Rolling Country 2012

And thanks for making it through them all, Don! (Or did you? -- Don't remember you mentioning Smokey Wood & the Modern Mountaineers, for instance, not that you have to mention all of them -- you mentioned more than anybody else did, here or elsewhere). Now one of these days I need to sift through your responses and respond to them -- definitely wish I'd noted the current-events potential of "Pipeline Blues" though; can't believe I missed that, as obvious as it is. (And yeah, the Playboys' polite grandpatude might be what bugs me most about them, but in general compared to say the Musical Brownies or Newman's Boys or the Modern Mountaineers or certain other westbound swangsters, their playing has frequently hit me as kinda staid, a lot of the time. Then again, they sure did play a lot of it, quantity-wise. Wills box set is still one of the very few box sets I own, though, even if it doesn't include my favorite recordings by him -- So I'm still a fan, don't get me wrong.)

Might like the imminent Jerrod Niemann album as much as the imminent Kix Brooks (former peaks higher, latter's more consistent -- evens out, more or less.) Which means 2012 is shaping up not quite as horrible Nashville-was as it was a couple months back. Still haven't gotten super-excited about a single country single yet, though. (Favorite probably the Pistol Annies' "Takin' Pills," which is really still a 2011 track in my head.)

("polite vocal grandpatude," I probably should've specified, as you did.)

And "Nashville-wise (not was). (Wordwork squeaks and out comes whatever you want.)

Sorry, forgot about Smokey Wood's "Everybody's Truckin'", wonder how did they get away with the f-word, which is almost the first word, very intelligible every time it comes spinning by. True drive-by truckers.

I'm not gonna vote for anything released in 2011, fuck the industry for working releases to death.

OK, maybe something released too late to make last year's ballot, but Pistol Annies were all over that.

I know: if it's officially released as *a single* (whatever that is) this year, it qualifies. Well, maybe if I'm desperate (which could happen)

Well, I'm desperate! (And "Takin' Pills" apparently officially had a video come out this year -- which qualifies as "released as a single" by my rules.)

yeah, I might list it too.

I can't imagine not listing "Takin' Pills" at this point in the year, and I sure hope xhuxk is right that the 3rd and 4th quarters aren't as dreadful for country as the first two have been.

To that end: The new Little Big Town. First of their albums that has at least 3 very obvious hit singles, if not more than that, so it should finally give them a leg up on the fading Rascal Flatts and the completely useless Lady Antebellum among the A-list vocal groups. The vocal harmonies sell it per usual, but it's the strongest batch of songs they've tackled. Production's on-point, too, which makes it all the more disappointing that the album sounds as terrible as it does. Far, far worse than either of the last two Miranda Lambert albums or Eric Church's Chief as far as Loudness War problems go.

<i>Hick-hop's heftiest good ole boy opens with angry identity politics, branding himself a "shotgun toter, Republican voter, Hank Jr. supporter" over "We Will Rock You" thumping.<i>

What an iconoclast. Oughta lose some weight before diabetes takes his feet. Really, someone actually paid to produce that song?

Yeah, pathetic. And I don't even know if I buy it -- just sounds like pandering, to a Tea Party country audience that I assume has been shrinking for years. (Haven't checked the charts lately -- How's the new Hank Jr. album doing? And no, I didn't listen it. Even Montgomery Gentry and Toby Keith, who were actually good at it, don't do this kind of crap much anymore. And even when they did, I don't think either of them ever sang about which party they vote for.) Anyway, if Colt's such a shotgun toter, he should try toting one onto the convention floor in Tampa and see how his Second Amendment rights are holding up.

There was a Rolling Stone website interview with Hank Jr in which he bragged of selling 200,000 USD in T-shirts since he made the Hitler comment and lost his ESPN gig. Whether that's true is anyone's guess but it's hard to see that album selling the same for him. Why did anyone like Colt Ford enough to sign him in the first place, though? Some idea there was an opening for an artist the morbidly obese white male end of the country demographic could identify with?

