Rolling Country 2019

xpost, Oh yeah, that 'un, thanks. So many Lukes these days, so little time. I'm not against arena country, I just got spoiled by the late 90s-early 00s art-of-entertainment heyday of it
Drag City now makes its Rolling Country debut mebbe---adjust shades accordingly, and know yr not alone:

THE LOST CITY OF
NASHLANTIS
The annals of Nashville, the 20th century's immortal Music City, are filled with lore of the legends, as well as tales of the one-shots, the lesser-knowns and the delightful obscurities. Like the outlaw he defines himself as, Chris Gantry doesn't really fit in any of those boxes -and now, 50-plus years since he wrote his first hit, "Dreams of the Everyday Housewife", Gantry prepares to release Nashlantis, his first album of new music following the 2017 archival release of At The House of Cash.

Produced by Jerry David DeCicca and recorded in Nashville with the legendary engineer Rob Galbraith, Nashlantis features 11 mesmerizing, worn n' weathered Gantry performances. Preserving the intimate nature of Chris' acoustic guitar and vocals, Don Cento, Ryan Jewell, and Marina Peterson wove electric guitar, mandolin, synthesizer, percussion and cello into the fabric of the songs, and Edith Frost and Bill Callahan turned up at Stuart Sikes' mixing session in Austin to add harmony vocals, as well.

Nashlantis is a testament to the career and talent of Chris Gantry - the individualism that set him apart from his earliest days and his openhearted embrace of the unknown. Featured in the Country Music Hall of Fame's Outlaws and Armadillos exhibit last year (one of two living artists included), Chris's cosmic stirrings have always set him a little apart from the rest. Nashlantis makes for yet another unique chapter in the Chris Gantry catalog - a potent new entry, five decades and more down the line - the improbability of which makes it pure Gantry, all the way.

As DeCicca says: "Gantry's juiced these songs like they're speedballs. He's taken the painful and the positive and wrapped it up in a celebration of the raw and knotty thing called Song. He brought his Queens, NY accent to Nashville in 1963, ran with legends like Shel Silverstein and Kris Kristofferson, sang at Woodstock with Tim Hardin, but all that's just trivia. It's the past. It's in history books and he's still breathing, and it's his breath that is in these songs. Others went diving for a sunken treasure and never came up for air. But here he is, dry as a bone, daring us, "Do you have the stomach for this?"

"Life Well Lived," the first single from Nashlantis, premieres on Rolling Stone Country today - listen now, and prepare to sink into Nashlantis fully when it's released on July 26th!
https://ffm.to/nashlantis">-https://ffm.to/nashlantis
TOUR DATES:

7/11/19 Murmrr Theatre Brooklyn NY*
7/12/19 White Eagle Hall Jersey City NJ*

*w/ Bill Callahan

Allow me to put in a good word for my friend Paul's band Jericho Woods, who just released their new album One Perfect Sound last week. It's a more contemporary style of country than I'm generally inclined to enjoy, but it's still too trad/ish to likely get any radio action. What a weird predicament, but it's quite good.

Weird but hardly unusual! Thx for tip, will check.
xpost That link in the press release is taking too long to open, but here's another in the Stone coverage:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/chris-gantry-new-song-life-well-lived-album-nashlantis-832446/

Another yeti geezer sighting:

Will Beeley - Highways & Heart Attacks - out June 14th on Tompkins Square. The Texas songwriter's first album in 40 years

Rolling Stone Country premieres the first single, U.S. 85:

HIGHWAYS & HEART ATTACKS is a remarkable return from a singer-songwriter whose work might well have been lost to dusty record crates and the secret annals of Americana musical history. But with Tompkins Square’s 2017 reissues of Beeley’s two stunning albums, 1971’s Gallivantin' and 1979’s Passing Dream, the Texas-based troubadour finally earned the applause his distinctive songcraft long deserved, with Noisey praising his “deeply felt, little heard, folk music” and Paste noting, “With the re-release of these fine LPs, we can spend some time more fully appreciating them before (Beeley’s) very welcome return to the music world.”

“The music business is one of those things where you expect it to happen now,” Beeley says. “When it takes 40 years to happen, it kind of makes you sit back and go, I’m surprised it ever happened.”

Born at Southern California’s March Field Air Force Base, Beeley traveled the world with his family before they finally settled down in San Antonio, TX. His natural love of music was further fueled watching Townes Van Zandt performing regularly at local bars and honky tonks, inspiring him to try his own hand at singing and playing songs for a living. Though only 200 copies were printed and sold from the stage and back of Beeley’s car, 1971’s stark Gallivantin' was undeniably marked by Beeley’s emerging lyrical voice, comparable to such contemporary Lone Star State peers as Van Zandt and Michael Martin Murphey. Beeley signed an artist contract with the Mississippi-based soul label, Malaco Records, recording sessions in 1971 and 1973, with a single released in 1974.

