Rolling Country 2015

psssh Caramanica, never put stock in his opinions

Maura, Jewly Hight and S. Erlewine all reviewed it well

it can be difficult to divine when she's ecstatic, or aggrieved, or wretched: maybe, but that's what cues are for, pop-settings-wise. Never heard a whole Underwood album albums, will try to listen without prejudice.

Also without typos, unusually enough.

As though sounding like Lita Ford is a bad thing...

Interesting; Eric Church just physically mailed a new album, Mr. Misunderstood, to select fans.

Maybe I'm overrating this, after being bored shitless by several albums in a row, but at the moment totes infatuated w Ryan Culwell's Flatlands: immediately takes the rein with nervous energy willed into focus (minus strain or excess melodrama)on tensile Texastenial tunes. He's young, he's spooked, but he's determined to "find my mountains in the flatlands, hallelujah!"--followed immediately by "I Think I'll Be Their God." Where he sounds like he's acquainted with the megaphone tape legacy of the Rev. Jim Jones. Yes, he's wary of hope, even self-mocking at times---"Ah am just a young man, with piss down in mah bones"---but he's tasted more than the grape Koolaid, tracks different flavors of hope and hopelessness. I'm also influenced by first hearing this while first reading Winesburg, Ohio: both consider the flavors of twisted roots, with spare but never bare presentation (12 songs, 40 minutes here, and, as in the book, weaker or slighter tracks are carried by the overall momentum). Especially like when sustain and a little bit of distortion appear on the horizon behind battered acoustic rhythm, and there's the occasional desert siren (of the female persuasion).
Rec also to selective fans of Townes Van Zandt, esp. "Red River" ("She's cleaning the red dirt off the life he give her...he ain't my uncle no more") and "Horses" ("Sometimes tough ain't enough/Bow down the head that Jesus raised"---addressed to a woman, not a horse, I think).

"Texastential," of course!

Eric Church is gonna be on that country awards program tonight too. With Hank Williams Jr ....

"Mr Misunderstood" sounds good.

Little Big Town just won CMA single of the year for "Girl Crush"....Plus host Brad Paisley said "cray" cray" and Carrie Underwood did the "nae nae"....The fun will be continuing for a few more hours.

Kacey Musgraves is playing her hokey, obvious song.

eric church's new song sounded fantastic. kacey musgraves sounded not only hokey, but really ... off. ashley monroe got three or four seconds of airtime in the audience early in the show. chris stapleton seemed truly unaware that he was going to keep winning. brad paisley played acoustic guitar without a strap. keith urban played bass. very very happy for little big town.

the crazy sparkly chris stapleton t-shirt that miranda wore while accepting her female vocalist award was kind of fantastic.

CMAs sending message to bros, I guess.

So do I need to hear Chris Stapleton's album?

You might like it? Rorschach test album -- some hear impressive rocking country while others hear barband cliches

The AMG review makes him sound like Jamey Johnson without the showy moroseness, and I could go for that.

I didn't like it, and last night's performance with Boy Wonder was still leaden.

that little big town album is great imo, though most of the album tracks are better than the singles.

this npr tiny desk concert is my favorite chris stapleton thing.

Well, I tried Traveller on Spotify, and the first four songs I clicked on were boring dirges, so I'm done.

About a mnute too long but it sounds fine, a non-soppy "American Pie":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOuF3k_-asA

A mildly interesting Awl piece on Keith Urban and Toby Keith and country music masculinity as drag.

Anyone already listened Mr Misunderstood? I mostly liked it, it's a real departure from The Outsiders and I think I prefer this one. The first half holds it up better than the second one but it didn't seem to drag. "Knives of New Orleans" sounds like a highlight.

The Outsiders was a sodden mess but whose singles were delights on the radio or in isolation.

Yeah, I can't really pinpoint where "The Outsiders" exactly goes wrong, I like songs individually but there's something about the pacing of that album that's really weird. I feel this one's turning out to be better in that aspect.

