself yak, but really he just wants to see his old lady NOW fuck this picturesque shit.

Flatlanders' "Borderless Love" seemed promising, but comes off pretty heavy-handed

Possibly redeemed, though, for sounding like the Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron."

New Dierks Bentley album seems to be getting iffy reviews so far, at least from Rolling Stone (can't recall who wrote that one) and Jon Caramanica in this morning's Times. Wasn't aware that the one track I love, "I Can't Forget Her," had originally been done by Clay Walker a few years ago. Both reviews miss how beautiful and eerie Bentley's version is; I should check out Walker's. Do agree it's Dierks's most ignorable album so far, though.

I like the riffage and what I suspect is a calculated effort to appeal to pot-smokin', jam-band-lovin' fans on the Dierks record. Great road music, but his voice is fairly marginal. Some cool riffs, though.
Pat Green has a goofy voice full of sympathy and there are lotsa eerie touches on nearly song, some kind of poignancy that can seem overdone, and damn he sure wants to sympathize with everybody and everything. So he's for shit and not against. "Man, that's lucky," and he almost rhymes "paparazzi" and "NASCAR" on that one. Nice weeping slide there too. Hopes, dreams, regular guys, red-white-and-blue skies: he's filled in the Springsteen gap. The attempted modalism of the melody of "In This World" is also pretty good, and I like the line about his sister when the sun goes down. This is the one he wrote himself and might be the best thing on the record, very tasteful indeed. Except he cannot resist overdoing it, and I could see how his vocalizing could ultimately be as annoying as, oh, Elvis Costello's; it seems a bit heavy to me. But shit, a beautiful ending to "In This World." The less said about "Country Star" the better, although I think he has a sense of humor, as in "gotta get my ass to Nashville." Or maybe this is such received-notion songcraft that it's become new again, dunno.

Saturday night we got out and saw Amber Digby, at the Midnite Jamboree. A cute girl with a decent voice, pure Texas shuffle, on a Texas label, and a great steel player. Did a few Loretta Lynn numbers, some Justin Trevino tunes, and Johnny Bush would be proud. Speaking of Bush, been reading the new Willie Nelson bio by Joe Nick Patoski. Pretty fine, and Bush relates how he first met Willie, cartoon-like, as some woman or another threw a pot at Willie's head and he was first glimpsed by an astounded Bush outrunning the object, just like Wil E. Coyote--everything suspended in mid-air.

Curious which of the new Dierks songs you think have notable guitaring, Edd. Like I said, I like a few songs -- the first two, and that Clay Walker cover -- but I just replayed the thing, and I'm actually irritated by how pedestrian most of it sounds; his singing has never sounded more bored, for one thing. A few tracks (e.g. "Pray") are almost unbearable to me, and that bluegrass closer with Ronnie McCoury just strikes me as pro forma, not exciting at all.

Have made a point of not paying close attention to the words of Pat Green's "Country Star," but oddly (given that it's apparently about country music), it so far strikes me as the toughest '80s Cougar-style heartland rocker on the record. Best guitar solo so far seems to be in "Carry On," unless I missed one.

Best '80s heartland Cougar on Eric Church's album is "Young And Wild" (cf. "hang onto 16 as long as you can," or Kenny Chesney's "Young"); like the even harder rocking opener "Ain't Killed Me Yet" (about not avoiding stuff the doctor says you should) even more. Starting to really hate the stupid anti-pretty-boy-one-hit-wonder thing between them though ("Lotta Boot Left To Fill." And I'm finding that, a few songs into the album, when tempos slow down and the ballad schlock quotient inceases, my attention fades.

If Dierks is really aiming for his newfound Bonnaroo fanbase as Edd suggests (assuming he now has one), that's yet another possible exception of country guys looking beyond the country audience, obviously.

