- Chet Flippo at CMT’s Nashville Skyline features thoughts on the new Wilie Nelson bio “Willie Nelson: An Epic Life” by Joe Nick Patoski. From the post:

Patsoki has ascribed his fascination with Nelson to his own decades-long quest to discover a way to write the real Texas book, the one that finally captures the giant sprawling state and its larger-than-life characters. He says he finally realized the answer lay right before him in the form of a Texas superstar he had already interviewed many times before. Willie Nelson was Texas.

- Ryan Adams has written on his blog that the Ryman Auditorium is a “shit hole in Nashville”and that he hates, HATES country music. And always has. And he “references” it when he makes music that sounds like that, the way a director would use water as a backdrop for a svcene (sic) with a shark in it.

And here I thought that sobriety would make Ryan less of a sniveling self-absorbed prick.

- Plans were announced today for this year’s 25th Annual International Country Music Conference.

“The International Country Music Conference is the premier academic event for those studying and writing about country music,” stated conference co-chair Don Cusic. “It is appropriate that ICMC is held at Nashville’s Belmont University.”

This year the conference is set for May 22 to 24, 2008.

Stacy Chandler at Hickory Wind has posted her husband Geoffrey’s matrix of a vision of an alt-country video game detailing artists, settings and powers. A sample:

Artist: Ryan Adams

Setting: A back alley behind Quizno’s at 4 a.m. or The Austin City Limits stage

Powers: Two fighting modes - “Greasy dopemups mode” where he can just sit there and take all kinds of damage

–or-

“Rage filled dopemups mode” where he gets a phone and the opponent is suddenly holding an answering machine to be the target of a blistering verbal assault

Hilarious!

Aquarium Drunkard recently commented - Grieving Angel (or, What Happened to alt.Country) - on the demise of No Depression magazine as a sign on the wall that alt.country, and all its various strains is headed for a well deserved dirt nap.

Everybody wants to be Nietzsche and be the one to get the “God Is Dead” headline. So Jeff Tweedy decided to chase the hipsters and ape Radiohead and Al Green instead of pursuing his inner Jimmie Rogers. Good riddance. His work in Uncle Tupelo will always be respected but making Tweedy the canary in the alt.country coal mine a like holding up John Lydon as the torchbearer for punk. Public Image Ltd.? Punk is dead! Artist champion then abandon, or simply just cross for a spell, genres every day with questionable intentions and to mixed success. Their movement across genres doesn’t leave the genre left dead.

Yes, No Depression magazine was the go to messenger for the genre and its many branches, but their demise seems to be more a reflection on external forces - the economy, paper prices - and internal business opportunities not pursued - changing editorial direction, overlooking the power of advertising on the web - rather than a symbol of a genre’s demise. If Rolling Stone magazine pulled the plug tomorrow would people assume rock is dead? Hardly. We’d think that somebody at Rolling Stone really screwed up.

Some see the embodiment of the genres extinction in its commodification and acceptance by the mainstream. Abercrombie and the Gap start selling pearl snap western shirts. Urban Outfitters starts to sell John Deere caps for $30. the same ones you could once get for free with two bags of feed at the local supply store. Bullshit. When leather jackets with safety pins turned up in the windows of Macy’s New York store and Hot Topic sprang up in malls across the Nation many beat the drum of punks demise. Punk didn’t give a shit what they said and gave us Green Day, the Offspring and Rancid.

And as far as the acceptance of the mainstream, this is still music with folk and country in its DNA. It is made to be appealing and to be related to by all people living a workaday life. With troubles and families and simple joys. It is made to be accessible so mainstream acceptance is a sign of success. This isn’t alt.rock where where the rules appear to be when there is mainstream acceptance it’s a sign for the hipster herd to move on.

This is America, The sincerest form of flattery in our hyper-capitalist culture is to be co-opted by trend-spotters and sold to middle America by the yard. So what? For every Flying Burrito Brothers there will be an Eagles. There are plenty of thrift shops and seedy bars for those that know the real, better thing from the Plexiglas replica. A genre that is so rarefied and precious as to wilt at the first sign of filthy lucre was never a legitimate genre anyway. It was just a gleam in some PR agents eye that once obtained was cashed in and abandoned. Grunge anyone?