Beeley was then given a release to concentrate on his songwriting but in 1977, he reunited with Malaco and backed by the label’s house band – which by a stroke of good fortune included such young Texas studio musicians as guitarist Larry Campbell (Bob Dylan, Levon Helm), keyboardist Carson Whitsett (Paul Simon, Z.Z. Hill), and drummer James Stroud (Mickey Newbury, Eddie Rabbit) – recorded Passing Dream. The LP saw Beeley taking a far more ambitious approach than his debut, imbuing his deeply personal songcraft with an edgy psychedelic outlaw energy. Most strikingly, Beeley’s singing voice had evolved, colored by experience and struggle.

“But nothing ever happened,” he says. “It just kind of dissolved. I was pretty discouraged.”

Beeley withdrew from his own musical career and went about the business of real life, raising a family in New Mexico whilst working as an over the road truck driver. His guitar and pen sat untouched for years, his dreams of being a working musician long relegated to his personal back pages. But when Tompkins Square reached out about reissuing Gallivantin' and Passing Dream, Beeley was inspired once again. He reached out to Tompkins Square founder Josh Rosenthal, wondering if the label might be interested in new material. The answer was of course an enthusiastic ‘Yes!’ and plans were made for Beeley to hit the studio for the first time in nearly four decades.

Recorded at San Antonio’s Blue Cat Studios with producer Jerry David DeCicca (Chris Gantry, Ed Askew, Larry Jon Wilson), GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer Joe Trevino (Flaco Jimenez, Los Lobos, Los Texmaniacs), and GRAMMY® Award-winning mix engineer Stuart Sikes (Loretta Lynn, Cat Power, Phosphorescent), HIGHWAYS & HEART ATTACKS sees Beeley backed by a combo of Americana all-stars that includes accordionist Michael Guerra (The Mavericks), guitarist Don Cento (Sarah Jaffee), bassist Canaan Faulkner (The Black Swans, Ed Askew), drummer Armando Aussenac (Neon Indian), organist Richard Martin, and GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist Bobby Flores (Freddy Fender, Doug Sahm, Willie Nelson). Songs like “Been A Drifter” and “Don’t Rain On My Parade” are both wistful and warm-hearted, Beeley’s rough-hewn vocals the ideal vehicle for his one-of-a-kind tales of a road well traveled and a surprise ending hard earned.

“I feel this is really the best stuff I’ve written,” Beeley says. “I recorded Passing Dream more than 40 years ago. I’m just thankful I got another chance to go in the studio and lay down some more of my tunes.”
Album trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvNpvh0Ka2U

Love this new Kelly Willis / Bruce Robison song "Nobody's Perfect" (not on YouTube but on Spotify).

Underwhelmed by their most recent solo albs, but usually enjoyed the duet sets, 'bout time for another.
I wasn't listening to much country in 1979, still haven't caught up with most of these, made while casting about in the wake of Dylan and Cash and KK and country rock and "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" and and Outlaw and Southern Rock and various prestigious Texan bards and many other thangs (Elton John,disco,Jimmy Buffet---), several years before the presentation of the New Traditionalists. Cantwell, a writer of various interests, flexible sympathies, prob didn't tag all, or maybe any, of the following results as "classics," but they're worth a read, and listen probably:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country-lists/10-classic-country-albums-turning-40-in-2019-838076/hank-williams-jr-family-tradition-elektra-curb-838230/

Looking fwd to this year's Caroline Spence, more cautiously or hypothetically hopeful about some others here:
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2019/05/10-great-country-and-americana-albums-released-so.html?utm_source=PMNL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=190521

