Category Archives: Americana

News Round Up: T Bone Burnett Discusses Crazy Heart Collaboration with Stephen Bruton

Posted on by — No Comments ↓
  • The Country Music Museum and Hall of Fame plans to update their main exhibit space to devote an area to Americana and contemporary bluegrass music. The new exhibit will feature artifacts from Alison Krauss, Jim Lauderdale, Dell McCoury and Buddy Miller. Also to be included  in the the second floor gallery’s theatre (in front of the Hee Haw exhibit)  a new video exhibit will be featured showing about how topical events and social political issues are reflected and country music. The exhibit will feature examples like Merle Haggard’s “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill,” the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl,” and Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue (The Angry American).”
  • For that Americana rock lover you need a gift for Billy Reid has offers a hand-made and -finished wooden box from Ross LeBlanc containing rare t-shirts inspired by the roots artists Old Crow Medicine Show, Justin Townes Earle, Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit, and the Drive-by Truckers, and also includes a DVD of Old Crow Medicine Show’s live performance at the Tennessee Theater.
  • T Bone Burnett discusses his personal story of singer/songwriter Stephen Bruton. Thier collaboration and friendship led to the music selections for the upcoming Jeff Bridge’s movie about a down but not quite out country singer Crazy Heart. Burnett also mentions upcoming production duties with Jakob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Gregg Allman, Robert Randolph and John Mellencamp, and overseeing an all-star recording of music written by Mellencamp and horror-writer, and Americana music fan, Stephen King for “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County,” a play with music. And then there’s “Tough Trade,” a new series about three generations of country music stars, for which he’s serving as executive music producer. It’s set to premiere next year for EPIX, Viacom’s new multiplatform entertainment service. (LA Times)
  • Paramount Pictures has begun an open casting call to find a Caucasian girl between the ages of 12 and 16 to play the lead role of Mattie Ross in the upcoming Joel and Ethan Coen’s remake of True Grit. (Cowboys and Indians blog)

The Best of 2009

Posted on by — 6 Comments ↓

best-09

It’s been a bumper-crop year for Americana and roots music. There are many reasons for this sonic bonanza but I believe the main drive results from an aging generation used to genre defying music now looking for something a little more comfortable, but no less challenging, as they move from their 20s to their 30s. A generation that grew to see mash-ups as a newly formed musical expression are much more comfortable with genre bending acts like The Drive By Truckers and Deer Tick, and the success of recent T. Bone Burnett stewarded projects, the O’ Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack and Robert Plant and Allison Krauss’ Raising Sand brings older performers and songs to a new audience and shows that the music is not only interesting and exciting, and in a culture steeped in hipster irony something emotionally authentic, but it can make money as well.

Maybe part of the boom was the newly added Americana Grammy category (yeah, I don’t buy that either), or maybe this aging population are used to the internet and discovering music their way instead of having pre-fabricated crap shoved down our throats by the big labels whose only business plan over the last decade is to sue the fans and squeeze musicians tighter, and the commercial radio stations that enable them. As a grassroots cultural correction Americana, like punk rock in the 70’s, is a response to this environment of mediocrity. Only this time it’s with a banjo instead of a Fender Jaguar and a Mohawk (though some of these musicians do sport Mohawks) and wielding the power of social media that does much of the jobs the big labels used to do a generation ago. Whatever the reason for all the music, I’m just happy to be a recipient and humble purveyor of all the goods, and I hope some of you readers find some of this stuff interesting as well.

I’ve expanded my top 10 list to 20 this year to make room for this great embarrassment of riches. By doing this I’ve also done away with my addendum Honorable Mentions, which was always kind of like a cheat anyway.

I was honored to be included with 29 of the best music blogger compadres around in the top 20 Bird List, but I have to admit that the list I submitted for that list has changed about 10 more times ultimately resulting in the list you now see before you….enjoy, disagree, fume and fret ,leap for joy, whatever…just get me some of that spiked Nog while you’re up.

