Rolling Country 2022

https://www.whiskeyriff.com/2022/03/11/the-ernest-tubb-record-shop-a-downtown-nashville-landmark-is-closing-its-doors-after-71-years/

is there a catchall country thread? this is such a jam but from Cauthen's 2019 album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm5UZ0Ov9O0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ihKjq2iM5w like this tune from the new Hailey Whitters album, Raised

i don't know why this bothers me so much but it does, i hate how she undermines the rhyme in the chorus by stressing the first syllable instead of the second in "hometown."

new maren morris is about a billion times better than her last

i continue to be surprised that we don't have a thread for her

make one. i will stan

There's been a lot about her on previous Rolling Countrys, haven't heard the new album yet.
is there a catchall country thread?
O hell yes corrs, you've come to the right place.

Under xpost New (To Me) Country Faces on my imaginary 2021 Scene ballot upthread, I should have listed *Sam* Williams, not Tom (was I thinking of Thomas Lainer Williams AKA Tennessee? Or just a brainfart, more likely). And his mother just died---she was in the video for one of the fine tracks on his Glasshouse Children, where maybe he was discreetly alluding to their mutual(ly agreed on?) need for rehab. He's talented and insightful/talks a good game, reminding me of early Justin Townes Earle; here's hoping he does last as least as long.

catching up w email---excerpts from Maren press release:
Maren will perform on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” tonight, with appearances on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” and “The Howard Stern Show” to follow on March 28.
...Humble Quest features the much-lauded “Nervous,” “Background Music” and “Circles Around This Town,” which broke Amazon Music’s record for most streams for a country song debut by a female artist and is currently Top 20 and climbing at country airplay charts.
Humble Quest is receiving widespread critical acclaim…stupid blurbs follow, then:
Maren began writing the songs on Humble Quest in the beginning of the pandemic as a series of major life changes unfolded—new motherhood, an upended career, the death of beloved friend and collaborator Michael Busbee and more, further compounded by lockdown. She felt control over life quickly slipping until she had an epiphany—she was never in control in the first place. This inspired her to reckon with the concept of humility as she thought about how the goal of appearing humble puts artists, especially women, in a box with unrealistic demands. Humble Quest documents Maren’s journey to redefining humility on her own terms as a grounded state of understanding one’s own truth rather than the capacity to appear authentic to others.
Produced by frequent collaborator Greg Kurstin (Adele, Paul McCartney, Foo Fighters) and written alongside her husband Ryan Hurd, Julia Michaels, Jimmy Robbins, Natalie Hemby, Laura Veltz and Jon Green on Busbee’s piano, Humble Quest is Maren’s most genuine collection of songs, tracing her journey to embrace the imperfections in her life through snapshots of her rises and falls, overshares, lullabies, wine-soaked conversations with one old friend and a final goodbye to another one.
MAREN MORRIS LIVE doesn't look write in paste, see https://www.marenmorris.com/#tour Would most like to see one of those Midwestern shows w Hemby.

I look forward to listening to it, but man is Humble Quest a bad album title.

New Wilder Blue is great

March 28, 2022—10x GRAMMY-nominee Brandy Clark will embark on her international “The Art of the Storyteller Tour” this summer with headline dates in the U.S., Canada and Europe. See below for complete itinerary. Pre-sale tickets for the upcoming dates go on-sale this Tuesday, March 29 at 10:00am local time. Details for how to access the pre-sale can be found at www.brandyclarkmusic.com/tour. Tickets will go on-sale to the general public this Thursday, March 31 (UK/Europe) and Friday, April 1 (US/CAN).
Clark will also perform as part of “CMT Crossroads: LeAnn Rimes & Friends,” airing April 14 at 8:00pm ET/7:00pmCT in celebration of Rimes’ 25th career anniversary. In addition to Clark and Rimes, the all-female event lineup will also feature Ashley McBryde, Carly Pearce and Mickey Guyton performing songs from throughout Rimes’ career.
The upcoming performances add to a landmark year for Clark, who is nominated for two awards at the 64th Annual GRAMMY Awards: Song of the Year (“A Beautiful Noise” performed by Alicia Keys and Brandi Carlile) and Best American Roots Performance (“Same Devil” featuring Carlile). The live awards ceremony will be broadcast Sunday, April 3 at 8:00pm ET/7:00pm CT on CBS.

“THE ART OF THE STORYTELLER TOUR”
June 17—Montgomery, NY—City Winery
June 18—Holyoke, MA—Race Street Live
June 20—Homer, NY—Center for the Arts Homer
June 21—Toronto, ON—Great Hall
June 23—Ann Arbor, MI—The Ark
June 24—Gary, IN—Hard Rock Casino
June 25—Minneapolis, MN—Dakota Jazz Club
August 28—Lutterworth, UK—The Long Road Festival
August 29—Bristol, UK—St. George’s
August 31—London, UK—Indigo at the O2
September 1—Manchester, UK—RNCM Concert Hall
September 3—Dublin, Ireland—Whelan’s
September 4—Glasgow, UK—Old Fruitmarket
September 6—Sunderland, UK—The Fire Station
September 8—Amsterdam, Netherlands—Melkweg Upstairs
September 9—Hamburg, Germany—Nochtwache
September 10—Copenhagen, Denmark—Vega Small Hall
September 12—Oslo, Norway—Parkteatret
September 13—Stockholm, Sweden—Bryggarsalen
www.brandyclarkmusic.com
For more information, please contact
asha.goodman at sacksco.com
catherine.snead at sackso.com
carla at sacksco.com

will definitely catch that, thanks!