Going to check out one of Edd's 2018 Reissue picks, Lefty Frizzell's Signed Sealed and Delivered, I got sidetracked by The Complete Columbia Sessions[i]: 5 volumes, from the early 50s to mid-70s (he finally went to another label, and then he died, in '75). Spotify has the whole thing in one mass; Amazon has each track as a download, but not as a box----they do carry the volumes as a series of CDs, and the ones from his last decade would prob be worth getting. Early stuff (from country's mostly pre-LP era, saleswise) is more diffuse, trying different angles, touching all the bases, but then suddenly he's a culturally deprived creative spirit, swirling over and into the gaps (depths!) between dull lines, which mean a lot to him, and hopefully her..it's amazing, but after a couple more tracks seems like another gimmick. Then he drops that approach, starts flirtatiously playing with his accent (aw-shucks-ma'am in-joke), also can play it for novelty hook, calling for "ciger-RATS and coffee," which keep him goin.'
Settles into a confidential tone: your buddy, somewhat like a pre-Don Williams, with more of a range of themes, such as pride goeth before a fall, but that's just how it went, ain't sorry, or all that sorry.
Getting a little louder and more full-throated (pre- and then para-Merle) as pride sometimes wins, at least for a while: plot-twists test and stretch the ties that bind, especially when he bests older, richer men (incl. his own father) who stand between him and (female) love objects. One is less a story than a posted warning: yes, "My Baby is a Tramp," but she had it rough growing up, he understands her, and (whatever else you do), you don't call her that---the term is reserved for himself, who now sounds older, tougher, maybe richer, than usual.
In reviews archived on his site, Xgau raves about this guy on the way to awarding Rhino's 1991[i]The Best of and Look What Thoughts Will Do (Columbia/Legacy, 1997) his rare A Pluses--I wouldn't go quite that far with the first (Spotify doesn't have it as one album, but can be easily made into a playlist), haven't heard all of the the second collection yet, though it does have some killers, they both do, and I still gotta get to Edd's pick, an original album, I think.
Bluesy, flexible inflections show up early and later: starting in the mid-40s, he def sounds like a link between Jimmie Rodgers and the other guys I mentioned, though also some lounge.

almost all in italics?! Sorry, in a hurry.

Rather than competing with Rhino's definitive 18-cut Best of, this two-CD set repeats it piecemeal around 16 newcomers, many never before U.S.-available. So says xgau about Look What Thoughts Will Do, which surely proves the point of its title track, in most of the selections, and all of the sequencing. The penny drops, the ripples spread, so look at that, and just keep looking, just keep riding--- even "Don't think it Ain't Been Fun Dear ('Cuz It Ain't") finds its own kind of fun as it keeps telling her what not to think, lest things get too real, making this zigzag twilight time more of a problem than he wants to think. Not too much time for mellerdramer in these situations, where Western Swingers are passing it to honky tonk stalwarts, elbowing more room on the dance floor and adjacent spaces, just enough to maintain some cool next to that upstart rock 'n' roll stuff (while taking notes).
Si the pained, typically up front "You Want Everything But Me" is somewhat undercut by the equally typical "I Want To Be With You Always," one of his periodic check-ins for fidelity's sake--but this time he gets to the thought that if the love nest ever falls, it'll have to be your fault, because his love is so very very very true.
His Jimmie Rodgers side comes back through the modernistical brooding of "Travelling Blues," as he at least mentally moves from the club to the barcar, going to find his baby and bring her back: it's just long and even-tempered enough---he's got a satisfied mind, and a purpose-driven life (no matter how things actually turn out; he doesn't do parentheticals)---so that it seems like the train time is becoming quite comfortable, as the slightly ominous tone fits the good ol' drone.
This impression seems seen and raised by the turn-around of "My Rough and Rowdy Ways," which sounds neither rough nor rowdy, just kinda bluesy-cowboy-dreamy, as he wants to get aboard and get away from her--no, that's too harsh: he's going from the previous track's (starting with) train-as-means-to-an-end, to something more like endless, as all expectations just kinda disappear into the freedom/habit principle and circuit: his ways, amen.
Which is not to say he can't wake up "Sick Sober and Sorry," but he jumps up too, bopping along like he does in "Just Can't Live That Fast (Any More)", and "I'm An Old Old Man (Tryin' To Live While I Can)" and a bunch of brisk shuffles in the fourth quarter--even gets a sax in "You're Humbuggin' Me" and maybe a grunty fuzz bass during the chorus of "She's Gone Gone Gone."
I especially appreciate the fact that his tedious version of"Long Black Veil" (which gives me time to think that "I spoke not a word though it meant my life, I'd been in the arms of my best friend's wife" is not very believable, unless maybe the wife is a man and it's 1938 or 1838 in Alabama) is here overcome by "Forbidden Lovers," who happily cruise over to "the lonely side of town, where the music is soft and sweet" and nobody knows them, unless it's other people who shouldn't be there, and he might well have a sequel about that somewhere, out of Lefty field.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/06/patrick-haggerty-lavender-country-blackberry-rose.html

that lavender country album is worth a play!

