Archive for August, 2008
Saturday, August 30th, 2008
The introduction of our new writers concludes today with the first post of Lynn Douglas. She has been a regular commenter for a long time, and now she will be contributing her perspectives on country music as a whole, with a focus on Americana music in particular. With her addition, our staff is now complete. Please join me in welcoming her! – Kevin
Hello everyone! I have been asked to make contributions to Country Universe, which I find to be such a wonderfully thoughtful and engaging (and female friendly!) site on country music. I’m incredibly excited by the prospect of introducing you to new songs and artists, as well as helping you discover or re-discover older ones.
I don’t have a formal degree or pedigree in the subject; I simply love and am addicted to music – from the Boss to the Dixie Chicks; from Joni Mitchell to Willie Nelson; from Louis Armstrong to Loretta Lynn; and from The Clancy Brothers to Steve Earle. I adore lyrics that that read like your favorite book, fast picking that energizes the blood, the perfect steel guitar solo, and the sound of an acoustic guitar being plucked by a master.
I was born and raised in Southern California, and currently call it home, but I have lived all over the U.S. (including Nashville) and spent a number of years living overseas. Both music and traveling have been my passions for years. In many ways, for me, each defines the other. Everywhere I have traveled, I have found my music spot – the cozy cavern in Spain, the friendly pub in Scotland, the smoky bar in Ireland, the dark basement in Prague.
Music has an amazing ability to define the moment and connect you to a new culture. I fully believe it is that grounding, yet transcendental quality to music that has enabled me to shelter my undying love for Latin, Irish, jazz, blues and folk under the same umbrella as my undying love for country. Each of those genres has a story to tell – of a people or of a generation. Hopefully through this site I’ll be able to help you sift through the morass of shallow nothingness that frequents the airwaves and makes the news and find those stories that should come to light!
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Friday, August 29th, 2008
I fear this post won’t quite live up to its ambitious title, and I realize that I’m stirring the tempest pot a bit by putting those two artists in the same sentence. But the tone that surfaces whenever Carrie Underwood is discussed here is something that I find increasingly frustrating, so I’m going to talk about it. Hopefully, I’ll get a meaningful conversation going along the way.
Readers of this site know that I write a lot about women in country music. Part of that is because the majority of my favorite artists are female, and part of it is because I have a sensitivity to gender issues as a whole. It’s impossible to be an educator and not pick up on the way that societal messages are distilled through the media and our own cultural traditions. What’s always amazing to me is how popular culture both mirrors and reinforces such things.
Witness the recent attempt to make Carrie Underwood and Jessica Simpson seem like rivals. Pitting young female artists against each other in the gossip pages is nothing new, especially when you can make it out like they’re fighting over a man. Even more popular is the “aging female star is threatened by the young new starlet” storyline. That was the subtext that made the silliness over Faith Hill’s on-camera joke at the CMA Awards gain traction in the media, even though Hill can be seen giggling and laughing right before she did the fake outrage bit.
Earlier on in Underwood’s career, an attempt was made to turn an innocuous comment by Wynonna into a criticism of Underwood’s music, with the reporter noting that Underwood was “teary-eyed” but not bothering to get a quote from Underwood herself. The construct is a two-for-one here: older women get to be shown as bitter and threatened by younger women, while the young woman herself is portrayed as a helpless victim. All of it is constructed from whole cloth.
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Friday, August 29th, 2008
We all know that I’m a sucker for a good Christmas song, or Christmas songs in general, really. So, while Faith Hill’s latest release of a Christmas song is admittedly premature in the month of August, I was excited all the same—mostly because it helps to signify that the Christmas season is approaching, which is something that I realize likely makes the rest of you cringe.
Because there are so many wonderful Christmas classics, it’s difficult for an original to make an impression. Therefore, it takes an outstanding original to successfully compete with the classics. “A Baby Changes Everything” is the only original song on Faith’s upcoming Christmas album, but it sadly does not justify its coveted spot. While her vocal performance is perfect, the song itself lacks the personality or depth that inspires me at Christmastime.
It starts off slow, without much of a melody, but it seems to stay at that point for far too long. While I suspect this initial understated approach is for the purpose of build up, it ends up seeming lackluster instead. The most interesting part of the song is when she is joined by a choral group, which does not bode well for the song, since such tactics in Christmas songs typically annoy me except in the rare case of Alan Jackson’s “Let It Be Christmas.”
Perhaps I’m just not in the Christmas spirit quite yet after all. Check back with me in a couple of weeks.
Grade: B-
Listen: A Baby Changes Everything
Friday, August 29th, 2008
908 miles. That’s the total distance, door-to-door, from my home in New York to the college I attended in Nashville, Tennessee. If you leave at a decent hour of the day, it’s going to take you 16 or 17 hours. If you do it overnight, you can cut that down to 13.
It was always easy to get a friend to drive up with me to New York, as the allure of the Big Apple was worth the drive. It was on one of those overnight drives, as we sped down I-81 in Virginia, that I was told, “You have to listen to this CD. You’re gonna love this guy.”
