Rolling Country 2015

Me on all counts (though I Nash Scened rather than P&J'd In Time), but I also think the new one is pretty good after all (didn't know I was ready for a Latin ska revival, or any kind of one)

In Time seemed like a creative breakthrough, which is not what I expect from a reunion (?) album, to say the least.

No longer being at risk of blowing up on country radio somehow freed them up, helped them expand their horizons. That's rare, I think -- at least rare as far as resulting in really good records -- but it reminds me of what happened with Kentucky Headhunters a few years back. In both cases, to my ears at least, their mature post-hit-era albums have way more going on than the (not bad) albums from when they were actually scoring hits.

Oh yeah, and come to think of it, they've got a previously unreleased album with Chuck Berry's pianist Johnnie Johnson coming out 6/2. Some tracks are linked here, with backstory:
http://kentuckyheadhunters.net/

I liked the last Yoakam album a lot better than this one (the song co-written with Kid Rock was one of the best album openers by anybody that year), but this one is definitely solid, and if it didn't mean going to some kind of gigantic fucking festival on Randall's Island I'd totally go see him on tour, especially since I didn't see him with Eric Church.

Yeah not quite up there w the last, but gets me going after first 2-3 tracks.

Shelby Lynne, I Can't Imagine: cosmic country soul in the pocket, sometimes with rock and/or folk, from Palm Springs to the Deep South and back, constantly intersecting in light and dark, heat and cold---but never loitering in extremes. "Paper Van Gogh" celebrates "my fake masterpiece on the wall," sounds like; she knows she's a non-genius on the trail, but faithfully, and art "soothes (suits?) my origami heart." "Front Porch Back Porch" soon finds a pod of voices opening amidst memories she knows she shouldn't poke into any more, not today, and as she keeps going around the parts of her house, another voice helpfully names it "Window, door"), and will be there when she comes around again, readying for take-off. Before doing so, she's "a son of a son of a gun" in the sun for a while, knowing reviewers will insert obligatory mention of her and Alison Moorer's daddy shooting mama when they were kids, even if that isn't what she's kind of alluding to---later there's a mention of "my dark Dixie closet," but that's more about "three dollar bills" among the hills, I think---in some other songs, other words still swimming just as confidently haven't reached me yet, but the music took hold right away, and she knows when to shut up, unlike so many.

http://img2.ymlp294.net/utre_KingstonSpringSuiteHiCover1_1.jpg

With a sprawling backstory that includes a veritable pantheon of Nashville's biggest names, The Kingston Springs Suite may be the greatest undiscovered treasure of the outlaw country era. Recorded in 1972 with the help of Johnny Cash, Shel Silverstein, Kris Kristofferson and "Cowboy" Jack Clement, the album has been hidden in the vaults until now. A prophetic, loose and gritty Polaroid snapshot into the lives of a small town of an America gone by, The Kingston Springs Suite has finally now been released through the Delmore Recording Society.

The Kingston Springs Suite first premiered via an exclusive album stream at The A.V. Club. The track "Bessie That's A Lie" was the first song to be shared from the album, and first premiered with The Boot. Aquarium Drunkard notes, "Confederate ghosts and oak trees loom over the record, about people and a town in transition, grappling with the heritage of their past and the uncertainty of their future."

Produced by the one and only Shel Silverstein – with help from Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Cowboy Jack Clement – The Kingston Springs Suite paints a crystal clear picture of the town’s life and its lore, of residents like blacksmith Vernon Newsom (“Mr. Soul”) and “Mr. Sam” The Railroad Man. Songs like “Melva’s Wine” and “Five Hundred Houses” are remarkably rich helpings of evanescent Americana, Matthews and Casey trading rough but resonant vocals over an outlaw symphony of front porch folk and traditional country, honky tonk balladry laced with the mellow fug of early 70’s rock. Finely etched and naturalistic, The Kingston Spring Suite captures the final breath of Smalltown USA before suburban sprawl commenced its proliferation over the land.