Out May 6th on Paradise of Bachelors: the reissues of Terry Allen and The Panhandle Mystery Band's early 80s albums, Smokin' the Dummy and Bloodlines.

Smokin' The Dummy
Terry Allen, in a 1981 letter to H.C. Westermann

Following the 1973 Whitney Biennial, in which songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen and fellow iconic artist Horace Clifford “Cliff” Westermann both exhibited, Allen maintained a lively long-distance correspondence and exchange of artworks and music with Westermann, whose singular and highly influential art he admired enormously. In a February 1981 letter to his friend and mentor, written shortly after the late 1980 release of his third album Smokin the Dummy, while he and his family were living in Fresno, California, Terry explains the genesis of the album title:

MY KID BUKKA GOT A CHARLIE MCCARTHY DOLL FOR CHRISTMAS ONE YEAR WHEN HE MADE UP HIS MIND HE WAS GOING TO BE A VENTRILOQUIST. HE IMMEDIATELY PAINTED IT UP TO LOOK LIKE A VAMPIRE ... AND I JUST AS IMMEDIATELY PUT ON A PAIR OF JO HARVEY'S SUNGLASSES AND THE SLEAZIEST JACKET I COULD FIND (western slime) AND SAT FOR FAMILY PHOTOS ... ANYWAY, I BLEW RINGS OF SMOKE ON THE DUMMY AND BUKKA SAID I WAS SMOKIN THE DUMMY.

I GUESS IT RANG SOME KIND OF DEMENTED BELL …

Westermann died shortly after receiving this letter, enclosed with a Smokin the Dummy LP, the minimalist black jacket of which Allen suggested that Cliff fold into a jaunty cardboard hat if he didn’t like the music. That response was unlikely, since Westermann loved Terry’s music, calling his debut record Juarez (1975) “the finest, most honest and heartfelt piece of music I ever heard.”

Recorded at Caldwell Studios in Allen’s hometown of Lubbock, Texas during the summer of 1980, exactly two years after his masterpiece Lubbock (on everything) (released in 1979) manifested in the same jury-rigged room, the feral follow-up is less conceptually focused but more sonically and stylistically unified than its predecessor. It’s also rougher and rowdier, wilder and more wired, and altogether more menacingly rock and roll. This was by design. The Panhandle Mystery Band had only recently coalesced during those 1978 Lubbock sessions, Lloyd Maines’s first foray into production. Through 1979, they honed their sound and tightened their arrangements with a series of periodic performances beyond Allen’s regular art-world circuit, including memorable record release concerts in Lubbock, Chicago, L.A., and Kansas City. Terry sought to harness the high-octane power of this now well-oiled collective engine to overdrive his songs into rawer and rockier off-road territory.

His first album to share top billing with the Panhandle Mystery Band, Dummy documents a ferocious new band in fully telepathic, tornado-fueled flight, refining its caliber, increasing its range, and never looking down. Alongside the stalwart Maines brothers—co-producer, guitarist, and all-rounder Lloyd, bassist Kenny, and drummer Donnie—and mainstay Richard Bowden (who here contributes not only fiddle but also mandolin, cello, and “truck noise theory,” the big-rig doppler effect of Lloyd’s steel on “Roll Truck Roll”), new addition Jesse Taylor supplies blistering lead guitar, on loan from Joe Ely (who plays harmonica here). Jesse’s kinetic blues lines and penchant for extreme volume—he was deaf in one ear from a near-fatal car accident—were instrumental in pushing these recordings into brisker tempos and tougher attitudes. Terry was feverish for several studio days, suffering from a bad flu and sweating through his clothes, which partially explains the literally febrile edge to his performances, rendered largely in a perma-growl. (By this point, he was regularly breaking piano pedals with his heavy-booted stomp.)

Like the album title itself, the songs on Smokin the Dummy ring various demented bells. The tracks rifle through Terry’s assorted obsessions—especially the potential energy and escape of the open road, elevated here to an ecstatic, prayerful pitch—and are populated by a cast of crooked characters: truckers, truck-stop waitresses, convicts, cokeheads, speed freaks, greasers, holy rollers, rodeo riders, dancehall cheaters, and sacrificial prairie dogs, sinners seeking some small reprieve, any fugitive moment of grace. In an echo of “Amarillo Highway (for Dave Hickey),” which opens Lubbock (on everything), “The Heart of California (for Lowell George),” another driving song and the first track of Dummy, is dedicated to Terry’s recently departed friend, the leader of Little Feat, who covered Allen’s “New Delhi Freight Train” before he died.