Thanks, will check. Looking fwd to this:
INTRODUCING THE HIGHWOMEN
BRANDI CARLILE, NATALIE HEMBY, MAREN MORRIS AND AMANDA SHIRES
“REDESIGNING WOMEN” SINGLE OUT TODAY
SELF-TITLED DEBUT ALBUM OUT SEPTEMBER 6
LIVE DEBUT CONFIRMED AT NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL
THE HIGHWOMEN TRACK LIST
1. Highwomen (written by Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires, Jimmy Webb)
2. Redesigning Women (written by Natalie Hemby, Rodney Clawson)
3. Loose Change (written by Maren Morris, Maggie Chapman, Daniel Layus)
4. Crowded Table (written by Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Lori McKenna)
5. My Name Can’t Be Mama (written by Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Amanda Shires)
6. If She Ever Leaves Me (written by Amanda Shires, Jason Isbell, Chris Thompkins)
7. Old Soul (written by Maren Morris, Luke Dick, Laura Veltz)
8. Don’t Call Me (written by Amanda Shires, Peter Levin)
9. My Only Child (written by Natalie Hemby, Amanda Shires, Miranda Lambert)
10. Heaven Is A Honky Tonk (written by Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Ray LaMontagne)
11. Cocktail And A Song (written by Amanda Shires)
12. Wheels Of Laredo (written by Brandi Carlile, Tim Hanseroth, Phil Hanseroth)
Caps verbatim from press release, sorry. See also:
https://thehighwomen.com/

from last year, but brent cobb's "come home soon" is a top notch addiction country song

posted on the AI thread but here too seems fair
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPs6wdM7S3U

Sheryl Crow: Threads, Aug. 30--The 17-song album features collaborations with a number of country artists, including Maren Morris, Chris Stapleton, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Margo Price, Jason Isbell, Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris and Vince Gill. Thanks, always handy nashcountrydaily!

...and also Gary Clark Jr., Chuck D (!), and St. Vincent (!!).

sending love to willie, off tour for the first time in a decade(?)

I had the blurry, ancient impression of Tyler Childers as sounding like an (alternate-universe) Sturgis Mini-Me, humble and homespun in the way SS never was, not on this side of the line---unless you count the way he gave up on them voices in his head,"ain't got nothin' to say," but he soon lit for the territory. On Country Squire, Childers is never that resigned, or that bold, just insecure, without whinin'---full-throated een when high lonssome---and he seizes on the good times like he does the bad, knowing it could all blow up, will turn again---oh well, "Honey don't cry, you're married to a Gemini"---and even the fella who "guards the rusty missiles" tonight like he does every night, daydreaming of rustic weekend adventures, sounds like he's 'bout to fiddle-waltz over the mountain, even though he must be down below the holler, also way out West of it, unless there's something our Government never told us.
Keep trying to keep up with the words, and catching more bits every time I listen---he's playing down at the bar every night, "turnin' songs into 2 by 4s": first I thought he meant he was making them very fuctional, down to the essentials, but come to think of it a 2-by-4 is a humble thang: is this bar gig reductive? But he's always resourceful, and diligent: The Country Squire is an ancient camper, the basis of "a temple" for his loved one---putting up "rafters" in a camper?? I know about making trailers into ex-mobile homes, building all around those tin walls, but---anyway the music is very solid and mobile, with enough variety and continuity to pull me along, in a plausible, not-quite-"universal" way, like the words "House on Fire" has an organ burning through, around and with string band instrumentation, "All Your'n" is the most Sturgill-esque in terms of early 70s R&B crossover appeal, yet country as its title, and overall there's a good balance of acoustic and electric, incl. choice and placement of microphones.
9 songs, 35 minutes, and I've listened four times in the last couple of days--could prob listen that many times a row

Mark Cline Bates, King of Crows: he's got a scarecrow where the birds like to sit, as well they might: although Don Dixon carefully produces and plays on this, it usually seems static, maybe because most of the songwriting is more about the words, which only go so far into situations, more than stories. But "Mississippi" builds fresh air anticipation (here the too-faithful piano even catches a little Bruce Hornsby glint), as the narrator looks fwd to seeing someone whom he more-than-fondly remembers, even though he knows she might not remember him. Also enjoysm the warm weather, Vicksburg, Biloxi, and b Civil War cemeteries: "a hero's grave" is a fine thing after all---the end, but not bad.
Then "Self Countrol" goes to New Orleans, which might not remember him, but he remembers it. Then he's there (at least in memory), observing musicians on the corner, men of faith "seeking light in the darkness," witch doctors: imagery's starting to swarm, and he throws them some change, to entertain him some more. The End, I think (this is one of the least static, with impressions, thoughts finally running past my far-from-perfect attention span---but it's down to the words, he stands or falls by them, while the music is just okay).
Followed by "Baby Don't Like" the tantrums and other stuff he throws, and he don't like 'em either, but sounds brooding, not remorseful, then quotes her telling him nobody knows how special he is--might be placating him, trying to soothe him out of tendencies, but he makes her sound like a believer, and/or a temptress--he's going to get the gasoline, and seems like it's not the first time.
Later on is "Ginger," song about an old lady who's broke, which even has a good chorus, jumping from details to "reaching for Paradise has left her short of breath." Amen, Sister (only song written in the third person, and not about a guy's plight (most of the guys' plights are more about self-obsession).