I did a brief obit on '70s proto-bro singer (and conceptual master) Tommy Overstreet, whose hits were masterminded by a team comprising Ricci Mareno, Charlie Black and Jerry Gillespie.

Thanks! Speaking of bro, if anything, yall may have underpraised xpost Thomas Rhett's Tangled Up. Really like the horns x beats behind his swaggering presentation of "South Side," the suggestions of Van Morrison (maybe "Crazy Love" in particular, but not too close) in the guitar etc. of "Die A Happy Man," the Pink ("Get This Party Started") in "Vacation," the cold bones country in "The Day You Stop Lookin' Back," also there in (but getting warmed up by)"Playing With Fire," the duet with Jordan Sparks, the modern sounds all around but never oversold, although lyrics of "I Listen To The Radio," have the r. telling him things he never ever thought of before, like he should go and kiss that girl.

Old Dominion's Meat and Candy is okay as office/traffic music, mainly because it's not very distracting. The drunk dialing one did grab my attention though, because that's an extreme example of their consideration of women (previous track gently submits for approval the idea of rollin' with you like a beercan in the back of a truck). Drunk Dialer says you should go with him, thus breaking up with the other guy implicitly, instantly, just "rip the Band-Aid off---you know I'm right, or you woulda hung up by now." He still sounds more hopeful than bold, as ever.

Also "Said Nobody," with Weekend Update punchline chorus.

"adding all that in, i happened upon a new album, 'Momentarily Yours', from Larry Hosford that is worth a peek."

yes this is a fun little album!

I didn't know Keith Urban was Australian.

Rolling Country regulars, should I watch the 1980 film Urban Cowboy starring John Travolta?

really love "record year" off the new eric church

Never saw xpost Urban Cowboy, but, despite a few duds, the soundtrack still seemed pretty decent the last time I heard it (not recently). Think they got all the songs in there; most soundtracks leave some off, for financial reasons, I guess. But this double-LP had several radio hits, and may have been a hit its own self.

Gretchen Peters, Blackbirds[:
Maybe especially this time of year, some days are just naturally darker than others, and this album can help them slide in there a little darker still, without overdoing it. Although the title track comes a little close, with violence getting more physical "I stink of kerosene" etc---in a way the other songs don't seem to bother with (although it's more about the immediate overall effect, so who knows yet), as they usually track bad (self- and other) love through the woods, and "that green suburban plain" at least one citizen is zoning on. Not country- or folk-rock, although there's usually an electric guitar and/or drums among the otherwise acoustic combo, usually with medium-to-brisk tempos, not much decoration, and steady rhythms building nicely, like on "Black Ribbons," co-written and background sung by Matraca Berg and Suzy Bogguss, her fellow members of Wine Women & Song.
Ballad-wise, sounds like she's been listening to Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson, but not too much; for instance, I've never heard anything quite like the beautiful death spiral skywriting of "Pretty Things"---heard the musical pattern before, maybe, occasionally, but not with this kind of storyline.
Good duet with Jimmy LaFave, too, and the only cover, "Nashville"--as written and performed, a cogent swirl of memory, anticipation and apprehension---makes me want to check out the writer, David Mead, and has me thinking even more that several of these would fit Nashville, as did Season 2's "How You Learn To Live Alone," the one she wrote with Mary Gauthier.

I guess there's a *bit* of folk- and/or country rock in there sometimes, when the electric guitar takes a solo.

thanks for that recommendation, sounds good

Rolling Country regulars, should I watch the 1980 film Urban Cowboy starring John Travolta?

― welltris (crüt),

Sure, but it's not that good.

holy shit that gretchen peters record is incredible and intense

Glad yall liked it. This isn't "wild-eyed" etc like the live set Jerry Wexler happened upon, but he's got an amiable delivery---crisp, little rough, confident, never overselling--and the band's tight, even got some gouging guitar at times (and note James Booker on keys!) Not a terribly distinctive approach, even in the early 70s (they def like Waylon, also Willie, Hank, etc), but some good, maybe original lines), and Outlaw was still fresh.
Jimmy Rabbitt & Renegade
The Texas Album
St. Roch Av. Recordings
24 June 2015
Jimmy Rabbitt was an outlaw before being an outlaw was cool.

