The Turnpike Troubadours make songs about love cool to listen to again. This is also their ace-in-the-hole, what makes them a band that could break out. They were also very patient with this release, waiting well over 2 years since their last album to let the songs come to them and the groove to materialize before heading into the studio.
This album is not the worst album ever put out in country music. With the advent of country rap, “New Outlaw” country, and the laundry list approach to country music in general, pop country now finds itself in a bit of a haven from the harshest of criticisms. What Lionel Ritchie’s Tuskegee album does hold the distinction of being is country music’s most embarrassing album put out to date.
Amongst all the bustle and big names in 1999, another superlative Austin talent released a debut album a little more quietly. The idea that there’s an amazing, world-class music talent on every corner of Austin, TX is not a myth, and Roger Wallace is a testament to that. But what many of Austin’s legendary local artists don’t have that Roger Wallace does is that one album that withstands the test of time.
On Friday night (5-4-12) we attended a show of reigning Saving Country Music Artist of the Year Justin Townes Earle at Antone’s in Austin, TX’s increasingly-crowded west downtown district. The Bloodshot Records-signed son of Steve Earle was in town in support of his latest record Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now, with a full band behind him for one of the first times on tour.
Where the country world comes in is in the heavy-handed and stark use of country and Southern influences in Paul’s Boutique, made by hip-hop pioneers from New York City. In many ways, country and Southern sounds and themes are the foundation for Paul’s Boutique. The problem with Paul’s Boutique was that it was not very popular in its time, and was considered a flop compared to License to Ill.
The current landscape of hip American music is like a lyric out of a classic Bob Dylan song about the changing times. Old is new, and nerdy is cool. It is in this environment that the Alabama Shakes have flourished like the imperceptible germs on the tips of your fingers when rubbed into a Petri dish and left to fester. The Alabama Shakes are not for everyone, but I struggle to find a wart to point at.
This fiery, unfettered, full tilt assault on country music strikes that perfect chord of being both inescapably familiar yet remarkably fresh. Johnny Cash on cocaine may be the most appropriate description. More Memphis than Nashville, more madness than melancholy. But moreover, Bad Juju is just one hell of a good time.
What do we mean when we say “country” music? Well take a listen to Mississippi native and Texas transplant Jason Eady’s new album AM Country Heaven, and that should give you the strongest of all possible clues. And what do people mean when they say “Texas” country? This album isn’t a bad example of that either. Where I distance from a lot of other music writers is in the project’s originality.
Did you ever wonder what it would sound like if a performing artist with absolutely no qualms or reservations spread their arms wide in a succumbing posture and completely forfeited their Will to a record label saying, “Okay Music Row, do your worst! We’ll that is exactly what you get with Luke Bryan and his gawd awful album Tailgates and Tanlines.
Marty Stuart is on an amazing roll ladies and gentlemen. What he’s doing right now with lead guitar player “Uncle” Kenny Vaughan and The Fabulous Superlatives is stuff that legends are made of. You know those periods in an artists’ career that you look back on like they can’t do wrong, churning out amazing songs and albums one after another?
Hollywood seems obsessed with finding talent among the masses with their silly reality show contests like American Idol and The Voice, when in reality there’s a boatload of talent just sitting there waiting to be discovered right under their surgically-crafted, cosmetically-sculptured noses. So here’s a list of some bands that are go ready, right now, no excuses.
Katy bar the door and baton down the hatches folks because Lone Wolf, the Italian, trilingual, pizza spinning, gator wrestling, globe trotting, banjo plucking, banjo building, wild-assed Floridian from up North via Costa Rica has a new album headed your way. Warn the neighbors downstairs, cause it’s about to get loud and feet will be stomping!
Trampled by Turtles have flat out blown up on our asses, debuting videos on CMT and selling out theater shows, while still being true to their original approach. That’s what happens when you have good guys putting out great songs and great albums and developing a sound that is familiar enough that it’s easy to get comfortable and acquainted with.
Isn’t Arron Lewis bored yet and ready to return to butt rock? Apparently not, as he told The Tennessean late last week he’s planning to release a “very country” album in June. What does “very country” mean? If his previous song “Country Boy” is any indication, it will be songs with laundry list country lyrics, and that’s exactly what you get with his new single “Endless Summer”.
Scott McDougall from Portland, OR might be the last of the true Romantic-era troubadours: a bardic-like, almost fantasy character that arrives in town with a bass drum on his back and guitar in hand, and sets up at the local pub to sing songs, spin tales, slay lonesome moments, and save the spiritually repressed before whisking out of town like something out of a dream.
It might be true that we would never know Lukas Nelson from Adam if his pops wasn’t the almighty braided one, but this might be more of a commentary on the parody and glut of music the American consumer must sift through to satiate their music wants rather than a commentary on Lukas’s talents. Because as far as talent goes, Lukas got an unfair share of the heavy persuasion for any family.
What separates The Wrinkle Neck Mules from the standard fare of Southern-based country-inspired rock is a fierce passion embedded in every element of their approach, from their songwriting and singing, to the lyricism and sounds, there is a weightiness, a fiercity, almost like Apocalyptic or battlefield poetry. It’s a great balance that conveys energy and importance, without being uncultured or immature.
If there’s honor amongst thieves, then it only seems fitting there should be a Grifter’s Hymnal. And if there’s going to be a Grifter’s Hymnal, it’s only fitting Ray Wylie Hubbard should compose it. The ingredients of grifters are already mixed there on his palette: Tales of dead and dying things and dens of iniquity, the struggle or the soul between good and evil, and the difficulty sometimes of telling the two apart.
For all intents and purposes, Justin Townes Earle has “made it” in as much as any musician can in the modern era of music, and this usually endows the artist with the latitude to do just about whatever they want sonically, and JTE decided to give a “Memphis feel” (his words) to his newest endeavor. I hear Memphis here, but I also hear just as much early Motown…
Davy Jay Sparrow from Bloomington, Indiana is not a neo-traditionalist, he’s an ultra-traditionalist. If you don’t like the “Olde Fashioned” country sounds, then turn back now. If you do, the tunes that Davy and His Well Known Famous Drovers throw down on this album are good enough to be considered right beside BR549, Wayne Hancock, and the other overlords of country’s old sounds.
In the end I’m just surprised at the sheer lack of direction with this album. I guess there’s a “Family Man” concept here, but it almost seems a burden to the music instead of a compliment. However I would be lying if I said Family Man didn’t have any moments. And yes, Shooter is a nice guy, but that is not a sonic element you can measure in music.
The best part about the Carolina Chocolate Drops is they symbolize the greatness, the importance, and the hope of true diversity in music. I’ll say what many others are scared to say: It is cool to have people of color playing country music, and not just playing country, but “getting it,” and not using race as either a bit or a crutch.
If you are truly a fan of country music and have an open heart, you will like 100 Proof. In the Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn mold, 100 Proof revives the lost appreciation for the strong, yet sweet country woman, while staying away from the surface symbolism that erodes the substance from many of the other artists that attempt this difficult feat.
Live At Antone’s is an essential for any serious Possessed by Paul James fan, if only for the coolness factor of seeing the man’s face on vinyl. It serves the purpose of what both a live album and a vinyl experience should: capturing those magical musical moments that when you experience them personally, it seems like such a shame that you can’t share them with the rest of the world.