Rolling Country 2017

First listen to Worsham's take on Nashville country didn't wow me.

Worsham's becoming quite the critic's fave. Here's a Jewly Hight feature on him for NPR. Maybe I will give him another listen...

http://www.npr.org/2017/05/02/526558502/charlie-worsham-wants-to-tell-you-the-truth

Going on a trip from NYC to Vegas, couple of canyons, to LA and San Francisco! Am looking for country tips! Bars! Concert agenda's, concerts, festivals, record stores etc!
Any guidance would be deeply appreciated!

Are you heading south first through Bristol, Virginia through to Tennessee?

Ah. No flying from NYC to Vegas first, then driving through Zion and Bryce via Grand Canyon to LA. Would love to catch some small time shows, or even a Highwayman coverband in some obscure country bar. Anything, really :)

bakersfield country music museum And the Buck Owens Crystal Pallace in Bakersfield, Ca

Thanks a lot. Gotta dig into that.
Also; any book recommendations about country music are welcome! Is the Waylon bio any good?

http://www.latimes.com/socal/glendale-news-press/entertainment/tn-gnp-et-0611-eli-locke-20160611-story.html

Here's a mostly traditional California country singer who does gigs in Burbank and elsewhere. Eli Locke has Gary Allan's bandleader in his group. The author of the article, Jonny Whiteside has written a book Ramblin' Rose: The Life and Career of Rose Maddox, that I have not read.

Thanks! Have you read the Waylon book per chance?

Thanks! Have you read the Waylon book per chance?

Sorry for the double post

Nope

Toby Keith will perform in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Saturday, on a bill with Saudi singer and oud player Rabeh Saqer. That's the weekend when the President is there

The new Shelby Lynne with Alison Moorer album is ok, but did not wow me on first listen.

I went to the Grand Ol Opry for the first time. Saw a bill that included Darius Rucker and Little Big Town and Wynonna. Not bad. Nice harmonies from Little Big Town. Wynonna wore an American flag bandanna, and said "isn't this the greatest country in the world." Not a word from anyone about Charlottesville.

Plus saw a decent cover band called Nashville Skyine at Robert's Western Wear on Broadway there

Skyline

good line-up! was it at the Ryman or at Opryland?

there is no more opryland

you know what i mean

i don't actually! The Ryman is the Ryman, where else are you thinking of?

there's a big building in what used to be Opryland where they put on a lot of shows. Church pews set up behind the stage, etc. Scroll down on this page:

https://www.opry.com/planatrip

From looking at the website all the September shows are there instead of at the Ryman. it's fine though! The sound is great!

oh sorry, you meant the opry house! yeah, okay; that's not a bad place to see music i guess but the ryman is far superior ime

The show was at the Gran Ole Opry not the Ryman. The current Opry is out in the burbs near a multiplex movie theatre and a shopping mall and you park in a huge shopping mall parking lot.

The bill also included Jeannie Seely (old-school singer); The Sisterhood (newish female duo with Rod Stewart's daughter); Riders In The Sky; and Charles Esten (from the tv show Nashville).

This (plus seeing the eclipse there) was the start of the wife & I's southern trip-- after Nashville we went to Muscle Shoals, AL; then Clarksdale, MS, and Memphis , TN plus a night at Senatobia , MS for the Barbecued Goat picnic with Sharde Thomas and her blues fife and drum band (the granddaughter of Otha Turner)

Dude that is one of the best road trip itineraries I've ever read

It was a great week--wish we had even more time. Although we did get tired a bit of barbecue and fried tomatoes, fried pickles, fried okra, fried everything food-wise near the end. Of course, some of it was also somber and disturbing-- from the Lorraine Motel/Civil Rights Museum in Memphis to the number of boarded up and abandoned buildings near Stax in Memphis, and in Clarksdale; gun shops everywhere, etc.

Oh yeah, was thinking about that kind of local-enough-to-me 'scape while listening to the new Langford we were talking about on the Mekons thread. Heard Sharde and her fife and drum band on Beale Street Caravan (not sure what's happening now with their re-launched site's archives, but think the set was during one of those shows recorded at annual North Mississippi Hill Country Picnics).