Despite its undeniable artistry and celebrity pedigree, Matthews’ lifelong knack for self-sabotage saw his defining work disappear into country music history. The Kingston Springs Suite became a cautionary Nashville tale, a secret totem heard of by few and actually heard by even fewer. Matthews died November 22, 2003, his obituary a reminder of how fleeting success in Music City can be. More than four decades later Delmore Recording Society - known for classic archival releases from Karen Dalton, Gary Stewart and Peter Walker, and home to the indescribable chanteuse Diana Darby - has made Vince Matthews & Jim Casey’s The Kingston Springs Suite available for the first time, offering a chance for the world to finally hear a milestone piece of American music applauded by Johnny Cash as “a laid-out slice of life as lived and learned by a laid-back country picker who knows and loves and understands the people like you’ll find at Kingston Springs.”

veddy interrrestink

That Stapleton record is so generic.

New John Moreland has some exceptional writing, and his singing is better than on his earlier albums. Have seen several writers who have been quick to anoint him as the next Sturgill Simpson, which does no one any favors.

― jon_oh, Monday, 4 May 2015 20:31 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

Agreed on all counts. A better reference point is Ryan Bingham, whose new record is a bit of a mess.

Anyone else have any trouble with Forks' Rolling Country playlist? I can't seem to find it in his profile on my phone (I see all the other ones though), and the link on my desktop browser takes me to a screen where I can see the songs but not subscribe.

here it is again?
http://open.spotify.com/user/forksclovetofu/playlist/0UovNZH0gkGMeUyADHp9PU

huh, you know what: i think they've changed up game where you have to have the most up-to-date version to share playlists? is that the case?

Stapleton just might be high generic. If so, well, I don't get into many male mainstream arena country these days; I'll take it.

Still digging Jessi Colter on the expanded 1996 The Outlaws and her own 2006 Out of the Ashes. Hoping for more, but meanwhile:

Jessi Colter ‏@Jessi_Colter May 6

For #WaylonWednesday : here's @OfficialWaylon , @Jessi_Colter , and the little nugget @ShooterJennings:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CEV26Y4WIAA5p_A.jpg

*much* male etc

expanded 1996 *reissue* of The Outlaws, that is (20th Anniversary Edition---maybe there will be an even more expansive 40th---next year!)

RC 2015 threadfather Edd just sent a link on discussion with xpost Kingston Springs Suite denizens, in connection with the ongoing exhibit "Dylan, Cash, and The Nashville Cats: A New Music City":
http://countrymusichalloffame.org/calendar/event/panel-kingston-springs-suite-the-great-train-wreck-of-1973#.VWT-gc9Viko

Figured it might be worth mentioning that the new digital-only album from Laura Bell Bundy is now available for pre-order. I didn't care for the first two singles from it ("Two Step" w Colt Ford and "Kentucky Dirty"), but I still love both halves of her <i>Achin' & Shakin'</i> from a few years back.

I prefer both of Stapelton's albums with The Steeldrivers to his new solo album, which his performances make seem maybe a bit better than it would otherwise. His voice keeps me engaged throughout, but I can see why others might find it boring. It's certainly within that contemporary Americana corner that I do find ungodly dull most of the time.

Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, Django and Jimmie: opening title song's no big deal, except for the way it turns out to be an example of the variety of the nfluences and results, rounded up from here and there, in Willie and Merle's own histories, still in the making, or at least here again for the taking. It's a stash of snapshots, postcards, business cards, phone cards, other kinds of playing cards, rolling papers, and a token, a wooden nickel or two or maybe three (a few tracks I don't care about). Philosophical sharing for sure, but not long-winded or too sweet: "The Only Man Wilder Than Me" has "a mind indifferent and free," with many passing points of interest in the atmosphere.
http://www.npr.org/2015/05/24/408540802/first-listen-willie-nelson-merle-haggard-django-and-jimmie

