Rolling Country 2013

Watson's voice and material begged comparison to Cash on that '07 album, and he seemed too pleasant a fellow for the dark side: imagine what Cash could have made of "Yellow Mama", about Alabama's old faithful 'lectric chair (named for the yellow streak along the cracked center of its seat). Agree that if he stuck to the novelties etc, would have fared better. Nobody should try to be so much like Cash, Dylan, Miles, Joyce, etc. Geniuses/indelible stylists are a pain that way.

Edd, I've a couple of Jeanie Seely LPs I've picked up over the years which never made a huge impression on me, though I remember liking them well enough - I'll give them another go. Any particular recommendations for records of hers to look for? Similarly, any Jody Miller recommendations?

Speaking of Swift--from OK, Is This The Worst Piece of Music Writing Ever?

this isn't about the camille paglia piece specifically but about this amazingly stupid junior high school paper-level response to it in LAist

http://laist.com/2012/12/06/camille_paglia_rips_hollywood_a_new.php
text:
Camille Paglia isn't known for being polite or couching her feminist arguments in niceties. In an opinion piece for The Hollywood Reporter, she keenly rips Taylor Swift and Katy Perry brand spanking new assholes, calling the singers "insipid" and "bleached-out" and saying that they and their ilk are ruining things for young women.

The piece itself is a little scattered, beginning by talking about how Perry and Swift are so bland as to vault feminism back about 60 years, then moving on to talk about how young middle-class white girls have sex these days without being considered rebellious, and wrapping up by saying that there aren't enough roles in Hollywood for older women in their 40s and 50s.

But in between all that, Paglia makes the correct point that watered down performers like Swift and Perry don't provide particularly interesting role models for girls, insofar as they seem to be more reflections of what society wants them to be than expressions of their own true selves.

The only catch? There are always artists like Perry and Swift out there, and they will probably never go away.

See, not everyone is a Camille Paglia. Some people take their music cookie-cutter because they are cookie-cutter themselves. And here's the thing -- that's OK. Just like not everyone will grow up to be a lawyer or a doctor, not everyone has the eclectic taste of a punk rocker, or a hip-hop head, or a connoisseur of electronic music.

In other words, some people like bland because they are bland. Writing a takedown piece of stars like Perry and Swift, who are harmless for all intents and purposes, just seems kind of unnecessary.

original Paglia piece here:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/taylor-swift-katy-perry-hollywood-398095

Seems like Swift's ever-massing target audience identify with Swift as somebody bursting out of the cocoon, fighting the good and necessary fight as each and every girl-to-woman does, regardless of Feminism-per-se's landmark victories. Paglia and her critic should see this as the obvious pitch, whether they like the songs or not. Dunno wtf deal is w Perry.

― dow, Friday, December 7, 2012 5:46 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

she has a dazzling smile

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, December 7, 2012 5:50 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The 93 writers from all over North America who voted in the 13th annual Country Music Critics’ Poll named Eric Church Artist of the Year, Singles Artist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year. Jamey Johnson’s “Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran” was voted the year’s Best Album, followed by albums by Dwight Yoakam, Iris DeMent and Kellie Pickler. Kacey Musgraves was named the Best New Act.

There are other winners: Little Big Town scored the #5 album and the #2 single and were voted best group. Miranda Lambert, last year’s big winner, was voted Best Female Vocalist and the #5 and #9 best singles. Jason Aldean was voted Best Live Act and the #4 Artist of the Year. Taylor Swift, the #3 Artist of the Year, was the subject of much discussion in the accompanying essay and voters’ comments. Johnny Cash has the #1 and #8 Best Reissues.

The issue will go live at this link tomorrow morning:

http://nashvillescene.com/nashville/from-eric-church-to-jamey-johnson-2012-found-country-music-in-a-holding-pattern-and-searching-for-role-models/Content?oid=3230383

Anybody heard the new Rimes album? So glad "Borrowed" came out just in time for my Singles.

Country Poll results out today. Puttin up pt. 1 here, thru Reissues...

no surprises for me at the top. Americana takes up a lot of the bottom half, from Kelly Hogan to Carolina Drops to Shovels and Rope, Miller/Lauderdale, Old Crow. Justin Earle. Marty Stuart? Alan Jackson. Rodney Crowell. good, quality artists...Jerrod Niemann at #24....

