In one, I dreamed that George Strait had an album called “Personal,” similar to Johnny Cash’s posthumous “Personal File” – different versions of his famous hits, covers of favorite songs, traditional gospel and folk classics, etc. One of the tracks I dreamed was on “Personal” was a stripped-down, slower version of his #1 hit, “Wrapped.” When I saw Wrapped’s songwriter, Bruce Robison, in concert earlier this year, he explained that the song was supposed to be a sad one – he’d written it at a point when he and his then-ex-gf now-wife were broken up and it was tearing him apart. But Strait made it sound like a happy upbeat song about just being in love. Robison said he likes the happy version more, but when I stop and read the lyrics thinking of it in the context of an ex rather than a current love, it makes a lot of sense as a sad song too, yearning for that one love you can’t escape: “It feels like ages since you laid down in my arms // I see no good reason but still I’m tangled in your charms // My God, you’re smilin’, you catch my eye // My heart is pounding deep inside.”
It’d be very interesting to hear Strait sing it that way.
My other dream was less country/roots, but still about music. I was sitting on the floor in front of a piano with eight pedals, kind of drunk, and discovered that I could play simple tunes with just the pedals. That was weird.
Earlier this week, I wrote a review of the new George Strait album, which was completely ruined by overuse of autotune (not as a T-Pain-style instrument, but turned up so high the voices didn’t sound human anymore). When I mentioned this, a friend wondered if maybe Strait is losing a step and needed the help to bolster his voice. No.
I’m sure this was justified in a loud, crowded arena to help the voices carry, but it was a terrible decision for a recording – and in response to my friend’s question, completely unnecessary. Check out this video I found from earlier this year of Strait picking up a guitar and singing a couple impromptu bars at a charity auction with no sound equipment – the voice is perfect!
I have never been as disappointed in an album as I am the live recording of George Strait’s final tour concert, “The Cowboy Rides Away.” Not because it’s a bad album, but because it should have been so much more. George Strait is the greatest recording artist I have ever heard, BAR F*ING NONE. The concert was amazing and both he and his fans deserve so much better than this travesty. I can’t believe I’m writing a bad album review for GEORGE FRIGGING STRAIT.
One word: G*D DAMNED AUTOTUNE. Okay, that’s two words. But listen, I’m in the process of becoming an ordained minister. I am not taking the Lord’s name in vain here – I’m simply literally asking the divine to DAMN THE MONSTROSITY THAT IS OVERUSED AUTOTUNE AND THE SIN THAT IS CALLING IT MUSIC. ENOUGH ALREADY.
Don’t get me wrong. From the clips I’ve watched, George Strait’s farewell concert was exactly what it needed to be, and we all know the legendary career. There is none greater in the history of country music and if you think Hank or Cash can beat it then just shut up because I’m a Texan and what I’m doing right now is called hero worship. I wish to high heaven I could have been in Dallas in June. But this God-awful album is chalk-full of autotune, and nothing else can shine through. You can hear it on most tracks, but especially on George’s voice on “The Cowboy Rides Away” and “I Can Still Make Cheyenne,” as well as Alan Jackson’s on “Murder On Music Row.” It even dominates the gorram fiddle on “Fool Hearted Memory.”
I can see how autotune would help the voices carry across a crowded arena of 104,000 screaming fans and I wish I’d been one of them – but recorded?
No, just, no.
There’s a reason Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line did not perform at the King’s last show. At least Jason Aldean pretended to be the old Jason, not the new Jason. This was a farewell salute to REAL country music. So what the hell was autotune doing so prominently on the album, even if it was necessary at the show? You can say it’s fine music, and you might not be wrong, but that don’t make it country.
This is not George Strait’s first foray into autotone. There were those couple lines in 2001’s “Stars on the Water“. But, that was one track on one album – I can’t blame anyone for experimentation. A mark of a true professional is trying, failing, recognizing it as failing, and moving on. And that’s what George Strait did, for 13 years – so I can only blame MCA for this bullshit.