Good music and conversations, incl. with listeners calling in, from a studio in Austin to this show in Boston: Rick Trevino, with recent songs re his (third-generation, gradually re-emerging, inescapable)Chicano background and situations of immigrants, also personal chestnuts like "Bobbie Ann Mason"-- I must check his new album, old ones too:http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/09/08/country-music-rick-trevino-lati

not exactly country, but rootsy, and fans of Jenny Lewis and Neko Case may enjoy Valley Queen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMp_dAG0PsQ

Thanks, will check out the album. Coming up next on FarmAid: Willie Nelson & Family (hope Neil will show up again, mebbe for a sing-along of "Homegrown", as sometimes happens)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg6-hljSb9E

Evocative slide show of farm scenes now, incl. all those cute critters raised for slaughter

That American Music Fest finished up yesterday in Nashville. Lots of alt-country, with some token others

Americana I mean

Drag City prose ahead, adjust your shades:

AT THE HOUSE OF CASH
Now, we'll admit, there's no colon and additional writing there in the title to help you understand the vintage propers of this release, so you'll have to listen closely for just a minute here: this is a previously-unreleased album made by Nashville singer-songwriter
Chris Gantry at Johnny Cash's home studio in 1973. Chris has been working for over a decade in Nashville, and along with buddies like Kris Kristofferson, Shel Silverstein, Eddie Rabbit
and other young outlaws-in-the-making, Chris's wild times had led to new directions in songwriting. After scoring a hit for Glen Campbell with "Dreams of the Everyday Housewife", Chris
signed with Monument and made a couple albums, the second of which, 1970's Motor Mouth, was tinged with acid-rock leads and surreal lyrics. By '73, Chris was getting pretty far-out, and At the House of Cash finds him in a Casteneda-styled impasse, making sweetly melodic folk tunes with raw edges that absolutely nobody else could touch! The Man in Black himself apparently told Chris
that he didn't think even the drug people would get it. This of course only pleased Chris, who took it as a sign of transformation - and of course it was! Chris went on to write many more songs for other folks, and make more albums on his own, but At the House of Cash has sat on the shelf until now. Hearing the sound of a man shedding his own skin in an often-hectic, hypnotic, quixotic, and ultimately harmonious process, backed by top Nashville cats every step of the way, is a thrilling encounter...this is the kind of thing that makes archival releases so essential - hearing something that was not in the narrative until now that nonetheless is part of an evolution, a secret step that was felt more than heard, and was a part of everything. Chris Gantry had it going on back in '73, and that we're only hearing it now makes it all the more special. Viva la reissue-stance!
Chris Gantry
At the House of Cash
LP/CD/MP3/FLAC
Drag City
To Be Released 2017-11-17 Catalog # DC686

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/arts/music/country-gentleman-thomas-rhett.html?mcubz=0&_r=0

Caramanica on Gentle-bros

...the country gentleman. And so Nashville’s bro tide is now receding, supplanted by a kindlier new generation of male country singers. They focus on uncomplicated, deeply dedicated love or, alternately, being hopeless on the receiving end of heartbreak. They sing with voices light on drawl. They ooze respect, charm and, occasionally, dullness. At times they recall George Strait, the restrained cowboy superstar; at others, Earl Thomas Conley, the emotional ballad specialist of the 1980s.

Visually, they have a similar aesthetic: white men with dark hair cut short and often pointed skyward. (A halfhearted beard is optional.) More often than not, they have sturdy, approachable, single-syllable last names: Thomas Rhett, Brett Young, Chris Lane, Michael Ray....

At the same time, female singers have been getting squeezed ever more tightly. ...
These are systematic issues — to fix them would require coordinated response from record labels, publishing companies, radio and video outlets, and more. But the rise of the gentleman — the gentlebro? — is a reluctant, #NotAllMen solution. It dilutes the toxic levels of masculinity in the genre without offering women songs of their own to sing, instead plying them with ones that place them on a pedestal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/arts/music/country-gentleman-thomas-rhett.html?mcubz=0&_r=0

I didn't know Rhett was a bro 'til I read about it, but if so, he was the only bro I heard who was good for a whole album, Tangled Up, which made my Scene ballot Top Ten, So far, the new one mostly seems like wet nerf, especially in stark-as-nerf-can-get contrast to lead-off "Craving", the duet with Maren Morris---hey, there's a female newcomer whose debut album established her own compelling stance and standard (despite the problematic single).Not totally unfamiliar problems/responses, but/and quite the radio-ready arts & entertainment onslaught.
And there must be others, but I don't keep up with newcomers as well as I should (though Ashley Monroe, for instance, is a twenty-something veteran who keeps getting better).

Keeps getting better whole-album-wise, that is; she's always made some good tracks, solo and with the Annies.

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/features/midland-on-bar-band-roots-new-album-on-the-rocks-w504844

These guys are getting a lot of attention too.

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/news/how-midland-epitomize-the-authenticity-debate-in-country-w505854

Apparently Midland are not "authentic" enough for some

well they are reaching especially hard for that 70s Nashville outlaw look and there is something slightly... desperate and pathetic about that? on the other hand they are v good looking and their music rocks, so

I Love Music Question Title: is Midland the Strokes of country music?

finger hovers over Submit Post

So that country music "salad" that the one industry exec was talking about is now--Gentle-bros, a band w/ a long-haired one-time model bringing 70s & current styles together, plus a few women....