Albums

1. Jamey Johnson, Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran (Mercury)

2. Dwight Yoakam, 3 Pears (Warner Bros.)

3. Iris DeMent, Sing the Delta (Floriella)

4. Kellie Pickler, 100 Proof (19/BNA)

5. Little Big Town, Tornado (Capitol)

6. Taylor Swift, Red (Big Machine)

7. Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives: Nashville, Volume 1: Tear the Woodpile Down (Sugar Hill)

8. Alan Jackson, Thirty Miles West (EMI)

9. Jason Aldean, Night Train (Broken Bow)

10. Rodney Crowell and Mary Karr, Kin: Songs by Mary Karr and Rodney Crowell (Vanguard)

11. Zac Brown, Uncaged (Atlantic/Southern Ground)

12. Kip Moore, Up All Night (MCA Nashville)

13. The Time Jumpers, The Time Jumpers (Rounder)

14. Carolina Chocolate Drops, Leaving Eden (Nonesuch)

15. Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson, Wreck & Ruin (Sugar Hill)

16. Dierks Bentley, Home (Capitol)

17. Justin Townes Earle, Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now (Bloodshot)

18. Don Williams, And So It Goes (Sugar Hill)

19. The Avett Brothers, The Carpenter (Universal Republic)

20. (tie) Corb Lund, Cabin Fever (New West)

20. (tie) Lionel Richie, Tuskegee (Mercury)

22. Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, Buddy and Jim (New West)

23. Willie Nelson, Heroes (Legacy)

24. Shovels and Rope, O' Be Joyful (Shrimp)

25. Carrie Underwood, Blown Away (19/Arista)

26. Jerrod Niemann, Free the Music (Arista)

27. Kelly Hogan, I Like To Keep Myself in Pain (Anti-)

28. Jason Eady, AM Country Heaven (Underground)

29. Old Crow Medicine Show, Carry Me Back (ATO)

30. John Fullbright, From the Ground Up (Blue Dirt)

Singles

1. Eric Church, "Springsteen" (EMI Nashville)

2. Little Big Town, "Pontoon" (Capitol)

3. Kacey Musgraves, "Merry Go 'Round" (Mercury)

4. Alan Jackson, "So You Don't Have To Love Me Anymore" (EMI)

5. Miranda Lambert, "Over You" (RCA)

6. Eli Young Band, "Even If It Breaks Your Heart" (Republic Nashville)

7. Pistol Annies, "Takin' Pills" (Columbia)

8. Carrie Underwood, "Blown Away" (19/Arista)

9. Miranda Lambert, "Fastest Girl in Town" (RCA)

10. Don Williams, "I Just Come Here for the Music" (Sugar Hill)

11. Band Perry, "Better Dig Two" (Republic Nashville)

12. Chris Young, "Neon" (RCA)

13. Dierks Bentley, "Home" (Capitol)

14. Brad Paisley, "Southern Comfort Zone" (Arista Nashville)

15. Hunter Hayes, "Wanted" (Atlantic)

16. Taylor Swift, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" (Big Machine)

17. Josh Turner, "Time Is Love" (MCA Nashville)

18. Taylor Swift featuring The Civil Wars, "Safe & Sound" (Big Machine)

19. Ashley Monroe, "Like a Rose" (Warner Bros.)

20. Jamey Johnson and Alison Krauss, "Make the World Go Away" (Mercury)

Reissues

1. Johnny Cash, The Complete Columbia Album Collection (Columbia/Legacy)

2. Various artists, Country Funk 1969-1975 (Light in the Attic)

3. Flatlanders, Odessa Tapes (New West)

4. Waylon Jennings, Goin' Down Rockin': The Last Recordings (Saguaro Road)

5. Jerry Reed, Unbelievable Guitar & Voice of Jerry Reed/Nashville Underground (Real Gone)

6. Hank Williams, The Lost Concerts (Time Life)

7. Woody Guthrie, Woody at 100 (Smithsonian Folkways)

8. Johnny Cash, Bootleg Vol. IV: The Soul of Truth (Columbia/Legacy)

9. Various artists, Work Hard, Play Hard, Pray Hard (Tompkins Square)

10. Mel McDaniel, Baby's Got Her Blue Jeans On: His Original Capitol Hits (Real Gone)

Who are these people? Likely I'd like any of them? (I'd look 'em up myself, but I'm lazy, plus I want opinions not facts.)

13. The Time Jumpers, The Time Jumpers (Rounder)
24. Shovels and Rope, O' Be Joyful (Shrimp)
28. Jason Eady, AM Country Heaven (Underground)
30. John Fullbright, From the Ground Up (Blue Dirt)

One of them almost has the same last name as me!

I finally got Church's Carolina, from which I'd only heard "Smoke a Little Smoke." It's damn solid – the guy's been consistent.

and in reissues...that Mel McDaniel one slipped past me and that's got to be good.

Country Funk is one I gotta get. Good selection of stuff, not all that country, but good.

