Essays, Rants, and Ramblings

What country music needs is another Willie Nelson

In a Texas Monthly cover article devoted to George Strait’s retirement from touring, Craig Havighurst argued that there may never be another George Strait.

George has been my favorite singer since I was 11, so I don’t say this lightly, but I would submit that what country and roots music need is not a new George Strait, but a new Willie Nelson.

Willie’s greatest accomplishment isn’t any one song or album, helping pioneer the outlaw sound, or even managing to make one beat-up old guitar last this long. It was the bringing together of diverse crowds that had always been at odds and finding among them common ground, new friendship, and a powerful movement. Like Bruce Robison sings,

“Like a miracle all those rednecks and hippies // From New York City down to Mississippi // Stood together and raised a brew // When it’s all gone wrong, what would Willie do?”

We need someone to do that again – someone who can unite the red dirt cowboys, the Mumford hipsters and Lumineer moms, and the old singer-songwriter foagies.

Think about it. I went to a Nickel Creek concert earlier this month in Washington, D.C., and the audience was incredibly young – dare I say largely hipster. Now I’m not saying that that’s newgrass’s main demographic. It was the venue, the 9:30 Club, more than anything. Still, it was encouraging to see such a young crowd at a fundamentally bluegrass show.

And take indie folk, definitely a big draw for college students and hipsters. Personally I like Mumford and Sons, but I know a lot of folks find them insufferable. That’s fine, but love them or hate them, there’s no denying the influence folk and bluegrass had on their instrumentation and harmonies. Of course they’re not Americana, they’re British! But while Marcus Mumford, the Lumineers, and their ilk may be more of a response to pop than country, they are still our distant kin.

And yet, I would wager that the Mumford and Nickel Creek crowds of the east coast bear very little resemblance to a red dirt festival in Oklahoma or a Kacey Musgraves home crowd in Texas.

The question is, how can we elevate roots music and take back country music from hick-hop light beer bros? How can we build a coalition large enough to make the record labels take notice, the way they noticed George Strait in 1983 and turned away from Nashville easy listening to the neo-traditionalists? We need some way – someone – to unite the the subgenres and create a movement.

L-R: Drew Ball of the Riverbreaks, Sturgill Simpson, and the author, Nathan Empsall

Maybe, just maybe, Sturgill Simpson will bring together the hipsters and cowboys the way Willie brought together the hippies and bikers. He’s a country traditionalist but one who’s not afraid to experiment, and after refusing to compromise with the major labels, his independent second album smashed through and debuted at #11 this month. Who are the crowds taking notice and driving that to the top? He comes from Kentucky coal country but has been featured on NPR; are those audiences coming together to give Metamodern Sounds in Country Music such a big boost? And will radio take notice?

I don’t know. But whether Sturgill is the next Willie or not, he’s at least a herald – if not the roots Messiah, then maybe our John the Baptist, proving that a better future is coming soon. That said, I don’t mean to put pressure or expectations on him; his art is already a breath of fresh air that speaks for itself. I’d say let’s just cross our fingers, but you can’t pick a guitar with crossed fingers. Instead, pour another round, play that Uncle Tupelo album one more time, and we’ll see what we see when we see.

UPDATE: After writing this post, I did some more reading, and found that Trigger over at Saving Country Music makes a similar arugment.

I still have hope for the future of country music

Texas Monthly is always far more than a regional magazine, but this month’s cover is really something special. No words, no article teasers, just a black-and-white of the retiring (from touring) king George Strait with his hand on his heart, looking straight into the camera and straight at his fans. It’s direct, it’s simple, and it tells a personal story without needing any bells, whistles, or other distractions — just like George Strait himself.

Granted, I’m biased; Strait has been my favorite artist since I was 10, and I write this post wearing jeans from Wrangler’s George Strait line, literally the only kinds of jeans I own. But even allowing for all that, the two cover articles are both must-reads for any traditional country fan – one a retrospective of Strait’s career by TM’s always-excellent John Spong, the other an essay pondering the future of country music by Music City Roots’ Craig Havighurst.

These are dark times for country music, there’s no doubt about that – and sadly, Havighurst argues that there will probably never be another King George. “Were [Strait] starting out today, he’d face a quick-hit culture that would undoubtedly clash against his tempo and timing… Perhaps the system just doesn’t do built-to-last anymore.” (Well, one can only hope that Florida Georgia Line will have the longevity of an Ikea dresser.) Havighurst also points out that Brad Paisley’s momentum is slowing, Josh Turner hasn’t been nominated for a major award in six years, and Kacey Musgraves’ critical adoration “feels like a dark harbinger of how she’ll fare on the radio long-term.” It all reminds me of what singer Clay Walker said late last year:

Traditional country music died. I think that George Strait winning Entertainer of the Year at the CMAs was, to me, a symbolic and a real closing of the door… I think people are fooling themselves if they think for a second that the recording industry is going to accept any more traditional country music on the radio.

Maybe Havighurst and Walker are right, but I’m not so sure. Strait was a traditional singer who toppled slick, commercial music and forced Nashville to make room for a new kind of sound. The way he did it can’t be replicated, no, but perhaps the feat itself can still be accomplished another way.