Bizarrely (I just checked Billboard.biz), Ford's album is #20 on the Billboard 200 (after entering at #5) and #5 on the country chart (after entering at #1) after two weeks. So somebody must be buying it, at least initially, though I'm clueless about who. Doesn't look like he has a single getting much airplay (a song with Jake Owen is #54 on the country chart, pretty weak), so radio's not selling the thing; maybe he actually has some semblance of a cult audience. Either way, the more I think about what little the Republican Party has done for the white working class in recent decades, the more his declaration of his politics as a class signifier creeps me out. (Fwiw, Hank Jr's current album is #29 country, #150 overall, after 6 weeks. No charting country song.)

Either way, the more I think about what little the Republican Party has done for the white working class in recent decades, the more his declaration of his politics as a class signifier creeps me out

It probably endears him to middle-class suburban Republicans

Well, ya see they buy all the crap mythology on how it was really the socialist commie elite liberals and Dems that have sold then out, using the government handouts to all the moochers, pulling the honest working man down, forcing banks to give home loans to people who didn't deserve and couldn't pay them. It's classic human race scapegoating and there's a closet bigot hiding behind every bit of it, too, someone who'll say, "Hey, I have two black friends!" And don't forget the conspiracy theory part, the passed around idea that the UN is plotting to make world laws taking away guns. Which is from the John Birch Society but has been laundered into the mainstream.

Junior's song also blames Fox and Friends for being the show where he compared Obama to Hitler, or vice versa. The truly desperate and others might try the Various Artists album Kin: Songs By Mary Karr & Rodney Crowell. Haven't read Karr's books. An excerpt Crowell's memoir about funky canaltown Houston in the 50s seemed a bit overloaded, but with good pungent detail. The one song that comes closest to being too wordy, "Long Time Girl Gone By", does so appropriately: as Emmylou stealthily stirs the shit, and regret's ritual recital of risk strikes some sparks that may go past "my bridal veil of smoke" on on the next spin or so (maybe why she didn't take some chances missed is cos she took a bunch of others, among her allusive souveniers). Whole collection's pretty lean, lilting, often like mid-60s country reflecting what Beatles got from country. But sometimes further back, like the most amazing track, just because I had no idea he could do it, is Vince Gill (!) on "Just Pleasing You", sounding like Doug Sahm might if he'd ever covered "Jolie Blonde", one of my all-time favorite songs. Lee Ann Womack remembers her and her sis zipping parental love's battlefield in "Momma's On A Roll", rec to Pistol Annies. Rosanne Cash does as well with "Sister Oh Sister": "You've been my seawall, you've been my flood, you're in my blood." Even Crowell's own turn with Kristofferson on "My Father's Advice" is springy and surprisingly painless. Here tis--hit Play All, to avoid random insertions; can always hit Pause
http://www.myspace.com/variousartists-49163478/music/albums/kin-songs-by-mary-karr-rodney-crowell-18541622

Oh yeah, and "Hungry For Home" is literal enough. "Frito pie and a grape Nehi"? Dang, I'm jealous!

"like mid-60s country reflecting what Beatles got from country" this may have never happened, but it should have, and it seems like an early notion of Crowell's, back when he was "majoring in joints and jellybeans." And, as w Gill's track making me wonder about Sahm doing "Blonde", close enough. Also prob has to do with the times the stories/mid-situations in these songs may have taken place, or started to.

mid-60s country reflecting what Beatles got from country" this may have never happened

Buck Owens, maybe?

And right, the GOP plays the race card and associated scare tactics to get the white working class to vote against its own interest; that's obviously been the case since Nixon's Southern Strategy, and it's still the case, even as the GOP stomps on said class more mercilessly than it ever has. It's what Thomas Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas? was about (and in post-Thatcher/New Labour England, it's what Owen Jones's Chavs: The Demonization Of The Working Class is about -- never realized how many parallels there were to the U.S. -- and across Europe it's part of what the rise of nationalist anti-immigrant parties has been about.) Anyway, given their debt to music by black people, without which their careers wouldn't exist, it's doubly despicable for Colt Ford and Kid Rock to swing that way. Maybe they're just stupid. But in country music that's a story that goes back to white country blues singer turned segregationalist Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis, at least.

indeed. Re Hank Jr.'s album, though, I'd be surprised and sad if there weren't a few good songs (haven't quite gotten the stomach to check it yet)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIyeP5xe6zk

Spot-on. Apparently MAD-TV is still a lot funnier than SNL. (Actually I don't watch either, so I really don't know what I'm talking about, but that was my impression a few years ago anyway.) Anyway, my only complaint is that I don't know why they made "McBride" her last name, given that Martina McBride has never really seemed to fit the Tea Party mold -- Not saying she's a liberal, it's hard to say, but she sure seems like a bleeding-heart something, given that her most political hits are probably the ones about domestic abuse, poor old ladies who can't afford milk, and slow-learning children who dress up like bags of leaves on Halloween.

