the Sturgill Simpson c/d

i'm pretty sure the DAC x-rated stuff i have is DAC and not johnny reb -- i'm familiar with those johnny reb 45s and they aren't the same.

i think DAC has a /ton/ of great albums, like way more than one could possibly imagine given, you know, who DAC is. he's a straight-up great ballad singer, not quite in the johnny paycheck or merle stratum but close. i fuck with a lot of DAC albums all the way through the 1980s.

I've never seen a derail quite like this.

i agree, this derail bit's done got out of hand

:)

all the outlaw country stars were real outlaws, sticking up small town convenience stores for Grapette n shit

That's actually a pretty rare bunch: outlaws who were actually outlaws. Haggard, Paycheck, Shaver, DAC, Cash, Steve Earle, all pretty much badasses who served time, were shot and/or shot people. Who else?

lol Cash just did a bunch of overnight/misdemeanor stays, hardly "outlaw"

out there obeying the law

all those other dudes were in for violent crime (well, I dunno about Earle, assume that could just as easily be drug charges), kinda different imo

xp

i feel like shel silverstein probably killed someone but got away w. it

Randy Travis seems pretty outlaw, in a drunk-spousal abuser way. (Could include John Denver too if we're going by that criteria).

Well, Cash, like Earle, was usually picked up for drugs. He never stayed more than a night in jail, sure, but he did get jailed on multiple occasions. He's no DAC, or Paycheck, or Shaver, but no one could call the dude a poseur.

anne murray was involved in a driveby shooting in ontario in 1987

garth brooks has several outstanding warrants for doing the dine-and-dash at a string of Applebees

At the least, his wife should be arrested for that breakfast recipe.

anne murray was involved in a driveby shooting in ontario in 1987

http://images.coveralia.com/audio/a/Anne_Murray-Something_To_Talk_About-Frontal.jpg

wearing this outfit

Coe and Haggard done time for property crimes---Coe vastly and variously exaggerated his exploits, while Hag told the story on himself, in one of his memoirs, went a little something like this: he and another young punk were discovered by property owner, who called the cops, and they hid under a house, where they were discovered by an armed kid, who made then wait for the cops. Cops said, "You boys that scared of a bb gun?" They thought it was a .22.
Shaver killed a guy in a bar a few years ago, successfully pleaded self-defense.
Paycheck, who got his name for forgery, for which he also done time, later wounded a guy, also claimed self-defense, served about two years.
Spade Cooley, the very talented western swing star, killed his wife in front of his daughter, served eight years before dying of a heart attack.

Not that those other guys aren't very talented (and not that the late Paycheck wasn't), but Cooley was almost as good as he was bad, at times.

I thought Merle robbed a bar in Bakersfield, which is why he got sent to San Quentin for 3 years.

That may have been the property in question, I don't remember, but def. cornered by the BB Kid, or so he wrote.

Would make it even better if he, the budding sticker-upper, was foiled by his ballistics ignorance.

I don't think Shaver killed him, just shot him in the face. Here's a quote for you:

"I am very sorry about the incident," Shaver said outside the courtroom. "Hopefully things will work out where we become friends enough so that he gives me back my bullet."

There was also that stretch where Shaver's son OD'd on heroin and he had heart surgery right after. The last time I saw him, a few years ago, he ripped open his shirt to show the scar, basically a cross in his chest.

Glad the guy didn't die! Shaver credited Willie Nelson with persuading him to perform the night his son died, said it might make him feel better (think he did a guest turn during WN's set, but might have been more). Shaver knew about Nelson's son killing himself, trusted Willie, and found that he was right. Also, his wife died, and yeah the heart surgery too---then Kinky Friedman drafted him for a tour. "But I need to recuperate." "I need you."

Good 2014 Billy Joe album: Long In The Tooth.

Slate's Carl Wilson from their end of the year roundtable chat-- on 2014 country albums he likes, and then starting trouble re Sturgill:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_music_club/features/2014/slate_music_club_2014/the_best_podcasts_about_music_2014_s_best_protest_songs_and_answer_songs.html

I’m glad Craig also shouted out the new albums from Lee Ann Womack and Angaleena Presley, whose incisive American Middle Class dramatized a woman’s perspective on the 99-percent experience even more assertively than Kacey Musgraves’ “Merry Go ’Round” did last year. Womack’s indie-label The Way I’m Livin’, with its unsparing portraits of hard-drinking, hard-loving, self-snafu’ing lives, would gobsmack anyone who knows only her hit high-school-grad valedictory, “I Hope You Dance.” There was also Sunny Sweeney’s Provoked, Lydia Loveless’s Somewhere Else, and the big sister many of us have mentioned, Miranda Lambert’s Platinum, one of the most fully realized albums of the year, which still earned it only middling airplay.