Tim, the Seely Greatest Hits on Monument is the place to start. It's probably easier to find the original LP than the '93 CD these days. but her masterpiece is Thanks, Hank! with songs written by...Hank Cochran, her husband at the time. But you know, despite the cover versions of "Harper Valley P.T.A." and "Wichita Lineman" (but Seely actually does a definitive version of "Dreams of the Everyday Housewife" on 1968's Little Things), all her Monument LPs are worth hearing, high-grade shit: The Seely Style, I'll Love You More, Little Things, Jeannie Seely, and then the '72 Jeannie Seely's Greatest Hits, on Monument. On MCA I like the album Can I Sleep in Your Arms/Lucky Lady, really good late-era novelty-soul country, and she's in a bed in a barn on the cover and looking her sultriest. And for what it's worth, one of her biggest successes was the 1970 single with Jack Greene, "Wish I Didn't Have to Miss You," which for updated '66 Beatles guitar move and giant hook is hard to beat.

Tim, as for Jody Miller, the best single LP she made is probably The Nashville Sound of Jody Miller, 1969, I believe. she was maybe known as a singles artist, with her "King of the Road" riposte, "Queen of the House," but the album of the same title is real good almost-country of the '60s. I've found just about all her Epic Billy Sherrill-produced LPs here for practically nothing in good shape. Depending on your taste for almost-schlock country morphing into the mechanized '80s, you may really like Miller's 1977 Here's Jody Miller, Nashville Kraftsmen at work. I think it's pretty great. another one that shows her pop range and somewhat surprising taste in material is '76's Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. Recorded in Nashville, strings by Bergen White, horns arranged by Bill Mcilhiney, the guy who played one of the trumpets on Cash's "Ring of Fire" or something. dunno if she's on CD in any significant way or not.

Xhuxk, the Time Jumpers are a western-swing boogie-jam band, revivalists. Kenny Sears is the main guy, a fiddler, and Hoot Hester has been a member, I believe Vince Gill is now? Shovels and Rope: here's my 2011 Nashville Scene critics' pick on them:

"Cary Ann Hearst possesses a country voice with a built-in bluesy ache, and she writes songs as if she instinctively knows the difference between wasting her gifts and selling out. She's a big talent, as evidenced on the 2008 full-length release Shovels & Rope, a collaboration with husband and musical partner Michael Trent. Sounding desperate but loose about it, Hearst and Trent covered Charlie Feathers' "I Can't Hardly Stand It" in magnificently creepy fashion and wrote a few themselves. Shovels was a lo-fi affair guaranteed to appeal to No Depression listeners and other guardians of authenticity. Still, Hearst essayed some amazing girl-group pop on last year's Are You Ready to Die EP — the title track was worthy of Jackie DeShannon. Touring under the Shovels & Rope moniker, Hearst and Trent make beautiful, idiosyncratic music together: Their harmonies manage to sound both spectral and full-bodied."

actually, I still need to hear last year's Shovels and Rope, I guess, don't remember checking that one out.

Here's my Shovels & Rope preview, later pasted into RC 2012 and my Scene comments blogged on http://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com followed by RC 2012 comments on Fullbright, also adapted for Scene comments and the blog round-up:

Also like these guys I previewed; go see 'em:
Shovels & Rope are Americana singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalists Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, a committed couple who never settle down, or settle for less than true love and cheap thrills. 2012’s O Be Joyful tracks risky ramblers teaming up, learning the mixing and measuring of pleasures. Thrills-wise, when Hearst later calls, “Come down here and make some sense of it all,” she’s affectionately addressing someone known as Wrecking Ball. Appropriately so: after all, Hearst sent “Hell’s Bells” prowling through True Blood’s third season, and S&R’s sly, Southern Gothic beauty travels many a moonlit mile.

John Fullbright's From The Ground Up also has me evangelistic 'bout it. Call this wide open spaces/ex-dustbowl/Oil Age southern gothic or just past that. First song is like Randy Newman's "God's Song" and then some: He gives us the stuff to party with here, then He (or whoever's representing) got a hang over cure, if you can hang with that (party again, way out of or in the core of bounds). "Jerico" founds him heading east to find his destination all fallen down, but bury him in the vines, he wants to rise and be the trumpet sound all around the walls )which have to rise and fall again for him to do so). Oh, but he's a badass by day who prays at night, when the world disappears and he has to confront his fears, has an unmarked car, wants to keep things unscarred (or looking that way), only flies so far. some things are nowhere to be found, but that's not nec bad: he might want to be a rich man in a big house where he can't be found--rich or poor, no matter how loudly he testifies, is always ready to take off again. So many shadows, such appetite, eh "Fat Man" (caricature taking on a life of its own). Another for Miranda Lambert or LeAnn Rimes to consider, though the orig should be on the radio right now: "This is not reflection/Reflections are true/This is just me/Me wantin' you/Sweet silver mem'ries/Me wanting you", and the music starts another upward arc, then back to its perch, but as always (so far) with the talons to ride cows, whales, whatever you got. Strong, clean-cut voice; there's more to the boy next door than previously thought. Kid's got charisma, look out.

