The New York Times has a nice piece on something I’ve seen first hand. the rising popularity of Roots Music here in New York. The city that gave you the smoky Greenwich Village folk clubs from the 60’s seems posed to offer the same proving ground for roots and Americana music.

From the article: “There’s another generation of people who want to hear music that’s accessible, that’s not a prefab product, that’s lyric based but not preachy,” said Adam Levy, a guitarist and singer-songwriter who has played on all of Ms. (Norah) Jones’s albums. “If there’s a roots movement in New York now, I think of it in those terms.”

Nebraska’s Lincoln Star Journal has a nice article on Johnny Cash’s enduring legacy. From the article”
Cash’s popularity isn’t restricted to the United States. When Gerardo Meza, singer of the Mezcal Brothers, donned his black suit and took the stage in Sweden, audience members started calling him Johnny Cash. After Meza threw some Cash-like stage moves into the act, the response was even more intense.

“They’d go crazy,” he said. “In Sweden they are fanatical about Johnny Cash. I was walking down the street in Malmo and ran into a guy with a huge tattoo of  Johnny on his shoulder. When I’d get up there in my black suit, I’d hear ‘You are just like Johnny Cash.’”

For Meza, that was a compliment in many ways. A fan since he was a kid, Meza acknowledges Cash’s influence on his songwriting, performing and life.

Adding to their earlier list of country, pop-country  and singer-songwriter albums of 2007, PopMatters.com adds their list of 2007’s best Americana music. Or as I like to call it, the stuff that doesn’t fit the narrow country mold cast by Nashville and usually kicks that woeful genres ass. Where else could the likes of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers (who once opened for Plant on tour) and Bettye LaVette be found on the same list? Like America herself, this is a big tent. Look for Twang Nation’s list of the best of 2997 next week.

The ever snarky yet entertaining music site PopMatters are dropping their “Best Of…” lists by genre and their list of 2007’s Best Country is an insightful pick of the crop. My three favorite female  country crooners of the year, Elizabeth Cook, Sunny Sweeney,  and Miranda Lambert made the list as well as some typical Nashville faire. They also take time to take some cheap shots at the Eagles (Linda Ronstadt’s old backing back reinvent itself as the oldest boy band on the planet, HA! ) which always scores points with me.

And then there’s this lyrical insight to Rascal Flatts.

It’s safe to say Rascal Flatts will never make that leap across the firewire because I really don’t see any merit in an outfit that takes ostensibly good ideas, drowns them like kittens in a syrup of glossy good taste, skins them, and then drags them out over four minutes where two-and-a-half would have been more than enough. It’s all enough to make you long for an American Idol or two.

Bless you PopMatters….bless your snarky hide!

One of the most memorable show I ever attended here in New York was the CMT Crossroads featuring Rosanne Cash and Steve Earle. The pairing of artists from the country and rock/pop genre is getting harder and harder to differentiate from one another but it’s still one of the best shows on CMT. The New York Times has a nice slide-show on Crossroads featuring Joss Stone and LeAnn Rimes, Kid Rock (Bob Ritchie) and Hank Williams Jr., Bonnie Raitt and Lyle Lovett, Bon Jovi and Sugarland and Kenny (Babyface) Edmonds and Trisha Yearwood.

CMT reports that spooky author and member of the Rock Bottom Remainders band Stephen King has included new albums by Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett on his year-end list of favorite music, published in the Dec. 7 issue of Entertainment Weekly. Earle’s Washington Square Serenade topped the list, followed by Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky, Lyle Lovett and His Large Band’s It’s Not Big It’s Large, John Fogerty’s Revival and Southern Culture on the Skids’ Countrypolitan Favorites.

Kurt Campbell who’s bio states that he’s  is an expert on Asia and security issues who is now chief executive of the Center for a New American Security and served in the Pentagon in the Clinton administration, in charge of Asia/Pacific issues, and earlier taught at Harvard. Mr. Campbell writes over at that mouthpiece for the Blue Sate agenda, The New York Times, that country music is a  place to gain a”…deeper insights into the soul of America even without leaving the obvious attractions of Blue State life.”

As a person enjoying the educational, cultural, culinary and economic booty of the bluest of states (New York) I agree with Mr. Campbell when he writes:

Yes, even with its love for the vehicular and alcoholic, country western is the best place to start to learn a little something   about what it means to have a family, to struggle making ends meet, to own a gun or a pickup truck, to support our troops     unquestioningly, to enlist in the military and fight our country’s wars and to generally be very proud of what America stands  for — and to profess confusion over just what all this fuss is about when it comes to our foreign policy choices.

But I urge Mr. Campbell to also pick up recent releases from Steve Earle, James McMurtry or Darrell Scott and many others to hear great country and roots music with a clear insights into foreign policy.

Popmatters.com is in the midst of doing the contentious and thankless job of counting down the “Top 100 All-Time Best Country Songs.” As they mention:

We kept this list, in the words of Strait, pure country: No Wilco. No Flying Burrito Brothers. No Old 97’s. No alt-country—there’s a time and place for honoring those heroes, and this ain’t it.

We based this list on two things: popularity and our own opinions. Just because a song was popular, however, doesn’t mean it made the cut. Same goes for the quality of the songs; because of space restrictions, we had to leave a bunch of our faves on the editing-room floor.

Still, in our opinions, these are indeed the 100 best country songs of all time. Let the disagreeing begin.

Yeah it’s the list is littered with pop-country drek like Garth, McGraw and the Judds but with #45 bing Jerry Lee Lewis’ “39 and Holding” and  # 64 being Emmylou Harris’ & Gram Parsons’ “Love Hurts” it ain’t all bad….so far

Which alt.country legend worked in the mailroom at Rolling Stone magazine in New York? Who’s father and stepfather are both in the Country Music Hall of Fame? If you know the answers to these questions and want to tackle more like them the always entertaining Chet Flippo has a challenging country music quiz over at CMT.com.

I got about 70% right. Not surprisingly I got all Garth related questions wrong.

the risk of being not only a Chet Flippo (CMTs Nashville Skyline) fanboy but one for Ms. “crazy chick” Miranda Lambert as well. Chet’s latest post (thanks 9513) on Miranda’s rise to stardom on her own terms and some of the cool things she’s done that lends her more cred than most of her other Music City counterparts:

She learned a valuable lesson in songwriting with her first album. The title song, “Kerosene” — which really put her on the musical map — sounded very much like Steve Earle’s “I Feel Alright.” Very much like it. After that was brought to her attention, she added Earle’s name as her co-writer on the copyright. And on the royalties. She told Barry Mazor in a No Depression interview, “I didn’t purposefully plagiarize his song — but unconsciously I copied it almost exactly. I guess I’d listened to it so much that I just kind of had it in there.” Well, hell, outlaws rip each other off now and then. But then they usually own up about it — as she did — very quickly.

Cool, no? How many other Nashville Star and CMT alum would go out of their way to credit Earle (and share royalties with him) rather than dispatch a labels lawyers to pay him off? Class act! Miranda is making me proud of Texas in a way that Willie and the Chicks did.