Brooks & Dunn's Reboot is 12 of their hits rerecorded with popular young 'uns, mostly one at a time, except for LANCO (sic, sorry), a man band. Wiki sez their greatest hit was featured on ABC's The Bachelor, and I believe it: this version of "Mama Don't Get Dressed Up For Nothin'" sounds like Hall & Oates wannebees (incl. B&D) making thrift store yacht country with Casio cowbells, but not as well as that could be. (Midland's a band too, right? Adding nothing much to "Boot Scoot Boogie," but once again, and as usual on this set, neither do B&D).
Programmed beats do signify on "Neon Moon," which is now mostly Kacey Musgraves keenly keening for certainties or at least passing solace---her most and only compelling performance ever, far as I've heard.
B&D seem to be living the dying of "You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone" all over again, or still, and Ashley MacBryde keeps the ballad momentum building, ditto Kane Brown on "Believe." Damn that could have been so blustery, but it's not. Reminds me of my favorite line in "Red Dirt Road, " where they learned that "happiness on Earth was not just for high achievers." Such a relief! Cody Johnson does no harm to that one.
Oh, and good, if slightly too long, re-reboot of BW Stevenson's 70s hit, "My Maria," with Thomas Rhett.
Otherwise, ehh--maybe I'll listen some more.

Rodney Crowell, Texas: frequently rockin', mostly country, never far from the pavement, with guests incl. Willie Nelson,lee Ann Womack, Ronnie Dunn, Billy F. Gibbons, John Jorgenson, Vince Gill, Steve Earle,Lyle Lovett Ringo Starr: even more carefully detailed than usual, yet one of his tightest ever. Theme might well be "Too much is not enough," but still too much, but he'll take it---"You're Only Happy When You're Miserable" (with a "doomsday fantasy") does not sound like a note to self; that would be "I'll Show Me," flipping succinct fantasies and probabilities like Benjamins to the waiter world, oh thank you suh.
Might be the same jaded guy, finally getting excited, anticipating getting schooled by a New York girl who's very strict about "sticking to those playground rules" (this one gets toward primo Steely Dan).
Most of these stay closer to home, though "56 Fury"'s butch vintage driver might a Droog, fan with his rockabilly haircut "like a French beehive lady"---yeah but look out for that ZZ guitar, farmers back there (it'll chop your cotton).
Getting loaded on the lakside with Willie & co. doesn't glaze the restless Texas urgers--still gotta float down the river, wander in the woods, while even a couple of crows, Heckle and Jeckle, build a barb-wire nest, move on to a high-rise, but keep the nest filled with magpie chicks (scarecrows are around,
The guy who works "The Border" is quieter, slower, than most of the others: he's gotta be.
"Brown & Root, Brown & Root," is a lowland 'billy waltz about working for that old construction conglomerate (eventually uploaded by the even bigger Halliburton, as Earle mentions in his intro), "climbin' in the dirt": it's all sepia, with some moisture, at wet cement and Paw's booze--quite a contrast with the bright clipped clarity of "Texas Drought Pt. 1" (although the dry folk drink too, while sending up prayers and helicopters).
11 tracks, 40 minutes, beep-beep.

Oops, that should have been:
"keep the nest filled with magpie chicks"(scarecrows are around, but no prob).

dow you are doing the lord's work. Stoked for new Crowell; you heard the new Vince Gill yet?

Thanks! Haven't heard it yet, but he's effective on "Caw Caw Blues," the one w crows.

xpost Also should have been
A Droog fan--with no comma (thinking of the Droogs or droogs in A Clockwork Orange, not the band).

Liking this new Tanya Tucker quite a bit!

Maddie & Tae - Bathroom Floor

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

Re: the Maren Morris album --

"rsvp" is basically a r&b song and i think it's v cool

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Wednesday, March 13, 2019

-- I agree, and same w/ "Common (feat. Brandi Carlile)." I like how Morris is pop-country in a manner that comes from the R&B side of pop.