As on Lubbock, many other songs are older, culled from a decade and a half of songbooks, demos, and worktapes. Allen wrote “Red Bird,” a deceptively simple ditty that combines two longstanding fascinations—New Orleans and bird symbolism—as an art student in L.A. in 1964 and performed it on Shindig! the following year. He considered it his first “real” song worth keeping, and it rates as the personal favorite of many of his oldest friends, including Bruce Nauman. “Cocaine Cowboy,” composed in 1968, lent its title to a 1974 play by Allen’s colleague George Lewis, starring Terry’s wife and collaborator Jo Harvey and featuring his own dada-inspired costume designs, including a giant Gogolesque ambulatory nose wearing a cowboy hat. “Roll Truck Roll” and “The Night Cafe,” a diptych of automotive dramas, with counterpoint perspectives on the labor cultures of trucking and food service, both date to 1969. (During this era, Allen was a great enthusiast and denizen of diners, particularly Denny’s, and Jo Harvey wrote and performed a play called Counter Angel, based on her oral histories with truckstop waitresses.) The glowering, bruised 1975 rodeo song “Helena Montana” was inspired by his friend Dave Hickey’s fine rodeo number “Calgary Snow” and Terry’s impending participation in The Great American Rodeo exhibition at Forth Worth Art Museum the following year.

The other four songs, like the aforementioned “The Heart of California,” were of more recent vintage. One of only two covers in Allen’s catalog (the other is David Byrne’s “Buck Naked”), “Whatever Happened to Jesus (and Maybeline)?” interpolates Chuck Berry’s automotive lament within a skewed gospel song of Allen’s own devising, a characteristic imbrication of sacred and profane gestures. Allen completed the furiously frayed album closer “The Lubbock Tornado (I don’t know),” about the devastating 1970 tornado (still a painful local memory ten years later), in a hot Texas Tech practice room during the recording sessions. It takes the American vernacular tradition of disaster ballads into sinister and hilarious spaces, implicating governmental, religious, and alien conspiracies—including the Lubbock Lights—as possible meteorological motivations. In 1980, as in 2022, we can rationalize any calamity with conspiracy theories.

In other words, this is deathless American music. Play it again.

Terry Allen and The Panhandle Mystery Band

Bloodlines

Paradise of Bachelors

6 May 2022

I’ve never heard such a consistent assortment of unpopular styles.

– Dave Hickey, to Terry Allen, regarding his album Bloodlines, 1983

Since 1970, when they met in Allen’s studio in his hometown of Lubbock, Texas, one of songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen’s great foils and friends was the sometimes cantankerous but always brilliant art critic and writer Dave Hickey, with whom he sparred on topics musical, visual, and beyond (and to whom this reissue is dedicated in memoriam, in the wake of his passing in 2021.) Hickey, a fellow Texan paddling against the currents of the hermetic New York-centric art world, was an accomplished songwriter in his own right, and he and Terry pushed each other to refine their respective practices. In 1983, the two were thick as thieves—brothers in blood—and Hickey’s wry but big-hearted presence haunts the history and periphery of Bloodlines, the album Terry released in June of that year. Dave stood among the chorus of singers on the reprise of the title track that ends the record. Terry reprised the album cover concept, a detail of a painting of Jesus carrying a lamb that he found in the gutter outside a Lubbock botánica and manipulated, for Dave’s 1989 collection of youthful short stories, Prior Convictions—but with Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 bloody-bathtub painting “The Death of Marat” as a replacement savior. Hickey wrote the tour de force catalog essay for Allen’s 1983 solo exhibition Rooms and Stories, which featured, two months before the release of Bloodlines, the premiere of his theater piece Bleeder. Finally, there’s Hickey’s sardonic quip about the dim commercial prospects of Bloodlines. Buckets of blood and ink were spilled.

Hickey’s commercial doubts notwithstanding, critical recognition was not in short demand. In a 1984 review of Bloodlines, the L.A. Herald Examiner called Allen “one of the most compelling American songwriters working today … making the most unique art-pop of our time,” elsewhere comparing him not only to Moon Mullican and Jerry Lee Lewis, but also to the Velvet Underground and Philip Glass (probably the first time that unlikely quartet ever appeared together in one sentence). In 1983, against all odds, such sentiments were growing in underground prominence, as Allen’s records gained a fanatical word-of-mouth following—they weren’t easy to find in those days, so sometimes they existed only as a words-in-mouth—that began among fellow artists and within the rarefied air of the art world, and then, following the 1979 release of Lubbock (on everything), circulated farther afield, among musicians and fans of “outlaw country,” a loose (in all ways) subgenre and scene named in part for Hickey’s 1974 essay “In Defense of the Telecaster Cowboy Outlaws.” Allen’s early audiences included an outsized contingent of potters and bikers, due, respectively, to enthusiastic ceramicist friends and an unexpected endorsement of Smokin the Dummy (1980) in Easyriders magazine. The Rooms and Stories opening reception at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art was packed with leather-clad bikers.

