Rolling Country 2006 Thread

listening to Scott Miller's "Citation" (that's a car which he borrows in the title song and in which he screws his girlfriend he's amazed he has). produced by Jim Dickinson, who has a real genius for recording drums, seems to me. so, sorta Earle-Cougar with more eccentric kick to it, probably belongs on this thread. definitely something like "Freedom's a Stranger" is "country music" or at least folkie country. touches of Mekons creep-oid guitar overlay in "Only Everything," and drums far more tribal and loose than anything attempted in Nashville (well, maybe Mark Nevers does it sometimes). I'm not especially big on Earle-Cougar heartland explorations of youth and age and all that--I have my moments with it and actually like Cougar better than Earle--but this is pretty good, esp. the blues-stomp "8 Miles a Gallon." "Cracker with a truck-stop whore," "invent a big engine, make it run on bullshit," you get the idea, I hope. somewhere in the Todd Snider territory, too. needs and deserves more listens but I like this guy, and sorry I missed his previous stuff. I think he's from Knoxville.

Discuss.

-- There is a female country singer named "Bomshel" (as in bombshell, apparently) who has a debut album coming out on Curb this year.

--Bluegrass band Cherryholmes, who I think I may have heard once and was bored by, have one guy in overalls with a ZZ Top beard who looks like an insane biker that could be the kentucky headhunters' grandpa.

-- Also, there is a photo of Big & Rich jumping on a bed together.

(among other things).

Willie Nelson, "Cowboys Are Frequently (Secretly Fond of Each Other)": Not as good as Ned Sublette's track on *New York Noise Vol. 2* (Soul Jazz, 2006). Also, not as good as anything on my favorite Willie Nelson album *Night and Day* (Free Falls Entertainment, 1999), which has no singing on it, interestingly enough. Disappointing. The way Willie says "fuck" is even clunkier than the rest of it. (6.5.)

I'm surprised to hear this Anthony - I've seen NC live three times now, and they're one of the best live acts I've had the pleasure of experiencing. Maybe that's changed in the past year, but their shows have always been sincere, exhuberant and a real artist-audience connection moment. Venues were great - Borderline, Academy Islington, Union Chapel (rip). Nothing smarmy IMHO, in fact, when they break out the acoustic finale section I'm always stunned into blissful silence and remember why the hell I bother with music at all.

Chuck, your take on Roseanne is the first dissenting view I've seen--everything I'm aware of has been laudatory. I haven't even heard it yet myself. Just sitting down with Marshall Chapman this evening, for real--had it on in the background a couple days ago and got involved in something else. However, I did snag a copy of her autobio "Goodbye Little Rock and Roller" from her publicist Tamara Saviano, who also got me a copy of the new Radney Foster--I've always kinda liked his work--and the "Rednecks and Bluenecks" book, in which Saviano plays a part: she was operations manager at the Great American Country cable channel, CMT's competition, and ran afoul of some right-wing attitudes re Charlie Daniels' "Open Letter to the Hollywood Bunch." She got the Daniels piece from a publicist, and she asked him to take her off that e-mail list, and then fired off a response to the publicist suggesting that perhaps Charlie might be due a boycott himself (this was around the time of the flap over Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks). anyway, she got fired, since although technically the email wasn't a company thing, it did have her company signature at bottom. now she runs a little media/publicity company on Music Row, very nice person. and obviously, a Democrat. she won a Grammy for the Stephen Foster tribute CD "Beautiful Dreamer."

anyway, "Rednecks" is a good look at the politics of Nashville--superior journalism. and Marshall's book I've scanned, but it's funny, elegant, affecting, so far. looking forward to relaxing with "Mellowicious" tonight...

has anyone heard battlestar america--they call themselves hick hop, and politically interesting (ie left), and aside from geography seem pretty standard hip hop, but they have flow, and the musics tight--mp3s here: http://www.b-star.net/what_we_do.html

I've got the Battlestar America CD around here somewhere; impressed me not at all when I played it last year, but I'll try to try again.

Now listening to Brityn Lotz, *Straight Ahead* 2005 self-released/cdbaby-distributed pop-soul-country from Louisiana, a solid ten songs including good-enough covers of "I Feel the Earth Move" and "Knock on Wood," though the two best and most rocking tracks are clearly "Back to Lafeyette" (I swear I like pretty much any song that mentions "the Ponchatrain" and I STILL think it's a hotel in Detroit) and "One Eighty" (about a a lady having a midlife crisis and pulling a 180, lots of specifics therein). I also enjoy the early '80s MTV semitechnopop production of "Lightly" (about angels, yet it doesn't make me gag at all) and the talked part at the end of "I Don't Play That Game." Good album, not remotely shy about incorportating r&b.

