Rolling Country 2012

Someone had to start it.

Just interviewed jazz keyboardist Erik Deutsch, whose primary gig is playing with Shooter Jennings. According to Deutsch, Jennings has two albums coming out this year, one in March and one in October.

Well folks, it's about that time again:

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2011:

1. This One’s For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark
2. Miranda Lambert: Four The Record
3. Sunny Sweeney: Concrete
4. Lydia Loveless: Indestructible Machine
5. Wanda Jackson: The Party Ain’t Over
6. Middle Brother: Middle Brother
7. John Doe: Keeper
8. The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams
9. Blind Boys of Alabama: Take The High Road
10. Pistol Annies: Hell on Heels

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2011:

1. Jackson Browne: “You Know The Night (radio edit)”
2. John Doe: “Peggy Sue Got Married”
3. The Bangles: “I’ll Never Be Through With You”
4. Buddy Miller featuring Lee Ann Womack: “Meds”
5. Steve Earle with Allison Moorer: “Heaven Or Hell”
6. Matt King: “Cursing The Ohio”
7. The Band Perry: “If I Die Young”
8. Toby Keith: “Red Solo Cup”
9. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: “Codeine”
10. Little Big Town: “Shut Up Train”

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2011:

1. Johnny Cash: The Sun Years Vols. 1-4
2. Hank Williams: The Legend Begins
3. Live From The Old Town School
4. Mickey Newbury: An American Trilogy
5. Neil Young/International Harvesters: A Treasure

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2011:

1. Willie Nelson
2. Merle Haggard
3. Jamie Johnson

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2011:

1. Sunny Sweeney
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Lee Ann Womack

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2011:

1. Emmylou Harris & The Red Dirt Boys (Newport Folk Festival)
2. Jamie Johnson & band (Farm Aid)
3. Willie Nelson & band featuring Lukas Nelson (Farm Aid)
(if allowed a fourth, would be
Miranda Lambert & band with guests Pistol Annies, on Austin City Limits)

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2011:

1. Guy Clark
2. Miranda Lambert and various co-writers
3.

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2011:

1. Middle Brother
2. Pistol Annies
3. Blind Boys of Alabama

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2011:

1. Middle Brother
2. Pistol Annies
3. Alabama Shakes

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2011:

1.Miranda Lambert (and band)
2.Blind Boys of Alabama (and guests, incl Jame Johnson and Lee Ann Womack)

That's your ballot?

Yes n here's the Comments too ( kinda long, all for Don Allred's Nash Scene Ballot)

COUNTRY BALLOT 2011 COMMENTS:
Early rock critic Nik Cohn once referred in passing to country music’s “elaborate sentimentality”, which is surely appropriate, but what I value most is the keep-a-goin’ obsessiveness, in some cases the morbid vitality, as obsession gives even fatalism a hard time. As I’ve said before, it also relates to the idea of beat (Paul Goodman said William Faulkner was beat, “in a complicated way” , a Faulkner way, like, "Now they could cross Grandlieu Street, there was traffic in it now; to clash and clang of light and bell trolley and automobile crashed and glared across the intersection, rushing to light curbchanneled spindrift of tortured and draggled serpentine and trodden confetti pending the dawn's whitewings----spent tinseldung of Momus' Nilebarge clatterfalque; ordered and marked by light and bell and carrying the two imitationleather bands and the drill mealsack they could now cross..." Mealsacks, though no hosses in that scene, but dig it) : Ginsberg said it came from beatitude, and also from Hernert Huncke saying, “Man, I’m beat”, after digging holes for the pot crop all day. Coulda been picking cotton, working at Auto Zone, doing taxes, figuring out the best place to take her or him, whatever. With a sharp, springy, never showy house band, led by a ditto vocalist always ready for non-pushy duet duty, The Guy Clark tribute mostly accentuates raging or talking back to or riding out or getting the hell out of the way of or otherwise dealing with the dying of the light, to the extent anyone can. All in the commons, and the details of each lot. Clark’s people got business to ‘tend to. And no matter how mellow things may sometimes get, “son of a bitch’s always bored me” is never too far away.
Country can’t just be conceptual of course, it’s also the sound. Wanda Jackson’s frayed, yet unstoppable munchkin splay brings the country out of The Party Ain’t Over’s bobbing New Orleans horns, its rockabilly, Latin, gospel and o yeah, its country songs too (don’t ever take for granted that country always sounds like country). Jack White couldn’t have done it if Wanda couldn’t, but he did, production-wise and his Barney Fife bravura helps The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams to represent Hank’s range, as does Hank’s own The Legend Begins (speedy exuberance of very early tracks, and the finally unscrewed-with, appropriately edited Health and Happiness Show broadcasts).
Also soundwise, the penetrating clarity, so pure it courts distortion, sorta between Loretta Lynn and prime Robert Plant soprano of young Lydia Loveless perfectly suits the obsessive and even necessary truth-telling. She’s a rebel against social conventions, but she’s also 21 now, and what is the deal with late adolescence, and principle vs. fear, with alcohol as the mirror? Her voice keeps it all spinning like a country hurricane, and a safe room too (its own sense of structure, wherever artist and listener are going). Obsession’s clarity and tumult Keeps it more country than a show of somehow more fresh-than-vintage folk-rock chops too, ditto Middle Brother.
Then there’s the way young Alabama Shakes make a bottle tree of their downhome soul chops, messages tucked into said bottles: “One two three, won’t you dance with me? By the bulllet holes in my sleeve. I could be your ticket home. (Clark’s characters might perk up their ears here, certainly the ones on John Doe’s Keeper, where love songs with teeth include “Little Tiger”, which might be about one of Doe’s daughters, prowling through discreetly observed private sorrows; a laidback motellude of a modern day Bonnie and Clyde, though if that’s what they are, she’s the only one who does the time, h’mmm--but he’s there when she gets off the bus, he’s gon’ help her do the parole; a fella who may be going back in time, or surely to some place where he and she paid their dues, and she should still be paying them, to keep her place in his sense of things (hey come to think of it, this might be a sequel to the parole song, I just thought of that); “Lucky Penny”, duet with Patty Griffin; and the one where he and current squeeze are having fun with whacky neighbors in sweet home Oildale, suburb of Bakersfield. Then there’s the transfigured (or at least much more intimate than the original) great lost r&b classic “Moonbeam” (the moon giveth, or bringeth into view, and taketh away).
The Blind Boys of Alabama have taken the gospel trail with a variety of companions, including the adapted chestnuts of Jagger-Richard, Dylan and Waits, not to mention a collaborative album with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. this time it’s country, with co-production by Jamie Johnson, who also sounds very much at home singing on several tracks, without pushing the doctrine--it’s all more poignant than that, including Lee Ann Womack’s turn (also in the way she finds her way through the clutter of Buddy Miller’s Majesty of Sliver Strings, for the non-campy “Meds”, written by Marc Ribot! Yeah, Miller’s men are trying to make more than a high-chopsy noodlefest, and it would be, if they’d written for and/or backed Womack and Griffin alll the way through). Not too long ago, when asked if he still believed in his religious songs, Dylan replied, “ I do when I’m singing them.” That’s what it’s all about.
Bonus section--like the drum solo, possibly time for your latest bathroom break:
notebook scribbles re Miiranda’s Four The Record--- Starts out like Coe, Mellow mischief, though eventually hey wouldn't this make a good sassy gal video, "Fine Tune" hot n bothered though also a just a bit Steve Milleresque, maybe for P&J Top Ten, the two [?] she wrote w out collabs are deepest? "Safe" seems magical thinking of material girl, but it's all subsumed in lyric and sonic imagery as salvation, comfort lovedrug etc, then "Dear Diamond", which is wrapped around my finger like him, seems like gonna be gloating but she feels guilty, burdened with the secret whose existence she can only confess to the dear diamond,glass-cutting, many-faceted and splendored diary thing, she can't quite unfold the secret--c'mon, roses won't tell, the diamond won't either--so magical images of power also cost, as she says, and she nails names her self in "Nobody's Fool"--but the music's always enjoyable at the very least, consolation prizes worth keeping always):(some are there to easily suggest how she'll do better, nay, slay, with 'em on stage)(also dig the jostling, minor key cabaret punk oompahpoid, begins with her cutting my bangs with rusty scissors, never mind the decorously painted lips bitten, "stoicism" is actually the "soft" way she won't be, won't fold away her sorrow like "My Mama's Broken Heart"--which is not a brash, rash or insensitive comparison, in this gathering of momentum and shadows, the pulsating hurt just starting to surface would be good to have Gogol Bordello cover.Hey presto! More on “Safe”--As with " Eugene" (best track so far on H3's windy baggy Ghost To A Ghost/Guttertown, his track also a bit Gogolesque) providing misery with fast brooding company, rattling the candles like she say she'll rattle in your drink when you're thirsty (that's in "Safe") No kerosene ect here, we jumpcuts and arcing subsets of theme and style provide musical sublimation the tone of it just won't settle for anything less than HELL YEAH (dito Sunny Sweeney, rolling blue but rolling)

Woulda Shoulda Coulda:
For all that, I feel kinda bad about ditching the sweet hoot of Merle’s Working In Tennessee for Doe, but Merle seems a little too detached, relatively speaking
Still, if this were a Top Twelve, he’d be in there, with the somewhut random canon of Willie’s Remember Me Vol. 1 (might as well be Vol XXVIII)/ Original Rolling Country 2011 comments on Merle:
Working In Tennessee is a lot of fun, mostly barroom/boxcar/daydream sing-alongs, with a natcherly blooming windowbox of the fatalist, affirmative and absurd, especially on "Laugh It Off." Flexes some mellow heart muscle too (some, not a ton, which wouldn’t suit him, nor me).
To this, xhuxx a.d. responded:
Favorite song is the homelessness one about Saginaw that shares its name with a much worse Red Hot Chili Peppers hit; "Laugh It Off" second place probably. Solid record, but there's a lot I could quibble about, if I had time to quibble these days.
And I then ‘llowed:
Xxhux's aforementioned quibbles with Working In Tennessee might well incl use of sureshot themes, re aforementioned barroom/boxcar/daydream sing-alongs, but his whiff-of-bs-bearing paper airplanes are bullseye or close enough, often enough for lazier me to be impressed--he really is Working it, somewhut. Top Ten? We'll see.
Another close call: Steve Earle’s I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive, track by track pretty strong, but overall maybe a bit too repetitious point/effect/and/or approach-wise, still deserves some context, from my feature:
In 2009, eight years after beginning his debut novel, country singer-songwriter Steve Earle decided he really had to finish the thing. He also felt the need to make a new album. Earle had moved from his longtime Nashville home base to Greenwich Village at the age of 50, while remaining blessed by his improbably durable seventh marriage, this one to chanteuse Allison Moorer, having a baby with her, and still keeping up with world news. Despite such inspirations, Earle was atypically short of original songs. So he came up with “Townes,” an often astute tribute to his formidable mentor, the late great Townes Van Zandt.
Earle leads off with Van Zandt’s most famous song, “Pancho and Lefty.” The doomed, defiant outlaw Pancho’s possibly treacherous accomplice Lefty slips across the border, to linger in the cold shadows of Cleveland. “Townes was both characters,” Earle declared of the mercurially standard-setting, substance-abusing Van Zandt. Nevertheless, Van Zandt’s crucial advice went beyond reading and writing: “He told me to always use clean needles, “ Earle said.
In Earle’s novel, “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive”, Doc Ebersole, who once claimed he could treat Hank Williams’ alcoholism and spinal bifida with drugs, has fled to San Antonio’s backstreets, after Williams’ death. The self-medicating Ebersole is often accosted by the novel’s eerie, jaunty namesake, Williams’ last hit released before he died. A decade later, it’s an eternal jukebox favorite of rich men and poor, also sometimes a cue for Williams’ ghost, which can be backed into at any minute, as it pleads for another shot. All of the novel’s characters, while evoking the songs and struggles of Earle and Van Zandt, morph into visions of “how different people come to experience spirituality,” as Earle put it. He defined spirituality as “a one-to-one encounter with God, or whatever word you use.”
Earle’s new album, also titled “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive,” distills his own brand of frankly 12-step-based, self-observant spirituality. We’re greeted by some wry celebrations: Earle’s still “ walkin’ on the water, ‘cause I never learned to swim.” He and wife Moorer sound at home while gliding through the discreetly psychedelic aura of T-Bone Burnett’s Americana production, as they sing, “I love you baby, but I just can’t tell/This kinda love comes from Heaven or Hell.” (Well, that one did make Singles.)

Subjects for further study (( should listen more) On High Atmosphere, Diana Jone’s voice has sensuous austerity, a winter tree just flexible enough for a shudder, a curl, a lasso, a noose, a glint passing through sparkle, a tear, possibly even a beer, but don’t push it. Miranda Lambert should cover the intriguing “I Told The Man” (careful with your wicked mitts on her sister buddy, Jones is on to you, reallly on)
Reissues (see above for mention of Hank’s; had a similar take on Cash’s Sun set. He seemed much more at home there than I expected)
Drag City's Mickey Newbury box is a wildly uneven space cowboy extravaganza (in its basically spare, basement galaxy way). But overall, it leaves quite an afterglow (though I got it as a promo; dunno what I would have thought as a customer, or if I knew the original LPs--some darn good [and darn bad] prev. unreleased tracks, I know that much)
Newbury brings the rain, while he ponders, way after midnight. Grim hallways, railways, but incense too. Kind of a dustbowl Donovan, if Donovan had been through Texas cotton fields and the Army, before getting back to the rabbit tobacco. But more of a personal darkness, however filtered through Music Row plot twists. His original version of "American Trilogy" (his combination and setting, for those unfamiliar, of "Dixie", "All My Trials" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic") is even better than Elvis's, in terms of calm gravitas and lucid overview (of experience, vs. what Elvis makes into a grand vision/illusion, although both versions def signify). You can also get a free four-track box sampler here: http://anamericantrilogy.com/splash
( Yep Roc's has or had a big sale on their 25th Anniversary series of Giant Sand deluxe and remastered reissues.A big sale in the sense you gotta buy all the albums to get a bargain, but I didn't know they'd been putting these out. From 1985's Valley of Rain to 1994's Purge & Slouch.)
Neil Young's A Treasure turns out to be closer to Working In Tenn than I would have thought to expect, in terms of drollery, fecund foraging with Nashville cats (here touring as International Harvesters) and use of familiar elements. Only five prev unreleased titles, but the known ones haven't been redone on disc too often and everything's pretty sparky, except the first one, Amber Jean (and mebbe a couple others are too long). Several def (incl initial snoozes) def get better as they go along, which is not so common these days, much gracias. Fave: "Southern Pacific", where a forcibly retired railroad worker complains as the Harvesters klang and steam, way out on the redeye express. Kinda spooky--are they part of why he was retired? Note to self: This would have to be in Reissues, wouldn't it? Since Himes' Nashville Scene ballots have so far defined those as music rec. five or more years ago, and A Treasure's tracks, though just now released, are from mid-80s shows.
( Yep Roc's has or had a big sale on their 25th Anniversary series of Giant Sand deluxe and remastered reissues.A big sale in the sense you gotta buy all the albums to get a bargain, but still.. From 1985's Valley of Rain to 1994's Purge & Slouch.)

No comment(s), as usual these days, but this is/was my ballot (disqualified Them Bird Things from the album list, even though it made my Pazz & Jop, since it technically came out -- in Finland! -- in 2010):

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2011:

1. Randy Montana – Randy Montana (Mercury)
2. Kentucky Headhunters – Dixie Lullabies (Red Dirt Music)
3. Eric Church – Chief (EMI Nashville)
4. Pistol Annies – Hell On Heels (Columbia)
5. David Nail – The Sound Of A Million Dreams (MCA Nashville)
6. Miranda Lambert – Four The Record (RCA Nashville)
7. Toby Keith – Clancy’s Tavern (Show Dog-Universal)
8. Merle Haggard – Working In Tennessee (Vanguard/Hag)
9. Thompson Square – Thompson Square (Stoney Creek)
10. Brantley Gilbert – Halfway To Heaven Deluxe (The Valory Music Co.)

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2011:

1. Martina McBride – Teenage Daughters
2. Toby Keith – Red Solo Cup
3. Thompson Square – Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not
4. Miranda Lambert – Baggage Claim
5. Eric Church – Homeboy
6. Taylor Swift – Mean
7. Rosehill – Midnight America
8. Steel Magnolia - Bulletproof
9. Keith Urban – Long Hot Summer
10. Reba McEntire – If I Were A Boy

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2011:

1. Human Switchboard – Who’s Landing In My Hangar?: Anthology 1977-1984 (BarNone)
2. (Various) – Keb Darge & Little Edith’s Legendary Wild Rockers (BBE)
3. ZZ Top – Live In Germany 1980 (Eagle)
4. Drive-By Truckers – Ugly Buildings, Whores & Politicians: Greatest Hits 1998-2009 (New West)
5. Shemekia Copeland – Deluxe Edition (Alligator)

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2011:
1.Randy Montana
2. David Nail
3. Eric Church

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2011:

1.Miranda Lambert
2. Lauren Alaina
3.Sunny Sweeney

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2011:

1.Miranda Lambert
2.Randy Montana
3.Steve Blodgett

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2011:

1.Them Bird Things
2.Kentucky Headhunters
3.Stealing Angels

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2011:

1.Randy Montana
2. Pistol Annies
3. Thompson Square

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2011:

1.Miranda Lambert
2.Randy Montana
3.Them Bird Things

Human Switchboard as a country reissue? Wow, your definition of country is wider than mine.

I was hurting for country reissues (my others are a bit of a stretch, too); went back and listened to the CD again and confirmed my hunch that alt-country is sort of in Human Switchboard's lineage. Then, a couple weeks after voting, went back and re-read a *NY Rocker* cover story on the band from 1981. Turned out Bob Pfeifer cited country guys like Johnny Cash and Gram Parsons as songwriting influences. So I was sort of right!

not a fan of the Mickey Newbury reissue?

Never heard it; not even sure I knew it existed. (Have barely ever heard him, to be honest.)

Plus (just looked it up) I tend to avoid box sets that big as a matter of principle. Waaaaay too daunting. (Not to mention too expensive, if I was actually buying new CDs.) So if I did hear about it, it probably just didn't seem like something I'd want to spend time with. Would definitely pick up any old LPs by him if I saw them in dollar bins, though.

You could check that free four-track download box sampler I linked in my comments, and several albums (none of which I've heard) are streaming here
http://www.myspace.com/mickeynewbury/music/albums
That's right: now that nobody listens to MySpace, it's got tons of albums, incl boxes and series, like the Hank and Cash reissue series I listed above.

My Nashville Scene ballot was like this. Think I already thought of a few more songs that should have been in that list but oh well. Putting three Taylor Swift singles was kind of gimmicky maybe but at the time I was feeling like those songs were all three better than the rest of my songs list. Not sure I completely feel that way now. Also was maybe reacting to Geoff's 'what do you consider country? is taylor swift country?' pitch for comments which is getting to be a tiring question for me -

Ballot -

Albums
1. Pistol Annies - Hell On Heels
2. Randy Montana - Randy Montana
3. Eric Church - Chief
4. Dolly Parton - Better Day
5. Lady Antebellum - We Own the Night
6. George Strait - Here for a Good Time
7. Luke Bryan - Tailgates and Tanlines
8. Sunny Sweeney - Concrete
9. Shelby Lynne - Revelation Road
10. Green Pajamas - Green Pajamas Country

Songs
1. Taylor Swift - Mean
2. Taylor Swift - Sparks Fly
3. Taylor Swift - The Story of Us
4. Keith Urban - Long Hot Summer
5. Randy Montana - Ain't Much Left of Lovin' You
6. Lady Antebellum - We Owned the Night
7. Eric Church - Drink in My Hand
8. Luke Bryan - I Don't Want This Night to End
9. Dolly Parton - Together You and I
10. Thompson Square - Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not?

Male Vocalists
1. Randy Montana
2. Luke Bryan
3. Eric Church

Female Vocalists
1. Taylor Swift
2. Sunny Sweeney
3. Miranda Lambert

Duos/Groups
1. Pistol Annies
2. Lady Antebellum
3. Thompson Square

New acts
1. Pistol Annies
2. Randy Montana
3. Thompson Square

Best 2012 country album I've heard so far is the new Dierks Bentley.

Oh yeah, I can see from these ballots I still need to check Shelby Lynne (heard some good'uns from hers on radio) and Randy Montana. Them Birds Too, who have the best name in quite a while. Dang, speaking of reissues and comments, I forgot this comment for one of my reissues listed:
Have a wild weekend anytime with Live From The Old Town School, going back and forth across the generations (1956 to the early 00s), via Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music. Big Bill Broonzy, Pete Seeger (together and sep, much better than expected either way), Van Ronk, pungent as usual (rec for Beefheart vocal fans), Baez, John Hammond Jr., John Hartford (all three meh, but even they have some good effect in context), primo Dan Hicks & band (Hot Licks, Acoustic Warriors, or maybe in between?), Steve Goodman, Jon Langford, Martin Carthy ("Willie's Lady", awes), Malvina Reynolds, Odetta, Doc Watson (with Merle, I think), Oumou Sangare, John Renbourn & Jaqui McShee, Conjunto Cespedes. Mahalia Jackson,Andrew Bird, Ramblin Jack, Joaquin Diaz, Hamza El Din, Merle Travis--well, you get the drift. Great sequences and subsets, for the most part, and lots of fun, if a bit near the knuckle, as old school Brits say. Justification for inclusion on this ballot: enough country and blues overall insofar as a ricochet rainbow of mortality gets its licks in for sure, though so does the fried ice cream. A bunch I'd never heard of as well, not just the folkie pantheon.

Fwiw, these three albums all would have made my top 10, had they qualified: The Band Perry (released late 2010), Darrell Scott (pushed back to early 2012), Stealing Angels (pushed back indefinitely, as far as I know.)

Yeah, I'd like to hear those (I've got the Scott, but havent listened yet, supposedly because of the push-back). Also forgot my comment on Middle Brother:
Middle Brother's s/t album is what I didn't get, at least so far, from latest Deer Tick, in which McCauley seemed too assimilated, what w other songwriters' worthy contributions and a certain evenhanded approach within angsty considerations too, although the Gacy thing does takes it beyondo. But Middle Brother's set is infused with the scratchy star power of first two DT albums (enhanced rather than blurred by sometimes not knowing which of the triad is singing and/or writing lead). Even has the Dawes dude wanting muse to break his heart so he can sing "with blood and guts/but I can't do that, I'll just sing like myself." Not coping a plea, he makes his quieter approach work this time, then gets loud in a forthright, Deer Tick/McCauley-compatible way, without imitation. Third man Vasquez fits too, and like Will Hermes said of Monsters of Folk, sometimes we get group therapy when listening for group harmony (not too much of either in this case). And it's if soap opry too, it's also the kind of country folk punk tombstone splattered there-stands-the lass type testimony, which is just a natural attraction for extreme housecleaning measures.

What I wrote about the Darrell Scott and David Nail albums, fwiw. (Actually chopped down some from the version I sent them, not always coherently, but I wrote long so I can't really complain I guess):

http://read.mtvhive.com/2011/12/16/david-nail-and-darrell-scott-overlooked-2011/

I really don't get the universal acclaim for Four The Record, which has some unbelievable highs but also some of the absolute worst songs of her entire career. "Safe," "Over You" and that duet with her hubby are so unbelievably non-descript and blah. It's not surprising to hear that she recorded the whole thing in a week. Lambert definitely put more effort into the Pistol Annies album, and it shows, gloriously.

what do you consider country? is taylor swift country?

really obnoxious but sadly believable that this is still a thing

No he just means what is country, mainly, although yeah is-or-isn't-she is a tired example. xhuxx, didn't seem too choppy and good for getting Laughner in there, but why is it One Of The Most Overlooked of 2011, having long since been pushed back to 2012? (now I see I def have to check it out)

Well, if we're posting ballots:

ALBUMS
1. Hank 3, Ghost to a Ghost / Gutter Town
2. Pistol Annies, Hell on Heels
3. Sunny Sweeney, Concrete
4. Noam Pikelny, Beat the Devil and Carry a Rail
5. Connie Smith, Long Line of Heartaches
6. Vince Gill, Guitar Slinger
7. Matraca Berg, The Dreaming Fields
8. Megafaun, Megafaun
9. George Strait, Here for a Good Time
10. Eric Church, Chief

SINGLES
1. Billy Currington, “Love Done Gone”
2. Taylor Swift, “Sparks Fly”
3. The Civil Wars, “Barton Hollow”
4. Pistol Annies, “Hell on Heels”
5. Shelby Lynne, “Revelation Road”
6. Zac Brown Band, “Colder Weather”
7. Ronnie Dunn, “Cost of Livin’”
8. Wanda Jackson, “Thunder on the Mountain”
9. Keith Urban, “You Gonna Fly”
10. Sunny Sweeney, “Staying’s Worse Than Leaving”

MALE VOCALISTS
1. Hank 3
2. George Strait
3. Vince Gill

FEMALE VOCALISTS
1. Connie Smith
2. Sunny Sweeney
3. Matraca Berg

LIVE ACTS
1. Drive-By Truckers
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Brad Paisley

SONGWRITERS
1. Matraca Berg
2. Taylor Swift
3. Lori McKenna

DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS
1. Pistol Annies
2. The Civil Wars
3. Zac Brown Band

NEW ACTS
1. Caitlin Rose
2. Alabama Shakes
3. Mount Moriah

BEST OVERALL ACTS
1. Hank 3
2. Pistol Annies
3. Taylor Swift

I didn't actually submit any comments this year because, while I appreciated that what I've submitted has been posted pretty extensively for each of the past few years, the overall editorial tone last year just kind of rubbed me the wrong way and the "Is Taylor Swift country?" baiting this year wasn't doing it for me.

To that end, this:

Songs
1. Taylor Swift - Mean
2. Taylor Swift - Sparks Fly
3. Taylor Swift - The Story of Us

is amazing.

The Dierks Bentley is solid, though the twitter fight between him and Jason Isbell about whether or not Bentley's single "Home" rips off a song from Isbell's first solo album has made both of them look like dicks.

The new album by Kellie Pickler is far better than I thought she was capable of. It's not a great album, but it's a very good one that doesn't overplay the traditionalism = credibility angle. Gun to my head, I honestly prefer it to Four the Record by a pretty substantial margin.

"Love Done Gone" was a gobsmackingly great surprise for me. That kind of shrugging, "the end of love can be a joyous relief instead of a tragedy" delirious delivery, and the funeral march horns at the end sound like a helluva wake. And I guess it's all personal bias, but as someone who had a relationship end recently without good reason, "like money in a slot machine/don't know what happened to you and me" seems an incredibly elegant turn of phrase.

I think Four The Record is way more fun than Revolution was, myself. But right, neither record is super consistent. (Neither is Pistol Annies, to be perfectly honest. Though being short helps a lot.)

I actually liked Pickler's Small Town Girl a few years back.

why is it One Of The Most Overlooked of 2011, having long since been pushed back to 2012?

