Rolling Country 2018

very bummed that brandy clark and angaleena presley are playing boston sunday, when i have to cover the grammys

About Half Good (60-45%): Nikki Lane: Highway Queen

Sounds low. I don't know if I listened to any other 2017 album more times in 2017 than this one, and it all seems absolutely perfect to me.

I think Nikki's all right. Not sure her concept goes that deep but Highway Queen has to be her best album to date.

Here's my Scene ballot:
TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2017:

1. Daniel Romano Modern Pressure New West
2. Midland On the Rocks Big Machine
3. Tyler Childers Purgatory Hickman Holler
4. Lee Ann Womack The Lonely, the Lonesome & the Gone ATO
5. Walker Hayes Boom Monument
6. Angaleena Presley Wrangled Thirty Tigers
7. Little Bandit Breakfast Alone yk
8. Juanita Stein America Nude Records
9. Whitney Rose Rule 62 Six Shooter/Thirty Tigers
10. Little Big Town The Breaker Capitol Nashville

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2017:

1. Check Cashing Country--Midland
2. Last Time for Everything--Brad Paisley
3. Every Little Thing--Carly Pearce
4. Tin Man--Miranda Lambert
5. Round Here Buzz--Eric Church
6. Softball--Caroline Spence
7. I Saw Jesus Peekin' Thru a Hole in the Sky--Will Beeley
8. Body Like a Back Road--Sam Hunt
9. Better Man--Little Big Town
10. You Broke up with Me--Walker Hayes

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2017:

1. Will Beeley Passing Dream Tompkins Square
2. Lydia Loveless Boy Crazy and Single(s) Bloodshot
3. Various Stax Country Craft
4. Will Beeley Gallivantin' Tompkins Square
5. Arthur Alexander Arthur Alexander Omnivore

might be seeing Whitney Rose at a BBQ joint in a few weeks. a free lunchtime show! though i think they violated a health code and are currently closed, so i'm not sure it's gonna happen. if it doesn't she playing another show at a cantina nearby the night previous.

NashScene ballot:

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2017:
1. Charlie Worsham – Beginning Of Things (Warner Bros.)
2. Walker Hayes – Boom (Monument)
3. Kelsea Ballerini – Unapologetically (Black River Entertainment)
4. Jace Everett – Dust & Dirt (Weston Boys)
5. Liz Rose – Swimming Alone (Liz Rose)
6. Sunny Sweeney – Trophy (Aunt Daddy)
7. Lauren Alaina – Road Less Traveled (Mercury Nashville/19/Interscope)
8. Lee Ann Womack – The Lonely, The Lonesome & The Gone (Ato)
9. Darius Rucker – When Was the Last Time (Capitol Nashville)
10. Nikki Lane – Highway Queen (New West)

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2017:
1. Haley Georgia – “Shots”
2. Haley Georgia – “Becky”
3. Ashley McBride – “A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega”
4. Jessie James Decker feat. Randy Houser – “Almost Over You”
5. Brandy Clark – “You’re Drunk”
6. Midland –“Drinkin’ Problem”
7. Bailey Bryan – “Own It”
8. Nellie Tiger Travis – “Walking in the Rain in Memphis”
9. Hurray for the Riff Raff – “Living in the City”
10. Olivia Lane – “Wrong Girl”

Guess I need to revisit the Jace Everett album, I liked the Live at Alex the Great. Saw the Kernal and Nicole Atkins at the Single Lock Records showcase here--Kernal was the embodiment of down-at-the-heel '70s country, and Atkins did material from Goodnight Rhonda Lee to great effect. Tight band who bore down on that record's '60s-'70s soul usages, and Atkins is a very convincing white-soul Jersey girl who wears what looks like lounge pants and slippers on stage. That's definitely one of the best Nashville records of the year, but I couldn't shoehorn her Lorraine Ellison soul into country, too uptown, basically.

What did you think of this one, or his others, Edd? Jeez, touring behind it even (Drag City prose ahead,, adjust shades accordingly)

CHRIS GANTRY BRINGS PSYCHOACTIVE OUTLAW COUNTRY TUNES TO CHICAGO

https://image-ticketfly.imgix.net/00/02/79/11/07-og.jpg?w=300&h=463

Step back in time and land smack dab in the middle of Music Row with Nashville's living legend and ORIGINAL outlaw country badass, Chris Gantry! At The Hideout next month, for his first performance in Chicago ever, the troubadour will sling tunes from the newly unearthed, early-70s lysergic classic, At The House of Cash and more! Gantry has been writing and recording songs for 40 years, cutting his teeth with solo albums in the late 1960s and 1970s featuring tunes that would be made famous by Glen Campbell ("Dreams of the Everyday Housewife") and Johnny Cash ("Allegheny")-and in true outlaw fashion, Chris continues to write and perform to this day, into his 70s. Gantry's ragged and rowdy maverick spirit, one he cultivated while paling around with Kris Kristofferson, Cash, and Shel Silverstein, is fully evident on his recordings and in his live performances - hell, he's such a wild card even in retirement years, he was cast by Harmony Korine for a role in his film, Trash Humpers.

With sheer wit and judicious charisma, Chris is neither country nor pop, not quite rock but not avant garde, either - like the best artists, his music can't quite be reduced to any one thing, which is exactly the kind of artist we love most! Since Chris' songs are unique and don't succumb to strict definition, it kinda makes sense that an album like At The House Of Cash was never released back when - recorded at Johnny Cash's home studio while Chris got back on his feet there following a marijuana bust and a peyote-enhanced trip to Mexico, it was so singular and strange for its time (particularly trying to imagine it being marketed to a Nashville audience) that it prompted Cash to exclaim, "Chris, June and I listened to your record last night, and I don't think even the drug people are gonna understand it." But we've discovered they do, and so too do the folks on the straight and narrow - Gantry's music is for all, and so we're inviting all Chicagoans to come out for what is quite possibly a once in a lifetime event!