yeesh some typos on the caffeinated Fullbright, no wonder Himes didn't quote it ( except not really: when he used to quote me, he included the typos)

Any links to previous nashville scene country polls?

Try the previous ILM Rolling Country threads -- I'm guessing at least the past several would have a link to that year's poll, around this same time in January. (Whether the links are still active, though, is another question.)

thanks for the Shovels and Rope update, Dow.
link to last yr's Poll:
http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/in-a-year-ruled-by-miranda-lambert-and-her-pistol-annies-eric-church-and-hayes-carll-country-music-returns-to-taking-itself-a-little-less-se/Content?oid=2743147

Found in the vinyl bins:
Charley Pride The Best of RCA '69
From Me to You sealed '71 with "Piroge Joe"
Compton Brothers Yellow River
Jack Clement All I Want to Do in Life '78

Edd, the Jeannie Seely LP I have is "Little Things", which I've now dug out and am enjoying it very much, especially side two. Bits of the record remind me of the Sammi Smith Mega-era stuff I love so much. Thanks! I seem to be making fairly regular trips to the US these days and it's always good to have something to look out for.

Yeah, Sammi Smith! Also: it's good to have something vs. the cloying/pro forma salute to hometown values, but (from my blogged Scene ballot comments)
Kacey Musgraves, "Merry-Go-Round" : "If you don't have two kids by 21, you're done." The first line is the best, then conformity and distraction go down the hill, to fetch a point made over and over. The small town in the video looks pretty good when it's gliding by, reminding me of my Granny's town, with an actual walk-in movie theater, where I used to sit through all-day Western fests. Don't remember a frame, but now the place is an arts center: walk by and hear kids strumming, warbling, to karaoke and Garageband beats. Getting ready for talent shows, reality shows maybe, and one of these days, some of them just might want to be the next Kacey Musgraves. But if so, they're less likely to be fired up by this droning, heard-it-all, mostly we-meaning-yall "confessional", than, for instance, whatever she may do with "Undermine," which is very fine, when serving as the creative breakthrough for TV's young and restless Nashville pop-country starlet Juliette Barnes, AKA Hayden Panettiere.

Yeah, McGraw had a much more potent antidote to the obligatory pandering:
More boldly cautious is the speculative survey taken by "The One Who Got Away." A long shot success, now everybody wants some, incl everybody in the once chilly hometown, Cub Scout leaders included. "Now you tuck your scars up under your dress, like an American girl", oh hell yes. No gilt-edged guilt, self-pity, lashing out, peacemaking, "closure", just flying round in the big room. And it's even a single!

Yeah, Dow the "what happened to my hometown" trope in country. Kenny Rogers and "20 Years Ago" at least 30 years ago, right?

I guess it's the Springsteen influence that is part of what Geoff is writing about in his Country Roundup.

I need to read it all again, but did take a look at it and the comments. Holly Gleason bemoans the the whole thing, another guy complains that Richard Thompson is English, but he's Americana. "Rootlessness" seems in there somewhere, and also, the opposition between Good Influences in country and Bad Ones like Olivia Newton-John. Frank's question about the split in the audience, between Taylor Swift Country and Real Country, or however you break that down, gets at it pretty well. I think country music left Jones, Kitty Wells, Billy Sherrill, and those guys behind a loong time ago, myself.

theNashville show lays it out better than anything in the Scene poll. the young thing, the pop star, is really the one searching for authenticity. she has the mom in rehab, the shoplifting, all the things poverty and provincial Southern life can do to you. She sees the snooty Nashville family--they woulda hated Webb Pierce and George Jones but maybe liked Jim Reeves, back in the olden days in Nashville, and their social anxieties and piety have blinded them to more bracing aspects of popular culture--for what they are, leaves it all at the altar. Reyna James is just the old-time, good old, half-facing-forward half-back '80s and '90s country, a big old girl with a way with middle-class heartbreak.

