Rolling Country 2006 Thread

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.

yeah, the book does that, very well, its deconstructive in a way that is genorous in its critique...but i do think there is something about making the outlaw/hippie powwow much larger then it really was.

how much of it charted, for example, and how well it charted (i think, and i may be wrong, and i have been wrong, the only song that charted is the redneck/hippie romance tune by bobby bare, and that didnt break the top 50)

the only problem i had with the entire book, in fact, and its a meme that has been annoying me in general, adn it was really kind of underplayed in the book anyways

My other prejudice is that when middle budget product disappears (you either have things with a lot of money and advertising and cross marketing behind it, or things with very little), that this isn't good. (But I'm thinking of movies here, not so sure how to apply it to records.)

should be "makes them LESS insular"

Yeah, well that's because little girls constitute the sociocultural vanguard. Followers and fellow travelers like me are always playing catchup. I was in 1966, and I still am. (But the "Rush" video wasn't until this year, and that automatically qualifies the song for 2006.)

the greatest Fairport Convention Celtic drone-rock I've heard from the '00s is the verse to Aly & AJ's "Rush"

My use of "Celtic" - probably anyone's use of "Celtic" in regard to music - is probably wrong here, since I doubt very much that Celtic origins have anything to do with why the music sounds the way it does. But my ideas here are based completely on what I remember from Peter van der Merwe's brief discussion of the origins of modern European music, which I read several years ago. Van der Merwe's idea (he presented it as if this was the standard belief among music historians, which it may well be) was that European music 1,000 years ago had basically derived from the Middle East, but that it was subsequently supplanted in urban centers by the do-re-mi scale, which then spread to most of the continental countryside but didn't spread to rural Britain and Ireland. So rural Irish, Scottish, Welsh music didn't sound the way it did because it was Celtic, but just because it was rural, and if you were rural and Anglo-Saxon your music would sound like that too.

And what's interesting here is that some similarities between Northern and Western African music and Scots-Irish music aren't just coincidence, but because those musics have at least some elements that originated in the Middle East. When those musics started running up against each other in the U.S. South, there were natural affinities already there.

John Shanks produced and played on about half of the songs, but didn't write any of them, and his half aren't any better than the other. He ought to be forbidden to work with any performer older than 25 years, since they dull him out.

(Shanks had nothing to do with that great AJ & Aly song, but it follows a pattern that he and Michelle Branch created in 2001.)

er, didn't willie nelson have a hit or two? (and commader cody, and asleep at the wheel, and lots of others any of us could name if we took the time, not to mention "longhaired redneck" by david allen coe and "longhaired country boy" by charlie daniels, and a whole bunch of southern rock bands?) or am i totally missing the point about the powwow in question?

how long did the outlaw movement last, from when to when
who were t he outlaws
how long did the countrypolitan movement last, from when to when
who were the countrypolitian

how large, in terms of sales were outlaw
how large in terms of sales were countrypolitan
how large in terms of radio play were outlaw
how large in terms of radio play were countrypolitan
ditto for concert revenue, and media concentration

how much of a cross over (songwriters, perormers, etc) were between various kinds of country music,

how does the folk revival impact these numbers irt the hippie qoutient.

why, amongst certain cultural critics, has the outlaw movement become such a peice of nostalgia.
is there an equal amount of nostalgia amongst current nashville perfomers (ie Paisley or Keith) (Rednecks and Bluenecks hints at the Keith connections, but rarely mentions Paisley, who I think may be a key to this)

how legitmate is the idea that outlaw country worked in musical and geographic oppostion to music row (ie Austin vs Nashville)

how does Johnny Cash fit into all of this?

What about Bakersfield.

when i went to new-student orientation for the university of missouri before my sophomore college year 1979, i asked some kids i met what kinda music they liked, and they said "progressive country," which i *think* mainly meant outlaw music and southern rock. i wonder if that genre name was ever commonly used, and if so where, and for how long.

>how direct is the line b/w outlaw, and alt country <

Didn't we talk about this for a while on that No Depression thread?

This is actually a really good question, though, I think. I kind of get the idea that the "opposition" might be more myth than reality.

No Depression Top 40 of 2005