Start hoarding your psychoatives now, Chris Gantry comes to The Hideout on February 22nd, with special guest Jon Langford!
CHRIS GANTRY LIVE:

February 22nd at The Hideout in Chicago, IL

TICKET LINK
http://www.hideoutchicago.com/event/1625495-chris-gantry-house-cash-chicago/

Chris Gantry Online:
http://www.dragcity.com/artists/chris-gantry
https://chrisgantrynashville.bandcamp.com/album/at-the-house-of-cash (2 tracks free)
https://itunes.apple.com/album/id1276375362

I like Gantry's Fred Foster-produced 1968 Introspection in the Hartford-Campbell-Jack Clement-Fred Neil mode of the day. Motor Mouth from '70 on a Monument imprint is...insane, a kind of Beat poetry reading with one or two really impressive subversions of song form. I think the House of Cash record is typical 1974 art song, nowhere near as good as Big Star's Third but ahead of Vince Martin or Mickey Newbury. I don't think the subversion on the Cash recordings adds up to much; Gantry is surrealistic without a grounding principle, but it's listenable. He really did take the time to distance himself from Newbery when I talked to him last fall, he was the new generation in Nashville.

Himes says Isbell and Price are spurring the industry to become more adult, tell stories. I'd say the list reflects Americana as it has usually (always?) done

Sounds right Edd.

Walker Hayes has that Sam Hunt rap-inspired vocal style plus Shane McAnally assistance, but I still can't make up my mind whether I like it.

Might as well post this here -- a fine new project, inspired by Tom Ewing

https://countrynumberones.tumblr.com/

(Should add this is by Robert Ham.)

Still listening to ones from yall's lists, tweaking the Imaginary Categories before officially blogging the ballot. Thinking about adding this IC, for that doesn't even seem Related, quite:
They Came To And/or From Nashville: Walker Hayes, Kelsea Ballerini, and mebbe Nicole Atkins (although I do still think of her as Related via the Dusty In Memphis approach, but that would free up a slot in the Related Top Ten, which I might need...)
I really like Walker Hayes, and might add him to Country Hon. Mentions anyway, especially like "Dollar Store," cos Strip Mall Country is way overdue, and I was hoping Midland's "Check-Cashing Country" would be the check-cashing place/wire money place. next to or also with the title pawn, next to tobacco shop, gun & pawn, phone repair & vape, Little Caesar's, and Rite-Aid, now with Pharmacy By Walgreen's.
Instead, it's 'bout how they *aren't* check-cashing country, they're into journeyman Dallas-era country, as Edd says, for the love of it, a band full 'o' Ringos---well okay, but so far I suspect the Randy Rogers Band do it better, will keep listening tho.
Reminds me: some have objected to their faves being (so far) consigned to About Half Good (60-45%), but this is no diss--a lot of albums in every genre work mich better when filed down to EPs--and the top end of that could put somebody into Hon. Mention or even possibly Top Ten, if the songs are truly outstanding. Also, it can be the overall effect, more than any particular picks. Like xpost Kip Moore's Slowheart, with that sly (incl. sensitive when need-be) voice and beat.

Talking about Caroline Spence: she's doing a residency in January here at the Basement.

Caught the finale of her residency last night. Solid performer, decent band, and the four new songs she played were quite good. Highlight was "You Don't Look So Good (Cocaine)".

Was thinking of xpost freeing up a slot in Related Top Ten because so far xpost Jace Everett's Dust & Dirt seems deserving of some Top Ten and I can't revise the Country Top Ten since I already submitted it to the Scene polling (also sent the Related o course but it's Imaginary and doesn't count for Himes's purposes).
The production here, especially the vocal, sometimes seemed drier than I was expecting, given the reverb etc. shadows of tumultuous Red Revelations, which made my 2009 Top Ten and incl. "Bad Things," the theme from True Blood. But this is more subtle, though straightforwardly re the spookiness of realer worlds (would still fit the satirical implications of TB, which is now RIP, I think).
There's one about love setting him free from the black-and-white view, although he's still not sure if your eyes are Green or Blue." It's okay though, so far.
He announces he's back in the b-&-w (more as an overall rigid dichotomy than racial per se, here, maybe) in "Free (Don't Ask Me)."
Followed by the even more ominous "Love's Not What We Do"---though the dryness keeps the atmospherics from getting too heavy.
Ditto on his lean-groove cover of Guy Clark's "The Last Gunfighter Ballad," where the G. ends up waving his weapon at "the ghosts in the street", which Everett's shrewd Clark-style delivery has me thinking might well be the cops, or Stand-Your-Ground civilians.
There are also a few conventional love songs, or they seem so pro forma because of the understated delivery. But the total effect was pretty involving right off. Will check it some more, like these others.

Still gotta check that Spence acoustic EP.

It's good. I like the album versions more though.

She said there's going to be a release of duets she recorded with Robby Hecht in May. Not sure if it's an EP or an LP. He joined her to sing "Parallel Lines" which was one of the best songs in the set. I believe her next album is done, too, but she didn't mention it.

Yeah, EZ, she told me last month that she was going to record one of the nights of the residency for release. Wish I could've caught one of them. Dow, I think the Jace album from last year is really good, and he cut an interesting live thing with his trio couple years ago too. Xhuxkk was the one who got me onto the Jace album, which would've made my top ten, probably, had I known about it, missed it.

