Rolling Country 2006 Thread

>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.

i dont even know how they record them, frankly.

i also have no idea how a ukranian polka would differ from lets say a hungrian or polish or rommanion.

so where you might need to get polka, is the new york equivlaent of a good old fashioned prarie supper

(the same thing with western swing, sort of---we get an old school country crooner, or the like here once or twice a year, at the pioneer house mostly, and its all the seniors, and their kids, nostalgia circuit sure, but fantastic if you can get it)

i mean i guess with both western swing and polka i want it to be fast catchy good-humored complicated highly rhythmic rocking dance music that doesn't seem to constantly pat itself on the back for BEING fast catchy good-humored complicated highly rhythmic rocking dance music (like, you know, when punk bands all the way back to brave combo decide to play polkas), which usually means it ISN'T. In 2006. this may well be a pipe dream; but in both genres, it used to come completely naturally. (i have always thought hot club of cowtown had promise, i guess -- am even a fan of their slowed down version of aerosmith's "chip away at the stone" - but they're totally wimps compared to what milton brown or roy newman or adolph hofner used to be. those guys wouldn't have given a shit about getting a rounder records audience, i don't think.) (interesting, what i'm looking for -- see above - -DOES still exist in southern soul music, though, apparently.)

>where you might need to get polka, is the new york equivlaent of a good old fashioned prarie supper<

ha ha, well, i am walking distance from Greenpoint! So maybe I should just take a walk!

I used to have those 3 Epic LPs from late '70s, Chuck. she was briefly a big deal 'round here. always struck me as a more liberal Tanya Tucker, maybe, or like someone who shoulda been on Stiff. proto-Lucinda, I dunno about that, I'm never a fan of Lucinda all that much except for the occasional pretty fair song she writes (and as an aside, I heard this P.F. Sloan album Jon Tiven's finishing up in N-ville, and the best thing on it was a duet with P.F. and Lucinda, so go figure). but Marshall covered Seger (so you might track that one down if you can find it, Chuck, it's "Jaded Virgin," but I haven't any idea if they're in print somewhere, and I'm constantly combing Nashvile for old country vinyl and don't recall seeing any of them lately) and Cash, I think, maybe it was "I Walk the Line," and one of her records was produced by Al Kooper, and if I recall it seemed a bit over-refined. I think her first Epic one was the best, tho, "Me, I'm Feeling Free" was the title. her new 'un hasn't hit here either.

and yet both places still seem to have real cowboy music by real cowboys, hmmm...what a paradox!

http://www.westernmusic.org/performers.cfm?ID=18

has anyone attended to the Hank III second disc trainwreck enough to tell me what Wayne Hancock song (if it is a Wayne Hancock song, I dunno) Shelton Hank's doing in the midst of all that crap?

Doing a list of best pop/rock covers by country artists. Any suggestions?

"...track down one of these artists [or head to one of these bars] ... and listen for yourself. Then you'll hear a remarkable sound: Music made for music's sake.

The Cowboy Palace Saloon {in the San Fernando Valley]

"Bordered by Bully's Billiards, a strip club and a liquor store, the Cowboy Palace Saloon calls itself 'the last real Honky Tonk' and it's true to its word ... The Asian cowboy beside me played a harmonica softly to himself, and a man in Wrangler jeans and a 10-gallon hat strummed air guitar on his pool cue.'

Mo' Cowboy Hats

Bruce Burton with King Size

"Great music often sweeps in on the tails of reinvention. Enter Bruce Burchmore, who was born in Bangkok ... and landed at USC to study music history. He mastered the lute...A little more than a year ago, after a painful breakup, Burchmore took his guitar to Manhattan, where he holed up in a hotel for 10 days, writing music and wallowing in melancholy.

"When he emerged he was Bruce Burton, country singer, and he had in his hands the makings of a fine album. Back in LA, he assembled the skeleton of Uncle Cowboy, a band of uncanny talent, which has since been renamed King Size.

"But he isn't the only member of King Size who takes his sorrow straight up...Witness an early memory of Easy Pickens, the band's guitarist, who as a teenager lived in a basement in a bad Vancouver neighborhood. 'I'd just put on a Hank Williams record,' he says, 'skip all the happy songs and drink myself to sleep.'"

Awwww. The only thing missing is the tin of snuff in back pocket.