I’ve been just a tad chagrined to see Sturgill Simpson’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music get so much more notice on year-end lists than most of the above. Maybe people are thankful to hear a male pick up the clue, or maybe when they think of trad country they just want to hear someone with a deep Johnny/Conway/Merle voice. Not that Simpson’s music isn’t singular and strong, but it’s also the sort of album we heard fairly routinely at the peak of “alt-country” a decade-plus back, a period many critics seem to scorn. Why the turnaround? To me Metamodern didn’t have the crackle of necessity that, say, Presley’s set did. What’s more, why always Simpson and never Ray LaMontagne’s Supernova, for instance? As with hip-hop, there’s a rock-crit default country album every year, too.

idk what "crackle of necessity" means

So he's singular and strong and has a deep voice that sounds like other singers people like. That's a pretty high start for a supposedly undeserving album. I'm not sure I recall much alt-country stuff from back in the day that sounded like, dunno, Waylon or Merle. Bit of Buck Owens and the Byrds, etc., plenty of rock-country fusion, Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly and Sun stuff and whatnot, but stuff that sounds like Merle Haggard or Jennings? Not so sure about that. While I haven't paid attention to any 2014 year-end stuff, and would be sad if Sturgill made it on lists that Womack and Presley missed, I'm not sure how anyone could say the Simpson is somehow not worthy of any year-end ranking that those others deserve.

So his point is that if you were obligated to include one and only one country record, it should not be the Simpson?

I don't see the connection here either: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X294h3dl2_I this sounds like some shitty generic indie rock

xp

I do like that Womack record, that's a good 'un

I'm not sure I recall much alt-country stuff from back in the day that sounded like, dunno, Waylon or Merle. Bit of Buck Owens and the Byrds, etc., plenty of rock-country fusion

I didn't pay much attention to alt-country but what I did hear it seemed like the major reference point was Parsons, not Waylon/Merle/Willie

What’s more, why always Simpson and never Ray LaMontagne’s Supernova, for instance?

lol

that dude isn't country is he?

ray lamontagne sings like the iron & wine dude so to me that is a point decidedly in sturgill simpson's favor

re: that piece, the lambert/presley/womack/loveless albums are all genuinely great but i think simpson feels a bit apart from the country scene, which is why he's mentioned by many year-end listmakers who don't even think about considering 'platinum' or 'american middle class' or some others.

those felt too radioish to me, didn't feel like putting in the work to get comfortable with them

i just kinda hate the whole backlash aspect where it's like i get it i'm sure there are albums in all sorts of niches that ppl with broad tastes by nature just don't find out about or dig but you can't dig deep into EVERYTHING and the sturgill record is good, and the kinda hardcore outlaw/merle thing meets the druggy/psych aspects did feel unique in some ways to me

yeah I don't like being browbeaten about how I'm supposed to be more invested in a particular genre

I spent most of my young childhood digging George Strait records & now as an adult I'm burnt out on booze + weed + cosmic anguish so Simpson is catnip for me. I think the Lee Ann Womack record is great too fwiw, Angaleena Presley less so but it has its moments.

the Carl Wilson thing is annoying because it reminds me of how uncomfortable critical acclaim for a relatively uncommercial/unpopular album makes critics as a whole - without the validation of the market, they start to get nervous, it's pretty clearly a "well we all like it, but the market doesn't, what's WRONG with us" dynamic at work; it's pre-emptive anxiety about potential charges of elitism.

that goes double for pop/populist genres like country and r&b

that… doesn't sound like a thing?

i don't know how successful they want the record to be, i imagine that for this day and age it's sold well. certainly his shows do well.

i mean they keep multiple copies in stock at every record store (ha!) i know. clearly people are buying it.

also, you may or may not like it, but simpson is bringing something /relatively/ new to the idiom he's chosen to work in. i'm not sure that i can think of many autodidacts with quite as eccentric an intellectual pedigree who show their hand so boldly in a country-music context.

I wanted to see him but he had a State Fair gig he canceled to go on tour w Brad Paisley or someone big like that then his solo club show sold out super fast

Sturgill just signed to Atlantic. Interesting.

What <is> Atlantic these days anyway?

With over 60 years of recorded music history, our passion for artistry in music continues today as a new generation of incredible artists including Bruno Mars, Coldplay, fun., Jason Mraz, Ed Sheeran, Wiz Khalifa, Janelle Monáe, Skrillex, Trey Songz, Hunter Hayes and more continue to further the Atlantic Records legacy.

Nevermind...

sturgill simpson and my mans trey songz