Same here, I wouldn't have known about the latest Jace if Xhuxcx hadn't just dropped in with his Top Tens, thanx xhuddy.
Speaking of discreet delivery of sometimes weird product, consider also Stax Country, and thanks to Edd for listing this. Given the title, I was kind of hoping for, you know, country soul, country funk, just a little bit at least--the only one that's like I was imagining is Danny Bryan's version of "My Girl"--which is not the self-congratulatory, novelty approach sometimes found on Light In The Attic's Country Funk 2 (which is still real good and real stoned). It's just his thankful 'n' thoughtful, unpretentious voice, mostly solo, although there are occasional angels and strings way back there, otherwise, just him and the steel guitar, a little rhythm picking, piano, bass, drums. Of course, that's not the weirdo material---
Paul Craft's "For Linda (Child In The Cradle," is a gentle waltz, which starts with a lyrical bang, "She's 27 going on 42, with a body that's just turned 16," and some think she's a crazy groupie, but "She's true to the friends and lovers she's made." Very nice tone to the verses, which doesn't break for the chorus, "She's a father, she's a bummer, she's a mother (or mutha), she's a hummer," whut which among other thangs sounds like a parody of Kristofferson's "He's a poet, he's a picker," or however it goes.
(This album is apparently on the Craft label---he wrote a bunch of hits and some presumably lucrative album tracks, so maybe his estate is using some of those Eagles bucks for this?)
Kind of an easier-breathing "Okie From Muskogee" feel to Roland Eaton's "Hippie From The Hills," which starts with "No my hair's not long because I'm cool, Pa broke the shears last winter, shearin' the family mule," and tells the bittersweet story of his young life so far. He's not complaining, and it's a nice vibe.
Connie Eaton's "I Wanna Be Wrong Right Now" turns understatement to moist apology, but Paige O'Brian's "Satisfied Woman" is poised and "knows the score."
O.B. McClinton claims that a lady raised among "The Finer Things In Life" has given them all up for his hobo ass, but Karen Casey's much more plausible "The River Is Too Wide" follows immediately, an answer song in this context.
Not all tracks are all that good, but for instance Becki Bluefield gets points for repeatedly pronouncing "there" as "thar" unself-consciously, and elsewhere there is or are some calm plagiarism I can't mention.
---

Sorry--"his crinkly-voice hobo ass" is what I meant to say: mellow tones don't hide the uncut wistful thinking BS, not here anyway.

Thanks to erasingclouds for posting the Top Ten incl. Lillie Mae's Forever and Then Some:
startling degree of fairly intimate, vivid focus and shading right away, especially considering its her debut--but then, as she says in the following interview, "Ive been working since I was three," starting in the family bluegrass band, Jypsi, and later in a combo with some of her sibs, who (along with still more not in the post-Jypsi teen line-up) play on this set, very cohesively, and non-showboating, sometimes hooky mandolinist sister Scarlett also does some writing and aranging: the style is their own sort of folk-country, though bass & drums have some pop-rock (especially pop) appeal, with occasionally noticeable electric guitar---but def. don't hear it like this interviewer re "indie rock attack" behind the mando, fiddle and other strings (the closer goes into more of an exploratory electric folk modal thing, briefly, guess that could be considered indie-pop-rock).

Slender but effective voice, rec to fans of Victoria Williams, Whitney Rose, Natalie Maines and Sunny Sweeney (Louisiana-Texas-suggestive flexings and inflections at times, though don't think she's from that neck of the woods geographically), listened to subsets of tracks on Spotify during fairly hectic Monday, but no prob getting back into it; faves so far are "Loaner" and the title song.

Good intro and conversation:
https://www.npr.org/sections/world-cafe/2017/06/30/529708788/world-cafe-nashville-lillie-mae

Is and sounds young, but has been around the block as well as the mountain.

Someone else sounding young but experienced and thoughtfully candid, and also from erasingclouds' xpost list: Brett Eldredge, on his s/t fourth album. Younger than Toby Keith was when he starting having hits BE's already had three country number ones), and minus the moods and shrewds just below the robust, sufficiently sensitive surface---also without the vocal range--but Eldredge knows how to use what he's got, and, although as with xpost Kip Moore's 2017 album, it's more about the overall effect here, but each track has its own themette, and "Superhero" rolls into its chorus like TK would approve, the singer kidding himself but into it too, on the look-out for Damsels In Distress, verse by sufficiently sensitive verse.
He's into chasing the "Heartbreaker" too, no complaints, and he's pretty good (lots of practice) at the groveling, unnecessarily self-described drunk dial on another.
His version of a bro song is "Brother", which starts like "We need to talk about why we've been playin' tough all these years"--instead it goes into okay bromantic nostalic anthemizing "You had my back when Dad got sick...you were my first call that night in jail, you raised my bail" later not quite rhyming it with "raised some hell."
"Cycles" also philosophically overviewing, and another with a touch of the late-80s-early-90s headphones atmospherics (speaking or early Toby Keith).
The Happy Hour cowpoke, always hopeful and cleaned up nice, in part because he may have just come from work.

Oops, meant to link! It's all here:
https://bretteldredge.bandcamp.com/album/brett-eldredge

Y'all heard Zane Campbell? Check out the Washington Post piece on him. He's played with the great pedal-steel wiz Susan Alcorn, whom I saw last year in Nashville and who blew my mind. She does stuff undreamed of by Buddy Emmons and Weldon Myrick (and Sneaky Pete too). What I've heard of Campbell's music sounds pretty impressive.

new Brandi Carlile streaming at NPR
https://www.npr.org/2018/02/08/582106372/first-listen-brandi-carlile-by-the-way-i-forgive-you

Yeah, gotta check that, I like her, gotta check Zane Campbell too.
Just listened to Natalie Hemby's Puxico for the first time---will at least another spin or 2 or more to catch all the words in her murmuring condifence in both senses: so far her ruminations seem saved from too much singer-songwriter navelgazing by surefooted professionalism, most of the time. Her songs have been covered by Woamack and other worthies, and several of these could be singles.

