Rolling Country 2023

Although maybe somebody will now compare statistics (not me). Of course it's also about how to deal with with such an event. (My thoughts, the end)(dyl has covered most of them).

Regardless of statistics and debates on same, point of course is that Aldean presents a false dichotomy. Thank yew and good night.

FWIW, Aldean is from Macon, which is not a particularly small town. I guess he's just singing about the small town in all of our hearts. Well, maybe not all of us ...

The copy of Mellencamp's "Small Town" in all of our hearts.

Probably not Bronski Beat, that's for sure.

"Try That With A Small Town Boy"

Jason Isbell's point about "fight me!"-type bullies brought back some depressing memories.

As a former resident and activist in rural Kentucky, I regularly encountered these Tough Guys who build their entire identity around the attitude expressed by “Try That In A Small Town” or numerous other songs of a similar nature – with the obligatory decals on their trucks - and I naively thought I could convince a few of them into joining efforts towards defeating the corrupt elected officials that gave huge tax incentives to multinational conglomerates in exchange for a small number of dangerous, low-paying jobs; or at least trying to fight back against the wealth-hoarding executives that ignore worker-safety laws and pollute the environment, all while harassing anyone trying to unionize (before the inevitable departure for another locale with even worse worker-safety laws).

Of course, they were not interested.

Way to stand up for your townsfolk, Tough Guys. When someone actually does “Try That” in your small town, you weak-ass shitbags roll over and lick the boots of the oppressors. You’re totally fine with having to boil your water before you drink it, or re-electing the Republican rep that denied the Medicaid expansion that would finance your kids’ health care when they got too close to the toxic sludge near the creek, but God forbid someone accidentally brush past you at the local bar, or a person of the wrong race or accent drives through your town!

Ugh

Jason Aldean addresses racism controversy surrounding his song ‘Try That in a Small Town’ and pledges to continue performing it:

“I love our country, I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this bullshit started happening to us.” pic.twitter.com/CixDNBwret

— Pop Base (@PopBase) July 22, 2023

So he just wants to make American great again, or something like that?

https://variety.com/2023/music/news/jason-aldean-concert-defends-vigilante-song-try-that-small-town-1235677520/

But the only example that Aldean offered in his defense of the song at the Cincinnati concert was something that doesn’t come up in either the lyrics or the music video: mass shootings.

“I know a lot of you guys grew up like I did,” Aldean said. “You kind of have the same values, the same principles that I have, which is we want to take our kids to a movie and not worry about some asshole coming in there shooting up the theater.

Hate to break the guy's heart, but afaict mass shootings in small towns aren't typically perpetrated by outside agents coming in to cause trouble.

"Try That With A Small Town Boy"

lolol

Here's some music to blow the bad shit away:
Flaco, the current Flaco Jimenez studio album, has too much meh vocals overhead, but ends with a fine pair of instrumentals:

"Loa Amores Del Flaco"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNcww523gIA

"Hasta La Vista"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lx1Wm5HFiA

and omg whatever else this is, it's fun, w somewhat spacey live sound; he plays on most of it, I think, even does an accordion and voice duet w Raul---songs do not play in the order listed:

Flaco Jimenez Vs. The Mavericks---Greatest Hits 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K28b70-_YnI

Does Flaco ever sing? There's one track where an agile little voice matches the accordion, don't think it's Raul----this set might sound better on YouTubeMusic, but somehow I don't want it to, at least not yet.

I had no idea Flaco was still alive. The Mavericks ... underrated? At the least Raul Malo has always been a heck of a singer.

jfc this idiot bringing up mass shootings as if there wasn't just one pretty recently in a "small town" during which the cops famously sat on their hands terrified to go in while kids were being massacred

Hey, in our small town you don't tell our cops what to do.

the Mavericks are fantastic

In Time was a peak: RIYL Los Lobos and early The Band, in terms of drawing all or many of their roots and interests into the signature sound---and now they've got a 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, with bonus tracks (Blue Vinyl Ltd. has sold out, but there's digital, CD, maybe another LP at some point)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnaoZ64VeyQ

RIYL Los Lobos and early The Band

I'd also maybe add Chris Isaak, for obvious reasons.

Yeah, and I didn't mean that they ever, as far as I know, actually sounded like The Band, but, for In Time anyway, had more signs of that syncretic Big Pink process going on, drawing deeper from the well for more colors, more shades at least, not radically altering their style, but doing it in a way that seemed like a logical development and a refreshing, exciting one. Big Pink was kind of high strung, while the Mavericks and Los Lobos are usually cooler with it, taking a variety of roots etc. as a given (Exception: to me, The Mavericks En Espanol sounds like Mario Unchained, Mario practically busting a gut at a talent show, and being awesome! But I wanna hear more of The Mavericks.)

