I love country music.
There. I've said it.
My embarrassment in making this confession has probably something to do with the public perception of country music. If country music still conjures up images of line-dancing, good dental work, big hats and leopard-skin cat suits then this blog may not be for you.
Or maybe, just maybe, I'll change your mind. If you're still struggling with that mental image ask yourself, what is country music, in essence? Nicholas Dawidoff describes it as 'simple songs of sincerity and feeling - songs about common people by common people.' (In the Country of Country). Put in another way (and I'm paraphrasing 60s country singer Buck Owens here), if Chuck Berry had been born white he would have been a country singer. Historically speaking then, Country is the white man's (or woman's) blues. Or America's own 'folk' music, if you prefer.
My own personal interest in country goes back to my childhood. My mum was a huge fan at a time when country was probably at its most unfashionable. Distinctly I recall the strains of Tammy Wynette's D.I.V.O.R.C.E echoing through our house (prefiguring her own actual D.I.V.O.R.C.E from my dad).
Some of the good stuff stayed with me, like this...
So I can probably blame these recent purchases on her...
Now, clearly something happened to country music in the 1990s. Put simply it crossed over in a BIG way. Shania Twain's 1997 album Come On Over is the best selling album of all time by a female singer. Garth Brooks has sold more albums than Take That, Robbie Williams, JLS and One Direction have put together. Things haven't changed greatly. Last year Toby Keith, a kind of Garth Brooks with stubble, earnt more from his Republican rabble-rousing than a certain Justin Beiber with all of his endorsements. And, of course, Taylor Swift earnt more than either of them. But that don't impress me much.
For me, it wasn't country. Nor was it for Nicholas Dawidoff, who described Garth Brooks as 'a pop star masquerading as a country singer - a yuppie with a lariat.' Steve Earle was more blunt. "If Garth Brooks is country, then I aint."
During the 1990s an oppositional movement sprang up, known collectively as 'alternative country' (or, depending on what magazine you read, 'Americana', 'Insurgent Country', 'Hillbilly Noir', 'Rural Contemporary', 'Y'Alternative'...)
Unusually for such 'movements' a definite starting point can be pointed to, the release of Uncle Tupelo's No Depression album in 1990. (I should mention there were a number of highly influential artists ploughing this furrow before the movement took hold, whose importance shouldn't be underestimated: The Long Ryders, Giant Sand, The Blasters, the whole 'cowpunk' sub-genre and a whole host of others I've probably forgotten).
No Depression's title track is a cover of a 1934 Carter Family song (No Depression in Heaven) yet Uncle Tupelo sprang from the mid-west punk scene. They couldn't decide whether they wanted to be Husker Du or Hank Williams, but ultimately it didn't matter; by interpreting their musical heritage in a thoroughly modern way they changed the landscape forever.
In 1995 Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock started the first dedicated 'alt country' magazine of the same name - it now resides online http://www.nodepression.com/
Country music itself hasn't always always translated easily across the Atlantic. And it was just so with country's twisted little cousin - it took a while for this sub-genre to cross over to the UK.
Uncut magazine, from its inception in 1997, was something of a standard bearer.
The free cd given away with issue 16 of Uncut, entitled Sounds of the New West, might well be the best alt.country collection on disc to this day: The Flying Burrito Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Will Oldham, Calexico, Lambchop, The Handsome Family, Neal Casal, The Pernice Brothers, Josh Rouse...
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| Shania Twain. The highest paid lap dancer in Nashville, according to Steve Earle. |
Or maybe, just maybe, I'll change your mind. If you're still struggling with that mental image ask yourself, what is country music, in essence? Nicholas Dawidoff describes it as 'simple songs of sincerity and feeling - songs about common people by common people.' (In the Country of Country). Put in another way (and I'm paraphrasing 60s country singer Buck Owens here), if Chuck Berry had been born white he would have been a country singer. Historically speaking then, Country is the white man's (or woman's) blues. Or America's own 'folk' music, if you prefer.
My own personal interest in country goes back to my childhood. My mum was a huge fan at a time when country was probably at its most unfashionable. Distinctly I recall the strains of Tammy Wynette's D.I.V.O.R.C.E echoing through our house (prefiguring her own actual D.I.V.O.R.C.E from my dad).
Some of the good stuff stayed with me, like this...
So I can probably blame these recent purchases on her...
Now, clearly something happened to country music in the 1990s. Put simply it crossed over in a BIG way. Shania Twain's 1997 album Come On Over is the best selling album of all time by a female singer. Garth Brooks has sold more albums than Take That, Robbie Williams, JLS and One Direction have put together. Things haven't changed greatly. Last year Toby Keith, a kind of Garth Brooks with stubble, earnt more from his Republican rabble-rousing than a certain Justin Beiber with all of his endorsements. And, of course, Taylor Swift earnt more than either of them. But that don't impress me much.
 |
| A muppet and some characters from Sesame Street. |
During the 1990s an oppositional movement sprang up, known collectively as 'alternative country' (or, depending on what magazine you read, 'Americana', 'Insurgent Country', 'Hillbilly Noir', 'Rural Contemporary', 'Y'Alternative'...)
