Rolling Country 2015

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

I've flipped on "Take Your Time." I thought it was lame loverboy drool when I wanted Loverboy drool. now when it comes on the radio I don't change it, especially when preceded or followed by Dierks Bentley 's "Say You Do."

Country Music Critics poll editor Geoff Himes likes Sam Hunt:

Hunt wrote most of the songs with his producers, Zach Crowell and Shane McAnally, the latter famous for helping Kacey Musgraves get smart songwriting on country radio. The music uses the same mix of pop, rock, country and hip-hop elements that all the big country stars use these days, but Hunt never lets them fall into a predictable pattern. He’s constantly moving from quiet to loud, from spoken recitation to smooth crooning, from minimalist synths to maximalist guitars. And if the Country Music Association had an award for best pun — and it should — Hunt would have to win it for the line about a girl using him to make someone else jealous: “You don’t want me; you just want your ex to see.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/going-out-guide/wp/2015/02/12/this-weeks-best-concerts-sam-hunt-and-emmy-the-great/

A double header of Music City Roots shows this week: Tues. is mostly pickers, although Hot Club of Nashville incl. vocal stylist Anne Sellick. the regular Wed. set is headlined by Pam Tillis, and also features Caroline Spence (heard intriguing tracks from new album, must check whole thing). Both shows start 7 Central, go on for a couple hours or so. Livestream or scroll to bottom of this page for the link to Nashville's Hippie Radio. More show details here:
http://musiccityroots.com/blog/lets-play-two-a-roots-double-header/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43vfvIwK9iE

Alfred and other Jukeboxers discuss discuss Ashley Monroe's "The Blade":
http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=17202

watching xpost livestream of Music City Roots, Caroline Spence's set: dandy lil band,and the female upright bassist's occasional vocal harmony brings sweet relief. Seems like the songs *might* be good, but Spence's voice keeps dropping the well-known ball. Hope it's fixed in the mix (will still check album).
Pam Tillis interview starting now! Her set will be later though, judging by the way MCR usually does thangs.

Sad that usually astute interviewer confused It's All Relative(Pam sings Mel) with PT's sufficiently cosmic Rhinestoned.

Pam Tillis set now, swinging the honky tonk blues, then something spooky under the Cali sun, with a bit of "Take Five" in its wake (mostly new songs tonight). Will be archived, if you can't be arsed to livestream.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122266/its-not-easy-being-guy-country-song-either

Political mag writer sneers at bro-country male values

Jason Isbell, Something More Than Free: doesn't travel with the more sustained undertone of excitement found in Southeastern---recorded sober, apparently!---but "Are you takin' the grown-up dose?" is still the question, or one of 'em, and it's often remarkable what can sprout from dry, quiet starting over, especially when the past gets out of bed and comes cruising through one's present-day/night of carefully worked out details, brushing them just a hair or three from conventional alignment. Or not, in which case it's conspicuous by etc., but always the singer's cue.
"Children of Children" and "24 Frames" will be the relatively big (npr) radio cuts, if any are, but most tunes as well as words tend to take fetching turns.
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/08/420588068/first-listen-jason-isbell-something-more-than-free

Not to say this 'un doesn't *also* sound like it was written and recorded sober---it does, and it also sounds like that's what it's about: dealing with the unfiltered, or differently filtered---but Southeastern seemed like more of an adventure.

Alan Jackson, Angels and Alcohol: Starts with less than half-hearted best wishes/empathy for one leaving the nest---"verybody's gotta live a little, before they die," and he can barely get the words out---then wheels around into a hearty chorus of reassurance, 'bout how you can always come home to big ol' generic slabs of bacon and gravy or whutever.
However, the overall theme of this set, convincingly expressed (tastefully, incl. with tasty details) is a healthy hats-off-and-on to the Uncertainty Principle and our need for same. Incl. in the title track, when it comes to "sooner or later you got to face what's hidin' in your mind", and the randy honky tonk encounters of "You Never Know," fender bender cum two daiquiri hookups and all. He and hitchhiking Jack Kerouac salute each other (along the alternative-lifestyles interstate of dreams, but still). They aren't too far apart in some ways: stay-at-home AJ finally gets a bellyful of his wife with the flattening iron and the curlers and that little dog and "that damn perfume"--she's sick of his shit too, so good riddance, he'll just keep partying with "Jim and Jack and Hank"--which rhymes with "So take your black Mercedes, full of stuff for ladies, to me you're just a total blank"---damn, that's pretty hardcore, especially for Mr. Mellow Melancholy Blond Mustache. Spoiler: he doesn't cave! Thought surely he would, what with the cartoon-country-Stones tone of the thing, and he does eventually have misgivings, by the end is invoking more and more of his male musical inspirations, "cleanin' out my closet."
And this right after a pensive sensitive cocktail reverie, but he's not just flipping scripts, because he's still competing with, while trying to imagine, "The One You're Waiting On": must be an awesome guy, considering this awesome woman, who keeps drinking and waving guys away, checking her phone...wtf, darlin...
He also celebrates "Flaws": "Everybody's got 'em/The ones you came with and you caused/Scars and tattoos gone rotten...all the little things that make her unique...the pieces of the puzzle that is me."
I'm hardly an Alan Jackson expert, but, while this set doesn't have any tracks with the downer power of "Monday Morning Church" or "The Little Man," it sort of doesn't need them: they've been done, and this hasn't, not by him, not this consistently (as far as I know).
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/08/420832163/first-listen-alan-jackson-angels-and-alcohol
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/08/420832163/first-listen-alan-jackson-angels-and-alcohol