Well, "long since" or no, I wasn't aware of the pushback when I pitched the two albums together; one thing they edited out was the new release date, oddly enough -- I suppose because they wanted to keep the "overlooked of 2011" concept. So overlooked it didn't come out, I guess!

I really don't get the universal acclaim for Four The Record, which has some unbelievable highs but also some of the absolute worst songs of her entire career. "Safe," "Over You" and that duet with her hubby are so unbelievably non-descript and blah

I can go along with this.

I'm only now paying attention to the Church record ("Drink in My Hand").

My favorite record of the week: Tim McGraw's "The One That Got Away."

The Church record is really consistent, the worst song being the Jesus one he didn't have a hand in writing. Though "funny how a melody sounds like a memory" in "Springsteen" was less on-the-nose and more breathtaking when Taylor Swift did it in "Tim McGraw."

I splained "Safe" in my notes, wish she'd lose hubby (duet-wise anyway)

Poll results:

http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/the-results/Content?oid=2743175

I'm crazy late to this but the Pistol Annies album is great.

gonna be digging into y'alls lists later.

From the "Selected Factoids" section of the Nashville Scene poll:

Country music critics are becoming as amnesiac as country radio. Jamey Johnson, who dominated this poll in 2010 almost as thoroughly as Miranda Lambert did this year, virtually disappeared from the voting. True, Johnson didn't release an album in 2011, but he did release a single and continued to tour. Yet he fell from No. 1 to No. 38 in the artist-of-the-year category, from No. 1 to No. 16 in the male-vocalist category, from No. 1 to No. 46 in the songwriting category, from No. 3 to No. 15 in the live-act category, and from No. 6 to No. 105 in the singles category.

The indignant can-you-believe-this tone here is just baffling to me. If there's no need to consider whether or not someone actually released new material within the past year when voting for this poll, then I guess I'll just start listing Dwight Yoakam on my ballot every year.

Can't get on board with the idea of Four the Record being much fun, at least not after the first 5 songs, and especially not the run of tracks from "Over You" through "Oklahoma Sky" at the end.

Yeah, that crazy bizarre Jamey Johnson complaint jumped right out at me, too -- I was considering mentioning it here. "Amnesia" has nothing to do with it. We're supposed to vote him artist or songwriter of the year based on a single (that came off his 2010 album, and got all the way to #51 on the country chart)? The Live Act thing (a category I don't vote in) might make a little sense, but that's it.

Well, I guess his single could have placed. That it finished at #105 might well mean, duh, that people preferred whichever one finished at #6 last year. Since when are all songs by an artist created equal? (Also, I have to admit, in polls like this I probably personally tend to disfavor singles off albums I voted for in the previous year in general. One reason I didn't name more than one Taylor Swift single this year, maybe. I may have even subconsciously docked "Mean" a couple of places because in my head it seems more 2010 to me than 2011.)

As for the songwriter category, did Johnson have great new songs that were recorded by other artists this year? Like, I don't know, the Blind Boys Of Alabama or somebody? I have trouble keeping track of that sort of thing. But if not, given that he didn't put out any new songs himself, isn't it more strange that anybody would vote for him at all?

Upthread are my votes for him in Best Male Vocalist, Best Live Act, where I listed him and his band, based in their Farm Aid set. He kept the vibe and distinctive momentum of The Guitar Album, playing into and out of songs continuously. Also upthread: him and Lee Ann on The Blind Boys' country set (made my Top Ten Albums)
The Blind Boys of Alabama have taken the gospel trail with a variety of companions, including the adapted chestnuts of Jagger-Richard, Dylan and Waits, not to mention a collaborative album with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. this time it’s country, with co-production by Jamie Johnson, who also sounds very much at home singing on several tracks, without pushing the doctrine--it’s all more poignant than that, including Lee Ann Womack’s turn (also in the way she finds her way through the clutter of Buddy Miller’s Majesty of Sliver Strings, for the non-campy “Meds”, written by Marc Ribot! Yeah, Miller’s men are trying to make more than a high-chopsy noodlefest, and it would be, if they’d written for and/or backed Womack and Griffin alll the way through). Not too long ago, when asked if he still believed in his religious songs, Dylan replied, “ I do when I’m singing them.” That’s what it’s all about.

Well, Jamie didn't make this'un. Better luck next time.

Marco Club Connection Names Top Ten Country Dance Club Hits for 2011

(Nashville, Tenn. – Jan. 9, 2012) Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton topped the list of dance club hits in 2011, according to the Marco Club Connection’s 8th annual ranking of Country dance favorites.

Every December, the Nashville-based company surveys a panel of nearly 250 club owners, DJs and dance instructors from across the country to compile its rankings. Overall votes by the panel determine each song’s placement on the list.

“The added emphasis on dance in the music videos for this year’s top club hits was hugely popular with club DJs and choreographers,” says Club Connection Manager of Venue Marketing, Bobbe Morhiser. “By featuring dancers and dance clubs in the videos, these records leave a lasting connection with fans that dancing and Country music are a natural match.”

The 2011 Marco Club Connection Top Ten Country Dance Club Hits are:

1. Luke Bryan - “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)”
2. Blake Shelton - “Footloose”
3. Big & Rich - “Fake ID”
4. Blake Shelton - “Honey Bee”
5. Gloriana - “Wanna Take You Home”
6. Billy Currington - “Love Done Gone”
7. Jason Aldean - “Dirt Road Anthem”
8. Dierks Bentley - “Am I The Only One”
9. The Lacs - “Kickin’ Up Mud”
10. Chris Young - “You”

“We are thrilled that ‘Country Girl (Shake It For Me)’ was selected as the No. 1 dance song of the year,” says Capitol/EMI Records Director of Media and Public Relations, Taryn Pray. “This single took Luke Bryan to the next level, and it’s great to have the recognition of the dance club community.”

Peter Strickland, Sr. VP Brand Management & Sales for Warner Music Nashville echoed the excited sentiments of his colleagues at Capitol: “What a great way to start off 2012 finding out Warner Music Nashville has four of the Top 5 dance songs. Congratulations to Big & Rich, Gloriana and Blake Shelton.”

A complete archive of Club Connection’s Top Ten Country Dance Club Hits by year can be viewed at MarcoClubConnection.com.

3. Big & Rich - “Fake ID”
5. Gloriana - “Wanna Take You Home”
9. The Lacs - “Kickin’ Up Mud”

Need to check these out. Never even heard of "The Lacs" til now, and I had no idea Big & Rich still existed.

As for Jamey, again, I get why somebody might've voted for him as one of the better live acts, but Don's explanation still doesn't explain the songwriter stuff. Did he get new songs he wrote out there, or not?

And as for singles, another very real possibility, even if people love the song, is that voters didn't know that Johnson's "Heartache" was a single in 2011. I sure never heard it on the radio myself. (Me, I was aware it was a single, mainly because Frank Kogan had listed it on his livejournal blog as one. Would have made my country top 15 or so, probably.) So it's still a really weird thing for Himes to highlight.

As for Lambert, I get that her 2011 album is frontloaded, but even if you ignore the first five tracks, you still have "Baggage Claim" and "Easy Living," for starters. What songs on Revolution are that entertaining, again? It's been a while, but I don't believe many are.

"Nobody's Fool," too - a real good pop-rocker.

Also, though I at least slightly prefer the Pistol Annies album and gave it a fairly glowing review in Rolling Stone of all places and totally understand its lyric sheet's recession angle and appreciate its concision, I'm somewhat dumbfounded by people who claim it's way better than the Lambert one. It's better on paper than it is in reality, and if anything, it's kind of too quasi-trad alt-country and could use more Lambert. Beyond "Takin' Pills," what exactly is super great on it??

And by "quasi-trad alt-country," guess I mean I feel like the Annies are trying to do this old-timey shtick and not quite pulling it off. I like the album (see RS review link below), but I sure don't love it as much as some people seem to. Some quieter parts totally bore me, to be honest.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/blogs/editors-picks/pistol-annies-hell-on-heels-20110913

Right. I do think the Pistol Annies album is superior to Four the Record by a pretty substantial margin, but, even still, I wouldn't rate it more highly than any of Lambert's first three albums, especially not Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

I don't think Revolution is all that much "fun" outside of maybe three songs ("Only Prettier," "Me and Your Cigarettes," and the "Time to Get a Gun" cover), but I do think it's a far better-written and performed album than the new one. Since I'd say "Baggage Claim" is an utter mess of a song lyrically and Lambert's vocal track sounds tinny and pinched, I simply don't agree that there's really anything that elevates the back half of the album. I just don't think the songs are all that well-written-- or, in the cases of "Over You" and the duet with Shelton, are actively poor-- or performed well or produced in an interesting way.

It's a good album, sure, but she's better than "good," and I felt like the Pistol Annies album had more of what makes Lambert great in it than her own album did.

Still puzzled by the "amnesia" thing wrt Johnson, particularly that Himes used Taylor Swift's placement in the poll as an immediate counterpoint: She headlined a massively lucrative tour that led to her releasing her first live album, and she charted 3 top 5 singles last year, so why *wouldn't* her poll results reflect that visibility? And Johnson definitely doesn't have any new songwriting credits on any albums I've heard in the past year...

I had it at #12 on my list, so I'll second xhuxk's mention of the great new Kentucky Headhunters album. Good to have that crew back.

(Was hesitating to post this, since I wanted to listen to the Zach James once more to decide if I should actually endorse it or warn you off. Folkie naval gaze from someone whose voice is no better than mine, with better-than-I-was-expecting melodies. I still haven't given it a third spin. --I seem to have left out a word or two in the sentence "I'm counting Taylor Swift's _______ as basically 2010," so I inserted a blank. Did I intend to put one of the following: arias? ungulates? mortgage-backed securities? What do you think? --I forgot that "Hell On Heels" was a single as well as an album, would have ranked it #5 or thereabouts. And despite the nice things I say about Ashley down-list, I did generally find the track and album too cute. Or anyway, Timberlee does a better cute. --Least extensive country-listening year for me since 1999, which is why my list looks like yourn.)

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2011:

1. Miranda Lambert - Four The Record
2. Sunny Sweeney - Concrete
3. Lauren Alaina - Wildflower
4. Randy Montana - Randy Montana
5. Pistol Annies - Hell On Heels
6. Eric Church - Chief
7. Zach James - Machos Pathos

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2011:

1. Taylor Swift "Mean"
2. Reba McEntire "If I Were A Boy"
3. Jamey Johnson "Heartache"
4. Eric Church "Homeboy"
5. Reba McEntire "When Love Gets A Hold Of You"
6. Gillian Welch "The Way It Goes"
7. Taylor Swift "Sparks Fly"
8. Keith Urban "Long Hot Summer"
9. Aaron Lewis "Country Boy"
10. The Band Perry "You Lie"

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2011:

--

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2011:

1. Toby Keith
2. Jamey Johnson
3. Eric Church

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2011:

1. LeAnn Rimes
2. Miranda Lambert
3. Sunny Sweeney

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2011:

--

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2011:

--

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2011:

1. The Band Perry
2. Pistol Annies

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2011:

1. Lauren Alaina

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2011:

1. Miranda Lambert
2. Sunny Sweeney
3. Randy Montana

(I'm counting Taylor Swift's _______ as basically 2010, even if there were a few spillover singles; anyway, decided to leave a few spots in my best-of for other people.)

Was going to say that Aaron Lewis can go fuck himself, but unfortunately when he goes he'll be going with my vote, since he put enough strong feeling and playing into his posturing that he moved me. He doesn't want to move himself, unfortunately; all I've got to say is that deciding what you are and what you believe and sticking to it despite hell, highwater, and evidence and life is not half as admirable as he thinks it is. Wish there were more learning and less stand-taking, esp. when the stands are based on symbols rather than thought.

Spent most of the year thinking that country could go fuck itself as well, though I can't say it threw anything different at me to make me feel this way. It was already capitulating to its audience's insecurity over a decade ago when I fell in love with Montgomery Gentry's "She Couldn't Change Me." But there was way more pathos and poetry in the insecurities back then; now it feels rote, and mean. But Eric Church isn't rote and mean, even though his ideas are as retrogressive as the rest. The home he's extolling, that didn't feel like home to the homeboy brother, is at risk, and he knows it. Maybe he's a step away from 1965 (remember, how does it feel, with no direction home, etc.?), where home is something you discover, you build, not just something you assert.

Some quick takes: Randy Montana's album is a hard-rocking sigh. Would have ranked even higher if there'd been more of the rockers. Lauren Alaina has no clue what she's doing, but flounders with a voice that aches and worries. Ashley Monroe is cute and funny without being cloying, and I hope the attention given to the Pistol Annies finds its way to the rest of her work.

Have a nice New Year.

Frank

I asked Himes what he meant about Jamey, here's his reply:
As I mentioned in the sidebar, he did get a smattering of support, but I thought his fall-off was pretty dramatic compared to the support that artists like Taylor Swift and Miranda Lambert get in a non-album year (and I like all three of them a lot). Did he stop being a notable live act and male vocalist just because he didn't release an album? That's what those other categories are for. It's not a big deal really, but I found it intriguing.
I've since mentioned to him that the Blind Boys album and Farm Aid set got me voting Jamey into Best Vocalists, and him plus band into Best Live Acts. But he hasn't responded yet, so I don't know if he was thinking of them re the sidebar speculations. I guess those weren't so widely heard, but he did do some touring, aa seen on YouTube (ditto the FarmAid set, or chunks of it, so you still might get some of the effect of J and band playing continously into and out of songs, a la The Guitar Album). so yeah, voters coulda even shoulda checked him out. But there's so much to keep up with, o' course.

The Kellie Pickler album is solid. Was Womack's There's More Where That Came From her model for smart gauze?

(it's not as sharp as the Womack record for)

Good album. First track seems like a strangely formal introduction. but overall much more consistently engaging than most tribs (def helps to have this house band)


This One's For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark
Rises to No. 1 on the Americana Music Chart

No. 1 in Classic Country, No. 3 in Today's Country,
No. 1 in Pop Tributes on Amazon Best Sellers Chart


Album includes recordings by Rodney Crowell, Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely, Shawn Colvin, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris & John Prine, Patty Griffin, Ron Sexsmith, Rosanne Cash, Steve Earle, Vince Gill, Jerry Jeff Walker, Robert Earl Keen, and more.

Produced by Tamara Saviano and Shawn Camp


January 31, 2013

This One's For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark tops the Americana Music Chart this week. The album is also No. 1 in Classic Country, No. 3 in Today's Country, No. 1 in Pop tributes and No. 24 overall on Amazon.com Best Sellers Rank.

The collection was lovingly produced by GRAMMY-winning producer Tamara Saviano (Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster)—who is also working with Clark on his definitive biography—and frequent Clark co-writer Shawn Camp ("Sis Draper," "Magnolia Wind").

The tribute includes 30 tracks by 33 Americana artists who are friends and colleagues of Clark or who have been influenced by his remarkable compositions. The collection was mixed and mastered by Austin's Cedar Creek Records principal Fred Remmert.

Part of the proceeds benefit the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.


Volume 1

1. That Old Time Feeling – Rodney Crowell
2. Anyhow I Love You – Lyle Lovett
3. All He Wants Is You – Shawn Colvin
4. Homeless – Shawn Camp
5. Broken Hearted People – Ron Sexsmith
6. Better Days – Rosanne Cash
7. Desperadoes Waiting For A Train – Willie Nelson
8. Baby Took A Limo To Memphis – Rosie Flores
9. Magdalene – Kevin Welch
10. Instant Coffee Blues – Suzy Bogguss
11. Homegrown Tomatoes – Ray Wylie Hubbard
12. Let Him Roll – John Townes Van Zandt II
13. The Guitar – Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
14. Cold Dog Soup – James McMurtry
15. Worry B Gone – Hayes Carll

Volume 2

1. Dublin Blues – Joe Ely
2. Magnolia Wind – Emmylou Harris & John Prine
3. The Last Gunfighter Ballad – Steve Earle
4. All Through Throwing Good Love After Bad – Verlon Thompson
5. The Dark – Terri Hendrix
6. LA Freeway – Radney Foster
7. The Cape – Patty Griffin
8. Hemingway’s Whiskey – Kris Kristofferson
9. Texas Cookin’ – Gary Nicholson, Darrell Scott & Tim O’Brien
10. Stuff That Works – Jack Ingram
11. Randall Knife – Vince Gill
12. Texas 1947 – Robert Earl Keen
13. Old Friends – Terry Allen
14. She Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere – The Trishas
15. My Favorite Picture of You – Jerry Jeff Walker

Check out our YouTube videos:

Worry B Gone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-ziW5e0494

Stuff that works
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npG3ngu49GA

Track Seven: Willie Nelson nicely deflates the excess melodrama usually found in covers of "Waiting For Train" (yep, that moneyshot chorus), by taking the whole thing at a brisk, even business-like tempo, which actually makes it more affecting.

http://pistolannies.s3.amazonaws.com/media/news/articles/39/q2n5rby011vxc7cm_large.jpg

"Conflates myth and memoir"(and memory, even), yeah-h-h that's a good way of putting it--but worth checking out:
press release, in case you can't tell
Mickey Newbury’s An American Trilogy was one of the most talked-about and lauded reissues of 2011 – a long-overdue affirmation for a songwriter and performer who has for years enjoyed cult acclaim, but belongs in the ranks of the American greats.
Keeping the love alive in 2012, Saint Cecilia Knows and Drag City present a split-single that pairs Mickey Newbury’s recording of “Heaven Help the Child,” the title track of the most refined and under-appreciated album in Newbury’s trilogy––with a new version of the song by Bill Callahan that invokes the stately, elegiac spirit of the original while reworking its intricacies for his own unique voice and style. It will be released March 27th.
Callahan has made no secret of his admiration for Mickey Newbury, even name-checking him (alongside George Jones, Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash, as part of a roll call of the most American of contemporary songwriter-performers) in the song, “America,” off his acclaimed 2011 album Apocalypse.
“There’s something psychedelic and transcendent about Mickey's best work,” says Callahan, “and when he gets into the realms of songs like ‘Heaven Help The Child,’ where he spans generations and flies over time while still maintaining a singular mind, he's imparting a truly epic knowledge and vision. The song always reminded me of the movie Once Upon a Time in America.”
A wildly-ambitious, cross-generational odyssey, written in 1971 against the backdrop of the waning days of the Vietnam War, “Heaven Help The Child” is the closest Newbury ever came to writing a pure protest song, albeit one that, in true Newbury style, breaks the mold and emotes heartfelt paens, seeking solutions rather than mere dissent.
Allusive, elusive and emotionally direct, the song conflates myth and memoir until the two are inseparable and interchangeable. A reference in the lyrics to Fitzgerald and Hemingway draws on the idea that, for Newbury and his peers, Nashville of the ‘70s was like Paris in the ‘20s, a meeting place for writers in exile; outsiders working within the mainstream of culture, whose artistic concerns were too epic and personal to be constrained by it.
“The point I was trying to make in that song,” said Newbury, “is that every generation thinks that its problems are unique where its problems really are as old as man. There are no new problems; there are only new faces having them.”
Mickey Newbury often referred to “Heaven Help The Child” as his “second Trilogy,” the first being “An American Trilogy,” the song with which he is most closely-associated yet, paradoxically, did not write. But “Heaven Help the Child” is Newbury through and through: the work of a master songwriter at the height of his powers.
Mickey Newbury online:
You can also get a free four-track box sampler here: http://anamericantrilogy.com/splash
also see
http://www.mickeynewbury.com/
and
http://www.dragcity.com/artists/mickey-newbury
you might wanta check his MySpace for a bunch of albums I've never heard
http://www.myspace.com/mickeynewbury/music/albums

Listened to the Zach James album a few more times and still like it, despite its having the indie tendency to lay back without kicking up its heels. Zach's voice reminds me a bit of Jim Morrison's, actually. I wouldn't say Zach's like Morrison in his vocal demeanor, however. Or only a little bit, an occasional moment of being declamatory. But not into riding snakes and such.

My two favorite 2012 "country" albums so far are by Elfin Saddle (cello-driven co-ed Anglo-style folkishness from Montreal with hints of goth and the Middle East but mostly of Fairport Convention) and Bryan Clark & the New Lyceum Players (guitar-chopsy full-band soft-rock that sometimes kinda rocks from Nashville via Texas with hints of jam band), and so far I'm getting more out of the new Drew Nelson (post-Earle/ Mellencamp recession folk-rock from Michigan with merely average singing) than the new Dierks Bentley. Like a few things okay on the latter (“Am I The Only One” left over from last year, “Diamonds Make Babies,” “The Woods,” the pretty Lady Antebellum style duet with Karen Fairchild) but I’m not hearing anything near the level of his best stuff. Not sure what, if anything, that says about country's current state. Should probably check out Tim McGraw’s album, one of these days.

Several Rolling Countrys back, xhuxk and I were briefly discussing Catholic country, trying to think of some examples. He may have come up with something, I haven't found the right thread yet, but anyway there's def some on Craig Finn's new solo album. No doubt about the Catholic part, the rest is if you consider Drive-by Truckers' sound and sensibility to be sufficiently country (I do, just didn't think Go-Go Boots had quite enough good cuts for Top Ten). Here's my Finn preview, which indicates my main interest wasn't the specifically Catholic aspect of his compassionate conservatism/low-rent empathy, but worth noting the theological in this year's RC. anyway, a fun listen overall, so far:
“Dude with the long fingernails, I know he’ll be good to you/I seen him shave up at the library/And sleep behind the caribou.” On his solo debut, “Clear Heart Full Eyes”, The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn temporarily trades THS’s ornate neo-classic rock chariot for his Austin session group’s alone-together cowbell groove, a bracing back room echo of THS tourmates Drive-By Truckers. Finn’s currently touring combo of Austin stalwarts include the new album’s incisive, evocative regular and steel guitarist, Ricky Ray Jackson; RRJ's Happen-Ins colleague, drummer Falcon Valdez; the well-named Moonlight Towers' guitarist, James Stevens; and attentive, sportive bassist Alex Livingstone of Grand Champeen.

Probably won't make my Top Ten though.

That last Hold Steady album was so dull; I've been avoiding listening to his alt-country move. May or may not get around to it eventually.

I feel like country has maybe gotten more Catholic, in general, since we had that discussion. Other examples will probably come to me later, but Brantley Gilbert naming his debut album Modern Day Prodigal Son and wearing graven-image religious jewelry (including a Virgin Mary and very gothic looking cross) around his neck (and showing us closeups of the same) inside the CD booklet of his followup Halfway To Heaven (and standing in his leather jacket in front of a fancy church window and beneath a chandelier adorned with crucifixes on the back) probably count -- definitely one of the most papist-looking c&w albums I ever saw (though I have no idea Gilbert was actually raised Catholic himself.) Also, Wiki says Laura Bell Bundy "graduated from Lexington Catholic High School in 1999." And Keith Urban is supposedly Catholic. Not sure about Tim McGraw, but his dad Tug apparently was.

(My own current reading, fwiw: Why I Am A Catholic by Garry Wills. Though I'm still a lapsed/recovered one, myself.)

Tug McGraw sounds like a cowboy dog in a children's book

you mean recovered by it, or from it? Maybe some of both at various times, like Southern Baptist-raised me. Holy Moly, I think I've got that Brantley Gilbert album, will have to check if the songs reflect any of the packaging.

From it. And "...no idea if Gilbert was actually...." etc., I meant.

Wonder if Quick Draw McGraw was Catholic.

Should've added a couple posts up that I also still need to check out the new Kellie Pickler that people seem to like so much. Jon Caramanica reviewed it affirmatively in the Times yesterday; he also made me at least slightly curious about Chi Bhiman and Christian pop singer Kari Jobe. Couldn't get into that 2011 Jason Boland album he wrote about (and which finished #30 in the Nashville Scene poll) when I tried a few times last year (liked his 2010 live album better), give or take or take the long, rambling talking-blues-style closer "Farmer's Luck." Anyway, here's Caramanica's thing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/arts/music/new-music-by-kari-jobe-mohombi-bhi-bhiman-and-others.html

Sho. Always crossed hisself before he'd draw, mighty quick!

Look out now:
Relativity Music Group is pleased to announce the release of the soundtrack for Relativity Media’s adrenaline-fueled Navy SEAL action-thriller Act of Valor, featuring brand new original songs written and inspired by the film from today’s top recording artists including: Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum, Sugarland, Trace Adkins, Wynonna Judd, Montgomery Gentry, and more. In theatres February 24, 2012, the Bandito Brothers’ Act of Valor stars a group of active-duty Navy SEALs in a film like no other in Hollywood’s history, along with actors Roselyn Sanchez, Alex Veadov, Jason Cottle and Nestor Serrano, in an unprecedented blend of real-life heroism and original filmmaking. The soundtrack will be released by Relativity Music Group and distributed in music retail locations by Capitol Records Nashville on February 21st.
The track listing includes original songs written and performed by artists including: Keith Urban (whose song “For You” is featured in the film’s end credits), Sugarland (“Guide You Home”), Lady Antebellum (“I Was Here”), Trace Adkins (“If the Sun Comes Up”), Lori McKenna (“Two Soldiers Coming Home”), Jake Owen (“The Best I Can”), Montgomery Gentry (“What It Takes”), Josh Kelley (“The Best of Me”), Hunter Hayes (“Where We Left Off”), and Wynonna Judd (“Whatever Brings You Back”).
Produced and directed by former Baja 1000 champion Mike “Mouse” McCoy and former stuntman Scott Waugh, and written by Kurt Johnstad (300), Act of Valor (etc). Hope the songs are suitably extreme. Where's Th' Legendary Shackshakers, where's any kind of metal (mebbe Montgy. Gentry will crank up the guitars, at least)

are those all original for the movie or?

So the press sheet leads me to believe, though I haven't tried to Google-verify (so lazy)

"written and inspired by the film", go film!

wouldn't see the film on a bet but that's an interesting soundtrack.

hope it will be.

For Tim McGraw, whose new album I still haven't gotten around to yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cObvO93LgFw

The new Dierks has been growing on me, though. Not sure I agree with Rob Harvilla that he's winning the Tom Petty soundalike sweepstakes (not sure I think he sounds much like Petty at all), but I wound up liking the non-triumphalist sea-to-shining-sea patriotic schlock of the title track "Home" (which Wiki informs me is the new single, and which basically says we all disagree on everything but we're all in this together and we'll get through it somehow) more than I would have guessed. "Tip It On Back" seems like fairly run-of-the-mill working for weekend beers (and tokes?) stuff to me, but I like the hard times verse it starts with. Seven-minute closer stretched out by some (presumably Dierks's?) kid singing it is impossible to get through, though -- when I saw that there was a song that long, I was hoping for some jamming.

And oh yeah, "The Woods" isn't near as good as it deserves to be, but I grew up in Michigan, so I relate to the idea of woodses being places where growing kids can do things they're not supposed to do, and I can't think of many other songs about it. Plus I like how Dierks magically transforms into Art Alexakis from Everclear when he tells the girl to leave her iphone at home.