King George’s next studio album – as he’s only retired from touring, not recording, and is already back at work in the studio – can’t come soon enough to wipe this bloodstain from our ears. In the meantime, just stick with 2003’s “For the Last Time: Live from the Astrodome“.
Two whiskey bottles out of five. The songs and singers are of course four or five bottles because it’s GEORGE STRAIT, but frick this should have been done better. This was clearly a fast turnaround by major-label execs who saw big dollar signs and wanted to make a quick buck – it has nothing to do with respecting fans paying homage to the best musical career in four decades. Money over music, everything Strait’s (admittedly poorly acted) movie strained against. No, just, no.
Ah, hell. At least it included the Martina McBride duet on the old Cash favorite, “Jackson.” That was a lot of fun when I saw the show in Philadelphia, so, that’s something.
Check it out… there’s a new Hank Williams biopic in production, and they just cast Loki from the Avengers to play Hank. I don’t know if it will be any good, but I’ll see it!
Anyway, real point of this post is to say I’m traveling through the weekend, then have a John Fullbright show on Monday night. So posts are on hold until Tuesday night or Wednesday. I know about half the folks who like this page on Facebook came by way of King Street Bluegrass (thanks y’all), so I will note that while things have been heavy on the country lately, I’ve got reviews coming of at least two new bluegrass albums, maybe more. The new one is probably more country though – Carlene Carter.
Huge news for the best new name in country music: Zac Brown has asked Sturgill Simpson to open for two New Jersey shows on July 10 and 11!
I had planned to see Sturgill open for Pokey LaFarge in Virginia on July 10. But last week, I learned about ZBB’s invitation after Sturgill had to cancel the Virginia gig plus one in Boston on July 13. The news wasn’t public yet and the person who told me didn’t realize I was a blogger, so I waited to post it. But, though no one seems to have reported it yet, it’s officially on ZBB’s site now!
This is Sturgill’s biggest break yet, far bigger than opening for Dwight Yoakam last year. No, New Jersey isn’t exactly a hotbed of country music, but opening for an act as big as Zac Brown will give Sturgill some attention and credibility with a crowd that may not usually pay attention to NPR, the New York Times, or even Rolling Stone – sites that helped propel his second solo, independently produced album to a #11 debut.
If anyone in the country industry was going to give traditionalist Stugill a hand up, it makes since that it would be Brown. He took the bro-country bull by the horns last year when he publicly called Luke Bryan’s “That’s My Kind of Night” “the worst song I’ve ever head.” No, Brown’s music isn’t exactly country, but I don’t say that as a criticism. It’s still roots music — Southern rock, and Brown is the first to call it that rather than country — and if you get past the beach-living singles, his first two albums were really good stuff. If I’m in the car for more than two hours, I’m playing “You Get What You Give” — I call it my roadtrip fuel. If there’s any major mainstream-country concert crowd that will appreciate Sturgill, it’s probably Brown’s. If nothing else, it will certainly help him get noticed by the entertainment reporters who cover Brown.
It’s particularly good news for country music, since it comes shortly before Brandy Clark goes on tour with star Erich Church this fall. Church might be a real asshole and his music isn’t perfect, but it is some of the best on “country” radio right now. Obviously we can’t expect Luke Bryan or Florida Georgia Line fans to hear a new, true country act and suddenly love it, but Church or ZBB crowds just might – and again, there’s the entertainment press that covers them.
I have every intention of driving up to New Jersey for the show, and will of course review it here. You know what Sturgill opening for ZBB kind of reminds me of a little bit is George Strait’s big break. In 1983, Eddie Rabbit got sick and had to cancel a performance at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Strait, just off his first #1 hit, was called in as a last-minute replacement – and 31 years, 20 more Houston rodeos, and 59 more #1 hits later, he’s finally retiring from touring. It broke my heart to miss his final show down in Dallas – but maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to watch a new legend take off the very same summer another one wrapped things up.
