Rolling Country 2006 Thread

OK, I want FRANK to listen to this one and figure it out. Are you out there, Frank? Three harmonizing Christian sisters who seem to want to look like the Dixie Chicks, all majoring in music at the University of Arizona, none of whom EVER seem to smile in any of their pictures. The first SEVEN (out of ten) songs on their album, including their uncharacteristically (at least comparatively) upbeat cover of "Ticket to Ride", all seem to be breakup songs. The first few, especially, strike me as very very dark, not to mention souped up with tons of Jim Steinman doing Bonnie Tyler melodrama. Opener "You're All I See" is the most over-the-top bombastic of all, but the close triple harmonies in it (is this a classical-training thing? a puritan Protestant church choir thing?) come off to me almost like some *Saturday Night Live* EZ-listening skit making fun of middle-aged ladies and their square square music, and its words are about going insane and feeling like you're locked in a cage in the heat of the desert, and after a stab at Spanish guitars, at the end the harmonies climb toward an almost operatic climax. Second song, right off the bat, concerns a disabled person and a suicide, so even darker, and though angels save the day they don't make the song any more cheerful. Next few songs are almost as dour, though "Marble Rain" seems to have a little bit of Stylistics or something in its melody, and the mood picks up a little for "Ticket to Ride" then the quite poppy "Between the Lines," which are still breakup songs nonetheless as far as I can tell, so by then you're wondering if they all broke up with the same guy (Jesus, maybe??); either way, they've got issues and they seem to want us to know it. Finally track 8 "Arizona Sunsets" is about finding an escape from climbing the ladder of success to the glass ceiling (they actually say "ceiling"), and the album closest with its funkiest track, a cover of Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You" which, like the Beatles cover, is forgettable but not bad. Their cdbaby page seems to suggest they self-identify as country (where else would they find an audience these days?), but I honestly don't hear much country here. And I honestly don't LIKE it much, but I'm still kind of in awe -- especially of that first song, which strikes me as fairly ridiculous, but also fully audacious in a way that I may not quite be getting.

..'cause you're haunted by the memory of the dude you just broke up with, and no matter what you do you can't shake the obsession (i meant to say.)

Sounds to me like an Auto-Tune thing. It's kinda hard to tell though over the net, but the harmonies have that flattened out quality. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I guess, but I'm not sure it's so good either. I like the version of "Ticket to Ride" though.

Her intentions are admirable, but the sign outside her mind reads Vacancy.

..and her single "country music love song" just entered the country chart at #59. (i got 2 billboards in the mail in the 2 days! hot apple pie as lionel now up to 54, carrie underwear i mean underwood keying cars up to 57, milsap down to 60). but i want to hear bomshel!)

god is nashville star boring

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 4, 2006

SARA EVANS AND WRITERS OF NEW SINGLE “COALMINE” BAND TOGETHER WITH RECORD
LABEL AND PUBLISHERS TO AID WEST VIRGINIA FAMILIES

April 4, 2006 -- Multi-platinum country superstar Sara Evans has joined
forces with her record label, RCA Records; writers Ron Harbin, Richie McDonald and
Roxie Dean; and publishers Harbinism.com Music, Sony/ATV Music Publishing and
Zomba Music Publishing to donate a portion of the proceeds from with her new
single “Coalmine” to a life needs/education fund for the families of the Sego
mine disaster in West Virginia.

Evans, currently on tour with label mate Brad Paisley, recently performed in
Morgantown, WV where they invited the families of the Sego mine disaster to
attend a special reception followed by the concert. Having spent time with
these families, Evans was moved by their strength and decided that she wanted to
find a way to contribute.

"It is truly a blessing that because of this song, so many different people
are able to come together to contribute to these families who have been through
so much," said Sara Evans.

The songwriters of “Coalmine,” Ron Harbin, Richie McDonald and Roxie Dean,
were also watching and reading about the Sego disaster and began to look for a
way to help out. Upon hearing that “Coalmine” would be the next single from
Evans’ album Real Fine Place, they contacted Evans’ management and record
label stating that they would like to donate a portion of the proceeds from this
record to the West Virginia families. RCA Records, Harbinism.com Music,
Sony/ATV Music Publishing and Zomba Music Publishing, a division of BMG Music
Publishing, were immediately on board to contribute as well.

“Ron, Roxie and I were saddened as we watched the news in West Virginia
unfold,” commented Richie McDonald. “When our song was chosen as the next single
for Sara Evans, we immediately knew that this was our chance to help make a
difference for these families who have been through so much.”