"Life on the Run" has those Detroit chromatic walk-up guitar licks all thru it, and I quite like the way the production combines banjo and guitar (and a police siren) on this one. Quite similar to what he's done all along. I also really like "Sideways," which maybe he got from the film of the same name (I was watching some Roxy Music videos with my buddy Dave Duncan the other day and he said, "shit, just imagine a Velvet Goldmine remake with Paul Giamatti playing Eno..."). Nice riff in the beginning of the third song, "Feel That Fire," but he's doing a lot of songs about how he sort of understands women, as in "she wants to wear my shirt to bed," I assume it's a white shirt and not the plaid he sports on the cover, which probably smells like bad incense and good weed, which I think is a good title for the record in another universe. Lot of walking-up guitar licks again "Here She Comes." The weird little distanced sonics of the opener to the wistful-as-hell "I Can't Forget Her" bleeds in the obligatory western-mythos move on the record, "here in Del Rio nothin' seems to change 'cept the weather," so he got to get on the road. She runs like a river but she should be running like a well-outfitted tour bus. He watches TV on the bus and it's bad news in "Beautiful World." Very nice brief lick opens "Little Heartwrecker." "Last Call" is bluegrass of the stoned variety. So yeah, this is a pretty mediocre album, all said and done. Could even be that Zac Brown (who I think also has his eye on the jam-band market) does it better.

xp yet another possible exception of country guys looking beyond

"possible example" I meant, not "exception."

And I guess Dierks played Lollapalooza not Bonnaroo last year, right? (Though inasmuch as those two festival crowds differ these days -- i.e., not much anymore -- I'd still say he's got more a potential audience with Bonnaroosters than Lollapoloozers.)

Funny how Pat Green's new album, just like Springsteen's new one, includes a song with "lucky" in its title, a couple albums after they both put out albums with "lucky" in their titles.

Second half of Church's album does have at least one hot rocker -- "Smoke A Little Smoke" (where he also drinks a little drink, and pulls out his stash), with meaty boogie riffs and glam-rockish handclaps. Also like how "Hell On The Heart" starts out like the Beatles' "Twist And Shout." And I wouldn't be surprised if a ballad or two sink in before long. (Actually, come to think of it, semi-extended guitar climax of the somewhat smoldering closer "Those I've Loved" is sounding pretty good right this second.)

Speaking of Eric Church, here's my May 2008 piece on Church, somewhat in advance of the new record. It should be he was "scared" by '70s-band songwriting, not "scarred," though.

We were talking about Neko Case the other day. the new Marianne Faithfull record Easy Come Easy Go: 12 Songs for Music Lovers (which has been out in Europe for a while but is just now getting a Decca release stateside) contains the singer croaking her way thru Case's "Hold On, Hold On," from Fox Confessor. Yikes. Also her and Keith Richards doing the old Gram Parsons chestnut "Sing Me Back Home." And Dolly's greatest song (one of her greatest, at least), "Down from Dover." Hal Willner provides some interesting settings and the usual guest stars, and Faithfull looks good in the cover shot and all, so how you react to this depends on how much you like spoken-word records...I suppose this is what remained undreamed-of in Shelby Lynn's philosophy...

via email from Metal Mike Saunders:

this is the BEST "LOVE SONG" OF THE LAST 30 YEARS

hahahahahaha, no seriously

KEROSENE Miranda Lambert no.18 country hit / 2005 first lp, both albums have gone platinum by now

feb 14 is on a saturday so i think i will put my CD on "repeat" on this track and play it on/off all day with the front door open, for like an hour at a time, thrice

i think every February/valentine's for the rest of my life, our band page will be a "miranda lambert valentine's day" tribute like right now

www.myspace.com/192503angrysamoans (top right, a little down)

good fan "mashup" video of the song

live outside, Eu Claire WIS w/pink electric guitar

her tour band sucks

oops, repeated one of those links; here's the Samoans page:

www.myspace.com/192503angrysamoans

(top right, a little down)

Guess you gotta self-paste the Samoans link in your browser; weird. Anyway, more Metal Mike, couple weeks ago:

i have NO use for almsot any/all country issued (by new artists since 1965, in fact)(the first Patty Loveless lp is where i get interested in country again = a proper marriage between trad/country and trad/pop-songwriting, aka Brill Building).

