The 9513 - Country Music Blog

In yesterday’s News Roundup, we learned the lineup for the Brooks and Dunn “Last Rodeo” concert special.

The special, which will be filmed April 19, will air on CBS in late May. Performers will pay tribute to the duo with covers of its songs:

The duo has landed Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, Reba McEntire, Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, George Strait, Taylor Swift, Miranda Lambert and Lady Antebellum for “ACM Presents: Brooks & Dunn — The Last Rodeo.”

…

Others slated to perform on the special include Sugarland, Jason Aldean and Jennifer Hudson.

Between chart-toppers such as “My Maria,” “A Man This Lonely,” “I Am That Man,” “Honky Tonk Truth,” “He’s Got You,” “How Long Gone,” “I Can’t Get Over You,” “You’ll Always Be Loved by Me,” “Ain’t Nothing ‘Bout You,” “Only in America” and “The Long Goodbye,” the show should have no shortage of material.

What Brooks and Dunn songs would you match up to each of the concert’s performers?

Today I guest write on Juli Thanki’s Friday Five not because she’s on vacation–mentally nor physically–but because we wanted to pay tribute to one particular little part of her that we adore. For those that have gotten the privilege to know her, Juli has a wonderful and twisted sense of humor, and nowhere is that more evident than in her Friday Five columns. After all, who else would have the grace to put together playlists on truly abominable topics like drowning and dead presidents and still make you smile while you’re reading them?

A couple weeks back, Juli put five songs together about freezing to death. (We here at The 9513 believe that mid-Atlantic cold spell has finally gone to her brain.) Offline, one of our other contributers, Sam Gazdziak affectionately called Juli, “The 9513’s resident mistress of the dark,” and suggested that since there’s so many happy pop-country songs out there, she should break out a new cause of death playlist every week for spite.

We won’t call this spiteful. We’ll just call this week’s Friday Five about death by stampede just a glorified lil’ honor to our own little Elvira.

• 5. “Stampede” – Chris Ledoux

  The poor protagonist in LeDoux’s song is making a peaceful resting spot down by the Red River and bunks down for the night when longhorns stampede through his camp. At the moment he’s about to be trampled to death, he awakes, only to find out that he’s been dreaming. But then the end of the song finishes off with his dream coming true, déjà-vu style. It’s like the movie Groundhog Day, but for cowboys out on the range.

• 4. “Buffalo Stampede” – Cowboy Troy

  I’ll take some grief for including Cowboy Troy in this “country music” playlist, but including this song helps spread the fear of being trampled beyond the bovine species and into the bison family. Cowboy Troy strings along a loose story of a buffalo stampede as an analogy of being a tough guy able to overcome anything–I think that’s what he’s talking about, anyway. I’m not quite jiggy enough to tell.

• 3. “Stampede” – Roy Rogers and the Sons Of The P

  “Ten thousand cattle in flight/The devil’s ridin’ herd tonight/The thunder of the hooves and the fury from the skies/Don’t get out in front or every man dies,” sings the King of the Cowboys, on a song released way back in 1950. Where’s Curly from City Slickers when you need him?

• 2. “Stampede” – Johnny Cash

  Originally released on Cash’s 1965 Western-themed album Johnny Cash Sings the Ballads of the True West, this song tells the story of a cowboy named Frank who is lost to a stampede when his foot misses a stirrup and he loses the grip of his horn. His final yell is, “Hey Johnny, head the wild bunch and do the ladies well.” Perhaps that’s the reason Cash shaved off the Bucky Covington mustache he was sporting on the album’s cover–chicks don’t always dig the stache’.

• 1. “Utah Carol” – Marty Robbins

  In this great story song from 1959, a cowboy named Utah takes the boss’s daughter out on a ride and the red blanket he puts under her saddle falls and causes a stampede. He leaps off his faithful steed, grabs the blanket and leads the stampede away from the young girl–towards himself instead. Utah’s a hero as he meets his end, but what do his friends do to remember him by? They bury him in the dang blanket that killed him!