Yeah, and she and the equally vocal-projection-tending Brandi and the other Highwomen perform pretty effectively on most of their album---some of the first-quarter tracks so far seem overdone (you want a "Crowded Table" for family fun? You got it), but then they settle into one-voice close to the mic for verses, others swooping in from (or in) the background on choruses and/or brief interjections--then it gets and stays fluid and dynamic. Fave so far is "Old Soul," who keeps the homefires low, not like those young folks who get out on "the edge"--but she keeps going in here 'til she works herself up, has an Emily Dickinson freak-in, with other voices, other rooms, bouncing off the back of her limits (which she seems to have taken it all to, maybe one more time). Not sure who this is, but think it's---Maren Morris.

Back to life: I really enjoyed, even Top Tenned Thomas Rhett's Tangled Up---hadn't realized that he was designated/lumped in bro country, but even more impressive when thought of that way, because I'd never heard any of those other guys who were good for a whole album (sure, some singles, "Beer in The Headlights" etc.). Life Changes just seemed twerpy, except for the duet with---yes---Maren Morris.
Center Point Road's title track feat. Kelsea Ballerini, but they're reinforcing each other's worst musical tendencies, solemnly pledging allegiance to filtered images of their high school selves, sounding like they may not too terribly far from taking off to or toward Young Springsteen Road, but they don't. Nor does it happen even on "Drive Too Fast," where the girl---only quoted by him, no duet---sweetly assures him, I don't care where we go, as long as we're flying. Not "flyyyyyyyyyying"---this is a Thomas Rhett album.
But it's a nice thought, more agreeable to me than all the twentysomething nostalgia for teentime, also nostalgia for the present==="VHS"-quality retro road trip, just like we did back etc (not even DVD? Maybe they're channeling the magic of childhood roadtrips, Disney Limited Edition tapes in the famly camper, but seems that format is meant to explain that this song is about retro), and 'nother one about hos good you look this second and it will be preserved for a long long time, in whatever format.
But there's at least keeper , "Don't Threaten Me With A Good Time<" because he's committed to partying, which in his case is reckless endangerment. Nothing too lurid is emphasized, but for instance he urges Little Big Town to get up on the counter and dance and make room for him---not followed by a crach, but for him it's rowdy, and a good subject I've never heard a song about before.
Also unusual, and I'll prob keep it too if I owned it, rather than streaming: the candid, succinctly grateful "Dream You Never Had," in which he thanks someone for living it, while he's super-living it, following and farming it on the road and in the media etc.

*How* good you look, not ho or hos good

Not followed by a "crash" either

xxp I think I’m the only person on here who loves the entirety of The Highwomen album, lol!

The two songs you highlighted (“Crowded Table” and “Old Soul”) happen to share a particular kind of “sophisticated 1980s” sound that really appeals to me; kinda like the sound (if not actually the songwriting) of the Dead’s In the Dark, or the French Frith Kaiser Thompson album.

!! hadn't thought to relate it to those albums, sonically or otherwise, for sure----but this "sophisticated 1980s" sound prob at least in part via Maren "80s Mercedes" Morris----which reminds me that another fave, "Honky Tonk Heaven," a florid x deadpan, thus country-as-hell, send-up of country beautiful loser cliches, could also be taken as kissin' cousin send-up of "My Church" by Maren Morris.
I do love or very much like most of it already!

Man, I ❤️ that song “80s Mercedes”... I’m a sucker for gleaming pop-country.

trying to catch up with email:
Acclaimed singer, songwriter and musician Tyler Childers will make his sold-out headline debut at Red Rocks Amphitheatre this Monday, September 30. In celebration of this milestone, the show—featuring special guest Robert Earl Keen—will stream live via Childers’ YouTube Channel beginning at 9:30pm MT.
The Red Rocks performance is the first stop on Childers’ sold-out “Country Squire Run” headline tour, which will continue throughout 2019 and includes upcoming shows at Los Angeles’ The Wiltern, New York’s Brooklyn Steel (two nights), Seattle’s Paramount Theatre, Chicago’s Argon Ballroom, Boston’s House of Blues, Atlanta’s Tabernacle (two nights) and Washington DC’s The Anthem among several others. Additionally, Childers will perform three special shows at Pikeville, KY’s Appalachian Wireless Arena on December 27, December 28 and December 31 and will make his headline debut at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium with four special sold-out shows next year: February 6, February 7, February 15 and February 16. See below for complete details.
These performances celebrate a landmark year for Childers, whose critically acclaimed new album Country Squire debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart with over 32,000 equivalent units sold. Released on Hickman Holler Records/RCA Records, the album was produced by Sturgill Simpson and David Ferguson and recorded The Butcher Shoppe in Nashville.