On his manifold fourth album, Allen contemplates kinship—the ways sex and violence stitch and sever the ties of family, faith, and society—with skewering satire and affection alike. Bloodlines, which compiles thematically related but disparate recordings from miscellaneous sources both theatrical and historical, is itself kin to its predecessor Smokin the Dummy (chronologically and in terms of its Panhandle Mystery Band personnel and its wide-ranging subjects) and to its descendant, 1993’s The Silent Majority (Terry Allen’s Greatest Missed Hits) (which similarly anthologizes stray and orphan songs). Recorded piecemeal at Caldwell Studios in Lubbock, in sessions spanning August 1982 through January 1983, Terry self-released it, like all his previous records, on his own Fate Records imprint. Despite his frustration with the protracted timeline and some anxiety about the correspondingly higher budget, the production on Bloodlines—courtesy, once again, of master guitarist Lloyd Maines—is slicker, cleaner, and more dynamic than prior efforts, and it reached a broader audience than ever before. UK label Making Waves reissued it in 1985, facilitating semi-reliable European distribution for the first time as well as a 1986 UK tour, on which the great BJ Cole filled in for Lloyd on pedal steel.

Allen wrote two songs as themes for plays: the Pasadena idyll “Oh What a Dangerous Life” for Joan Hotchkiss’s 1982 play Bissie at the Baths and the gospel-coughing hymn “Hally Lou” for his wife and collaborator Jo Harvey Allen’s 1983 performance piece of the same name, in which she plays the titular revival preacher. Bloodlines is the first of several albums to revisit selections from Terry’s 1975 debut Juarez with full-band arrangements: a comic take on “Cantina Carlotta” that inhabits the tone-deaf tourist’s perspective of the hapless narrator, and a terrifying road-rage, burnt-rubber rendition of “There Oughta Be a Law About Sunny Southern California” featuring Jesse Taylor, in his final Panhandle Mystery Band recording, on “asphalt vendetta guitar” (Maines Brothers guitarist Cary Banks deftly handles lead guitar elsewhere). The irreverent hellfire-hitchhiker-on-highway ballad “Gimme a Ride to Heaven Boy” (featuring Joe Ely), in which Jesus steals the narrator’s car and beer for a joyride to the hereafter, remains a fan favorite. Terry wrote the final verses in a Texas Tech practice room the day they recorded it. “Manhattan Bluebird,” a surprisingly earnest (and unexpectedly moving) lament for the cultural insularity and provincialism of a New Yorker deluded by her own alleged cosmopolitanism, boasts one of Allen’s most beautiful minor-key melodies. On tour in Belfast in 1996, Allen’s tourmates feared “Ourland,” a thinly veiled satire of the IRA’s hypocrisy amid the Troubles in Northern Ireland, would incite a riot and urged him not to play it. Of course, he didn’t listen.

Lloyd Maines wept when Terry first played him the poignant eponymous ode to the arteries of ancestry and landscape, which sounds as ancient and eternal as a psalm. But that didn’t stop Lloyd from complaining about having too large a chorus on the album-closing extended version (he’s a notorious stickler for tuning and pitch). Twenty-five friends and family members packed the studio that day, including Dave Hickey, Joe and Sharon Ely, and Stubb of BBQ fame. “Bloodlines II” represents the recorded debuts of the Allens’ sons Bukka and Bale as well as Lloyd’s eight-year-old daughter Natalie Maines, later of the (Dixie) Chicks—a true testament to the power of blood. In 1998 Lucinda Williams covered it in a spookily spare version on Allen’s soundtrack for Jane Anderson’s film Baby Dance, starring Laura Dern and Stockard Channing. As the credits roll, the river runs through the mountains, under the moonlight. Hear the song.

Terry reprised the album cover concept, a detail of a painting of Jesus carrying a lamb that he found in the gutter outside a Lubbock botánica and manipulated, for Dave’s 1989 collection of youthful short stories, Prior Convictions—but with Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 bloody-bathtub painting “The Death of Marat” as a replacement savior.

Two advance singles ("The Heart of California (for Lowell George)" and "Gimme a Ride to Heaven Boy") are out now on all DSPs and no additional singles will be released ahead of May 6th.

"The Heart of California (for Lowell George)" https://lnk.to/PoB65

http://lnk.to/PoB65

"Gimme a Ride to Heaven Boy" https://lnk.to/PoB66

http://lnk.to/PoB66

Sorry, thought that would show the videos---follow these links for those, and for the audio streams on various services.

i meant to post this a week or two ago — Maren Morris covered Fiona Apple’s Criminal in her NYC showcase that aired on Amazon Prime, Twitch etc on March 26

this clip isnt the best quality but god she killed it

@MarenMorris covering #FionaApple Criminal is something I didn’t realize I needed in my life. What a cover! pic.twitter.com/FiuwfjXKW7

— Scott Rosen (@DaScottyMac) March 27, 2022

Thanks VG! Maybe Fiona will return the compliment.

Country-adjacent

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 14, 2022

AMERICANA RAILROAD, A COLLECTION OF SONGS CELEBRATING THE HISTORY OF TRAINS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE VIA RENEW/BMG ON JUNE 17.

The album features tracks from John Fogerty, Dave Alvin, Rocky Burnette, Dom Flemons, Stephen McCarthy, Carla Olson and more.