One of the initial stand-outs is especially lilting, as she walks through a town basking in the sunshine of your love, "you" being a local hero or heroine gone somewhere, but "They still tell your stories, swap your jokes," and as she walks the high school halls, sees "your pictures in the trophy cases." Next song is maybe sung by another character, who has found that the details of a past (?) relationship have become "trapped in the photographs,,,Just when I understand everything about our story, that's when I forget." Now it's all "feelings in the walls," but sounds like that's okay, more than okay,also
part of the cycle, but nothing mystical. Her tunes and delivery are straightforward as always.

Which also helps with the likes of "Ferris Wheel," similar conceptually to "Circle Game," but her take is not a sing-along for sad Boomers: it seems like a good old sawdust county fair memory and theme song; she ain't sorry.

Edd otm, as usual, re Zane Campbell.
His s/t debut, which I 2015 Top Tenned, started with vintage-y material---which could suggest a fuller-throated, Appalachian American Richard Thompson (or maybe some of RT's mid-60s influences)---yet eventually topped by for instance a sometimes roaring body bags anthem, "Bringing The Boys Home" ("Nobody wanted to do it").
Ola Wave celebrates his equally outspoken aunt, born Ola Wave Campbell, better known to folk freaks as Ola Belle Reed: starts with a Zame original, about asking her why she turned down a potentially-career-making job offer from Roy Acuff (didn't wanna take orders from no man), followed by the title track, which takes off re the force truly advertised by her birth name--he catches up with said force as well as he can on his second and last original here, ditto on strong covers of her remarkable ballads---in which she seems to paying the cost for being her own boss, but then again, so be it---even wth, at times (a blues starts slow, develops a strut), and on we go: as written and especially with Zane's nuanced lungpower, these mountain tunes embody transcendence of mere yearnin.'
Both albums here: https://zanecampbell.bandcamp.com/

I just finished something on the new Secret Sisters album, produced by Brandi Carlile and the Hanseroth twins. The title track of You Don't Own Me Anymore is pretty good, the toughest thing they've done yet. The other stuff is local color, just a bit--their song about the joys of Alabama is banal. They sound like the Everly Brothers circa "Love of the Common People." (Read Jim Dickinson's memoir for a good portrait of the very good songwriting duo of Hurley and Wilkins, who wrote it.) I like the record, but they've still got some growing to do as songwriters. I'm also quite impressed by Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams' Contraband Love, which is already the best Americana album I've heard this year. I found a 2008 interview w/ Campbell, who also played on my favorite reissue of 2017, Will Beeley's Passing Dream, when Campbell lived in Jackson in the mid-'70s (as I discovered he'd told me 10 years ago in the interview). The guitar playing on the new record is great--Richard Thompson-esque Beatles-Byrds modalism in the service of some great blues-soul tunes, including one called "Slidin' Delta" that doesn't seem to be the John Hurt tune. I also recommend a pop-Americana album that's kinda under the radar, Steve Mayone's Sideways Rain.
I'm not sure what in the hell to make of Bonnie Montgomery's new Forever. She's been touted as an Ameripolitan artist--from Arkansas, she moved to Austin and cut her new one w/ some help from Dale Watson. (She also wrote an opera about Bill Clinton's youth,Billy Blythe, which I haven't heard enough of to get a handle on. Montgomery sings a bit like Mary McCaslin--the head voice break, etc.--but her songwriting is, to say the least, perfunctory. There's one about a heist she and Watson are gonna pull, and it contains rather incredible lines about how Montgomery's sister dated the cop in the town they're pulling into to rob (a bank) and an ending that goes "We'll be running 'til the day we die/Just like all the stories/Just like old Bonnie and Clyde." Uh huh. Arthur Penn and Roger Corman (Bloody Mama, supposedly about Ma Barker (who wasn't really a criminal) might disagree with her. The songs are mediocre to godawful--she has no talent for narrative and she perpetrates some of the most atrocious rhymes I've ever heard. But the record has its charming moments, I suppose; the music is received, though, and her observations about the lure of the road are banal. "Crop Dust Eyes" is perplexing--is she just making it up as she goes along? check it out here.

Can imagine how Carlile & Twins' roots-theatrical, outdoor drama approach could suit the Sisters, looking fwd to that. Yeah, I enjoyed their early single of "Big River": they sounded like country kids out seein' the sights, incl. Jack White's look-whut-Ah-can-do! guitar solo on the rapids---but a subsequent, maybe second (White-produced?) album seemed to be going for an Everlys-ish, Kentucky night-to L.A. noir (just off the Greyhound, reading headlines about the Black Dahlia, rings a bell), but they weren't entirely ready for it. If you want that, check some of the vibes on Walk Right Back: The Everly Brothers On Warner Brothers, 1960-1969.

Also I like the Chapin Sisters' A Date With The Everly Brothers, and the Corn Sisters, Neko Case and Carolyn Mark, who mostly show up on comps, but did release one whole set The Other Women, recorded live in a Seattle dive, sounding also like from a stairwell in a well-broken-in Louisville hotel, ca. 50s-60s, when I lived there. So of course it's rec. to fans of the classic Bloodshot approach, though actually released on B's Canadian cousin label, Mint.

Larry Campbell was certainly an attentive picker when supporting Dylan and quite a few female vocal stylists, but his recording debut as a singer often seemed strained and overbearing, trying too hard, especially in comparison with Teresa Williams, jeez. But was smitten w their version of "Attics of My Life"---if he could relax more often, could work out. Will approach new set w cautious optimism.