Unusually for such 'movements' a definite starting point can be pointed to, the release of Uncle Tupelo's No Depression album in 1990. (I should mention there were a number of highly influential artists ploughing this furrow before the movement took hold, whose importance shouldn't be underestimated: The Long Ryders, Giant Sand, The Blasters, the whole 'cowpunk' sub-genre and a whole host of others I've probably forgotten).
In 1995 Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock started the first dedicated 'alt country' magazine of the same name - it now resides online http://www.nodepression.com/
 |
Uncut magazine, from its inception in 1997, was something of a standard bearer.
The free cd given away with issue 16 of Uncut, entitled Sounds of the New West, might well be the best alt.country collection on disc to this day: The Flying Burrito Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Will Oldham, Calexico, Lambchop, The Handsome Family, Neal Casal, The Pernice Brothers, Josh Rouse...
Yet as much this was a movement, it was very much an underground one.
I was working in a record shop at the time and it didn't really come on my radar until 1996/7 when most of my peers were still taking sides in the phoney Britpop wars or buying Spice Girls cds.
There was something wonderfully cool about following such an underground movement and I distinctly recall our excitement at being able to fill a whole shelf of these obscure artists (although it was tempered by having to file them at the bottom of the country section after the compilations and line dance cds...)
Leicester seemed like the unofficial capital of the U.K's alt country scene at the time. Thanks largely to Ian from Magic Teapot promotions, artists like The Handsome Family, Lambchop, Chris Mills, Neal Casal, Grand Drive etc played regularly at the Princess Charlotte (now sadly defunct) and the grandly named International Arts Centre (which was essentially a bingo hall). Ditto Cosmic American Music and the Maze in Nottingham. These were exciting times for me: from sharing beers and discussing a mutual love of the Louvin Brothers with Brett Sparks of The Handsome Family, to deeply insulting one of my all-time heroes Mark Olson (ex-of The Jayhawks)...
Me: "Your new album (Political Manifest) seems like a bit of a change in direction...it's more political"
Mark: "We've always been political."
Me: "Ok... musically it's a bit of change too, it's less acoustic more... funky."
Mark: "We've always been funky."
And so it went on... and so my aspirations towards a career in music journalism ended.
The alt-country scene grew through the next decade but I guess it left me behind a little. Most of the artists I truly loved either disbanded or moved on: Wilco ventured into deeper waters and became a kind of American Radiohead. The reconstituted Jayhawks split, although I was fortunate to see their first reunion show in the U.K in 2011. Ryan Adams went from releasing three albums in a year to going on strike. Some great bands from this first wave just disappeared entirely. Whatever happened to Nadine, Wagon, Lullaby for the Working Class, Lincoln '65 etc?
What almost all of these alt-country artists had, and what much of contemporary Nashville lacks, is that 'sincerity and feeling' that Dawidoff was talking about. Or as Steve Earle puts it, "It's not about country or rock, it's really about any kind of music that's real."
I was working in a record shop at the time and it didn't really come on my radar until 1996/7 when most of my peers were still taking sides in the phoney Britpop wars or buying Spice Girls cds.
There was something wonderfully cool about following such an underground movement and I distinctly recall our excitement at being able to fill a whole shelf of these obscure artists (although it was tempered by having to file them at the bottom of the country section after the compilations and line dance cds...)
Leicester seemed like the unofficial capital of the U.K's alt country scene at the time. Thanks largely to Ian from Magic Teapot promotions, artists like The Handsome Family, Lambchop, Chris Mills, Neal Casal, Grand Drive etc played regularly at the Princess Charlotte (now sadly defunct) and the grandly named International Arts Centre (which was essentially a bingo hall). Ditto Cosmic American Music and the Maze in Nottingham. These were exciting times for me: from sharing beers and discussing a mutual love of the Louvin Brothers with Brett Sparks of The Handsome Family, to deeply insulting one of my all-time heroes Mark Olson (ex-of The Jayhawks)...
Me: "Your new album (Political Manifest) seems like a bit of a change in direction...it's more political"
Mark: "We've always been political."
Me: "Ok... musically it's a bit of change too, it's less acoustic more... funky."
Mark: "We've always been funky."
And so it went on... and so my aspirations towards a career in music journalism ended.
The alt-country scene grew through the next decade but I guess it left me behind a little. Most of the artists I truly loved either disbanded or moved on: Wilco ventured into deeper waters and became a kind of American Radiohead. The reconstituted Jayhawks split, although I was fortunate to see their first reunion show in the U.K in 2011. Ryan Adams went from releasing three albums in a year to going on strike. Some great bands from this first wave just disappeared entirely. Whatever happened to Nadine, Wagon, Lullaby for the Working Class, Lincoln '65 etc?
.jpg) |
| The Jayhawks, Birmingham Academy 2/8/11 (l-r) Gary Louris, Marc Perlman, Mark Olson, Tim O'Reagan |
What almost all of these alt-country artists had, and what much of contemporary Nashville lacks, is that 'sincerity and feeling' that Dawidoff was talking about. Or as Steve Earle puts it, "It's not about country or rock, it's really about any kind of music that's real."