Less than a year after their last album, “Cheater’s Game” (one of 2013’s best), Texas country husband/wife team Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis have put out a new one, “Our Year.” Their sound is certainly more traditional, and their lyrics deeper, than anything on the radio today.
I really like this album – and I loved seeing them in concert last week at Alexandria, VA,’s Birchmere (with Dale Watson as the opener, but I’ll review both concerts in a forthcoming post). I will say that I think I liked last year’s “Cheater’s Game” a little more. It feels a little like the duo came up with 23 amazing songs and picked the 13 best for an album, but then realized the remaining 10 were still strong enough for another project. Sometimes that doesn’t turn out too well – see Springsteen’s “Magic” followed by “Working on a Dream” – but in this case, it’s not a bad thing at all. If “Cheater’s Game”‘s larger shadow were to disappear, “Our Year” would stand very well on its own.
Overall, the voices are great, and it’s a solid balance between uptempo and melancholy. The only thing that holds it back is that it’s a little softer than “Cheater’s Game” – there’s nothing adventurous here. It’s comfortable, maybe even safe. But sometimes, that’s okay. Towards the end of last week’s show in Virginia, Robison told the crowd that they’d thrown a lot of new stuff at us that night which is always risky, but we’d seemed to take it well. Yes, Bruce, we did – and there’s no need to apologize at all. It’s new stuff, but it’s good stuff.
I’ll come back to the album in a moment. First, some context. Willis has one of the absolute best voices in country music and Robison is one of the better songwriters. He penned the #1 hits “Wrapped for George Strait (I’ll write a separate post later about that song’s origin story, it was great), “Travelin’ Soldier” for the Dixie Chicks, and “Angry All the Time” for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill (I like Robison’s rendition better – he does sad well), as well as Strait’s #6 “Desperately.” As for Willis, she had a few songs chart in the early ’90s, though unfortunately none reached the top 40s. I’m personally most familiar with 1993’s #72 “Whatever Way the Wind Blows.” My mom had a now out-of-print compilation CD of Texas country that included that song and was also my introduction to Bob Wills. When I saw recently that Willis had sung it, I thought it was a cover, until I listened again – “No, this is it!!! How was that only #72, I thought it was a huge hit????” Nope, my mom just played that album a lot. And decades later, I’m still better off for it.
Back to the album. “Our Year” is relatively stripped down yet still well-produced. The smaller, rootsier instrumental feel, more than the relatively light tough of the steel guitars or fiddles, is what makes it Texas country. Willis’ music has lost the commercial sheen it used to have, making it even better than it already was, and Robison is very down to earth, as well as a smoother tenor than you usually hear in country.
It’s a mix of covers and new originals. The first track is “Departing Louisiana” by Robison’s sister Robyn Ludwick. Thematically, it reminds me of a slower version of Mac Davis’ “Texas in My Rear View Mirror.” It’s probably my third favorite track on the album, after two Robison originals. It leads into Walter Hyatt’s “Motor City Man,” a rock-influenced but fiddle-strong peppier salute to a better life that Willis does wonders with.
Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis at the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA, 06-06-14
Track three, “Carousel,” is a Robison original about how hard relationships are, and it’s probably the best song on the album (though “Anywhere but Here” is a close runner-up). It’s got a great melody and uses the steel guitar very effectively for a sad feel. “There comes a time the music has to stop, it’s the end of the ride… But people love a carousel, and no one is to blame.” Even though Willis’ voice is the album’s real star, this showcases Robison’s quite well.
That leads to a Willis original, “Lonely for You.” This is a really interesting one to hear a husband and wife sing together – it’s a song about missing an ex. Several of the next-up songs are similar in that regard, too — but it sounds great and it’s well written. That leads to a lover’s duet, “A Hanging On,” that’s been covered many times, but sounds great here too. Next up, before he was a legendary producer, T-Bone Burnett wrote “Shake Yourself Loose” in 1986. There’s nothing new about this sound, but the couple trade verses and their voices are perfect.