Album promo video featuring multiple tracks here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7GEf2fmg1Y

LOS ANGELES, CA -- The idea of a new album of traditional and contemporary railroad songs had been percolating for a decade or so before recording began for Americana Railroad. After talking about artists and songs and label partner possibilities every few years producers Carla Olson and Saul Davis decided to just begin and see what was possible.

The first artist asked was Stephen McCarthy (Dream Syndicate, Jayhawks, Long Ryders) to see if he would be interested in such a project, followed by Robert Rex Waller Jr (I See Hawks In L.A.), John York (Byrds), Dave Alvin, Rocky Burnette, Gary Myrick and James Intveld. Rock’n’roll, Rockabilly, Americana ~ the genre or category is for the listener to decide. The goal was simple – railroad songs performed by great expressive artists.

After recording the nine tracks that Carla produced, the thought turned to locating a record company partner.

Executive David Hirshland noted, “When Saul brought this to me for possible release by Renew / BMG it instantly made sense. There is such a deep history of trains in the American musical canon I felt that we should expand the project and get more artists on board. Every artist we subsequently approached was eager to join in.”

Since the overwhelming number of train songs requires hard choices, this anthology’s selections attempt to cover significant historical ground. Elizabeth Cotton’s “Freight” Train is covered lovingly by A.J .Haynes in a style evocative of the ‘50’s in which it was written. Dom Flemons takes the true story of ex-slave and Pullman porter Nat Love (aka Deadwood Dick) and spins it into a narrative of spiritual survival and ultimately triumph via original track “Steel Pony Blues.” Steve Goodman’s epic “City of New Orleans,” a portrait of the disintegration of an entire way of life, is given added poignancy by John Fogerty’s vocals and Micky Raphael’s harmonica. Peter Case’s treatment of “This Train” echoes Woody Guthrie and the world of depression era America. Americana Railroad is thus meant to entertain and educate albeit subtly.


Prior to Americana Railroad’s June 17, 2022 CD and digital release, it was issued as a limited edition vinyl piece for Record Store Day in November 2021.

Producer/performer Carla Olson observed that “Growing up in Austin, Texas during the 1950s the fascination with trains was the stuff childhood dreams were made of. Walking home from school the temptation to put your ear to the track to hear if the train was close was a daily routine. We lived five blocks from the railway and heard the whistle of the trains well into the night. For some the call was a way to escape small town blues, for others thoughts of exotic destinations lured many to hop a freight and disappear over the horizon. The Americana Railroad album is a collection of both history and metaphor for your listening and thought provoking pleasure.”

Full track listing with songwriter credit notated in parenthesis and performers and special guests:

Here Comes That Train Again ~ (Stephen McCarthy)
Stephen McCarthy & Carla Olson

The Conductor Wore Black ~ (Chip Kinman, Tony Kinman)
Robert Rex Waller Jr with Chip Kinman on guitar

Mystery Train ~ (Herman Parker, Sam C. Philips) ~
Rocky Burnette with Barry Goldberg on piano

This Train ~ (traditional, arranged by Sister Rosetta Tharpe)
Peter Case

City Of New Orleans ~ (Steve Goodman) ~
John Fogerty with Mickey Raphael on harmonica

Marrakesh Express ~ (Graham Nash)
Dustbowl Revival

Train Leaves Here This Morning ~ (Gene Clark, Bernie Leadon)
Kai Clark with Byron Berline on fiddle

Train Kept A-Rollin’ ~ (Tiny Bradshaw, Howie Kay,
Sydney Nathan)
Gary Myrick

Southwest Chief ~ (Dave Alvin)
Dave Alvin


500 Miles ~ (Hedy West)
Alice Howe

People Get Ready ~ (Curtis Mayfield)
Deborah Poppink

Steel Pony Blues ~ (Dom Flemons)
Dom Flemons

Runaway Train ~ (John Stewart)
John York

Waiting For A Train ~ (Jimmie Rodgers)
Paul Burch & Fats Kaplin

Freight Train ~ (Elizabeth Cotton)
AJ Haynes of Seratones

Whiskey Train ~ (Keith Reid, Robin Trower)
Carla Olson & Brian Ray

Mystery Train ~ (Herman Parker, Sam C. Phillips)
James Intveld with Barry Goldberg on Hammond B3 organ

Midnight Rail ~ (Steve Young)
Robert Rex Waller Jr with Todd Wolfe on guitars

I Remember The Railroad ~ (Gene Clark)
Stephen McCarthy & Carla Olson

Chr*s Richards in Washington Post re new Jason Aldean: he kinda likes the album, while disliking Aldean.

Some excerpts--

This has to be the most handsome music of Aldean’s career. Hunched over some neon-drenched bar, the singer narrates a variety of pressing-the-bruise ballads with a lucidity that makes his previous signatures — the rock-tinted bluster of “Hicktown,” the halfhearted quasi-rapping on “Dirt Road Anthem” — feel teeny-tiny in the rearview. As a pair, “Macon” and “Georgia” don’t feel leaden and ponderous like a “mature” album might. They’re focused. So much so, that a rare glimpse of the outside world comes halfway through “Macon” during “Story for Another Glass,” when Aldean says he’s willing to make chitchat about “politics, religion — man, anything, I don’t care,” so long as he doesn’t have to talk about “why I’m here and why she ain’t.”
....There’s a tail-chasing poetry to someone who speaks out against mask mandates donating millions to a hospital — and that dissonance feels even sharper in the cool shadow of Aldean’s anodyne new music, let alone the slick pleasantries of country music writ large. Why does modern country music, a musical community that purportedly celebrates everyday American lives, not do more to protect those lives?....