(P.S. I wrote Elizabeth McQueen telling her I liked the liner notes to Happy Doing What We're Doing a lot and that I wanted her to continue writing about music. The liner notes just made me want to smooch her. (I didn't say this in the email. And the cover photo also had something to do with the desire to smooch.) There's a brain in there, both in her singing and in her commentary. (A brain worth smooching.) Anyway, she was complimented that a writer would want her to write, but she felt she'd probably not want to be a critic while still putting her own music out there, that this would inhibit her. "It's fine to write about the good, but when you get down to the meat and potatoes of criticsm, which is being critical..." A brain, for sure. Maybe we could get her to write about electronica, which she says she's into.)

So, "Politcas Ratas" on the new El Tri album *Mas Alla Del Bien Y Del Mal* sounds like a nicely barbecued '70s ZZ Top rip, but I don't think there's much else on the CD. Lots of '50s rock'n'roll revival, one song that reminds me of "Rockin' in the Free World," I dunno what else. I think this is like their 50th album though, so maybe there's a kick-ass greatest hits album somewhere down in Mexico. Or maybe not.

I actually decided I don't hate the Bob Log III song, "Log Bomb". Not that it's really a song per se'; more like just a sound, this high-pitched attempt to recreate old-timey backwoods blues country as some kinda newfangled avant-garde slide shuffle -- reminds me of what the Hi Sheriffs of Blue were doing in NY a quarter-century ago, but not nearly as good. Still, not bad. Like, yeah, a log bobbing up and down in the water. (The Ani Difranco track is still unbearable, however.)

I actually thought that at one point I wrote up a Voice choice for Bob Log for the listings page that never got printed, but here's what I was thinking about instead (this thing may well be five years old):

"LONESOME BOB--Quite a buzz in alt-c&w circles for this balding bearded Jersey baritone, maybe because his CD's full of titles like ``He's Sober Now'' and ``I Get Smarter Every Drink'' and ``2 Drinks on an Empty Stomach.'' He mostly sings like a overboozed bull in a china shop, natch. But he can slip a pinch of David Allen Coe into his twang, and ``Heather's All Bummed Out,'' about a 35-year-old looking for love on all the wrong websites while her clock ticks away in her Harrison-Ford-postered cubicle, deserves a Christgau choice cut at very least."

In the cubicle, Harrison Ford's picture is next to her fiancé's. "Sometimes a girl gets bored." A good observation, but at the time (according to my notes) there seemed something condescending about Lonesome Bob's sympathy.

I've felt an affinity for the image I get of Moorer and her sister through their music, but I could rarely not be bored by the music itself. I always listen, feel the affinity, but end disappointed.

David Scott put Shelby Lynne's version of "Rainy Night in Georgia" on his annual best-of CD, which always contains a lot of stuff I seem to have missed. it's really good. and altho it's not country I really like the two songs by Devin Davis, who was unknown to me, he put on it--a really great one called "Transcendental Sports Anthem."

and I've been listening to some late-'50s Webb Pierce, too, which seems to handle its backup voices and so forth really well--great version of "Raunchy" called "The New Raunchy" and a great one called "Tupelo County Jail."

listened to the 4-song Redhill CD yesterday--thx Chuck. I got bored with it, but I think Julianne has real potential as a singer, and seemed to me they saved their best moves for, like, the codas or something. but there's something there, I just need to listen to it again.

and for those Gram Parsons fans out there, this site called youtube.com has a video of the Burritos doing "Older Guys" from '70 that's really cool, and lots of other video stuff as well--like the James Gang! seems like the site works better at night, during the day the vids seem to play pretty jerkily, and I can see it being a major time-waster, too. but worth checking out.

I've decided that I really like the Jamey Johnson record, "The Dollar." great baritone. "Rebelicious" is a good song about the ideal hard-bodied woman who can also bait her own hook. and I think "The Dollar" is excellent, altho "Flying Silver Eagle," about melting down wedding rings, is even better. I just wish it were more of a concept album about money, and funnier. but I'm impressed that he wrote most of the songs, and he seems sane, even-tempered. could be as good as John Conlee or Moe Bandy, maybe.

"by Tony Scherr at his house in Brooklyn"

I mean, Moranis may have talent -- he may even have potential to be Shel Silverstein or Bobby Braddock, for all I know. Maybe someday, in some context, I'll have the patience to listen closer to his demos.