I’m a sucker for gleaming pop-country. Wal now, have you heard Sturgill's Sound and Fury yet? I just did, and right off, seems like this ZZ Rex electro-pop-boogie, sometimes also reminding me of Neil and the Trans Band (more the show tapes than studio album), might suit you too. It's much less soapbox ranty than I feared---and the non-pedantic retro detailing, commercial inclusiveness x righteous fencepost grievances x deserty-hot-cold broodiness, also that voice, keep it all country or countryoid. Also 'ppreciate how he keeps twisting the dial into another track at just the right moment, or close enough.

Have we consensus on the Tucker album? I prefer her "The Wheels of Laredo" to The Highwomen's (B. Carlisle produced and co-wrote both).

Haven't done any comparative listening, but that's a highlight of both albums. Most of hers seems disappointing so far: I prefer ain't sorry to weepy regrets, though straight-up regrets are okay too, because anybody who claims no regrets atall is bullshittin' or worse. Several strong ballads, though my fave rocks like Mellenncamp at his best: "Aw my story's so sad."

Also, re xpost Sturgill's approach: even more, or more surprisingly, personalized retro---"bespoke," right?--is to be found on most of Patty Griffin's current s/t--it's surprising to me because she's usually got a very distinctive style of composition, and these spare tracks---usually just her and a guitar and sometimes a bass, a couple voice-piano pieces, acoustic probably, although there is "The Wheel, " a grinding combo blues shuffle---at first seem a little too familiar, received, aside from the unfamiliar lack of sonic density and burnished imagery.
But after a couple of opening duds--despite the striking Spanish-style guitar, she keeps repeating the verse of "Mama's Worried" in a way that does not build momentum, and "River" is the woman-as-river bit that Howe Gelb did better---soon enough, her newly mumblecore-tending urgency has me leaning into my headphones, and for instance rushes the cool beat of "Hourglass," and rises through the Braziloid sunrise of "What I Remember," and hovers in the the canyon (piano pedals) twilight of "Luminous Places" and there's a couple near the end that are trademark PG-style after all, and really just about all of this is, mostly in a way I've near heard before (not that I've heard all of her albums).
Certainly preoccupied and restlessly-rooted Incl. sitting down) enough for some forms of country (also I'd like to hear the Dixie Chicks/Courtyard Hounds/solo Maines cover some of these).

I enjoyed the Tucker album a lot but i burn out after twenty minutes or so

The Tucker version of "Wheels of Laredo" is nice but a little flaccid

(it's my least fave song on the Highwomen alb, so I'm not very attached to it)

I like this song a lot:

Miranda Lambert - Pretty Bitchin'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O7-LrnEJCo

Yeah I wish she'd put out the album already, instead of making us wait 'til Nov.1.

As I dimly recall, Susan Gibson's "Wide Open Spaces" seemed even better in the context of Wayside, her band The Groobees' late-90s song cycle CD, than it did when covered by the Dixie Chicks (who I guess heard it via Nat's Dad/Groobees' producer, Lloyd Maines). Gibson's new The Hard Stuff certainly gets reliable support from producer-arranger Andre Moran, of the Belle Sounds, but so far she often seems too talky and wordy, before and after a midway trilogy: "The Big Game" prowls around her simple-minded (thus probably male) prey, who can't get a clue or two or more---"Why do you make it so harrd/For me to be easy?" Immediately followed by the cooler "Clinical Heart," which turns out not to be so different after all (it's time to pull that plug).
Winner of this year's Pistol Annies Memorial Why Has Nobody Ever Written A Song About This That I've Heard Before Award: "2 Fake IDs," checking into that old Memory Motel---"you could babysit me again"---but when the coplights came on, wasn't for them after all: " All the men scattered like roaches, all the whores got busted." Meanwhile, "It wasn't the first time, and it wasn't the last" that she and Babysitter practiced the art of deception, incl. on themselves and each other---"Ooo-ooo, Growin' Up," as Springsteen sang of.
(Oh yeah, anybody heard all of Western Stars? He said he'd been listening to a lot of Jimmy Webb, and the bits I've heard seemed like might be credible retro country crossover musing.)
She does work her extended metaphors, so I'll try the other tracks again, maybe get used to the delivery and mundane lines (She sings better when she writes better, for sure).