Beginning as a deejay in the '60s, Rabbitt has spun records from coast to coast and all points in-between, kickin' ass and taking names not only over the airwaves but also in every roadhouse and backroom dive from Dallas to The Apple and, of course, El Lay with the equally dangerous backing band Renegade.

These were the guys your mama warned you about.

Fate would have it that on one particular evening in 1972 while returning home from a concert, Jerry Wexler stopped to get a slice at a Pizza Parlor in Saugus, California. Jimmy Rabbitt & Renegade were playing their barn-burning, wild-eyed & country-fried outlaw music in the next room and were offered a recording contract with Atlantic Records on the spot. The master tapes collected dust for over 40 years, unreleased until now.

Recorded at Sound City Studios, 1973
Produced by Jerry Wexler
Engineered by Keith Olsen
Mixed by John Porter and featuring James Booker on keyboards
Half-Speed lacquer mastered by Stan Ricker.

This release contains all material from the recording session. Full album Download card with 5 additional songs included.

These guys were promoted as a fun alternative to ineptly trendy mainstream and stilted alt-country (or at least that's the way I took the pitches), but somehow they went in one ear, out the other, in my sad case. Like most bands, they were said to be better live, so maybe:

BR5-49 DELIVERS ONE LONG SATURDAY NIGHT
OF RED-HOT COUNTRY MUSIC FUN
ON THIS ARCHIVAL CONCERT CD/DVD
FROM BEAR FAMILY RECORDS,
OUT IN U.S. NOVEMBER 20th
This 1996 German TV show recording
contains several songs that never appeared on a BR5-49 album

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Country-music renegades BR5-49 made their name as a live band in the mid-’90s, when their high-spirited shows at Robert’s Western Wear, a boot shop and sometime bar in the Nashville’s then-still dicey Lower Broadway district, turned them into the talk of Music City. Performing there several nights a week for tips, the band would do four- or five-hour sets loaded with country classics, rockabilly gems and their modern traditionalist originals.
After the group — bassist Smilin’ Jay McDowell, drummer “Hawk” Shaw Wilson, multi-instrumentalist Don Herron and pair of singer/songwriter/guitarists: Chuck Mead and Gary Bennett — signed with Arista Records in 1996, the label released a live EP, Live at Robert’s. This six-song recording, however, only gives a glimpse of the band’s on-stage magic. The new Bear Family CD/DVD BR5-49: One Long Saturday Night, provides a broader picture of why they created such excitement on Lower Broadway. U.S. street date is set for November 20, 2015.
BR5-49: One Long Saturday Night captures the young band at peak form. Shortly after their self-titled studio debut, they toured in Europe, where their authentic brand of American roots music had already developed a following. In October 1996, they appeared on the German TV program Ohne Filter, which let bands play live in the studio. Chuck Mead states that this performance “really captured us at the top of our game and I look back on that time as an experience of a lifetime.”
For nearly an hour, BR5-49 tore through a spirited set where they mixed rejuvenated classic country hits like Johnny Horton’s “Ole Slewfoot,” Moon Mulligan’s “Cherokee Boogie,” Webb Pierce’s “I Ain’t Never” and even Gram Parsons’ “Big Mouth Blues” with their own timeless-sounding tunes, from Mead’s honky-tonkin’ “My Name Is Mudd” to’s country boogie number “Even If It’s Wrong.” The guys’ fun-loving sense of humor cuts loose on their punk-rock-girl-gone-country ditty “Little Ramona (Gone Hillbilly Nuts)” and “Bettie, Bettie,” their ode to a certain pin-up icon.
“We saw it as our duty to bring the spirit of Robert's Western World to every place we went,” explains Mead. “When I see and hear this DVD and CD set, it feels like we actually did that.” One Long Saturday Night, in fact, features several songs that were Robert’s show staples but never made a proper BR5-49 album. Hank Williams’ “Lone Gone Lonesome Blues,” Ray Price’s “Heartache by the Numbers,” Carl Perkins’ “Gone, Gone, Gone,” Carl Smith’s “Go Boy Go,” Hawkshaw Hawkins’s “Lonesome 7-7203” and a two tunes Bob Wills popularized — “Right or Wrong” and “Take Me Back to Tulsa.” There is even a previously unreleased Chuck Mead song, “Hometown Boogie.”
The DVD and CD both contain all 19 songs BR5-49 played on Ohne Filter, and the CD adds four soundboard recordings taken from a concert the band played in Japan one week after their German TV show appearance. These bonus tracks include three standards that were regulars in the BR5-49’s concerts — “Knoxville Girl,” “Settin’ the Woods on Fire” and “Sweet Georgia Brown” (the latter two are on a BR5-49 album for the first time) — along with Gary Bennett’s “Hillbilly Thang.”
BR5-49’s own “Hillbilly Thang” began after Bennett met Mead at Nashville’s Bluebird Café. While Bennett hailed from Washington state and Mead from Kansas, they found themselves to be musical compatriots. The two started playing at Robert’s Western Wear with a loose ensemble of musicians that formalized as BR5-49 with Mead’s old bandmate, drummer “Hawk” Shaw Wilson, Bennett’s roommate, multi-instrumentalist Don Herron, and “Smilin’” Jay McDowell, a buddy of Mead’s, on standup bass.
BR5-49 (their name taken from an old Hee-Haw sketch) made two studio albums and a live one for Arista before moving on to Sony/Epic’s Lucky Dog Records. After one album there, where they went by BR549, Bennett and McDowell left the band. Mead led the group through a couple more CDs before they went on hiatus, although they have had periodic reunions.
One Long Saturday Night offers a chance to why they were such a breath of fresh air in the country music scene when they appeared in the mid-’90s, and how they helped blaze the trail for the Americana music movement.