1. Charlie Robison – Beautiful Day (turning life’s lemons into Luckenbach lemon-aid)
2. Kris Kristofferson- Closer To The Bone (#2 this year, but career-wide nobody can touch Kristofferson for songwriting.)
3. Gretchen Peters with Tom Russell – One To The Heart, One To The Head (a brilliant Western cinematic duet)
4. Lindsay Fuller and the Cheap Dates –Self Titled (Flannery O’Connor with a telecaster)
5. Miranda Lambert – Revolution (The anti-Taylor works from inside Music City)
6. George Strait – Twang (The King of Country. Period)
7. Tom Russell – Blood and Candle Smoke (Beat poet hillbilly travels dusty roads and smoky coffee shops with members of Calexico)
8. Carolyn Mark and NQ Arbuckle – Let’s Just Stay Here (Quirky yet familiarly cozy Canadian country music)
9. Corb Lund – Losin` Lately Gambler(See Canadian reference above)
10. Grant Langston – Stand Up Man (Bakersfield is alive and well)
11. Wrinkle Neck Mules – Let The Lead Fly (alt.country is alive and well)
12. William Elliott Whitmore – Animals In The Dark (punk and folk ethos delivered with timeless soul)
13. Amanda Shires – West Cross Timbers (Winsome chanteuse travels dark and dusty regions of the heart)
14. Angela Easterling – Black Top Road (Roots/Rock sweetheart with a folk sense of cultural activism)
15. Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel – Willie and the Wheel (perfect union channels the spirit of Bob Wills)
16. Todd Snider – Excitement Plan (Steve Earle should study this release, social commentary doesn’t have to suck)
17. Justin Townes Earle – Midnight At The Movies (the younger Earle continues to make his mark by reaching into country music’s past)
18. The Felice Brothers – Yonder is the Clock (The Basement Tapes run through a dark prism)
19. Guy Clark – Somedays The Song Writes You (A Texas treasure that can do no wrong)
20. Deer Tick – Born on Flag Day (Indy spirit that uses twang as a strong driver)
21. Those Darlins – Self-titled (Riot Grrrl spunk with a Carter Sisters trad reverence)

It’s been a bumper-crop year for Americana and roots music. There are many reasons for this sonic bonanza but I believe the main drive results from an aging
generation of people used genre defying music but now looking for something a little more comfortable, but no less challenging, as they move from their 20s to their
30s. Kids that grew to see mash-ups as a newly formed musical expression are much more comfortable with genre bending acts like The Drive By Truckers and Deer Tick.
The success of recent T. Bone Burnett stewarded projects, the O’ Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack and Robert Plant and Allison Krauss’ Raising Sand shows that the music is not only interesting and exciting but can make money as well.

Maybe it was the newly added Americana Grammy category (yeah, I don’t buy that neither), or maybe this aging population are used to the internet and discovering music their way instead of having pre-fabricated crap shoved down our throats by the big labels whose only business plan over the last decade is to sue the fans and squeeze musicians tighter, and the commercial radio stations that enable them. As a grassroots cultural correction Americana, like punk rock in the 70’s, is a response to this environment of medicocrity. Only this time it’s with a banjo instead of a Fender Jaguar and a Mohawk (though some of these musicians do sport Mohawks.) Whatever the reason for all the music, I’m just happy to be a recipient and humble purveyer of all the goods, and I hope some of you readers find some of this stuff interesting as well.

http://www.thebirdlist.org/

I’ve expanded my top 10 list to 20 this year to make room for this great embarrassment of riches. By doing this I’ve also done away with my addendum Honorable Mentions, which was always kind of like a cheat anyway.

I was honored to be included with 29 of my music blogger compadres in the top 20 Bird List, but I have to admit that the list I submitted for that list has changed about 10 more times ultimately resulting in the list you now see before you….enjoy, disagree, fume and fret ,leap for joy, whatever…just get me some of that spiked Nog while you’re up.

