The 9513 - Country Music Blog

• Blake Shelton on his more defiant attitude of late:
  

  “One thing we’re doing that we probably haven’t done is showcase the … ‘I don’t give a (expletive) if you like it or not’ attitude,” Shelton says. “It’s puzzled me why country artists have to be so politically correct. I mean I’m not a politician. If I’m going to sing about drinking and raising hell then you have to know deep down inside that’s what I do. I’m just more open about it lately, and it’s amazing the reaction to that. People either love me or hate me. But it’s the first time they are noticing, which is awesome for me. I’m loving it. I can show you some people on Twitter that hate me. They are probably tree-hugging, card-carrying members of PETA that can kiss my (expletive) anyway.”

• If you like the music of Lee Ann Womack, The Boot invites you listen to “So Embarassing,” the new single from Becky Schlegel whose next album, Dandelion, will be released in January and is billed as her most commercial country project to date.
• Farce the Music: Top 10 Positive Things About Rascal Flatts
• Craig Shelburne compiled a list of his favorite Waylon Jennings songs from the ’70s.
• Those “dudes in a band” give musicians a bad rap.
• Without writer, folklorist, Smithsonian Folklife Festival founder/coordinator, and musician Ralph Rinzler, Juli Thanki argues that the founding father of bluegrass music, Bill Monroe, could have been erased from the minds of the American public.
• Alison Bonaguro mentioned a few songs that were recorded by two separate artists — for example, “Break Down Here” by Julie Roberts and Trace Adkins and “Telluride” by Tim McGraw and more recently Josh Gracin — and asked if you can think of any other examples.
• Country Haiku:
  

  In this truck I am
  Carrying your love with me
  Also, some boxes

• Caroldwood Records folded into Lyric Street Records. Trent Tomlinson and Love and Theft made the switch, but there’s no word on Jessica Andrews, the label’s first artist.
• Country Universe: What are some of your favorite non-hit singles from the past decade?
• Guy Clark performed “Somedays You Write the Song,” “The Guitar,” “If I Needed You,” “L.A. Freeway,” and “Hemingway’s Whiskey” in the World Cafe studio.
• Country California fake news:
  

  “Crunchy, guitar-driven rock music with hick-flavored lyrics is my calling card, but it wouldn’t be a Jason Aldean album without a vaguely menacing, clearly-overcompensating-for-something title,” says Aldean. “People don’t think about it, but the title is real important. It’s something we’ll have to tour behind for a year and print on t-shirts and stuff, so when it comes to finding the right name, we’re giving it our all. Hmm… Giving It My All? Nah, not tough enough.”

• The latest group of honorees for the Music City Walk of Fame includes Dolly Parton, Ernest Tubb, Kid Rock, Tootsie Bess, and Charlie Daniels.
• Nathan Rabin covered Lee Hazelwood for week 22 of his Nashville or Bust column.
  

  Even when he was singing, he was still pretty much just talking: His voice wasn’t a particularly powerful or subtle instrument, but he got the most out of it. “I’ll Live Yesterdays” has one of the strangest, funniest, most unexpectedly affecting intros I’ve ever heard, as Hazlewood reasons, with exquisite world-weariness, “Seems we’re always doing something to hurt each other / But you know, you never really hurt me until the fourth verse of this song.”

• Watch the new video for “It Did,” the first single from Blaine Larsen’s forthcoming album. (via NashvilleGab)
• Gretchen Peters posted a 15 minute travelogue video from the Cowboy Train ride with Tom Russell, Paul Zarzyski, Wylie Gustafson, Sourdough Slim, Barry Walsh and Thad Beckman back in September.

The American Revival Tour is currently winding its way down the Eastern seaboard, spreading the gospel of oldtime and bluegrass. Monday night the tour stopped in Alexandria’s at the Birchmere. Though the venue wasn’t sold out, there was a respectable turnout for a weeknight, especially considering that Lyle Lovett and Bruce Springsteen were in town. Because there were three acts, each was limited to a 40-minute set, but for listeners, that added up to two hours of excellent music at a reasonable price. Verdict: a good deal
.
First up were The Dixie Bee-Liners, a six-person group that blends bluegrass, country, and folk, and has charm to spare. Most of their material was from new release Susanville; the album’s tagline is “every car on the highway has a story,” and the Bee-Liners deliver these vignettes about roadside cafes, wanderlust, and a demographic of women known as “diesel sniffers” with sweet harmonies, fierce picking, and catchy turns of phrase.