This guy was Todd Snider, and the album was Songs for the Daily Planet. My friend was right. I was instantly hooked. Soon, I was buying his entire catalog. But it was once I was done with college, and East Nashville Skyline was released, that I became a hardcore fan. I don’t remember what I was doing in Manhattan that night, but it was close enough to NYU that I went to the Tower Records store and bought the CD. It instantly became my favorite disc of his, later topped by its follow-up, The Devil You Know.
I’ve since seen Snider in concert, just him and a guitar in a bar near Union Square, and he’s even better live than he is on record. He has a new album coming out this fall, and while its running time’s a bit too short and it’s not as cohesive as The Devil You Know, fans of his acerbic writing will not be disappointed. Here are some of my favorite songs of his.
#25
“Vinyl Records”
New Connection, 2002
In rapid-fire delivery, Snider catalogs all of the artists that make up his collection of dusty vinyl records. With shout-outs given to everyone from Bob Dylan and U2 to Emmylou Harris and Rosanne Cash, it makes you wonder what’s on his iPod these days.
#24
“Mission Accomplished (Because You Gotta Have Faith)”
Peace Queer, 2008
The rhythmic opening to Snider’s upcoming polemic is a subversive chant, using the drone of an army drill to satirize the repetition of media talking points that become accepted as truth by a public that lacks the access to verify. Oh, and it riffs off an old George Michael song.
#23
“Just Like Old Times”
The Devil You Know, 2006
One of Snider’s gifts as a writer is painting portraits of the underbelly of society that finds the humanity without dulling the rough edges in the process. Here, a hustler runs into a woman he’s always carried a flame for, and hangs out with her in the motel where she often does her evening work. “Your goal was always the same as mine,” he tells her. “We didn’t want to throw a fishing line in that old mainstream.”
#22
“Broke”
Live: Near Truths and Hotel Rooms, 2003
The original version of this song appeared on New Connection , and it’s the story of a man who turns to armed robbery to pay his bills. As he explains before the live performance documented here, a young fan wrote to him saying how disappointed he was that the song glorified violence. So, in the live version, he performs the song in its complete, original form, then adds at the end: “Don’t shoot guns. Don’t be violent. Don’t shoot guns. Don’t be violent.”
#21
“Happy New Year”
The Devil You Know, 2006
Part of the problem in describing the appeal of Snider’s songs is the temptation to just quote the entire song and point to the lyrics, saying, “See! He’s brilliant!” So I’ll just say that he starts with the irony of adjacent bumper stickers and it just gets better from there.
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Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Patty Loveless
The Trouble With the Truth
1996
She’s no trouble at all. Patty Loveless thoroughly deserves a place among the very best of country hitmakers, and The Trouble with the Truth, the follow-up to her CMA award-winning classic When Fallen Angels Fly, is a worthy companion piece to that terrific collection. It proves Loveless to be one of the finest voices ever to record in Nashville, and with the assistance of some top-flight pickers and harmony singers (along with husband-producer Emory Gordy, Jr.), she engages her audience with a strong set of heartache and healing songs.
The toe-tapping “Tear-Stained Letter” opens the album with a Cajun feel, and Loveless sounds like she gives as good as she takes while she tells all about the man who turned her world upside down. It’s desperation at its very sweetest, and she sings the fire out of it. But the album soon reaches deep into the soulful blues that Loveless has mastered. Whether haunted by love’s memory (“I Miss Who I Was With You”) or hurt by the seeming indifference of a former flame (“You Can Feel Bad”), she connects with the material as few artists are able to do. The cause is assisted by the sweet steel guitar and the fiercely powerful fiddle that marks the most traditional tracks, along with the effective use of pop sensibilities that reinvent country music and help create a blend that Loveless can call her own.
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Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Don’t know why I’m so into kiss-off songs for this feature, as this is my third in a row. This week, I’m recommending “I’ll Be Gone”, a killer track off of Clint Black’s 1989 debut album, Killin’ Time. Even though five singles were pulled from that record, there were still could’ve been hits that were overlooked.
This is Clint at his best, with rapid-fire wit and wordplay backed by fierce honky-tonk country. “Baby you’ve got questions I don’t care to answer, and I don’t get off on leading people on.” He tells the lady he’s leaving behind, “Before you see me going, I’ll be gone.”
That’s my recommendation this week. What’s yours?
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
On behalf of Leeann, Blake and myself, I‘m thrilled to welcome our newest writer, Dan Milliken. For many of you, he will need no introduction, as Squinty Dan’s is a popular blog among our readers.
Dan’s mixture of knowledge, humor and personal reflection, along with his strong writing voice, make him a perfect fit here. I know that all of you will enjoy his contributions as much as we will! – Kevin
Hey there, everybody! My name’s Dan, and I’m pleased to be formally making all of your cyber-acquaintances. I currently live in Nashville, Tennessee, where I’m working toward my Bachelor’s of Business Administration in Music Business, and I like to spend my non-blogging free time working out, vegging with a good video game, or trying not to suck at guitar. Sometimes I go outside, too.