>Chuck, your take on Roseanne is the first dissenting view I've seen--everything I'm aware of has been laudatory. <

Yeah well, not to cynical, Edd, but it's a *concept album (at least ostensibly) about Johnny Cash (and other country hall of famers in her family) dying.* "Laudatory" is kind of a foregone conclusion, isn't it? With that concept, she could've released a blank CD, and every country critic in the world would have gotten down on their knees and sung hosannas. (And the ones who don't give a shit won't review it anyway, right?) The album's okay -- not as dire and dreary as some stuff I've heard by Rosanne in the past two decades, which is an accomplishement, given the concept. But she was way better in 1981.

Birdie Bush seems more interesting to me. I need to take her home and put her in my CD changer with the new album by Espers, and figure out which (if any) has more Fairport Convention pastoral gorgeousness. (They're both from Philly, right? Where phreak pholk lives, I guess.)

By the way, for aficionados of the white-black conversation that Simon Reynolds thinks barely exists right now, "Rush" starts its drone w/ hip-hop/r&b beats accompanying it, but then shifts to rock beats for the rest of the song.

Plus Bertha Payne telling that guy to get off the pot obviously also connects to whatever Millie Jackson LP pictured her on the toilet.

Yeah, Chuck, Pinmonkey is pretty blah. I probably always give too much of a free ride to those kind of powerpoppy things, but altho "Big Shiny" is certainly nice and I quite like two or three songs, they have nothing to say. I just filed a Nash Scene piece on them, and so I have listened to their
'02 Paul Worley record and the new one a lot. I can't discern any real difference. just formalists--shit, they can't even work up enuff anger in the song about not getting a good table to make it sound real. one of those records that sounds good until you listen close, then it still sounds good but why bother. they're Poco--in fact, they're doing a show here with Poco soon. "Lot of Leavin' Left to Do" does what Pinmonkey tries to do with much more power and commercial savvy, as does the best stuff on Dierks' last 'un. they need to find something to sing about, Pinmonkey does--like beer and trucks and stuff.

and Chuck, glad you're diggin' the Keith Anderson record. I still find some of it under- or badly sung, and that pederast-Jesus song still makes me gag, but it's grown on me over the last few months--esp. "Plan B," which I think you mentioned above.

and in total agreement about Roseanne Cash--she was far better twenty-five years ago. finally heard a few tracks from the new one, and I don't get the critical love--absolutely she's always gotten a free ride from critics. give me the feisty Carlene Carter any day.

and I finished the "Rednecks and Bluenecks" book. I recommend. the chapter on the history of country in wartime and election time, "Town & Country, Jungle & Trench," is great. Dave Dudley's '66 "Talkin' Vietnam Blues" and Harlan Howard's '68 album "To the Silent Majority, With Love," which contains the awesome lines: "They're needing you boy and you're sitting in your coffeehouse/Whatcha gonna do when your woman begs you save her from a mouse?" the fabled Nashville songwriting at its most trenchant.

yikes! which track is this, edd?? guess i need to listen closer...

anyone--suggest for me some Gene Watson. Old Gene Watson, I've heard his latest one. I was in Robert's Western World on Lower Broad last night having a beer and heard a really good band play some old Gene Watson tunes--"14-Carat Heart," I think one was called. I need to investigate him further, I think.