You know the next one – a cover of Tom T. Hall’s classic “Harper Valley Pta.” In concert, Robison said this was one of those pairings where the song and the voice (Willis’) seem perfect for each other. Indeed, they’ve apparently been playing it in concert long before recording it, and he’s definitely not wrong. Her vocals are great here. But I’ll also say this – it’s disturbing how much this song, a social critique, feels like it could have been written in 2014, not 1968. It can seem like there’s as much sexism and hypocrisy today as ever.
“Anywhere But Here” is another Robison original and another of the album’s highlights. The melody here is great, and Robison sure writes good choruses. This is about the fading memories of yesterdays gone by and a present that’s only getting harder. “But now it’s only stars and shadows, and heaven’s just a dream // I thought that I knew trouble, but the devil laughed at me // Any life that was worth living, any moment without fear // It’s getting harder to remember anywhere… but here.” It’s a great pairing of lyrics and melody. Since Nashville foolishly seems intent on seeing Robison as just a songwriter, I hope a star picks this song up and slows it down just a little. I could see it being a potential melancholy hit for a voice like Gary Allan’s.
The album closes with Don Reid’s “I’ll Go to My Grave Loving You” and the title track, “This Will Be Our Year,” by Chris White. The former is a nice uptempo tune to balance out the sadder “Anywhere,” and their voices blend together beautifully on the final, title track. Both are good covers, and a very fitting closer for a husband/wife duo who are riding success high and, as anyone in the audience can see, are clearly still in love.
3.5 whiskey bottles out of 5 for “Our Year”, but I’ll admit I might be letting “Cheater’s Game” – a 4.5 – influence me too much. Maybe “Our Year” actually deserves a 4. It really is a good album and I do recommend it.
There aren’t many good YouTube clips of “Our Year” material featuring both singers – so here’s a good duet one from “Cheater’s Game”, then a solo from “Our Year.”
Brad Paisley’s music is about as traditional as today’s mainstream country radio gets – he even used to feature George Jones! – so it was troubling to read last month that the new album will feature dubstep and be EDM-inspired. But you know, he did promote it on Prairie Home Companion of all places, and the lousy sound could be limited to just a track or two. It could even just be hyped. So I took a wait-and-see approach – the album’s not even out yet; let’s ignore the rumors and just wait to judge it on its own merits.
But then I read this in this week’s country issue of Rolling Stone:
Think Van Halen in a 10-gallon hat. “I couldn’t have done that in 1989,” Paisley says. But with country borrowing more and more from classic rock, “that kind of playing fits our format now,” he says. “It all becomes country eventually, somehow.”
It all becomes country? NO! Maybe it all becomes country radio, but that doesn’t mean it becomes country. The sound is the sound and country is country – you can’t just relabel the rest!
I love that Paisley’s guitar is taking centerstage with his voice more and more. But can’t it stay country guitar? Or at the very least, do we still have to call it country once it isn’t?
I can’t help but wonder, would calling Nikki Lane “outlaw country” have ever crossed NPR or Rolling Stone‘s minds if she didn’t wear vintage western country outfits or if the album’s first track didn’t include the lines, “I’ll knock on [Ol’ Willie’s] door and ask him for a toke // Just because, hell, we’re both outlaws”?
It “outlaw” refers to a mindset, then maybe Lane, a South Carolina native, is an outlaw – but if it refers to the general sound first made famous by the 1976 album of that name, then no. This is a good album, but it is not outlaw country. Perhaps a little closer to the mark is the similarly named Baron Lane over at Twang Nation, who described the album as “Gram Parsons playing in a saloon in a Quentin Tarantino flick.” I think Parsons was twangier than Nikki Lane, but the rest fits. It’s tough to label this album — the title track is even a little bluesy — but “indie roots rock with pedal steel” might be the best description. Perhaps all that comes together as “alt-country,” maybe with “country rock” a distant second? This is why we tend to just label anything even remotely rootsy and non-mainstream as “Americana” and just get on with it!