Kevin originally contacted me to design a banner for the newly pimped-out site layout, and at some point in that conversation I rather cleverly bamboozled him into letting me join up as a writer, as well. Poor guy.
But in all seriousness, I’m thrilled to have been offered this opportunity to share my thoughts on what I consider the greatest music on Earth, and humbled to be doing so for this community, which I happen to hold in similarly high regard. Kevin’s incisive work has already taught me more about the breadth and history of country music than I ever knew I wanted to know, and the site has only flourished in depth and personality thanks to the brilliant additions of Leeann and Blake. Throw in the passionate, diverse readership, and it all amounts to a very addictive experience for the burgeoning country fan like myself!
Country Universe is also personally meaningful to me in that its stellar example was part of what inspired me to revive my own blogging habit. My personal site, Squinty Dan’s, is the fruit of that decison, and I’ve loved packing it with country music content from the get-go. Ultimately, though, I felt that the blog needed a bit more topical balance, and was already looking for someplace else to dump my country music spillage when Kevin mentioned the possibility of my contributing here. So the timing of the offer really couldn’t have been better.
But enough about blogplay. This entry is supposed to be about my personal connection to country music, though frankly there are few topics I find harder to discuss. My “thing” with country music is almost too intrinsic for me to really describe it as a “connection,” hokey as that might sound. I don’t appreciate country music from a distance, as some sort of entertainment-hungry spectator looking for some excuse to have an opinion; I appreciate country music from the inside-out, because I see myself in it.
That’s what gives merit to any art form, I think. There’s no difference between the post-grunge fan and me, except that we happen to prefer different mediums, different sonic windows on the world and our places in it. I prefer my window rusty and raw, I prefer it with vocal trimmings that sound dead-tired from heat or heartache, that slur words and speak only in simple poetry because they can’t afford to waste breath on B.S. Because that’s what makes sense to me.
I appreciate country music because it’s terse, witty, honest, all of those other adjectives people throw around all the time. I appreciate country music because, at its best, it reminds me of who I am and who I’d like to be. And most of all, I appreciate country music because it appreciates me back, even when the rest of the world doesn’t.
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Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Life as a singer-songwriter has run the gamut from major-league success to disappointing failure for Steve Azar. Azar first signed a record deal in 1995, and his most notable single “I Don’t Have To Be Me (‘Til Monday)” earned Top Five status in 2002. The artist has endured long stretches of relative inactivity on the record shelves and on the radio. After leaving Mercury Records in 2005, he struggled in his pursuit of another recording contract, but returned this year with Indianola, an album on his own record label, Dang! Records. His latest single is “You’re My Life”, an ode to undying love and devotion.
The song, co-written by Steve and Radney Foster, owns an acoustic country-rock arrangement. Buoyed by a sweet organ sound and the bluesy quality of Azar’s voice, “You’re My Life” is a cut above the rest of country music’s love songs. Is the song revolutionary? No. But it does sprinkle enough unique details into the verse (his woman is a “smooth, rolling river” and a “warm and tender night”) to rise just a little higher than those paint-by-numbers sappy ballads that fill quite a few mainstream country releases.
Azar is a talent, and his album is distinctive in theme and sound. “You’re My Life” may not be the song that jump starts his career again, but it is a quality piece of work.
Written by Steve Azar & Radney Foster
Grade: B
Listen: You’re My Life
Buy: You’re My Life
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Here are some of the favorite album artwork choices from our readers:
Hard call, but I think my favorite art ever might be the one for Waylon Jennings’ Are You Ready For The Country. I’m a sucker for forest shots. - Dan M.
I must say that Garth Brooks’ ‘Fresh Horses’ cover is my favorite. All you could see was the eye and maybe a half-inch of skin surrounding the eyeball on all sides, but you knew in an instant you were seeing Garth Brooks’ eye somehow. Brilliant. – J. R. Journey
I LOVE Cross Canadian Ragweed’s Mission California cover. It’s one of the best ones of the last few years. – Matt B.
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Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Here are some of the favorite album artwork choices from our readers:
Hard call, but I think my favorite art ever might be the one for Waylon Jennings’ Are You Ready For The Country. I’m a sucker for forest shots. - Dan M.
I must say that Garth Brooks’ ‘Fresh Horses’ cover is my favorite. All you could see was the eye and maybe a half-inch of skin surrounding the eyeball on all sides, but you knew in an instant you were seeing Garth Brooks’ eye somehow. Brilliant. – J. R. Journey
I LOVE Cross Canadian Ragweed’s Mission California cover. It’s one of the best ones of the last few years. – Matt B.
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The introduction of our new writers concludes today with the first post of Lynn Douglas. She has been a regular commenter for a long time, and now she will be contributing her perspectives on country music as a whole, with a focus on Americana music in particular. With her addition, our staff is now complete. Please join me in welcoming her! – Kevin
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