Ha... x-post

'drinking problem' is nice enough.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/05/las-vegas-shooting-gun-rights-country-music-215684

One sign that things might be changing: Three mainstream country acts, including the popular Florida-Georgia Line, have quietly canceled their NRA Country partnerships in the wake of the Vegas shooting, and only one would confirm to Rolling Stone that they were still partnered with the organization.

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/features/nra-country-music-alliances-weakening-after-las-vegas-shooting-w507289

xposts, Midland look like idiots

Not nec. "desperate", though: in my experience, it's just what happens if you let it grow, let it flow.

Looks like I might have to pick from my usual gratuitously hacked-in Countryoid/Americana/Related category, for a legit Top Ten on the next Nashville Scene ballot: all I got so far among even the probs is Willie Nelson's God's Problem Child (vibe established by title track [feat. Jamey Johnson and Tony Joe White], not unlike "The Thrill Is Gone", thus especially appropriate this year) Lynne & Moorer (commanding voices, just settling in for a moment, that genetic country harmony, the most consistent work Moorer has ever done), Mellencamp frequently feat. Carlene Carter (special guests Martina McBride and Kenny Aronoff! He's pulling prev. unreleased charging them up, new ones sound refreshed too, overall effect almost happy), maybe Stapleton's Songs From A Room Vol. 1, although it seems a little skimpy, and not just because 9 tracks (c'mon with Vol. 2 already).

Womack will have a new one out later this month, but still seems like I'll have to pull some in from Americana etc. Prob the prev. mentioned Langford, and Lucinda's This Sweet Old World, which is a re-recording of her early SOW and of prev. unreleased from same sessions.

Haven't done comparative listening yet---this one may be more mannered, with that sound like she's rolling pills around in her mouth---but so far it stand on its own: she gets just enough of the right-enough details into the blue-gray clouds, which also incl. her cogent current core band (plus, as with early sessions for the original album, Greg Leisz on steel guitar) ripe and tensile, so ready for anything that the overall effect is almost subliminally happy, as with the Mellen. Good bonus tracks too; "Wild and Blue" will never die!

But I still haven't heard Sweeney's latest, or the full-length Whitney Rose (or the Womack).

Oh yeah, Rimes! Need to listen more, but a trip right off.

And the Crowell's pretty intense, especially the song about Susanna Clark.

I need to listen to Sweeney too.

Her previous albums have been imperfect, but effective overall, sometimes in unusual ways (Provoked incl. the one about moving through a party where everyone's staring at her, spooky). Trophystarts with "Pass The Pain", and gets some more mileage out of etc. by pulling rank on, then apologetically appealing to/explaining herself to a bartender, in a way a guy would be less likely to; we're not trained like that. But so far seems like this this set makes room for too many crisply boring duds, disappointingly written with the usually cogent Lori McKenna, whose terse, subtle vocal approach doesn't always work for the previously bolder Sweeney. But co-writing and vocal influence def effective in the eerie low-key layers of the title track, which seems ready for ID---Investigative Discovery, the semi-true crime channel.
Also, she lets her guard down on the venerable, Jerry Jeff-associated (Chris Wall-written) "I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight": "I play jazz when I am confused, I play country, whenever I lose...When I'm high I play rock and roll, country when I lose control..." Cuts loose on the finale too, but on first listen the album seems about half good. (I'll listen more, but she usually puts 'em right over the plate.)

He made it into one of my Best New Artist slots on the Scene ballot. I still need to check his Imaginary Appalachia EP, have you heard it?
Another one from the Stone link. She's always sounded like she probably likes Elton John, David Bowie, Patsy Cline: "Americana"? OK!

Album: By the Way, I Forgive You
Release Date: February 16th
On her sixth studio album, Americana heroine Brandi Carlile ramps everything up a notch, working with Waylon Jennings' rebel-yell son Shooter, who co-produced with Dave Cobb. She takes deep dives into her family history ("Most of All") and offers up an anthem for the downtrodden ("The Joke," a chin-up call to arms for anyone feeling oppressed, was blasted out in a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!). While largely adhering to her unplugged, modern-Appalachian approach, Carlile also pushes a few musical envelopes: "Harder to Forgive" is swoony, luxurious pop, "Hold Out Your Hand" has a wall-of-drums wallop and "Party of One" wraps up with shivery orchestration. D.B.

I keep confusing him with music writer Seth Colter Walls in searches (still not quite sure they're two diff people).

ha

definitely different people

and i have heard IA a few times actually, yes

it's good but i like his self-titled release better, though sleeping on the blacktop is equally as good as say thirteen silver dollars (similar vibe)