Labels aside, I do like this album. Lane has a wonderful voice – a high alto with an original mix of singer-songwriter husk and ’50s sugar. Her voice never has a weak moment, but it’s probably showcased best in the style of “Out of My Mind” and the range and speed of “Seein’ Double”. Unfortunately, producer Dan Auerbach (of the Black Keys) used vintage equipment to record the album, so she sounds kind of muffled and echoey the whole time. That could have been a neat effect in places, but used across the whole album, I think it detracts from the overall sound – but only a little. Lane’s voice still shines through. I also like the overall instrumentation balance. It’s the perfect amount of pedal steel (I do love me some pedal steel) and even a little fiddle for an album that wants to borrow from country without sounding like it’s trying to be something it’s not.
The album’s best feature, though, is Lane’s songwriting. She wrote or co-wrote all twelve tracks, and while none are truly breakout songs on their own, several come close. Closer “Want My Heart Back” has some great lyrics and piano riffs that really capture what it feels like to be post-breakup and ready, but still unable, to move on (the reviewer writes from experience). The first track, “Right Time,” does a great job of being mischievous and naughty without getting in-your-face or trite about it. So often those songs are just hackneyed, but Lane hits the right balance. Perhaps my favorite track on the alubm is the duet with Auerbach on “Love’s on Fire,” a song about a couple deeply in love and fighting like hell to keep from drifting apart while he’s on the road, a need she understands but laments. With Lane’s voice and the song’s melancholy context, the line “Won’t you sing me to sleep tonight?” preceding the chorus has a lot of power.
More important than any individual song, however, is the picture they all come together to paint as a whole. The album opens assertive, fast, and strong with the line, “Any day or night time, it’s always the right time // It’s always the right time to do the wrong thing.” That vibe escalates with track 8, “Sleep with a Stranger” – a song that’s pretty much what the title suggests. But don’t think this is just an album about a tough woman declaring her independence, using lovers as props. Some of the songs are practically pining for a lost love, while others either profess love or, like “You Can’t Talk to Me Like That,” describe the feeling of falling in love when one doesn’t want to: “You can’t talk to me like that // It makes me wanna be your baby // I know you want me but it’s such a drag // It’s just not in a girl to act like that.”
Put it all together, and what it sounds like is a woman trying to be strong and independent but who finds that identity betrayed by her own emotions and under attack from our society’s expectations of its women, and trying to find her righteous way among it all. I’ve got a lot of very-strong women friends, and given how f*d up our society can be, I have to imagine that many of them can identify with that position. Judge for yourself it that interpretation fits with Lane’s own description of the recording process:
“My songs always paint a pretty clear picture of what’s been going on in my life, so this is one moody record. There’s lots of talk of misbehaving and moving on… During the first round of recordings, I was in an awkward mood every night I left the studio. It was hard for me to trust that Dan was right when he said I should move a verse around or add an extra chorus. He pushed to find the right feel for each track one by one, and a few months later, I found myself with a damn good record.”
3.5 whiskey bottles out of 5, and I don’t blame anyone who gives it 4. I like it more every time I listen to it, and would bump the rating up a little if the vocal recording wasn’t so muffled/fuzzy. I don’t know if it will be heavy rotation for me, but if not, it’s only because I’ve been on more of a neo-traditional country kick lately than an alt-country kick, and that’s the kind of thing that changes every four or five months anyway.
I wouldn’t call myself an Eric Church fan. I don’t change the station when his music comes on. Most of his stuff is middling, but every now and then he does a great song. It’s more rock than country, but at least it’s closer to rock than it is pop or rap, unlike most of of today’s radio. And since Church only puts an album out every three years and wrote 120+ songs for the new one, I do believe he’s in it for the music. Best yet, in the cover article for this week’s country issue of Rolling Stone, he praises Kacey Musgraves, rightly says “Brandy Clark should be the face of the genre,” and criticizes laundry-list bro-country as “shallow”. Bravo!
But on the giant other hand, Church is an arrogant jerk who glorifies and encourages violence, hypocritically performs with and thus enables some of the very acts he calls “shallow,” and insists he’s an “outsider” despite his industry awards, giant label, and huge sales. That’s either the biggest case of self-delusion the world has seen since Harold Camping, or just pure marketing crapola.
