Rolling Country 2018

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."

Some of these are full band, rockin' in a Model-A way.

"Well the night came undone, like a party dress" (that's not "Georgia Road," it's a bluesy waltz).

"Acony Bell" still the one to end with: seems like a dry little flower, but something inside and all around keeps it alive.

So that “Saving Country Music “ website guy is defending Huckabee and criticizing the critics of him. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised

he's the worrrrrst

I spent an hour talking to Trigger of Saving Country Music the other day. He's gonna part of a piece I'm doing about the, er, state of country criticism.

did you ask him why he's such a sexist prick

In following the twitter battles, I see someone recommending the following country and alt-country sites/writers on twitter instead: highwayqueens ; the musicdivide ; TheDailyCountry; ; CountryUniverse ; Honest_Country ; countrycritics

Thanks---Edd aside, I mostly occasionally skim for info---but did fairly recently read Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz (handsome trade pb w good pix, Routledge, 2003), by Rick Kienzle, who also contributed to the late, useful Country Music Magazine. He doesn't just enthuse, he describes what made and still makes the heyday of Western Swing so musically gratifying, and isn't shy about detailing how and when and sometimes why (increasingly desperate attempts to biz-adapt) the recorded offerings of his protagonists, incl. heroes, turned to shit.
It's kind of Four Lives In The Be-Bop Business in reverse, with questing young musos from hither and yon peaking early in California, then scuffling, going back to the boonies and/or hitting a wall re The Nashville Sound and Countrypolitan.
Although there are exceptions! To any predictable arc, anyway--for instance, Ray Price went to honky tonk with a strong beat, drawing the livelier geezers and some youngsters, without actually playing that rock&roll stuff---then he decided he *did* want to do the smooth Nashville thing, not only on record but replicated live, challenging his carefully established audiences and hardened swing-to-tonk road dawg band---never mind we don't have no orkystraw or choir, just do it. And you out there, you better like it.
And the saga of former teen swing fan Willie Nelson, whose vocal timing (also some of his lyrics) broke the tried & true Hit Factory assembly line, as far as the suits and producer Chet Atkins was concerned--well, you've heard about that, but maybe not in such telling detail (come to think of it, maybe he was influenced by the tenacity of Price, an early employer).
Very handy discography of reissues too.

Also I've gotDreaming Out Loud: Garth Brooks, Wynonna Judd, Wade Hayes, and the Changing Face of Nashville(William Morrow,1998), by Bruce Feiler. Bought it after reading an excerpt in which the author runs into Garth Brooks soon after a National Holiday (Thanksgiving, I think). Brooks allows that he spent it curled in a fetal position, contemplating the marketing of his next release. Asked why he still tortures himself thusly after selling nine jillion albums, GB says he wants to be an American Archetype, like John Wayne. Well okay--but Wayne wasn't nearly always the biggest box office draw, far from it at times...

Anyone who thinks John Wayne is some kind of great American archetype is right, of course, but they can't have seen many John Wayne movies, in which he's usually brutal, one-dimensional and therefore perfect for the world of John Ford. Wayne in Hawks' Rio Bravo and Red River, however, is a very nuanced character, one who shows humor and even doubt (which Wayne shows, the doubt part anyway, in the one Ford film with Wayne worth mentioning, The Searchers (honorable mention to Stagecoach, which is really Gregg Toland's movie, not Hawks' or Wane's). In today's cultural climate, Wayne might as well be a serial killer, and that's both to be expected and somewhat unfortunate. The idea of a man telling women what to do, even in the very nuanced Hawks films, like Hatari!, in which women are treated as equals and are also somewhat puzzling figures these men have trouble keeping their heads straight about--sex, and the humorous aspects thereof, are a big part of Hawks even when he's most serious--is not something you can get away with any more and I won't defend that old-school viewpoint. But Hawks, compared to Ford, Huston and even Ray, was virtually a feminist, tho the Hawks bio indicates he was a compartmentalized, sneaky womanizer. I definitely think Ida Lupino is a very fine, underrated director, so let her receive some praise, she deserves it. Enough on the auteurs for now. Garth is just too fucking sincere to grasp any of this, which isn't to say he's stupid.

I hever did listen to him much, despite endorsements from xheddy and zgau, for inst. But, while working in a 90s CD store, I got the demographic appeal: he was one of those who grew up with arena rock---popped up on a Kiss trib, and a Voice feature mentioned "Pink Floyd guitars" on an album drama---so it was time for arena country, High Hat. He was certainly in the vanguard of that, and credited the reinforcement of Chris LeDoux's stage shows LeD. became a real rodeo bravo, so why not ride a mechanical bull while the music played---seem to recall him tagging his approach as "Aerosmith in a cowboy hat." Take that far enough, and you get Aldean for instance, but--
In any case, I never saw that show, only got into him as he was checkin' out fairly early (liver cancer), clued by the famous Garth line, "A worn-out tape by Chris LeDoux, lonely women and bad booze Seem to be the only friends I've got left at all. " From "Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old." And a lot of Brooks' peers related to that too, no doubt, but LeDoux's own music, though it brought the wide open spaces, incl. the lonesome parts, I mainly recall for its confidential tone, as unpretentious as suave can get without boring. Toby Keith seems to embody both sides of LeDoux more than Brooks does, but Brooks is a brother in the trustworthy, well-meaning sense, unlike the moody, shifty TK, who still thereby seems like the more interesting artist, but I owe Garth some more listens, in part for turning me onto Chris.
Being an archetype means getting in under people's hats and staying there, deeper than "Hey, he likes what I like" etc.---could see maybe say Madonna or Taylor Swift with that kind of staying, resurfacing power (gotta move from power to authority though, to be an archetype). We'll see.

Oh yeah, speaking of Wayne, I liked Gary Wills' attentive, appreciative, shrewd, informative as hell, Big Picture with a zoom lens (book), John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity, good crisp take here:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/reviews/970323.23haskelt.html

"zgau"? Still waiting for that one; I meant xgau ocourse.

Jewly Hight on on the changing face of country. Well worth your time.

Meanwhile, yours truly on the related topic of country criticism and the man called Trigger and Saving Country Music. Kinda remedial crit for people who don't know from poptimism, I guess, with Chuck Eddy and Frank Kogan making an appearance, along with the equally fine country critic Marissa R. Moss.

i only know her bc she toured with jimmy eat world a few years ago but the courtney marie andrews record that came out today is a deep country stunner

https://open.spotify.com/album/1U8907wmzKNgvDEW3mk21S?si=vcno9D-WTpGJhA-kJMaG7Q

oh sweet i'm glad she was mentioned by someone else on this thread

Yeah it's real good! It was streaming on NPR for a while

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.