Last summer when Mile 0 Fest announced its intentions to hold a Texas music festival in Key West, Florida, and then announced a lineup that seemed almost too good to be true, there was an awful lot of concern and trepidation about what could happen.
Perhaps Mike and the Moonpies are the greatest true country band out there right now. They at least deserve to be in that discussion. But what is hard to argue is that Mike and the Moonpies are the band out there right now where the attention their music deserves is woefully out-of-whack with how many people know about them.
Sometimes the best way to illustrate absurdity is by being absurd. Sometimes the best way to protest something is through parody. Songwriter, producer, singer, and performer Dustin Christensen does both in a new song he’s released randomly under the pseudonym Dean Summerwind called “Parked By The Lake.”
So what happened? It’s less likely that Justin Timberlake and Timbaland were lying, and more likely that the country record Justin Timberlake envisioned never got made. At some point in the process, Timberlake must have had a change of heart. The entire pursuit was scrapped for what became “Man of the Woods.”
It’s the local flavor, the authenticity, the dedication to themselves, their fans, the music, and the true-to-life dues paid by Mike and the Moonpies that make them darn near the perfect embodiment of the Austin, TX dance hall and dive bar band so many want to emulate, but so few want to put in the sweat or make the sacrifices to actually become.
I’m sorry, but Luke Bryan’s “Most People Are Good” is a good song. It’s a really good song. And we’re all just going to have to deal with that in whatever way we individually see fit, however painful it might be. The biggest problem with “Most People Are Good” is that Luke Bryan sings it.
From the lowly and remote outpost for underground country that is Salt Lake City, amid the spires of Latter Day Saints churches and the shimmering mountains cutting into the sky, you will find two old souls by the name of Ryan Eastlyn and Braxton Brandenburg, known collectively as the Ugly Valley Boys.
At 12:01 last night (or this morning), after all the hands had been shaken, and all the hugs exchanged on the Saturday Night Live set in New York’s Rockefeller Center, you didn’t know what to do with yourself. Okay, now you’re supposed to just nestle into bed and act like that didn’t just happen?
What happened to Justin Timberlake making a country record, or at least including some country or “earthy” Americana on it? I can’t tell you. However “Say Something”—the studio track that is—delivers somewhat on Timberlake’s more updated promise of Man of the Woods being “Americana with 808’s.”
Journeywoman songwriter and closet singer/performer Caitlyn Smith just released perhaps the best country pop record to grace the roster of Music Row projects in a half a decade or more, and we should all be embarrassed and inconsolably incredulous it took so damn long for this voice and these songs to get their proper due.
The Söderberg sisters don’t just sing, they soar. Their harmonies are so angelic and adept, the siblings come across more like deities than entertainers, untouchable and ethereal, blessed with immortal capacities, and brought to the Earth only to convey their wisdom in sonnet and rhyme.
“Parallel Line” could have been cut by Ed Sheeran, Keith Urban, The Weeknd, Justin Bieber, or whomever. It doesn’t really matter who sung it; it would have sounded almost exactly the same. That’s why so many immediately identified this as an Ed Sheeran song. Popular music is just numerous pop franchises with many different faces.
“Woman, Amen” is the first complete song to grace our ears since Dierks experienced his vision quest whilst among the mountains of Telluride, CO—rekindling his bluegrass roots, communing with nature, sprinkling fresh blueberries and certified non GMO rolled granola over a bed of Greek yogurt for breakfast every morning.
Nobody really wants to be an Outlaw. They just think they do. All that black leather and badass attitude, booze and women, it looks like the essence of cool from afar. But it’s a lot easier to admire the Outlaw life from a distance than it is to actually live it yourself.
Context is everything here, and it’s critically-important we regard what the end game with this song is. The impetus for Carrie Underwood’s “The Champion” is to be a TV theme song for the Super Bowl on NBC. But I don’t know folks. As was expressed recently, we need Carrie Underwood in country right now, but not necessarily this version.
What’s the value in late career success when you sell out to attain it like David Lee Murphy has done here? You can forgive the lightness in the writing. You can even excuse the cavorting with Kenny Chesney. But that stupid electronic drum beat is the type of thing David Lee Murphy should be railing against.
The sincere love of authentic country music is something that a genuine country artist cannot be swayed from. It’s a bond, almost like an oath or affirmation, that becomes affixed to the soul, and grounded so deeply with penetrating roots, it is impossible to snap or even strain them, regardless of the allure.
The new Urban Pioneers album ‘Hillbilly Swing Music’ is true to the title, filled with fun ditties and infectious reels that reawaken the simple joy of primitive American string music in a way that is invigorating and fun, yet still enriching with intelligent turns and deceptively-smart songwriting.
Quietly, the Brothers Osborne have deposed the terrible Florida Georgia Line as the biggest duo in country music, at least when it comes to peer recognition and appreciation by the industry. Florida Georgia Line is still a juggernaut in radio play mind you, but that appears to be slipping from their grasp too.
One of the most erroneous arguments made in music is that traditionally-inspired country cannot be relevant to the modern ear—that it’s a mode stuck in nostalgia, with a by-gone influence not receptive by the young and hip of today.
Will 2018 be yet another banner year for independent country releases like 2017 was? We’ll have to see, but what we do know is what to expect in the release department for at least the first quarter of the year, while rumors abound about other projects that could come to light later in the year. Here’s a detailed run down.
While in the independent realm of country music, 2017 went down as a record year for quality projects, the mainstream was downright abysmal pretty much across the board for both songs and albums. There actually were quite a few pretty good songs, but most struggled to gain traction in the charts.
2017 was a bumper crop year for great country and roots records, and this is reflected in Saving Country Music’s 2017 Essential Albums list, which has expanded once again to include a total of 65 albums, each of which was reviewed in-depth during the year, and each which can be seen with a summation of the review.
Country music will not be saved by just one soul, even though this is a thought process many fans and much of the media tend to buy into, often putting an unfair burden on the careers and purpose of certain artists, and placing them at odds with what they should be focused on, which is the creative process.