apparently Taylor Swift is the new (fifst) female Elvis Preseley (or Beatles) but i'mnot brave enough to plunk out $14 for her new abum yet (i havern't even fully digested the fifst one which is pretty darn good).

but her "revised" MISSION STATEMENT on her myspace page is, holy fuck, this girl is articulate. she writes better (in her journals/blogs to her 2,000,000+ "friends" of whom any 100's comment into her each/every journal) than the average Stanford (or ivy leaguer) entering freshman! and she loves "minor chords" (aka, brill building musical vocabulary). could give a shit about boys, is in love with her guitar/writing/songwriting, is FRIENDS WITH MYLIE CYRUS ( = she should write fucking mylie some good ROCK songs instead of the crap mylie's or mylie-plus-adivsors keep barfing up. Def Lepperd riffs and shit. they should form a side-band, althoughi don't doubt that idea has alredy kicked itself around. Mylie and Taylor butchering 3-chord Def Lepperd riffs, rewritten. i thought Taylor's "CMT" thing w/Lepperd was totally cool. although being no fan whatsoever of the Lep guys i don't have a high bar whenit comes to hearing re-makes of their hit catalog.

Taylor is articulate, and I think she can write. I have trouble with the actual music/arrangements but I am old-fashioned. But smart, yep, and that bit about "minor chords" is funny because I spoke with her last fall and she mentioned she used this "weird" chord in one of her songs, the one she wrote w/ John Rich, and me being me I had to call her on that--"Taylor, that's a minor chord, the Beatles used it to spice up that shit like 'You Won't See Me' and everything." And yeah, the Brill Building writers liked that technique too. Probably she went out and bought one of those Mel Bay chord books and got up to speed. She's so smart!

Seems like Bentley's second album arrived with a bio that emph his and his band's early tours (especially with Cross Canadian Ragweed)that included some of the jam band circuit, as well as more country per se venues.His band got a lot of room on that album, and deserved it. Never been that crazy about his po'studmo vocal persona (a kiss 'n' cry cousin of Billy Currington's more spirited midnight plowboy). Even People magazine slams his new 'un (while big upping Coldplay for Album Of The Year). Oh, should still be a downloadable Neko show on NPR, think it's the All Songs Considered section (also a good Martha Wainwright show, she was Neko's rowdy lil sister opening act, but it's a sep file)I P&Jd Neko's Furnace Room Lullaby, also liked her (even more ruminatin' urban prairie echo of) The Virginian, and the Corn Sisters (Neko and Carolyn Mark, like the Everly Sisters, and kinda 12-string proto-psych country at times) and an Austin City Limits set with full band incl Kelly Hogan. Also, her version of "Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis" was a highlight of an unusually worthwhile tribute album, New Coat of Paint (Tom Waits songs are pretty good, long as he's not the singer)Haven't kept up with later albums, but her dynamic stairwell channeling of family, friendship, and other encounters through ever-emerging porchlit/rusty river imagery (stage smarts x private life) is very appealing on earlier works. Am only reviewer on Earth to pan New Pornographers.

Songs I'm curious about on the current Billboard Hot Country songs chart. (Will check youtube for them when I get around to it, but I'd be curious what anybody who has actually heard any of these thinks):