1. Charlie Robison – Beautiful Day (turning life’s lemons into Luckenbach lemon-aid)
2. Kris Kristofferson- Closer To The Bone (#2 this year, but career-wide tobody can touch Kristofferson for songwriting.)
3. Gretchen Peters with Tom Russell – One To The Heart, One To The Head (a brilliant Western cinematic duet)
4. Lindsay Fuller and the Cheap Dates -Self Titled (Flannery O’Connor with a telecaster)
5. Miranda Lambert – Revolution (The anti-Taylor works from inside Music City)
6. George Strait – Twang (The King of Country. Period)
7. Tom Russell – Blood and Candle Smoke (Beat poet hillbilly travels dusty roads and smoky coffee shops with members of Calexico)
8. Carolyn Mark and NQ Arbuckle – Let’s Just Stay Here (Quirky yet familiarly cozy Canadian country music)
9. Corb Lund – Losin` Lately Gambler(See Canadian reference above)
10. Grant Langston – Stand Up Man (Bakersfield is alive and well)
11. Let The Lead Fly – Wrinkle Neck Mules (alt.country is alive and well)
12. William Elliott Whitmore – Animals In The Dark (punk and folk ethos delivered with timeless soul)
13. Amanda Shires – West Cross Timbers (Winsome chanteuse travels dark and dusty regions of the heart)
14. Angela Easterling – Black Top Road
15. Rita Hosking – Come Sunrise
16. Todd Snider’s Excitement Plan
17. Justin Townes Earle – Midnight At The Movies
18. The Felice Brothers – Yonder is the Clock
19. Guy Clark – Somedays The Song Writes You
20. Deer Tick – Born on Flag Day
21. The Builders & The Butchers – Salvation is a Deep Dark Well

News Round Up: Emmylou Harris , Miranda Lambert and Brandi Carlile Join Lilith Fair Line-Up

Posted on by — No Comments ↓
  • Longtime member of Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys passed away at the age of 72. (Billboard)
  • The End Times Opry stops into New York City’s Lower East Side cozy Living Room on December 20th 7-10PM. The End Times Opry is a result of a group of artists who performed at the Pumpkintown Opry, in Pumpkintown South Carolina, for aging church groups. The End Times Opry fuses comedy, spoken word, and music for a collective entertainment experience. Performers include singer/songwriter Alexa Woodward , sonwriter/puppeteer Phoebe Kreutz, singer/songwriter Annie Crane , singer/songwriter Dan Costello, the band BoomChick, singer/songwriter Jack Hardy, singer/songwriter Frank Hoier and comic relief by Michael Robinette and Charles Massey of No Expectations Comedy.
  • Emmylou Harris , Miranda Lambert and Brandi Carlile will join Sugarland, Indigo Girls and Sheryl Crow performing with the newly reestablished Lilith Fair created by Sarah McLachlan. Some of first-round 18 cities already announced for this traveling tour are Atlanta, New York, Dallas, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Denver, San Francisco, Montreal and London.
  • Ranch Twang favorite, The Mighty Drive By Truckers, have left New West records and signed with Dave Matthew’s ATO Records (yes, THAT Dave Matthews.) Thier ATO Records debut record and the band’s 10th, The Big To-Do, is scheduled to be released March 16, 2010. The Big To-Do features thirteen new tracks from the Drive-By Truckers and was produced by their long time producer, David Barbe (Sugar, Bettye LaVette). “It’s very much a rock album,” says Patterson Hood of the Trucker’s upcoming release. “Very melodic and more rocking than anything we’ve done since disc 2 of Southern Rock Opera.” The Drive-By Truckers will be hitting the road at the beginning of the new year and a full tour supporting The Big To-Do will be announced in early 2010.
  • St. Luis based root-rock stalwarts The Bottle Rockets will release a new live 7-inch single through Euclid Records store on Dec. 15. Recorded during the band’s in-store performance on Record Store Day this past April 18, the release will be strictly limited to 300 copies. The 45s are sold exclusively at Euclid Records (www.euclidrecords.com) for $9.99. For each sold a dollar will be donated to the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund (NOMRF) to benefit musicians displaced or suffering loss of equipment in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Euclid Records is located at 601 East Lockwood in Webster Groves, Mo. (Country Standard Time)
  • Fox Searchlight’s fading country singer comeback move, Crazy Heart,starring Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Lost Highway’s Texas singer/songwriter Ryan Bingham, looks like a great movie. It seems that it was lucky to make it to the theaters at all.

