Rolling country 2007 thread

I guess no one other than Willman and Rosen have gotten the new Paisley cd, so someone can explain to me what Willman means saying that it is "goofy" and "brave." Or maybe when Willman checks back in he can clarify it for me.

As for Lambert, would the No Depression folks like her if she had not covered Gillian Welch and Patti Griffin? She does not sound like those acts do or like Neko Case. If Miranda can get the No Depression folks to open up to the mainstream, and the alt types to recognize value in the mainstream, more power to her.

I got the Paisley but just haven't listened to it yet.

Kinda stumped so far about what people are hearing as so great on the Paisley record. Most of it, again so far (could change) is seeming fairly meh to me in the way Brad usually seems fairly meh. The extended (five minute) Lonnie Mack or whoever style guitar instrumental at the end, "Throttleneck," is pretty cool. "Online," about a middle-aged web nerd (maybe web perv?) who lives in his mom's basement and tells lies about himself to girls on his Mac after mom fixes him a snack, struck me as sort of funny until Lalena pointed out that the character in the song is a way-too-obvious cliche done way funnier by Weird Al last year. "Mr. Policeman" has some okay so-what auctioneer-spiel-as-chase-scene momentum I guess, but still seems pretty pro forma all the way down to its "In the Jailhouse Now" (Mississippi Shieks etc) quote at the end. And there are some fulminating cleancut down-get-any-on-you guitar parts at the ends of some songs, but in general I'm shrugging my shoulders like I usually do with this guy. Not sure I'm even impressed by "Ticks" yet (again, guitar ending seemed better than the song), though that may change after I've heard it a few times. Carrie Underwood ballad seemed like a snooze; "If Love Was a Plane" and maybe "Some Mistakes" seem like okay semi-ballads; 16 songs is way too long for a country album, though I'm no doubt missing some good ones. (Two of them feature the "Kung Pao Buckaroos," which is apparently Little Jimmy Dickens, Vince Gill, and Whisperin' Bill Anderson; if I heard those, they went right by me.) I dunno, probably lots of the songs will grow on me. But today the imminent Columbia debut by Cole Deggs & the Lonesome (which I'll post about soon) was sounding a whole lot more exciting. (Weird coincidence, though: First song on Brad's album is "All I Wanted Was A Car"; chorus of fist song on Cole Deggs etc.'s album goes "all I wanted was the girl next door." Who apparently does reckless things with her car, and with Marlboros.)

DON'T-get-any-on-you guitar parts, I meant. (In general, I'm not yet a convert to the Paisley guitar cult; I think I'd take Keith Urban over him, easy. Though "Throttleneck" does help in Brad's regard.)

got an early paisley out of the library, with a 4 minute bluegrass instruemtal called nervous breakdown, its kind of awesome

Have read the Breihan, not the Mazor. A wrong assumption is (or isn't) that "alt" is the only alternative to "mainstream." Miranda is a bit left field for Nashville country, just as Big & Rich and Cowboy Troy are left field. But it's a different field from alt's. Is too bright and poppin' for alt. But Miranda is the sort of non-alt that alt types'll like, owing to the blatancy of the twisted-revenge tales and the, well, hard rock of her stomps.

The critic embrace will probably neither hurt nor help her airplay. She's not gotten much airplay for her previous album, either.

Not sure why I think her rock is more "rock" than, say, Montgomery Gentry's rock is, since MG rocks at least as hard as she does.

Okay, more thoughts on more stuff:

COLE DEGGS AND THE LONESOME -- Looks like country "bands" (who apparently sometimes play actual instruments) are on the verge of becoming more visible in the next couple months. Not sure I've heard Emerson Drive yet; liked Lynville Train's track or three on the Broken Bridges soundtrack last year. Didn't know what to expect of these guys, and my first reaction was somewhere in the neighborhood of "lite southern rock so what" or maybe "Rascal Flatts so what." But a bunch of tracks are really starting to grab me -- "I Got More," jazzy in the tradition of Marshall Tucker Band; "Huggin' in the Blacktop," beautiful desert-at-dusk ballad that might have as much Gary Allan in it as anything on Blake Shelton's album; "Do You Think of Me," with a nostalgia mood somewhere between Night Moves and Against the Wind Bob Seger; "I Haven't Stopped Hurtin," jazzgrass soft/hard rock that might match anything on the last Dierks Bentley album; "Out Of Alabama," another good lonely road song (like Dierks, that seems to be these guys' specialty) and possibly the best song to call Alabama the Crimson Tide since Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues." "Girl Next Door" appears to be a pretty sweet pop-rocker -- sounds like the single to me, and it'd be a good one (basically mom and dad try to keep fixing him up with respectable marrying types but he's always been in love with the wild girl who grew up in 305 whilst he grew up in 303 on the same street). "Everybody's Beautiful" is a sappy one for the ladies and maybe James Blunt fans, but the girl in the song works in an office (her job is very boring she's an office clerk?), and working woman rock rules (plus this one has cool mandolin fills or something). And that's just be the start.