He’s shrewd to let his wife, a tenacious Instagram influencer, do the heaviest lifting. Among the various T-shirts Brittany has peddled on Instagram, one reads, “THIS IS OUR F-ING COUNTRY.” Are we supposed to believe that these “Let’s go Brandon”-types mean what they’re saying when they’re too afraid to use the actual words? And who’s the “our” in that sentence? Even if the shirt weren’t a racist dog whistle, it still caters to the ugly idea that America belongs to some, not all.

And it clashes with Aldean’s tidy musical self-image, too. In a news release hyping the arrival of “Macon,” Aldean gave thanks for the musical influence of his multicultural hometown: “Growing up in an environment that was a crossroads between country music, Southern rock, blues and R&B, it was just natural to blend different sounds in my own way.” So inclusion is good for the Aldean family when they’re turning it into royalty money, but not so good when they’re trying to make merch money....

This music doesn’t necessarily sound hypocritical, though. It appears to have no ideology, no agenda, ...In his heartsick confusion, the song’s narrator is deflecting responsibility for what might happen next. I can’t decide whether it’s funny or sad how credible Aldean sounds singing these words.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/04/22/jason-aldean-album-review/

Enjoying the new Charley Crockett covers album

saw Charley recently and could not believe how many people were there, how far in advance it sold out, and how many people were online desperately seeking tickets.

my takeaway was that he is somehow a couple years away from playing theaters/amphitheaters?!

dude's traveling on a couple of sweet tour buses, too.

He is apparently going to be featured on CBS Saturday morning show tomorrow - pretty prominent national coverage! Funny that it's on the occasion of a covers album though.

Here’s that Charley Crockett profile - lots of details about his life I didn’t know. https://www.cbsnews.com/video/charley-crocketts-hard-times-inspire-soulful-genre-defying-music/

Crockett's kind of the Roots/Americana guy _we need_ right now.

Seeing that footage of him in his early days busking on the subway, and also hearing his earliest albums which are much bluesier... man I am really glad he found his voice/persona.

yeah it was really interesting / weird seeing him out of the persona that we know ... a testament to how well he plays it, i think.

That was an interesting feature on Crockett. Nice

PATTY GRIFFIN
TAPE
(PGM Recordings/Thirty Tigers)
Release Dates:
Friday, June 10 (CD, Digital Download, Streaming)
Friday, June 17 (Cassette)

“At some point in the pandemic, I was digging through my own music streaming to relearn some of my own oldies and found something that had been compiled (perhaps by a computer algorithm) that was titled as a ‘rarities’ or ‘deep cuts’ collection,” Griffin says. “I looked of course, and it was a pretty boring list for the most part. I later dug through some recordings I had done on cheap home recording apps, including my favorite one called TapeDeck which I’m not sure exists anymore. I really liked some of the songs. They were better than I had remembered. I dug around some more and found things from some GarageBand recordings, and then also a couple of things from an in-studio demo session in Nashville that were pretty interesting, including a duet I did with Robert Plant when we first met. It all seemed worth listening to. Back then I didn’t think so, but I do now.

“The sound quality on the majority of things on TAPE is pretty low, but the performances are what really matter to me. My home recordings are almost always my favorite recordings, as far as capturing a fresh, direct feeling. The shy introvert’s dilemma…I’ve always had a hard time creating that same feeling in a studio full of people whose talent is in sound quality. These songs have a feel you can only get when you’re by yourself at three o’clock in the morning. To listen to the bulk of these recordings, you do have to let go of the idea of good sound quality and just listen to the performance. I feel better getting some true rarities out there for people to listen to…not compiled by a computer algorithm.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U2kkSByUsY

“Don’t Think Jesus” is one of five Hot 100 entries this week bearing Wallen’s name, tied with Doja Cat for the most of any artist. Oh, and lest we forget, well over a year past its initial release, Dangerous is still No. 2 on the Billboard 200 — perhaps just a Tyler, the Creator vinyl shipment delay from returning to No. 1 this week for the first time since March 2021, for the 11th total frame.

https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/morgan-wallen-dont-think-jesus-five-burning-questions-1235063588/

So, via WaPo syndication in Birmingham News, I came across the whole long xpost Chris Richards review of Aldean's latest, and maybe I'll give it a listen, maybe---hesitation is not about his current out-of-studio political stance, but prevalence of thinkin' and drinkin' songs---Wallen does find something unexpectedly ear-grabbing in some (some) tracks of the longass Dangerous, but Aldean isn't that crazy, at least publicly. I knew I was tiredass of this classick approach when I couldn't even make it all the way through my first listen to the long-awaited-by-me 2021 Gary Allan album. Should try again, but mainly I guess I was spoiled by Gary Stewart in the 70s, and stayed that way, as described in my ancient Voice piece, when he'd just killed himself, right after the release of Live At Billy Bob's (overall effective, in a way that was spooky even before his death was announced):

