Kacey Musgraves

Who is Chris Stapleton?

Last night, country rocker Chris Stapleton took the 2015 CMA Awards by storm, shoving bro-country and country (c)rap out of the way to win Male Vocalist of the Year, New Artist of the Year, and with best-in-the-business producer Dave Cobb, Album of the Year for May’s “Traveller.”

Chris Stapleton straddles country and Southern rock, and previously, bluegrass. So he’s not strictly country – we’re not talking outlaw style like Sturgill Simpson or a traditionalist like Dwight Yoakam – but he can write and perform that way when he wants to, and he is damn good at what he does.

Despite the “New Artist” tag, you’ve heard his work if you listen to either mainstream radio country or bluegrass. From 2008-2010, he was the lead singer for that great bluegrass band, the SteelDrivers. As a songwriter, he has six #1 hits, and wrote or co-wrote four songs I really enjoy: “Your Man” for Josh Turner, “Love’s Gonna Make it Alright” for the king, George Strait, “Drink a Beer,” the only recent Luke Bryan performance I can deeply respect, and “Whiskey and You” for Tim McGraw, though I prefer Jason Eady’s version. You might have also heard “Never Wanted Nothing More” for Kenny Chesney, “Come Back Song” for Darius Rucker, and “Crash and Burn” from Thomas Rhett.

He’s also got an amazing beard that can almost compete with Jamey Johnson’s.

Does this mean the tide is turning? Not on its own, no, but it helps. Kacey Musgraves did well (not as well, but well) at the 2013 and 2014 award shows, but still hasn’t had mass radio play (though both albums were #1). That said, when you add these awards to Sturgill Simpson’s quick rise to the top; Jason Isbell and Alan Jackson’s iTunes album sales in July; attention for quality artists from major industry figures like Zac Brown, Justin Timberlake, and Blake Shelton; and the quick downfall of Sony exec Gary Overton after disparaging independent music, fans of Americana and actual country music have more momentum and more cause for hope than at any time in the past decade.

But remember: While Stapleton is authentic, he isn’t strictly country. As he told Rolling Stone, “I don’t like to put things in a box all the time. If I’m feeling like rock, we’ll do some of that, and if I’m feeling some other way, we might do some of that.” Look to him to make good music, but not to be a singular force that “saves” country radio or the industry.

I’ll have my review of “Traveller” in the next few days. Here’s one of last night’s duets between Stapleton and Justin Timberlake:

And here’s Jason Eady covering Stapleton’s “Whiskey and You”:

The songs that made Brandy Clark want to write – a live review of country’s best woman

Brandy Clark is, along with Courtney Patton, the most talented female artist in country music right now, and perhaps one of the three best along with Sturgill Simpson. I was lucky enough to see her at Virginia’s intimate Birchmere on Sunday night, and it was an absolutely phenomenal show. The highlight wasn’t even the songs I already know and went for; it was the encore when she came back out solo to perform four classic country songs that made her want to become a songwriter. I would choose one of those for the video at the end of this review – probably George Strait’s “The Chair” – but I can’t find any on YouTube! I will definitely see her again.

brandy-clark-1-600 Clark is linked in a lot of minds (including mine) with Kacey Musgraves, since the two both sing traditional country, released breakout albums in 2013, and often co-write together. But Clark’s songs are more story-based, her style is slightly less poppy, and there’s a little more twang to her voice. Maybe that’s more life experience bringing extra songwriter depth, since Musgraves is 26 and Clark 37? Then again, maybe it’s just style. I’ve seen both of them this year (albeit at very different venues), and while Musgraves plays up the kitsch, Clark bonds with the audience over pure country music. Both are phenomenal, but Brandy Clark is the absolute best, and I was thrilled when she played the GRAMMYs with Dwight Yoakam this year.

On Sunday, Clark’s band was great and came out with a loud rendition of her hit “Stripes“, then closed the same way with “Hungover” (see below) to an instant standing ovation. But honestly, while good, it was what you would expect hearing the album live to be like, just with the additions of the songs she’s written but didn’t record (like Miranda Lambert’s “Mama’s Broken Heart”). I’d go back for that, don’t get me wrong, but the real kingmaker was the solo stuff, and holy crap wow.

Playing the 500-seat Birchmere, she referred to us as the kind of “listening audience” she doesn’t often get to play for anymore. That meant we were treated to that rare-but-amazing classic encore, several more solo performances (including her song “Follow Your Arrow,” a hit for Musgraves), and a song from her six-year old nephew. Best aunt ever? The little man reminded me of a young Martina McBride singing “I’m Little But I’m Loud.”

The author with Brandy Clark, 06-28-15

The encore was four classic songs that she said made her want to write songs herself, the kind you wish you wrote yourself: “The Chair” (George Strait by Dean Dillon and Hank Cochran), “Two More Bottles of Wine (Emmylou Harris by Delbert McClinton), “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” (the Shirelles by Gerry Goffin and Carole King), and “Crazy” (Patsy Cline by Willie Nelson). She cited “You Don’t Know Me (Ray Charles by Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold) as a fifth but said it was too hard to play. Fair enough.

I loved loved loved that encore, and as much as I respect and enjoy her songwriting, those covers really showed her roots and musical talent. Even though it meant the show ended on a softer note, it left the audience instantly on our feet for a second time. You can see the entire set list here.

The whole show was phenomenal – my buddy said that other than George Strait, it was the best country concert he’s been to (though he does need to go to far more, heh). If you can ever see her, do, and if you haven’t yet, be sure to buy “12 Stories” right now!