• Kate & Kacey Coppola are no longer with Big Machine Records, but the sisters aren’t letting their departure slow them them down, in fact, it was label slowing them down.
  

  It happened a little while back, and it’s one of the hardest things we’ve ever gone through. They weren’t wanting to put out new music quite as fast as we were hoping, and for that and other reasons, we decided to move on.

• To open the different dates on her first official headlining tour Miranda Lambert chose nine different artists, all male
• Brooks & Dunn landed an impressive lineup of big names (all solo artists or trios, no duos) to perform at their “Last Rodeo” concert special in April following the ACM Awards.
• New Elizabeth Cook album. May 11.
• Chet Flippo’s Nashville Skyline column consists of a 19-question, multiple choice quiz this week. One of my favorites:
  

  Brad Paisley recently had a bad fall on stage while performing his song, “Alcohol.” The accident happened because:

  A. He stepped on Little Jimmy Dickens and tripped.
  B. He stepped on Justin Moore and tripped.
  C. He was sober and singing about drinking.
  D. He was scratching a tick bite.
  E. None of the above

• The Smoking Gun’s Backstage Pass section lists numerous tour riders for entertainers of all genres, including 14 from country’s past and present stars. (via HearYa, which asks what you’d include on your own personal list.)
• Austin Music Source’s Joe Gross reviewed Taylor Swift’s recent tour stop in Austin:
  

  Speaking of flipping, boy, can that gal flip her hair. Admittedly, it’s spectacular hair and she worked it, her head seemingly capable of 360 degree motion — I counted ten different angles in a four bar passage during the piano ballad “You’re Not Sorry” point. Somewhere, her chiropractor is already putting money down on a beach house.

• The Tennessean, CMT, and GAC all have reviews of Lady Antebellum’s sold out show at the Ryman on Wednesday night, where one of the highlights was an acoustic rendition of the Hank Williams classic “Lost Highway.”
• That Nashville Sound introduced Zoe Muth and The Last High Rollers, a band that’s described as sounding like “Emmylou Harris on vinyl.” (MySpace)
  

  If you’re interested in beautiful pedal steel, gorgeous mountain mandolin, and old-school country, this is one of the best offerings of the last year.

• Did you know Clint Eastwood has a No. 1 country hit? It was a duet with Merle Haggard back in 1980 and is one of the songs from a list that Craig Shelburne put together of seven surprising singers with a country hit.
• Josh Turner respects his heroes:
  

  I won’t ever forget, I had gotten an offer to do a show in Florida, and they wanted John to open for me. I told them, “Absolutely not! There’s no way I’m going to go out there and be a headliner with John Anderson, one of my heroes opening for me.” I’m so glad I made that decision because I got out there and played my 40 minutes, and he comes on and plays two hours worth of hits. It was unbelievable and just knocked everybody dead. So that was one case where being humble was the right way to go, because he would have just put me to shame regardless.

• John Fogerty will be honored as a BMI Icon at the organization’s 58th Annual Pop Awards next Tuesday.
• Ray Benson isn’t worried about seeking airplay:
  

  “We have found that with satellite radio and the Internet, Asleep at the Wheel still sells records and [has successful] tours,” says Ray of stations’ quest for young listeners. “Great country music still exists all over the place; it’s just not on country radio anymore … I don’t mind but it has certainly changed the format.”

• Music Fog: Kevin Welch – “Andaman Sea”

Songwriters: James Otto, Carson Chamberlain and Al Anderson.

Like blistering sunburns caused by prolonged exposure to the long, hot days of summer, country songs that celebrate the season of fun in the sun can quickly become over-baked and painful. James Otto’s new single “Groovy Little Summer Song,” however, breaks through the pack and delivers a self-aware, laid-back tune just as enjoyable as an SPF-covered day at the beach.

The song finds Otto comfortably in the pocket, showcasing the same smooth delivery exhibited on breakout hit “Just Got Started Loving You.” When he implores the DJ to “Play something sexy/Make her fall in love with me,” it’s easy to imagine the singer following through on his end of the deal.