I remember the hype re them, more than I remember what they sounded like, too

they were super solid live, couldn't name a single song.

Listening to Old Dominion's Meat and Candy and I'm not sure what to make of it. Mostly I dislike it, but I think like their single, it will worm it's way in me and I'll love/hate it.

Yeah like I said upthread, really liked the drunk-dialing one, "Said Nobody" and 1-2 others, but doesn't really hold my attention overall, might grow on me though.
Ditto, I hope xpost Eric Church's Mr. Misunderstood I do like about 5/12 tracks so far (somewhere in the middle, "Mistress Called Music" goes from prematurely celebratory to reflective, which seems more convincing). But jeez, there's only 10 total, so not that much more potential. However, I'll keep listening. No problem to do that, although the intermittent country mellensteen moves are annoying; his voice isn't (even) good enough to pull 'em off, nor are the words. His band can do anything, but are kept on a short leash here; if you're gonna be that kind of corny, go all the way and then some, like on The Outsiders.
Still, "Chattanooga Lucy" is my fave so far, because it builds musically, as the reach-out lyrics call for. And all the best songs here draw on personal-cultural history for reaffirmation, refueling for the present and future, hopefully, in different situations.
(re the 'steen, if you want bemused ol' twangboys prowlin' the mean streets with time, blood and/or grease etc. on hands, try the Deluxe Edition of Tim McGraw's Sundown Heaven Town---it's uneven too, but lots more good songs, in part because lots more songs).

"Chatanooga Lucy" disturbingly reminds me of Yello's "The race"

Uh-oh, good thing I was gonna listen again. He does sound more at home here, for better and worse, than on some of The Outsiders. No surprise to see him quoted as wondering if producer didn't push him too far, "Oh Nashville, you great Babylonian bitch" or whutever, and his reservations/resistance made his voice/vocal approach seem even more limited that it does otherwise.

Not that he can't be effective with more intimate material.

Or maybe less intimate/more tasteful but also less-BS away (hard to balance those last two at once)

found a cheap copy of the new lindi ortega album "Faded Gloryville" and i've been listening to it a lot. found the chris stapleton for the same price and am enjoying with some reservations, but it's not bad at all.