In 1980, Strait’s traditional, Texas sound was almost as out of place on mainstream country radio as it is today. I don’t disagree that the way Strait broke through then would be almost impossible to replicate today. As Spong explains:

Back then, most radio stations were owned by individuals, and all [manager Erv] Woolsey had to do to get Strait on the air was get program directors to attend his concerts. Now those stations are owned by only a handful of conglomerates like Clear Channel and Cumulus, and the people at the top of those pyramids have decided to stick with this new sound. Sometimes country radio seems like one long, loud song.

What all that means is that in 1983, you could have thousands of chances to make it big in dozens of regional markets; today, you have just three or four chances in one national market.

As dire as that sounds, the future of country radio and record labels is NOT the same thing as the future of country music. In 1983, if you wanted to be a music star, you had to make it big on the radio. That’s still somewhat true today, but things are changing fast, and the market landscape will be radically different by 2020 or 2030.

Radio isn’t dying the same way newspapers are, no, but ratings are falling. It’s true, 92% of Americans listen to the radio each week versus just 20% who listen to Internet radio – but 20% is a huge number when you consider that Spotify is just four years old. Demographics matter, too – what’s the age of the average FM music listener? Today’s youth don’t want to roll the dice and hope the DJ plays something cool when they can just design their own iPhone playlists.

Similarly, while major record labels are still the only way to become a superstar, they don’t have the same stranglehold on middle-tier success that they used to. Thanks to Internet crowd-funding and social media, there are now dozens of ways to build a fan base. Nothing proves that more than this month’s stellar news that traditionalist Sturgill Simpson’s second album debuted at #11 on the charts – independently produced, a perfect bird to the major labels.

Are Internet radio, social media, and crowd-funding the future of pop music? And if so, does that extend to the demographics of a traditionally more-rural format like country? I don’t know. The tech landscape is changing too fast, and too much is at stake in the net neutrality battle, for anyone to authoritatively state that they know what Web 3.0 or 4.0 will look like. But what we can say is that the future does not look like the present.

The deep pockets always ta johnny-cash-finger ke over a genre once it starts to get popular – and the people always counter with something new. When pop became stale, along came rock. When rock became too slick, along came punk. When Nashville threw out the steel guitars, the Texas outlaws gave them the middle finger and the neo-traditionalists pulled Hank Williams’ old cowboy hat out of the dumpster. And today, with pop more obsessed with teenagers than ever, indie folk has come along with its banjos.

Giant corporations try to put profit before people, but there are always just enough people with just enough voice to scream “SOD OFF” loud enough to make it stick. So no, the record labels can’t be beat the same way they were in 1983. But they can be beat another way, and time will show us exactly what that is. Maybe Sturgill is already leading the way.

This I Believe: Music reaches everyone

This essay was written for a church project, and is modeled after the Edward R. Murrow and NPR “This I Believe” essay series.

I was a government and Native American studies major in college — but the best course I ever took was called “Beethoven in Context.”

When no one’s around, there are few things I love more than putting on headphones, turning off the lights, and freaking. out. to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Not the opening notes of the famous First Movement, but the crescendo between the third and fourth movements, the sudden shifts, the way all the instruments weave together, and the way it absolutely drives forward, pushing every limit.

But Beethoven didn’t hear it the same way. By the time he finished this symphony — a process that took him four years — he was two-thirds along the way to becoming entirely deaf. He could still feel the music’s power, though — they say he sawed the legs off his piano and sat on the floor, experiencing the vibrations of each and every note.

Even Beethoven could experience music. Music has a way of reaching literally everyone.

And so, I believe in the power of music. We all know what it’s like to hear a favorite song come on the radio and be whisked away to an old memory or special place. When I hear Bela Fleck’s “Big Country,” it’s like a door opens in my soul and I’m really back in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.

If someone doesn’t love music, maybe it’s only because they haven’t heard the right song with the right voice or the right instrumentation yet. This is where my Native American studies professors come back in: Some tribes say that the most special thing you can ever receive or share is your singular song, the one that belongs only to you.

Music may not be my core belief or my mission in life, but it is what makes me who I am. It is how I best connect to God — taking in a brass concert at Christmastime, chanting psalms at a Boston monastery, or singing my favorite hymns on Easter Sunday. Why, even an atheist can say that I connect to my creator through music. My birthmother played the flute when she was pregnant, and I’m told that for years after my birth, anytime I heard a flute, I stopped what I was doing and cocked my ear towards the radio.

In a more secular sense, I most feel like myself through music, whether that’s identifying with the realistic poetry of a new Americana favorite, feeling like I’m finally home during a Steep Canyon Rangers concert, working up a sweat just watching Springsteen videos and DVDs, or ending the day with a favorite mellow playlist of Alison Krauss and Billy Joe Shaver just before bed.

I even believe that certain songs saved my life during my angsty, most-depressed teenage years, holding me back from suicide by reminding me of a better future in grace.

Music makes us all equal. The worst singer can be the most grateful audience member; the worst guitar player the best poet. A Specter-esque wall of sound greets a hedge fund manager the same way a vocal chord can lift up an African farmer. Math may be the universal foundation, but music, with its inherent power and depth and as something to be experienced rather than simply heard, is the universal language.