Anyway, since Gorge himself hasn't posted it here yet, there's also this (musically inspired by David Allan Coe, he says):

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

>>Id be surprised and sad if there weren't a few good songs (haven't quite gotten the stomach to >>check it yet)

Don, all of it was on YouTube, in one slice and separate pieces when I gave it a listen. A lot of it's still there but not as neatly arranged as originally, some of it deleted. Much of it is just tortured, like his song about small businessmen with these words:

"I want to dedicate this song to every working man and woman in this country and everyone trying to run a business constantly punished, taxed and regulated by the federal government.”

And “Our glorious leader just got back from China and Japan where he gave away our jobs, put us down and sold out our plans" and "We don’t need to be givin’ all that money away to other folks.”

And he autotunes his Dad on the first cut. It's mostly just trying. He does a duet with Brad Paisley called "I'm Gonne Get Drunk and Play Hank Williams" that's OK. Perhaps Paisley did not know what his contribution/favor was getting him into when he done did it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY-Z1hjquqo

Here's the one with autotuned Pop, pandering trash. He got what he wanted from it, a fan video with the president sieg heiling imagery.

Didn't realize that Mad-TV thing was 6 years old. Prescient!

Meanwhile, Dan Emmett will never die, apparently. Seems like the RNC really missed the boat in not having these 2nd South Carolina String Band fellas open for Kid Rock.

http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/civil-war-events-feature-minstrel-song-revival-2449440.html

Gotta love Hank Williams, Jr., so desperate he's got no way to sell his crappy new record except by appealing to the worst: " 'We've got a Muslim for a President who hates cowboys, hates cowgirls, hates fishing, hates farming, loves gays, and we hate him,' Williams Jr. bellowed [at the Stockyards in Texas.] The Dallas Sun reported -- the crowd responded with a loud cheer." Hates fishing and loves gays. Well, we can never abide someone like that.

Doing modern country music a big favor every day, making Brad Paisley and everyone else who stupidly helped him with the latest thing regret every minute of it. Honest question: Is he going to check himself into Betty Ford after this tour?

Maybe if he ever gets into big enough legal difficulties (atarted singing about frivolous torts a lawwng time ago). Catherine Irwin's new solo album, Little Heater, starts out with her as a maybe wayward but non-waify personal pilgrim,with some bruised resolution to walk on down the tracks. Then she becomes a tough-soled backwoods backstreet visionary, a nature-loving evangelist: "We must save the liars, we must save the liars! Foe there is much/Truth in them." Also, we must save the whores, the thieves, and "the pirates' hearts," though not the rest of them apparently, which in hindsight may be a foretaste of gory glory divine, though only glimpssd in those "kerosene lights", as she eventually (spoilers ahead)looks back: "Ah rose through those valleys unscathed, but Ah couldn't take the heights....when 'Do What Thou Wilt' was the whole of the law." (The ancient motto goes good with the tune and inflections-Appalachians are descendents of the Elizabethans, don't you know)Ends up eternally wistful, having killed the loved one who killed the dream, but not dead enough, in the only cover, "Banks of the Ohio".
Sound unbearable? It doesn't *sound* unbearable, far from it. After all those steadily progressing quality vs quantity Freakwater albums and one prev solo set, she masterfully guides and trusts the scaled-down pre-bluegrass mountain sounds throug isolation and stealthy company (a few strings like creek branches, a steel guitar here, banjo thar, harmonies finding their sea legs soon enough). Also finding her own way through syllables, chords and good ol' tunes in the momemt, or so it surely seems. The only thing is, the seriously punk-to-roots humor of her deadpan ways is now pretty much reduced to "is she kidding with that?", once or twice at most. Unless it can be heard in/implied by the quiet audacity of the whole thing, which might be an allegory of what happens to all religion. Does also seem fully, personally inhabited though. Track by track, it mostly still works--so far, but the lack of humor makes me wonder. Might at least make my Scene Top Ten; slim pickins this year.

