Invariably this is the question brought up when Saving Country Music or any website or publication chooses to don its poison pen and stick it in the eye of a ne’er-do-well assaulting our eardrums with ghastly tripe. Many chide, “Why can’t we just focus on the good stuff?” Never mind that the web traffic to articles that are negative in nature tend to outpace the positive ones 3 to 1.
Yes, if you needed any more evidence that the Mumfordization of music has reached every single God forsaken corner of popular music world, now Dave Mustaine and his heavy metal legacy band Megadeth are browsing through Guitar Center catalogs looking for “guitjos” and releasing a supposed “bluegrass-inspired” track on their latest album.
Radio station 93.5 KOOK and 1230 KERV in Kerrville, TX, managed by legendary DJ Big ‘G’ Gordon Ames has a radio promo done by Kinky Friedman that simply says, “We play Hank. All of them.” Yes, we all know about country music’s most famous family, but here are the other 5 Hank’s that helped establish the sound of country music (and didn’t actually have “Hank” as their legal first names either).
The rapping grandson of Waylon Jennings, one Will “Young Struggle” Harness, or “Struggle” as he prefers to go by now has a new album out called I Am Struggle, that doesn’t just borrow heavily from Waylon’s catalog, it is downright built from it. 7 of the 9 tracks on the country rap record directly incorporate samples and structures of Waylon tunes in an unprecedented intrusion of rap into the country music format.
Eric Strickland is Country with a capital ‘C’ and couldn’t make a bad album if he tried. He may be more locally-oriented than the other big names in honky tonk music, but gives up nothing to his more well-known comrades when it comes to cutting songs and records. Eric Strickland and The ‘B’ Sides are doing their part to save country music. Now it’s time to do your part by giving them your ear and attention.
Take the West Coast country coolness of Dwight Yoakam, the haunting tremolo of Roy Orbison, the sweaty rhythms of Los Lobos, and what you get is Miami’s indescribable and enigmatic throwback old-school all-things-to-all-people house band for America known as The Mavericks. “In Time” might be the best album in their nearly 25-year history, and its one of the best put out so far in 2013.
Former Dixie Chick Natalie Maines has a knack for allowing her words to precede her. She left country after her quote about George W. Bush torpedoed the trio’s career, and ever since she’s been lobbing grenades back in country’s direction, including yet another in a new Rolling Stone article that represents her as “declaring war on Nashville.”
Sources close to the Sheryl Crow camp have confided in Saving Country Music that part of Sheryl’s country move is politically motivated. Sheryl is a staunch environmentalist, and has championed specific issues over the years, most notably in 2007 when she advocated the use of only one square of toilet paper during restroom visits to conserve trees and increase global oxygen levels.
Whenever I find myself thirsting for inspiration, I tend to search out the blessed gift that is the harmonies of sister pairings. Any two great singers can harmonize, but few can match the instinct and tone of two blood relatives, making the artform seem as effortless as breath. Following is a list of singing sisters who never cease to inspire.
The Last Ride, a movie depicting the final days of Hank Williams, will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 6th through Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, but you can win a copy right here on Saving Country Music by leaving the name of your favorite Hank Williams song in the comments section below. Saving Country Music will give away two exclusive copies of the movie to randomly selected readers.
Country music legend Ray Price is finally being released from the hospital after being admitted on May 9th for severe dehydration. Ray was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in November of 2012 and began receiving radiation treatment. By February of 2013, the cancer was in remission and Ray was back performing, but a medication Ray was taking for Post Radiation Syndrome resulted in the loss of too many fluids.
These dudes are on the mother of all tears. Their song “Cruise” threatens to be the biggest country song in 2013, and has already set multiple records, including spending 12 weeks at the top of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart—the first time this has happened by a duo in the 69-year history of the chart. “Cruise” has already been certified triple-platinum.
Country music loves to pride itself in supporting the troops and the cause of the military more than any other genre. Though some of it may be bravado meant more for marketing, there are many legends in the country music ranks that served their country as young men. Here’s a list of country heroes who served the county.
Carolina Still puts out a great-sounding, patient, and professional album through Rusty Knuckles Records called The Color of Rust, spiking old music with a new energy. Self proclaimed “old-time moonshier stomp,” they bring the primal enjoyment a jug-like band can evoke, without any of the grab ass garbage that can come from half efforts.
If you would’ve told The Avett Brothers back in 2007 when they released their album Emotionalism that in five years, the best-selling album in all of music would be from a roots band playing acoustic instruments and featuring emotional, singer/songwriter material, they’d probably call you crazy. But that is the power one album can have to launch a formidable music career…
Garth Brooks was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 2012. As is to be expected, Brooks was humble in his acceptance. But what went unreported at the time is that Garth actually attempted to turn his induction down, feeling that there were others that were more worthy than him.
The long-rumored, long-anticipated Hank Williams III and David Allan Coe collaboration was a long time in the making and even longer coming. But it’s here, and though some may have been wishing for a few songs or even an entire album, clocking in at over 7 minutes, “The Outlaw Ways” will satiate your Hank3/David Allan Coe collaboration jones just fine.
There are songwriters, and then there are songwriters; those folks that so effortlessly set words to the moods and moments of life and that can make you weep like a baby or wildly happy to be alive. These songwriters are there for us, creating a soundtrack for our most enduring memories, making the most of the life experience by enhancing it with music.
Every time the topic of country rap is broached, accusations fly that people who oppose the emerging sub-genre are simply opposed to country music evolving. But country rap would be bad even if the verses were sung instead of rapped. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to mix elements of American roots music with elements of hip-hop. Enter Adam Matta, an extraordinary and gifted old-school beat boxer.
We all know them and we all hate them, those ubiquitous and ridiculous pop country songs that make us hang our heads in shame, embarrassed to call ourselves country fans, constantly making us having to explain that no, we don’t listen to that type of country. They pursue us doggedly, on the radio, over the speakers at the grocery store, blaring from a car full of high school kids at a red light.
Can four dudes from Germany make American roots music and still be authentic? Do they have the ear, the personal history, the DNA, the dirt under their fingernails to do what American-based string bands do, or will they be forever relegated to being once removed from the American musical experience? If The Dinosaur Truckers and their new self-titled LP are any indication, the answer would be “Ja! Natürlich!”
If Red Dirt spans a wide sonic palette that ranges from hard country to straight rock n’ roll—with alt-country, country rock, Southern rock, and even some country pop thrown in between—then Jason Boland is the hard-edged bookened defining Red Dirt’s country border. In other words, it is pretty difficult to be more country than Jason Boland and the Stragglers.
The Last Ride, a movie depicting the final days of Hank Williams, will finally be released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 6th through Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. Starring Henry Thomas (the kid from ET), Kaley Cuoco (Big Bang Theory), Jesse James, Fred Dalton Thompson, and Fred Tolobowsky, The Last Ride follows the last 72 hours of Hank’s life.
The Americana Music Awards just announced their 2013 nominees. On September 18th, the awards will once again be held at the prestigious Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, and once again the nominations show a very narrow focus on the dramatically broadening world of Americana music. Aside from the Instrumentalists, only 11 names of artists or groups compile the entire field of 2013 Americana nominees.
