Remember those that gave all.
Johnny Cash – Ballad of Ira Hayes
Jason Isbell – Dress Blues
Drive-By Truckers – The Home Front
Ernest Tubb – Soldier’s Last Letter
Tom Waits – Soldier’s Things
John Michael Montgomery – Letters From Home
Sammy Kershaw – The Snow White Rows Of Arlington
George Jones – Fifty Thousand Names Carved In The Wall
Bruce Robison (w/Charlie Robison) – Travelin’ Soldier
Merle Haggard – Fightin’ Side Of Me
Radney Foster – Angel Flight
Are there any more maligned or misunderstood genres of music than hip and country? When asked what kind of music a person likes these two styles are at the top of the excluded list. Now imagine them joining forces in some unholy alliance of country-rap (or as one person I know coined it “crap.”) I can just imagine the exit becoming glutted with the fleeing hordes. Screw ‘em….
I was cruising twitter and came upon several posts/tweets the name of Colt Ford. He’s become sort of surprise dark horse on the both the country and the hip-hop charts . I have a soft spot for both country underdogs so I checked him out.
Though not as left-of-center as Buck 65 or Ridley Bent , or as bat-shit crazy as “Insane” Shane Mckane, this 300 lb former PGA golfer comes across as a drinking buddy of Everlast and Bubba Sparxxx that might have passed a bottle with Jamey Johnson (who appears here on the cut Cold Beer) when he was working out the lyrics for Honky-Tonk Badonkadonk.
Like a typical hip-hop album Ride Through the Country offers cameos from other artists and you can judge the performer by the company he keeps.
The title cut is a slow country-rock ride back to Colt’s Georgia roots with smooth backing vocals and guitar furnished by John Michael Montgomery. The excellent Gene Watson trailer-park kiss-off cut No Trash in My Trailer gets a great reworking here and is made better by the great Mike Dekle on chorus.
As mentioned earlier, Jamey Johnson sings chorus on Cold Beer a rollicking party cut and Nashville singer Lindsey Hager provides a smooth counter to the Ford’s gruff lone-wolf with a soft heart lyrics on Never Thought. Saddle Up is a hell raising fiddle laced cut featuring the Alabama rapper Attitude. The bluesy, swaggering Good God O’mighty is tailor made for a good old fashioned hell raising drunk singalong.
The themes on Ride Through the Country are as cartoonish as a typical rap or country album – beer and rotgut, fighting, Southern cooking, pride in vehicle choices (4X4), pride in America, God and the bible, keeping it real – except the mean streets of Brooklyn or Philly are replaced by the dusty, feel good (where even fights are cordial) streets of Georgia. This is about as good as something like this can get and it beats the crap out of anything Kid Rock ever did. Somebody give me a hell yeah!
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUKt91wvPE8[/youtube]
If you ever pondered who might hold the title for best pedal steel player wonder no more. According to the users of the industry networking site, Musician’s Referral List (MRL) that would be Tommy Butler. Using scoring is 1 through 10 Butler received almost exclusively 10 (highest) ratings from his peers and fans. Butler said this about his success, “This career has taken me places and afforded me opportunities to see and do things that I would have not gotten to do without music. It is an experience unlike any other.”
Some of the more artists Butler has performed with are Joe Nichols, Tim McGraw, John Michael Montgomery, Doug Stone, Vern Gosdon, Hank Williams III, Daryle Singletary, Dierks Bentley, Jessica Andrews and The Wilkinsons. Butler is currently working with the much heralded brother and sister country duo, “The Roys” who are touring with Legendary George Jones on select dates throughout 2008.