Music Review: Mandy Marie and the Cool Hand Lukes – $600. Boots

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

mm coverThe Internet not only allows this site to exist but it makes discovering bands (and my work) a lot easier. I discovered Mandy Marie and the Cool Hand Lukes after coming across a featured review of their new release $600. Boots over at the the No Depression site (are you a member? You should be)  written by the good folks over at hyperbolium.com. The part of the review that caught my eye was the comparison with Ms. Mandy Marie and Ms. Wanda Jackson. After listening to $600. Boots and hearing Ms. Morris bet out her songs, rip her tele her and her Cool Hand Lukes (Morrison Foster – upright bass, Eric Grimmitt – Telecaster numero dos, Lewis Scott Jones – drums) I do believe that Ms. Jackson would be proud (and might jump on the stage with them.)

This is the wrong side of the Americana tracks. Evoking barrooms with chicken-wire caged stages, wood shavings on the dance floor, good-natured brawls, whiskey-fueled tears, Saturday nights with little thought to Sunday morning. Stories of sin, salvation, cheating, fighting, wayward youth, hot-roding, all-night trucking, doping and boozing spiked with an amped-up hillbilly Rockabilly/Bakersfield style that makes all that suffering sound like a grand old time.

Dresser Drawer Bible is a motel room honky-tonk Gospel-tinged number sang by a gal at the end of her rope and the title cut train-chugs Cash style road-weary tales that proclaims in the chorus “We’re too dumb for New York. Too ugly for L.A.”

Booze and broken heats are on fill display with This Old Tattoo, is a boot-skooting broken hearted tale of emotional and skin-art regret, and  (I’m Gonna) Drink You Out Of My Mind a high-gear jaunt on forgetting. For pure honky-tonk-girl-had-enough goodness you could do any better than Leave Me baby, Leave Me be, which sounds like a Loretta Lynn song written on meth.

Like a shot of good whiskey $600. Boots ends with a smooth burn, a blazing version of Jimmie Roger’s classic Mule Sinner Blues complete with Ms. Marie’s dead-on yelping yodel.

four-half-rate

MySpace | Buy

(I’m Gonna) Drink You Out Of My Mind (mp3)

Rose Maddox

News Round Up: Billy Joe Shaver Disovers his Roots, Closes Out 2009 with Willie

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Texas country music legend and friend of Twang Nation Billy Joe Shaver is closing out a great career year with a slew of concerts including a a sold-out show with the Texas Yoda Willie Nelson, Ray Price, Billy Bob Thornton and Kris Kristofferson on Wednesday, December 16 at famous (in Texas anyway) Carl’s Corner Truck Stop. Billy Joe is also looking out for the working man by launching what he calls the “Bottom Dollar Shows” to give people access to his shows during these trying times. Shaver is also looking toward the new year by preparing material for a new album, including a new composition, “The Get Go,” which he’s been debuting in live appearances.

Besides his personal legendary musical status Shaver has learned that he comes from historic bloodlines. His great-great-great grandfather was Evan Thomas Watson (1759-1834), a Virginia-born Revolutionary War veteran who settled in an area of the Arkansas Territory that would become part of Texas. Shaver has known since childhood that he’s part Native American as well, but recently learned that he’s also a descendant of Crazy Horse, the respected war leader of the Oglala Lakota who fought against the U.S in an effort to preserve the traditions and values of the Lakota way of life and participated in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876. Shaver recently visited the tribe’s reservation, close to where a large mountain carving similar to Mount Rushmore is being created as a Crazy Horse Memorial. He was given a Native American name: Spirit Eagle

The Revival Tour – Slims – San Francisco, CA – 11/6/09

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

Me and many others have drawn a crooked, dirty line from old-time country, mountain and folk music to punk music. Working class themes punctuated by simple rhythms defined more by passion then artistry While I consider myself a music fan, I know next to nothing about current punk (or post-punk) bands, so I took it on the advice of a friend to check this tour out. I did some research and like what I learned.