Kentucky Headhunters with Johnnie Johnson, Meet Me In Bluesland: The flow to and around the beat and the point of the song (appeal of Willie and Merle's album also), the way Chuck Berry and pianist Johnnie Johnson did it, also brings flex and focus to the big-foot boogie of the Headhunters. This second KH x JJ set is the result of a long-ago all-nighter, def. on the fly ("we were writing verses during the solos"), that sounds like a liquid lunch at a place in the country, if not entirely of it, genre-wise. Still, if country is white people's blues, as was long ago posited, then white people's blues can be country--whoops, Johnson's not white, nevermind. But this sure sounds like a jukebox of mostly new, vintage-customized sides at places in my neck of the highway-side woods (helps that the The KH lead singer has an unabashed Kentucky accent, though not nasal; his delivery is clear and full, sometimes like Arkansas' Levon Helm).
True, the sort of place I'm thinking about is mostly (though not entirely) for fortysomethings-and ups, couples who look like Roseanne and Dan, proud to "Go stumblin', 'cause we can't dance/You can tell 'em I'm blind, they'll think you're bein' kind/We ain't lost on the floor, we're just kinda hard to find." Embarrassing their kids, in the universal family tradition.
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/05/25/kentucky-headhunters-unearth-johnnie-johnson-collaboration-with-meet-me-in-bluesland-exclusive/

The link is to stream of the album as well as backstory.

I'm curious about: Cam, “Welcome to Cam Country” (she wrote songs for Maggie Rose and Miley C) plus Whitey Morgan and the '78s Sonic Ranch (outlaw influenced country)

also, via factcheckingcuz:
http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/05/27/sexist-tomato-barb-launches-food-fight-music-row/28036657/

― like a giraffe of nah (forksclovetofu

posted on Kacey Musgraves thread but of interest here. Article re programming songs by women on country radio

https://www.countryaircheck.com/WomenInCountry.pdf

More on the subject

That there xpost Kingston Springs Suite is songs about life in a small town, mostly gently fading away---'til "500 Hundred Homes" pop up in a bubble or something (spoiler, but that doesn't change the arc much, coming near the end) Other friction: "Mr. Soul" is an old African-American disturbed by racial conflicts rising again, outside of town (so far, this time) Self-awareness, re isolation and fading away, are pretty common here. The fade is not so gently for the "Franklin Lady, " whose husband, Col. Franklin, is drinking and losing brain cells all the while. Look awaay," indeed.
Interesting mix of signals in "Bessie That's A Lie". a Tom T. Hall-type reminder that big city attitude and opinonating--all 2 cents worth---can be found in small towns too.
Chills from the build and background voices of "Melva's Wine" (the voices show up later during a fishing trip, pre-figuring the sirens of O Brother Where Art Thou?, but they're "church camp chicks," one fisherman advises the other).
Some of this will have to grow on me, but it's worth checking out.

This week's American Routes, Hr. 1: Rodney Crowell, on the funky canal bar Houston of his memoir, Chinaberry Sidewalks, also lots of good tracks, solo and w Emmylou, also Rosanne, his early faves like Moon Mullican, Clifton Chenier, Juke Boy Bonner. Right now: Sammi Smith's after-midnight call, "Help Me Make It Through The Night"---was that the first hit version? (Hr. 2: a whole lotta Dr. John; should be good also) Stream (dl if you've got FlashGot, for inst.)
http://bit.ly/1JzsPKD

Meanwhile in the country chart, who says bro-country only borrows from '80s hair metal,

country music borrowing from r'n'b

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/6582974/country-music-plumbs-the-history-of-soul-in-search-of-a-new-direction

See the first comment

I'm glad the article took pains to explain that this is nothing new.

The Billy Currington album is better than expected.

i'm glad the article took pains to explain that country doesn't operate in a vacuum.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/10/country-musics-next-star-is-a-young-black-woman-thats-not-as-crazy-as-it-sounds/?postshare=821433944963231

Mickey Guyton article written by professor Charles Hughes (who has spoken at EMP events)

That's a good 'un, thanks.yAlso: Valerie June and Ruthie Foster have their country tendencies, Anthony Hamilton too (for instance, the version of "Lay Lady Lay" he recorded with Buddy Guy and cosmic steel guitar virtuoso Robert Randolph) ditto Mavis Staples, especially when I saw her with steel players The Campbell Brothers. Al Green credibly covered "Together Again" and "For The Good Times," Aretha's "With Pen In Hand" is the best version I've heard.
You could rove all through ancient radio hits like "Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp," written by Dallas Frazier and recorded by Merle Haggard, although I think the bigger hit was the record cut by OC Smith, he of "Little Green Apples" fame, way after Ray Charles' Modern Sounds In Country and Western, and so on!