Following the Bee-Liners was Sierra Hull, bluegrass’ current Anointed One. The mandolin virtuoso was barely old enough to vote in yesterday’s elections, but when it comes to performing, she’s a seasoned pro. She and her band Highway 111 (with Ron Block taking the place of the band’s regular banjo player, Cory Walker) ripped through an all too short set that captivated the audience. Hull’s vocals are Krauss-like, her angelic soprano balancing masterful mandolin picking and making it all look incredibly easy. Guitarist Clay Hess took lead vocals for a couple songs in addition to, as he put it “doing [his] best impression of a 16-year old girl” on the harmonies for stunning ballad “The Hard Way.” Personally I’m looking forward to the day Hull and her band return to the Birchmere as headliners: 40 minutes just wasn’t enough.

Closing the show was Uncle Earl, who opened their set with an oldtimey version of Blind Willie Johnson’s “God Moves on the Water.” The g’Earls, as they call themselves, are women of many talents; banjoist Paula Bradley and Kristin Andreassen kicked up their heels and clogged along to a few fiddle tunes, while fiddler Stephanie Coleman cracked up the crowd by introducing the rather depressing “The Drunkard’s Lone Child” as “not an autobiographical song, but my dad got so drunk at my sister’s wedding…”

Their set wasn’t all drunkenness and sinking ships: there was a whole lot of goofy banter among the bandmembers between songs, and the madly catchy “Crayola,” written by Andreassen, saw Uncle Earl eschewing their instruments in favor of some elaborate playground clapping (think “Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack,”). The gals currently have Bryn Davies keeping the rhythm for them on the American Revival Tour; Davies, known as “The Bass Lady,” has played with artists like Tony Rice and Guy Clark, but her seamless incorporation into the band made it seem like she’d been with UE since their inception a decade ago. The band was also briefly joined by Punch Brother and honorary g’Earl Chris Eldridge, one of the few American Revivalists to possess a Y chromosome.

All three acts mentioned the Birchmere’s long history as a roots-friendly venue, with Hull, a first-timer, naming it “totally a legendary place to play” and confessing to owning several bootleg recordings of Birchmere bluegrass shows, while the Dixie Bee-Liners dedicated a song to the late John Duffey, a DC native and member of the Country Gentlemen and Birchmere mainstays The Seldom Scene. Perhaps it might be too early to make such statements, but I’m going to say that in 20 years, many of these musicians will be talked about as reverently as Bee-Liner Buddy Woodward spoke of Duffey.

After Uncle Earl’s set, all 15 musicians on the American Revival Tour—joined by a towheaded toddler playing what appeared to be air washboard—crowded around a pair of microphones for one final song, “Sittin’ on Top of the World.” Driving home with the Bee-Liners’ new record keeping me company, I felt the same way.

Last.fm Top Artists

Two familiar faces are tied for #1 this week, as George Strait and Miranda Lambert both have 24 listeners. Alan Jackson is one behind to end up at #3, and the group of artists at #4 with 21 listeners includes Taylor Swift, Patty Loveless, Keith Urban and Johnny Cash. For Swift and Urban, it’s the best showing for either of them in quite some time. Perhaps Swift’s release of a recycled old album with a few new songs, photos and videos brought a few additional fans out of the woodwork. Joe Nichols makes a strong showing as well, with 17 listeners putting him at #17. Lorrie Morgan, despite the fact that Amazon was giving away her new album for spare change and pocket lint, ended up with 11 listeners, actually one down from last week. Lyle Lovett, who was the beneficiary of a similar bargain with his new album, had 10 listeners, an increase for him. Hayes Carll ended up at #21 with 16 listeners, the best of the Americana bunch, with Steve Earle (13) trailing.

Last.fm Top Albums

There is still a sizable gap between Revolution, with 18 listeners, and the rest of the field. Fearless (impossible to tell if it’s the Regular, Platinum or Karaoke version – yes, there is a karaoke version) came in at #2 with 13. Brad Paisley was next with American Saturday Night (12). Again, the grouping at #4 has a little something for everyone. There’s Justin Townes Earle’s Midnight At The Movies for the Americana fans, Lee Ann Womack’s Call Me Crazy and Strait’s It Just Comes Natural for mainstream fans, and Carrie Underwood’s Some Hearts for American Idol fans. Play On made it up to #16 despite not being released until tomorrow, so that’s bound to have a big showing in next week’s charts. Elsewhere, as further proof that you can get good stuff for free, the T For Texas T From Tennessee sampler that’s available as a free download from Amazon had 6 listeners.