Speaking of male-female vox, spooky x-roots vibes, etc., I'm also digging Modern Mal, whom xgau recently compared to Dolly Parton x Leonard Cohen. To me, Rachel Brooke sounds more like a Patsy Cline fan (not a wannabee): more relaxed, after-midnight simple-subtle, not as high lonesome as Parton (no diss on DP; this is just different). Also kinda like Nancy Sinatra and several other duet partners of Lee Hazlewood---Brooks Robbins' voice is higher and softer and huskier than Hazlewood's, but the boondocks gothic pop approach is indeed like some of what El Cohen might learned from selective studies of LH, for his own more listenable tracks (BR v. discreetly delviers Cohen/Lizard King-worthy lines like "driven insane by your porcelain frame.")

Also, the songs seem more country-Cohenesque than Hazlewoody re more consistently, closely related to personal experience, however similarly filtered through dark flashy imagery. Even/especially "The Mystery of Death" seems like a relatable barroom-living room sing-along, not too much of a novelty, though Brooke & Brooks def. like the olde novelty-pop, maybe enhanced by 0 budget. (

They also prob like The Captain & Tennille's hit version of "Muskat Rat Love", aka "Muskrat Cdndleiight," its original title on Willis Alan Ramsey's only album---wtf, WAR?
Which reminds me, MM's album comes from the personal experience of taking care of a reclusive old family friend in an old house in "Northern Michigan." (Upper Peninsula?) Nothing about creaking floorboards, bedpans, angels etc., but possibly old scribblings, snapshots, late-night conversations, before, during, and/or after "drinking ethyl." (Think that's lower-case.)

The Misanthrope Family Album is all here:
/modernmal.bandcamp.com/releases

Er, "Muskrat Love," of course, sorry.

I just finished something on the new Secret Sisters album, produced by Brandi Carlile and the Hanseroth twins. The title track of You Don't Own Me Anymore is pretty good, the toughest thing they've done yet. The other stuff is local color, just a bit--their song about the joys of Alabama is banal. They sound like the Everly Brothers circa "Love of the Common People." (Read Jim Dickinson's memoir for a good portrait of the very good songwriting duo of Hurley and Wilkins, who wrote it.) I like the record, but they've still got some growing to do as songwriters.

― eddhurt, Monday, February 12, 2018 11:19 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I slept on this last year. Big step up from the previous albums where the production was too heavy-handed and the songwriting too formulaic, but agree there's room to grow.

Tough to make this kind of neo-traditional effort not sound pastiche, but they mostly pull it off. Carry Me and the stretch from Kathy's Song through Little Again stand out. I prefer this listen front-to-back than albums by their peers (First Aid Kit, The Wild Reeds, The Staves), which tend to blur together as albums.

Wow Cowboy. How have I never heard this

You mean the youtubes recently posted here? Aloha, Scott Boyer:
S/D Southern Rock

whut does it mean my modernmal link not found on this server---let's try this
https://modernmal.bandcamp.com/releases

That works, for now anyway--was gonna say it's not all "dark flashy imagery" yadda yadda---there are other thangs, for instance "Clean," as sung by Rachel Brooke:
Bathtime is my favorite time.
The water runs and wets this hair of mine.
It’s ok to say I like it.
It’s ok to say I care to be clean.
Wash away the day’s mistakes.

Yep xp. Thanks

i love this brandi carlile album.

i guess that makes me an NPR fogey but whatever

Still haven't gotten to that, but usually dig her, so looking fwd.
Meanwhile, a couple more from '17: Howe Gelb's Open Road iis "a collection of sketches from several different projects over the last five years," but not too sketchy, no start-stop or mumbling in the background, but the pleasure of finding that good note right now, in several related styles overall, and seemingly fully-produced, if not quite what he's looking for yet, and always a thoughtful, intimate approach, even on a Spaghetti Western trip. Makes me think he's got, not only a tape recorder next to the Gideon Bible in the motel nightstand, but an array of instruments and musos standing by at all times.
Oh yeah, and not all the words may be quite worked out--haven't caught 'em all--but some lines to jump/slip out into memory, like the one about those who don't fall in love are "in love with the safety zone"---not entirely fair/true, but some truth im my case.
http://music.howegelb.com/album/the-open-road
Further Standards is somewhat Country Related if you justify that tag re the amount of the more downhome jazzy lounge-roadhose sounds of this set by the Howe Gelb Piano Trio (with Lonna Kelly in duet and sometimes upfront vocals; guitar octaves occasionally appear). Kind of a Mose Allison thing, minus the zings and bop excursions--there is MA-worthy wordplay, re word meanings and sounds and ideas, bits of storyline sliding around, but this is not Allson's attitude, it's pretty much all Gelb, writing on cocktail napkins and wondering when it's cool or acceptable or saleable or desirable, for that matter---and like what's the point or is it about a point---be "Presumptuous" or "Irresponsible" or an "Impossible Thing"----no matter how experienced and observant of self and others you are, it's provisional, swirling around in that glass, my my. In a discreet or furtive way, he's got the Country Related romantic preoccupations alright.
(Willie and Leon doing "One More For The Road", sometimes on YouTube, also several of Willie's standards collections and Dylan's also Mose-related "If Dogs Run Free" and some of his Sinatra-related covers, especially on Shadows In The Night,are also from this neck of the woods.)
https://howegelbmusic.bandcamp.com/album/further-standards

"Irresponsible Lovers," that is, the couple from Heaven and/or Hell, ask their bartender.