What little "Americana" there is in the show is in the songwriting team--where do they end up but Austin, where whats-his-name meets his brother as the prison gates roll open. As Dow says, everyone has scars, everyone needs "closure," therapy--the pressures of even small-town life in America are immense, everyone knows someone who got shot at the mall. Everyone has a daughter who left Alabama for Seattle and Denver, and won't come back as long as her gun-toting father keeps that handgun in the house, or continues to support the Republicans.

The old stuff--Tompall Glaser and Harlan Howard's 1966 hit song for Bobby Bare, "The Streets of Baltimore," gets it back when American industry was more important than Information Moving or Finance--says some of the same things at a less complicated level.

I may not make the time to read any poll essays this year, and I'm just skimming the Scene comments, but was delighted to see Anthony Easton, in wondering about how "Pontoon" snuck up on him with its appeal, saying, "it's mostly the craft." If it were you saying this, Don, I'd know the pun was deliberate. I can't tell with Anthony.

I'd say the divergence I was talking about wasn't between Taylor Country and Real Country (no matter how ironically those terms are meant), but between the country market and Taylor, a divergence I hadn't seen in the past; though maybe there was something of a drift during Speak Now.

Jiyoon and Gayoon of the great K-pop girl group 4minute are billing themselves as 2YOON and have just released a country-dance-pop (or something) EP called Harvest Moon. I'll report back when I hear it. In the meantime, there's the single, "24/7," which forapper over on K-pop 2013 calls a mess -- certainly has more of a mashup sensibility than a country sensibility. The first vocals you hear are a rap. My thumb is wavering but in the up direction. Jiyoon's climbing-and-falling wail in the prechorus is the best part (shows up first at 0:28 thru 0:33), though I'd more likely envision Robert Plant singing it than Miranda Lambert. There's a teaser with a very problematic cultural stereotype that unfortunately I find funny (and sounds more like Steppenwolf than Hank Williams). I'm sure 2YOON dance better than any of their country or rock counterparts.

I would like the EP to be great, so that on next year's ballot I can list Shinsadong Tiger, Kim Da Hoon, and Lee Sang Ho as Country Music's Three Best Songwriters Of 2013.

(xhuxk, you've got a Shinsadong Tiger song on your 2012 P&J ballot.)

The great thing about McGraw's song is he (or "you", who may be trans, with the line about having scars and being the American Girl, tho basically he's stoically talking about the price and process of success) refuses closure, unless it can mean confirmation: he doesn't sound surprised to see all the people who treated him like shit now cheering him on and swarming around him.

Having now listened to Harvest Moon, and done some searching for writer and producer credits, I discover that (1) no songs other than "24/7" even remotely pretend to be country, (2) I actually couldn't find any producer credits, but if Shinsadong Tiger and Kim Da Hoon had anything to do with the thing (as some Hallyu website claimed, but which I now doubt), it would be as producers, since they're not in the writers and arrangers credits that someone posted on Omonatheydidnt. Not that I necessarily trust such information, but my ears certainly don't hear anything of the quality of "Lovey-Dovey" or "Trouble Maker" or "TTL." There is a pretty good lite-metal power ballad, "Why Not," written by Thomas Troelsen and Remee, a couple of Danes who've done good work with SHINee and SNSD and Corbin Bleu and f(x), and also by Robbie Nevil, who as a singer did music that I've utterly forgotten but that other people like and as a writer had a hand in many of the worst of the High School Musical tracks, all of this being neither here nor there for Rolling Country. Also, while I'm still being somewhere but not here or there, Lars Aass and Ole Henrik Antonsena, a couple of Norwegians, are on the credits of "Black Swan," the third of the three good songs (out of five) on here, and they once helped M2M write "Everything You Do." And one of the two M's - Marit Larsen - went on to have occasional countryish moments including my country track of the year in 2006, not that that's relevant to 2YOON.

Which leaves us with "24/7," which is rolling in country signifiers and instrumentation while still doing a fine job of feeling K-pop and not country. It stomps along, it wails, it grins. It is resolutely and deliberately silly, but with a serious theme, and I quote (though I'm not sure whom I'm quoting): "The title track of the mini album, '24/7,' is about pulling ourselves out of the monotonous routines that we go through 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in order to seek a free, exciting life. It is a song that has an exciting intro and fun atmosphere. It combines the liveliness of country-pop with Gayoon's high notes and Jiyoon's powerful singing into a wonderful harmony." The video has a hen, a chicken, a pig, a mechanical bull, and a boombox. So, funny hunny as usual in the land down south of the 38th parallel. The track doesn't have the how-did-he-pull-that-all-together amazingness that Lee Sang Ho seemed to be going for, in imitation I'm guessing of his colleague Shinsadong Tiger. But my thumb is veering up to match my gullible smile, about a 6 or a 7.