Also they sound like they probably like the Texas Tornadoes and some other bands and recording situations involving Flaco and Doug Sahm, who was never shy about musical variety, while always sounding unmistakably like himself (that voice, that weed)

And prob should have left out The Band, but yeah Isaak, so Orbison, and his Latin inspirations, whoever they were.

Official name: Texas Tornadoes (spellcheck making me look like Dan Quayle)

Now it's leaving out strikethrough! Too klever of me: sorry, Texas Tornados (as Flaco has noted,"Now there's just me and Augie, two tornados")(although Shawn Sahm pulled together at least one more album)

The Band

Yeah, I don't think the Mavericks sound like them at all, but at times Los Lobos sure has. Perhaps the only band I've ever heard really bring to mind the Band, intentionally. But of course, Los Lobos are pretty much capable of anything.

So I'm disappointed in most of Flaco's latest, but Eva Ybarra's La Reina Del Accordéon rules OK! (and then some): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3F7qrqwnZ0

And now I see that I misplaced the acute mark in the word misspelled: should be La Reina Del Acordeón.)

"Lake of Fire" was the highlight of a mostly disappointing Bruce Robison album several years ago. He misspelled the writer's name, Christy Hays, but I tracked down her River Swimmer, which was and is a trip, though I learned how to go with the flow, how to swim it, and there's a striking, somewhat countervailing version of "Lake" on her latest, the reductively-titledSad Songs For Lonely People: there's a playful, old school country feel, as she even gets the sometimes scary steel guitar to shuffle along in a sincerely horny way: the Lake of Fire is her heart, babe, "in the dark of the light," and now it occurs to me that this is a drinking song, a having-drunken song, in which such confidences make total sense, or enough of the right kind.

Another good version of this effect comes on one of her more mumblecore productions---she's already told somebody she knows she's hard to handle but still doesn't feel doing nothing else on this long-ass day, I just wanna ride around": that's "Ride Around"---and now, she's nailed by those "White Crosses," the little ones, with "fake flowers," by the side of the road, and she's taking them personally, that's clear enough, and seems like she might have been a killed or killing traveler, perhaps both, or at least relates re tendencies. Meanwhile, the steel guitar keeps floating around the curve, its degree of brightness never entirely predictable, while she's hunched over her acoustic.

Lots of atmospheric character studies here, with enough discernible detail, and even an intriguing personal-historical Western trilogy in the home stretch (she lives in Butte, Montana).

new Tyler Childers video/song is gorgeous despite the video's reliance on certain tropes, also love to see Silas House was involved

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II-L8Hq0_i4

Thanks---at first, discs 2 and 3 of Childers' opus were growing on me quite a bit, then receded---but glad he's still trying---and Silas House! I enjoy his interviews, should check his books, and maybe he'll try his hand at lyrics, if he hasn't already.

Also for further study: Sara Evans, who I didn't know could be this good.

She was in the back yard
Say it was a little past nine
When her prince pulled up
A white pick-up truck…

Speaking of so many country and adjacent acts with names that start with the letter "M," My Morning Jacket just played the Newport Folk Festival and was joined at various times by Maggie Rogers, Margo Price, and Animal (from the Muppets).

Pop-country alert: Stumbled on this because she's playing here in a few weeks as an opening act. I was initially charmed by the blatant pseudo-Swiftness of it, thinking about how many hundreds of Swiftian writers there are yet to come. But the chorus sold me. Interesting that she's keeping a country affiliation while absorbing a lot of the stuff Swift did only after she "left" country.

Also, it's not six minutes long, it's just the song looped twice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJKlxl4yJ0M

lol from YouTube it looks like Tana Matz has been making music for 10 years and sounding like Taylor Swift the whole time.

Taylor Slow

x-post re: Sara Evans

She's only rarely ever been that great; "Suds in the Bucket" is (one of?) her best singles, and it's because she leans hard into the more trad-country phrasings and her thick drawl. Evans has never seemed to know what her actual strengths are: She fancies herself more of a Faith Hill / Martina McBride type when she's better suited as a Lee Ann Womack / Patty Loveless.

The covers album she released a couple of years ago is honest-to-God one of the worst albums I've ever heard. There's a particular iteration of Hell that's just Sara Evans, bleating her way through "Come On, Eileen."