The tour started last year as the brainchild of Chuck Ragan, frontman for  post-hardcore/punk band, Hot Water Music, and presented by Ragan’s own label Ten Four Records. The format gathers a revolving cast of musicians from various punk and post-punk bands to revive the old style jamboree and hayride format of organic collaboration. The musicians either stripped down their original material to fit the folk/ Americana acoustic format or they have written material that fits the genre structure for the show and egos are kept in check as musicians accompany each other in various combinations.

Aside from Ragan, this bill for the Orlando show featured Jim Ward (of At The Drive-In, Sleepercar and Sparta), Frank Turner (of Million Dead), Joey Cape (Lagwagon), folk/Americana singer Audra Mae, The Anderson Family Bluegrass Band, Konrad Wert (Possessed by Paul James) and featured the frequent and excellent fiddle playing of Jon Gaunt & Digger Barnes on the upright bass bringing up the low end.

The show starts with all the musicians on stage exhibiting the democratic and supportive ethos that characterizes the tour. It sounds like a recipe for chaos but all the performers are amazing and the caradre from the musicians spills out into an adoring crowd that whoops and claps along.

Audra Mae and The Anderson Family Bluegrass Band were the only full-time Americana acts on the bill and they delivered in spades. The former sang with a clear stream voice that warmed your heart and made you forget your troubles and the latter,  Mom Christy on upright bass, Dad Mark banjo and their family Paige (guitar/vocals), Aimee (fiddle), Ethen (mandolin) and Daisey (fiddle), tearing it up onstage and winning over an audience that probably could not name one song by Bill Monroe.

El Paso, TX based Jim Ward, formerly the rhythm guitarist of At The Drive-In, the vocalist/guitarist in Sparta, and currently fronting his Alt-Country project Sleepercar performed a spirited set and appears to be comfortable in his newly chosen genre (must be those Texas roots) and British folk/punk Frank Turner (formerly the vocalist of U.K. post-Hardcore band Million Dead) performed a rollicking set drinking songs from across the pond and remained us all that “What you call Americana and country has been kicking around my country for a couple of thousand years.” tis true. Both  performers left me wanting more.

Possessed by Paul James did a sit down set with a soar and yelp of his voice he embodied the best tradition of a one man band and local boy (well, Santa Barbara) Joey Cape played a great set to an audience that seemed to know his songs word for word and sometimes filled in. Cape’s  voice, more than the others,  lent itself well to the more subtle singer/songwriter format. Jon Gaunt was a great pick for fiddle support. He reminded me of O’Death’s Bob Pycior as a find of a guy that brings ferocity yet precision to the instrument.

As a master of ceremonies Chuck Ragan is a modest one. His graveled vocals and acoustic attack that can only come fro a guy that cut his teeth on punk’s intensity and he commands the stage during his set.  As he plays through his set the rest of the band enters the stage and things end as they began , camaraderie and revelry on a large scale. Check closed by saying “See you next year!” so it appears  that the Revival Tour will continue for years to come. I’ll be there.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMkuUxsQHzQ[/youtube]

Thankful For The Music

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Okay, I got a lot of hits and responses to my post on the dismal glitter parade that was the Country Music Awards. I’m encouraged that it was almost universally positive, though some was not (when will people get that just because I don’t like Taylor Swift’s songs or music I am not opining on her as a person? How many of these people know Taylor Swift personally? Maybe she’s a horrible diva that likes bathing in champagne and looking at her charting position and cackling “Suckers!!”), But I don’t just enjoy cursing the darkness (hilariously), I like to light a candle now and again.

The relationship of country music and Music City has been fraught with tension since Judge Hay started MCing the The Grand Ole Opry on the WSM Barn Dance from the fifth-floor radio studio of the National Life & Accident Insurance Company in downtown Nashville on November 1925. Music City is in the business of business.  The product they have historically offered is, at its best, a reflection n tradition and heritage of the Amerivcan human soul, the good bad and the ugly. Trouble results when the bean counters weigh in on song creation, studio production and trends are chased, not because they are interesting branches or simpatico with the music, but just to cash in. This output is mediocre if monetarily profitable. As a fan, and not a shareholder, I find this unacceptable and a damn shame and am noy t shy to say as much.

