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.
There are many festivals out there now catering to independent country and Americana. But in three short seasons and amid a pandemic, Under The Big Sky Fest has quickly made the case for being the biggest and most important of all off the strength of its lineups.
It’s not that those “authenticity” concerns don’t continue to linger. But Midland is most certainly a mainstream country music bright spot, and has been ever since the band’s inception. This new album is no exception, once again taking Midland’s throwback 90s-era style…
I listened to the entirety of ‘The Sonic Ranch’ album by Midland and watched all of the 45-minute documentary so you don’t have to. It’s not that it’s terrible, or in any way offensive. For what it is, it’s fine, and you can’t approach either the album or the film as if these were finished products
To some it was much ado about nothing. But to many in Austin, TX, the Midland trio conducted a grave offense when a photo featuring the band ended up in a recent Washington Post feature with the sign of the legendary Sam’s BBQ in east Austin changed to the name of one of their songs.
Midland will not be heading to Europe in a few days for scheduled tour dates in December as planned, and will also miss upcoming shows in Idaho and Las Vegas after postponing all their remaining tour dates in 2019 to deal with a family emergency. “We regretfully must postpone our upcoming tour due to a medical emergency.”
The effort to save country music must be a pragmatic one. Classic country like the stuff Midland is peddling has become a hot commodity in the mainstream and beyond in the last couple of years, and don’t question for a second that Midland and their big radio singles haven’t been a catalyst for this positive development.
“If I ever meet that guy from Saving Country Music he is gonna see just how Country I really am!” says Mark Wystrach of Midland, while calling Saving Country Music’s coverage of the band “lies” and “click-bait.” But it was never about how “authentic” Midland was. It was about their attempts to unnecessarily embellish their back story.
“I feel like we manifested [Midland], because this is our playground…,” says Shane McAnally. “When these guys walked in and were a vehicle for those kinds of songs, and also quite capable of writing them as well, it was like ‘Weird Science,’ like, it wasn’t our design, but it’s almost like we put into a machine what we wanted, and out came Midland.”
I can’t stand these Midland guys. I can’t stand their faces, I can’t stand their bullshit Tom Selleck circa 1985 mustaches, I can’t stand their stupid getups, or the fact that they’re making a mockery of the authenticity of scores of Austin-based country artists, and legions of traditional country performers across the globe.
There will be one point of interest for some country fans at the 2017 VMA Awards on MTV. One of those “authentic, hardscrabble, Texas country” guys from the new band Midland will be up for no less than four VMA awards during the 2017 presentation. How, you say?
As time has gone on, I find myself disliking these dudes more and more because I can’t beat back the obvious reality that we’re being misled about these guys. Midland is a machination of the big Music Row industrial complex, no different than most major label artists.