Patterson Hood, Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance--no distance as evasive action (or something) re some of the worst songs he shared with the Truckers, He aasures us these are autobiographical, though from two different phases in his life. Not as static as some of the worst songs he etc. Several snapshots, as usual, but the whole thing's so spare, crucial details of lyrics, arragements, even singing quickly stand out when they show up at all, which is fairly often. But autobiographically enough, we get several autumnal ruminations and songs about touring. But he accepts being "between anguish and acceptance" cause he could easily do worse, even if he had a choice:one of his buddies jumps. falls and/or is pushed out of the window, lands with the bong still in his hand and still smokin' But this reminds me that the whole thing is so *tastefully* spare, no yeehaw sendoff for his bud. (C'mon Patterson, it could be like dark humor, "Stagolee" as funeral parade). The first one seems like it's gonna be rehash of the prowling ex-cop on Go-Go Boots, but she lets him in the backdoor and between the sheets (or vice-versa), which makes it clear even to him that it really is over. Last track is another leaving song, but with some of the set's best music, guitar formations up-close and vivid, with a brief bridge suddenly opening as he tells his kid he'll send a picture from the plane but no way to convey how big the sky really is (the bridge gives some idea though, even more so when strings briefly lure through stereo sky at the album's end) 2009's Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)seems much richer, with material reworked from earlier solo collections, new song and a cover of "Range War" (could be a Neil & Crazy Horse demo, actually it's a Rundgren song). But this has several (well, a few) might fit my tweak-burn of Southern Rock Opera. Kelly Hogan was on that and this, ditto the strong drummer, and several other current Truckers (not Cooley, alas)

Oh yeah, and the songs narrated of his younger, sometimes mopey but often ornery self def help (he's not dopey about that). Just wish the mature perspective was more often along the lines of "carryin' hell around gets to be a drag", which I won't spoil by contextualizing.

anyone get the Yoakam yet?

Not me.

But as of now, three EPs (Thomas Rhett, Miss Willie Brown, Jake Owen) would almost definitely make my Nashville Scene country albums Top 10. Wonder what that means.

Looking fwd to Yoakam (already out in Europe and approved on its own thread). Also to Jamey J's Hank Cochran tribute album, if he has to do a tribute album (hope it includes some appropriate originals, like Loudon W.'s Charlie Poole tribute-plus-homage, but I've never heard of anybody else doing something like that). Okay I'll bite: please tell us about those EPs, xhuxx!

I listened to the Yoakam on Spotify yesterday, and bought it today. It's really, really good. More in the vein of his 90s stuff than his first three albums, of course, but it's already one of my favorite albums of the year, even with one song co-written with Kid Rock and two co-produced by Beck. (None of which are the one where he sings about what it'd be like if he owned a giraffe.)

Doing modern country music a big favor every day, making Brad Paisley and everyone else who stupidly helped him with the latest thing regret every minute of it. Honest question: Is he going to check himself into Betty Ford after this tour?

― Gorge, Tuesday, September 4, 2012 5:55

They were just together on the CMA tv special the other night, and they did the CMT one earlier, so Paisley not regretting anything yet.