Last.fm Top Singles

We have a dethroning, as Lady Antebellum has the #1 track, with “Need You Now” having 9 listeners. It’s still a Lambert-centric Top 10, with “Dead Flowers,” “The House That Built Me” and “White Liar” all having 8 listeners, but the cracks are showing. The non-Ran tracks in the rest of the Top 10 include Kellie Pickler’s “Didn’t You Know How Much I Loved You,” Underwood’s “Cowboy Casanova,” Eli Young Band’s “When It Rains,” and David Nail’s “Red Light.” Any Top 10 with a Kellie Pickler song in it is pretty special already, but “Casanova” puts it over the top. Morgan’s classic covers album has six listeners, and their favorites included “Wine Me Up,” “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” and “Cry.”

Billboard Country Songs

It took 18 weeks, but Zac Brown Band’s “Toes” made it to #1, giving the band two #1s and a #2 to start its major-label career. The other big jump in the Top 5 was that “Welcome To The Future” moved from #4 to #2. Toby Keith leaped from #55 to #39 with “Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song), and Strait’s “Twang” jumped from #30 to #24. “Backwoods” by Justin Moore moved from #50 to #42, because it’s been almost 10 minutes since a song about country living was a hit. Thank God “Southern Voice” keeps moving up the charts, up to #16 this week, because the country radio audience will be experiencing withdrawals.

Billboard Country Albums

While the single continues to gain airplay, McGraw debuted at #1 with Southern Voice (the album), which made it to #2 on the Billboard Top 200. Swift will likely have her one-week stay at #2 before Fearless, or at least some version of it, goes back to #1. Revolution stays in the Top 5, moving from #4 to #5, and Lady Antebellum moves from #7 to #6 after 80 weeks on the chart. It’s the second-longest tenure for any album on the charts. Lyle Lovett debuted at #8 with Natural Forces, ensuring that the Top 10 has at least one artist that makes the Taylor Swift fans say, “Who?” Keep On Loving You by Reba McEntire moved up from #16 to #13 and was the sales gainer for the week. The other notable debut was Bomshel’s Fight Like A Girl. Actually, any record that gets released by Curb Records and isn’t a greatest hits package is a notable debut.

Americana Music Association Chart

Robert Earl Keen made it to #1 with The Rose Hotel, with its 405 spins putting it at 2,234 total spins since its release. Lovett, Keen’s college roommate, moved up to #4 from #8. Corb Lund’s Losin’ Lately Gambler moved from #19 to #12, and his success will hopefully mean that the next time I see him live, there will be more than 20 people in the room. Son Volt’s American Central Dust moves back from #33 to #37, but its 5,629 total spins make it the most played record in the Top 40. The Mississippi Sheiks, an early era blues-type band from the 1930s, have earned a tribute album, which debuted at #28. Things About Comin’ My Way includes contributions from Carolina Chocolate Drops, Danny Barnes, Bruce Cockburn and North Mississippi All Stars, among others.

Freebie of the Week

The Bee’s Knees is a quartet from Worcester, Mass. The band’s influences on its Myspace page range from The Byrds and Carl Perkins to International Submarine Band and Paul Westerberg. Despite the fact that they misspell Bill Monroe’s name, that probably puts them in the Americana realm. They have several songs available on Last.fm for download. Check out “Kristi,” “Dear Carpenter” and “Down The Line” in particular.

To see this week’s charts and join our group, head to http://www.last.fm/group/The+9513.

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Reality-show prodigy turned down-home diva, Carrie Underwood has earned little critical praise despite moving over 10 million albums since her 2005 American Idol win. Nashville’s now the stomping ground for ‘80s pop-rock refugees, and Underwood’s widely viewed as a key cog in the nouveau Music Row machine–with high-minded traditionalists blanching at her country bona fides.

