If you wanted to be all buzzy and clickbaity about it, you could proclaim “Marcus King goes country!” or “Marcus King releases a country album!” But that’s not really what’s going on here.
It’s official. Independent country and roots music has a new killer festival on the calendar. It’s called the Unbroken Circle Music Festival, and it happened September 4-6 on the banks of the Ohio River.
Nobody panic. Try to look cool. But what happened in Telluride, Colorado Saturday night (6-21) on the legendary stage in Telluride might be one of the greatest things to happen in Southern rock in the last 25 years.
It’s almost like the entire music industry has memory holed Oliver Anthony. It was just two short years ago that he took a video of him hollering out in the woods all the way to #1 in all of music.
A Southern rock supergroup consisting of Marcus King, Charlie Starr, Paul T. Riddle, bass maestro Oteil Burbridge, Josh Shilling of Mountain Heart, and the incomparable Billy Contreras on fiddle? Are you kidding me?
Bob Wills and Western Swing were just as much jazz as they were country, and the same goes for Sweet Meg and ‘Bluer Than Blue.’ It’s boldly and steadfastly traveling back to the ’20s-’40s period, and reviving the era in sound.
Hannah Juanita’s “Tennessee Songbird” allows you to fall in love with country music all over again. It’s like a love letter to country music. Press play, and let the waves of classic country twang and goodness wash over you
On “Borned In Ya,” Melissa Carper leans into her strengths even more by worrying less about genre, and more about era, while emphasizing what is quietly brilliant about her approach to songwriting.
Yes, yes, and yes. Finally we have a Swamp Dogg album that fits in the country music world. It’s bluegrass. It’s “blackgrass” if you will. And it’s also decidedly a Swamp Dogg album, which means it’s all served with offbeat weirdness.
“People call me retro or throwback, and I’ve been OK with that,” Carper says. “But, I feel like I’m still creating something new. I’m taking styles and blending things in a way that maybe hasn’t been done before.”
For now the second time in a row and in as many years, Melissa Carper and her cohorts have crafted an exquisite work of audio goodness that mesmerizes with its wayback sound and style, stealing you to a simpler era in music when everything made more sense, and the foundations of music were set.
An important subset of the country/roots revolution we’re currently enjoying is women who are fearlessly hearkening back to the very earliest times of American music before it was all corrupted by fads and financial incentives. This is where Sierra Ferrell has found fertile ground, and so has Melissa Carper.
This new album by Melissa Carper entitled Daddy’s Country Gold is not just the blossoming of a songwriter, singer, and entertainer, it’s one of those few and fleeting moments where everything comes together to present music in its perfect, most ideal form.