Once upon a time, he was Dr. Fun and Mr.
Doom (and self-awareness, and headlonging), simultaneously. Stewart still sounds impossibly corny, truly inspired, while flourishing and flinging single notes and phrases all the way through Out of Hand/Your Place or
Mine, his two best LPs on one CD. Songs flash by like whole lives, but really
they're just his moments, ticking away.
Billy Bob's cuts like "An Empty Glass (That's the Way the Day Ends)" turn the tides
down like blankets, till I'm bathed in (pace tua, St. Sade) the *truly* sweetest taboo (of self-pity).
Tiring, soothing. I just stare through his stare, on the rocks, as he
imagines/avoids/follows her stare. "Maybe you feel cheated, for having married so young,"
he mutters to self and/or significant other (wed in their mid-teens, forty-odd years ago now), while shifting on his bar
stool, in the still-rousing "Ten Years of This." ("A million nights alone!") So:
Mebbe getting married is cheating? No! Not always!

Yeah, flashbacks getting intense---the drinkin'-thinkin' songs on Alan Jackson's 2021 return album, Where Have You Gone mostly work, helped by title track opening with theme that is up front meta-country: He's calling out to his kind of hat trad country, him and the steel guitar, so it's also an effective demonstration of what he's missing in today's country---which of course is also a familiar meta-theme, and his thinkin' drinkin' songs play the angles effectively, like good trad product should, while his vocals and the Nashville Cats apply seductive salesmanship---even though his neat, discreet delivery has me skeptical about how much drinking he's ever done, in a risky way---he still sounds so clean-cut---but if it's more thinkin' about drinkin' while measuring, that's okay too, for this sly one: "I Can Be That Something" soon slips in, among the suggested options, "I can be your whiskey," like he's the one staying sober enough to time this right: he can be your blond-mustached rehab or at least maintenance love guru: transfer to him, darlin', not that ol' cocaine or mary jane.
I did like "Hicksville,"but somehow I don't think the somewhut grunty Aldean is up to something comparable in sheer ear appeal or conceptual interest to any of this, though maybe I'll give his latest a try.

One of my nieces is at Stagecoach fest. Her IG story said she enjoyed Maren Morris

https://www.billboard.com/music/country/stagecoach-2022-day-one-highlights-thomas-rhett-maren-morris-1235065213/

Chxckx Eddyx says YEA: Miranda Lambert: Palomino (Vanner/RCA) 8; Priscilla Block: Welcome to the Block Party Mercury Nashville/InDent) 7;

riyl Jason Molina / Songs:Ohia / MEC

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mj-lenderman-boat-songs/

one of my favorite albums of the year so far ^^

stunned/happy to see it get BNM

On Billboard Music Awards tonight a Miranda Lambert & Elle King raw ( or sloppy depending on pov) duet; Dan & Shay; and Morgan Wallen first appearance on an award show since before his n word incident. He did a 2 song medley

Wallen also won an award for best male country singer

bleuch

Wallen's thank you speech was bland and made no mention of remorse or learning anything from his recent past.

Sean P-Diddy was the host and he insisted that Wallen and Travis Scott both get to appear and perform

Discovered via Spotify algorithm, so I feel a little dirty, but I’m enjoying this new album by S.G. Goodman.

https://open.spotify.com/album/5fXIv2d6FP5hSTYThKREZH?si=D40IRlq2Tz2gY90gFJB4Fg

can relate to that feeling

sounds good

Thanks - didn't know there was a new one. "Space and Time" from the last album floored me on first listen.

I'll search that out, thanks Indexed

"When You Say It" is the one that's really getting me on the new one.

Yeah, looking fwd to new alb---here's my RC comments added to blogged version of Scene ballot re 2020:

Good'uns Added After Ballot Deadline/Subjects For Further Study:

S. G. Goodman: Old Time Feeling---Appalachoid high lonesome--associated pitch and power rising bullseye from the persistent and fully occupied folds of fog-smog topography: like The Croz before him, on Joni Mitcherll's debut, Goodman's co-producer Jim James refrains from loading this launch with heavy big-name guests---just close mics That Voice and jumps back. Oh, it gets a bit of echo sometimes, and the swirl of low-reflective resonance also brushes by reverb-y guitar (which can come apart sideways when appropriate), pedal steel, bass, drums (she told Rolling Stone she was inspired by Link Wray's '71 s/t, one of his chicken coop sets)---but mainly That Voice, which is youthful but also one of experience, like debut Joni, with plenty to remember and offload, seeking some relief, but not miserabilist nor wrecking ball, just personalised fragments, scenes, phrases coming toward the brink of clarity---somewhat like early Neko on Bloodshot, when she was covering and writing between Loretta Lynn and Scott Walker. Could imagine Goodman working with Brandi Carlile, the Highwomen, whomever, though for now is still Murray KY collegetown-based apparently. (Before this solo, worked as The Savage Radley with a collaborator who was also a drummer; she's gotta have a drummer, as do my ears)

Listening to the Adeem record. Can't believe "Books & Records" isn't a Lori McKenna tune.

that is a terrific record ... good the first time, and growing on me, too.