34 1 Shuttin' Detroit Down, John Rich
J.Rich (J.Rich,J.D.Anderson ) Warner Bros. PROMO SINGLE | WRN | 34
35 36 39 12 Best Days Of Your Life, Kellie Pickler
C.Lindsey (K.Pickler,T.Swift ) 19 DIGITAL | BNA | 35
37 40 40 7 Telluride, Josh Gracin
B.James (B.James,T.Verges ) Lyric Street DIGITAL | 37
38 38 38 15 Space, Sarah Buxton
S.Buxton (S.Buxton,C.Cannon,L.White ) Lyric Street PROMO SINGLE | 38
47 43 45 10 Like A Woman, Jamie O'Neal
R.Good (J.O'Neal,S.Bentley,J.Femino ) 1720 PROMO SINGLE | 43
48 47 46 9 Everything, Jessica Andrews
J.Demarcus (Marcel ) Carolwood PROMO SINGLE | 45
58 NEW 1 The 12th Man, Dusty Drake
D.Drake (S.Yurjevich,K.Fowler,D.Drake ) Big Machine DIGITAL | 58
59 59 55 5 You're My Life, Steve Azar
S.Azar (S.Azar,R.Foster ) Ride/Dang DIGITAL | New Revolution | 52
60 NEW 1 What Would You Say, Trailer Choir
Butter,M.Logan (Butter,Big Vinny,D.Fortney ) Show Dog Nashville DIGITAL |

---

The Trailer Choir track definitely wasn't on their okay EP last year; the Steve Azar track may or may not have been on his okay album last year, but if so, it wasn't one of the tracks that jumped out at me (plus it has a mushy title, so I don't have high hopes. Also don't have high hopes for the Josh Gracin, but "Telluride" is a potentially interesting title. Though not nearly as potentially interesting as "Shuttin Down Detroit" from McCain's main man.)

As for Jamie O'Neal, Jessica Andrews, Kellie Pickler, and Dusty Drake, I've liked albums by all of them before, but have fallen behind, apparently.

Not sure I've ever even heard anything by Sarah Buxton (besides a duet she did with Cowboy Troy once), but I'm pretty sure that Frank likes her.

---

Way off the chart, I played new albums by both Nashville Pussy and Ian Tyson (former Ian & Sylvia folkie, now an Edmonton cowboy) a few times in the past few days, but nothing seemed to click. Which is the only thing they had in common with each other.

Yeah, okay, "Shutting Detroit Down" (live version below on the radio in Jersey) gave me the chills. Not surprised. Don't really mind its New York-baiting disguised as Wall Street-baiting, either. Haven't heard the official recorded version (and John Rich might want to ask himself why even the so-called "Reagan Democrat" Detroit suburbs went so strong for Obama. Unless he's come to his senses by now.) (Also worth noting that, when I visited my family out there at Thanksgiving, nodody seemed all that pissed off about the auto execs private-jetting to D.C. to ask for the bailouts; their line seemed to be more that jet-setting Congresspeople were hypocrities for complaining about it. Bet they'll like this song if they hear it, though -- even if the only country music they care about is Kid Rock):

New single (about broken couples?) by Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles is more pop-rocky than her more pub-country last album, but catchy regardless. (Just got sent the link via email, is how I know):

John Rich couldn't even be half as screwed up as Ted Nugent when it comes to political beliefs. My opine is that country is going to see a bit of a dip in yearly sales as its constituency rolls into ever increasing joblessness through 2009. People will buy the CDs and go to shows for awhile and then, at some point when there's a critical mass collecting unemployment, a noticeable shortfall will occur. A big Ford dealership on the corner of Colorado, something which has been in Pasadena at least as long as I have, suddenly went out of business, its lot suddenly scraped completely clean in the last couple weeks. Where did the hundreds of new cars go?

Yeah, several friends from different areas have recently mentioned suddenly clear air, lots, etc...mebbe somebody should do a country cover of T.Heads' "Nothing But Flowers." But who will buy, in such a climate?

Trailer Choir "What Would You Say" is about trapped miners and uncharacteristically sappy; Dusty Drake "The 12th Man" about Pittsburgh Steelers fans and has some boogie to it. Drake much better, both already possibly somewhat past their sell-by date.