It used to be that sub-genres were prohibited by physical space to thrive. Tower and Peaches only had so many shelves to hold album, cassettes and CDs and a minimum wage staff that know nothing about music didn’t help to perpetuate the hidden gems. But that hurdle didn’t stop indy boutiques from filling the void by bringing expertise and products that could not be found at the big box music stores. Now the rules and economics have all changed and physical space for product is not an issue. Online retail can adapt and support genres and sub-genres as they establish themselves to be financially viable. Amazon offers an alt.country and Americana section featuring the likes of Tift Merrit, Neko Case and the Drive By Truckers and iTunes offers an essentials alt.country play list featuring Ryan Adams and Johnny Cash. For those that prefer the boutiques expertise and selection can head over to Miles Of Music.

The whole argument might just be moot. Country music as a singular entity is really just a newfangled marketing artifice. What we have come to think of as country music is a mongrel beast of Celtic tunes, sea shanties, blues and gospel music. Hell, what we know as country and rock music today cross pollinated in the 50’s at a little studio at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee and changed the music world forever.

People that argue that alt.country and its cousins Americana and roots music is some way diluting “true” country music ignore the genres history as already existing and enduring sub-genres Honky Tonk, Bakersfield Sound, Bluegrass Traditional Country, Yodeling, Country Boogie, Country Rock, Close Harmony, Square Dance, Jug Band, High Lonesome Sound and Western Swing. Like the English only crowd, they ignore the history of cultural evolution in an attempt to erect a legislative dam to keep the genre pure. I say put on the Rolling Stones “Sticky Fingers” and watch their heads explode.

Livestock breeders often practice inbreeding to “fix” desirable characteristics within a population. However, they must then cull unfit offspring, especially when trying to establish the new and desirable trait in their stock. Alt.country, roots, Americana are the unfit offspring of the Nashville and corporate play list cultural breeders. These castoffs, misfits and outlaws make their own way in places across the globe. They make American music healthy and thrive by allowing a level of flexibility and brave experimentation that evolves the art and lays the groundwork to be culturally relevant to a new generation of fans.

Every day I’m contacted by new artists like the Dexateens, Twilight Hotel and the Whipsaws or their representatives that are taking alt.country, Americana, roots and Country music in exciting and sometimes unusual directions. Are they representative of country music? No, not in the officially sanctioned Nashville and mainstream radio sense, but there they are, listening to Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson and playing in their bedrooms and down at the the local bar. The are putting up a MySpace and Facebook page to allow people all over the world to discover them, refer the bands to their friends, and the artists can accumulate a list of fans so that they can serve them directly going forward. These artists have much to say and prove. Alt.country in and of itself is a merely a label that is only useful if representing a thing. Judging by my email, mailbox and experiences with local performances and conversations with artists and fans there is certainly a thing thriving out there that will not be denied, not matter what Nashville or cultural critics (me included) thinks.

I have to concur with the Twin-Cities country music critic Jack Sparks when he said “It’s important that I end this thought by saying everyone leading up to this, and everyone after, who writes an article about how “alt country” is dead, is a fucking moron.” Amen partner, amen.

Uncle Tupelo - Chickamauga

Ryan Adams, musical legend or precocious twit? I think there’s an argument to be made either way - but one thing there’s no argument on is that Adams early Band, Raleigh, NC’s Whiskeytown, made some of the best damn alt.country music in it’s short existence.

Whiskeytown’s 1997 major label debut, Strangers Almanac will be re-released in a deluxe, 2-CD edition on March 4, 2008 on Geffen/UMe/Mood Food/Outpost.

During the time of the recording the band was led by a 22-year-old Adams and was in a certain level of turmoil: There was a new rhythm section (bassist Jeff Rice and drummer Steven Terry joined Adams, Cary and Wandscher), band member fiddler-singer-songwriter Caitlin Cary was in a relationship with the former drummer Eric “Skillet” Gilmore, Adams had been offered his own solo deal and they had no guitars because they had been misplaced during the trip to Nashville. The acoustic guitar heard on Strangers Almanac was bought in a pawnshop.

Disc one is the original album plus five previously unreleased live public radio performances. 17 of the 19 recordings on the second disc were previously unreleased recordings and are from the pre-production sessions for Strangers Almanac (commonly referred to as the Barn’s On Fire sessions). Intimate acoustic demos of “16 Days,” “Avenues” and “Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart,” are included plus several original songs making their premieres in the Whiskeytown catalog: “Kiss & Make-Up,” “Indian Gown,” “Barn’s On Fire,” “Streets Of Sirens,” “Breathe,” “Nurse With The Pills” and “10 Seconds.” Also included are covers of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” Gram Parsons’ “Luxury Liner,” Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone” and an early version of the True Believers’ “The Rain Won’t Help You When It’s Over.”