Meanwhile, Kelly Hogan's I Like to Keep Myself in Pain starts with the same Irwin song Irwin starts xpost Little Heater with: "Dusty Groove." Which may be what the protagonist feels like, and mebbe she's dusting the walls in the hall as she bumps off 'em, but she's got some concealed, wary agility down in the groove, and pushes herself out into some Loretta Lynn-worthy precision--"Sleeves rolled down/Even in an evening gown", resolutions crumpled in her fist--gliding into understated flamboyance, train of thinking out loud about seeing stars in the love wars or anyway the battered homefront. "Underneath the sweater/Ten fingers are red/Ah bequeath this gold map of the stars to the living dead." The whole thing's like late 60s crossover bait,radio hits and shoulda-beens, from the age of Lynn and Bacharach and Jim Webb and Randy Newman, when Dusty Springfield was covering Ran' songs(if he wrote "Just One Kiss", or was it Nilsson-anyway, their neck of the woods and Vine). But Hogan wisely reserves the right to take it further than most reasonable radio-bait would have. So, while "Daddy's Little Girl" reminds me that Newman sincerely offered "Lonely At The Top" to Frank Sinatra, it also sounds like one he would have written for himself (maybe Stephen Merritt wrote it, sounds more adept than recent Newman). Sung by Frank, or somebody who thinks he is, providing a grand, somewhat brain-leaky perspective, a tribute to himself. She does best when she's got something like this, tilting the Hoganpolitan shimmer and sheen, quickly training us to watch for the little psych-pop glints. Even the few merely retro tracks are spot-on. Rec'd to fans of recent Lambert, Pistol Annies, Lee Ann Womack (thinking esp. of the way she did Mark Ribot's "Reds," on Buddy Miller's Majesty of the Silver Strings, where Womack didn't have to deal w the guitar noodles, unlike Patti Griffin and Emmylou on other tracks).

When I say "the whole thing's like," I mean more like the total effect, even with off-the-wall images, which she matches to "normal" delivery, without neutralizing or overemphasizing the lyrics.

Would love to hear Lambert and Hogan doing "Look At Miss Ohio"--has Lambert had a CMT Crossroads?

Marc Ribot's "Meds", not "Reds"

Haw, for those of us who don't wanna Spotify (via mandatory Fecebook), here's the whole already-out-in-Europe 3 Pears on Yoakam's MySpace- click to play the whole album; if you try it track by track, MySpace Radio may stick some other shit between clicks:
http://www.myspace.com/dwightyoakam/music/albums/3-pears-18705505

I'll get to Dwight right now in a little while, but wanted to check Chris Smither's June release, Hundred Dollar Valentine, before I go past it again. His best known songa are the ones covered by Bonnie Raitt in her 70s prime, "Love Me Like A Man" (she tweaked the title to that) and "I Feel The Same," backed by Little Feat in their own early 70s prime (Esther Phillips also did a first-rate version). It's inescapably lucid and shadowy too, says a lot that his version here doesn't overshadow, just fits right in. "Try not to complain, nobody cares/Don't bother tryin' to find your place/It's everywhere" might be charming disarming bullshit if he weren't so good at finding a worthy perch damn near everywhere, amidst 60s folkie tropes that sure don't seem like cliches here, where he's a tour guide through illusions useful and otherwise, in his experience. Like the kind rewarded by good sex, a sensuous chord progression and a melodee descending and going back up somebody's down staircase. He's kinda world-weary, but always got another good line and lick, deftly off the denim cuff. is this love, or infatuation? We'll see, but right now, I'm gratified.

God, 3 Pears is great. Grabbed me right away--and yeah, on MySpace, but great sound (via Koss UR40 headphones). He assimilates the mid-60s back-and-forth of country, rock, some Latin in both, from the Southwesten US to UK and back: well, mostly assimilated, not too quote-y, though he does make good use of a certain Beatles chorus, Tommy James--mostly subliminal Orbison, Owens, Everlys (even multiple Dwights for a moment on one track), early Gram Parsons, and right from the latter to "Heart of Mine", the best southwest of Liverpool garage pop country the young Sir Douglas Quintet never did. Circumspect flash, he is a character actor after all, knows not to wink and the audience, but when to whoop, and the wave of music the sorrowfully moralistic, left-behind hubby rides though "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke" has a faithful scream inside. Also like what I hoped the Mavericks' album would sound like in the wake of "Oh What A Crying Shame", but this is much more consistent. "Waterfall" sounds like a children song,more imaginative than sentimental, but the line about babies being born even in a war, is that something you'd tell a kid? Some kids would know, would be there to agree with you, no Pope Daddyio. Couple tracks toward the end I could live without, but it perks up again.

Kix Brooks is on MySpace too! I'll check him next, probably. Thanks for mentioning his album, xxhux ( his MySpace even has a previous solo set, from 2007, it says--maybe a pre B&D, re- or finally released then?)

really liking this Kacey Musgraves single

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJjeWDvh6J0

Will check that, also check FarmAid tonight on their site, 8-11 p.m. Eastern, and look who's on at 9:30:
http://blog.farmaid.org/2012/09/farm-aid-2012-lineup-schedule-concert.html

9:20, not 9:30!

