Digging Deep: Ashley Monroe
Recently, while listening to Kathy Mattea’s Coal, I realized that, perhaps, the most important aspect to creating a themed play list was the ability to find some obscure songs to include with all those well-known classics. While Merle Travis’s “Dark as a Dungeon” as performed at Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash and Darrell Scott’s “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” as performed by Patty Loveless are two of my personal favorite coal miner songs—they are already in heavy rotation on several of my play lists and are drawn from albums I listen to regularly.
Ashley Monroe’s “Canary,” which can be unearthed on This is My America Volume 2, is the kind of hidden gem that often can be missed even by those paying close attention to the movements of country music. Similar in tone to classic coal mining songs but delivered with modern sensibilities “Canary” most closely resembles what I wish “radio friendly” country sounded like—it isn’t traditional but it feels like country music. Plus, it fits well between my more traditional favorites, providing some variety for myself and perhaps a surprise to anyone listening along.
One of Country music’s most respected female artists, Reba McEntire, has had an expansive career that has spanned three decades. Those who have assessed McEntire’s longevity have rightly concluded that she has reinvented herself several times within her long career to adapt to the ever changing climate of country music.
I think someone’s in a little songwriting funk. The #37-stalled “Dead Flowers” had intriguing lyrics but a generally bland sound; this one has the inverse problem. The melody and production are reminiscent of Little Big Town’s best rustic country-rock, and there’s a much more commanding hook here than “Dead Flowers” had, but the effort is compromised by throwaway lines like the chorus’ closing “And I don’t know why, white liar.” Don’t know why what, MirLam? 
The first week of Back to the Nineties will wind down with women who have something in common. Each one is the daughter of a legendary country star that struggled to break through during the late seventies and most of the eighties, then became commercially successful throughout the nineties.