Sturgill-like in terms of immediately engaging ***sound*** and song-structures that fill it out, is none other than Justin Townes Earle's The Saint of Lost Causes, despite the title, which had me expecting not so much, although I didn't anyway----really enjoyed The Good Life, Midnight At the Movies (a favorite], and the sometimes startling Harlem River Blues, all of which are on his bandcamp---but albums of this decade seemed to lose or drain his precarious stance in slo-mo: "weary" was a word I used earlier in that process, and then "shoebox in the middle of the road," and couple of years ago, re Kids in the Street, "JT is but a bug on the windshield of life," so self-reduced did he seem.

But he was working on this sound then, getting it sometimes, and now there's a whole set, co-produced with Adam Bednarik, who also engineers, and plays acoustic and electric bass. It's an acoustic and electric, fluid and shiny and shaded, blue and brown sound I associate with Memphis and Mobile (although bandcamp still lists his address as Nashville, and that's in here too, why not): pedal steel and slide, some fingerpicking and strumming, bits of celeste, Wurlitzer piano, organ, stalwart drums & bass, no big solos, but an alert team. This groove, and the tunes, sometimes remind me little of Jesse Winchester, but JT doesn't have that little trill, he's more down-to-earth, without going too far into the semi-coherent referential murmur of some other 2010s offerings: he's---post-wasted, you might call it, without much of a hangover or rehab speak.

Even got some outside-world topics, like he wants somebody to give him some money, "I don't need no honey, I can make it all myself," and one about dealing with bad water, and one about Flint by name, in which Deetroit shouldn't get all the publicity, good and bad--he's right: blue-collar crossover stadium heroes Grand Funk Railroad were from there, and Akron's David Allan Coe was right to tour with them early on.

Anyway, dang, check it out:
https://justintownesearle.bandcamp.com/album/the-saint-of-lost-causes

Another pulsating combo, but not sonically suggesting proximity to a river, more likely a two-lane blacktop through the mountains: Kelsey Waldon's moderate-budgeteers, especially the unusually prowly but not too nosey pedal steeler Brent Resnick, bass guitarist Alex Newnam (sic), and drummer-percussionist Nate Felty, who plays, as does everybody here, with the unobtrusive precision of get-on-with-it confidence, just like their fearless leader, on her latest album, White Noise, White Lines.
2016's I've Got A Way was enthusiastically discussed on Rolling Country, but wasn't quite as together as this, seemed like. (They're both on her bandcamp, with an earlier one I haven't heard yet.) She sounds young, but she's been around---not too much of either: born in "Kentucky 1988," and Daddy don't always do right, she's on record about that, but so is he, and they love each other. As for the rest, here she jumps right into it:
When the sun sinks down and dreams start to drown/And you still don’t know who you are/Workin’ the ground, pace like a dog in a pound And you still only get so far/And I’d do it again, even if I didn’t know how.! Kind of her theme song, because she thinks trying to know it all is a big mistake.
Which goes in several directions, like "Sunday Children" ("are bein' lied to"), which sounds like Gil Scott-Heron, although the guest Wurlitzer piano helps.

Fave so far is "Very Old Barton":
My life is a song; my mind’s a picture show/You are the real thing, when you are alone/Drinkin’ Very Old Barton with the country radio/Always lonesome, and won’t let it go.
And if I knew any better, I’d know it’s a sin/ But some things are just better, without you knowin’ them...How can I be happy, how can I Iove today? Take hold of my own life, and not wish it away? Keep your loved ones close, don’t stay far behind...
Drinkin’ Very Old Barton with the country radio/Always lonesome, and too prideful to show/Have another go-round, don’t mind if I do/It’s just one of those things we all go through...
T
he only cover is the closer, "My Epitaph," by the late great Ola Belle Reed (with eerie, hospitable guitar reverb making me of Pop Staples):
When I go from this life, let me go in peace/I Don't want your marble at my head and feet/Don't gather around me oh just to weep and moan/Where that I'm going I won't be alone/
The flowers you give, please give them today/Don't waste their beauty on cold lifeless clay/One rose with love could do so much good.
https://kelseywaldon.bandcamp.com

Oh and Ola Wave, Ola's songs performed by her nephew, Zane Campbell, yet another mavericky mountain citizen:
https://zanecampbell.bandcamp.com/album/ola-wave

making me *think* of Pop Staples.

daddy's on the/this record, yes---not agreeing with her that he don't always do right, but telling somebody that he heard her on the radio, and sounding moved by that.

RIYL Margo Price and the Price Tags.

Somebody stole the Guit-Steel! (Well, one of them.)

https://www.savingcountrymusic.com/junior-browns-iconic-guit-steel-guitar-has-been-stolen/