kayla locicero, *beautiful world*, cdbaby teen-country from small-town louisiana. opens with its most interesting track, the part (sort-of)-rapped title cut, which starts with (literally) a giggle from kayla and from there is about her neighbors, one of whom is chinese and says kayla talks funny since she's from louisiana, and another of whom is jamaican and is learning english by listening to country radio in the cab he drives all night, plus another line rhymes "ph.D." with "aborigone" though i can't figure out why. later on kayla says "que pasa" and "por favor", so it's sweet if kinda condescending in its we-are-the-world-we-are-the-childen way. more evidence that either kayla or her songwriters might be liberal are the two rock songs about rebel girls: (1) "outside the lines", based on a glam-rock-i-guess riff (reminds me of the kings, though more likely swiped from the hollies or t.rex) and about a girl who "colors outside the lines, just a little to the left," but never really says how so maybe she's just bad with crayons and (2) "she's ready for a revolution," which naturally never specifies what the revolution consists of but its riff comes straight outta john cougar's "small town" all through so who cares. then there's a couple pretty good songs ("bobbi rae" and "what she wants") about apparently working women searching for meaning in their lives, which i THINK turns out to be finding a husband and a nuclear family in both though i'm not completely sure. then there's another MAYBE liberal one called "a little good news" which sounds kinda familiar (and yep, i just checked AMG, i must've heard the anne murray version before though br-459 did it too) where an anchorman says this war is wrong and people say the economy is bad and getting worse and there needs to be a change in policy so we need to start hearing all the good news about bad stuff that DIDN'T happen today, you know (but hey it beats the news song on terri clark's last album). and then there are sundry bluegrass-ish duets and mush-ish ballads including at least one song ("a brave new world") that i'm guessing concerns being born again and a weird one called "the halls of st. jude" that i didn't figure out yet (isn't he the patron saint of lost causes or something?) and one sappy thing ("it comes from you") that i really hate and one sappy song about how she loves her daddy (paper heart) that i hated at first but second time through it choked me up a little, hey gimme a break, i'm a dad too you know. spirited singing and hooks throughout.

-- Joseph McCombs (jmccomb...), February 14th, 2006.

YAY! Willie debuted this week at #52 on the Hot 100! He's not charting country and I doubt he will, but I'm as giddy as Clay Aiken at White Party right now. Glad to see that someone else who colors outside the lines and a LOT to the left is getting rewarded for his efforts.

thumbs down on birdie bush. basically devoid of energy, and not as pretty as it should be.

New Garrison Starr: still folkie-indie-country, but weirder than her last one, which is a good thing.

shedaisy has recorded two versions of american housewife, i think--since the soundtrack that it first appeared on said american, and the video up north here says canadian--is this interesting.

whats the jessi colter called?

anthony, you rank with the most cryptic people on earth. how *what* doesn't work anymore? (plenty of hippies were rednecks in the '70s, right? or was that your point?)

also, you mean in canada the shedaisy song is called "canadian housewife"? that's wacky!

there is nostalgia i have noticed recently in criticism, for this 70s nostalgia, where rednecks and hippies would hang out--and the sadness that doesnt happen anymore, which i think is interesting.

that is what i mean.

and is it a way for liberals, to allow themselves to like country--is there an elitest foregrounding of this kind of music (ie the talk here of willie, bobby bare, jessi colter, etc) instead of more conserative voices?

or am i talking out of my ass?

Anyway, it's a great, dynamic CD, produced by John Rich, with several of the songs co-written by Rich and Vicky McGehee (though Shannon gets co-credit for several herself). Like Gretchen she's much less comfortable with ballads than up-tempo stuff at this point - "Turn to Me" is pretty compelling but "Something Good" is kinda bleh and there's the redundant presence of "Why" which was on Jason Aldean's record from last year (and a minor hit too I think).

The party songs are clearly the best though, the very "All Jacked Up"-sounding "I Love 'Em All," the conceptually brilliant and blasphemous "High Horses" where she pledges allegiance to Sheryl Crow over Dolly Parton, and especially "Good Ole Days" which has a killer Zep-disco breakdown in the middle.

the guy who wrote Sunday Money, Jeff MacGregor, spelled this out explicitly in a great piece on Salon last week, about how the Dems needed not only to court the NASCAR fanbase but maybe also needed an infusion of some of that populist larger-than-life spirit. of course, a healthy number of the commenters called him an idiot and continued to assert that the Dems shouldn't cater to a bunch of redneck trash.

re Shannon Brown (xp):
(The first few songs of whose album sound really really good by the way. An "Okee From Muskogee" update about how we don't lock our doors and nobody burns flags on the courthouse lawn and there's only country stations out here and we don't keep anybody who lives out here out whatever the heck that means, a funkier one about she's a little woman who needs a big man not a mack-daddy pimp like you {I think she answers somebody who calls her a "ho" in it, too}, a song about people are wrong to say Garth and Shania aren't country 'cause that's what they used to say about Johnny Cash but she likes Steve Miller and Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock too and isn't it great how Kenny Chesney's laughing all the way to the bank so why don't we all get along -- all rocking country with fiddles in the groove, and yeah, lots of dumbass pandering in the words but what else is new? Now I'm on "Can I Get an Amen" which sounds EXACTLY like some big '70s rock song -- "Listen to the Music" by the Doobie Brothers, maybe? Then it turns into something by BTO, I think, "Roll On Down the Highway," maybe?; whatever it is, it definitely outrocks the Doobie Brothers, and then it winds down to more fiddles then handclap gospel acapella.)