Working with West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin’s office, a foundation was
identified that will help the families with everyday needs as well as lend
assistance with their children’s education. Anyone who would like to make a
personal contribution can do so by purchasing a commercial digital download of
“Coalmine” available at iTunes, Walmart Digital Downloads, Napster, Real/Rhapsody,
MusicMatch, Microsoft, SonyConnect and Y! Music. A portion of the proceeds
from all digital downloads will contribute to the fund.

anthony, are you refering to the wooden shoes bit?

http://cdbaby.com/cd/lucasmccain

Lucas McCain, *New Horizon,* yet another excellent cdbaby Southern rock/country-metal album (from Georgia this time) nobody's gonna care about but me and George, though others should. 2006 copyright, too! Anyway, a brief rundown: "New Horizon" (Skynyrdesque gimme-three-steps boogie woogie, they totally know how to dance), "Long Hot Summer Night" (Mellencamp/Adams '80s-style words, riff somewhere between "Run to You" and "Money for Nothing" but heavier + more boogiefied), Home On their Minds" (lament honoring the troops, hoping for peace in a strange land with death all around them), "Gimme Some of That" (funky rock namedropping Bocephus and Skynyrd and saying no-sell-out and we miss that old time rock and roll it's the music that saves our soul), "One Bad Love (Don't Make It Bad)" (divorce lament suggesting, no kidding, John Conlee leading the Marshall Tucker Band), "Does Anybody Care" (gutbust lament where the vocal verges into Eddie Vedder territory though that's just 'cause, as I believe Frank Kogan observed in *Radio On* many years ago, Vedder sang like David Clayton-Thomas; beautiful twin-guitar ending), "Concrete Cowboy" (Charlie Daniels doing "Legend of Wooley Swamp"-style rapneck), "Working on Tomorrow" (riff recalling Eddie Money's "I Think I'm in Love" only heavier.) And there's a couple other songs too (and many other lovely guitar parts).

I also love that they've opened for both Mother's Finest and the Kentucky Headhunters, that's very cool.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0404061_hank_williams_1.html

Australian Angel City fan Leanne Kingwell's "More" (not nearly one of her most rocking songs, but still) is allegedly getting played on terrestrial country stations in Stillwater, OK (KGFY) and Sheridan, WY (KYTI), not to mention Internet stations LexCountry out of Lexington KY and USA Radio Country out of Eagle, ID. I mentioned her cdbaby album, which I love, on the metal and teen-pop threads, but oddly did not think to mention it here. So I'm gonna cut and paste in a sec.

so, stop the presses, this album from australia is what avril and kelly (and uh, maybe even ashlee and skye and hope) *should* sound like. which is to say, like the first-album divinyls except less arty and more consistently catchy and funny and sexy, often (in "you stink" and the great and hilarious and furious cheated-on-revenge single "holding your gun" for instance) doing a fast mott the hoople (or angel city?) boogie-woogie hard rock under thick guitar buzz. the *gun* EP threw me at first because it opens with leanne kingwell (that's her name, remember it) doing two power ballads (one of them apparently a cover, since it's credited to john watts and the lyrics aren't in the lyric booklet of the album) with prim and proper aussie pronunciation like for instance pronouncing "france" "frontz", but in the course of the album (now called *show ya what,* which seems to be mostly a reissue of the 2005 album that's up on cdbaby, with "holding your gun" replacing "back to me" and the track order shuffled) the ballads make way more sense, partially by being less plentiful...and okay, i also just noticed that the track "be with you" is credited to brewster/brewster/neeson, which means i was RIGHT about the angel city comparison. "blind" is credited to one james stewart; the rest are kingwell herself. "drop your pants" starts out like "hey little girl" by the syndicate of sound (which the divinyls covered), then gets tougher and thicker, like the sonics, but the effect isn't '60s garage rock nostalgia at all, probably because leann's vocals (basically, she sings a lot like christina amphlett at her most rocking) are the most powerful element in the mix. and also maybe as a tribute to christina, in "my hero" she touches herself. with her vibrator. which is better than you. predicton (probably premature, but who cares, what else is new with me): *show ya what* could wind up being one of the best albums of 2006; "holding your gun" might be one of the best singles.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/kingwell

http://cdbaby.com/cd/kingwell2

-- xhuxk (xedd...), March 28th, 2006.

okay, didn't notice these; she's even cooler than i thought:

>"I saw The Angels gig at the Palace in 2000 and it absolutely knocked me out. I was one of a dozen girls in a room of about 1500 guys who just went off and knew the words to every song. That gig got me thinking about how to create some kick arse rock n' roll that girls would dig as much as guys."<

>A four track EP featuring a cover of Fischer Z's 1980 smash "So Long" plus 2 originals.<

and yeah (as reviews on those pages say) i definitely hear the easybeats and suzi quatro in there, too.