Oh, the mechanical bull is actually a mechanical sheep, unless it's a bull in sheep's clothing.

Do mechanical sheep dream of the beautiful shepherdess, who plays the gatta, bagpipe of her native Galicia?
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/19/169639816/a-bagpipe-slinging-spaniard-finds-a-home-in-new-york-jazz

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/01/17/cristianapato_nimg_7966_wide-d8e27c2404aa3f64c66a0b70d6bd05135e637a8f-s4.jpg

Musically and video-wise, "24/7" is pretty agreeable, but not hardly country at all. A long article about K-pop may still be on the New Yorker site--I'm tempted to call it in-depth, but don't know if anybody who knew anything about the subject would agree.

New York City has a country station for the first time in 17 years:
http://www.nashfm947.com/about/

awright! Sounds good, thanks.

Jewly Hight on Gary Allan in Nashville Scene. Make sure to read the comments on Jewly's comparison of Allan to Neil Young.

who plays the gatta, bagpipe of her native Galicia.
It's spelled gaita, Don. .

(Knew something seemed familiar about the boom-claps in "24/7." Subdee points out that there's more than a passing resemblance to Hannah Montana's "Hoedown Throwdown" -- though boom-clap aficionados will notice that, while Hannah goes "Boom boom clap, boom de-clap de-clap," 2YOON go "Boom clap, boom-b-boom clap." Think 2YOON provide more juice overall.)

That Nash FM website is a catastrophe.

How so? I'm listening to it now, still sounds OK (clear sound, typical contemporary country programming, minus OD of commercials on my local stations)

So anybody heard the new Allan? Hight's passing descriptors seem promising.

the station might be great (can't listen, i'm in the UK) but radio stations really need to have more than an "about" page on their web site! like.... what are they playing now? what shows do they have? what's their schedule? anything exciting coming up? etc

I've got a review of the new Allan coming out in Rolling Stone -- I like it a lot, think it's his best in years, though its first half beats its second half. (Wrote up the new Tim McGraw, which I like less, there too.)

Liking the new Ashley Monroe even more than the Allan. And I just got an email saying Kacey Musgraves' album is out March 19.

yeah Tracer they could use info on the web page; maybe it's coming--hopefully with an app to make it more playable for far-flung hopefuls--but what is this deal with US vs UK listening on the Web--like I can't listen to some BBC stuff; related legal issues?

very hopeful about Ashley and Gary; skeptical vs. hopeful about Musgraves (see my above re "Merry Go Round" vs. "Undermine")

Marco Club Connection Names Top Ten Country Dance Club Hits for 2012
(Nashville, Tenn. – Jan. 7, 2013) Little Big Town and Eric Church topped the list of dance club hits in 2012, according to the Marco Club Connection’s 9th annual ranking of Country dance favorites.

Every December, the Nashville-based company surveys a panel of nearly 250 club owners, DJs and dance instructors from across the country to compile its rankings. Overall votes by the panel determine each song’s placement on the list.

Bobbe Morhiser, Manager of Venue Marketing, states “This year's top ten contains a number of young, fresh talent. I'm proud to see new music impacting the club and dance community so quickly. We also saw a few ballads in the top ten, which is a switch from the surge of remixes seen in previous years. Proving that a great song will thrive in a high energy dance setting just as well as a dance remix.”

The Top 10 listing for 2012 is as follows:

Little Big Town – “Pontoon”
Eric Church – “Springsteen”
Kip Moore – “Somethin’ ‘Bout A Truck”
Luke Bryan – “Drunk On You”
Easton Corbin – “Lovin’ You Is Fun”
Dustin Lynch – “Cowboys And Angels”
Parmalee – “Musta Had A Good Time”
Toby Keith – “Beers Ago”
Florida Georgia Line – “Cruise”
Carrie Underwood – “Blown Away”
Morhiser added, “There was a positive trend in this year’s voting. New artists Rachele Lynae, The Lacs, and Levi Riggs were all well represented in the voting, illustrating openness among the dance community to new and compelling music, whether it be from a major label, or an independent.” A complete archive of Club Connection’s Top 10 Country Dance Club Hits by year can be viewed at http:www.MarcoClubConnection.com.