Here's my Scene poll. I actually have played Randy Montana's record more than any other country record from last year, altho I like the Lambert/Annies records quite a bit. The Haggard record grew on me some, altho I still find "Too Much Boogie Woogie" completely banal even by Hag standards. A few months previous to the poll, I wrote up Montana in the Best of Nashville issue as the country record of the year, but it ended up coming in a little below that by December, if we make it through, which I did.

Going to begin doing a bimonthly country column for the Scene, which I've been trying to conceptualize the last month or so. Should have one up soon.

Anyone else gotten the new Encyclopedia of Country the Hall of Fame/Museum just put out?

Finally, here's my Nashville Scene review of the Drive-By Truckers and Bobby Keys & the Suffering Bastards, in case you're interested.

Edd Hurt
Nashville Scene

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2011:

1. Pistol Annies Hell on Heels Columbia Nashville
2. Miranda Lambert Four the Record RCA Nashville
3. Randy Montana Randy Montana Mercury Nashville
4. Hayes Carll KMAG YOYO (& Other American Stories) Lost Highway
5. Willie Nelson Remember Me Vol. 1 R&J
6. Old 97s The Grand Theatre Vol. 2 New West
7. Glen Campbell Ghost on the Canvas Surfdog
8. Steel Magnolia Steel Magnolia Big Machine
9. Brad Paisley This Is Country Music Arista Nashville
10. Todd Snider Live: The Storyteller Aimless

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2011:

1. Miranda Lambert "Heart Like Mine" RCA Nashville
2. Hayes Carll "Grand Parade" Lost Highway
3. Eric Church "Drink in My Hand" EMI Nashville
4. Eric Church "Springsteen" EMI Nashville
5. Zac Brown Band "Colder Weather"
6. Brad Paisley "Toothbrush" Arista Nashville
7. Keith Urban "Long Hot Summer" Arista Nashville
8. Pistol Annies "Hell on Heels" Columbia Nashville
9. Miranda Lambert "Baggage Claim" RCA Nashville
10. Shelby Lynne "Revelation Road" Everso

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2011:

1. Various Artists The Bristol Sessions: The Big Bang of Country Music Bear Family
2. The Beau Brummels Bradley's Barn Warner Bros.
3. The Gourds Old Mad Joy Vanguard
4. Mickey Newbury An American Trilogy Drag City
5. Gene Clark Two Sides to Every Story High Moon

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2011:

1. Merle Haggard
2. George Strait
3. George Jones

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2011:

1. Miranda Lambert
2. Emmylou Harris
3. Martina McBride

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2011:

1. Zac Brown Band
2. Eric Church
3. Brad Paisley

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2011:

1. Miranda Lambert
2. Guy Clark
3. Brad Paisley

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2011:

1. Pistol Annies
2. Steel Magnolia
3. Zac Brown Band

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2011:

1. Pistol Annies
2. Randy Montana
3. Laura Bell Bundy

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2011:

1. Miranda Lambert
2. Pistol Annies
3. Hayes Carll

I didn't include Jonny Corndag's Down on the Bikini Line but I should have. It is rather underachieved pseudo-country on one level, sure, but I think it works--he's trying to do some combination of Bobby Bare, David Allan Coe and Michael Hurley. Does his own leather working too and runs marathons...
here's my Scene piece on Coe-n-dawg.

Corndawg!

I still find "Too Much Boogie Woogie" completely banal even by Hag standards

Glad to finally learn I'm not the only person who thinks this. Really dumb song. (Besides, Hag is a Western Swing fan, right? He ought to like boogie woogie.) Only great song on the album, as far as I can tell, is "Under The Bridge" -- Even though it turns out he'd first recorded it years ago, and the Chili Peppers recorded a much worse song with the same title once. But between that and the general okay-ness of the rest of the album, that was enough to give it a place on my ballot.

Didn't include Jonny Corndawg's Down on the Bikini Line but I should have

First time I played this, I too was thinking he could be the new Hurley, what with his dirty mind and all. By the third time, I wanted to strangle him, what with his precious anti-folk non-singing and all.
And the more I played it, the more I decided he's not even that funny.

I did include Newbury in my reissue ballot. A lot of it is more or less demo-plus in my book; he wasn't the most commanding singer. And I really should've included Larry Jon Wilson in reissues--Omni put out his 1975 Monument album plus bonus tracks. Good stuff, and I got to know the guy who produced Wilson (and who has produced Ronnie Milsap for years), Rob Galbraith--another r&b fan who came to Nashville and went country.

I have not heard the Guy Clark tribute. I saw Guy Clark play live last year, with Ray Wylie Hubbard. I suppose anyone doing Clark would have more oomph than Clark himself, who is a very, er, casual performer. So I don't know. Steve Earle's record I found unlistenable; for that matter, I can barely stand Phil Ochs except for the one Ochs album that is good, that 1970 record he did wearing his gold Elvis suit. Earle is like Phil Ochs with a better sense of rhythm, at least Earle tries to make these New Orleans-style tracks and all. He's just so obvious and earnest. He's no Del Reeves...who is a forgotten figure who made great sort of Jerry Reed-style novelty trucking records/place-name tributes with, often, a New Vaudeville Band kinda overlay of ricky-tick. Or the Wilburn Brothers, whose 1966 single "Hurt Her Once for Me" is one of the great sub-Buck Owens rock 'n' roll country tunes.

And the more I played it, the more I decided he's not even that funny

Could be that his funny stuff isn't his best. But I do think "Undercover Dad" of whatever that one is called, about his daughter's diary and what she is doing outside the family circle, as it were, is some kind of song.

Xhuxk, I also like the title track of the Hag record. He gets a job at Opryland, you gotta love that.

Rob Galbraith: same fellow who made an LP called Nashville Dirt in a Tony Joe White kind of mould? I've been enjoying that record lately, having bought it years back and never really got round to paying any attention.

right, Tim, Nashville Dirt. he did another solo LP too. Rob played a show late last year at Douglas Corner here. I need to get a copy of that album actually. At one time in the early '70s, Rob was Billy Sherrill's assistant. Rob told me he was the guy who tried to get J.J. Cale signed to Epic but they passed. Interesting, and very nice, guy.

Okay so. Tomorrow night, as my Valentine's treat for my wonderful sweetie, I'm taking her to see Martina McBride, who's playing a benefit show up in LA. She's one of my sweets's favorite singers of all time -- only Dolly ranks as high for her -- so I'm looking forward to this, besides the fact that this is pretty much the first country-show-as-such I've ever seen.

Is she gonna love you through it?

Hey, it is Valentine's Day after all.

Ned, please report back with highlights.

Assuming you mean Martina's show, yes.

Presuming you don't stop off at a salon along the way.

A vision! (Actually the real concern is beating traffic, partially because we hear the openers are supposed to be okay.)

I still love "Independence Day."

Ned's been taking it nice and easy since Valentine's.

As one should. Good show, it all slotted into my own memories of early 80s Pat Benatar and that-era country crossover hits revamped for a later time -- reinforced by the set-closing take on "Don't Stop Believin'" Clearly got a good band going for her as well, in great voice in general.

Opening dude Danny Nail and his band made me think they could just have easily opened for Wilco or Howlin Rain' just as easily. Not a complaint, they were pretty good in their own way too.

Think you mean David Nail, Ned? I liked his 2011 album a lot (linked upthread to a review I wrote); a lot more than Martina's (which was just okay, but which did have my favorite country single of the year), in fact.

Whoops, yes you're correct, David not Danny.

Glad it turned out well, Ned. I keep adding to my P&J and Scene comments posted on http://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com and here's one I don't think is in the ones posted upthread, judging by Control + F, pretty fun album:
Not quite country enough for these lists, but
Also: Snow Shadows, a recent studio album by Alana Amram. Her voice reminds me of very early Dylan, but without imitating him--also without his very early hillbilly thing, not that there's anything wrong with that. Spare, expressive, interested in beats, a tad cautious, but looking for the right place to jump, then doing it-- early Dylan in that sense. Songs by Vince Martin, whom I only knew from his collaboration with Fred Neil (on an LP I never heard, blanking on the title). He’s no genius, but provides good moody, vivid vehicles for Alana and the lads’ green rocky road flavor of folk-country-pop. I might be prejudiced, because I used to jam with her dad Dave (who wrote “Pull My Daisy” with Kerouac and Ginsberg, also plays classical and jazz french horn, piano, flute etc). He used to lead jams at Birmingham’s nascent civic arts fests in the 70s. But Alana’s def got her own thing--Van Dyke Parks' strings on a few cuts (sunlight violins forking the forest of dark red and green cellos etc), album produced by Mark Sebastian, who wrote gritty "Summer In The City" & whose brother John plays on here too-- yeah, and she wears it with just enough, casual enough flair

Here's something I found interesting in the Thousand-Dollar Cut-Rate Quartet division of Nashville ghost stories and rockabilly casualties making their local-band statement--Million Sellers' new opus Music City USA and Other Ghost Stories.

Good title, I'll check it out. This seems like it might be good too. Never heard of some, but Tracy Grammer, Gretchen Peters, Mary Gauthier, and Malcolm Holcombe should be okay; Steve Dawson has some really intriguing tracks on the mega-space-time vessel Live From The Old Town School
Listen to Folk Alley on folkalley.com, Thursday, Feb. 23 and Friday, Feb. 24, to hear interviews and performances streaming live from the Magnolia Room at the 25th Folk Alliance in Memphis, Tennessee.

Hosts Jim Blum and Matt Watroba are in Memphis to introduce an exciting line-up of artists including (all times listed as Central Time GMT -6):

Thursday
11 am-11:45 am CT: Nora Jane Struthers
11:45 am-12:30 pm CT: The Dunwells
12:30 pm-1:15 pm CT: Tracy Grammer
1:15 pm-2 pm CT: Gretchen Peters

Friday
11 am-11:45 am CT: Old Man Luedecke
11:45 am-12:30 pm CT: Mary Gauthier
12:30 pm-1:15 pm CT: Malcolm Holcombe
1:15 pm-2 pm CT: Steve Dawson

(other musicians will be recorded for later broadcast)

yeah, looks good. I only know Holcombe, who was quite good last Oct. at Americana here in town.

Dierks album still growing on me some (like that he references Ozzy in "5-1-5-0" and admire his almost risking pornography in "Breathe You In"); still didn't get through the McGraw but the first few songs sounded okay I guess; wish Bryan Clark & the New Lyceum Players were jazzier and jammier and less uh John Mayeristic (maybe also Zach Brownistic?) or whatever but still think their album has enough tasty bits to get by.

Favorite "country" album of 2012 is now Bhi Bhiman's Bhiman, first time I've ever been able to say that about a Sri Lankan-American singer songwriter who's been hyped on NPR. (Favorite songs, not necessarily in this order: "Kimchee Line," The Cookbook," "Atlatl," Ballerina," and the instrumental "Mexican Wine." My wife, who's spent way more time in Mexico than I have, explained to me what an atlatl is. My 3-year-old daughter likes the album so much she's been asking me to play for bedtime music.)

Also, probably would've put this album in my 2011 country Top 10 if I'd heard it on time, even though it's way more biker-doom metal. (Scroll down in the middle for my mini review):

http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/gideon-smith/album/30-weight

PYeah, xgau really liked Bhiman, covered the album on NPR and Expert Witness, though noted some current limitations in his approach.
Plumb forgot about the Thurday Folk Alley Folk Alliance live stream, heard only the end of Mary Guathier's set today, voice seemed a little faint (some weird raspy inhalations when talking) but pretty good tune.I see what you mean about Holcombe, Edd, kind of like Dave Van Ronk in "One Meat Bawwl" mode, the freewheeling side of Uncle Dave Macon, but most of all like a bulldog, growling and pulling images (esp like to check about "a hole in the ocean" some more), through funky undertow. Steve Dawson mostly did Mississippi Sheiks tunes, from a tribute years ago, when most of their stuff was unavailable beyond obscure bootlegs--he got me thinking about the Sheiks, since said a lot is ready on iTunes ect. and esp group recordings he so into (I only know OOP Stop + Listen and an even grabbaggier than nec thing on Sony), got me thinking and missing some of Dawson'svocals, which seemed bland not only compared to the Sheiks of course but also his originals I'd heard before. Good playing from him and his motel combo, suitcase and all, and voice better when they finished with a faster Sheiks, focusing on the beat focused his phrasing of the typically pungent Sheiks lyrics too. "Apple Doll", one of his tracks on Live From The Old Town School, brings seemingly fragmented lines into focus via music and more elusively accruing senses--in principle like some 60s Dylan, that version of the "The Cuckoo Song" on Harry Smith's Smithsonian Anthology, Fairport's early version of "Nottamun Town," and--not much else, some other ancient, maybe coded and/or stitched together folk songs, but not much I've heard. "Apple Doll" might be adapted from old sources, but seems entirely and disquietingly like testimony from the very recent past. Folk Alley's in the process of posting highlights of the streams here
http://www.folkalley.com/festivals/folk-alliance-2012

"Apple Doll" deals more with shattered than "seemingly fragmented," actually--hence why impression of testimony from very recent past is disquieting, the musical mending spooky too, in sunlit way.

Finally made it through Emotional Traffic, which strikes me as a more or less average Tim McGraw album, which means I like it fine. Totally stumped about people who've said it's his best ever (that'd be A Place In The Sun from 13 years ago), but it has some good if probably not great songs on it -- "Right Back Atcha," "The One That Got Away," the purple-drink single left over from last year, Ne-Yo duet "Only Human", "Die By My Own Hand." (For his quiet storm/yacht-rock mode, I'd take "Suspicions" from 2007 waaay over "Right Back" or "Only Human" though.) And he's singing good, sure -- but when didn't he sing good?

Still need to try the Kellie Pickler. Tried the upcoming Marty Stuart yesterday, and he's as boring as he always is. What do people hear in him again? Respect for country history I guess, right? Some bluegrass wanking from the musicians, if you like that sort of thing. Though for what it's worth, I didn't hate the closing Hank III duet as much as I expected to.

One time through the Kellie Pickler album, I'd say it's all real purty in the background, and I get the idea the songwriting's on point for a lot of it, but almost none of it is connecting with me so far regardless -- If anything, I'd say the self-conscious countrypolitan classicism of the sound obscures the songs; I'm just kind of not buying it. It will probably grow on me with more listens, but I'd actually be surprised if I wind up preferring it to her debut. (It's not like '70s pop-country is inherently better than '00s pop-country, after all. And I think Lee Ann Womack's More Where That Came From is a pretty good album, but I never liked anything on it anywhere near as much as "I'll Think Of A Reason Later.")

haven't heard Marty's new one, but he and his band are usually pretty sparky (vs. earned/traditional/received fatalism, never far away). He did push the bloodthirsty Old Testament aspect of Soul Chapel too far for fun (would have to go metal for that)But Badlands, his brooding white-man contemplation of Native Americans getting screwed over, sure worked better than most such.

What I said about Pickler's debut on here, over half a decade ago:

Rolling Country 2006 Thread

Good pickers on here at least, and hopefully not too many more Tea Party-and-beyondo rants, anybody heard it yet?
Shooter Jennings--FAMILY MAN
Recording in his recently adopted hometown of New York, producing himself for the first time, and playing with a group of extremely talented musicians he has dubbed The Triple Crown; Shooter is more relaxed and confident on this album than ever before. Featuring renowned jazz pianist Erik Deutsch, guitarist Chris Masterson, drummer Tony Leone, bassist Jeff Hill, pedal steel player John Graboff, and rising roots music star Eleanor Whitmore, who contributes harmony vocals as well as playing mandolin and fiddle, the Triple Crown brings to mind such ensembles as Merle Haggard's Strangers, Bob Wills' Texas Playboys, and Buck Owens' Buckaroos, becoming an integral part of the music and adding their unique stamp to each and every note. It is his ... Read more blah-blah, songs below:
Track Listings
1. The Real Me
2. The Long Road Ahead (feat. Tom Morello and Eleanor Whitmore)
3. The Deed and The Dollar
4. Manifesto No. 4
5. Summer Dreams (Al's Song)
6. Southern Family Anthem
7. Daddy's Hands
8. The Black Dog
9. The Family Tree
10. Born Again (feat. Eleanor Whitmore)

Squinting at those titles some more, mebbe not so promising...

Some these titles are def intriguing--would like to check "Shattered Image," "Shinola," "Jesus and Gravity."

Lebanon, Tenn. (March 5, 2012) – Mark April 2 on your calendar for An Evening With… Dolly, then be sure to stop by your nearest Cracker Barrel Old Country Store® location to pick up your copy of this first-ever Cracker Barrel exclusive two-disc DVD and CD set. The DVD and CD (w somewhat dif tracks)transport you to a front row seat in London as Dolly performs some of her most popular songs “Coat of Many Colors,” “9 to 5,” and “Jolene,” live in front of her sold-out O2 arena concert.

Classics like Dolly’s very first million seller, “Here You Come Again” and “I Will Always Love You,” along with previously unreleased live bonus tracks “Shattered Image” and “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” combine in a memorable collection. The DVD captures Dolly interacting with the audience, sharing stories about growing up in Tennessee, and in the “Soundcheck” feature, fans get to take a peek backstage and see the inner workings of the show. An Evening With…Dolly will be available exclusively at all Cracker Barrel Old Country Store locations and online at crackerbarrel.com/music.

“In 2008, we released Dolly’s Backwoods Barbie - Collector’s Edition CD and we are delighted to work with her on a second project,” said Julie Craig, Cracker Barrel Marketing Manager. "(yadda-yadda)"

An Evening With... Dolly CD Track Listing:
1. Two Doors Down
2. Jolene
3. Coat of Many Colors
4. Only Dreaming
5. Little Sparrow
6. The Grass is Blue
7. Do I Ever Cross Your Mind
8. Here You Come Again
9. Islands in the Stream
10. 9 to 5
11. I Will Always Love You
12. Shattered Image* - previously unreleased live bonus track
13. My Tennessee Mountain Home* - previously unreleased live bonus track

An Evening With... Dolly DVD Track Listing:
1. Two Doors Down
2. Jolene
3. Backwoods Barbie
4. Coat of Many Colors
5. Only Dreamin’
6. Better Get to Livin’
7. Shinola
8. Little Sparrow
9. The Grass is Blue
10. Do I Ever Cross Your Mind
11. Here You Come Again
12. Islandsin the Stream
13. 9 to 5
14. I Will Always Love You
15. Jesus and Gravity

More country criticism perhaps but I encourage folks here to check out these two threads over at Rod Dreher's blog at _The American Conservative_, both the various linked articles, his own thoughts and especially the many comments. (You're also going to figure out who I am on there pretty easily, I admit, given I mention a certain xhuxk at one point.) An interesting amount of stuff to chew on.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/2012/03/08/conservative-culture-of-country-music/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/2012/03/08/country-music-catechesis/

I'd especially recommend this comment, which I suspect few here will find surprising but which is nonetheless expressed very well and concisely:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/2012/03/08/conservative-culture-of-country-music/#comment-105520

skipping over the posters like a stone, I agree with the libertarian-to-liberal insofar as he hears the conservative-traditional older person confronted with differences in younger generations of own family, but also, country does adapt, necessarily. Even in acting, working, playing the same way, eventually it gets heard differently, even hears itself differently as time change and memories accumulate, adapting as they pile in together. It always adapts in someway, even in reacting against changes in other forms of pop music. Pop and art and/or folk processes.

So tension of adaptation (grappling with marriage sharing rocks w whiskey, for inst) a great country sobject

Those are some thoughtful comments!

A new one from Marley's Ghost, whom xhuxx and I were discussing on RC 2006--good stuff on there, but vocals didn't hold up w repeated listenings. Lots of good guests on here, although Prine and Kristofferson are not the kind of vocal support I'd want. Oh well, there's Emmylou, Old Crow etc (and production by Cowboy Jack Clement), so here's hoping:

NEW ALBUM BY MARLEY’S GHOST, JUBILEE,
FEATURES LEDENDARY PRODUCER/SONGWRITER
COWBOY JACK CLEMENT AT THE HELM

Stellar list of guest performers include Emmylou Harris, John Prine,
Old Crow Medicine Show, Marty Stuart, Larry Campbell,
Byron House and Don Heffington.

Along with six band originals, songs include covers of Kris Kristofferson,
Levon Helm, Bobby & Shirley Womack and others.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Marley’s Ghost — a virtuoso aggregation composed of singer/multi-instrumentalists Dan Wheetman, Jon Wilcox, Mike Phelan, Ed Littlefield Jr. and Jerry Fletcher — celebrates its 25th anniversary with the scintillating roots-music tour de force Jubilee (Sage Arts, street date: June 5, 2012).

The album, produced by legendary Nashville cat Cowboy Jack Clement and recorded at the city’s venerable Sound Emporium, which Clement built, features guest performances from Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Old Crow Medicine Show, Marty Stuart, Larry Campbell, Byron House and Don Heffington.

“One of the things that we were really clear on with this record was that we wanted it to be a Marley’s Ghost album with friends sitting in, not guest stars with us as the backing band,” Wheetman explains. “And it worked.”

Like its nine predecessors, Jubilee is wildly eclectic, its 13 tracks drawn, with unerring taste, from the songbooks of Kris Kristofferson (“This Old Road”), Levon Helm (“Growin’ Trade”), Bobby and Shirley Womack (“It’s All Over Now”), Katy Moffatt and Tom Russell (“Hank and Audrey”), John Prine (“Unwed Fathers”), Butch Hancock (“If You Were a Bluebird”) and Paul Siebel (the closing “She Made Me Lose My Blues”), along with the traditional “Diamond Joe.” These deftly interpreted tunes blend seamlessly with the six originals on the album.

Marley’s Ghost is nothing less than a national treasure, the capable inheritors of the archetypal Americana blueprint drawn up by The Band. As the L.A. Weekly aptly put it, “This West Coast group deftly, and frequently daffily, dashes across decades of American music to create a sound that’s steeped in tradition but never bogged down by traditionalism.” These guys can sing and play anything with spot-on feel, from reggae (hence the double-entendre moniker) to blues to stone country, which is what they’ve been doing — to the ongoing delight of a fervent cult that includes many of their fellow musicians — throughout their first quarter century as a working unit.

“The band has always been eclectic, and that’s one of the reasons we’ve stayed together for this long,” Wheetman explains. “I’ve said this before, but instead of having to be in a Delta blues band, an a cappella singing group, a country band, a reggae band, and being a singer/songwriter, I’m in one band and we just do all that. It’s very convenient.”

When they started thinking about this album project more than a year ago, the band members agreed to each bring songs to the table that they wanted Marley’s Ghost to record. “That’s the way the band has generally operated,” says Wheetman, “and then some things naturally stick.

I brought ‘The Blues Are Callin’’ for Mike because I thought it would be a good duet song, although he wound up singing it by himself — and he sang the shit out of it, by the way. And when I heard Kris Kristofferson’s last album a couple of years ago, I thought the title song would be great for Jon, so I brought that one along as well. Jon brought ‘Growin’ Trade,’ which Eddie ended up singing.”

Phelan describes “Growin’ Trade,” written by Larry Campbell and Levon Helm, as “an emblematic Band song that was never recorded by The Band. Loving The Band and being able to make something that sounds like The Band without imitating The Band is kinda tricky, and I think we pulled it off with this one, so we’re really proud of that.” Wheetman’s “South for a Change” has a Bob Wills feel, while Phelan was thinking of Buck Owens when “Lonely Night” came to him.

The new record is the band’s second straight project with Clement, who turned 80 last year. Clement first heard Marley’s Ghost in 2009, when a mutual friend brought him to a performance at Nashville’s Douglas Corner. “Afterwards, Cowboy came up to tell us how much he liked the band,” Phelan recalls. “He said, ‘You got a lot of bang,’ whatever that means. It was love at first sight all around. He liked that we were a real band and not a bunch of session musicians who get together for one project. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but he knows a lot of those guys; he doesn’t know a lot of real bands who play and sing together and have a sound. About a month later, he sent us a letter — not an email — saying that if we wanted to come down to his place, he’d really like to make a record with us. We thought about that for two or three seconds — ‘Let’s see, do we want to make a record with a living legend, the guy who produced Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins? Okay.’ So this was a unique opportunity for us to do something with him while he’s still at the height of his powers.”

They first worked with Clement on 2010’s Ghost Town, which in turn followed 2006’s Van Dyke Parks-produced Spooked. “Working with Van Dyke was like grad school in producing, says Phelan, “whereas Cowboy is a much more subtle guy. He’d be sitting there in the control room with these gigantic speakers cranked up listening to us do a take, and we’d hear him like the voice of God over the talkback, ‘Liked that one.’ Or he’d go, ‘That kinda sucked. You got a better one in ya.’ He guided the process, but not in any way similar to what Van Dyke had done. So it was a wildly different experience. But when you ride out the whole process, you can see why he’s got so many gold records on his walls.”

“Jack brings a state of mind, a perspective about why you’re there in the first place,” Wheetman says of Clement’s production approach. “Then he lets things happen. When he started working at Sun, everything was cut live, and it was all about feel, not precision, and that’s how he still approaches it. And as you get basic tracks done, he’s got ideas about what to add. Jack really wanted Jerry on piano for the basic tracks because he’s such a great piano player, and up to this point, he’d been playing drums and piano at the same time, believe it or not. So we asked our old friend Don Heffington, who played on Spooked, to play the drums on the album. And I generally play bass in the band, but we asked Byron House come in and play bass on the sessions.”

According to Phelan, they brought in House and Heffington to serve as the rhythm section on the album “because we wanted that feel you get when the whole band plays together. We wanted to get as much in the live session as possible and change as little as possible to the record — it just feels better that way.”

Marley’s Ghost had brought in guests on several of their previous records — “friends who happened to be in the neighborhood,” according to Wheetman — but nothing approaching the all-star cast that graces Jubilee. “That was all Jack,” says Wheetman. “As we were doing ‘Unwed Fathers,’ he said, ‘That one needs a girl’s voice —it needs an angel on there.’ So he called Emmylou. Marty Stuart used to live at Jack’s house back when he was still playing mandolin with Johnny Cash. And Jack produced a couple of records for John Prine. We had sent Prine a CD of ‘This Old Road,’ and he really did his homework — he came in ready to go. They were all incredibly wonderful to work with — really giving and friendly. With every one of them, it was, ‘Is that what you want?’

“Emmy was in the studio trying to work out the harmony part for ‘Unwed Fathers,’ and because I’ve got a low voice, she was figuring out where to put it in her range to make it work. She said, ‘I’ll be out here ’til the cows come home,’ and I got on the talkback and asked her, ‘What time do the cows come home?’ She said, ‘As soon as I get this part!’”

The lone non-Nashville guest was Woodstock-based guitarist and fiddle player Larry Campbell, a former key member of Bob Dylan’s band, Levon Helm’s producer and musical director, and the co-writer, with Levon, of “Growin’ Trade,” one of the highlights of Helm’s Grammy-winning 2009 LP Electric Dirt. “We wanted some fiddle and some electric guitar on a couple of things, so we invited Larry down,” says Dan. “He came into the studio and cranked for two day and just killed it. He played hellacious guitar on ‘Hank and Audrey,’ and he was great fun to work with.”