-- xhuxkx (xedd...), March 28th, 2006.

On the cover the new CD the last three songs are called "Bus Songs Session #2," so yeah, I guess this is the only time he's done it besides *Shock N Y'all.* And I meant to steal Frank's "escape hatch" metaphor in regards to these, not his "trap door" metaphor. Though I guess it's more honest than coming up with an entirely different alter ego, like David Allan Coe and Clarence Reid have done. (Not that Toby has ever done anything approaching the outrageousness of those guys' sideline stuff.)

an unrelated amusing anecdote
hes also working w. bochephus, and lives in the old hank/audery home--which apparently is civil war old, so hank jr and tim mcgraw try to figure out which bullet holes are "civl war or hank/audrey war'

don -- cute lil ashley monroe came into the office yesterday. has the sharp nuance of dolly. she's 19 and i really wanted to hate her but could not.

WHY OH WHY CAN'T THIS BE TRUE.

random thoughts/questions:

Saw Sara Evans on the CMT countdown show talking about meeting with the miners' wives and it was pretty vacant. Why is she such a terrible judge of her own music lately? I want "Bible Song" and "New Hometown" as singles.

I just listened to the new Shooter Jennings for the first time and thought it sounded pretty terrible. Do I need to give it another chance or can I safely file it away?

I weep at my inability to keep up with this thread.

(And M@tt -- you know I was country when country wasn't cool!)

Je4nn3, I wish you'd visit the teenpop thread more often.

I like it! See waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay upthread, like around January 16. I need to pull the thing back out though. The songs about hangovers and sniffing cocaine are best I think.

the lyrics weren't cringe-worthy but they did make me tilt my head into the upright and locked "huh" position considering she's 19 and she did the majority of the writing for this album when she was 17 (and sometimes younger). i guess that's a popular ageist complaint, but at the same time its hard for me to invest in her sincerity in lovers lost, etc. when she's my lil cousin's age. and i'm a dour old lady at the age of 24!

first impression (i.e., two and a half songs in to her album)? she sounds kinda slow and lacks bounce, and i'd take many of the unknown cdbaby acts on this thread over her easy. also, i think it's rather odd that she says desperate housewives both complain about their husbands no longer mowing lawn AND that the grass is always greener on the other side. this implies that lawnmowing increases green-ness, which is certainly not always the case. (my opinion may well change, though.)

Leanne Kingwell's Show Ya What: Boogie woogie rock and roll, with brassy chick, right away for fans of the Blackhearts, the early Kim Fowley jailbait and guitars sound. Squealing and tuneful lead guitar, rupture your liver in the middle class bar while dancing to the hooks. She's holding a gun, her cheatin' boyfriend's, get outta here with that other wench's lipstick on yer collar. You taught me how to use it, she sez, and I'm keeping it.
Also seems to have something to do sonically with Kings of the Sun and the personal vocal style of Angel City's Doc Neeson. (Or the Angels as she'd call them.)
Oh boy, now there's a great pumping roadhouse organ -- or old timey skate rink -- on "Be With You." Lots of crunch on the guitars and bass.
Tommy James-style "Crimson & Clover" tremolo on "So Long." Boy, along with the old Conwell CDs, a history book of classic radio ready guitar licks and roughed-up and dirty pop rock singing.
-- George 'the Animal' Steele (georg...), April 7th, 2006.

o far I'm liking but not loving Leanne Kingwell. For some reason the name that pops into my head when listening to her isn't any of the teenpoppers or the Divinyls or Suzi Quatro etc. (though I'm not saying the latter too aren't relevant) but Shooter Jennings; the same almost-nothing of a vocal-cord digging into itself and managing to scoop out a voice for itself.
Not that a cross between Shooter and Lindsay wouldn't be worth something...
-- Frank Kogan (edcasua...), March 30th, 2006.