I am currently reading the Ralph Stanley’s biography Man of Constant Sorrow and am struck by how resolute the man and his brother, Carter, was about keeping their “simple, mountain music sound” and how Ralph threatened to quite the band when the introduction of the new-fangled instrument ,the dobro, was considered as an addition to a Stanley Brothers song. Stanley was about 23 at the time. Can you imagine anyone that age starting out in music having that clear and focused of a vision of their music and not just will to allow outsiders to shape them to make as music as possible? Br. Stanley had a clear idea of their brand of “hillbilly music” and what the fans wanted it that he was willing to chuck the whole thing to save it.

I believe there are a few creators still out there today creating a brand of hillbilly music, maybe a more distant cousin of Stanly’s, but it’s no less bracing in it’s allegiance to tradition even as it breaks genre grounds in other directions.  Covering the miles, often in a car or a van instead of a bus or charted plane, they bring grateful fans a sound that just can’t be found largely on commercial country radio, and willing to hang around the place afterward toseel a CD or shirt,  press some flash, sign an autograph and take a picture or two.

Off the top of my head I offer from my home state of  Texas Dale Watson, Wayne Hancock, James Hand, Jake Penrod, Junior Brown, Hayes Carll and legends like Ray Willie Hubbard and Tommy Alverson.  In other regions there is Joey Allcorn, Elizabeth Cook, Robbie Fulks, Chuck Mead and the new school with Those Darlins, Justin Townes Earle and William Elliott Whitmore, Grant Langston, Angela Easterling, the Felice Brothers , Lindsay Fuller, Amanda Shires, and many many more are out there many night of the year doing what they love telling their stories and leaving it all out on the stage.

Like i said in the original CMA post, I criticize because i come from this music. Its part of my Texas heritage and part of my family business. I love it and , like family, am not shy to pipe up when I think it’s done wrong.

Music Review: Wrinkle Neck Mules – Let the Lead Fly [Lower 40 Records 2009]

Posted on by — 3 Comments ↓

Lead_Fly_CD-208x208Richmond, Virginia’s Wrinkle Neck Mules’ fourth studio release Let the Lead Fly finds the band – Andy Stepanian on vocal, guitar, mandolin, Mason Brent on vocal, guitar, mandolin, pedal steel, Brian Gregory on vocal, bass, Stuart Gunter on drums and Chase Heard on vocal, guitar, banjo – strips down their earlier sound resulting in this fine rustic Americana bedrock veined with flashes of indy rock gold that fits well with other roots rockers like The Drive By Truckers,  Son Volt and American Gun.

The music of the hills and hollers is part of the backbone of rock and roll, but by dipping deeper into the well of influence Let the Lead Fly fits together the contemporary and the old timey like a snug harness. The title cut, with Andy Stepanian’s graveled Fogerty-like hollerin’ and top-notch fiddle, sounds as natural as an off-the-cuff front porch hullabaloo. Heard takes on the vocals for the mid-tempo Fortune Fades is a tunes that sounds like Jay Farrar stopped by The Band’s up state New York Big Pink hideout for a Summer night jam.

Stepanian and Heard use thier respective strengths to harmonize on rustic-jangle of Medicine Bow and Dopamine Dream has a nice Red Dirt regional twang with guitar and pedal steel (which is interlaced throughout this release nicely) playing off each other nicely. Interplay between the old-timey and the contemporary doesn’t stop there, The mountain lament The Waters All Run Dry dapples with clawhammer banjo and is met later in the song with a sweet run of electric guitar. Sepia colored memories are the source the smooth barroom shuffle of Catfish and Color TVs and Howard Johnson tells the tale the simple pleasures of a small town hangout. Let the Lead Fly is a great release  that,  strikes the right balance of old and new connected by excellent songwriting and performance chops. I can’t wait ’til the WNM reload.