Case Garrett's Aurora has an econo-produced, even "down-at-the-heels 70s" atmosphere, as Edd says about somebody else upthread, but it's pleasantly musty, like a thrift store LP cover, yum, and it's growing on me though low-key it's growning on me: has the means to get catchy, especially on "She Never Liked Elvis": put off by "that slicked-back hair", she's modern enough to get off on "Lester and Earl," who brought their always intelligent if not subtly progressive style to Bonnie and Clyde and The Beverly Hillbillies and other 60s landmarks (also check the Earl Scruggs Review's early 70s Live At Kansas State for the livelier side of newgrass and more).
So Lester and Earl get the inner girl dancing in her ruby slippers, no matter what; "She never told her husband her secrets." Off-handed delivery of lines with just enough of the right detail to add up, a la most or much Tom T. Hall and prime Prime on the verses---then the chorus adds good Buffet-=-no lie, kept expecting steel drums to appear among the Kentucky stringed things.
He get back to the Buffett table in a more speculative way with "The Thought of You," where he's rehearsing the lines going for a soft-spoken tweaking of JB's "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw": he for one is already loaded, which is how he came to think of her, and "It won't take very long" is a key selling point---soon as he can find his phone.
Several celebrations of/while going nowhere at various speeds also have this suitably light, comfortably numb touch, unlike the heavy-handed cartoon contrast Scott Miller occasionally brings to Ladies Auxiliary, which is mostly about being somewhere and nowhere along the foggy smoggy boondocks road ---trying to get to the realness of life-as-transition everywhere, and sometimes it works, like in one about a guy whose mother is fixing to move to Kentucky---no suggestion, written or sung, that he's anything other than a grown man, so time to get it together, and the sense of shifting ground is there in his non-weepy voice, and the bowed bass---also like one about a town with a Spanish name in West Virginia, once ao off-season settlement of migrant workers, perhaps, like my Mom's hometown in the toetip of Applachia---this has some Garrett-like blend of Hall-Prine-Buffett catchy detail (arc of a local soccer team and their coach in one line), and I won't spoil the suitably wry punchline, adding to the trace of high lonesome, even.
Also heavy-handed with teh absurd are several oovers on Bruce Robison and the Back Porch Band, most of which supports the idea that he should never be 'llowed to record anything but self-writ demos---sent only to hardened professionals, sparing the gen. public, for whom those duet albums with wife Kelly Willis are sweet offical release (more please now!)
She's on here a little bit, though subdued (and icked out by the "it goes innn and outtt" bit on a shitty version of "Squeezebox")There are a couple of somewhat-promising-at-least-as-written originals, ditto a cover of Christy Hays' "Lake of Fire" (she's got several things on bandcamp, album out in April)---and a chiming, swaying, building performance of "The Years", by one Damon Bramblett, who released one album, in 2000, and that's it---so far he's an xpost Willis Alan Ramsey for the Millenium (as is the olde original WAR is now), but several tracks are on youtube (with a few others), and I just now ordered it. (Willis recorded his starry, sick, infectious "Heaven Bound" in 1999.)

Wrote a bit about the Secret Sisters, here. Nice girls. Anyone else listening to Courtney Marie Andrews, another Will Oldham singin' partner, folkie Joni singer and full-throated soul artist? Diggin' her stuff, new album out next month, May Your Kindness Remain.

https://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2018/03/01/mike-huckabee-resigns-cma-foundation-board-following-controversy/385920002/

Huckabee whining about being a victim of course

Word to Huckabee: title track of American Grandstan, a honky tonk sidetrip taken by bluegrass stalwart Rhonda Vincent and country-classicist Daryle Singletary, RIP a few weeks ago, but sounding robust and alert on this July 17 release. On "American Grandstand, a set-typical, melodious, harmonious song of discord, they've signed everything, and are now singing the detailed summary and agreement, with, to and at each other, rehearsing "the final show" of family values and marital drama.
All these warm, catchy, sometimes bouncy chestnuts and compatible contemporaries are now playing my headbox on a regular basis, having commenced upon first listening. Adios, D. I"ll know you'll be back with me soon.

Word to me: American Grandstand, July '17 release, ffs,

On Minnesota Public Radio's Live From Here, just now heard immediately and lastingly compelling performances by local hero Kaitlyn Smith, who got more Nashbiz-acceptance as a writer---of several songs I knew, but not as by any one person, let alone her---new release seems to be getting more promotional etc. support than previous. Inneresting feature here:https://www.rollingstone.com/country/features/caitlyn-smith-on-the-closed-doors-and-raw-emotion-that-led-to-starfire-w431402

Um, "Caitlyn," like it says there, yep.

Listening again to some demos, alts, prev. unreleased titles on disc 1 of Gillian Welch's Boots No, 1: The Official Revival Bootleg. Substantial-enough storylines, from a shoebox of snapshots and postcards, plus a fluid-enough way with the tiny tuneful turns of detail, keep most of 'em from being too received folkieness, if you're not allergic to Americana, and this assortment is for making your own sequences: Like "I Don't Want To Go Dpwntown," "Go On Downtown," "Red Clay Halo," "Paper Wings" (this last could be taken as caution to writers, which is ever'body these days of course). A bit too much regret in some subsets, but for instance Bonnie Raitt please cover the Randy Newmanesque "Georgia Road," a report from where "The boys are walkin' funny, and the girls are all undone...workin' those tiny polka dot skirts...I was bawn a nasty man." Ain't sorry, but/and knows he'll die one too. "Prob'ly go to Hell."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2018/11/15/cma-awards-complete-list-winners-best-worst-moments/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e28138b5e549

Kacey Musgraves was the best album winner. CMAs are radio-friendly country mostly, but sometimes they go for acts without a lot of current chart toppers

Just now discovered that Willie Nelson's taping an upcomimg full-hour Austin City Limits, this livestream started at 8 central:https://www.austin360.com/entertainmentlife/20181119/tonights-night-watch-willie-nelsons-austin-city-limits-livestream-here

I came in on "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die," then a Djangoesque instrumental, now A Tom T. song I'm unfamiliar with: everything quite perky and limber so far, more about the picking than the singing in that regard, but voice is still good enough, in the Willie way.