With each album, the band’s mastery of all manner of roots forms becomes more captivating, and more seamless in its variety. “When you’ve been together for 25 years, there’s an approach, and that just automatically puts a certain spin on everything you do,” Wheetman points out. “One thing that’s always been important in the band is that you do what you can to serve the song, and that creates a cohesiveness from song to song.”

“We’re five singers who don’t think genres mean much,” says Phelan. “If you connect with the song and the song connects with you, that’s what’s important, and that’s a real core belief of the band. When I go to a performance, I want to hear passion; I want to hear somebody up there doing it because they can’t not do it. That’s what we’re going for with everything we tackle. We have so many diverse feels, and we can pull them off in an authentic way — and after all this time, we’re playing the best we ever have.”

One listen to Jubilee will confirm that assertion. In every note, and every measured silence, you can hear the miles they’ve traveled together, the jaw-dropping closeness they’ve attained, and the magical place where the men of Marley’s Ghost now reside.

Oh wait, Kristofferson isn't actually on there, they just do one of his songs. Here's the cover, from a painting by Thomas Hart Benson, who also invented a system of harmonica notation I believe.
http://e2ma.net/userdata/1400488/images/large/e1332960768.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TM7tZRp4iHk/TV70xhN9ZcI/AAAAAAAAALs/Z_oJjvOmZxo/s1600/Marley%2527s%2BGhost%2BGhost%2BTown.JPG

http://www.billyates.com/wilcox/images/ghost.jpg

Here's the one we were discussing, might be RC 2007, since that's when it was released, unless advances were '06.
http://goodnewmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/0603-marley_large.jpg

i need to give the hunger games soundtrack a spin

Yeah, interesting about Appalachoid District 12, but just read Joe Levy's Rolling Stone review: says it's verrry uneven, w credit and blame mainly going to producer/co-writer T-Bone Burnette. Pretty blunt review for Stone.

from the Takoma rarities thread: we got into a discussion of Norman Blake, and the following also has some links useful re other Nashville etc cats:
Back in the 70s, we were having a plastic suburban house party, playing the first three Aerosmith albums over and over and over, 'til I finally freaked out and flipped on the TV. There was Norman, just picking away: not speedy and flashy, but cutting across, unstoppable. We were the ones who stopped, looked, and even listened. My first Norman Blake experience, unless you count my already having had whiskey before breakfast. You can also find a number of situations involving Norman (and sometimes Nancy) on The Steam-Powered Preservation Society's download/stream site http://thespps.org
However! They don't have a search function, so you gotta scroll down and read the descriptions of the sets, and even so, let your finger linger on the download link, while you write it down, cos when you get into the archive you'll see a whole dizzying tower of links, not nec near yr target. Or you can just do a control + F search for a name you're looking for in there, and hit info under a promising label, sometimes get a pretty thorough commentary that way. Being of the jazzier-grass tendency, I also searched for and found clements & friends (Vassar w Grisman etc), Tony Trischka, Peter Rowan (w a line-up incl Trischka & Statman), Country Gazette etc. Blake plays w Tut Taylor alot, so check their Tut stash.

Oh yeah, Taylor and Blake worked as a duo at the Marin County Bluegrass Festival of 1974, which also involved Garcia and Grisman in various line-ups, plus Doc & Merle, Jim & Jesse, Frank Wakefield, and a monster Nitty Gritty Dirt Band set folding in several of the above and more. Can find that w no trouble at
http://smadacounty.blogspot.com He's also got lots of Garcia, w Dead and others, Townes (Lou Reed, Bird, Trane), etc etc. See the reposts link in left rail for complete list.

Nongrass-wise, A Truer Sound has for instance some Ray Wylie Hubbard tracks linked to his wife's posts, a live RWH set, even, if you go back far enough a mega-disc set involving Hubbard's Three Faces West, which A Truer Sound ecstatically describes as a Texas Crosby Stills & Nash (h'mmm), plus Steve Fromholz, Michael Martin Murphy, Bill & Bonnie Hearne (only ones here I've heard much, later work anyway, which is nice). Dunno if I'll try all that or not. Also an OOP print Johnny Paycheck collection, haven't checked the link yet though, ditto the live Merle radio set. We must lobby for re-post of the Mike Cooley live solo set. You'll see a re-direct to new site, but check this older one first:
http://atruersound.blogspot.com

"linked *from* his wife's posts"--think that's how it works.

As long as I'm doing this, might as well mention a lover of West Coast buckskin--my main interest is the Gram & Emmylou & Fallen Angels show, not the same as on the officially released LP, CD. Also a Byrds x Flying Burrito Brothers live interface--no Gram on there, alas, but Clarence White, Sneaky Pete etc. Lots of other Byrds-related, a ton of Young, the Complete Last Waltz (w tracks not in the official box, and none of it fixed in Robertson's official mix), live Kinks in '89, lately live The Band. Here's the link:
http://bbchron.blogspot.com

"live Kinks in *69*," that is! An audience tape, but still.

http://www.acmcountry.com/about_the_show.html

Sunday night April 1 is the Academy of Country Music Awards. How many different country music award shows are there? It seems like a lot.

Indeed. Been wondering about this, haven't gotten promo yet

http://rodneycrowell.com/splashpage/images/kin-cover.png

Joe Henry produced that and I think he sometimes turns stuff into just ok middlebrow NBR music. Guitarist Steuart Smith is on it, so maybe he livens it up. I haven't heard it yet either.

NPR

You remember this right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9Td_1ZcEaY

Well here it is again. Shameless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76kuL0qCIRE

Ah yeah, I need to dig deeper into YouTube country, thanks. xpost curmudgeon: Crowell, Karr and Smith will tour. Dunno if Karr reads, sings, or both. Hope Crowell does both; excerpts of his memoir Chinaberry Sidewalks were pretty pungent, if sometimes overwritten (pot to kettle, yeah).

Anybody heard this?

The Lacs 190 Proof Available In Stores Today
Collaborations with Big & Rich, Bubba Sparxxx and Crucifix Included on the Anticipated Sophomore Album

The Lacs gear up to open for Colt Ford on his
2012 “Declaration of Independence” tour

Nashville, TN (April 5, 2012) — Backroad Records’ high-powered duo The Lacs are now serving up their intoxicating blend of southern rap and rock on their sophomore album, 190 Proof. Available now in stores and online everywhere, the highly anticipated release includes collaborations with country music stars Big & Rich, as well as platinum selling rapper Bubba Sparxxx, and new artist Crucifix.

Taking the partying, country mud truckin’ lifestyle to the next level, 190 Proof is creating quite a buzz with songs like “Drinks Up” “Shake It (featuring Big & Rich)” and “4 Wheel Drive.” Produced by Phive Starr Productions and Shannon “Fat Shan” Houchins, 190 Proof is filled with 14 tracks of their unique inebriating mix of slinky southern guitar riffs with booming beats and rhymes about life in the dirtiest parts of the Dirty South. The album is available on iTunes and can be downloaded here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/190-proof/id513376545

Hailing from the sandy dirt roads of Baxley, GA, hip-hop artist Clay "Uncle Snap" Sharpe and lead vocalist/guitarist Brian "Rooster" King make up The Lacs (short for Loud Ass Crackers). Their unique brand of hick-hop/southern rock captured a national audience when their song, "Shindig" (featuring Colt Ford), appeared on the Mud Digger album series, selling over 100,000 albums and 150,000 digital downloads. Their Backroad Records album debut, Country Boys Paradise, released in 2010, went on to sell over 50,000 albums and over 150,000 downloads.

The Lacs will join label mate Colt Ford on the road as one of the opening acts on the 2012 “Declaration of Independence” tour. For a complete list of tour dates visit www.thelacsmusic.com

190 Proof Track Listing:

190 Proof
Drinks Up
Po Dunk University (Skit)
Shake It featuring Big & Rich
Old River Road
Wylin featuring Bubba Sparxxx
Great Moments in Redneck History #2 (Skit)
Country Biy Fresh
Island Time
Just Another Thing featuring Crucifix
4 Wheel Drive
Drink Too Much
Ease Along
What I Need

I do like their ride
http://www.selectohits.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/AVJ-238.jpg

Was not wowed by some of those youngin' who were up for best new artist at the Academy of Country Music Awards, but maybe I need to give 'em more of a chance. XChuckx probably knows their rock influences and can 'splain which ones are worth following. Scotty McCreery won as best new artist--he looks like he is 14 but he has a pretty deep voice

That live stream upthread has now been archived, or at least "highlights" have, w more Folk Alliance performers unveiled: we get the aforementioned Mary Gauthier, Steve D. and Malcolm Holcombe, plus Jimmy LaFave, the Dunwells, some you may even give a shit about:
http://www.folkalley.com/festivals/folk-alliance-2012

Heard the Lacs album today. Or skimmed it anyway. As country rock rap goes, maybe better than the most recent and worst Colt Ford one (maybe), but that's not saying much. Opener, which is the title track, rocks and crunks hardest -- had me going there the first time through, I admit it. Big & Rich and Bubba Sparxxx collabs both seem to be country strip-pole rock, and both seem negligible. Skits are as dumb as all rap skits, maybe dumber -- for Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy fans I guess. They get kinda smooth in a not awful way toward the end, but by then it's kinda too late. "Kickin Up Mud," mentioned upthread as a big country linedance or whatever song last year (and which I've still yet to hear), isn't on the album. Though "4 Wheel Drive" (no relation to BTO, unfortunately) does probably refer to mud being kicked up.

Oh well word to the Lacs: Necs! I mean Next! True that xpost Joe Henry can stuff some boredom into tracks, but he does great w with the ones he produces and writes and co-writes on Bonnia Raitt's new Slipstream. The co-write's with Loudon Wainwright, melds with the real good Dylan-written track before it, which he also produced, so Raitt's playing with Bill Frisell and Greg Leiz, no ambient 'llowed, not in the usual elevator sense anyway, just some eloquent picking. She and ex NRBQ/long-time Nashville cat Al Anderson play great elsewhere (she produced most of the set, sounds like she and Al may have co-written some too)They even squeeze and slap some juice out of "On Down The Line," basically a boring-ass yacht rock barnacle. The only other song choice I'd quarrel with so far is one about a Hollywood marriage as run through the evil media blah blah, but some musical diversion there too. So far seems like if you jumped from her 70s peaks to this, you'd be on the same level, or close enough to keep your balance--streaming here for nownhttp://www.bonnieraitt.com/slipstream

Player's in the right rail, despite blank in the middle of page.

Might be good. See link below for some of the tracks. Support record stores yall, wherever you find 'em.

New West Records and WXPN-FM's World Cafe®
Collaborate For
Special Record Store Day Release
NEW WEST RECORDS PRESENTS
ON AIR AT WORLD CAFE®
limited Edition Sampler Available Free With Purchase

At Participating Record Store Day Stores
Los Angeles, CA - April 12, 2012 - New West Records and WXPN-FM's acclaimed music program World Cafe® have joined together to produce a special, limited edition Record Store Day sampler available for free with purchase at participating stores worldwide on April 21st. New West Records On Air At World Cafe® features 14 special performances that have aired on World Cafe® but have never been made available on CD.
New West Records On Air At World Cafe® spans New West's 14 years as a label with performances from early signings Shaver and Tim Easton recorded in 2001 to shows recorded in 2011 with Buddy Miller and Steve Earle. Other artists featured on this exclusive release include Delbert McClinton, Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman, Drive-By Truckers and Mark Olson & Gary Louris.
"World Cafe® has been integral in building the careers of many of our artists. We were thrilled to work with WXPN to curate this special release," says Michael Ruthig, General Manager of New West Records. "We hope to spread awareness for the show and celebrate the terrific performances on World Cafe® by making this stellar collection available to fans supporting Record Store Day.
"Looking through our archives for sessions with these amazing New West artists took us back over our 20 year World Cafe history as well," adds World Cafe® host David Dye. "I was struck with the artistic integrity of the artists and the consistent quality of the work. Kudos to New West. Now even more people will be able to hear them."
Track Listing:
1 Buddy Miller - Don't Wait
2 Steve Earle - This City
3 Old 97's - Dance With Me
4 Tim Easton - Lexington Jail
5 Mark Olson & Gary Louris - Turn Your Pretty Name Around
6 Drive-By Truckers - 3 Dimes Down
7 The Flatlanders - South Wind Of Summer
8 Jason Isbell - Dress Blues
9 Billy Joe Shaver - Restless Wind
10 Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman - Midnight In The City Of Destruction
11 The Majestic Silver Strings (Buddy Miller, Bill Frisell, Marc Ribot & Greg Leisz) - Freight Train
12 Randall Bramblett - Playing Card
13 Ben Lee - We're All In This Together
14 Delbert McClinton - Going Back To Louisiana
Click here to listen to a selection of tracks from the sampler:

http://soundcloud.com/newwestrecords/sets/nwr-world-cafe-sampler

I condensed that a lot, should've done more, sorry.

He can be peppery live, wish there were more new songs though.
TEXAS LEGEND BILLY JOE SHAVER RELEASES
LIVE AT BILLY BOB’S TEXAS,
FIRST NEWLY RECORDED PERFORMANCES
IN NEARLY TWO DECADES

Twenty-two track package features CD and DVD;
includes two new previously unreleased songs

WACO, Texas — Country songwriting icon and honky tonk hero Billy Joe Shaver and his Heart of Texas Band offer the best from his catalog of legendary songs in concert from the stage of the world’s largest honky tonk. Shaver’s Live at Billy Bob’s Texas, slated to be released July 17, 2012 on Smith Music Group is his first album in five years. The fully loaded special package includes 20 live renditions of some of his most notable compositions on an audio CD and DVD as well as two bonus tracks, and is the first set of new concert recordings since 1995 to be issued to the public. Included among Shaver classics and favorites are two new songs: “Wacko From Waco” (co-written with his longtime friend Willie Nelson) and “The Git Go,” proving that his muse remains as fertile as ever.

Born, raised and still living in the rolling plains of Central Texas, Shaver is not just the epitome of a songwriter’s songwriter, but a singer, recording artist and performer as well as actor and published author. A genuine salt of the earth natural talent whose acclaimed work is free of any artifice. The esteem he has accrued since 1973 — when he issued his first album, Old Five and Dimers Like Me, and Waylon Jennings recorded nine of Shaver’s songs on his landmark Honky Tonk Heroes LP that heralded the arrival of country music’s outlaw movement — is best measured by the fellow writers and talents who admire, perform and have recorded his compositions. Revered American novelist John Steinbeck’s favorite song was “Old Five and Dimers,” which has also been played at live shows by Bob Dylan, who mentions Shaver in his recent song “I Feel a Change Comin’ On.” Just some of the distinguished artists who have recorded Shaver’s works are Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Kris Kristofferson, The Allman Brothers, Bobby Bare, John Anderson, George Jones, Tex Ritter, Patty Loveless and Willie Nelson, who says that “Billy Joe Shaver may be the best songwriter alive today.”

At the same time, there’s nothing else like Shaver himself performing his songs. Live at Billy Bob’s Texas delivers all the dynamism, musical variety, emotion and personality of a Shaver show in both audio and video. The set opens with his paean to his home place, “Heart of Texas,” a Lone Star dancehall two-step with a rock kick from his band: guitarist Jeremy Woodall, drummer Jason Lynn McKenzie and bassist Matt Davis. Included are vibrant renditions of such signature Shaver numbers as “Georgia on a Fast Train,” “Honky Tonk Heroes,” “Old Chunk of Coal,” “Live Forever” and “Old Five and Dimers,” along with gems from across the range of his career. Shaver rocks numbers like “That’s What She Said Last Night,” “Black Rose,” “Hottest Thing in Town” and others. He hits an electric Western groove on “Thunderbird,” harks back to ragtime on “Good Old USA,” country-waltzes Texas style on “I Couldn’t Be Me Without You,” tenderly renders “Star in My Heart” a cappella, and wraps it all up with a rousing “You Can’t Beat Jesus Christ.” His recent legal troubles are wittily recounted on “Wacko From Waco” while the hauntingly bluesy “The Git Go” deftly summarizes the facts of life since the dawn of history. The double-disc set is the ultimate Shaver live experience as well as a de facto greatest hits collection, and finds Shaver as potent as ever in front of an enthusiastic audience.

H'm-m, maybe, got some of his more reliable associates aboard anyway:
THE FINAL RECORDINGS OF WAYLON JENNINGS
TO BE RELEASED 10 YEARS AFTER
COUNTRY MUSIC ICON’S DEATH

GOIN’ DOWN ROCKIN’:
The Last Recordings of Waylon Jennings
DUE SEPTEMBER 2012
ON SAGUARO ROAD RECORDS

Nashville, TN (April 16, 2012) --- A new album from outlaw country legend Waylon Jennings will be released this September, filled with recordings the icon made during the last few years before his death in 2002. Jennings spent hours in a recording studio with his longtime accompanist, Robby Turner and together they laid down twelve tracks using just Waylon’s guitar and vocals and Turner’s bass. All songs were personally selected by the country star, ones that resonated in a deeply personal way and reflected his state of mind, his passions, and important statements he wanted to make about his life. The duo planned out the future instrumentation that would be added to the tracks, but Jennings was never able to complete them. 10 years after his passing, Turner returned to the recordings, finishing each song to honor Waylon’s vision of what would turn out to be his very last album. Bringing in musicians who had long worked with Waylon, such as Reggie Young, Richie Albright and tour mate Tony Joe White, Turner painstakingly created the album that Waylon set out to make. "Waylon knows he's surrounded by friends and all that hear this will feel as if they know Waylon in all his authenticity," explains his widow, country singer Jessi Colter. With his family’s blessing, Goin’ Down Rockin’: The Last Recordings of Waylon Jennings will be available on September 11 (Saguaro Road Records).

Jennings wrote 11 of the 12 songs that appear on the new album, a testament to the personal nature of the recordings, and they reveal an artist in the midst of a final creative peak. In addition to his own songs, the album includes Tony Joe White’s “Goin’ Down Rockin’” (on which White himself is a guest). In all, the album will feature eleven songs that have never been released before.

Goin’ Down Rockin’: The Last Recordings of Waylon Jennings Tracklisting:

1. Goin’ Down Rockin'
2. Belle of The Ball
3. If My Harley Was Runnin'
4. I Do Believe
5. Friends In California
6. The Ways of the World
7. Shakin' The Blues
8. Never Say Die
9. Wasting Time
10. Sad Songs & Waltzes
11. She Was no Good for Me
12. Wrong Road To Nashville

Isn't there still a Waylon Jennings with Tupac unreleased album?

Yeah that's the hologram for BamaJam.

Holabamajamma

Anybody heard the new Don Williams? I'm intrigued...

Oh yeah

He's still got it

Spotify, I love you

Luke Bryan's "Drunk On You" is getting a lotta play around here (I see it's #9 on the charts this week, no wonder) & I like how the vocal's cadence is like a rapper's: like I can almost believe you could straight cover it as a rap song. good song!

I like it too.

I should buy his records; I loved "All My Friends Say" a few years back, & "Country Girl" is good dumb fun.

Bamajam 2012, sure wish I could go. Never been to a *country* festival, wonder how it compares to a rock festival ("Get yer meth makin's here"?) Latest news flash (note good opportunities for golf!) and complete lineup by now, prob:
BAMAJAM 2012 REVEALS EXCITING NEW DETAILS FOR
ON-SITE ENTERTAINMENT AND AMENITIES

High Demand and Early Purchasers Have Campsites Filling Up—
Buy Now to Reserve Your Spot and the Lowest Ticket Price

Enterprise, AL (May 30, 2012) – With only two weeks to go before BamaJam 2012, organizers are pleased to reveal details about on-site entertainment and amenities that are sure to excite festival attendees. The event, to be held in Enterprise, Ala., June 14-16, will not only feature performances by some of today’s hottest music artists, including Tim McGraw, Zac Brown Band, Kid Rock, Alan Jackson, Eric Church, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow and more, but the premier festival will also offer a wide array of lifestyle activities including a water park, a par 3 executive golf course, ATV trails and more. Tickets for each of these individual activities will be exclusively offered to BamaJam 2012 attendees during the festival for the discounted rate of $15 per person.
.

Due to high demand and early purchasers, the BamaJam 2012 RV Camping Central Lot is SOLD OUT. But don’t worry because there is still limited space available in the RV Camping North Lot ($175 per spot), RV Camping South Lot ($160 per spot) and tent camping ($85 per spot). In addition, there are a very limited number of all-inclusive RV spots available with water, power and sewer hook-ups ($1,500 per site). Reserve your campsites now to ensure a spot!

BamaJam 2012 will introduce new and innovative dual-headlining stages, allowing the music to keep flowing without having delays due to set changes, resulting in three days (over 2,520 minutes) of non-stop music!

BamaJam 2012“We thought about our audience and the excitement that each act generates,” said Rendy Lovelady, executive producer of the festival. “We wanted to keep that excitement going.”

These two stages are the largest portable ones ever built. When they arrive on site, they will transform into two huge 50’wide X 40’deep X 35’ tall stages in less than a day. All together this rig is over 216’ wide and weighs in at about 400,000 lbs. A special sound system has been designed and custom built in Valencia, Spain. Production is topped off with three large high definition 11’ X 21’ LED video walls, giving even the furthest person an up-close-and-personal view of their favorite artist.

Surrounding these two stages will be VIP double decker viewing stages giving festival attendees an unparalleled view of the artists as they perform on stage. Also, the downstairs area will host a VIP lounge. To see more pictures of the stage, please visit http://bamajam2012.com/ or http://www.fb.com/BamaJam2012.
BamaJam 2012 is a production of BamaJam Productions, LLC. For more information about BamaJam 2012 artists, tickets, camping, directions, parking, sponsors, jobs and vendors, please visit www.bamajam2012.com.

Tim McGraw

Eric Church

Willie Nelson

Darryl Worley

Third Day

Outlaws

Herrick

Dustin Lynch

Tyler Reeve

The FARM

David Kroll

The Lost Trailers

John Nemeth

Joanna Smith

ConnorChristian
& Southern Gothic

Bill Gentry

Martin McDaniel

Buffalo Clover

Honey Island Swamp Band

Aerias

Zac Brown Band

Alan Jackson

NEEDTOBREATHE

Ronnie Milsap

Stryper

Michael Sweet

John Elefante

Casey James

Wood Brothers

Badfinger

Sonia Leigh

Nic Cowan

Aaron Parker

Levi Lowrey

Dugas

Albert Castiglia

Wheeler Boys

Kid Rock

Sheryl Crow

Jamey Johnson

Gov’t Mule

Uncle Kracker

Yelawolf

Randy Montana

Breaking Laces

Drake White

Rosehill

Big Smo

Mockingbyrd

Tyler Farr

Moreland
& Arbuckle

Jaida Dreyer

Bridge To Grace

Ph well, mebbe I'll save up and be ready for this:
Alabama's Quest for Gay Rodeo
Maggie Martin (2012-05-29)
Listen Now:
FORT WORTH, TEXAS (APR - Alabama Public Radio ) - More than 100 people gathered in a large arena in Fort Worth, TX to watch and compete in what was called a "traditional" rodeo. However, the term traditional may depend on your point of view. The event is a gay rodeo. It's like a traditional rodeo with bull riding and calf roping, but it's open to the LGBT community. John Beck of Denver is an expert on the gay rodeo. He's hard to miss with his large, red feather on his cowboy hat.
"That's been my signature for close to ten years," he says.
Beck is known as the Grandfather of the Gay Rodeo and is one of the oldest competitors on the circuit. He rode in straight rodeos too, but says the atmosphere of a gay rodeo is more welcoming.
"We work together better than in straight rodeos," says Beck. "Straight rodeos, I hate to say, is more of a cut throat type business. We're out here for camaraderie and fun and give the people who win a pat on the back. You don't find that in other rodeos."
Even though gay rodeos aren't as competitive as their traditional counterparts, Beck says they're just as dangerous.
"I've had five ribs broken, both collar bones, both legs, one ankle. It doesn't bother me."
On the other side of the arena is a woman who's also made a name for herself on the rodeo circuit. Lisa LeAnn Dalton of Fort Worth, TX is just above 5 ft. tall with short blonde hair and blue eyes. She's dressed the part of a rodeo competitor with a black cowgirl hat and a championship buckle. But she's not competing today. Five years ago, she had a bad accident in the arena that took her off the circuit.
"I broke C5 and C6 and damaged my spinal cord and was paralyzed completely from the shoulders down. It's been almost five years, but I can walk now."
Dalton competed in gay rodeos for about five years before the accident and made her name riding bareback broncs. Among her other prizes, Dalton won the national rodeos twice. But Dalton isn't gay. She's straight, but she prefers gay rodeos because there are no gender restrictions. In traditional rodeos, women can hold the reins with both hands. That didn't work for Dalton.
"I rode one-handed so I technically could ride in any rodeo and then I could qualify for and compete against the guys, but not all of them were interested in having girls so I was turned down some."
Dalton says of the rodeos she competed in, gay rodeos were the funnest. But some of that fun has gone away now that she's restricted to the sidelines.
"I love to come back and see all my friends but it's a bummer because it's not fun watching for me. I'd much rather competing," says Dalton.
Music starts to blare in the arena and the crowd roars as chutes open for one of the most popular events-bull riding. Competitor Russell Schnitz of Gonzales, TX hangs on tight to his bull. But he doesn't stay on long. He hits the dirt and barely gets out from under the bull. He has a bad scrape on his left cheek.
"I almost got him covered. Right at the buzzer I bucked off him and fell under him. He stepped on my face. And that was that," says Schnitz, who is still slightly shaken by the incident. He's been competing for 15 years and it's taken a toll on him.
"I used to do every single event, but now that I am older, I just do a few. Today was the first day I rode the tough bulls in a long time. I usually just ride the smaller ones because I'm too old to be hurt and my friends talked me into the regular ones today."
Schnitz, Dalton, and Beck have been competing in gay rodeo circuits for years in states like Texas and Colorado. But not in Alabama. That's because there isn't a gay rodeo here yet. A man in Birmingham wants to change that. Rick Vaughn is president of the Cotton States Gay Rodeo Association in Birmingham.
"I just felt it was a very positive thing for the gay community. And to show the rest of the world that we do things like everybody else does."
Vaughn says he wants to be seated by the International Gay Rodeo Association, or IGRA, by November. He wants to hold Alabama's first gay rodeo by 2014.
© Copyright 2012, APR - Alabama Public Radio

12,000+ words I wrote (plus an intro where I use the editorial "we" under duress) on 50 really good country songs, from the '20s to the '10s.

http://www.complex.com/music/2012/06/50-country-songs-that-dont-suck/

Great songs, xhuxk. I went to find Milsap-disco immediately.

Yep, and I think the dB's' new "She Doesn't Drive In The Rain" is a real good contemporary country jangle-ballad. Would really like to hear the Pistol Annies With Special Guest Lee Ann Womack cover, but the orig should be on the radio rat now.

Turns out Holsapple wrote it w Kristian Bush of Sugarland, so maybe they'll do it too.