But my real issue is that Eric Church doesn’t respect country music or even understand what real country music is – to the point that he says that, like Santa or the Tooth Fairy, it doesn’t exist. From the RS story:
You can’t really put Bruce [Springsteen] in a box – what kind of music does Bruce do?” says Church. “It could be country. If he came out right now? No doubt, that’s where he’d live.”
Church’s music, on the other hand, could easily have been considered rock in the Eighties and Nineties… “True red-white-blue American rock & roll fans have gone more toward country. Hip-hop has gone down. Rocks’ down. People are kidding themselves if they think there’s a bigger format than country.”
“What kind of music does Springsteen do”? What a stupid question! ROCK! The answer is ROCK! Right in the middle of his own show, he’ll proclaim the concert “a rock and roll exorcism!”
Then Church says that “country” is now the biggest genre. Well, yeah, and if you want to change Alaska’s name to “Alabama,” then we could call Alabama the biggest state in the country. Which is exactly what Church is doing when he says “Born to Run” is rock if it’s the ’80s but country if its the 2010s. NO! It’s the same recording in any time, so it’s the same genre in any time! Nor is the country audience truly growing – the labels and radio conglomerates are just appealing to various portions of the pop, rock, rap, and country lite crowds all at once. It’s a bigger audience than country has, sure – the same way New York has a bigger population than Chicago. Moving from one to the other didn’t mean the city grew; you changed cities!
This “country” format Church says is so big is NOT country. It’s rap, pop, and rock thrown into a blender with a dash of banjo to mask the lack of twang and story. Simply calling it “country” is not enough to make it country.
But Church disagrees – he seems pretty adamant that rock and country are now the same thing. Last year, he told ABC, “Genres are dead. There’s good music. There’s bad music. And I think the cool thing about Nashville is it is at the epicenter of that kind of thinking.” An odd quote for a guy who says Brandy Clark should be the face of the “genre” – and complete horse hockey. To say there’s nothing more to it than bad vs. good music is to demand that we all have the same taste, to declare that if you like country then you’d damn well better like pop and rap, too, because you’re not allowed to have one without the other anymore.
This homogenization is a terrible thing. It is the true straitjacket on country innovation, and it is an attack on the diversity of fans’ tastes.
I know that a lot of people hate “labels.” They feel like you’re putting them in a box and taking away their individuality, especially in music – plenty of artists claim their music transcends genres and labels.
I understand and respect genre hopping. I do. But I also think labels can be a good thing. If I ask for chicken for dinner, don’t tell me, “There’s good food and there’s bad food, pull something out of the good bad!” No, dammit, this bag is labeled “Cheetos” and that bag “chicken” for a reason. Neither iTunes nor the last few record stores actually remaining are going to merge everything into two sections called “Good Music” and “Bad Music,” and it would be too overwhelming to have just one section alphabetizing EVERYthing. Broad labels are not a bad thing – they help us narrow things down, and give our searches somewhere to start.
Switching gears just a little bit, the RS article goes on to quote publisher Arthur Buenahora saying, “With Eric, we don’t need fuckin’ twin fiddles” – as if fiddles are a bad thing! Sure, you don’t NEED them to do country, but why is that supposed to be a laudatory goal rather than just something different?
The same giant, fiddle-appreciating audience that existed for George Strait in the ’80s, Alan Jackson in the ’90s, and Brad Paisley in the ’00s still exists today. It was only four years ago that Easton Corbin had back-to-back #1 hits! No, that audience’s taste hasn’t changed; it’s just that the music industry is ignoring that audience for a new one. It’s not about the music — it’s about the greed, the money, the bigger and bigger profits. So the next time Church defends homogenization, he should think about where that homogenization is coming from, and remember his own quote, “Once your career becomes about something other than the music, then that’s what it is. I’ll never make that mistake.”
Hard Times No More 