Okay, let's see here: Sarah Buxton's "Space" is excellent (he says he wants space and she's bitter so she's going to give his sorry juvenile ass space and make it sting and she's going to put spooky quiet space in the music too and mention the dark side of the moon while she's at it and sing it all in a great scratchy rasp I now need to hear more of); Kellie Pickler's "Best Days Of Your Life" is passingly cute pop-rock (another breakup song about how he's gonna miss this); Jamie O'Neal's "Like A Woman" is very horny wife-and-new-mom who wants her husband to make her feel like a natural woman song (sung in an appropriately fleshy country-soul voice to match); Josh Gracin's "Telluride" is not nearly as good as the eight-year-old original version by Tim McGraw and also doesn't put over the resentment of a working class kid spending his vacation working to serve spoiled rich kids nearly as well (at least judging from several live Gracin videos on youtube -- couldn't find his studio version, but I'm still fairly convinced that as a singer the dude's a zero not a hero, which can not be said of Mr. McGraw).

(Pickler song more "just pop" than "pop rock," actually. Production suggests something non-country from the '80s.)

That Sarah Borges xhuxk posted is very, very Joan Jett.

Jessica Andrews "Everything" -- Big bland devoid-of-personality adult-contemporary ballad about how some guy Jessica broke up with (and should therefore GET OVER ALREADY) is her everything. Also it's too long.

Steve Azar "You're My Life" (another "you're my" song just like Jessica's apparently) doesn't seem to be on youtube. But it was indeed on Indianola last year, and I didn't like it then. Songs on there I did like somewhat were "Crowded," "Flatlands," especially "The Coach," and maybe one or two others.

Speaking of sell-by dates, I finally figured out what I like best/basically about Jamey Johnson, in the following show preview:
After eight years in the Marines, Jamey Johnson won and lost in Nashville, then wrote clean-and-sober hits (plus "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk") for others. He's learning to see and get through the old dualities. So, on Johnson's current album, "That Lonesome Song," his band bounces the sardonic daydream of "Mowin' Down The Roses" and brushes by the testimonal "High Cost of Livin' ", sweetly tempting each. Also, black-and-white images (mere evidence) lead straight up through a World War II veteran's history, always lived "In Color", and still in the present tense.

Actually, it was "see (and get) through the old dualities" and I think I got all the commas AP-right in the sent/published version, this is typed from handwritten original

So, question of the day: When exactly did John Doe (the ex X guy) start to suck? I was actually a pretty huge fan of those first four X albums (stuck with the band longer than some punk fans I know), including the third and fourth ones where they started to work in country/roots-type influences. More Fun In the New World was even my #1 album in 1983, the first year my Pazz & Jop ballot got printed in the Voice. Only liked a couple things they did after that, though (especially "4th of July"), and thought Doe and Exene's proto-alt-country Knitters were just bad cornball kitsch, and have never paid much attention to Doe's solo stuff. Now he's got one of the dullest tracks on that Chris Gaffney tribute album, and he's got an album of country covers coming out on Yep Roc this spring which I played a couple times yesterday, and man, the guy has no capability for expression left in his singing at all. He used to, even doing music not too far from this. Anyway, he cardboard-voices his way through "Detroit City," which is well-timed, but he does nothing with it, plus "Help Me Make It Through the Night" (the Mekons did that one better as I recall), "The Cold Hard Facts Of Life," "Stop The World And Let Me Off" (some of the same chord changes as Merle Haggard's "If We Make It Through December," I just realized, not to mention some song the Boxmasters did last year), etc. (I'm not even sure off hand which old country acts those last couple are most associated with, so maybe Edd should school us.) Closest song Doe comes to pulling off is probably "Are The Good Times Really Over For Good," early '80s Merle about how Ford and Chevy don't make cars as good as they used to and stuff like that, but maybe I was just happy to hear the song. (Didn't some alt-country type cover "Big City" recently too? If so, seems like the Hag LP of that name is maybe belatedly being acknowledged as the classic album it had always sounded like to me in the first place.)

(Also "Are The Good Times Really Over For Good" clearly counts as '80s recession country, even though one of the main things Hag laments in it is how girls have forgotten how to cook properly ever since the microwave oven was introduced. That "back before Nixon lied to us all on TV" line really hits me now, though, since I've been reading and loving Rick Perlstein's Nixonland this week.)

