One hard and fast rule around Saving Country Music is that I don’t review EP’s except for in “extreme cases.” There’s just too much music out there these days to consider half efforts, and in many cases, this is what EP’s are. So what is an “extreme case?” Well in 5 or so years, not once have I had an EP cross my desk that I felt qualified. Until now.
Well I can tell you this. No matter what you were expecting from this album, you’re probably going to be surprised. Who Dat is a completely different direction for Joe Buck, while still being exactly what he’s always done. That’s the root genius of it. Yes, without question this album is a lot more tame, but what this approach does is bring out the roar of quiet anger.
By request, here is my list of the greatest underground country albums of all time. The underground country movement started roughly in the mid 90’s on lower Broadway in Nashville that at the time was a run down part of town. Young musicians from around the country, some from punk backgrounds, came together from their mutual love of authentic country music.
Last night Tim McGraw and Faith Hill began their stint of shows at Vegas’s Venetian, and apparently the show opens with an unveiled shot at country music’s traditionalists and two artists they hold dear: Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams. Tim and Faith’s “Soul2Soul” show opens up to Waylon’s “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” playing mockingly.
Last night the 2012 American Country Awards transpired on Fox, with Luke Bryan coming out as the big winner. The Georgia native walked away with an unprecedented 9 awards. How did the country singer rack up so many trophies? By giving a new meaning to the term “crossover appeal,” taking awards in both male and female categories, including the coveted Female Artist of the Year, and Female Single of the Year for the song, “I Don’t Want This Night To End.”
Curb Records’ talent roster continues to contract. The latest defector is Jo Dee Messina, whose charted 9 #1 hits and sold more than 5 million records worldwide during her 18-year career. The reason? Just like Tim McGraw, Hank Williams III, Clay Walker, Lyle Lovett, and LeAnn Rimes to name a few, Jo Dee Messina is fed up with Curb refusing to release her music.
These honky tonk albums are hard ones to make in 2012. Everyone else in country is trying to carve their niche, bending and blending genres and doing any manner of outlandish things to get folks to pay attention to them in a glutted music world. Meanwhile the charge of the honky tonk musician is to keep the traditions alive through purity.
Rachel Brooke is one of the few select artist with enough mustard to rise out of the ashes of the country music underground and become a force in the greater roots world. Like an early Emmylou Harris, the music industry should be shuttling her across the country to lend her singular vocal texture to other projects in between putting out excellent solo albums that time finds hard to forget.
Every year this list stirs a little controversy because people misunderstand that these are not supposed to be the songs you “like” the best, but instead is supposed to be compositions in a given year that have the most impact. They’re songs that make you change the way you see the world, or change the way you see yourself. It is reserved for those few compositions that have the ability to change lives and to change the world.
The fight for the purity of country music is almost as old as the genre itself. The conflict between pop and traditionalism, and the fight for creative control for artists runs like a thread throughout country music’s history, defining it as much as the twang of a Telecaster, or the moan of a steel guitar. Here are some of the most iconic images of country music revolution, and the stories behind them.
2012 was a bumper crop year for great albums in the greater country music world, and that necessitates a bolstered lineup of candidates for Saving Country Music’s coveted Album of the Year. 7 total made the list, with others admittedly getting completely screwed by their absence. I already have a bead of sweat forming across my brow brought on by the impossible decision of who I’m supposed to pick off this list.
Over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a topic more beset with assumption, conjecture, and sometimes, idiocracy. Whether Taylor Swift uses Auto-Tune in either the live or recorded formats is not an opinion. Either she does, or she doesn’t, and the evidence we have to make those conclusions in many cases is obvious.
Don Maddox, the last surviving member of the wildly-influential Maddox Brothers & Rose, will be recognized in his hometown of Ashland, Oregon for his 90th birthday at the Don Maddox Birthday Celebration on Saturday, December 8th. The Maddox Brothers & Rose are one of the most influential bands in the history of American music. They played shows with folks as far ranging as Ernest Tubb and Elvis Presley.
Ray Wylie Hubbard and Ronnie Dunn wrote some songs together back in September, and has been in Austin where for the last few days, they’ve been recording with an all-star band of George Reiff, Rick Richards, Ian McLagan from Faces, Brad Rice formerly of Son Volt, and others. “Started recording in Austin yesterday,” Ronnie Dunn posted on Facebook.
Alive at the Deep Blues Fest is a full tilt listening experience. No tired, dragging renditions of “Mustang Sally” to be found here. Instead what you have is the raw, uncapped energy of true blues revitalization channeled through some of the strongest talent the roots world boasts. Deep Blues partnered with Alive Naturalsound Records to record the concert and showcase artists on Alive’s roster in a live context.
Reno, Nevada’s Hellbound Glory with be touring with Kid Rock on his “Rebel Soul” tour to transpire at the very start of 2013, trekking through the Midwest and South. Leroy Virgil, the frontman of Hellbound Glory is one of country music’s best kept secrets in regards to songwriting. The band first rubbed elbows with Kid Rock on his “Chillin The Most” cruise down in Florida last March.
I have been struggling to write this article for almost two years, but have been putting it off because there’s some hard things to say, and I didn’t want to “talk down” a movement that was already trying to deal with pretty alarming trends. But I think that especially now, zooming out and trying to be honest and critical in a constructive way is important, because there is positively no doubt that underground country is dying.
Somewhere in the last year or so, country music crossed that line from being the last bastion for respect of beautiful women in American popular culture, to hanging out in the gutter with the rest of the vermin, making videos of venereal-infused floozies dry humping flashy vehicles in the classic vein of tasteless, materialistic, shallow-minded rap imagery.
If a song can change a life and music can change the world, I can’t think of a better gift to give your friends and family for Christmas than music. So Saving Country Music has been feverishly working our little fingers off frantically compiling all the great Black Friday / Cyber Saturday / Holiday Season deals on music and merch right here in one place.
So what positives could come from the show? If you take away all the drama between the characters that’s really the central focus of the series, what you have is the biggest inside look into the business of country music ever released to the public through popular media and a vehicle for presenting new music to millions of folks. The ugly trappings of Nashville go with out saying. Here are some of the positives.
Jesus may have turned the other cheek, but he also overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple where they didn’t belong. Just like the Romans of biblical times, these pop country fart tards are foreign occupiers who need to get the hell out of country. I don’t pretend to know what Jesus would do, but if I were him, I’d shove my sandal straight up Thomas Rhett’s ass and tell him he could keep his Michelob Ultra.
They’re like a perfect recipe that includes all of your favorite ingredients, though you can’t taste any of them individually in the end result because they’re blended and mixed so well. Gothic, poetic Americana, Gospel, and strait-laced country elements, they are all interlaced harmoniously with a broody pall cast over everything for a cohesive sound and an immersing experience.
Willie Nelson just released his latest memoir Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die, and many college students that grew up in an era when Willie’s songs were virtually nowhere to be found on the radio, are shocked to read that Willie Nelson is a musician, and an influential one at that. To them he’s known as one of America’s most notorious pot heads.
Her immeasurable influence spanning country, rockabilly, and rock and roll is undeniable. As far as I’m concerned, Wanda Jackson has no “unfinished business” to attend to. She’s given her heart and soul to the music, and the music is better off because of it. She’s got nothing to prove, but she proves it anyway in Unfinished Business. And so does producer Justin Townes Earle.