And I still love the Delta blues-to-country crossover (roping in Jimmie Rodgers fans, was the idea) of The Mississippi Sheiks, via Stop + Listen, a Yazoo Records CD later replaced by Greatest Hits, which I haven't heard. .

Something related I wrote for Rhapsody four years ago (which seems since to have disappeared from their website):

The past few years have been better than average where African-Americans scoring in country music are concerned. First there was Cowboy Troy, the six-foot hick-hop rapper who put out a couple albums after first showing up as a sideshow under Big & Rich’s bigtop in the mid ‘00s, and Rissi Palmer, whose 2007 hit “Country Girl” was the first country-charting single by a black woman in two decades. A year later, ex-Blowfisher Darius Rucker put out his first country album, which exploded; he’s now had four number-one singles so far, making him easily country’s most commercially successful black artist since ex-Negro League baseball player Charley Pride’s incomparable career starting falling off in the early ‘80s. Add in Ray Charles – who played in a hillbilly band known as the Florida Playboys before he was a star, and whose 1962 Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music topped Billboard’s album chart for 14 weeks – and that’s probably the extent of what most music fans knows about black people in country. But actually, the story goes back longer than the genre itself. And all along, from both sides of the aisle, country and black American music (blues, jazz, gospel, soul) have never stopped interbreeding.
Documented evidence of slaves in the American South playing fiddles – a European instrument, used for the reels and jigs from which hillbilly square dances evolved – date back at least to the late 17th Century; by the 18th, classified ads trying to track down fiddle-playing runaway slaves frequently showed up in local papers, and by 19th, there was no more popular folk instrument among either white or black Americans. After the Civil War, and especially as the 20th Century dawned and the blues were born, string bands – black, white, occasionally integrated – performed traveling shows that mixed fiddle breakdowns with ragtime, early blues, comedy shtick, and novelty hokum. And really, well into the depression years, black bands like the Mississippi Sheiks and white bands like the Allen Brothers sounded more alike than different. “Country” was a marketing term, and most of the genre’s pioneers – from Jimmie Rodgers, Uncle Dave Macon, and Charlie Poole, up to and including Hank Williams -- were basically white blues singers (or, in the case of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, jazz musicans.) So it probably shouldn’t be too shocking that one of the earliest stars of the Grand Ole Opry – in 1928, no other country musician appeared on the stage anywhere near as often – was a black harmonica honker named Deford Bailey.
Meanwhile, black people in the mid-century South grew up listening to country music – because in some backwaters that’s all their radio could pick up, or maybe their fiddle-playing dad loved Bob Wills, or their church-going mom didn’t think country was too vulgar, or Hank Williams was just what the white landowner whose fields they share-cropped blasted out of his truck. And when they went to the Saturday matinée, cowboys like Gene Autry (himself a former white blues singer) and Roy Rogers were up on the screen. So when some black kids grew up, they decided to become country singers: Not just Charley Pride (for years the biggest star on RCA’s country roster), but guys like Big Al Downing, O.B. McClinton, and Stoney Edwards, all of whom had at least some minor success on the country chart.
Others worked a grey region, somewhere bridging country, soul, and middle-class adult pop: Brook Benton, O.C. Smith, Dobie Gray, Bobby Hebb, Joe Simon, often Ray Charles himself. Others – Esther Phillips, Etta James, Joe Tex, Bobby Blue Bland, Bobby Womack, Tina Turner, even the Supremes – made at least one country album. Still others were encouraged to record versions of songs that had already been country hits: labels intertwined with publishing houses might double their money that way. In the end, there’s a good chance that most r&b artists from the ‘50s to ‘70s dabbled in country, in some form or other – from the Staple Singers to the Pointer Sisters, from Clarence Frogman Henry to Clarence Gatemouth Brown to Candi Staton, and way beyond. James Brown even appeared at the Opry, opening with three c&w numbers before commencing to get his funk on. Arkansas-born Al Green, in the course of his career, covered songs by Kris Kristofferson, Ra y Price, Willie Nelson, and Hank Williams.
As disco, hip-hop, and the teen-aimed hybrids those styles spawned increasingly pushed soul’s more down-home grown-folks side to r&b’s margins, black country moves seemed to fade somewhat. But even in the early ‘80s, frequent Kenny Rogers collaborator Lionel Richie crossed to country stations with “Stuck On You”; truth is, country had always been part of his sound – listen to the Commodores’ small-town-boy “Sail On,” if you’re skeptical. Come the early ‘90s, a moonlighting black Louisiana cardiologist named Cleve Francis landed four hits in the lower rungs of the country chart; appropriately, given his day job, his biggest was titled “You Do My Heart Good.” Aaron Neville (who, like New Orleans predecessors Fats Domino and Professor Longhair, always acknowledged the genre as an influence), charted country twice in the ‘90s as well. And out on the outskirts, it’s not hard to hear traces of country in the music of black artists from rap’s David Banner to jazz’s James “Blood” Ulmer to garage rock cult heroes like Andre Williams and Barrence Whitfield. So Darius Rucker, it turns out, is only the latest in a very long line. In a lot of ways, country is just soul music, or the blues, under another name.

