Country Music – Blonds Leading the Bland

The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica has a feature on the growing predominance of younger female artists in Music City (Country’s New Face: It’s Young and Blond)  in the wake of the success of Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Kellie Pickler, and how spunky DIYers, like Peoria, Illinois’ Veronica Ballestrini, are busy using the web to build a fan base for their performances and raise their profile.

Though the piece is trying to make a big deal about these women making a dent on the male dominated Music City culture, the phenomenon is not at all surprising. Nashville’s big country labels are in the business of making money. Period. They are not in the business of  pushing a cultural bias outside of the aforementioned quest for profit. A large part of that goal is to develop product with a predictable success i.e. charting hits that move product and can be replicated ad nauseum. Right now that success means young blond women.

Underwood and Pickler are American Idol alum and Swift developed her skills by playing country songs with karaoke backing tracks at her local mall. These young women had visual evidence of their ability to perform on cue and be adaptable to an external idea of a star in order to be successful. And even though Swift showed an early streak of independence at 15 when she turned down a development deal with RCA Records when not allowed to write her own songs, the songs she did write and were featured in her best selling debut were distinct from most Music City product by having the emotional depth of school notebook scribbling and being in tone more Britney than Loretta.

So yeah, the upcoming crop of Music City groomed country music performers are going to be young, female and mostly blond and largely indistinguishable from many of the clones coming out of the Disney and other tween culture behemoths in which Hanna Montana‘s Miley Cyrus and Jennette McCurdy of Nickelodeon’s show iCarly are the most viable examples.

This is the current business model of success with current benchmarks for profit, and in the music business this is the closest thing you can get to a sure thing.

Unlike the major rock labels band-signing shotgun approach in the 90’s during the Seattle Grunge  mania you can be assured that the Nashville’s major labels will keep a tight rein on product, how it looks and how it sounds. The difference is that with Grunge, as well as the country music phenomenons of Outaw Country and the Bakerfield sound, the labels were then left to play catch up to culture and were trying to capitalize on something that occurred organically and crackled with intensity. Playing catch up is messy and costly, controlling production from the get go contains cost and better assures success.

Replicating the current stable of blond fembots may make business sense, but it’s  not likely to result in anything worth listening to.

Country Singer Vern “The Voice” Gosdin Dies

  • Singer Vern Gosdin, who recorded country music hits like the award-winning “Chiseled in Stone” during a 30-year career, has died. He was 74. Gosdin reportedly had a history of strokes and suffered the latest one a few weeks ago and was under hospice care and died late Tuesday at a Nashville, Tenn. hospital. The 9513.com offers a fine tribute to the man.
  • Birthday Boy Willie Nelson will join relative young’uns Bob Dylan and John Mellencamp on a U.S. summer tour of minor league baseball parks, beginning July 2 at the GCS Ballpark in Sauget, Ill., and wrapping Aug. 15 at the Banner Island Ballpark in Stockton, Calif.
  • The San Francisco Chronicle has posted a review of the John Prine / John Ritter  Apr 25th Warfield performance.
  • And in painful crossover news Def Leppard has been confirmed to perform on the CMT Music Awards on June 16. The Britsh pop-metal has-beens…er…band have recently been involved in the Music Row marketering wet dream collaborations with Tim McGraw earlier this year on the song “Nine Lives” and appearing with Taylor Swift on CMT Crossroads. What’s next? Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach doing coutry music…oh wait…

Hank Williams III and Taylor Swift Duet

Country music pioneer Hank Williams III and flavor-of-the-moment ‘tween pop cash machine Taylor Swift will collaborate on a song they wrote together entitled “I’d buy you a drink if  only you were 21.” The song was constructed over the last week by text messages and goat hide parchment and blood ink. All proceeds will be donated to the hellraising kitten recovery project

Swift: “I’m super excited to be working with someone with the legacy that Hank has. I mean, he’s the son of Bocephus!”

Hank III: “Taylor what? I thought I was writting with that stacked, snaggle-toothed chick”

Those Darlins Ready New Summer Release

  • Craig Shelburne  over at the CMT blog has posted a great video I had never see with Willie Nelson and fantastic bluegrass Melonie Cannon covering Willie’s Back to Earth.
  • Speaking of Texas (Wille, Texas…same thing) If you’re in the San Francisco area tomorrow night head over to the historic Fillmore to catch Houston’s own Robert Earl Keen with the great Hayes Carl as the opener
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    I heard that Miley Cyrus is slated to Perform at the 4th Annual Country Music Awards on April 5. Aand here I thought it was Miley’s buddy Taylor Swift’s job to serve the ‘tween demographic with insipid tales of mall heartache. Or maybe that’s Carrie Underwood… Point is the CMA’s continue to embody thier new acronym definition, Country Music my Ass.

  • Murfreesboro, Tenn’s country-punk sweethearts of the prison rodeo, Those Darlins,  got a lot of deserved attention at SXSW ’09 and it looks like they are due for more love this Summer when their self-titled debut album is released on July 7th (vinyl on July 23rd) on OH WOW DANG records. Here’s the title cut off their current Wild One EP to hold you over until then.

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Those Darlins – Wild One(mp3)

Ladies and Gentlemen…Ms. Rachel Brooke

You can keep your Carrie Underwoods, your Taylor Swifts, your Jewels and your Jessica Simpsons…I’ll take a beer and another song by Michigan’s Rachel Brooke.

Rachelle Brooke Covering Hank William’s Old Log Train

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3YNlIVxwWk[/youtube]