THE PLAIN DEALERS -- Northern Exposure country rock from way up in Edmonton (Anthony, you're up near there somewhere right?), and maybe even a better shot that Cole Deggs etc. at being a Marshall Tucker Band for our time, judging from their great EP, one of the best cdbaby releases I've heard this year. Apparently the people in the band were prog-rockers before they went hard country, so they've definitely got chops, but with a way jazzier groove than most prog ever has. Singer sounds like a tough guy but that somehow doesn't bug me -- reminds me of Dale Watson, I think. Now all I have to figure out is why they're named after a daily newspaper in Cleveland.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/theplaindealers

CAROLINA COTTON - "The Yodeling Blonde Bombshell"; recorded and did a radio show between 1946 to 1952; now her daughter runs (or at least has a connection to) a recording studio in Bakersfield and has put together a CD of Bombshell Mom's work and put it up on cdbaby. "Western Swing," we're told, but I'm not sure how much swing I hear in the actual instrumentation; I need to listen more to figure that out. Western Swing's definition then might be wider than my definiton of it now. But Carolina's signing has something that, say, Anita O'Day or Keely Smith or Rosmeary Clooney had (I am no expert on that kinda stuff, so those are probably far from the best comparisons), and they were jazz vocalists, right? So maybe that is the swing part. Also, she yodels. A lot. I'm not sure how much yodeling I can take; 19 tracks (including a long segment from her radio show, complete with banter and jokes with guys and snippets of songs like " Red River Valley" all through it) might be a bit of an endurance test, but I am trying. Lalena swears by "You And My Old Guitar" already; I gotta go back and check that out.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/carolinacotton

COWBOY TROY -- New album is kind of depressing me so far, so I took it out of my changer a week ago and haven't put it back in. The old old old school DJ Hollywood type rapping in "Blackneck Boogie" seemed kinda fun I guess, but Troy's idea of hard rock seems to be Limp Bizkit stick-up-the-butt gnu-metal (though John Rich I believe has said this album sounds like "Motorhead on a horse," which sounded really promising!) Proggy parts in "Paranoid Like Me (Tis the Season of Discontent)" might be a Metallica attempt. "Hick Chick" has an obvious Gretchen Wilson lyric connection plus some redneck wimmin singing in the background. "Buffalo Stampede" has Avenged Sevenfold on it but has left no impression at all so far. There is also a "Barn Dance Mix" of "I Play Chicken With The Train", I just noticed. We'll see. It can't be as bad as it's seeming so far, can it?

COUNT BISHOPS -- Been playing Speedball + 11, released on 1995 on Ace Records UK and containing EP and outtake tracks recorded by the hardest-rocking band in UK pub-rockdom, mostly in 1975, when they were just starting out. Man, they totally just wanted to be early Stones then, I'm realizing, and they were great at it -- "Route 66," "Teenage Letter," "I Ain't Got You," "Cry To Me," "Sweet Little Sixteen, "Carol," "Mercy Mercy," "Reelin' and Rockin," "Down the Road Apiece" (most country track here, and it's awesome), "I'm a Man" -- how many of those songs (including three Chuck Berry ones, right?) had the Stones done first? A bunch I think. Frank Kogan would probably know off the top of his head. Anyway, this might just be my favorite Bishops CD of the large pile I've been delving into lately.

KORPIKLAANI -- Finnish hummpa/folk/forest-metal, getting ever more beautiful as it gets ever jiggier. Last track "Nordic Feast" is like a great Pogues instrumental circa "Red Roses For Me." "Vesilahden Verajilla" on now, just tearing my heart apart.

"Huggin' in the Blacktop,"

No "in". The blacktop is what is being hugged.

JOHN EDDIE -- Oh yeah, wanted to ask if anybody had an opinion about this guy. Too bad Rob Sheffield isn't here; I'm pretty sure he has a John Eddie opinion somewhere. Anyway. Jersey guy, I think. Cool last name, but he spells it wrong. Mid '80s album (just reissued on American Beat Records) features Max Weinberg, Ian Maclagan, Mitchell Froom, Nils Lofgren, and David Lindley, but it just sounds like a sub-sub-John Cafferty/Corey Hart hack Springsteen imitation, and doesn't hold my attention at all. But "Jungle Boy," which went to #52 on the pop chart apparently though I don't think I've ever once heard it on the radio, is weird! Not nearly as good as "Tarzan Boy" by Baltimora from around the same time, which I'm sure some people must have confused it with back then, but still: A blatant Gary Glitter "Rock and Roll Part Two" rip via Bruce, basically. What the hell? It would not be hard to make a Jimmy Ray connection, if I really wanted to.

if you were on the jersey shore in the mid-'80s -- and probably other parts of the northeast -- you heard lots of "jungle boy" on the radio. and even a little bit of "pretty little rebel," from the same album.

started out as john eddie and the front street runners, who i think were more of a south jersey/philly club phenomenon than a jersey shore phenomenon, but the springsteen/southside/beaver brown fans looooved them. eventually dropped the band name and settled on the shore, where he hit with those two songs immediately and then was never able to follow up. his biggest weakness, i think, was his bland, powerless voice. but he kept trying, with a bit of a kinda sorta dance album if i recall correctly, and at least one country/folk/acoustic/singer-songwriter album, speaking of this thread. at least until recently, he was still playing the shore fairly regularly.