Current album that makes most sense in a CD changer along with *White Trash With Money*: Dean Martin's 1955 *Swingin' Down Yonder,* reissued this month by Collector's Choice. I've never gotten into Dino much -- "That's Amore," "Volare," that's about it. And I've never thought much about him being connected to country music, though obviously Elvis (and Jerry Lee maybe?) considered him a huge influence. But this album (only the second one by him listed chronoligically at AMG, so I would assume one of his first?) is all songs about the South* -- about the Carolinas, and Georgia, and New Orleans, and Basin Street, and the Robert E. Lee and so on, some dating back to the 20s or even 10s (really informative liner notes by James Ritz), and it sounds like he's picking up on what Hoagy Carmichael (I guess - -somebody correct my chronology if I'm way off) picked up from Al Jolson or whoever. (I'm sure I'm missing several important intermediate steps along the way, and would be curious to know what they are.) Anyway, the minstrelized (I guess) yet smoothed out Dixieland-pop sound here isn't far from the jazz the shows up on Toby's new album (and that Merle and Tom T touched on before.) It totally swings, and Dino's signing makes it sound warm and good-humored, even if, obviously, a lot of the lyrics are probably (though maybe not explicitly, as far as I've noticed so far) nostalgia for the good old days of the old plantation south before the War. Anybody else have thoughts on this? And what does it mean that it's still part of country's defintion of soulfulness in 2006?

* -actually looks like there are also four bonus tracks on the CD reissue, *not* about the South. One's abotu Paris! I'ld think that might compromise the concept, but maybe not.

Just finally got this and listened and I actually had to check the lyric sheet to actually verify that they'd put the right album into the CD case. Every so often I'd drift away and start thinking I was listening to some Ryan Adams outtakes record.

And by the way, have I noted how over the top insanely great that *Texas Bohemia: Polkas Waltzes Schottisches: The Texas Bohemian-Moravian-German Bands* album I bought at Princeton Record Exchange a couple weeks ago is? Well, it is. It's barely left my CD changer since, and the amazing thing is that I keep forgetting it's not Mexican music, which it absolutely sounds like until they start singing in German or whatever. Some of the bands are really big, but some of them just seem to consist of nothing more than a drum and a tuba. Pick hits: Adolph Hofner "Beautiful America - Waltz" 1959 (in which he says everything in America is beautiful including the girls. I have a great album on vinyl by him, too. Must have been really hard to have a name like that in America in the 50s!); Vrazel & Majeks & Bobby Jones Czech Band "Corn Cockle Polka" 1992 (party in the background rock!), Tuba Meisters "Edelweiss" 1993 (yes, that "Edelweiss", but not the "Bring Me..." one); Henry Tannenberger & his Orchestra "On Our Porch Polka" 1986 (on Oompah Records out of San Antonio!); The Red Ravens "Stone Heart Waltz" 1977; Leroy Ryback's Swinging Orchestra "El Rancho Grande" 1985; Knutsch Band "Zwei Wie Mir Zwei" 1993; Vrazels & Majeks & Bobby Jones Czech Band (again!) "A Ja Sam (All By Myself)" 1992.

A couple other thoughts/questions about the Dino reissue:

1) I'm realizing that it's never been especially clear to me what exactly Dixieland music (note its name!) *was.* Ritz's liner notes say, "combining elements of New Orleans, classic, and Chicago jazz, Dixieland came into is own in the 1920s." But who did the combining?

2) On the back of the original vinyl version of said album (reproduced small on the back of the CD's inner sleeve), a drum and bugle corps are mraching with a Confederate flag.

3) Clearly one of the obvious "intermediate steps along the way" I allude to above was, duh, Bing Crosby, who went #1 with "Dinah," which Martin covers, in 1932. The album is *all* covers, the notes say, and was partially a response to all the concept albums Sinatra had started putting out in the early '50s. And yeah, as far as I can tell, it does seem to be just Martin's second album. Other songs covered, according to the notes, were originally hits for the Heidelberg Quartet, Paul Whiteman's Rhythm Boys (at least three of them), the Mills Brothers (they did "Dinah" too, or maybe with Bing?), Gene Krupa with Anita O'Day, Jimmy Dorsey, Ozzie Nelson, Gene Austin, and a 20s comedy duo called Van & Shneck. "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans" wound up being a million seller for rock'n'roller Freddie Cannon (who was great, by the way) five years after Martin's version, in 1959.

4) Ritz refers to Martin "singing in much the casual manner in which he spoke, which, for lack of better designation, could be called 'conversational singing.'" So could many of Toby Keith's best performances, it occurs to me. As could "laid back drawl that was not quite southern, but a far cry for the east coast sophistication practiced by most male singers of the day." Not unlike (from the LP's *original* notes) Martin's "easy golf swing."