Eric Church, some McGraw performing at this weekend's Bamajam 2012, hope more music surfaces later, mostly yadda-yadda so far
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9VNYsKxdKc&feature=related

Also from YouTube, Don Williams' EPK; he's back with the producer of his hits (and non-hits). Should I request the new album? Trying to avoid the snoozier stuff these days (incl much involving drone etc)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvBf9TKrqAo&feature=youtu.be

Strange! You may see a big black space, But if you click on it, esp right above my name, it'll take you to the EPK

Don, did you see the gigantic 50-country-song thing I linked to a few posts up? Would be curious what you thought of it; just beware of all the quotation marks that Complex's faulty tech tools substituted for my dashes all through it.

In other news, I like a song or each each on the new Alan Jackson, Josh Turner, and Edens Edge albums, and less than that on the new Easton Corbin -- none of which are enough to make me listen to them more than I already have. Not much a fan of Luke Bryan's "Drunk On You" either.

Exchange on Facebook yesterday, after I linked to my Toby Keith "Beers Ago" blurb from my country song thing...

Me: Wanted to end with a single from this year, so I cheated -- This actually came off a 2011 album. That it's the best I could come up with indicates just how lame 2012 has been for country records.

S@r@ Sh3rr: I don't know a lot about new country but I look at the Billboard charts every week for karaoke purposes and I noticed that there's a return to young cowboy hat studs.

Me: I hadn't thought of it that way, but that sounds about right -- At least they sound like hat guys, even if they don't wear them: Just real rote and cautious, with basically none of the character or chips on shoulders that made so much Nashville country so great in the past decade or so. Kip Moore (who wears a baseball cap) made a fairly decent album; Lee Brice's new one (he wears a baseball cap too) might be borderline but nothing on it touches the four best songs from his debut. I like the Farm's single "Home Sweet Home" okay. None of the other young guys seem to be grabbing me this year (like, for instance, Randy Montana and David Nail did last year even). And the old guys aren't doing much better. If there's stuff I've missed, I don't know where it is.

"...a song OR TWO each" on Alan Jackson, etc., I meant.

Hi xhuxxk, I'll comment when I've had time to listen to all 50 songs, several of which I thought were long gone from anywhere but yard sales, like "Heather's Wall"--ghost song, ghost track. Thanks! Hope the artists are aware.

Don't know whether I hope Ty Herndon is aware, considering I go into his...unfortunate incident. But right, that song has ghosts galore.

Just listened to nine of the first ten (Rimes wouldn't play, but she's usually good, usually and vaguely taken for granted by reviewers, it seems; glad you didn't do that). "Space" and "Heather's Wall" have none of the padding (incl excess melodrama, without or without an inspirational aura) so often required for country Top Ten--Hell, I'm impressed he made it 17. Good presentations, though "Space" isn't wordplay, and that girl sounds nothing like Nico, very little like Marianne F., though yes, somewhere between her faves, Dusty and Bobbie G. Way between. But that's the point, she's isolated, makes herself even smaller to lay low, when the scarey ol' Drone Patrol comes through at the end. Rebecca Lynn Howard's track is cool too, bet Scott Seward would dig it. The Friday night fight rolls on out of sight, "pre-football game," as you say. "Bad Things" was always king, Red Revelations made my Nash Scene Top Ten too, thanks for getting me into both (and indirectly into True Blood)

Hey xhuxk, I made a Spotify of the stuff I could find on that list so I could easier play it through my stereo while reading through, hope you don't mind. Awesome article:

http://open.spotify.com/user/yesmoremaciej/playlist/74GTFgoasj2NyjMTyD59jn

man I still love that Kellie Pickler album released in January.

deeply obsessed with "Springsteen" now

Church's album has been my sleeper.

just got the album after getting caught on "Springsteen", gonna get into it shortly

xpost Oh yeah xxhuxx, I guess "Space" is wordplay in the sense that she gives it to him alright, by expanding convenient absence-of-Sarah into this cold, dark, approximately infinite thing, also conjuring "an island on the dark side of the moon." In this track, and in "Heather's Wall," the usually numbing use of radio-aimed repetition has just the opposite effect. Also, no cute excess melodrama, just: baby it's cold inside. The program directors don't wanna know, but some folks, including many females, understand (so Buxton may well have an enviably sweeter gig as some smart cookies' creative-process-resource than she did as a non-star)

the kellie pickler is so surprisingly good. far better than the new carrie underwood.

also this is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLOmpgLmtP0

maciej recognizing trill -- I don't mind at all; in fact I'm honored, and happy you liked the piece. Curious which/how many songs you wound up tracking down though. (I'm semi-employed by Rhapsody these days, so Spotify's off limits to me -- Otherwise, I'd post your link somewhere.)

dow -- You may be right about Nico and Faithfull in re: These Bird Things; sometimes I might use those ladies as ice-queen fallbacks, and Salla's singing has warmth; just not sure it's the r&b-inflected warmth of Gentry or Dusty, either. I was probably grasping for straws there.

As for "Heather's Wall" and "Space" (or Eddie Rabbit's "Suspicions" or Trace Adkins' "I'm Tryin'," for that matter, and maybe a couple other things on the list) I agree they have a spareness unusual in Nashville (though busy-ness is the least of Nashville's problems in my book -- it's not something that actively bugs me much anyway.) But fwiw, I don't hear those songs' kind of space in most alt-leaning country, either.

The LeAnn Rimes song I wrote up was basically disco-rock; not sure why it didn't play there (I actually haven't tried any of those streams myself), but it should here:

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

THEM Bird Things -- oops.

found 39 of them on Spotify. Missing the ones by: Gene Watson, Ty Herndon, Sylvia, Terrie Gibbs, Ronnie Milsap, Stoney Edwards, Narvel Felts, OC Smith, Dick Curless, Moon Mullican, and Smokey Wood and the Modern Mountaineers

The "50 Songs..." feature is, of course, fantastic stuff, xhuxk. I've loved "Somebody's Knockin'" for years; the local "classic country" station keeps that one in pretty heavy rotation. They're also big on Don Williams and early Tanya Tucker, so I can overlook the fact that they throw the occasional Kenny Chesney or Rascal Flatts single into their playlist.

"I'm Diggin' It" was the last cassingle I bought. Elliott's other singles weren't enough to kickstart a career, but that one still holds up well. Makes me quite happy to discover that anyone else actually remembers it.

The Pickler album is definitely worth going back to. Wouldn't have released the title track as a single (it missed the top 50), but I also don't know if there's anything on it that wouldn't sound out-of-place on radio between Luke Bryan and Lady Antebellum. Still don't think it's a great album, but it's a very good one that I really did not think she had in her.

Underwood's album is pretty obviously her best yet, though it's still a long way from being great, either. Will be interesting to see if the minor backlash she's incurred for her pro-marriage equality statement a couple of weeks ago actually has any real impact on her commercial stats.

Is that the consensus with the current Underwood album? If so, I really didn't realize people were liking it that much. I haven't heard it -- was kind of under the impression that she was one of those people who peaked with her debut then kept getting worse (which I probably tend to think about way more artists than deserve it) -- but I guess I need to check it out now. Should probably try the Pickler again sometime, too.

That's been the consensus among the folks I talk to who write predominantly about modern country; mainstream sources have been more mixed but still generally pro on it. My full review is here.

"Before He Cheats" and "Some Hearts" have been the only two singles of hers I've liked much at all, and she's had maybe two or three other album tracks that were solid, but this one has a handful of cuts that I've gone back to revisit and two that I like outright. So that's an improvement for her. I still think her level of acclaim and stature are greatly disproportionate to the quality of the material she's released, but I can see that gap closing a bit with her new one.

I'll listen to it. As is, a week short of halfway into the year, my country album top 10 is shaping up to look downright weird, and more alt-ish than it's ever been since I started keeping track: Elfin Saddle (more Brit folk but with Appalachian tendencies), King Mob (somewhat rockabilly but really loud pub-rock), Bhi Bhiman, Blackberry Smoke, Turnpike Troubadours, Darrell Scott (which I probably heard almost a year ago but it didn't come out until February or something). Lionel Richie and Kip Moore would have a shot (and even if it's the second biggest selling album of the year I don't think the Richie actually gets played on country radio); Dierks Bentley and Tim McGraw might squeak in for lack of competition. (Also marginally tolerable, if no-names: Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires, Drew Nelson, Bryan Clark & the New Lyceum Players. Hell, I might go with those over the equally marginal Nashville guys, just because Nashville pisses me off lately. Wonder if Dr. John -- pretty good, far from great -- counts. And if ZZ Top's album is good as the single, maybe them.)

Finally made it through the second ten of xpost xxhuxx's 50 Country Songs That Don't Suck. Adkins' "I'm Tryin" is great up to half way through, but at 4'40" it's noticeably longer than most, maybe all of the next nine. Also much more recent, and lengthy repetition became a given with so many radio-aimed songs, hits and non-hits, sure enough. My faves are "I'm Diggin' It" and "Seminole Wind," both with tenacious beats; she's bit by the lovebug, like she's celebrating, and Jawwn's riding the ancient snake through the tropical profusion of them word things, the arrangement slanting the light of motel window blinds all through there. T.G.'s song might've been lifted from The Summer of 42, which I saw in the summer of '72, so mainly remember it was a hit date movie with a real happy ending. But I also remember it was much more appropriately atmospheric--you know: gettin' in the mood--than T.G.'s high-stepping barroom sing-along, guess they didn't want it to sound suggestive. Pretty close to Sylvia's oompah band, with matadors in lederhosen. The arrangement on Don Williams' song seems busier than I remembered, but his voice has no prob mood-wise, maybe he should cover T.G.'s song, but does he do the sex stuff, except maybe very very very subtly?

Listening to (Jon Dee Graham, Freedy Johnston, Susan Cowsill) The Hobart Brothers & Lil Sis Hobart's At Least We Have Each Other. Cowsill of course the youngest of her brothers'/mother's/manager dad's group The Cowsills, real life basis of the Partridge Family. She does not sound waify here, fairly tough and flexible voice, something of a potentially upsetting, born-for/to-trouble spark. Also ready when Johnston brings out a bit of power pop, the soda pop pulled from a rusty icebed outside of an ol' gas station, probably in Texas and/or the Great Plains, while the sun keeps the beat--they keep enough shade, enough cool to try and work out "the difference between beaten and beat," also Beat. Several Rolling Countrys ago, Edd Hurt and I were digging Jon Dee Graham's gravelly live solo sets (also played w Alejandro Escovedo in guitar armadillo army True Believers and fairly recently with A.E.'s own band). Think Edd's Top Tenned at least one JDG album I haven't heard, but prob will(now that nobody goes to MySpace, tons of albums there, incl most of Graham's, plus I gotta get to the promo of his new Garage Sale). This album (electric and acoustic versions of most tracks, justifiably so) rec to these individual artists' fans, ditto those who enjoy the best of James McMurtry, Warren Zevon, John Doe, Dave Alvin, Eliza Gilkyson, like that y'all.

Looks like most if not all of Freedy Johnston's albums are on his MySpace as well, incl the raved-about and the only one I heard, from a couple years back, which I may not have given enough attention. Need to check 'em all, judging by his Hobart songs.

anybody bought the new Alan Jackson?

Didn't buy it -- Got it for free, but did listen to it a few times, to less avail than I hoped. Like the single, "So You Don't Have To Love Me Anymore," more than most A.J. singles, and thought there were a couple other okay songs with a breakup-oriented theme. The seven-minute Zac Brown collaboration is more expansive than anything on Zac Brown's own new album, which counts for something. But not for enough, and there's nothing beyond the single that I can imagine ever needing to hear again.

Sara Watkins is playing a free show tonight in Pasadena. I ran across her new album by accident (didn't know anything about her) and kinda dug it.

What Brad Paisley thought and what was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMefOyqw7gI

Played the White House lawn on July 4.

Listening to the third ten from xpost xhuxx's "50 Country Songs That Don't Suck", though the magazine's embeds aren't playing at all now--no worries, so far they're all on YouTube (except had to get a live "The Pill" from Loretta's MySpace). LIke this vid for the Statler Bros' "Whatever Happened To Randolph Scott" ("happened to the best of meee")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJlD5roDqNw

This subset--from Eddie Rabbit's "Suspicions" to Barbara Mandrell's "The Midnight Oil"--has more keepers than the previous: almost all of 'em, and some choices are just a matter of taste, although I really am tired of songs that tell everything in the first verse and chorus, with latter verses just placeholders, while the infinitely repeated chorus trances us out, supposedly. Even Stoney Edwards' "Blackbird" turns me off a bit, though still digging his delivery (okay, mission semi-accomplished, entrancers)Sufficiently powerful/to my taste voices can overcome, def the Kendalls. But I'm lucky to find brief live versions of Stella Parton's "Standard Lie Number One" and Loretta Lynn's "The Pill," so linear here they're like short stories, sharp ones too. Stella's got two sets of lies-well, I won't spoil her comparison, just listen. Charlie Rich's luxuriously upholstered voice is indeed "Rollin' With The Flow", and he figures however fucked he is, he'll play it out, yo, still in the game, and he asssumes all his folks will continue to keep rolling with him, cause they know how he is. OMG "The Midnight Oil": basically the standard confessional cheating song, but "that midnight oil all over me" really frank and pungent and 70s-appropriate (maybe it helped to have oil's physicality set up by the make-up and trad wordplay: "When I'm puttin' on my make-up/I'm puttin' on the one who loves me best"--that's the chorus too, so don't have to mention the oil so much, the make-up's a cover for the oil) but still amazed country radio played it so much--guess that's another reminder of "The Pill" as milestone.

Narvel Felts like honky tonk Tiny Tim here, later for Slim Whitman, and Ringo Starr should cover--whatta find, thanks!

So good to see alll that Stoney Edwards on YouTube too.

don't have to mention the oil so much, the make-up's a cover for the oil

Ha -- wish I'd thought of that angle! And glad you're liking these; wish I had more to add than I've already said (but if I think of anything, I will.)

Sorry for any accidental re-hashes of your commentary, which I can't see too well currently---this giant-ass ad (with its own music links, I think) keeps getting in the way.

Ah damn, just now saw this: Rolling Country alum Edd Hurt on the recently deceased Susanna Clark--forgot she co-wrote "Easy From Now On"
http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashvillecream/archives/2012/06/29/susanna-clark-1939-2012

"Easy From Now On" is your typical piece of genius songwriting, right down to the way Carter and Clark tease you with the song's title hook, which takes its time making its appearance.

Spot-on. Terri Clark also covered "Easy From Now On" a couple of years before Miranda got to it, and she did as fine a job with it as anyone else. I particularly love the way the song functions as a closing statement on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Carter remains a criminally under-appreciated talent in her own right. Of the versions of the song I'm familiar with, Harris' is probably my least favorite, but that's really a matter of splitting hairs.

Unrelated:

Brad Paisley is being courted to sit alongside Mariah Carey on the American Idol judging panel next season. The show has been on quite friendly terms with the country demo since at least its fourth season, so that could be seen as a pretty big "get" for them.

And "Pontoon" is very rapidly ascending the charts (top 15 in under 12 weeks, which is all too rare for country radio these days), clearly en route to becoming Little Big Town's biggest hit. Production's aces, and Karen Fairchild really tries her damnedest to sell the totally undercooked double-entendres, but it's not much of a song. Glad to see that group breaking through, though.

Jon, did you ever see Carlene's Austin City Limits set, with Al Anderson playing lead? She was just awesomely gleeful all over the place, Dept. of I'll Have Whatever She's Having etc

ha, enjoying the auto-tuned Jason Aldean hook on the new Colt Ford

I find Colt's shtick less and less bearable with each subsequent album. Here's what I wrote about his new one (which I still didn't hate, mainly because of the guitars):

http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/colt-ford/album/declaration-of-independence

Also, I finally heard a Nashville country album this year that I unreservedly like -- Kix Brooks, out Sep 11.

Will check Kix, he's touring too. Finally jumped aboard the ziptrain fourth ten-set of xhuxk's http://www.complex.com/2012/06/50-country-songs-that-don't-suck From Anne Murray's "Snowbird" to Arthur (Guitar Boogie)Smith's "Who Shot Willie." Not really a question, we know from the celebratory vocal and fiddle. True, Miz Maxine Freud, the lady of the triangle laments, "Willie was tall and Willie was good, and Willie would come back if he good," but narrator also explains that "Maxine is young," and she's already forgotten about Willie as our correspondent in the field does his best to console her. Maybe she has forgotten by this point in the song, which moves along like the rest of this subset. A practical, survival-minded, almost stoical approach, although slinging plenty of vivid detail out of the window, gong that stop sign boy. Come to a full stop it might git you, like the cabdriver in "Kay," either way it'll quickly accrue--"While the ashes are falling, from the smoke you inhale/There's an old dream to recall/Or a new one to fail"--so whut can a ballin'-on-a-budget boy do, but toast "Smokey The Bar" one more time. Tom T.'s original version of "The Homecoming" is kind of a man-to-man, business-like rationalization, with self-obsession/confession leaking out of the delivery."Never gets past the foyer": could be! And the cover shot is devastating" homecoming to the cemetery, T. as middle-aged businessman, perhaps remembering (or just now composing) the words only rehearsed, to be looped through fantasies of the past as future from now on, as they maybe have been replayed in his headbox for so long. Sir Doug's version is maybe even better, more frictional for sure, with the yearning to connect, to be absolved, to get the fuck back out of here swirling around, cabin and club and highway fumess in his lungs. I thought the tramp-daddy was the one knocking on mama's door, that this kind of sometimes-at-midnight arrangement was the only way they could still make it work--what a naive child was I--that "red light" she turned on, of course! Thanks for pointing it out, and making this drive-by sequence.

"come back if he *could*" sorry

The last one referred to is O.C. Smith's "Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp." Thanks for reminding me of the black country anthologies From Where I Stand and Dirty Laundry, gotta check those too. Harmonica Frank's freewheeling trickbag focus on whack is survival-minded too, the old hobo, tramp, busker and pitcher rolling onto that Sun train for a spell.

The final 10 of xhuxxk's 50. I think I got more out of 'em going 10 at a time than I would have trying to do it all once, lots of them had me buzzing anyway, dunno what the writing would've been like after one marathon session.
Delmore Brothers, "Freight Train Boogie": I've got the Ace collection pictured, real good. Might pick something else from that to give more of "rock 'n' roll ten years aarly", as shuxx tags this, because the deftly mellow vocal phrasing reminds me of Doc Watson covering Mississippi John Hurt, though Doc did go on to rockabilly, so maybe this discreet house party vibe is a good warm-up for outright rocking--dig the guitars adding detail and momentum (like live radio performances of Charlie Christian with Benny Ooodman go hurtling towards rock). Also, boogie as boogie-woogie just about, can imagine the guitar solo on piano.
Def some woogie in the boogie, and outright rock assertive absurdity on "Ding Dong Daddy." Surprised to read here about Wills andthe TPs reputedly wusstern swing; only reservation I've ever had is their tendency to sing like polite granpaws even when young. Anyway an excellent pick. Since I'm still relying on Youtube for all these, I also checked Louis Armstrong and the Sebastion Cotton Club Orchestra's version, which is mainly trumpet, drums and Satchmo's scat, in 1930: cutting through early swing towards pre-rock rocking, seemingly off the cuff, on the fly,
Moon Mullican "Pipeline Blues": excellent comments as always, and this song is so fracking relevant again; will be even more so with President Mitt's energy policy, just announced, though he won't appreciate the fatalistic horndog's boom and bust perspective: "You don't miss your water, 'til your well runs dry, you don't miss your honey, 'til she SAID goodbye."
Couldn't find Milton Brown's version of "Texas Hambone Blues", though I very much enjoyed Carlitos and the Hi-Lo Playboys doin' it at the Redwood Lounge. Go see 'um. Also check Milton's "You're Bound To Look Like A Monkey," fastest boogie heard today, and built on a playgroud thing:"I can tell by your hands, you've got monkey glands, I can tell by your nails, your folks hung by their tails"--yeah, so that's why you'll look like a monkey when you're old, I never will!
Roy Newman and His Boys, "Sadie Green": give it up for the clarinet, and the way the fiddle matches it, is this even possible any more, with recording methods in reach of modern man? Think it might be "big brown eyes and feet to match", not "teeth", xxhuxx.
Armstrong also gets a sound with rock appeal via somehow wiry, sinewy muted trumpet on "Blue Yodel # 9", which yeah is several shades of bluesy,punky, country, the most affecting track here.
Allen Brothers, "Maybe Next Week Sometime": amazing! Gotta check more of theirs, though YouTube also offers a second version, okay but not as good (lyrics are more diffuse). It turns out he does want to go to extremes right now, but but things moderation in all thangs, incl. digging gold in the graveyard, racing with a ghost and dallying with the wife of a dangerous man, in their own home, is wise. Oh discretion, oh tweak freaks! I'm one too.
Emmett Miller sounds more stilted than I remembered, Poole's version of this seems more diffues than others (more diffuse lyrics, though the discontent, maybe foreboding comes through) Not particularly engaging picking either. But all on-line courses should be like this, what a trip, thanks!

And thanks for making it through them all, Don! (Or did you? -- Don't remember you mentioning Smokey Wood & the Modern Mountaineers, for instance, not that you have to mention all of them -- you mentioned more than anybody else did, here or elsewhere). Now one of these days I need to sift through your responses and respond to them -- definitely wish I'd noted the current-events potential of "Pipeline Blues" though; can't believe I missed that, as obvious as it is. (And yeah, the Playboys' polite grandpatude might be what bugs me most about them, but in general compared to say the Musical Brownies or Newman's Boys or the Modern Mountaineers or certain other westbound swangsters, their playing has frequently hit me as kinda staid, a lot of the time. Then again, they sure did play a lot of it, quantity-wise. Wills box set is still one of the very few box sets I own, though, even if it doesn't include my favorite recordings by him -- So I'm still a fan, don't get me wrong.)

Might like the imminent Jerrod Niemann album as much as the imminent Kix Brooks (former peaks higher, latter's more consistent -- evens out, more or less.) Which means 2012 is shaping up not quite as horrible Nashville-was as it was a couple months back. Still haven't gotten super-excited about a single country single yet, though. (Favorite probably the Pistol Annies' "Takin' Pills," which is really still a 2011 track in my head.)

("polite vocal grandpatude," I probably should've specified, as you did.)

And "Nashville-wise (not was). (Wordwork squeaks and out comes whatever you want.)

Sorry, forgot about Smokey Wood's "Everybody's Truckin'", wonder how did they get away with the f-word, which is almost the first word, very intelligible every time it comes spinning by. True drive-by truckers.

I'm not gonna vote for anything released in 2011, fuck the industry for working releases to death.

OK, maybe something released too late to make last year's ballot, but Pistol Annies were all over that.

I know: if it's officially released as *a single* (whatever that is) this year, it qualifies. Well, maybe if I'm desperate (which could happen)

Well, I'm desperate! (And "Takin' Pills" apparently officially had a video come out this year -- which qualifies as "released as a single" by my rules.)

yeah, I might list it too.

I can't imagine not listing "Takin' Pills" at this point in the year, and I sure hope xhuxk is right that the 3rd and 4th quarters aren't as dreadful for country as the first two have been.

To that end: The new Little Big Town. First of their albums that has at least 3 very obvious hit singles, if not more than that, so it should finally give them a leg up on the fading Rascal Flatts and the completely useless Lady Antebellum among the A-list vocal groups. The vocal harmonies sell it per usual, but it's the strongest batch of songs they've tackled. Production's on-point, too, which makes it all the more disappointing that the album sounds as terrible as it does. Far, far worse than either of the last two Miranda Lambert albums or Eric Church's Chief as far as Loudness War problems go.

<i>Hick-hop's heftiest good ole boy opens with angry identity politics, branding himself a "shotgun toter, Republican voter, Hank Jr. supporter" over "We Will Rock You" thumping.<i>

What an iconoclast. Oughta lose some weight before diabetes takes his feet. Really, someone actually paid to produce that song?

Yeah, pathetic. And I don't even know if I buy it -- just sounds like pandering, to a Tea Party country audience that I assume has been shrinking for years. (Haven't checked the charts lately -- How's the new Hank Jr. album doing? And no, I didn't listen it. Even Montgomery Gentry and Toby Keith, who were actually good at it, don't do this kind of crap much anymore. And even when they did, I don't think either of them ever sang about which party they vote for.) Anyway, if Colt's such a shotgun toter, he should try toting one onto the convention floor in Tampa and see how his Second Amendment rights are holding up.

There was a Rolling Stone website interview with Hank Jr in which he bragged of selling 200,000 USD in T-shirts since he made the Hitler comment and lost his ESPN gig. Whether that's true is anyone's guess but it's hard to see that album selling the same for him. Why did anyone like Colt Ford enough to sign him in the first place, though? Some idea there was an opening for an artist the morbidly obese white male end of the country demographic could identify with?

Bizarrely (I just checked Billboard.biz), Ford's album is #20 on the Billboard 200 (after entering at #5) and #5 on the country chart (after entering at #1) after two weeks. So somebody must be buying it, at least initially, though I'm clueless about who. Doesn't look like he has a single getting much airplay (a song with Jake Owen is #54 on the country chart, pretty weak), so radio's not selling the thing; maybe he actually has some semblance of a cult audience. Either way, the more I think about what little the Republican Party has done for the white working class in recent decades, the more his declaration of his politics as a class signifier creeps me out. (Fwiw, Hank Jr's current album is #29 country, #150 overall, after 6 weeks. No charting country song.)

Either way, the more I think about what little the Republican Party has done for the white working class in recent decades, the more his declaration of his politics as a class signifier creeps me out

It probably endears him to middle-class suburban Republicans

Well, ya see they buy all the crap mythology on how it was really the socialist commie elite liberals and Dems that have sold then out, using the government handouts to all the moochers, pulling the honest working man down, forcing banks to give home loans to people who didn't deserve and couldn't pay them. It's classic human race scapegoating and there's a closet bigot hiding behind every bit of it, too, someone who'll say, "Hey, I have two black friends!" And don't forget the conspiracy theory part, the passed around idea that the UN is plotting to make world laws taking away guns. Which is from the John Birch Society but has been laundered into the mainstream.

Junior's song also blames Fox and Friends for being the show where he compared Obama to Hitler, or vice versa. The truly desperate and others might try the Various Artists album Kin: Songs By Mary Karr & Rodney Crowell. Haven't read Karr's books. An excerpt Crowell's memoir about funky canaltown Houston in the 50s seemed a bit overloaded, but with good pungent detail. The one song that comes closest to being too wordy, "Long Time Girl Gone By", does so appropriately: as Emmylou stealthily stirs the shit, and regret's ritual recital of risk strikes some sparks that may go past "my bridal veil of smoke" on on the next spin or so (maybe why she didn't take some chances missed is cos she took a bunch of others, among her allusive souveniers). Whole collection's pretty lean, lilting, often like mid-60s country reflecting what Beatles got from country. But sometimes further back, like the most amazing track, just because I had no idea he could do it, is Vince Gill (!) on "Just Pleasing You", sounding like Doug Sahm might if he'd ever covered "Jolie Blonde", one of my all-time favorite songs. Lee Ann Womack remembers her and her sis zipping parental love's battlefield in "Momma's On A Roll", rec to Pistol Annies. Rosanne Cash does as well with "Sister Oh Sister": "You've been my seawall, you've been my flood, you're in my blood." Even Crowell's own turn with Kristofferson on "My Father's Advice" is springy and surprisingly painless. Here tis--hit Play All, to avoid random insertions; can always hit Pause
http://www.myspace.com/variousartists-49163478/music/albums/kin-songs-by-mary-karr-rodney-crowell-18541622

Oh yeah, and "Hungry For Home" is literal enough. "Frito pie and a grape Nehi"? Dang, I'm jealous!