Brandy Clark is Finally Getting Her Due (and also, my friend Shelly can SING)

Just a quick overdue post to say how excited I am about the mainstream media finally discovering Brandy Clark. (And what’s this? Back-to-back posts for the first time in months? Maybe I really am getting back in the saddle! )

Clark, along with Kacey Musgraves, was a big new name in 2013. Her album, “12 Stories,” was one of the year’s finest – honestly, while Musgraves might have the better voice, I liked Clark’s album better, and she even gets credit for co-writing Musgraves’ hit “Follow Your Arrow.” When people say it’s the women who are keeping country alive right now, they’re absolutely right, and these are the first two names that come to mind whenever I hear that refrain.

To date, Musgraves has been the one getting solid label support, and now Clark can claim that mantle too. Not only was she nominated for two major GRAMMY awards – Best New Artist and Best Country Album – she even performed during the televised portion of the award show, getting her some major exposure (it led to exactly the kind of massive boost in Spotify and Pandora plays you’d hope for). Dwight Yoakam provided harmony and guitar for her song “Hold My Hand” – and while I was initially irked that Yoakam was relegated to a backup role, he was actually perfect for it, giving the song just the right extra touch it needed. Like George Strait’s movie Pure Country, they stripped away all the GRAMMY hoopla and just sang – no lights, no pyrotechnics, no dancers or slideshows, just music. And y’all, it was one of the biggest standing ovations of the night.

On the heels of that performance, Clark is Yahoo’s Artist of the Month – and when Reba’s new album drops in May, it will feature THREE songs written by Clark. Check out her GRAMMY performance here, then go buy 12 Stories.

Trigger recently wrote that Clark’s “12 Stories” has the feel of formulaic songwriting by committee. I disagree (with the exception of the one she wrote for Toby Keith… fair enough, Trigger). Even if it is a committee, Clark is the chair of that committee, and they’re producing good stuff. As for formulaic – well, maybe, but if so, it’s a good formula, tried and true. Clark’s songs are stories about life’s harder moments, which is one area where country music really excels. They may not be overly personal or deep, but they do resonate with real life. And they truly are stories, even without being ballads, and with good melodies, which is all more than you can say for more than most of what’s out there today – but I think she also would have done well in past decades. So, here’s the rare bravo to the mainstream for grabbing a solid country act and lifting it up.

On a related note, my friend Shelly Page recorded a cover of Clark, and y’all, SHELLY CAN SING. Her cover is a little more poppy than country – electric instead of acoustic with a little less less twang, sort of reminiscent of the great women of the ’90s – but it’s still damn good. And when a song is good in multiple formats by multiple artists, you know the quality isn’t just the artists but also in the song itself. Anyway, check Shelly’s video out, then click around to check out a few of her other videos too while you’re at it.

Eric Church Praises the False God of Homogenization Once Again

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.”

‘Rolling Stone’ launches new country music website with greatest songs list

Well now this is interesting – Rolling Stone magazine launched a new venture today, “RS Country.” It’s a new Nashville office for the new rollingstonecountry.com, and the next print edition will be a special issue focused on country. According to editor Gus Wenner,

Now more than ever, music is all mixed up again. Listen to country radio today, and you’ll hear heavy-metal guitar solos, hip-hop rhythms and EDM flourishes alongside pedal steel and twang: Country now encompasses all of American pop, decked out in cowboy boots and filtered through Music Row. Listen to pop radio, in turn, and you might hear [Taylor] Swift, Carrie Underwood, Lady Antebellum or Florida Georgia Line.

Rolling Stone has always been about storytelling, as has country music – and we’re excited to have a new world of stories to tell. We will treat country the way we treat every other subject we cover: We will take it seriously, we will look beneath the surface, and we will always focus on what brought us here in the first place – the music.

The new website launches with a diverse set of articles covering all aspects of country – an interview with Keith Urban, reviews of the new albums from Sturgill Simpson and Nikki Lane (look for mine later this month or even week), and in true Rolling Stone fashion, their 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time and a 10 New Artists You Need to Know: Summer 2014 that’s thankfully much heavier on the Americana than the hick-hop.

Both lists bode well for RS’s expanded country coverage. Unfortunately, the only way to read them is as a slideshow, and that’s just stupid. But I did the clicking for you, and here are their top 10 songs:

10. Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, ‘Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys’ (1978)
9. Dolly Parton, ‘Jolene’ (1973)
8. Merle Haggard, ‘Mama Tried’ (1968)
7. Ray Charles, ‘You Don’t Know Me’ (1962)
6. Tammy Wynette, ‘Stand By Your Man’ (1968)
5. Jimmie Rodgers, ‘Standing on the Corner (Blue Yodel #9)’ (1930)
4. George Jones, ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ (1980)
3. Hank Williams, ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ (1949)
2. Patsy Cline, ‘Crazy’ (1961)
1. Johnny Cash, ‘I Walk the Line’ (1956)

Looking through the full 100, the ’90s are a little underrepresented – no “Check Yes or No” or “Should’ve Been a Cowboy”??? – but thank Heavens there’s absolutely no Luke Bryan in sight. In fact, after Taylor Swift’s “Mean” from 2010 clocks in at #24 (the hell?), there’s absolutely nothing from after 1987. I also love that Kacey Musgraves’ “Follow Your Arrow” from just last year is #39.

What do you think of Rolling Stone‘s list? Don’t see your favorite? Disagree that “All My Exes Live In Texas” is George Strait’s best? Upset he didn’t have anything higher than #18? Outraged “Goodbye Earl” beat “Golden Ring” or “Pancho and Lefty”? Let’s discuss in the comments below!

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.