Yeah, I wanna check Tivel too, thanks for the encouragememt!
Good point about McKenna, wonder if she's heard Akeem? The word is spreading among Akeem-inclined listeners, for sure.
Reminds me:the McKennaesque combo of kitchen sink realism x dynamics has been growing on me every time I listen to the Kaitlin Butts EP.
(Warning! Do not do this on a Windows 7 Dell laptop---go straight to the library and TURN IT UP on a Dell Windows 10 desktop. On the former, her voice sounds little and thin and crowded by the band.)

Properly heard (via new $30.00 Koss over-ear cans), she has no prob finding room, even when in the nasty, roiling, rippling regular guitar and steel guitar hallways of "Jackson." The band even saves the one substandard script, the title song, which is as static as the life it describes. The backing drone and guitar break of "She's Using Again" have a narcotic trace, and Butts esp. scores w mention of "getting straight," getting normie functional enough to do whatever you gotta do, esp. re: scoring again, and again. This not so much scolding or even complaining, just once again observing (to someone who really isn't listening) how you're doing this again: the observer, who seems to have a close connection (now changed) to the user, has to some extent become part of the routine, the normalization.
Which goes well with "Blood"'s "You're in my veins, " as the cyclic music rises, like xpost "So This is Christmas" ("And what have you done"), yes, and "Stewball" before it. This is the one where I also started hearing her as filling the Iris DeMent gap---suffering a little by comparison, since she doesn't have DeMent's somewhat impulsive way with phrasing, like she's thinking about driving the County Bookmobile somewhere way off---but Iris ain't here, so I'll take it, and would anyway.

Nevertheless, also can't help noticing, from the first minute of the first listen, that Ingrid Andress sounds like nobody I can think of but herself, while leaping from peak to peak on Good Person (she's suddenly struck by that phrase, even wheels around to ask somebody what that's like, and did they ever do anything bad [sounds like she's wondering if you can do that and what is it if you can also still be good, as considered by yourself and others: she does give you room and inclination to think about stuff like that, with breadcrumbs in the whirlwind).

Also bounces phrases off intractable and/or impassive love-hate objects (and even ones that ask wtf: well, since you've asked, she'll come out of her shell)(for instance busting a steady for cheating on her with her younger self), also bouncing them off intractability itself: "My parents have lived in the same house for almost 40 years now, and the only time they were ever on the same page, it was in their high school yearbook." Ha, good one, next (what are they gonna say to that? "No!" "I tried!" "Duh!" Anything?)

But the real test is, will the country pop sonic revelry (sorry, Akeem) turn to mush when she starts being breadcrumbed back to the new love experience? No. Although I won't say just how that goes (Merry Whatever, Happy New Year, and good luck to all concerned, as always).

This is the one where I also started hearing her as filling the Iris DeMent gap---suffering a little by comparison, since she doesn't have DeMent's somewhat impulsive way with phrasing, like she's thinking about driving the County Bookmobile somewhere way off---but Iris ain't here, so I'll take it, and would anyway.

Well I'll be..

Wow, yall right about Anna Tivel, damn. People at a crossroads, living there, wherever they go, incl. back to bed. Despite some small electric appliances with the finger-picking, sounds less like Americana per se than Oregon country: the rain, the city, timberland, desert, roads, schoolbook images of the Trail not too far away. Wondering if some songs will seem too similar, but so far I notice that each one has its own details, as written, performed (incl. by uncredited players), recorded. Bandcamp has the lyrics, which aren't strictly necessary--what a sound---but good to get more detail right away:
https://annativel.bandcamp.com/album/outsiders

https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/zach-bryan-drops-live-album-titled-all-my-homies-hate-ticketmaster-while-vowing-to-find-ticketing-work-around-for-2023-tour/ar-AA15EJDi

No Dep Readers Poll:
https://www.nodepression.com/no-depression-readers-50-favorite-roots-music-album-of-2022/ 50! That's a lotta unpaid work.

Their Writers Poll:
https://www.nodepression.com/critics-poll-nd-writers-favorite-roots-music-albums-of-2022?utm_source=No+Depression+Newsletter&utm_campaign=212c25f0a4-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_12_27_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_659325596f-212c25f0a4-226384157&mc_cid=212c25f0a4&mc_eid=b850f832a1

Hot on the heels of our annual Readers Poll, we checked in with No Depression’s staff and contributors to get their takes on the best roots music albums released in 2022.

As usually happens, there’s only a little overlap between the two polls, but the good news is everybody’s right, and everybody wins.

Put cursor over title, see vid:
https://folkalley.com/top-25-favorites-of-2022-listener-poll-results/

Heard Anna Tivel's "Heroes" on the Saving Country Music SOTY playlist -- truly excellent, and am excited to dig into the album.

Have spent more time with Adeem -- can't shake this feeling that a few of his tunes are straight Lori McKenna knock offs.