--xhuxk, (xedd,,), November 23, 2005

(Fiddle break in Shannon Brown's "Corn Fed" quotes Black Dog riff...
-- Sang Freud (jstrell...), November 24th, 2005.

"Good Ole Days" (track #8 on the Shannon Brown album) = the most over-the-top 1979 disco on any country album, maybe ever (or at least since, like, 1980 or so).
-- xhuxk (xedd...), November 24th, 2005.

> over-the-top 1979 disco<
Or 1976 disco. Or somewhere in there. (Do your own callibrations at will.)

-- xhuxk (xedd...), November 25th, 2005.

Shannon Brown, "Corn Fed." A good solid "Gloria"/"Sister Ray"–three-chorder, lite style, though marred by the usual lying xenophobic, chauvinist lyrics about the innocence and safety of the rural heartland. Someone should prevail upon Shannon to record "Sister Ray," or Shooter's "Daddy's Farm," or that Darryl Worley song from a couple years back about the heartland drug town.
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), December 27th, 2005.

one of the points that Willman makes in "Rednecks & Bluenecks," Anthony, is that the '70s Outlaw movement was perhaps the last time in Nashville that country music and "liberalism" really joined hands. one of the virtues of this book, if you ask me, is the way he presents a lot of different viewpoints, so you come away feeling, as I think you should, not so damned sure of yourself when you think about someone like Garth Brooks. if you think as I do, you like a lot of Garth's music but dislike his image, like the way he took on Nashville's power brokers but dislike the obsession and confusion about what to do with that power. I can't say this or repeat it enough, and some of you have heard me say this before so forgive me, but what happens in Nashville is uniquely deforming of the process of making and marketing and thinking about music. the city itself is exploding--becoming a world-class town, finally, the only southern city to compete with Atlanta in that regard. when I moved away in 1991, it was still pretty relaxed and you could get from east Nashville to Belle Meade in twenty minutes. no more of that. and as my pal Marky St. James pointed out last night, Nashville's full of people like the Swedish guitar-teacher-virtuoso-ph.D. who got on a plane to come live here and play Telecaster--it's what New York and L.A. have been in the past, as music center (altho NYC will always be the capital of jazz in the world...) I think someone's gonna come along here and do something as big as what Garth did, in perhaps a different area of "country music," seems inevitable to me...

>what happens in Nashville is uniquely deforming of the process of making and marketing and thinking about music<

Not sure I get what you're saying here, Edd; how is it more deforming etc than the rest of the music biz (including indie labels, for that matter)? Assuming the biz is deforming at all, which I'm not entirely convinced about (although there's plenty of evidence to the contrary in the book I HAVE been reading -- Jen Trynin's *Everything I'm Cracked Up to Me,* which is hilarious and I highly recommend, and I say that as somebody with very little use of '90s alt-rock and very little time to read books about music, especially rock biographys. I wonder if the Commander Cody or Babes in Toyland books were this good). Most evidence I've seen in the past couple years suggests that Nashville has a pretty good knack for leaving great music intact, or at least no less a knack than anybody else has. Though maybe that's beside your point; I'm really not sure. (Also not sure what it is about Garth's image you dislike, unless you just mean his larger than life hubris, which at this point seems sillier and sillier as he proves not nearly as big as he used to be or he thought he was, in which case your dislike makes perfect sense. Plus, I just remembered that I've still yet to get around to playing his new CD, so, uh, maybe I hate what he stands for, too.)

actually, i guess you do kind of explain what bothers you about Garth here...

= evidence that the biz IS deforming (which I usually assume it isn't, really, all that much.) On other other hand, as charming as Trynin is, she often sounds like she's just whining. And I'm still stumped why bizzers ever figured she'd be big in the first place. But maybe it's just that I've always noticed so much great music coming out of the biz *despite* its machinations that I just assume those machinations are, in the long run, basically inept.