Coming out of a brutal chill that left snow on the ground in every state across the country except Hawaii, “Groovy Little Summer Song” practically salivates over summer’s much-anticipated answer to blizzards and snow boots: “When the days stop gettin’ warm /And the sun starts sinkin’ lower/Weekends go by faster and beer stops tasting colder/Wanna tune into a station that takes me on a soul vacation.”

The song’s singer, who walks the “country soul” talk that Danny Gokey has hyped as of late, complements the tune’s a-few-beers-in flavor with well-placed ending falsetto notes reminiscent of Alabama’s “Dancin’, Shaggin’ on the Boulevard.” In a sea of artists trying to force a square peg into a round hole, Otto’s special brand of cool is refreshingly authentic.

Otto has struggled to channel any momentum on his last three singles “For You,” “These Are the Good Old Days” and “Since You Brought It Up.” Songs such as “Groovy Little Summer Song” and “Just Got Started Loving You” obviously come natural to the singer; however, if Otto has any hopes of sustaining a career, he’ll have to find a way to channel his brand of country music into songs that don’t solely rely on his sexual charisma.

On top of the appeal that stems from a summer song not forced on country radio by Kenny Chesney and Co., “Groovy Little Summer Song” is a definitive example of what its title describes. After a long, cold winter, bring it on.

Listen: James Otto – “Groovy Little Summer Song”

Last week I caught up with Warner Bros. Nashville SVP of Sales and Marketing Peter Strickland to chat about the strategy behind Blake Shelton’s new six-track album release, and about what a successful launch of the “SixPak” brand could mean for a struggling music industry. Here’s the transcription of that interview.

To read my interview with Shelton, click here. Or, check out the conversation about EP and short-length albums started by Karlie Justus in last Saturday’s Your Take.

JIM MALEC: Why is physical product a part of this new marketing strategy?

PETER STRICKLAND: Well, physical, in our format, represents ninety percent of the business. It wouldn’t make sense for us to eliminate that part of the business. It’s just how our consumers shop for music. Digital is growing, but it just made sense to do it on both platforms. And, with it being new, you want to be able to gauge the success in both areas—whether we grow in physical, whether we grow in digital, or whether we don’t [grow].

JM: Are you confident that you’ll have shelf placement for Blake’s first SixPak, Hillbilly Bone?

PS: Yes. It was very well received by all digital partners and all retail partners.

JM: What does a SixPak look like?

PS: In its current release state, it looks exactly the same as a regular CD. There are branding points on the piece that will describe it—down the inter-window of the spine it shows a SixPak copy layout, and we also have a SixPak logo on the stickering (where we call out the hit track and other things we want to message).

JM: In the press release that went out with the advance for this, there’s a quote from Blake that says, “The fact that people will be able to get the new music for less money is a gift to my fans who have been behind me every step of the way.” What advantages are there, cost wise, in releasing two smaller albums as opposed to one album, and how does this format lower costs on the label’s end so that it can lower costs on the retail end? Or, I guess another way to ask this question would be, is the savings that Blake is talking about really anything other than a nominal reduction in retail price?

PS: I can’t get in to the financial structure of how we put out our music, and additionally, we can’t tell our customers—not our consumers but our customers—what to sell music for. We sell it to them at a certain price, but they could sell this thing for $20 if they want. I doubt that’s going to happen (laughing).

I think that what is making this initial launch successful is that retail is embracing it, and I think they’ll price it where it could attract additional consumers to the project. If it’s being sold for less, but you’re selling more volume, ultimately you’re going to end up in a better place.

Now, as far as on the manufacturing side, yes. Instead of manufacturing or developing a product once–and all the art that goes along with that–you will have that cost twice or three times or whatever it might be. That’s if you look at it as an album cycle.