Despite her scratchy connection with country’s yesteryear, Underwood’s racked up a laundry list of industry honors with just two albums under her belt buckle, a reward for her gentle, tuneful voice and wholesome brand of straight-ahead twang pop. Her third disc, Play On, starts promisingly, with a whiff of boozy, barroom novelty. The playful “Cowboy Casanova,” an ode to a hard-to-keep lothario, plows along to a grungy electric guitar laced with a curling pedal steel line. This all-American girl, it seems, means serious business.

The remaining 45 minutes, though, are more Hallmark than honky tonk. Play On is a tastefully-done pop pleasure, with little of the pretentious production that gutted much of her first two discs. Better still, Underwood’s found new creases in her sweetly-Southern voice, an engaging instrument that’s grown with each album. She’s in a cheerful frame of mind these days, too: the joy she’s found in her budding romance with hockey star Mike Fisher makes the tender-hearted love songs sound like gossip night with the girls.

At her best, Underwood excels at handling the finest storytelling that Nashville has to offer. The album’s strongest track is “Someday When I Stop Loving You,” a brooding tune framed beautifully by her delicate performance, while “What Can I Say,” a collaboration with sibling trio Sons of Sylvia, is a simple, elegant declaration of longing. And the all-American girl even delivers a tart-tongued reading of the spunky, Shania-esque “Songs Like This.”

Play On, though, leans heavily on the polish of Underwood’s still-golden pipes. Too often she’s trying to outact a bad script, with a heap of platonic platitudes laid out over these sleek, bright rhythms. Underwood co-wrote seven of the thirteen cuts, and she clogs songs with stale ideas that dent the impact of her soaring soprano. Given the chief hooks of “Undo It” (a severely-processed uptempo romp) and “Unapologize” (a nice slice of swirling pop-rock), it’s a mild shock that Diane Warren doesn’t rest among the whopping twenty-five songwriters listed in the credits. Treacly anthems like “Change” and the title cut are a killjoy, too: “The smallest thing can make all the difference,” she swears on the former, aping her #1 smash, “So Small.”

Few singers could save insipid statements like “Play on, when you’re the losing the game,” and Underwood scrapes through by the skin of her teeth. Further, her hired guns hand her no favors; successful pop-rock collaborators, chief among them Idol judge Kara DioGuardi and Swedish hooksmith Max Martin, contribute little to an often-dull conversation.

No matter, as Play On will plant itself firmly atop the charts for months to come, and Underwood’s warbling saves a good deal of the dreck. With the herd of hard-charging teens now drenching the airwaves, it’s hard to believe that Underwood’s only 26. Near the top ranks of mainstream music for four years running, the reigning ACM Entertainer of the Year has long proven to be an unstoppable force. Play On, though saddled with its share of loose songwriting, is a convincing reminder of a blonde, budding talent.

• George Strait and Reba McEntire are going on tour together.
• String Theory Media’s Craig Havighurst highlighted a NPR feature that argues that charts might be measuring the wrong thing, and because of that, they mean less today than they did in the past.
  

  They’ve always been something of an illusion, a contrivance meant to serve the needs of an industry interested in getting us to consume a lot of just a few artists rather than ranging across the new and the old for a fulfilling listening life. Before SoundScan, the system methodically and negligently under-represented country and hip-hop. And SoundScan has been far from perfect. The whole Hit Parade concept has gone on to suffuse other industries such that who’s on top, who had the biggest share or the biggest opening weekend has defined most of our public dialogue about our culture’s art. And that’s just a sorry place to be.

• New releases for the week of November 3, 2009 include:

  • Alan Jackson – Songs of Love and Heartache
    Cracker Barrel

  • Carrie Underwood – Play On
    Amazon | iTunes | MySpace

  • The Dixie Bee-Liners – Susanville
    Amazon | iTunes | MySpace

  • Hank Williams – Revealed: The Unreleased Recordings
    Amazon

• Billy Deaton, a longtime booking agent for artists like Faron Young, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and more, passed away on Saturday.
• Juli Thanki covered the Patty Loveless concert at the Birchmere on Sunday:
  

  Though Loveless was in good spirits, teasing her band members and joking with audience members, two somber moments punctuated the evening. Loveless, a coalminer’s daughter (her father died of black lung), brought the crowd to their feet with her stunning bluegrass version of “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” dedicated to her late parents, who had “the best seat in the house.” She also dedicated “Too Many Memories” to the late Stephen Bruton, fighting tears as she ended the song with a sincere “Thank you, Stephen.”