(Didn't some alt-country type cover "Big City" recently too? If so, seems like the Hag LP of that name is maybe belatedly being acknowledged as the classic album it had always sounded like to me in the first place.)

I thought Peter Guralnick's discog in the back of Lost Highway was the reason why I bought a copy of Big City. But now that I'm looking at it I don't see the record mentioned. Strange. Anyways, I think it's a great record, and at some point in my life I remembering reading a review that inspired me to pick up a copy.

Big City probably fell victim to the hipster idea that no good country was made after Urban Cowboy was released. But maybe the '80s is being reevaluated. John Anderson and Randy Travis could become the next names for Americanians to start dropping.

Just picked up a vinyl copy of "Big City" for 5 bucks at a record store in Louisville. It really is great. That late 70's, early 80's period of his produced some of my favorite songs (Footlights, The Way I Am), but most of the albums are fairly inconsistent. "Big City" is the best of the bunch.

Also nabbed a copy of Waylon's "Are you Ready for the Country" which wasn't as satisfying, though the NY cover is pretty great.

Early '60s folk revival sort of counts as country, right? A lot of overlap over the years, probably. Anyway, I got sent this vinyl LP two days ago called Songs Of Leaving on a Chicago label called Numerophon by this girl folk singer named Niela Miller, recorded in 1962 in NYC -- or really, by 2009 (even 1981, if not 1962) standards more like a vinyl EP, since it seems to clock in around 20 minutes for about 10 songs. The thing is on 150-gram vinyl, really thick and heavy; label looks like it would have been plastered on some old 78. Record cover cardboard is also super thick, made to look like some Folkways album from the '50s. Clever (and actually quite beautiful) marketing concept, I gotta admit -- maybe even smart, on an extremely small scale, since the idea I guess is to make physical product collectible in the age of mp3s. (Apparently this album is the first of a series on the label.)

Thing is, there's also music on the thing, and it's just....okay. Niela sings her (apparently mostly if not all original) blues-folk in a tone that strikes me as really proper and cautious, maybe a precursor of Joan Baez-type singing (never listened to enough Baez to know for sure) (maybe proto Janis Ian too?) -- basically, it's how you'd expect those iron-haired private-girls-school rich chicks in Animal House (also set in 1962) to sing. Played it back-to- back this morning with a couple of New Christy Minstrels LPs from around the same period (sent to me by Metal Mike a couple years ago), and Miller sounded completely strained and constrained and unenergetic and humorless in comparison (and the New Chistry Minstels didn't seem as good as the Kingston Trio or Limeliters, all of whom I'm guessing Miller's milieu would have dismissed as phonies and sellouts, though somebody correct me if I'm wrong.)

Still, I like the record okay -- especially "Goodbye New York," which has a tune and some bite to it plus a lyric I identify with right now, as my apartment fills up with boxes packed for my move. And (apparently the main justification for the reissue), there's also this song called "Baby Don't Go To Town" which the (Folkways-like) liner notes peg as a prototype of "Hey Joe" -- or, at least the song that was allegedly combined with Carl Smith's 1953 country hit "Hey Joe" to get the song that Hendrix and the Byrds and Leaves and Deep Purple and Cher later did. (Aside: Back at University of Missouri in the early '80s, I knew a guy -- otherwise a major fan of the Jam -- who collected on cassette tapes all the versions of "Hey Joe" he could get ahold of.) Supposedly Neila Miller's "unstable boyfriend" Billy Roberts stole her version, had it copywritten, and the rest is history. I'm skeptical about all of this, but it's a good story, either way. And there is a certain proto-garage-punk (post-blues) punch to the guitars in Miller's song. Or at least I imagine there is, so I can keep her cool looking record.

(Though when I say the novel marketing concept is potentially smart, I'm leaving out that I have no idea what it would cost to put out a record that looks like this one in 2009, with vinyl pressing plants supposedly shutting down and all. Looks expensive to my eyes, but what do I know? Also leaving out that, though the thing looks real classy on one hand, it's also obviously kind of ridiculous, which may or may not be part of the point.)