What we’re looking at it as is a six-track album that would release every six months, to infinity. That would just become a normal release schedule for a body of work. We’ve talked with Blake that we could potentially see three of these, which will give us enough time to see what the consumers’ shopping habits are gonna be based on this type of release. We’ll learn from it and alter some things if we have to. But if it’s a huge success, the best thing we could do is just to learn what we did from that and then launch another one.

Continue Reading…

• The Alabama Music Hall of Fame announced its latest class of inductees, but it’s hard to tell who is actually being inducted and who is simply receiving an award. Either way, Jamey Johnson will be honored with the Alabama’s Rising Star award and Mac McAnally will receive the Arthur Alexander Songwriter’s award.
• Ninebullets.net: I am looking for the 5 songs that shifted you musically over your lifetime and made you who you are. Furthermore, I want to know how it changed you.
• A couple of weeks ago we announced Rodney Hayden’s birthday, one which he shares with Johnny Cash. Can’t get anymore badass than that, right? Well today, Hayden’s New American Voices (The 9513 sponsored tour) counterpart, Drew Kennedy, is celebrating his own birthday, and it’s one that he shares with the inestimable Carrie Underwood. But onward to the cool part. To mark the occasion, he’s recorded a live album, complete with detailed song intros, featuring six favorites and six new, previously unreleased songs. How can you get it? Glad you asked, the physical copy can be had via Lone Star Music, or if you prefer the more economic (free) alternative, it can be downloaded through his website starting sometime today.
• Country Haiku:
  

  That old man Wrigley
  Offered me advice on life
  Like, always chew gum

• The fans voted and the results are in: GAC presents the top 10 Brooks & Dunn videos.
• Farce the Music: Top 10 Rap/Country Mashups (that someone ought to create… or not)
• Songwriter Tom Douglas confesses to The Boot that he was haunted by his lack of action to help a woman in need and that’s what led him to write the song “Grown Men Don’t Cry” with Steve Seskin.
• Rising stars Luke Bryan and Emily West are scheduled to appear in an episode of the new Celebrity Apprentice.
  

  The two will take part in a Nashville-themed challenge that will have the celebrity teams try to figure out what it takes to make a country music superstar.

• Legacy Recordings plans to digitally reissue 14 of Johnny Cash’s ’70s and ’80s Columbia Records albums. Dolly Parton’s early ’70s gospel recordings will also be reissued, and Craig Shelburne encourages readers to pick up the new double-disc set George Jones: The Great Lost Hits, which includes 34 sides from ’60s and ’70s Musicor years.
• Rock critic Ken Tucker on the latest Johnny Cash record:
  

  There’s a grand legacy of Johnny Cash music that American VI: Ain’t No Grave does not by any means trash. It simply presents the man in his final phase, reflective but also active; wanting, needing to make more music. You must choose the way you want to interpret the sentiments that he has left behind.

• My Kind of Country’s J.R. Journey reviewed the recent Lee Ann Womack/Reba McEntire/George Strait tour stop in Memphis, Tennessee.
• The Boot listed the top 10 Carrie Underwood songs, which equals 25 percent of her recorded output.
• Blake Shelton on marrying Miranda Lambert:
  

  He tells Us Weekly, “I thought we were getting a little closer until she took me to Tiffany’s to show me the ring she wanted.

  “It was a $450,000 pink diamond. I probably need to save a bit longer before I’m ready for that.”

• Galleywinter introduced Expectations and Parking Lots, the new album from the Brison Bursey Band. (MySpace)
• Josh Grider took to his MySpace blog to explain how sometimes things come full circle:
  

  One such trip was to Belmont University in Nashville, TN. I was particularly excited about this audition because I felt like I could really play some music that I dug, and really showcase myself doing what I loved to do. I didn’t have to sing an aria, or a classical piece, but I could sing a contemporary country song and accompany myself on guitar. The song I chose to sing was one of my favorites at the time, and remains so to this day. It was called “The Cowboy Song” and was the last track on Garth Brooks’ In Pieces album.

• That latest video from Music Fog, David Olney and Sergio Webb performing “Postcard from Mexico,” prominently features a megaphone, a one-handed guitar performance, and free advertising for Radio Shack.