Bravo! Also, this collection rounds up a bunch of those artists, among others:

http://www.discogs.com/Various-From-Where-I-Stand-The-Black-Experience-In-Country-Music/release/6241650

I think xhuxk's written (at least on previous Rolling Countrys, maybe elsewhere) about Dirty Laundry
http://lightintheattic.net/releases/113-dirty-laundry-the-soul-of-black-country and More Dirty Laundry http://lightintheattic.net/releases/109-more-dirty-laundry-the-soul-of-black-country Audio and more info on those pages.

new ashley monroe; i like it on first listen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HO86LNKx7c

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/arts/music/kacey-musgraves-and-other-tomatoes-give-country-its-bite.html?partner=socialflow&smid=tw-nytimes

Caramanica weighs in

"But in truth he made the lazy mistake of believing his data was pure rather than seeing it as a representation of how entrenched sexism is endlessly reproducible if the petri dish never changes."

i like this sentence

Agree. He also has me curious about Kelsea Ballerini. And he is critical of the new Musgraves

He has good reason to be.

This is a quick, mid-year reminder that all available tracks mentioned on this thread (and a handful of album selections from each listed) are being posted as updated to the thread-specific Spotify playlist. I just did a top-to-bottom sweep prior to posting this message and have updated as of today with everything that's been added on Spotify since it was first mentioned.

Slow going this season... not much to discuss or is everybody on artist specific threads? In any case, this is 6+ hours of country but a bucket full of it is 2014 hangover.

ILX's Rolling Country 2015 Thread Spotify Playlist

Yeah, I need to catch up, and JP's piece will help, thanks. But one question, re:
Ms. Lambert, once a reliable firebrand, has eased into her role as half of country’s first couple (with Blake Shelton). Is he writing from, say, 2030, and/or an alternate universe? He later gestures in the general direction of her "brio," but that don't nearly cover Platinum, for instance, or her Pistol Annies writing.

Really don't think country has an acknowledged "first couple" now, unless it's Rayna and Deacon.

dunno, miranda and blake seem as power couple as a power couple can be

OK, maybe I didn't get the memo, but either way, she actually seems more of a "firebrand," for moving beyond the pyro ex-girl friend shtick, and getting more into following/cultivating uncomfortable thoughts on a variety of related issues.

schtick, that is; sorry.

I like this Sam Hunt song:

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/samhunt/houseparty.html

Here's a few verses of it--

We'll have a house party, we don't need nobody
Turn your TV off, break that boom-box out
We'll wake up all the neighbors til the whole block hates us
And the cops show up and try to shut us down

If you're gonna be a homebody
We're gonna have a house party
If you wanna be a homebody
We're gonna have a house party

I've had neighbors like that. Fun for them, maybe, 'til the cops showed up. Then it wasn't pretty, or less noisy, for quite a while. On a number of occasions. What do you like about that song? The lyrics I guess, since you post a link to them rather than YouTube.

Speaking of Sam Hunt lyrics, he comes off like something of a campus creep on Montevallo, named for a small town Alabama liberal arts college. Good music program, but doesn't sound like his main interest.

It's worth hearing at least once, though---for forensic purposes, if nothing else---and actually made several Top Tens.

Its catchy