"like mid-60s country reflecting what Beatles got from country" this may have never happened, but it should have, and it seems like an early notion of Crowell's, back when he was "majoring in joints and jellybeans." And, as w Gill's track making me wonder about Sahm doing "Blonde", close enough. Also prob has to do with the times the stories/mid-situations in these songs may have taken place, or started to.

mid-60s country reflecting what Beatles got from country" this may have never happened

Buck Owens, maybe?

And right, the GOP plays the race card and associated scare tactics to get the white working class to vote against its own interest; that's obviously been the case since Nixon's Southern Strategy, and it's still the case, even as the GOP stomps on said class more mercilessly than it ever has. It's what Thomas Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas? was about (and in post-Thatcher/New Labour England, it's what Owen Jones's Chavs: The Demonization Of The Working Class is about -- never realized how many parallels there were to the U.S. -- and across Europe it's part of what the rise of nationalist anti-immigrant parties has been about.) Anyway, given their debt to music by black people, without which their careers wouldn't exist, it's doubly despicable for Colt Ford and Kid Rock to swing that way. Maybe they're just stupid. But in country music that's a story that goes back to white country blues singer turned segregationalist Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis, at least.

indeed. Re Hank Jr.'s album, though, I'd be surprised and sad if there weren't a few good songs (haven't quite gotten the stomach to check it yet)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIyeP5xe6zk

Spot-on. Apparently MAD-TV is still a lot funnier than SNL. (Actually I don't watch either, so I really don't know what I'm talking about, but that was my impression a few years ago anyway.) Anyway, my only complaint is that I don't know why they made "McBride" her last name, given that Martina McBride has never really seemed to fit the Tea Party mold -- Not saying she's a liberal, it's hard to say, but she sure seems like a bleeding-heart something, given that her most political hits are probably the ones about domestic abuse, poor old ladies who can't afford milk, and slow-learning children who dress up like bags of leaves on Halloween.

Anyway, since Gorge himself hasn't posted it here yet, there's also this (musically inspired by David Allan Coe, he says):

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

>>Id be surprised and sad if there weren't a few good songs (haven't quite gotten the stomach to >>check it yet)

Don, all of it was on YouTube, in one slice and separate pieces when I gave it a listen. A lot of it's still there but not as neatly arranged as originally, some of it deleted. Much of it is just tortured, like his song about small businessmen with these words:

"I want to dedicate this song to every working man and woman in this country and everyone trying to run a business constantly punished, taxed and regulated by the federal government.”

And “Our glorious leader just got back from China and Japan where he gave away our jobs, put us down and sold out our plans" and "We don’t need to be givin’ all that money away to other folks.”

And he autotunes his Dad on the first cut. It's mostly just trying. He does a duet with Brad Paisley called "I'm Gonne Get Drunk and Play Hank Williams" that's OK. Perhaps Paisley did not know what his contribution/favor was getting him into when he done did it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY-Z1hjquqo

Here's the one with autotuned Pop, pandering trash. He got what he wanted from it, a fan video with the president sieg heiling imagery.

Didn't realize that Mad-TV thing was 6 years old. Prescient!

Meanwhile, Dan Emmett will never die, apparently. Seems like the RNC really missed the boat in not having these 2nd South Carolina String Band fellas open for Kid Rock.

http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/civil-war-events-feature-minstrel-song-revival-2449440.html

Gotta love Hank Williams, Jr., so desperate he's got no way to sell his crappy new record except by appealing to the worst: " 'We've got a Muslim for a President who hates cowboys, hates cowgirls, hates fishing, hates farming, loves gays, and we hate him,' Williams Jr. bellowed [at the Stockyards in Texas.] The Dallas Sun reported -- the crowd responded with a loud cheer." Hates fishing and loves gays. Well, we can never abide someone like that.

Doing modern country music a big favor every day, making Brad Paisley and everyone else who stupidly helped him with the latest thing regret every minute of it. Honest question: Is he going to check himself into Betty Ford after this tour?

Maybe if he ever gets into big enough legal difficulties (atarted singing about frivolous torts a lawwng time ago). Catherine Irwin's new solo album, Little Heater, starts out with her as a maybe wayward but non-waify personal pilgrim,with some bruised resolution to walk on down the tracks. Then she becomes a tough-soled backwoods backstreet visionary, a nature-loving evangelist: "We must save the liars, we must save the liars! Foe there is much/Truth in them." Also, we must save the whores, the thieves, and "the pirates' hearts," though not the rest of them apparently, which in hindsight may be a foretaste of gory glory divine, though only glimpssd in those "kerosene lights", as she eventually (spoilers ahead)looks back: "Ah rose through those valleys unscathed, but Ah couldn't take the heights....when 'Do What Thou Wilt' was the whole of the law." (The ancient motto goes good with the tune and inflections-Appalachians are descendents of the Elizabethans, don't you know)Ends up eternally wistful, having killed the loved one who killed the dream, but not dead enough, in the only cover, "Banks of the Ohio".
Sound unbearable? It doesn't *sound* unbearable, far from it. After all those steadily progressing quality vs quantity Freakwater albums and one prev solo set, she masterfully guides and trusts the scaled-down pre-bluegrass mountain sounds throug isolation and stealthy company (a few strings like creek branches, a steel guitar here, banjo thar, harmonies finding their sea legs soon enough). Also finding her own way through syllables, chords and good ol' tunes in the momemt, or so it surely seems. The only thing is, the seriously punk-to-roots humor of her deadpan ways is now pretty much reduced to "is she kidding with that?", once or twice at most. Unless it can be heard in/implied by the quiet audacity of the whole thing, which might be an allegory of what happens to all religion. Does also seem fully, personally inhabited though. Track by track, it mostly still works--so far, but the lack of humor makes me wonder. Might at least make my Scene Top Ten; slim pickins this year.

Patterson Hood, Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance--no distance as evasive action (or something) re some of the worst songs he shared with the Truckers, He aasures us these are autobiographical, though from two different phases in his life. Not as static as some of the worst songs he etc. Several snapshots, as usual, but the whole thing's so spare, crucial details of lyrics, arragements, even singing quickly stand out when they show up at all, which is fairly often. But autobiographically enough, we get several autumnal ruminations and songs about touring. But he accepts being "between anguish and acceptance" cause he could easily do worse, even if he had a choice:one of his buddies jumps. falls and/or is pushed out of the window, lands with the bong still in his hand and still smokin' But this reminds me that the whole thing is so *tastefully* spare, no yeehaw sendoff for his bud. (C'mon Patterson, it could be like dark humor, "Stagolee" as funeral parade). The first one seems like it's gonna be rehash of the prowling ex-cop on Go-Go Boots, but she lets him in the backdoor and between the sheets (or vice-versa), which makes it clear even to him that it really is over. Last track is another leaving song, but with some of the set's best music, guitar formations up-close and vivid, with a brief bridge suddenly opening as he tells his kid he'll send a picture from the plane but no way to convey how big the sky really is (the bridge gives some idea though, even more so when strings briefly lure through stereo sky at the album's end) 2009's Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)seems much richer, with material reworked from earlier solo collections, new song and a cover of "Range War" (could be a Neil & Crazy Horse demo, actually it's a Rundgren song). But this has several (well, a few) might fit my tweak-burn of Southern Rock Opera. Kelly Hogan was on that and this, ditto the strong drummer, and several other current Truckers (not Cooley, alas)

Oh yeah, and the songs narrated of his younger, sometimes mopey but often ornery self def help (he's not dopey about that). Just wish the mature perspective was more often along the lines of "carryin' hell around gets to be a drag", which I won't spoil by contextualizing.

anyone get the Yoakam yet?

Not me.

But as of now, three EPs (Thomas Rhett, Miss Willie Brown, Jake Owen) would almost definitely make my Nashville Scene country albums Top 10. Wonder what that means.

Looking fwd to Yoakam (already out in Europe and approved on its own thread). Also to Jamey J's Hank Cochran tribute album, if he has to do a tribute album (hope it includes some appropriate originals, like Loudon W.'s Charlie Poole tribute-plus-homage, but I've never heard of anybody else doing something like that). Okay I'll bite: please tell us about those EPs, xhuxx!

I listened to the Yoakam on Spotify yesterday, and bought it today. It's really, really good. More in the vein of his 90s stuff than his first three albums, of course, but it's already one of my favorite albums of the year, even with one song co-written with Kid Rock and two co-produced by Beck. (None of which are the one where he sings about what it'd be like if he owned a giraffe.)

Doing modern country music a big favor every day, making Brad Paisley and everyone else who stupidly helped him with the latest thing regret every minute of it. Honest question: Is he going to check himself into Betty Ford after this tour?

― Gorge, Tuesday, September 4, 2012 5:55

They were just together on the CMA tv special the other night, and they did the CMT one earlier, so Paisley not regretting anything yet.

Meanwhile, Kelly Hogan's I Like to Keep Myself in Pain starts with the same Irwin song Irwin starts xpost Little Heater with: "Dusty Groove." Which may be what the protagonist feels like, and mebbe she's dusting the walls in the hall as she bumps off 'em, but she's got some concealed, wary agility down in the groove, and pushes herself out into some Loretta Lynn-worthy precision--"Sleeves rolled down/Even in an evening gown", resolutions crumpled in her fist--gliding into understated flamboyance, train of thinking out loud about seeing stars in the love wars or anyway the battered homefront. "Underneath the sweater/Ten fingers are red/Ah bequeath this gold map of the stars to the living dead." The whole thing's like late 60s crossover bait,radio hits and shoulda-beens, from the age of Lynn and Bacharach and Jim Webb and Randy Newman, when Dusty Springfield was covering Ran' songs(if he wrote "Just One Kiss", or was it Nilsson-anyway, their neck of the woods and Vine). But Hogan wisely reserves the right to take it further than most reasonable radio-bait would have. So, while "Daddy's Little Girl" reminds me that Newman sincerely offered "Lonely At The Top" to Frank Sinatra, it also sounds like one he would have written for himself (maybe Stephen Merritt wrote it, sounds more adept than recent Newman). Sung by Frank, or somebody who thinks he is, providing a grand, somewhat brain-leaky perspective, a tribute to himself. She does best when she's got something like this, tilting the Hoganpolitan shimmer and sheen, quickly training us to watch for the little psych-pop glints. Even the few merely retro tracks are spot-on. Rec'd to fans of recent Lambert, Pistol Annies, Lee Ann Womack (thinking esp. of the way she did Mark Ribot's "Reds," on Buddy Miller's Majesty of the Silver Strings, where Womack didn't have to deal w the guitar noodles, unlike Patti Griffin and Emmylou on other tracks).

When I say "the whole thing's like," I mean more like the total effect, even with off-the-wall images, which she matches to "normal" delivery, without neutralizing or overemphasizing the lyrics.

Would love to hear Lambert and Hogan doing "Look At Miss Ohio"--has Lambert had a CMT Crossroads?

Marc Ribot's "Meds", not "Reds"

Haw, for those of us who don't wanna Spotify (via mandatory Fecebook), here's the whole already-out-in-Europe 3 Pears on Yoakam's MySpace- click to play the whole album; if you try it track by track, MySpace Radio may stick some other shit between clicks:
http://www.myspace.com/dwightyoakam/music/albums/3-pears-18705505

I'll get to Dwight right now in a little while, but wanted to check Chris Smither's June release, Hundred Dollar Valentine, before I go past it again. His best known songa are the ones covered by Bonnie Raitt in her 70s prime, "Love Me Like A Man" (she tweaked the title to that) and "I Feel The Same," backed by Little Feat in their own early 70s prime (Esther Phillips also did a first-rate version). It's inescapably lucid and shadowy too, says a lot that his version here doesn't overshadow, just fits right in. "Try not to complain, nobody cares/Don't bother tryin' to find your place/It's everywhere" might be charming disarming bullshit if he weren't so good at finding a worthy perch damn near everywhere, amidst 60s folkie tropes that sure don't seem like cliches here, where he's a tour guide through illusions useful and otherwise, in his experience. Like the kind rewarded by good sex, a sensuous chord progression and a melodee descending and going back up somebody's down staircase. He's kinda world-weary, but always got another good line and lick, deftly off the denim cuff. is this love, or infatuation? We'll see, but right now, I'm gratified.

God, 3 Pears is great. Grabbed me right away--and yeah, on MySpace, but great sound (via Koss UR40 headphones). He assimilates the mid-60s back-and-forth of country, rock, some Latin in both, from the Southwesten US to UK and back: well, mostly assimilated, not too quote-y, though he does make good use of a certain Beatles chorus, Tommy James--mostly subliminal Orbison, Owens, Everlys (even multiple Dwights for a moment on one track), early Gram Parsons, and right from the latter to "Heart of Mine", the best southwest of Liverpool garage pop country the young Sir Douglas Quintet never did. Circumspect flash, he is a character actor after all, knows not to wink and the audience, but when to whoop, and the wave of music the sorrowfully moralistic, left-behind hubby rides though "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke" has a faithful scream inside. Also like what I hoped the Mavericks' album would sound like in the wake of "Oh What A Crying Shame", but this is much more consistent. "Waterfall" sounds like a children song,more imaginative than sentimental, but the line about babies being born even in a war, is that something you'd tell a kid? Some kids would know, would be there to agree with you, no Pope Daddyio. Couple tracks toward the end I could live without, but it perks up again.

Kix Brooks is on MySpace too! I'll check him next, probably. Thanks for mentioning his album, xxhux ( his MySpace even has a previous solo set, from 2007, it says--maybe a pre B&D, re- or finally released then?)

really liking this Kacey Musgraves single

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJjeWDvh6J0

Will check that, also check FarmAid tonight on their site, 8-11 p.m. Eastern, and look who's on at 9:30:
http://blog.farmaid.org/2012/09/farm-aid-2012-lineup-schedule-concert.html

9:20, not 9:30!

Well that turned out to be their most mess-up Webacast ever--not just the glitches, also just down to a couple of performances (back to back) from several setsm said diptychs between a lot of talk (what the hell is organic pesticides anyways). Prob more chunks later on YouTube. Willie fit in well w Neil and Crazy Horse on "Homegrown," though didn't sing, just picked. Kix Brooks' New To This Town, on his MySpace, is really good, that early 00s bluesy boogie, Southern Rock as mainstream country thang, even "let's put some Otis Redding on" w Cropperesque licks on or leading into the steel guitar, "There's The Sun", pool party w the Hi Rhythm Gang (in effect). Title track is like why has no one ever done this before, although it might be risky on a mainstream country album, what will the Chamber of Commerce think of somebody who wishes he was new to this town, cos he's sick of this town, cos he knows it too well, and vice versa. of coures, because it is mainstream, has to be tied in w a relationship, every street is where they used to walk happy together, and she's still around etc., but that's a good subject too ( could incl they still have the same friends, but that could lead to a sequel). Mostly songs about cutting loose, the other obligatory homefires songs usually fit in better than expected, and the closer, "She Knew I Was A Cowboy", is more affecting than 90 percent of all songs containing the word "cowboy", Ah believe. (no songs about kids, he doesn't push his luck that far). Lots of good video soundtracks here, re what I still think of as the early 00s-type marketing.

Sorry for all the typos in that last one. I'm not familiar with Janis Martin's early stuff, but while Rosie Flores, producer of Martin's posthumously released The Blanco Sessions, contrasts her 50s " sparkling little hillbilly" voice to this, the tobacco that got her soon after doesn't impose any obvious wear and tear. If anything, the first couple tracks have her deeper tones kinda smoothly stolid, compared to the eager sounds boppin' at the hop all around her. But "Long White Cadillac" gives her some high lonesome notes to flex over a brisk-ish shuffle, that's the kind of combo really gets her going; "Oh Lonesome Me" turns into a party for wallflowers, chompin' at the bit, and Bill Monroe's "Walk Softly In this Heart of Mine" meets some "Honky Tonk Womne," pert near (Keef always did point out that the Stones trademark guitar sound was based on a banjo tuning). "Wild Child" has Flores providing that "sparkling little" etc, other tracks bring in the jump band, jitterbug bait of early rock, also rec to fans of Etta James' more downhome records, and Wynnnona's, for that matter. Not as glitzy as Wanda Jackson x Jack White, but good to go.

Rosie Flores' own new album, Working Girl's Guitar, could use some of Martin's firm vocal heft, she sounds like a polite li'l sister, deferring to her guitar--but they're side by side in the mix. So sometimes it's like, "After you." "No, after you." Though I think "Surf Demon # 5" would be my favorite even if it weren't the only instrumental. Still, voice & guitar do pretty well with "Drugstore Rock 'n' Roll", "Too Much", and "If (I Could Only Be With You)", her strongest vocal. A few tracks kinda catch up with the 60s or early 70s. Title track's kinda Rockpile, but more in the writing than the performance, alas. "I'm Little But I'm Loud" mildly suggests "Bang A Gong", and "Yeah Yeah" is pretty good, reflecting Lennon's 70s reflections on/of the early 60s, looking to a moment "frozen in time" of living for today while praying for tomorrow--only thing, the steel guitar gets a bit toward Harrison's more wan/cloying slide. Though dang the actual "While My Guitar" 's descending melody gets steadied by a "Good Day Sunshine"-type bassline, with excess tears flushed, and she even brings out the zing of "you were inverted/No one aler,er,ted you"--nice roll, Rosie.

dow otm on the Yoakam, especially "Waterfalls" and the penultimate song, which evokes "Sweet Jane." Only two plays in but I had to consult the liners to confirm which were the Beck productions: that's how unified this sound is.

Penultimate song has been evoking "Crimson And Clover" for me, but can definitely hear "Sweet Jane" too (which is pretty blatant, amazed I didn't notice before) now that Alfred mentions it. Almost definitely my favorite track on the album -- which I like pretty well, but don't love.

Joe McCombs does not miss cowboy hats, or the kind of country guys who wore them.

http://entertainment.time.com/2012/10/02/where-have-all-the-cowboy-hats-gone/

cowboy hats out, this garbage in:

http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/600_143238207.jpg?w=600&h=400&crop=1

yawn. there is, on the other hand, a very good article in this month's new inquiry (one that also cites that 'murder on music row' performance) considering charlie rich's CMA incident and the formation of the ACE in the context of mid 70s labor struggles. only available by subscription right now but it should be online in the next few weeks.

Press sheet. Several mentions of who sings what on this, here and there:
\
Jamey Johnson

Living For a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran

When word got out that acclaimed Nashville artist Jamey Johnson was recording a tribute album to beloved songwriter Hank Cochran, musical superstars clamored to participate.

“When we were talking about who to call, people just kind of presented themselves,” Johnson says. “I think the word got out after awhile, and we were getting phone calls from people wanting to do it. There weren’t a whole lot of arms that needed twisting.”

The resulting cast, plus the brilliant and timeless Cochran songs, make this recording one of the musical events of the year. From the ranks of the Country Music Hall of Fame came George Strait, Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, Ray Price and Vince Gill, not to mention Cochran’s oldest and truest friend, Willie Nelson. Veteran stars Leon Russell, Elvis Costello, Bobby Bare and Asleep at the Wheel perform on the album alongside contemporary artists such as Alison Krauss, Lee Ann Womack and Ronnie Dunn.

“Everybody got to pick their own songs, so for me, it was just as much a journey as it was for anybody else involved,” Johnson reports. “I thought I’d heard all of Hank’s songs, and I hadn’t heard anything.”

Johnson is quick to praise the efforts of co-producer Buddy Cannon, who worked with co-producer Dale Dodson to recruit artists and explore Cochran’s vast catalog. “By the time Buddy was done with it, it was the easiest thing in the world. I can’t give him enough credit.”

Johnson grew up singing gospel harmonies in church and believes this is why he was able to sing so capably with so many different stylists on the album, as well as in Cannon’s various musical settings. Johnson performs Cochran’s Keith Whitley hit “Would These Arms Be in Your Way” as his only solo on the tribute album.

Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member Hank Cochran died in 2010, but he left behind a song catalog that the world reveres. Masterpieces such as “Make the World Go Away,” “I Fall to Pieces” and “Don’t You Ever Get Tired of Hurting Me” merely scratch the surface of his genius that produced hits on the country charts for more than four decades.

Cochran was also widely loved for his generosity of spirit, charming personality, easy-going humor and boundless kindness. During the final years of his life, he became a mentor to Johnson.

The two met when Johnson was celebrating the Gold Record success of his 2008 CD That Lonesome Song (which eventually achieved Platinum certification) as well as the Song of the Year trophies he collected for “Give it Away” and “In Color” from both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association. Johnson’s renown continued with the 2010 release of his ambitious double album The Guitar Song, which also became a Gold Record winner. In addition, he picked up five Grammy Award nominations along the way. But throughout his rise, he remained close to Hank Cochran, who was slowly dying of cancer.

“Hank loved Jamey’s music, and Jamey just latched onto him,” says the songwriter’s widow, Suzi Cochran. “Jamey always wanted to hear Hank’s stories. Shortly after they met, Hank was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. So for the two years he lived after that, Jamey would get off the road, pull his bus right up to the hospital, run up and see Hank and raise his spirits.

“Hank adored Jamey. Jamey was there when a lot of people weren’t coming around. A lot of people are afraid to be around sick people. They don’t know what to say, or they don’t need you anymore. But Jamey was a constant in the last chapter of Hank’s life.”

“Hank influenced me, not only as an artist and a songwriter, but also just as a person,” says Johnson. “If I had to dream up someone to influence songwriters, I couldn’t do better than Hank. For Willie and for a lot of people, he was such a helpful friend. If he knew you needed help with something, he was there. And that’s what I want to be for the people in my life, the same kind of friend that Hank was.

“Buddy Cannon was the one who told me that it was getting to be about time, that if I wanted to say goodbye, now was my chance. So I met him at Hank’s house. Billy Ray Cyrus was there. Merle Haggard called. We did what we knew we could do. We just sang Hank songs and hung around with our friend.”

Recalling the night before Cochran died, Suzi Cochran says, “They all sat and sang Hank’s songs to him. Hank was very weak by this time. He couldn’t talk, but he’d kind of hum along. I think they left about 11 o’clock that night, and it was about five o’clock the next morning when Hank passed away.”

Johnson says it was Cochran’s passing that kicked off the idea for this project. “Willie Nelson was the first person I knew I wanted to include. Bobby Bare introduced me to a bunch of Hank’s songs that I didn’t know. Having Merle on it meant a lot to me, too. Bobby introduced me to him. Elvis Costello flew to Nashville [in 2009] when they had an event to honor Hank, so I knew he would want to be a part of this.”

On Livin’ For a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran, Johnson and Nelson sing “Don’t You Ever Get Tired of Hurting Me,” and the duo is joined by Leon Russell and Vince Gill on “Everything But You.” “When you start talking about songwriters, you’ve got to say his name first – then you start talking about everybody else,” says Nelson of his departed friend. “Hank had a lot to do with me getting started. He was responsible, really, for me going to Nashville.

“I thought this [tribute record] was a great idea, that if it had never been done before, it was about time, “Nelson says. “I think also that he should be in the Country Music Hall of Fame. That’s my nomination for the next guy they put in there.”

Bobby Bare, who joins Johnson on “I’d Fight the World,” is delighted that his dear friend (and best man in Bare’s wedding) is being honored in this manner. “It just makes my heart warm to see all the great names who are on this album for no other reason than they respected and loved Hank’s songs. I still think about Hank. I hear Hank throughout all his songs. Hank was his songs, and the songs were Hank.”

Johnson teams with Haggard on the Patsy Cline 1961 hit “I Fall to Pieces.” “It’s important, historically, for people to know who Hank Cochran was and what he did,” Haggard believes. “He always wanted to be the Hemingway of country music, and I think he did it.”

Johnson, Nelson, Haggard and Kris Kristofferson sing “Living for a Song,” a poignant recording that includes Cochran’s voice. “Hank’s ability to perform comes across right there,” Haggard says of the song he describes as “our life on paper, music.” He says, “I mean, he’s in there with some of the best singers in the world and he gets it across better.”

“He wrote a kagillion classic songs,” adds Ronnie Dunn, who duets with Johnson on “A-11.” “It’s stunning when you look at the body of work that he was able to accomplish. He stayed relevant for so long.”

“Who wouldn’t want to be a part of this?” says Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel, who joins Johnson on “I Don’t Do Windows.” “Hank Cochran is, without a doubt, one of the greatest songwriters ever on earth. His songs transcend time because they’re based on emotion. I think the collection of artists on this album shows the respect that we all have for Hank’s artistry.”

“Hank’s songs bring out the best in anybody,” Johnson observes. “You don’t go on auto pilot and skip over the words. He’s going to make you focus in on a song. That’s the beauty of a skilled songwriter. A good song just inspires you. It makes you want to do better. The songwriter puts the spirit in it. That’s why everybody had the desire to make something great.

“It doesn’t make the Hall of Fame worthless that Hank Cochran is not in there, but it certainly makes it worth less that he’s not in there. It’s a matter of just recognizing good country music.”

Suzi Cochran pays perhaps the highest compliment this album could receive. “I wish Hank had been here to see it. He wouldn’t believe it. He would have cried. He’d be happy. It’s exactly like Hank would have done it.”

Caramanica in the NY Times re Jerrod Niemann, sensitive bro

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/arts/music/jerrod-niemanns-big-hearted-good-time-country.html?ref=music

The sensitive bro is a relatively new country paradigm: The outside is tough, mostly, and sometimes muscled, but the heart is big and often bursting. It’s become a stand-in for masculinity in the post-outlaw age, in which real rebellion isn’t an option, but a hint of it is welcome, particularly if it comes with a big, warm embrace and maybe a nibble on the earlobe.

Blake Shelton is the figurehead of the movement, the gentleman who provides cover for the rowdy boys in back. Those second-tier guys include Lee Brice, Randy Houser, Kip Moore, Bradley Gaskin and Jerrod Niemann. Of those, Mr. Niemann may be the sharpest and the most apt to throw curveballs.

I read it a couple days and disagreed -- so Alan Jackson is not a sensitive bro?

otm bout boring Blake Shelton though

also Miranda's consort (hey, enough of a job in itself)

If his presence contributes to her making good records, then his existence is justified, amen.