Listened to this a half-dozen times today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXRrySTujn8#t=128

that's not really country is it?

"Jim and Jack and Hank" sounds like Jackson's attempt to get the Dierks Bentley dough, but he and his guitarists sound convincing.

xpost - probably more for the singer/songwriter thread

I've only heard the title track from Angels and Alcohol but I really like it.

The first track is a stunner.

This Zane Campbell album from February is becoming one of my favorites of the year. Reminds me of Billy Joe Shaver or maybe Fred Eaglesmith.

https://open.spotify.com/album/7dKo63nBxey77KzkhktAD4

http://www.usatoday.com/story/experience/weekend/lifestyle/2015/07/20/blake-shelton-miranda-lambert-divorcing/30418429/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R2qMLeKFwg

Indeed. Lots of discontent on that album.

A recent discussion of The Blade, from the Like A Rose Poll thread (Alfred's Spin review, linked toward the end, is very postive, except for pickin' on those two tracks)

"From Time to Time" and "Bombshell" are the duds imo.

no no NO these are not duds!

― lex pretend, Thursday, July 16, 2015 1:19 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes yes yes!

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, July 16, 2015 1:22 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They are so not duds---"Bombshell" is where she shifts from an initial impression of a tendency to stasis---where you get it all, and maybe get hooked, in the first verse and chorus, then stick around, to increasingly, if vaguely, diminishing returns, as the mind starts to wander---shifts to a more dynamic, moody yet sufficiently gravitational speculation: drop it on him now? How, "It's never a good time for a bombshell," but she's still checking her options...haven't heard a song about this situation, so in that respect, as well as the actual sound, I make a mental note for my future mix, The Great Lost Pistol Annies Album.
"From Time To Time" (like several on here)might be another one for the same destination, although in this case, the multiple Monroes have more of a post-Beatles/Fleetwood Mac/Dixie Chickc/Courtyard Hounds/multiple solo Maines/Mona Lisa: real friendly and slightly exotic (which is a friendly warning not to take friendliness for granted).
Despite her turning the pages in the stylebook--without trying to hide it---this set is more emotionally and/or sensually involving than Like A Rose.
Her debut, Satisfied, is also engaging---it's uneven, but the best tracks, written when she was a teen and maybe even a tween, are adolescent adventures in the best sense.

― dow, Thursday, July 16, 2015 2:31 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Stasis creeps back in on "If The Devil Don't Want Me," maybe some of the other second-half tracks too, but they (and the better ones nearby) are still strong enough to keep me hangin' around, if not on.

― dow, Thursday, July 16, 2015 2:33 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"bombshell" is a great concept executed really well, dow nails it. and it fits in really well with the overarching themes.

"from time to time" i find really powerful, as much for what's not in the song (that i've heard yet) as what's in it...there are secrets and darknesses beneath its tenderness. and as brad says it's just a straight-up gorgeous melody.

Despite her turning the pages in the stylebook--without trying to hide it---this set is more emotionally and/or sensually involving than Like A Rose.

agree with this too; it builds on like a rose so well, takes its strengths and fleshes them out, pushes them in multiple unexpected directions

― lex pretend, Thursday, July 16, 2015 2:38 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And again, with the Pistol Annies-associated knack for fresh topics: considering that your love was (def past tense) "heaven," then, if the devil don't want her, where can she go? Purgatory? Celibacy? Just everyday numbnuts office bus station cafeteria reality? It's a good question, long as she can keep asking it, and putting off the answers.

― dow, Thursday, July 16, 2015 2:40 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.spin.com/2015/07/review-ashley-monroe-the-blade/

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, July 20, 2015 10:55 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm seeing her live tonight at an NPR first listen show; looking forward to it obviously

― you are extreme, Patti LuPone. (forksclovetofu), Monday, July 20, 2015 11:25 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hope it doesn't bury your love alive

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, July 20, 2015 11:26 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm planning on catching it by the handle.

― you are extreme, Patti LuPone. (forksclovetofu), Monday, July 20, 2015 12:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Putting internal quotes in bold because having formatting/computer/nearsightedness probs

she was wonderful live and basically all the new material sounds great; this is gonna be a v v popular album.