About Marco Club Connection: A division of Nashville-based secondary radio promotion company, Marco Promotions and The Aristo Media Group, Club Connection specializes in marketing dance club singles to nightclubs and dance venues across the country. Club Connection maintains a national database of more than 240 venues and world-renowned dance instructor contacts, reaching more than 200,000 club patrons each weekend. For more information, visit: www.MarcoClubConnection.com.

sorry, it's http://www.MarcoClubConnection.com

They're educational on the floor too! http://www.marcoclubconnection.com/dance-steps/

Okay, those of you dismayed by my incompetent exercise in "boom clap" genealogy will be relieved to know that 2YOON were likely copying their "boom clap, boom-b-boom clap" not from Miley, who did a different boom clap, but from other people, such as m-flo, who did the same boom clap, boom-b-boom clap ("Miss You") - and m-flo may have been copying a previous boom clap, boom-b-boom clap. Of course, boom claps go way back (here's Crooked I from the mid '00s, but he's not doing the specific boom clap, boom-b-boom clap in question); for all I know the first boom clap appeared the year after the invention of the timpani, which is 18th century or earlier, says Wikip. Someone here who actually knows something about hip-hop or country might want to enlighten me.

I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

This looks interesting--I'll have to pull out the copy of Diana Trask's Miss Country Soul I bought years ago for 99 cents:

"Various Artists - Country Soul Sisters CD/2xLP (Soul Jazz)
A celebration of feminism in country music. Country Soul Sisters charts the rise of female singers in country music from 1952 to 1978. As well as country legends Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Tanya Tucker and Tammy Wynette, Country Soul Sisters also features artists such as Bobbie Gentry, Nancy Sinatra - who also made country music but existed outside the traditional Nashville framework. Also highlighted are country soul music protagonists such as Jeannie C Riley, Diana Trask and Barbara Mandrell. Far from the traditional conservative image of country music this album features songs whose lyrics deal with female empowerment and subjects that include child prostitution, abortion, death and angels, workplace sexual exploitation, small town bigotry and more. Includes 68-page book with extensive sleevenotes, photos, etc."

"Miss Country Soul" is pretty good, by my reckoning, but "Diana's Country" is better: I love the version of "The Choking Kind" on that record.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE0hAdRm8JM

The Soul Jazz comp is really a primer on female country singers from Kitty Wells' "It Wasn't God Who Made" (included) along with Trask, Jody Miller...and the concept of "country soul" is dubious at best. There are a couple of Wynette LPs from the '70s that are a bit more "soul"-influenced. Norma Jean doing Swamp Dogg's "She's All I Got" is interesting. "California Cottonfields" is just a plain old country standard. I recently saw a Del Reeves or Wilburn Bros. show re-run on the RFD Channel, and a forgotten female singer in go-go boots was doing Tony Joe White's "Willie and Laurie Mae Jones," which was a kind of country-soul signifier back then, since it's about a white sharecropping family and a black family, and not a tale of Togetherness at all. I can only imagine Kitty Wells singing "Delta Dawn."

Dolly Parton — Don't Let It Trouble Your Mind
2. Lynn Anderson — Fancy
3. Jeannie C. Riley — I've Done A Lot Of Living Since Then
4. Bobbie Gentry — Reunion
5. Tammy Wynette — Tonight My Baby's Coming Home
6. Jean Shepard — A Satisfied Mind
7. Nancy Sinatra — Get While The Gettin's Good
8. Tanya Tucker — California Cotton Fields
9. Sammi Smith — Saunders Ferry Lane
10. Connie Smith — If It Ain't Love
11. Jean Shepard — Two Whoops And A Holler
12. Billie Jo Spears — Mr. Walker, It's All Over
13. Patsy Cline — Ain't No Wheels On This Ship
14. Barbara Fairchild — Color My World
15. Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty — You're The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly
16. Jeannie C. Riley — Harper Valley PTA
17. Jody Miller — A Woman Left Lonely
18. Kitty Wells — Delta Dawn
19. Diana Trask — Show Me
20. Norma Jean — He's All I've Got
21. Bobbie Gentry — Ode To Billie Joe
22. Bonnie Guitar — Tender Words
23. Barbara Mandrell — Husband Stealer
24. Diana Trask — I'll Never Do You Wrong
25. Kitty Wells — It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels

Chris Willman on C&W and the NRA

http://popdust.com/2013/01/29/sandy-hook-does-country-music-have-a-gun-problem/

Country soul: I'd add "Son of a Preacher Man" and prob other Dusty; Freda Payne's "Band of Gold", Aretha's "With Pen in Hand", "The Weight", prob others by her (didn't she contribute to Rhythm & Country & Blues & Western? May not be exact title). Several, if not all from Stacy Fairchild's first album. Gladys Knight's "Rainy Night In Georgia." If incl guys, Al Green's "Together Again" and "For The Good Times", OC Smith's "Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp"--well yall can guess the rest (seems like guys did most of the more obvious choices)