Well that turned out to be their most mess-up Webacast ever--not just the glitches, also just down to a couple of performances (back to back) from several setsm said diptychs between a lot of talk (what the hell is organic pesticides anyways). Prob more chunks later on YouTube. Willie fit in well w Neil and Crazy Horse on "Homegrown," though didn't sing, just picked. Kix Brooks' New To This Town, on his MySpace, is really good, that early 00s bluesy boogie, Southern Rock as mainstream country thang, even "let's put some Otis Redding on" w Cropperesque licks on or leading into the steel guitar, "There's The Sun", pool party w the Hi Rhythm Gang (in effect). Title track is like why has no one ever done this before, although it might be risky on a mainstream country album, what will the Chamber of Commerce think of somebody who wishes he was new to this town, cos he's sick of this town, cos he knows it too well, and vice versa. of coures, because it is mainstream, has to be tied in w a relationship, every street is where they used to walk happy together, and she's still around etc., but that's a good subject too ( could incl they still have the same friends, but that could lead to a sequel). Mostly songs about cutting loose, the other obligatory homefires songs usually fit in better than expected, and the closer, "She Knew I Was A Cowboy", is more affecting than 90 percent of all songs containing the word "cowboy", Ah believe. (no songs about kids, he doesn't push his luck that far). Lots of good video soundtracks here, re what I still think of as the early 00s-type marketing.

Sorry for all the typos in that last one. I'm not familiar with Janis Martin's early stuff, but while Rosie Flores, producer of Martin's posthumously released The Blanco Sessions, contrasts her 50s " sparkling little hillbilly" voice to this, the tobacco that got her soon after doesn't impose any obvious wear and tear. If anything, the first couple tracks have her deeper tones kinda smoothly stolid, compared to the eager sounds boppin' at the hop all around her. But "Long White Cadillac" gives her some high lonesome notes to flex over a brisk-ish shuffle, that's the kind of combo really gets her going; "Oh Lonesome Me" turns into a party for wallflowers, chompin' at the bit, and Bill Monroe's "Walk Softly In this Heart of Mine" meets some "Honky Tonk Womne," pert near (Keef always did point out that the Stones trademark guitar sound was based on a banjo tuning). "Wild Child" has Flores providing that "sparkling little" etc, other tracks bring in the jump band, jitterbug bait of early rock, also rec to fans of Etta James' more downhome records, and Wynnnona's, for that matter. Not as glitzy as Wanda Jackson x Jack White, but good to go.

Rosie Flores' own new album, Working Girl's Guitar, could use some of Martin's firm vocal heft, she sounds like a polite li'l sister, deferring to her guitar--but they're side by side in the mix. So sometimes it's like, "After you." "No, after you." Though I think "Surf Demon # 5" would be my favorite even if it weren't the only instrumental. Still, voice & guitar do pretty well with "Drugstore Rock 'n' Roll", "Too Much", and "If (I Could Only Be With You)", her strongest vocal. A few tracks kinda catch up with the 60s or early 70s. Title track's kinda Rockpile, but more in the writing than the performance, alas. "I'm Little But I'm Loud" mildly suggests "Bang A Gong", and "Yeah Yeah" is pretty good, reflecting Lennon's 70s reflections on/of the early 60s, looking to a moment "frozen in time" of living for today while praying for tomorrow--only thing, the steel guitar gets a bit toward Harrison's more wan/cloying slide. Though dang the actual "While My Guitar" 's descending melody gets steadied by a "Good Day Sunshine"-type bassline, with excess tears flushed, and she even brings out the zing of "you were inverted/No one aler,er,ted you"--nice roll, Rosie.

dow otm on the Yoakam, especially "Waterfalls" and the penultimate song, which evokes "Sweet Jane." Only two plays in but I had to consult the liners to confirm which were the Beck productions: that's how unified this sound is.

Penultimate song has been evoking "Crimson And Clover" for me, but can definitely hear "Sweet Jane" too (which is pretty blatant, amazed I didn't notice before) now that Alfred mentions it. Almost definitely my favorite track on the album -- which I like pretty well, but don't love.