Hold your horses, cowpokes–Rodney Atkins’ new single, “Farmer’s Daughter,” is not a cover of Merle Haggard’s classic piece of country music poetry. In fact, Atkins’ innocuous vignette is about as far as possible from that father’s rumination on the night he’ll give his daughter away to a city boy.

Here, perhaps country music’s most family-friendly singer in a generation “dad-gums” and golly-gees his way through a piece of contemporary fluff that only proves his music to be fundamentally comprised of the genre’s most basic stereotypes.

With a catalog full of songs that primarily includes topics like America, “values,” kids and rural life, Atkins has established himself as an artist more concerned with motif than character. Unfortunately, those themes are seldom developed to more than a perfunctory degree. Atkins’ music is full of nifty rhymes and swell imagery that does a sufficient job of illustrating a particular lifestyle and life perspective, but it consistently reduces its characters to a monolithic group of stock small-town faces who have no depth beyond their obvious connection to a particular setting.

In this case, that setting is a farm, and the characters are a hard-working farmer, a beautiful farmer’s daughter and a young, cocky farmhand who falls in love with said female. What, you’ve heard that one before? “Farmer’s Daughter” tells the most obvious story about this most obvious trio in the most obvious way possible, as if we’ve never considered the possibility of the situation.

Or should I say the probability of the situation? Because, after all, it’s not even particularly unexpected that a farmhand would fall in love with a beautiful farmer’s daughter, since both of them likely live in a small town where choices in mates are limited, they see each other and interact on a daily basis, and their relationship is, in a way, taboo—a fact which fuels attraction.

Not to spoil anything for you, but yes, they get married–and yes, they live happily ever after.

In fact, the story is so obvious that it seems hardly worth telling. Alas, that’s what today’s mainstream country audience clamors for—the simplest, most easily-consumed lyrics possible, wrapped up inside a musical setting that doesn’t so much help the song communicate as remind you what radio station you’re listening to.

Atkins has carved out a reasonable amount of success by playing the “aww shucks” card to great effect. “Farmer’s Daughter” is a logical next step in that chain, though it will accomplish little other than to help further entrench country music in one of its most stale and unintelligent periods ever.

Listen: Rodney Atkins – “Farmer’s Daughter”

• Ryan Bingham joined the Country Throwdown Tour, which already includes Jamey Johnson, Little Big Town, Eric Church, Jack Ingram, Montgomery Gentry, Eli Young Band, the Lost Trailers, and Heidi Newfield.
• Jason Aldean and Ashley Monroe celebrated the success of the song “The Truth” at an industry party on Monday.
• After subjecting himself to Danny Gokey’s new album twice, Country California’s C.M. Wilcox has a few things to say:
  

  Gokey’s complete lack of investment in anything resembling country music is readily apparent. He’s a Christian soul singer tapping the conventions of country music from a safe distance, seeing if he might strike gold. The nearest analog is Phil Stacey, who released exactly one ‘country’ (at Disney’s insistence) single and album on Lyric Street before following his heart to a Christian label the next year. I hope Danny Gokey’s country stint will be similarly short, so he can move on and make some music he actually enjoys.

• Brad Paisley tweeted the results of his recent stage spill.
• Drew Kennedy posted the demo to a song he just wrote and recorded this morning titled “The Captain And The Highway.” Now that’s impressive turnaround.
• First week sales totaled 71,009 for Blake Shelton’s new EP, which was good enough for No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and earned No. 2 spot on the country album chart. (via press release)
• Nathin Rabin’s thoughts on Kinky Friedman: “[...] of all the personas and roles Friedman has adopted throughout his life and career he should be remembered first and foremost as a great songwriter.”
• The Boot posted video of Gary Allan’s neck tattoo, kilted guitar player, and a performance of “Get Off On The Pain.”
• My Kind of Country writer Occasional Hope’s take on the Josh Thompson song “Blame It On Waylon” — “more about image than substance” — seems to be a pretty fair description of Josh Thompson the artist at this point, but she argues there is some substance, most notably in the reflective lyrics of “Sinner.”
• Josh Thompson holds hope for his career:
  

  “Hopefully with the right mojo I’ll watch my songs go up the charts and hopefully sell records,” he said. “I think when people hear this CD they will know exactly who I am as a writer, as an artist and as a person. The only thing I can do is try to write great songs.”