Official Site | MySpace | Buy

four-half-rate

Wrinkle Neck Mules -  Let the Lead Fly.mp3
Wrinkle Neck Mules – The Waters All Run Dry.mp3

Hating on the CMAs

Posted on by — 15 Comments ↓

After again watching the Country Music Association Award ceremony last week I was again left with the feeling that I had sat through an hours-long infomercial. I mean is Taylor Swift and Kenny Chesney really the rightful heirs of Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash? Of course they’re not.

But they are the heirs of a a finely tuned trade organization whose job it is to perpetuate brand and maximize profits. Nothing to do with crafting great and memorable work. Swift and Chesney are not Lynn and Cash, they follow in the gilded footsteps of Shania and Garth.

I’ll say it right out, mainstream pop-country is crap. It’s not crap because it sells zillions of units, but because to hit numbers that high the product typically is as brain dead boring. Innovation is risky and costly. Mediocrity and homogeneous product maximizes profit by drafting on an already proven brand.

Some argue that those sales numbers equals the quality of the music. Bullshit. That’s like saying that since McDonald’s sells “billions and billions” that they offer the best meal you can eat. It’s nothing to do with quality and everything to do with predictable and ubiquitous product.

The rougher and more traditional strains of country music have been regulated into the Americana camp due to the level of control Music City has over the “country music” brand. If Hank Williams or Dolly Paron were teenagres starting today with their unique sound they would have to work the Americana side of the tracks because Music City would see them as too risky a venture to bother with. Country music of the last 20 years is less a genre and more a brand akin to Coca Cola or Microsoft.

Sure there are occasional rebels. Jamey Johnson, Miranda Lambert. Kris Kristofferson and George Strait made appearances on the awards show. But they are typically trotted out just to allow the CMAs to prove to themselves that they do offer a diverse showcase and pay homage to tradition. Again, bullshit. Just because McDonald’s offers a salad on the menu does not make it a healthy eating establishment.

I don’t know why I expect something more than product placement from award shows. Ultimately they are trade shows displaying the newest year’s product, akin to a car show or electronics expo. Only instead of industrially created gizmos they are offering cultural artifacts. The process that makes a great MP3 player or car rarely makes a great, and by great I mean not predictable and boring, song.

As a self-professed “Americana and-all-derivatives-thereof” blogger why do I even care abut the glittery side of the tracks? Because I come from country music. It’s in my family and in my North Texas blood. And I know that what passes for country music when people superficially speak of it is not the whole picture, but the is what people typically refer to. It’s like hearing people talk about Thomas Kinkade when discussing art when you’ve seen a van Gogh up close. I care, and complain,  because I love the music.

Ultimately, the CMAs come off as one long PowerPoint presentation. No matter how much music and how many snazzy animated sweeps and colorful backgrounds are thrown in, it’s typically all diverting from one tedious, fabricated message to sell t-shirts.

News Round Up: Kris Kristofferson Presented With BMI Icon Award

Posted on by — No Comments ↓
  • Rosanne Cash talks to the Wall Street Journal about her new release, The List, and joins George Jones by stating her views on the homogenization of mainstream country radio.
  • The Who’s Roger Daltrey says Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium is the “That’s the best bloody place for a musician to play in the whole —— world.” You get one guess what goes where the lines are but this is a quite as it appears over at Country Standard Time.
  • Kris Kristofferson was presented with the BMI Icon award Tuesday evening and watched while Vince Gill, Patty Griffin and Willie Nelson performed some of his best-loved compositions.  “Why Me,” “Help Me Make It Through The Night,” “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)” and “Me and Bobby McGee.”
  • Geoff Muldaur recently sat down with the New York Times’ Ben Sisario to discuss the extraordinary group of musicians who came together to form the Texas Sheiks. The Texas Sheiks includes the late Stephen Bruton (Kris
    Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt, and T-Bone Burnett) who did not live
    to see the album released, blues singer Johnny Nicholas (Big Walter Horton and Robert Jr. Lockwood, Asleep at the Wheel), Cindy Cashdollar ( Levon Helm, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Paul Butterfield), Suzy Thompson ( Dave Alvin and Alice Gerrard).  Bruce Hughes (Jason Mraz, Bob Schneider)