I guess Niemann is a sensitive bro, but he's also a trickster (which Caramanica does get at a little). 600 characters I wrote on his new one:

http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/jerrod-niemann/album/free-the-music

Couple moments of the first song on the album also remind me of Everclear (who I know a lot of people hate.) Weird, since Niemann had a song called "For Everclear" on his debut album that didn't remind me of Everclear at all -- at least not at the time, when I wrote this about it:

http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/jerrod-niemann/album/judge-jerrod-and-the-hung-jury

Been re-playing 2012 country albums the past few days. 3/4 of the way (plus a week) in, my top 13 would look something like this:

1. Jerrod Niemann – Free The Music (Sea Gayle/Arista Nashville)
2. Blackberry Smoke – The Whippoorwill (Southern Ground)
3. Thomas Rhett – Thomas Rhett EP (The Valory Music Co. EP)
4. Kix Brooks – New To This Town (Arista Nashville)
5. Bhi Bhiman – Bhiman (Boocoo Music)
6. Miss Willie Brown – Sampler (A&M/Octone EP)
7. Darrell Scott – Long Way Home (Thirty Tigers/Full Light)
8. Turnpike Troubadors – Goodbye Normal Street (Thirty Tigers/Bossier City)
9. Bryan Clark & The New Lyceum Players – Southern Intermissions (Rainfeather)
10. Kip Moore – Up All Night (MCA Nashville)
11. Lionel Richie – Tuskegee (Universal)
12. Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band – Between The Ditches (SideOneDummy)
13. Dwight Yoakam – 3 Pears (Warner Bros./Via)

(Last six are pretty close, though -- which is why I didn't stop at 10. Order could easily change. And I also might decide that Bhi Bhiman stretches the "country" definition too much, like I did with Elfin Saddle's Devastates, which'd be my #1 if I counted it as country.)

and Niemann wrote a good song about Everclear!

Haven't listened in a long time, but I used to like Everclear, and Pazz & Jopped Songs from an American Movie, Vol. 1: Learning How to Smile. So Jarrod's still got good judgement (get it, Judge Jarrod, hyuk hyuk). I will check out his latest ruling.

"Jason Aldean is giving fans the chance to listen to his upcoming fifth studio album NIGHT TRAIN in its entirety for the week leading up to its Oct. 16 release, with an exclusive iTunes pre-stream found at www.iTunes.com/JasonAldean The stream is available only on desktop and iPad devices in the United States and Canada." Eh, I dunno if I'll check it, but there it is.

That was sic, but this might be better http://www.iTunes.com/JasonAldean

actually really enjoying that record, even more than the last

I'm mixed on it; probably need to listen to it more. But it's really long, just like his last one. So far, two songs stand out for me: closest thing to a "rap" song (and rock song, and novelty track) is "1994," nostalgia for a year I didn't realize anybody was nostalgic for yet and for a country singer (Joe Diffie!??) who I didn't expect anybody would ever be nostalgic for, though I liked his chaos theory/butterfly effect hit "3rd Rock From the Sun" back in 1994 too; Aldean's musicians a little space in that to get funky. There's also a song near the end I like -- "Black Tears," a sort of sad hair-metal fallen-angel-working the-strip-club-and sniffing coke ballad, but maybe darker than that sounds, plus there's a recurring "Stairway To Heaven" motif running through it, which I don't remember country doing before. Rest of the album, so far, strikes me as just typical Aldean, who-cares rock-wannabe stuff and ballads, with okay small-town details (an abandoned factory in one song, for instance, where a party happens), more I could take or leave, and some that will probably grow on me a little over time.

So I just now checked out Jerrod Niemann – Free The Music (Sea Gayle/Arista Nashville) on his MySpace. Crisp white sand Carribean country appeal, rec to fans of Sublime, Chesney Buffett, RIYL associations esp. relevant on the five tracks I so far don't particularly care about. But some of that same appeal on the seven I perk up for, "Guessing Games" being the most meta, like what will the arrangement do next, with suave switcheroos, "I could waste a day or two with my hippies out west/Cajuns on the bayou" ect., little bits "Southern Nights"-era Allan Toussaint and early Big Kenny solo turns flash before mah eyes,and I'm there for the horns, a bit "Kenny Lane" on the title track, though usually with a sly riverboat Dixieland tinge(as heard on riverboats near casinos and minor league ballparks in the modern South). When he disclaims being a "Rhodes scholar/rough edges, blue in the collar", is he maybe actually disavowing all of that, so "Rhodes" could also be "roads" ("blue in the collar" could also imply "red in the face", he's not overselling or embarrassed, also not red in the neck) and he's not afraid to show musical evidence of being an unstudied combo of non-generic brains and beauty? Maybe does crossword puzzles, albeit with a pencil and eraser; only wears cologne on the right dates,if atall. Good to hear and think about, but I dunno about Top Ten Albums; h'm-m-m, seven keepers, five so-whuts. Should be something for Singles though, unless his ballads tamely hog that category.

Mind you, the disclaimer goes with a very nice trad country-friendly track, mellow baritones singing along, made me wonder again about the xpost Jamey Johnson trib to Hank Cochran (also reminds me Niemann should have supporting vocals more often, on slower songs)

Great writeup, Don, but wait -- which are the stinkers again? (Agree there's a couple, though not nearly enough to sink the riverboat.)

The Aldean dig grow on me, a little -- At least enough to convince me to hang on to the promo CD I got sent. Is it my imagination, or is it possible he's actually singing better now? Or maybe I just never noticed before that he's pretty okay at it. There's something about his slightly fancy vocal swoops in "I Don't Do Lonely Well" that reminds me, in a good way, of Jon Secada doing "Just Another Day" two decades ago. Despite its rote farm-town tough-guy chauvinism I don't hate the other quasi-hard-rock quasi-rap shitkick song "The Only Way I Know", which apparently has Eric Church and Luke Bryan on it. But besides the two I mention above, I'd say the standouts are "Night Train" (I get that "going down to the tracks to listen to the night train in the middle of the night" or whatever is a metaphor for making out, but is it also something people actually do?) and "Water Tower," and maybe "This Nothin' Town" -- all partly for their hicktown specifics, I reckon.

Drew Nelson's Tilt-A-Whirl, on folk/blues/Americana-type indie Red House, has a real shot at my country top 10, it turns out. He sings just about as bleh as Steve Earle, so I have my reservations, but the first few songs are real nice Nebraska-style recession gloom that always grabs my bleeding heartstrings. Album tails off halfway through, though I like when his band stretches out "Copper" to 6 minutes.

"..did grow on me a little..."

And I didn't make it very far into the Jamey Johnson. Just seems like a lazy writer's-block stopgap and star-studded grandstanding move to me. Can't make myself care about it at all. Though I did notice that both Jody Rosen in Rolling Stone and Christgau (who never liked Johnson much before) gave it good reviews.

The last Niemann album was a sleeper: I got it two years ago and it kicked in last summer or fall. It's hard for charm to combat slack songwriting, but he won. The last single was terrific.

The Singles Jukebox on "Shinin' On Me":

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=5386

Maybe the rest of Free The Music will grow on me like the prev did for Alfred, but meanwhile, keeping things positive, these are the ones I do like so far:
"Free The Music"
"Shinin' On Me"
"Honky Tonk Fever"
"Guessing Games"
"It Won't Matter Anymore"
"Real Women Drink Beer"
"Fraction of a Man"

The others aren't stinkers, just dull-normal pop country radio bait.

Oh man, back to MySpace, this time for Jamey Johnson and friends' Hank Cochran tribute, and now I wanna do bad things with you. Very sensuous autumn flames in the veins, righteous wounds and guilt, old weird passive aggressive Casonova singing in his chains and cowpoke leather. Well, it's a reverie anyway, but the object of his repentant booty doesn't seem so far away tonight, and actual female duet partners take it t another level, which may be why not so many of them. The faster, funnier tracks are welcome too, a little fresh cold air, not too far from the dancefloor, at-least-mental boudoir, or bar (I once read that songs of this era were judged by the amount of drinks sold while they were played on the jukebox and radio; not a conspiracy, just corporate tie-ins). Maybe it is just one more elaborate act of JJ's writerly procrastination, but he def holds his own amid all the guests. Sounds kinda like Merle but younger. Very edutaining too; I never heard most of these.

repentant booty *call*, that is.

"one more act of writerly procrastination" in all the world of writers, that is, and hold the JJ, not saying he's done this before. I like that so far, each album is different, whatever the circumstances might be.

Goood band too, discreet yet sparky and no-hesitation spot-on.

I'm kinda skittish about the Johnson album. I liked That Lonesome Song better than The Guitar Song, and albums of duets typically do nothing for me. But I'll check for it on Spotify.

So, is anybody in this thread watching the TV show Nashville? I'm kind of enjoying it.

I liked the Altman movie okay, despite its know-nothing condescension toward country music. But this is what I wrote about the TV show on facebook last week: " I miss Tami Taylor. And I have no Hayden Panettiere opinion. (Doubt I could identify her in a police lineup, to be honest.) And I might try out this show when Netflix gets it a year from now (just like I try out lots of shows), but I do not have high hopes. 'Real' country diva who's paid her dues vs. 'fake' country upstart superstar, right? Zzzzzzzzzzz."

Just my know-nothing gut feeling, though. Could be wrong, obviously. (And other people seem to like it. Except ones who are bored by it.)

Yeah, pretty decent last night, especially the music. Even the tween-aimed video song was totally believable, could see it as a hit in that fictional world and this one too. The final song was awesome, smoke curling down the scale seeping into certain little shifts, private places. "We shouldn't have done that song," the resolutely ex-lovers agree after this duet, which portends probs for their reunion tour (he plays in her band all along, but this is a reinstatement of the once famously hot, fraught, pre-rehab duo. Which is Rayna [Connie Britton of Friday Night Lights)'s desperate career move, having pissed off her label and precluded their support for new album, by refusing to open for the tween-aimed starlet (who wants to move to grown-up audience cred, busy trying to steal the reinstated duo guy). Anybody heard the soundtrack?

I think Hayden comes off as a *somewhat% sympathetic character: like Rayna/Connie, she doesn't want to be trapped in a niche, and when she witnesses the xpost duet, cries like she's being shut out, not only a power thing, it's evidence of a bond, a musical transmutation of experience she hasn't had. Clumsily trying to buy it with the coveted duet guy, and may succeed to some extent, judging by previews of upcoming episodes, which also include crying after an encounter with her own non-rehabbed mother, recalling rough upbringing of this by-her-bootstraps gal.

Well, Metal Mike Saunders sure likes it. This was waiting for me when I opened my email this morning (tried to un-jumble it a little; not sure how successful I was):

c.f. everyone's favorite TV adult actress Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights) and other things/etc. (and wow is the show as good as hyped, based on ep #2)
i'd seen only a couple (or three max) of co-star Hayden Panettiere's TV/movie credits (i.e. the straight-to-DVD BRING IT ON: All Or Nothing from 2006 which is rerun 16 times a week on Disn/Nick/Fox Family channels) (and the2009 movie I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER that she had the lead role in) but had the definite impression (esp in the 2009 movie) that she had/has real cinema-stage-presence/etc. i never watched the TV series HEROES that made her a medium-big TV name 2006-2010) ("Nominated: Saturn Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role on Television Series (2008–10), and Teen Choice Award (2007) Choice TV: Breakout;") even though best-TV-show-ever-Veronica-Mars 's kristen bell had a character/role in it before moving over to big co-star movie roles
but wow does NASHVILLE have a perfect casting with HP and Britton (who is regarded as a national treasure for her five seasons' of Friday Night Lights)

...and hound dog, i mean T-Bone taylor, i mean T-Bone burnett owes me two snow cones if he's never heard the 1965 kitty wells pop-country hit (that i cite). ya fuckin' dumbass texas ya. it was a #4/country (hit single)! look it up in Whitburn!
there are a shitpile of original songs on this/that youtube page (several of them legit pop-writer gifted, i.e. melody lines) and a half billion cover songs all of which...need autotune like santa needs reindeer. hey, didn't stop Lila McCann from gettin a gold album or two in the 90's! (as a mid-late teenager from seattle/tacoma)
(like teenagers getting to review 1971 proto/early metal albums in CREEM/etc, i am wot? the first "music fan" to post a muso-comment into the brand-new youtube ABC-TV clip(s)? does not make sense. makes NO sense at all. now send me a fuckin' snow cone coupon for referring the great Kitty Wells 1965 hit back into public discussion so's they can sing it in a couple/few months from now on that should-be-a-hit TV show. just do not make me listen to a "J Henry Burnette and the B-52 Band" album (on Uni) from 1972, wow not good x 10)

(a nova scotia/canada country-songwriter highschool prodigy who's been writing since age 12; vocals extremely erratic w/good hard country/country-pop vocal sound that needs AUTOTUNE on 6 of every 10 notes. like taylor swift ha). ..u probably saw/heard this on TV (last night/wed, ep #2). wow, some baadass oldschool vocals, but w a slight folkie tinge just like late 60's-early 70's dolly parton. NO AUTOTUNE. hp is a real singer, even if she apprenticed in highschool doing random disney/Hollywood Records' comp tracks..

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

"hybrid hard country/folkie vocal sound, very similar to (late 60's-early 70's) (early-RCA) Dolly Parton. truth = HP has got an oldschool Hall of Fame country voice, in the key of D here anyway. so she used to cut tunes in highschool for Disney/Hollywood Records' comps/sdtks (Girl Next, Girl Next 2, DisneyMania 5, Cinderella III)?"

"doesn't matter, 'it's what's in the grooves that counts.' "

oh wait that was me sayin that haha. note: miranda lambert (1st lp that had a bunch of acoustic-y things) would have OVERsung this song, and she's an often-great singer. HP understates it -- gives the vibrato space at the end of lines -- like wow hella good.

NASHVILLE "Undermine" as sung in ep#2 (missing the "studio-recording" scene later in the epi)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irx8_XFI7Fs

NASHVILLE "Undermine" full studio recording

http://www.youtube.com/user/EmilyTaylorKelso

Uh, think I might've cut-and-pasted a couple of those comments in the wrong order...Oh well, deciphering Metal Mike is half the fun.

He also called it (in his subject line) the "best TV drama ever about the music biz."

Btw, I am with Phil in preferring Jamey's Lonesome to Guitar. And also in not being a fan of duet albums.

The Guitar Song is like the Use Your Illusion albums - a bunch of good stuff, but also a bunch of filler. Take all the good songs and make a solid 45-minute iPod playlist out of it. That's what I think I'm gonna do tonight.

well gosh, finally listened to Iris Dement's Sing The Delta, and don't want to say too much now, I need to listen more--it's really rich, deep, lots of turns in the syllables, imagery, piano--but gotta say something. First track reminds me of what I liked about Leon Russell: that rippling, bouncing/pouncing piano (thinking of his "Tightrope"), and what kept me at at armslength: those rippling, detouring syllables). But intriguing, and after that, more like Toussaint,Domino even, especially at her most country (reminds me, she played piano with Merle Haggard and the Strangers on tour; think she learned something from his sneakily flexible tightjaw, even though she can take such phrasing much further--usually I can follow her far enough, catch up with her often enough). And at least a couple, "The Night I Learned How Not To Pray" and "Mama Was Always Tellin' Her Truth" ("no back burners on her stove"), are like great lost Tom T. tracks. Would like to hear Lee Ann Womack, Miranda Lambert, Lucinda Williams cover some of these.

So much for making the good stuff singles, sez this email I just got:

Sea Gayle Records/Arista Nashville singer/songwriter Jerrod Niemann is poised to hit the airwaves with the stirring “Only God Could Love You More,” the new single from his recently released Free the Music album.

Yuck.

x-post to Dow

Would like to hear Lee Ann Womack, Miranda Lambert, Lucinda Williams cover some of these.

Does that mean you think Iris Dement's renditions are too stiff or something; or do you like Dement's takes but also want to hear what the others would do with such songs?

Really enjoy her takes. She has such a distinctive way with fairly familiar elements. And I don't think I've ever heard anybody else cover one of her songs, I'm curious.

Oh yeah, back to Jamey Johnson for a sec: I really liked the way he and his band continuously played in and out of songs--whole songs, not medleys--on The Guitar Song and in some live sets on YouTube. The lesser songs were helped by the momentum, ditto on the Cochran tribute, even though its tracks are separated, and "lesser" here just means some don't have an immediately hooky turn of phrase.

<<'Real' country diva who's paid her dues vs. 'fake' country upstart superstar, right? Zzzzzzzzzzz.">>

that's the basic premise, more or less, but the show, which i love so far, is a lot smarter and more interesting than that. the "real" diva who paid her dues relies on her producer to bring her songs. and the upstart, we learn in episode 2, is a good writer with serious ambition. and both of 'em have backbones. and that smoky duet that closed episode 2 was pretty damn great.

Indeed. Though I'm wondering if Connie Britton can project beyond her hopeful yet basically seen-it-all Friday Nights Light perspective--gettin' weary when she's even got time for that---can she be project showbiz-drama-appropriate charisma when she's not singing? Here's a bit about the music
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/tv-film/big-machine-records-to-release-music-from-1007966002.story

it's not so uncommon to hear albums inviting comparisons to spaghetti western soundtracks, but few really 'ppreciate the possibilties of American and European give-and-take: Latin in the Southwestern and Transatlantic senses, small room jazz a la Weill, Ellington, Arizona highway lounge; steel guitars and twang bars with nothing left to prove, Giant Sand (many of whom have been Danish for some time) expanding into Giant Giant Sand and offering Tucson--billed as a country rock opera--without ever being anythang that can't be hitched to s dustcloud drum kit, usually bouncing through stagecoach ruts. Sometimes swinging a little, though a droll drawl and and a tall tale (of love yall--it's all very romantic, in a worldly, wide open spacey way) "You're so much like the river/Beautiful, twisted and blue/You appear to be here forever/Passin' through."

And like an old Giant Sand song mentions, "Baby, it's hot outside."

Anybody heard Big & Rich's Hillbilly Jedi? Several Amazon reviewers describe it as "conventional, though with sound effects", "thinning" etc.

I am having a go at Kurt Wolff's 100 Essential Country Albums Rough Guide
Somehow never did Roy Acuff seriously. Newsflash: This guy is good!

Those are accurate descriptions for the Big & Rich set. Reviewed it here a few weeks back; the first single stalled at #16, and the album hasn't sold particularly well, and there's not another standout choice for a single that could really turn the project into the "comeback" it was intended to be.

Absolutely love the new Iris DeMent. Have seen quite a few complaints about its overall tempo, which is something that I typically complain about (as with the comatose new Tift Merritt album), but I didn't hear that as an issue for Sing the Delta.

I've never been fond of Jamey Johnson's voice, but I was impressed by the range in his performances on the Hank Cochran tribute.

Me on the new Big & Rich, which I didn't like much:

http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/big-and-rich/album/hillbilly-jedi

Those reviews are all too plausible, ditto the Amazon. I guess I'll listen anyway, what is country without some sadness, after all. James Hand's Mighty Lonesome Man pays some mighty lonesome dues with mighty fine timing--unafraid to venture beyond deft word play into details that could easily keep him orbiting in mental and emotional rituals eternally--but 12 items, 34 minutes, as Windows Media Player sums up, hand him off, pass him along in the alone together jukebox of honky tonk pop. Good in the background or foreground; I'm tempted to say he'll be there when you get there--he's a stand-up guy--but whatcha say James? "Let's do it now, before they use a plow, 'cause then I won't be no earthly good to you."

Gotta head out before I can finish listening to John Fullbright's From The Ground Up, but the first 2/3 have me evangelistic 'bout it. Call it Southern Gothic or just past that. First song is like Randy Newman's "God's Song" and then some: He gives us the stuff to party with here, then He (or whoever's representing) got a hang over cure, if you can hang with that (party again, way out of or in the core of bounds). "Jerico" founds him heading east to find his destination all fallen down, but bury him in the vines, he wants to rise and be the trumpet sound all around the walls )which have to rise and fall again for him to do so). Oh, but he's a badass by day who prays at night, when the world disappears and he has to confront his fears, has an unmarked scar, wants to keep things unscarred (or looking that way), only flies so far. some things are nowhere to be found, but that's not nec bad: he might want to be a rich man in a big house where he can't be found--rich or poor, no matter how loudly he testifies, is always ready to take off again. So many shadows, such appetite, eh "Fat Man" (caricature taking on a life of its own). Another for Miranda or Lae Ann to consider, though the orig should be on the radio right now: "This is not reflection/Reflections are true/This is just me/Me wantin' you/Sweet silver mem'ries/Me wanting you", and the music starts another upward arc, then back to its perch, but as always (so far) with the talons to ride cows, whales, whatever you got. Strong, clean-cut voice; there's more to the boy next door than previously thought. Kid's got charisma, look out.

An unmarked "car" I meant (quoting him, and yeah wants to keep things unscarred, visibility-wise anyway, also based on transcript)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 30, 2012
TO CELEBRATE RECORD STORE DAY’S
BACK TO BLACK FRIDAY EVENT (NOVEMBER 23)
OMNIVORE RECORDINGS
READIES
FOUR TEN-INCH VINYL DISCS BY WANDA JACKSON,

GEORGE JONES, MERLE HAGGARD AND BUCK OWENS

Also from Omnivore, Jellyfish’s two-CD set Stack-a-Tracks offers
rare glimpse of band in an instrumental mode

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — In order to celebrate Back to Black Friday (November 23, 2012), Omnivore has prepared four ten-inch vinyl EPs by country legends Merle Haggard, Wanda Jackson, George Jones and Buck Owens, with much of the material making its vinyl debut. At another end of the musical spectrum, Jellyfish’s Stack-a-Tracks presents never-before-heard instrumental mixes of the band’s two studio albums in a limited-edition, numbered, first edition digipak.

On November 23, 2012, Omnivore will release these ten-inch discs, which will preview full albums due in 2013: George Jones’ United Artists Rarities; Wanda Jackson’s Capitol Rarities; Merle Haggard’s Capitol Rarities; and Buck Owens’ Buck Sings Eagles. Jellyfish’s Stack-a-Tracks also hits the racks on the same day.

According to Pawelski, “Our very first Omnivore release, the Big Star — Third [Test Pressing Edition, released on Record Store Day 2011] is an example of being a little extra creative for Record Store Day. It was an expensive release to make, and without the event that is RSD, we probably couldn’t have pulled it off. It gave us that extra latitude to be able to push the creative limits as far as we could go and justify it.”

The November 2012 Record Store Day releases:

• George Jones – United Artists Rarities: As Jones prepares for his farewell tour in 2013, Omnivore is planning the release of The Complete United Artists Solo Singles. Jones had two label homes prior to signing to UA in 1962, and while his tenure there was short (four years), it produced hits like “She Thinks I Still Care” and “The Race Is On.” The United Artists Rarities ten-inch vinyl EP in a beautiful picture sleeve presents four alternate versions of UA recordings plus two previously unissued duets with Melba Montgomery (“There Will Never Be Another” and “Alabama”).

• Wanda Jackson – Capitol Rarities: 2012 was a big year for the Queen of Rockabilly on the heels of career-reinvigorating new albums produced by Jack White and Justin Townes Earle. While Omnivore puts the crowning touches on its 2013 release The Best of the Classic Capitol Singles, the six-song vinyl EP Capitol Rarities sets the stage. Included are previously unissued versions of songs recorded between 1956-62 including “Step by Step” “In the Middle of a Heartache,” “The Wrong Kind of Girl” and three more.

• Merle Haggard – Capitol Rarities: One of the pioneers of the Bakersfield sound, Haggard toured with Buck Owens in the early ’60s and in 1965 was signed to Capitol Records (already home to Buck) by producer Ken Nelson. Omnivore is planning a full-length CD The Complete Capitol ’60s Singles for 2013 release, to which the Capitol Rarities ten-inch vinyl EP sets the stage. The EP contains songs never released back in the day, and alternate versions of well-known tunes. All six songs emanate from unique Nashville and Hollywood recording sessions, making this EP a very cool, collectible piece.

• Buck Owens – Buck Sings Eagles: If Buck Owens, Father of the Bakersfield sound, wasn’t already a household name by 1968, the advent of the hit TV series Hee Haw cemented his fame. Music for the show was recorded in Buck’s studio and then played back on the show with live-to-track vocals. Omnivore will issue these previously unissued made-for-TV recordings as Honky Tonk Man: Buck Owens Sings Country Classics in 2013. Among these recordings were four previously unissued cover songs by the California country-rock torch-carriers the Eagles that comprise the ten-inch vinyl EP.

• Jellyfish: Stack-a-Tracks: While recording their two pivotal studio albums, 1990’s Bellybutton and 1993’s Spilt Milk, “instrumental” mixes of each record were created by Jellyfish and their producers. Unheard and untouched for decades, these recordings will finally see the light of day on Omnivore Recordings’ Jellyfish – Stack-a-Tracks. This is not a “re-imagining” of what these records “might” sound like as instrumentals. They’re the real deal, transferred from the original 1/4-inch masters. With an individually numbered edition of 2,500 units, housed in a digipak for the limited first edition with new illustrated artwork (created for the release by artist Mike McCarthy), this two-CD set is destined to become the newest gem in the collection of power-pop fans everywhere.

About Omnivore Recordings:
Founded in 2010 by longtime, highly respected industry veterans Cheryl Pawelski, Greg Allen, Dutch Cramblitt, and Brad Rosenberger, Omnivore Recordings preserves the legacies and music created by historical, heritage, and catalog artists while also releasing previously unissued, newly found “lost” recordings and making them available for music-loving audiences to discover. Omnivore Recordings is distributed by EMI.

So...who is watching the Country Music Awards? I mean...I'm not

It's got its lumps but I love this Niemann album.

Haven't heard the new one Niemann but I didn't like the last one, save for a few songs.

Re: CMAs: I really hate that Lambert song (and half of that record) but the performance was fantastic, probably the best of the whole night (tempering the fact that the insipid/overblown "Over You" won Song of the Year over "Springsteen," which is one of the most elegant songs to be a hit on country radio even if it pales in comparison to Taylor's "Tim McGraw'). Swift was ok, kind of nice to see her romantically triumphant after her current persona (which is why "Begin Again" is such a stellar closer on Red). Totally happy that Church won Album of the Year; of all the nominees, his was the most consistent, but his performance weirdly lacked the urgency of his last few times on the show, maybe because he knows he's finally Made It. I kinda love the new Paisley song for ~WHAT IT MEANS POLITCALLY/CULTURALLY~ and Underwood was flawless if frigid, as always. I'm most excited about Little Big Town's success; their songs have not often lived up to their talent, but "Little White Church" and "Pontoon" have a bluesy FMac influence that is really endearing.

Can't believe Miranda won song of the year over Springsteen.