  Clicking through and scroll to the bottom for a video tour of Thompson’s van.

• The members of Lady Antebellum are not only carving out their own mainstream success, but writing songs for other artists as well, including Luke Bryan, Miranda Lambert, and Danny Gokey.
• Carrie Underwood’s “Play On Tour” kicks off tomorrow.
• Walmart’s Soundcheck is featuring a six-song performance and interview from Blake Shelton.

• Music Fog: Eric Brace & Peter Cooper – “Wait a Minute”

Kellie Coffey was originally signed to BNA records in 2001, and it was a cut from her Dann Huff-produced 2002 album–”When You Lie Next to Me”–that introduced the country music world to her. The song spent an amazing eight months climbing up the charts, eventually resulting in a tour spot on Kenny Chesney’s Margaritas & Senoritas Tour, a 2003 Academy of Country Music Award for Top New Female Vocalist and a spot on the George Strait tour in 2004.

But after a split from her record label in 2004, she put her music career on hold while she tackled another equally challenging new role: Mother. It didn’t come easy, and in the process, she recorded and released a song about the challenges of infertility. The video for “I Would Die For That” has become an internet sensation, collecting over half a million views while becoming an inspiration for women and couples facing the same challenges.

Coffey released an independent album, Walk On, in 2007, and an EP called Why I’m Alive within the last year. And while there are few country music stations playing the new releases, she has finally found fulfillment in becoming a mom to two healthy kids. She’s still writing and recording and fans will have new music to look forward to before the end of 2010.

The 9513 had the opportunity to talk with the ever-lovely Kellie Coffey about the time during her peak radio airplay and about what life is like for her these days. Continue Reading…

Three friends named Butter, Big Vinny and Crystal sounds like a team of crime-fighting mice from a mid-‘80s Saturday morning cartoon, but together they are, in fact, Trailer Choir. Up until now, the band is best known for its song, “Rockin’ The Beer Gut,” and the fact that Big Vinny–a 400-plus pound former Sonic manager who wears overalls–can break out The Worm during a concert. That’s a dance move, by the way, and not anything lewd.

With that kind of a track record, it’s hard to take them seriously, and that may account for the group’s failure to crack the Top 40 yet. Sure, Brad Paisley and Trace Adkins have had hits with humorous songs, but they’ve got an equal number of somber ballads in their repertoire. Aside from one heavy-handed song about dead coal miners, Trailer Choir has been all about jokes and gimmicks from the start, and it’s tempting to put the trio in the same category as Fast Ryde and Tyler Dean and dismiss them as all schtick, no substance.

Then along comes “Rollin’ in the Sunshine.” No, it’s not a groundbreaking single by any stretch of the imagination. It’s written in the same template that most breezy summer songs use: Life’s really hard right now, but man, the weather’s sure nice! Let’s go for a ride! However, writers Big Vinny and Butter took that old template and turned out a song that’s catchier than most with a few little details–like taking a night class and hand-surfing in the car–that don’t normally pop up in a country song. Butter turns in a pretty smooth vocal performance, and the backing fiddle and accordion give the song just a bit of an always-welcome Cajun feel.

“Rolling Through The Sunshine” isn’t any deeper than Trailer Choir’s other songs. However, “Off The Hillbilly Hook” and “Beer Gut” just seemed like desperate cries for attention, too forced to be truly humorous or stand up to repeated listening. While this song doesn’t seem to have aspirations beyond being a fun summer tune, it strikes a better balance between entertainment and quality. A few more songs like this one, and people might start thinking there’s more to Trailer Choir than The Worm.

Listen: Trailer Choir – “Rolling Through The Sunshine”