Well that was a trip. Hope the whole thing will be posted on ACL's YouTube channel, before editing for broadcast, which may not for inst. incl. Bobbie's coda for the finale,"Will The Cicle Be Unbroken">"I'll Fly Away."

Sweet... I saw Willie and his family show at Red Rocks, around 7 or 8 years ago; I was blown away by his bursts of atonal guitar playing... it was like some “harmelodic,” avant-grade shit. Saw the show again here in L.A., a year or so later. Would love to see him play on TV.

Yeah, the sounds he got from Trigger--- long the oldest, ugliest acoustic guitar I've ever seen---were truly karma chameleon, and always fit---even writhing through "Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground," without breaking vibe or meter, like one of those Old Testament, Milton or Blake angels, not from a greeting card (that I'd be likely to get, anyway).
Can prob find more TV appearances on the Tube---he and his family and friends band were all of the very first Austin City Limits ep, in '74, been on there several times since (his collaboration with Asleep At The Wheel etc), and prob some on the Farm Aid channel. His CMT "Crossroads" episode with Sheryl Crow was ace, especially his electric guitar all over "Every Day Is A Winding Road."

Maybe this goes better somewhere else but here's some electro-country:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpOdJhLvHE8

George Jones and the Jones Boys, Live In Texas: True, some of the classick self-torture serenades, though always ready for the spotlight turns, can seem a bit hemmed in here, where ever'body's having so much brisk-to-frisky fun at Dancetown U.S.A., where the supposedly rock & roll-hating Jones delivers a well-fueled "Bonie Maronie" by request, ditto his own "White Lightning, from way back when he was still recording that greasy kid stuff under duress. The Jones Boys, with steel guitar great Buddy Emmons and ace fiddler Re Hayes guesting, open the first set with Billy Butler & Clifford Scott's "Hold It," close for "liquormisson er, intermission" with Ellington's "C Jam Blues," also we get western swing gems "B Bowman Bop" and "Panhandle Rag"--hell, they even bring out Rufus Thibodeaux ("Two-by-Four," George says it) for "Jole Blond," with Emmons and Hayes right in there, of course; that's one of my favorite songs ever. Jones Boys trusty Don Adams is a totally artificial and strangely satisfying Texas-Nashville crooner while the boss takes another break or three, and, like all the JBs and guests, perfectly supportive when he does show up again, which is often enough for me. Really good mono.

Live In Texas 1965, that is. ace fiddler *Red* Hayes.

Charlie Rich, Too Many Teardrops - The Complete Groove & RCA Recordings: Choirs and strings oops upside your head, but get bearable and even occasionally useful, after or during the first couple listens, although Disc 2 still kills some of the weakest material, and that's what he gets for turdpolishing with his surefire sound (a la Elvis, Sinatra, Willie, etc.) But I like a lot and love some, as expected of Big Ol' Charlie on li'l cat feet---that voice, them keys, which deliver the expected drama and rolling country-plus, also the sassiest "Old Man River" and bluesiest "Twelfth of Never" ever.

And as I said over on Charlie's own thread:
Also a couple of intriguing ballads written by Freddie Hart:"Too Many Teardrops" starts out feeling for a fella who lost his love to the narrator, yet, "I did what any man would do"---emphasis on "man," because the cry guy wasn't "strong enough to play the losing hand"--crying and drinking yourself to death doesn't count as a well-played losing hand, so what does? Revenge, mebbe? Doesn't say.
The other Hart-written track, "There Won't Be Any More, " has a terse, I cut-you-off lilt that somehow reminds me of some British Invasion tracks, like uhhh covers like "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying"? But with more attitude.
The Riches-written (lots of originals here) "The Grass Is Always Greener" advises that, "You may think you're rollin' in clover/But you better think it over." Shaddup with that, I must not think bad thoughts!
The Complete Smash Sessions is the one to start with, but this is def worth checking out.

Re redeeming the less promising material, the way Rich and his hairspray angels do "Nice and Easy Does It Every Time" isn't so nice, and it isn't so easy, except in a not-nice sense.

There Won't Be Any More is the latest reissue of the complete Smash sides: an Ace Import, like Too Many Teardrops, and both are readily available on Amazon (as I know from a recent Rich binge, once I found about 2018's TMT---my wallet doesn't thank you, ilm, but I do).

Onetime ilxor and current City Pages editor Keith Harris has The Pistol Annies as his number 1 album of the year. The Ashley Monroe solo album has appeared on a few too I think

But the awards-show inequity pales to what’s afflicting the country airwaves, and the degree to which Music Row refuses to rock the boat — even when it comes to meaningful progress toward gender parity — in favor of not angering the decision makers at radio. Put simply, the inequality issue is one of which everyone is aware, and yet no entity capable of enacting change — from the CMA to Country Radio Seminar — has publicly floated the idea of country’s own task force.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/women-in-country-music-grammy-awards-768170/

https://www.popmatters.com/best-country-albums-2018-2622402944.html?rebelltpage=2#rebelltitem2

Eric Church #3, Ashley Monroe at #4 . Kacey M won

I have to say the new Colter Wall is a huge improvement on the last album

His voice makes my throat feel good. He should do a tea commercial, wrapped in snowy blankets or his bog coat. I like that he seems to travel or sit around in various centuries, maybe. Just gives me that impression sometimes, just passing through.
I don't know what the title of John Prine's The Tree of Forgiveness means, but "I live deep down inside my head" and yet still goes out on a limb and gets some air once in a while, checks the groundhogs and such, a sociable-enough hermit, not trying to avoid his own shadow, or the lonely friends of science. Prine country.