rather not get into gun control here; I did way much on ILE

Yes he is raggedy, but right (also Left) often enough to suit me:
JANUARY 30th, 2013 - New York, New York - Steve Earle is set to release his new album The Low Highway on April 16th via New West Records. The 12-track set is the anticipated follow up to 2011's Grammy Award-nominated album I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive and is the first billed as "Steve Earle & The Dukes (And Duchesses)." The album is also the first to feature "The Dukes" band name since 1987's Exit 0. The Low Highway features his live band consisting of Chris Masterson, Eleanor Whitmore, Kelley Looney, Will Rigby and Allison Moorer and was co-produced by Earle and Ray Kennedy (whose production partnership known as the "Twangtrust" was behind Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road). The Low Highway is Earle's 15th studio album since the release of his highly influential 1986 debut Guitar Town. It will be available as a single compact disc, deluxe CD/DVD set, digitally, as well as 180 gram vinyl. The album track "Calico County" from The Low Highway is streaming now at RollingStone.com.

Between the opening title track and the reflective closing of "Remember Me," The Low Highway is very much Steve Earle's road record, and one that has seen many miles. Earle states in the album liner notes, "I've been on every interstate highway in the lower forty-eight states by now and I never get tired of the view. I've seen a pretty good chunk of the world and my well-worn passport is one of my most prized possessions, but for me, there's still nothing like the first night of a North American tour; everybody, band and crew, crowded up in the front lounge, eating Nashville hot chicken and Betty Herbert's homemade pimento cheese, swapping the same tired old war stories half shouted over the rattle and hum of the highway. And I'm always the last one to holler good night to Charlie Quick, the driver, and climb in my bunk because to me it feels like Christmas Eve long ago when I still believed in Santa Claus. God I love this."

The Low Highway also features "Love's Gonna Blow My Way" and "After Mardi Gras," two songs Earle co-wrote with Lucia Micarelli, his co-star in David Simon's original HBO Series Treme. Earle played a recurring character, Harley, a street musician who mentored Micarelli's character Annie during the first two seasons. The songs were written specifically for the series and an additional song written by Earle for Treme, "That All You Got?" was performed by Micarelli's character with the Red Stick Ramblers during the third season premiere. All three songs are included on the new album and appear in recorded form for the first time here. Earle's previous composition written for the series, "This City," garnered both Grammy and Emmy Award nominations in 2010.

On February 19th, Steve Earle will release via his own E-Squared Records label, a limited edition 7 inch of the album tracks "Burnin' It Down" and "That All You Got?" in support of Independent Music Stores. The record is available on red vinyl and is a limited edition pressing of 1,000. Each cover has been hand-signed by Steve Earle and is hand-numbered.

In addition to the release of The Low Highway, Steve Earle also signed a two-book deal with Twelve, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group last year. The first will be a memoir and the second a novel. Earle's memoir, the book he swore he would never write, will be a literary work in three acts. The first section will focus on meeting Townes Van Zandt and the complicated friendship and music mentorship that ensued, taking place in Texas and Tennessee. The second section will center on bottoming out in Nashville, culminating in a prison sentence, during which Steve got clean. The heart of the third and final section will be recovery, starting around the recording of the masterful album, Train A Comin'. The novel is a work of historical fiction and will tell the story of a runaway slave who survived the battle of the Alamo. Earle previously released a collection of short stories, "Doghouse Roses (2002, Harper Collins) and his critically acclaimed debut novel, I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive (2011, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Of the novel, Patti Smith stated "Steve Earle brings to his prose the same authenticity, poetic spirit and cinematic energy he projects in his music. I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive is like a dream you can't shake, offering beauty and remorse, redemption in spades."

A protégé of legendary songwriters Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, Earle quickly became a master storyteller in his own right, with his songs being recorded by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Travis Tritt, The Pretenders, Joan Baez and countless others. 1986 saw the release of his debut record, Guitar Town, which shot to number one on the country charts and immediately established the term "New Country." What followed was an extremely exciting and varied array of releases including the biting hard rock of Copperhead Road (1988), the minimalist beauty of Train A Comin' (1995), as well as the politically charged masterpiece, Jerusalem (2002) and the Grammy Award Winning albums The Revolution Starts...Now (2004), Washington Square Serenade (2007), and Townes (2009). His previous album, I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive (2011) was also Grammy Award nominated.

The Low Highway Track Listing:

1.The Low Highway

2. Calico County

3. Burnin' It Down

4. That All You Got?

5. Love's Gonna Blow My Way

6. After Mardi Gras

7. Pocket Full Of Rain

8. Invisible

9. Warren Hellman's Banjo

10. Down The Road Pt. II

11. 21st Century Blues

12. Remember Me