If this release comes anywhere close to the treatment reached by the Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and The Allman Brothers Band Eat a Peach deluxe editions it should be a great addition for Ryan fans.

I posted the overlooked a couple of doozies from the fall music calender.

Mary Gauthier with John Henry  9/20/2007    Blender Theatre at Gramercy   New York, NY

Ryan Adams                 10/31/2007    Hammerstein Ballroom        New York, NY

The New York Times has a nice piece on Ryan Adams, his ending contract and sometimes tumultuous relationship with Lost Highway records, getting back with his old manager, John Silva, and the road ahead. This article contains this great story when one outlaw of country meets another:

One afternoon, as Ryan Adams was recording his new album, “Easy Tiger” (Lost Highway), at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village, the singer-songwriter Steve Earle dropped by to visit. Jimi Hendrix had built Electric Lady in the late 1960s, and Mr. Earle pointed out that “there are some good ghosts here.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Adams blithely responded. “There are the ghosts of about 45 speedballs from when I was recording here a year or two ago,” referring to a mixture of heroin and cocaine.

Like Earle, Adams is working on containing his demons and is producing some of the best work of his life. Horror-meister and former addict himself, Stephen King wrote the record company bio that will accompany Easy Tiger’s release on June 26. Mr. King calls it “maybe the best Ryan Adams CD ever.”

It seems Ryan Adams has a famous, and creepy, fan that might be able to match him in creative output.

Pitchfork reports that horror-meister Stephen King has penned a bio/homage (below) for Adams and a excerpt has been posted on Amazon.com for his upcoming release “Easy Tiger.”

The complete work:

It was, Ryan Adams says, this girl he’s been spending time with; the title of this album is her fault. “She wanted to go out to dinner at eight; I wanted to go right away. She said, ‘Easy, Tiger.’ And that hit me. It stuck with me to the point where I called up Neal [that would be Neal Casal, guitarist of The Cardinals] and left a message on his answering machine with those two words. ‘Don’t forget this,’ I said, ’cause I want to use it.’”

Adams laughs and adds, “I think he’s still got that message.”

And I understand that. Some things you just save, because they’re worth playing over again.

I think there are really only two kinds of pop music CDs these days. There are the ones you listen to only once or twice, maybe downloading the single good song to your iPod or computer; then there are others that grow stronger, sweeter, and more necessary each time you play them. Gold was that way; Cold Roses was that way; so was Jacksonville City Nights. I won’t say Adams is the best North American singer-songwriter since Neil Young…but I won’t say he isn’t, either. What I know is there has never been a Ryan Adams record quite as strong and together as Easy Tiger; it’s got enough blue-eyed, blue-steel soul (with the faintest country tinge) to make me think of both Marvin Gaye and the Righteous Brothers. Probably ridiculous, but true. And the songs themselves are beautiful– the lyrics tightly focused and brief, the feeling one of melancholy calm that will probably be a revelation to fans that remember the old, sometimes angry Ryan Adams.

He agrees that the tone of Easy Tiger is different– not dark, just different– and suggests in passing that it may have something to do with both sobering up and growing up (he’s 32). Then he goes on to talk about the process, which is clearly something close to his heart. “I write on a manual typewriter,” he says. “I get up, I have a cup of coffee, I sit down at the typewriter. I never spent a useless day behind a typewriter.”

I say amen to that, but he’s already going on.

“It’s like– I don’t know, sometimes it’s like chasing a pretty girl on the beach. And things I never thought I could do…I can do.”

I mention how prolific he is, aware that I might be touching a sore point. After all, there are plenty of critics who seem to think that’s a bad thing. Adams, however, just laughs.

“Yeah, yeah, in America people give you shit for working hard,” he says. “But…it’s process, that’s all. I process things. I went into the dream business. If people need ‘em, I’ve got extra.”

He talks enthusiastically about all the unreleased material he hopes to set free in a box set, maybe at the end of the year (”If people hear it all, then they’ll get the connections,” he says), but that’s then. Now there’s this, maybe the best Ryan Adams CD ever. And I know you want to listen to it right away. But slow down. Take your time. This album asks for that, and it will reward your full attention.

In other words– easy, Tiger.

–Stephen King