His *big* coat, not bog coat, jeez. Although could be both.

I included a song from it in my Himes Scene poll I turned in last week but didn't vote for the album itself, which is just underproduced. But Kevin Gordon's Tilt and Shine is a great example of the Nashville Prestige Effort that's also insufficiently populist, and good. Gordon has been a cause celebre for Himes himself and for others, and given a budget, some horn arrangements and a good coaching on vocal presence--making him cut the vocals until he gets it right, or better than what's on this album--he'd be a major guy. Because the songwriting and the musical conception is purt near close to "major"; Gordon's writing, while kinda writing-school stuff at times, can be brilliant. As in the song I picked for the poll, "Drunkest Man in Town."

The other local Nashville guy who, if produced more outgoingly (and made to ditch some of the affectations-mannerisms of his singing and guitar playing), might break thru into something more than cult popularity I've been catching some sets by is Jon Byrd, who sounds sort of like Gram Parsons.

The best sorta local thing I saw this year might be Joseph Hazelwood's recent set at a West Nashville club. Hazelwood, who is sort of a country-blues guy writing about modern things in an intermittently modern way, is eccentric and weird enough without trying, and at his best he's on the edge of an unselfconscious pop-blues-folk synthesis, with "pop" the operative word; one tune he did this month reminded me of Seals & Crofts, some schlock-pop remains from the '70s he used with no sign of strain.

Also filed a Scene piece this week on a real interesting mostly unknown Mississippi-born singer, Chelsea Lovitt, who's around 30 and a garage rocker who twists the form smartly and a quasi-country-Americana artist who comes from the Parsons-Chilton school of modified folk-rock-rock. Were she not so abstract, and literary (songs often use free-floating imagery that glances off their ostensible subject matter), she'd be in the league of Nikki Lane or Elizabeth Cook. The album, cut in Nashville in 2016 and just released in fall 2018 to virtually no notices (on a small Knoxville label, Fat Elvis), is You Had Your Cake, So Lie in It, which includes some post-Wanda Jackson vocals along with a few post-Kinks garage rockers and the weird Parsons-esque (reminds me somehow of "Luxury Liner") tune "De Donna," which someone should work to make Lovitt as famous as she probably deserves to be.

Here's what I said about Kevin Gordon this year: https://www.nashvillescene.com/music/features/article/21014643/kevin-gordon-makes-pop-conventions-work-for-him-on-tilt-and-shine

I also did this on a duo of Ivory Coast Simon & Garfunkel-influenced "country" singers whose excellent 1985 album has been reissued by Awesome Tapes from Africa, and they played a Nashville show as well: https://www.nashvillescene.com/music/features/article/21033204/jess-sah-bi-and-peter-one-revisit-our-garden-needs-its-flowers

Those guys are playing out again, and in America! Thanks, hadn't thought to check. Think I posted the reissue on bandcamp way upthread---from backstory there:
Our Garden Needs Its Flowers was a lush fusion of traditional Ivorian village songs and American and English country and folk-rock music. Jess and Peter sang in French and English, delivering beautifully harmonized meditations on social injustice and inequality, calls for unity across the African continent, an end to apartheid in South Africa and the odd song for the ladies...As well as French and English, Jess and Peter spoke Gouro (a Mande language). They had the shared experiences of loving and drawing inspiration from the traditional and ceremonial songs they remembered their mothers singing in their respective hometowns of Barata and Ono. In addition, hearing imported country and folk-rock music over the radio in the early ‘70s was a lightbulb moment for both of them. Jess recalls DJs playing Kenny Rogers, Don Williams and Dolly Parton on the radio in the morning, while Peter notes the significant presence Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Creedence Clearwater Revival had in his listening life.
https://jesssahbipeterone.bandcamp.com/album/our-garden-needs-its-flowers

x-post- listened to Kevin Gordon after I saw his album in Geoff Himes roots music top 10 at Paste. On first listen I thought his bar band roots rock was just ok but my wife was more impressed. Maybe i will give him another listen. Haven't dug into his Iowa writers workshop lyrics yet either.

Gordon has been a Himes subject for years, and Himes overrates him. Himes did a Scene cover story on him, called him the country's best songwriter or some such. Gordon is like a thousand other people in Nashville--they can't just make a good-sounding record, it has to be this commentary on the South or whatever it is. I've seen Gordon play guitar, and he's a very good Telecaster blues guy, solid down the line. Also a pretty good singer. My problem with him is the fucking production values.

Jewly H year-ender piece on women in country and more:

https://slate.com/culture/2018/12/country-music-women-pop-crossover-nashville.html

A number of newer country acts, the majority of them women, presented themselves as singer-songwriters in the classic sense of the term—not just performers who had a hand in co-writing their material, as has become common in Nashville over the last decade or so, but those connecting with audiences on the strength of their particularized perspectives. I’m thinking of major label signings like Rachel Wammack, Tenille Townes, and Kassi Ashton, and artists like Jillian Jacqueline, Bailey Bryan, and Kalie Shorr, who are either on the rosters of powerful indies or entirely independent. from Jewly H essay. Too much music to keep up with. I don’t know these acts at all

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country-lists/25-best-country-and-americana-songs-of-2018-770295/courtney-marie-andrews-may-your-kindness-remain-3-770333/

Dow, you gonna start the 2019 thread?

Yep.