Suds in the Bucket is a certified hit, one of the best of that era for sure.

Also would like to read the think piece about how the balkanization of all other genres and musical fandom has led to a resurgence in the cultural significance of a few select (male) country stars. When was the last time 3 of the top 4 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 were male country acts?

Thanks for the xpost Evans warnings!

Finally saw this splendid 2022 work-out---get it while you can:

Terry Allen & The Panhandle Mystery Band
Season 47 Episode 4712 | 54m 6s
|

Enjoy an hour with maverick Texas singer/songwriter and artist Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band. The Guggenheim Fellowship winner performs songs from his lauded LP Just Like Moby Dick, as well as classics from his back catalog.

Aired: 01/29/22

Expires: 08/27/23

Rating: TV-G

Continuous Play Settings

oops, here's link:
https://www.pbs.org/video/terry-allen-sgfb6f/

Deep summer bonus track from The River and The Stream, later on a Jesse Winchester tribute album, Quiet About It:
Rosanne Cash, "Biloxi"---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDhV5SscEgc

Maybe a controversial opinion, but I think Ro. Cash's three album run from Black Cadillac to The List to The River & The Thread is as strong as anything she's ever done, and I'm someone who thinks she already had at least 3 canon-ready albums during her commercial heyday.

I remember being a bit distracted by what I heard as the arty (pastoral woodcuts vs. country) lyrics of The River & Thread, but liked some of it, if not as much as those first two.
Emily Nussbaum tries to come to grips with today's blue Nashville under assault from within and without, but I was mainly struck by her conversation with Adeem, starting about 20-25 minutes in:

Nussbaum also speaks with Adeem the Artist, a nonbinary country singer and songwriter based in East Tennessee, who has found success with audiences but has not broken through on mainstream country radio. “I think that it’s important that people walk into a music experience where they expect to feel comforted in their bigotry and they are instead challenged on it and made to imagine a world where different people exist,” Adeem says. “But, as a general rule, I try really hard to connect with people even if I’m making them uncomfortable.”

Also, Adeem plays "Books and Records" by request, at just the right point in the interview.

re: Sara Evans, pretty sure Suds in the Bucket is one of her two best songs, the other being the near-title track from her best album Real Fine Place ("A Real Fine Place To Start".) SITB is on a pretty decent album too, but RFP is the place to uh start.

Lori McKenna's new album is solid as ever. Seeing her in a couple of weeks so need to do a bit of a back catalog review.

Also, seeing Eric Church this weekend. Not sure what to expect. Anyone seen him live?

Church put on a solid show this weekend. Though his last couple of albums aren't very consistent, he played what would be considered his "greatest hits," much of Chief and Mr. Misunderstood especially, which I consider two of the best country albums of the 2010s. He blends outlaw, swamp, and southern country rock, liberally borrowing from R&B, gospel, and soul in the mold of CCR and the Stones. He did two covers, Little Feat's "Sailin Shoes" and a rousing "Ophelia" in tribute to Robbie Robertson, both bands that seem like the kind of antecedents he models himself after.

Content-wise, he likes to walk in two worlds, playing to his audience with ample songs about drinking and getting stoned--"Livin Part of Life," "Drink in My Hand," "Round Here Buzz," and "Smoke a Little Smoke" all made appearances--and unfurling a giant American flag to rousing applause late in the set. But the songs rarely if ever seem to be plainly patriotic or about the type of macho masculinity that Aldean and others traffic in. I was struck in particular by "Never Break Heart," in which he repeats "It's okay to cry" four or five times; maybe I'm misinterpreting, but he recited the line as if addressing his male fans directly.

One topic that he returns to again and again is music itself: "Mistress Named Music," "Country Music Jesus," "Pledge Allegiance to the Hag," and "Springsteen" were all played, the latter of which remains his best track, the rare understated song that became a fan favorite and a sing-along anthem. I like how often he name checks his heroes or nods to their work in his own songs: Merle Haggard, The Boss, Elvis, Stevie Wonder, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Elvis Costello, and Jeff Tweedy to name a few, whose "Misunderstood" he interpolated for the aforementioned "Mr. Misunderstood."

“Rich Men North of Richmond” is an archetypal example of right wing populist ideology—there’s a vague gesture against elites keeping working people down, but the alleged mechanism by which they are keeping them down is by giving their tax dollars to “undeserving” poor people

— Armand Domalewski 🍌 (@ArmandDoma) August 14, 2023

I still love Eric Church like he was an ex-boyfriend with whom I remain on good terms. I roll my eyes at his mistakes, forgive him.