Albums are proving no prob, but could use suggestions for Top Ten Country Singles this year (can't stand the endless idiot commercials on my local radio, so mentions of tolerable online country stations also much appreciated)

a few:

Dierks Bentley - 5-1 5-0
Tim McGraw - The One That Got Away
Eric Church - Springsteen
Miranda Lambert - Fastest Girl in Town
Carrie Underwood - Blown Away
Luke Bryan - Drunk On You
Jerrod Niemann - Shinin' on Me
Lee Brice - A Woman Like You

In no real order except the top one (which is shoo-in for top 10 singles list, country or otherwise), here are some other singles from this year ( might consider, if I don't decide that I actually hate them:

Kacey Musgraves – Merry Go Round
Pistol Annies – Takin’ Pills
The Farm – Home Sweet Home
Toby Keith – Beers Ago
Tim McGraw – Better Than I Used to Be
David Nail – Sound Of A Million Dreams
Thomas Rhett - Something To Do With My Hands
Alan Jackson – So You Don’t Have To Love Me Anymore
Miss Willie Brown – You’re All That Matters To Me
Kix Brooks – New To This Town
Rodney Atkins - He's Mine
Dean Brody - Canadian Girls
Band Perry - Postcard To Paris
Dropkick Murphys – Rose Tatoo (probably not country enough, maybe also not good enough)
Laura Marling – All My Rage (ditto)

And Frank Kogan listed these (along with a few others Alfred and/or I mentioned) on his blog a month or so back:

Eden's Edge "Too Good To Be True"
Jason Aldean "Fly Over States"
Eric Church "Creepin'"
Carrie Underwood "Blown Away"
Easton Corbin "Lovin' You Is Fun"
Willie Nelson "Just Breathe"

And then there is Taylor Swift. I am inclined to grandmother in Red as country for my Nashville Scene album ballot if I get sent one despite its pervasive lack of actual country-ness. (And if I do, it will probably top my list -- sorry Jerrod.) But I'm less sure about the singles on it (some but not all of which I might like enough.)

Also, I hate Record Store Day sucker-bait on principle, but gotta admit those 10-inch rarities EPs Don posted about sound pretty cool. Then again, I always think that about 10-inch EPs. Reminds me that I actually used to own this 10-inch George Jones EP with early rockabilly sides like "White Lightnin" and "Who Shot Sam" on it, but for some reason I don't anymore. I sure have done some dumb purging over the years.

http://www.discogs.com/George-Jones-White-Lightnin/release/2923913

Oh yeah, the rest of that Fullbright album wasn't quite up to the first 2/3 or so, but overall pretty strong, he stays in the room w fellow Okies Woody, Garth, Toby 9yeah, some spaces in that room). Been listening to Deluxe Edition of Toby's Hope On The Rocks. The title song opens with troubled people hurtling into the bar and the chorus, which isn't quite up to the pressure. It's not a total let-down, and wouldn't want something grand, which would miss the point--the singing bartender's professionally observant, but he's just a bartender, and he knows that too. Just is a little too anti-climatic, beyond the call of realisn's duty. The uptempo yuk-yuk stuff could work (laff to keep from crine), but could use a guitar solo here, bigger beats there--thinking oof Montgomery Gentry, Terri Clark respectively--but Toby might riposte, "And where are they now?" Okay, but anyway I do enjoy "Get Got"--"Ask forgiveness, not permission." The one about the little gal who's just his size is kinda growiing on me, since the friend he's talling to back off is a big guy, which implies that Toby is fine with being little too (of course he's huge, so the buddy must be a monstah, but so be it). Immediately got spooked goosebumps via "Haven't Seen The Last of You" and "Missed You Just Right." Bonus tracks: good remix of "Red Solo Cup", which was already one of his funniest; nice mix of "Beers Ago" and live "Whiskey Girl" has some good beats too. Other extras are more disposable.

Thanks for the suggested singles, guys, I'll check 'em out.

Here's Hope... and a bunch of his other albums (if you want to stream a whole album here, better to hit Play All than try to go through track by track; can always pause it):
http://us.myspace.com/tobykeith/music/albums/hope-on-the-rocks-deluxe-edition-18769271

Almost as uneven, but w higher highs: Tim McGraw's Emotional Traffic. Opens and closes with dispatches from our correspondent in the field, with reminders that the middle ground can be pretty costly to gain and then settle for--a place that has to "bleed out", in the opener, "Halo" ("Lay low under your halo"). But oh well, time to realize once again, "I'll always die by my owh hand"--title of closer, as the music man cues the guitar's xxth nervous breakdown, served on shaved ice of hairline fractures. In between, the cost of advancing mainstream country-as-pop-rock-nostalgia into a reasonably radio-aimed degree and angle of support for a mature overview of personal history as something still being made, for better, worse and breaking even--the cost, Ah say (aside from getting sued by your label, if that's why), is the risk of some expectations getting unreasonably raised. So, even though the overall effect is taut 'n' juicy, the songs aren't always up to the voice and instruments, or sometimes even vice versa. For inst, when "The One" calls on memories of early inspirations, and these are not sunsets and Eagles tapes, but "black leather, acid rock, cherry lipstick, 17", seems like the music should tilt (oh yeah, he says "tilt-a-whirl" too) and whirl reflections of some of these wild things, instead of just perk, perk, perkin' along, unless this is an ironic effect--old dude, kidding himself about the wild thing comeback! But if so, who cares. Except maybe the folks for whom the thought of being middle-aged is still a kick in itself. But at least the lyrics' references are nicer thoughts than those of "I Will Not Fall Down", the previous track, which is way too Jon Bon Jovi contributing to the soundtrack of a Tom Cruise movie about military romance. However, "Better Than I Used To Be" can be heard as a no-comment on rationalized reasonables: "Still got a few more dances with the Devil, but I'm cleanin' up my act a little. til I can stand the man in the mirror I see...I'm better than I used to be." Shore, just keep hitting those Merit Lights, Miller's Lites, rub that stuff into yore sore tooth stead 'o' shootin' up. And yet there's no nudge-nudge to the vocal delivery, the guy in the song and the mirror really is hopefull. More boldly cautious is the speculative survey taken by "The One Who Got Away." A long shot success, now everybody wants some, incl everybody in the once chilly hometown, Cub Scout leaders included. "Now you tuck your scars up under your dress, like an American girl", oh hell yes. No gilt-edged guilt, self-pity, lashing out, peacemaking, "closure", just flying round in the big room. But in between these coups, "Touchdown Jesus" cheerleads for instant salvation! McGraw's idea of reasonable radio-bait, gateway for the uncut insights of the album-only cuts? Same kinda balance Niemann goes for--but "Felt Good On My Lips" is like one of Niemann's best, even harder rocking trade-offs with the Caribbean lilt. And the "Die By My Own Hand" guy's horizons have been permanently broadened by Sex In The City--on and off0screen too, probably, and always worthy of capitalization and Indian food, courtesy of the perhaps Indian-Indian, not "Indian Warpath" Indian gal whose "Indian Daddy" who admittedly was right, or is it "probably right", when said,?you were too good for me." But don't worry, he'll just always die by his own hand, while still thinking about you, no doubt. Just keep on keeping on, and "lay low under your halo." This way to the Egress!

"Felt Good On My Lips" and "The One That Got Away."

....are great.

Yeah! Those are prob best. The track between them, "Touchdown Jesus", is prob worst, since "instant salvation" sure implies as easy/sure cure for alcoholism, even.

I had "Right Back At Ya" in my iPod for a few months. We haven't even mentioned the Ne-Yo duet (they reunite for a track on Ne-Yo's new one).

The Ne-Yo starts great, but gets kinda cloyingly grandiose, re the downside of the 80s/90s pop-rock nostalgia as creative resource in this set. Furthermore! "Touchdown Jesus"'s implication of miracle cure is reinforced by context of the lyrics, undermining justification for "reasonable" context of sure-shot shout-out's placement between more daring songs. It's so conservative it's irresponsible, enabling self-delusion: "I can always get saved and get cured, someday."

So really he either needs more of the daring, or more better middling radio-bait.

Prob the latter.

"en though the overall effect is taut 'n' juicy, the songs aren't always up to the voice and instruments, or sometimes even vice versa" is otm, dow. On the strength of the two songs I mentioned I was ready to love Emotional Traffic. It's a rich, warm, beautiful sounding album. But he gets spongy.

I dig about half of it so far, def for Singles lists anyway. Also like these guys I previewed; go see 'em:
Shovels & Rope
Shovels & Rope are Americana singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalists Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, a committed couple who never settle down, or settle for less than true love and cheap thrills. 2012’s O Be Joyful tracks risky ramblers teaming up, learning the mixing and measuring of pleasures. Thrills-wise, when Hearst later calls, “Come down here and make some sense of it all,” she’s affectionately addressing someone known as Wrecking Ball. Appropriately so: after all, Hearst sent “Hell’s Bells” prowling through True Blood’s third season, and S&R’s sly, Southern Gothic beauty travels many a moonlit mile.

notes so far on this:
Don Williams-And So It Goes: startlingly good sound on some tracks, even though mp3s, has to be this good with “Infinity”, for inst, and “I Just Come Here For The Music." Appeal of wistful thinking bobbing out on a tether to/from way things are on other tracks and in general, but prefer more a sense of struggle or something in songs and/or singing which responds to less desirable situations the way the best music here does. Still, seems good for late night or midday consolation breaks.

Really like the strings pivoting around his trademark toetapping groove, and gets to the "Tula Time" groove at times in contexts quite diff from that song, yet appropriately so.

"Tulsa Time", that is.

Todd Snider, Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables. Known for his words, and yep music is setting for same, but I like 'em best when his voice unobtrusively and perfectly sets them down, teeth matched to gums, or upper and lower plates. Sharp enough, sometimes rounded, down in the gums or the plates and the meat of the matter, the details move into the overall effect. Better when he gets through the teaching moments and the passing suits, up above, down to the ground, where he might be a doorman, a cabbie, an ambulance driver, night court reporter--observing charred and certified White Trash and even a power couple (in "Brenda", which might be about Bill and Hilary, the renters of the lock just checked, and does incl their usual pursuits:"He's livin it up while she's workin, and that seems right/After all, Mick Jagger was born on Monday mornin'/Keith Richard on Saturday night")--when he's not "In Between Jobs" and back and forth from fear to distraction (like the primeval tribe in the first track), while 'llowing, "Ah may've been born yesterday, but I was up all night." His people are funny that way, incl when stubbornly creeping at their own chosen speed up and down tunnels and barrels they should be long gone from, given the means of course. That's the sound, which also usually includes a bluesy fiddle over a heavy flexible mobile rhythm section, which always includes a heavy etc. electric guitar (suggesting a door taken down and set on the kind of wheels that should be on an office chair, a door with a screen and bars too, a Southern thing). Rec to those jonesing for the next Truckers album, at least (if Cooley and Hood, in that order, were to merge, vocally and writing-wise, with Cooley's guitar central to and more prominent in the mix). What am I saying? Forget that, we got this. Imperfect, but it sure builds. Now I'm getting confused about my Scene Top Ten, oh well.

"funny that way" incl sometimes in the head and/or hands (easy now podner)

I don't think we've talked much about Korean country music - there not being much Korean country music to talk about. Han Myeong Suk's "The Boy In The Yellow Shirt" (1961) uses a self-consciously old-timey string band arrangement, though with a more aggressive '60s rhythm. Melody and singing are - I don't know - old bluesy country mixed with (I really don't know) trad Korean? pop Hawaiian? G'Old Korea Vinyl, the site that streams it, tells us that the lyrics "were pretty badass at that time" - doesn't quote much less translate them, unfortunately. Site says that the song was a hit in Japan too and other parts of Asia, and according to Wikip there was a French cover version by Yvette Giraud, YouTube being no aid to further research. Is terrific enough in the original.

Searching "country music in korea" on Google nets me Bobbyville, a side project of Seoul indie performer Bobby Chung, who says he models it on the Bakersfield sound; and Kim Tae-hun and his band Sunday Losers, who veer towards rockabilly and blues and are from the Busan indie scene. There's also a trot song by Moon Hee Ok that's labeled by the uploader as Korean country music, but isn't unless you consider trot the Korean equivalent to American country, which it's not.

There's perhaps a Korean yodeling scene that seems to go for yodel per se rather than the country variety, but it includes someone identified by the uploader as "Korea Young&Beautiful Yodelgirl" who wants to learn to rope and ride, someone doing "La Desperadado," and a fellow billing himself as Peter The Korean Yodeler who made his way to the Le Mars Country Festival in Iowa a few years ago.

Thanks--wish Subliminal Sounds or Sublime Frequencies would do a comp along these lines. Always good to check hearty voyagers having a go at familiar-to-seemingly-played-out styles.

Hopefully Psy will go country, Gangnam Style.

can't believe I love the generic crap of the Clarkson-Gill duet as much as I do.

Is my favorite Clarkson single since "Never Again." And for being generic, it straddles genres nicely (country and AC).

reminds me how much I love Gill's harmonies

He was good in Emmylou's band too. I like him better in duets than solo, mostly.

A very provisional top twenty, or top twenty-one if I decide to classify Taylor Swift's "Red" as a single; if I do, it's number 1 - was one of a bunch of download-only singles Big Machine put out in the days before the album to drum up excitement. The label had previously done the same with "You Belong With Me" in 2008 and "Mean" in 2010, only to give each of them a more emphatic release in the year that followed, meaning I had to vote for them two consecutive years. So my inclination this time is to disqualify "Red" for insufficient singleness; I've got plenty others to list, anyway. I <i>am</i> counting Tim McGraw's "The One That Got Away," which was never a single except that it charted a bit (and of course by that criterion "Red" is undoubtedly a single, but, you know, list making is more an art than a science).

I'd rank "Blown Away" even higher if its words were in Korean.

[Taylor Swift "Red"]
1. Miranda Lambert "Fastest Girl In Town"
2. Charles Esten & Hayden Panettiere "Undermine"
3. Eden's Edge "Too Good To Be True"
4. Eric Church "Creepin'"
5. Lionel Richie ft. Jennifer Nettles "Hello"
6. Kix Brooks ft. Joe Walsh "New To This Town"
7. Luke Bryan "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye"
8. Carrie Underwood "Blown Away"
9. Kacey Musgraves "Merry Go Round"
10. Kelly Clarkson ft. Vince Gill "Don't Rush"
11. Thomas Rhett "Something To Do With My Hands"
12. Tim McGraw "The One That Got Away"
13. Easton Corbin "Lovin' You Is Fun"
14. Toby Keith "Beers Ago"
15. Willie Nelson "Just Breathe"
16. Gary Allan "Every Storm Runs Out Of Rain"
17. Greg Bates "Did It For The Girl"
18. Kristen Kelly "Ex Old Man"
19. Alan Jackson "So You Don't Have To Love Me Anymore"
20. Jason Aldean "Fly Over States"

oh yeah, lots of good 'uns on there, and ones I still need to check out. Also, the fine "Undermine" reminds me to check out the rest of Nashville-the-TV-series' soundtrack album.

Gary Allan's on there--does he have a new album? Anybody heard it?

Hey guys, sorry if this is a breach of decorum for this thread -- I'm not really up on mainstream country music or the opinions of ILX country thread regulars -- but can any of y'all recommend some new-ish traditionalist country music? No blues-rock riffs, no tom-tom fills, no redneck-pandering I-like-beer-and-jeans lyrics. I'd like to be able to listen to some new country music while simultaneously being able to pretend Brooks & Dunn never existed. Thanks in advance & no offense meant.

You might like current James Hand, Don Williams, Jamey Johnson's Hank Cochran tribute, all discussed upthread. Ditto those Merle and George Jones rarities collections, if you're into vinyl.

You might like the new Dwight Yoakam record a lot too. It's hardly straight country - there are a bunch of left-field-ish pop-rock moves on it, but they're all derived from '60s rock, not present-day rock, so give it a shot.

thanks guys!

Don, "Undermine" is written by Trent Dobbs and Kacey Musgraves and is going to be on Musgraves' debut album. Acoustic version here.

I was bored by Panettiere as a teenybopper, but she's ace on this song.

Gary Allan alb (Set You Free) not out till next year. My guess is that crüt would like Allan even if he doesn't specifically meet the criteria - like Yoakam he's got rock tendencies and dallied with L.A. punk in his distant past, but he's not part of the current we-are-country pander and insecurity (instead he's got his own insecurities), and he's a beautiful singer.

Don't think there was ever a time in the history of sound recording when country didn't have blues riffs, though.

Thanks for the link; also, yeah, Hayden and all the other TV series regulars' musical moments (always key plot points) have been pretty effective so far. Dunno if they're doing all their own singing, but good stuff. "Blues-rock" riffs are what crut's trying to avoid. Good to know about new Gary.

Following those xpost 10" records:

Omnivore Recordings will release definitive compilations by three giants of country and rockabilly music — Wanda Jackson, Merle Haggard and George Jones — on February 12, 2013. Having released musical appetizers in the form of ten-inch vinyl EPs on Record Store Day’s Back to Black Friday, Omnivore will serve the main course on compact disc in the form of Merle Haggard’s The Complete ’60s Capitol Singles, George Jones’ The Complete United Artists Solo Singles, and Wanda Jackson’s The Best of the Classic Capitol Singles. All three compilations feature A & B sides from the artists’ most influential years. The vinyl EPs were companion pieces, containing rarities not found on the CDs.

Wanda Jackson’s The Best of the Classic Capitol Singles contains 29 songs from her Capitol stint, which began in 1956. Each was taken from the original analog mono 45-rpm masters. Idolized by three generations of rockers, the Queen of Rockabilly made musical side-trips into country and gospel. For every A-side rave-up like “Mean Mean Man” or “Fujiyama Mama,” she offers B sides of equal intrigue: a weeper like “(Every Time They Play) Our Song” or the hillbilly tragedy of “No Wedding Bells for Joe.” She tore through songs that Elvis sang, and also drew from the jazz greats, R&B legends, doo-woppers and the Nashville hit machine. And she made each song her own.

In the ’50s, Capitol Records ad men scratched their heads, looking for a way to position Wanda Jackson’s sound, gamely settling on “jumping rock ’n’ waltz novelty.” Today, as she plays before indie-rock-aged crowds, supporting recent albums produced by Jack White and Justin Townes Earle, we know she’s no novelty. The Best of the Classic Capitol Singles, with extensive liner notes by Daniel Cooper, is her most definitive career retrospective to date.

Jackson’s Capitol label-mate Merle Haggard became one of country music’s greatest stars while recording his Bakersfield-honed songs at the tower at Hollywood & Vine from 1965 until 1976. The Omnivore compilation The Complete ’60s Capitol Singles features 28 A & B sides taken from the original analog mono 45-rpm masters. Neo-rockabilly artist and part-time journalist Deke Dickerson, a longtime Haggard fan, wrote the liner notes.

From “Swinging Doors” in 1965 until the end of the decade, Haggard had an impressive string of hits. “The Fugitive” (b/w “Someone Told My Story”), his first #1 single, was a composition by the esteemed songwriter Liz Anderson (Lynn Anderson’s mother). “I Threw Away the Rose” b/w “Loneliness Is Eating Me Alive” went to #2 on the charts in 1966. Other chart-toppers on this volume include “You Don’t Have Very Far To Go” b/w “Good Times” and “The Legend of Bonnie & Clyde” b/w “I Started Loving You Again.” “Working Man Blues,” written when Haggard “needed (his) own ‘Folsom Prison Blues,’” became a blue-collar anthem and shot to #1. The collection closes with “Okie From Muskogee,” the unlikely political pop crossover that sent mixed signals to younger listeners. Most have since delved deeper into Haggard’s five decades of music and consider him a hero. He continues to record today.

United Artists Records was eventually married to Capitol when it, along with parent label Liberty, was acquired by EMI in 1978. But when country star George Jones recorded for the label (following stints at Starday and Mercury) from 1962 til 1966, United Artists and Capitol were Hollywood crosstown rivals. It was at UA that Jones mastered all the flavors of country: lovelorn ballads, inspirational gospel, uptempo honky tonk, humorous novelty numbers, old-timey murder ballads — even holiday and Western songs. Most of his UA work was done in Nashville featuring the city’s A team: guitarist Grady Martin, pianist Hargus “Pig” Robbins, bassist Bob Moore, drummer Buddy Harman and Hal Rugg on pedal steel. The Jordanaires provided background vocals.

Omnivore’s 32-song George Jones compilation, The Complete United Artist Solo Singles, leads off with chart toppers “She Thinks I Still Care” b/w “Sometimes You Just Can’t Win,” produced by the legendary Cowboy Jack Clement. Both sides of the single pointed the way to the sound that would mark his signature style in decades to follow. The collection also includes Jones’ 1965 smash “The Race Is On.”

“Country music is like a religion to me,” he told Holly George-Warren, author of this compilation’s liner notes. Jones’ early ’60s work for United Artists will make a believer out of you.

About Omnivore Recordings:
Founded in 2010 by longtime, highly respected industry veterans Cheryl Pawelski, Greg Allen, Dutch Cramblitt, and Brad Rosenberger, Omnivore Recordings preserves the legacies and music created by historical, heritage, and catalog artists while also releasing previously unissued, newly found “lost” recordings and making them available for music-loving audiences to discover. Omnivore Recordings is distributed by EMI.

Looks promising, re going further in direction of Emotional Traffic:
TIM MCGRAW REVEALS MORE DETAILS ABOUT HIS UPCOMING ALBUM RELEASE TWO LANES OF FREEDOM – IN STORES FEB 5, 2013

Debut Big Machine Records Disc To Include Standard & An Accelerated Deluxe Version At Most Retail Accounts

Nashville, TN- Dec. 13, 2012- Country music icon Tim McGraw is revealing more details about his highly anticipated release TWO LANES OF FREEDOM. His first album for Big Machine Records will be released on Feb. 5, 2013 and is set to prove once again that on stage and on record, he remains dedicated to delivering music that is innovative, heartfelt and authentic.

"I feel like I've progressed in my work, and I've always strived to get better," says McGraw. "On my last album, I was discovering some new sounds and new things that I wanted to do, scratching the surface of the direction I wanted to head. This album was a way to reach a little further back, to all that I'd done throughout my career, and bring both sides together—it's a combination of that discovery, along with some rediscovery."

On TWO LANES OF FREEDOM, the sense of nostalgia comes through on the hard-driving current single "One of Those Nights." The reverie of that song, though, is countered by the humor and joy of "Southern Girl" or the feel-good hangover of "Mexicoma." McGraw maintains that it was the album's title track that really established the tone for the entire project.

"When we cut 'Two Lanes of Freedom,' there was such a freshness to it," he says. "The track has this sort of Gaelic drive to it and really sets a palette for the whole record because it's so visual—it has that summery, hazy image and I think that made the whole record open up for me."

McGraw reaches some especially emotional depth in his performances on such songs as "Number 37405," the lament of a singer-turned-convict. Most powerful of all might be "Book of John," a wistful account of a family going through the journal left behind by its late patriarch. The album closes with "Highway Don't Care," a breezy yet complex track that features Taylor Swift (the song is featured as number 13 on the album as a nod to her) and Keith Urban.

TWO LANES OF FREEDOM TRACK LIST
1. Two Lanes of Freedom
(Jaren Johnston/Jenn Schott)

2. One Of Those Nights
(Luke Laird/Rodney Clawson/Chris Tompkins)

3. Friend Of A Friend
(Mark Irwin/Josh Kear/Andrew Dorff)

4. Southern Girl
(Jaren Johnston/Lee Miller/Rodney Clawson)

5. Truck Yeah
(Chris Janson/Danny Myrick/Preston Brust/Chris Lucas)

6. Nashville Without You
(Kyle Jacobs/Joe Leathers/Ruston Kelly)

7. Book of John
(Jon Nite/Greg Becker)

8. Mexicoma
(James Slater/Brad Warren/Brett Warren)

9. Number 37405
(Tom Douglas/Troy Jones)
10. It’s Your World
(Scott Stepakoff/Josh Osborne/Shane McAnally)
13. Highway Don’t Care (featuring Taylor Swift and Keith Urban)
(Mark Irwin/Josh Kear/Brad Warren/Brett Warren)

ACCELERATED DELUXE VERSION INCLUDES
Annie I Owe You A Dance
(James Slater/ Tom Douglas)

Tinted Windows
(Mark Irwin, Josh Kear, Andrew Dorff)

Let Me Love It Out Of You
(Rachel Thibodeau, Jason Sever, David Tolliver)

Truck Yeah LIVE

In his record-shattering career, McGraw has sold over 40 million albums and dominated the charts with 32 No. one singles. Since the release of his debut album in 1993, he has won three GRAMMY’s, 14 ACM Awards, 12 CMA Awards, and 10 AMA’s, while simultaneously maintaining a parallel career as a successful actor in such films as The Blind Side, Country Strong, and Friday Night Lights—as well as hosting Saturday Night Live, a rare honor for a singer in any genre. Nielsen-BDS recently certified McGraw as the most-played Country artist of the past 20 years (1992-2012) with more than 10 million spins detected and Mediabase recognized him as the most-played Country artist in the history of their tracking service.

For more updates and the latest information, visit www.timmcgraw.com or follow @thetimmcgraw on twitter.

Sir Charles Jones "Country Boy" is not a country song per se, but rural Southern soul that I think y'all would like. I think you can find it on Youtube and maybe Spotify

Don't think there was ever a time in the history of sound recording when country didn't have blues riffs, though.

Yeah this is true; I guess I phrased my request wrong -- I'm just trying to avoid riff-based rock that masquerades as country, stuff with a heavy rhythm section. I do dig this Dwight Yoakam record even though a lot of it hinges on that sort of thing, but I've always had a soft spot for Dwight. "A Heart Like Mine" and "Missing Heart" are probably the closest to what I'm looking for.

"Heart Like Mine" definitely rocks out but it's mixed tastefully.

but, crüt, when hasn't country used riffs and heavy rhythm sections?

man, I'm just trying to find country music that doesn't sound like Tom Petty or "Rock My World Little Country Girl." I think there is plenty of country music out there that fits into this category.

i generally only lurk on this thread but hey i did a list of best and worst country singles of the year: http://narrowcast.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-20-best-country-radio-hits-of-2012.html

I mean I love a lot of country-rock and Texas boogie kinda stuff! I just need an antidote for Luke Bryan.

it's all good – my bad

<3

free of its parent album, the Alan Jackson song sounds terrific.

doesn't it, though?

ha – we really disagree over "5-1-5-0."

Jackson's like that (I've had "Everything I Own" in my iPod since July and when it comes on shuffle I don't dare skip it). Drive and Like Red On a Rose are the only two studios that don't bore me.

*Everything I LOVE

Just filed my Nashville Scene ballot a couple hours ago. Three of somedude's 20 favorite country singles of the year made my singles ballot; none of his least favorite singles did, though a couple were definitely in the running, and I voted for the EP containing another one (which I actually like a lot.) Never heard Kristen Kelly's "Ex Old Man" until this morning (finally listened to it since Frank had recommended it above); didn't make my ballot, but I the OMC "How Bizarre" thing jumped out at me right away, a couple hours before I saw somedude mention it.

I'm kind of ambivalent about "5-1-5-0." Sort of like it okay, but it sort of it annoys me (just like the album it's on, come to think of it.)

i'm not gonna defend my dislike of "5-1-5-0" too strongly, it was just on the radio all the time and i never wanted to hear it

otoh Kenny Chesney can fuck right off

seriously

I'm wondering if he's got genuine talent: the guy has made vanilla blandness offensive.

Then again, he's also made a few pretty great albums (though not this year).

Wikip takes me to an article in the New Zealand Herald on whether "Ex Old Man" had permission to use the riff from "How Bizarre." Answer: the person who wrote the article doesn't know whether there was permission or not.

(The world's full of similar and lifted riffs, and it's not like this is gross plagiarism or "Ex Old Man" is built around the riff.)

"The world's full of similar... riffs"

--I mean riffs that are similar to each other, not that the world is full of riff's similar to "How Bizarre."

jeez that jackson tune is great, missed it