• Craig Shelburne never realized it until listening to the new Dolly Parton box set, Dolly, but he says she’s a bit morbid.
• Country California fake news: MuzikMafia announces cutbacks.
• Peep’s Joey Guerra was disappointed with the new Carrie Underwood album:
  

  Maybe Underwood isn’t interested in truly spreading her musical wings. And maybe fans don’t care if she ever leaves her ice castle. But with so much vocal talent, Play On’s underwhelming tunes put Underwood’s potential on pause.

• USA Today gave the record three out of four stars:
  

  This is how to build a career for the long run. On her third outing, the still-blossoming Idol alum with the sterling pipes invites a diverse handful of outsiders to join her proven Nashville-based songwriting/production team. They expand her sound and worldview just enough to perhaps lure more folks to the party while satisfying country radio programmers and her loyalists.

• Rosanne Cash earned four stars from American Songwriter’s Holly Gleason for her album The List.
• Cracker Barrel released a new Alan Jackson compilation yesterday. Titled Songs of Love and Heartache, the collection features 10 of Jackson’s hits along with a couple of unreleased tracks: “That’s What I’d Be Like Without You” was originally recorded for his 2004 disc What I Do and “Nothing Sure Looked Good on You” is a Gene Watson cover.
• Watch the premiere of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” from her Live From London DVD.
• A new survey commissioned by the Country Music Association, called the CMA Prime Prospect Study, concluded that country consumers are feeling the effects of the economic downturn and have reduced spending in the last year
• George Jones still doesn’t like what passes as country music these days.
• Carrie Underwood hates the term pop-country, instead preferring to describe such music as contemporary.
• Toby Keith touches on booger-eatin’ nerds, national healthcare, and illegal immigration in an interview with CNN.
• Today is the last day to win a Drew Kennedy house concert; check his website for details!

Founded in the mid-90s in Ogden, Utah, Ryan Shupe and The Rubberband hope to be a two-hit radio wonder.

Comprised of Shupe (fiddle, guitar, ukulele, lead vocals), Roger Archibald (guitar, vocals), Ryan Tilby (bass guitar, vocals), Craig Miner (banjo, bouzouki, mandolin, guitar, vocals), and Bart Olson (drums), the band’s music has been described as “a breathtaking blast of manic musical virtuosity.” It certainly is an eclectic mix of several acoustic musical genres, leaning heaviest on country and bluegrass.

When asked about how he describes his music, Shupe gets appropriately analytical: “It probably depends on who I’m talking to. When we look back at when we were answering that question when we were doing our big radio promotion tours, the best answer would have been the funniest answer: ‘We are the biggest country band–no one else sounds like we do so therefore no one in the country is more country.’ But the truth is labels are hard with us. What’s bluegrass? Sure, we have a banjo and a fiddle in our group, but are we bluegrass? No. It’s kind of bluegrassy, but at a bluegrass festival, they’d say, “no way.” We kind of sit somewhere between country, bluegrass, Dave Matthews Band, Barenaked Ladies with some humor mixed in the middle. When I describe my music to someone who has never heard of us, I use names like that because they know what I’m talking about. It’s an acoustic jam rock of bluegrass country.”

Then

After learning to play the fiddle at the tender age of five (in doing so, becoming a fifth generation family player), Shupe started his first band at ten and played in a variety of different bands in his teens and during college. Only one common theme ran throughout each group–they each came to an end when the broke up. From there, the concept of the Rubberband was born. “I decided that I was going to make a band that didn’t break up,” he recalls. The idea would be that the Rubberband would be elastic. That’s the best way to make a band not break-up.”

As Shupe began to shape his musical sound following college, he made friends throughout the community with the best musicians he could find. On gig nights, he brought in the players he needed depending on the venue and the crowd. On some nights, there could be two on stage or as many as five. And then one night, magic happened and the membership became permanent.

“I’m a band guy,” says Shupe. “I’m a big band fan. I like bands. Anyone that plays music knows the difference between a band and a hired gun situation. With a band, you get a cohesiveness that you don’t find any other way. And I’m not saying the other way is bad. I wouldn’t downplay how other artists play music. It’s just different. Anyone who has been in a band knows the moment it becomes a brotherhood. You look at a guy and just know what he’s going to do. There’s that moment when you just gel.”

They were producing a sound that was certainly unique to the band.

“Basically, in a nutshell, it’s acoustic instruments pushed to the limits of what they should be able to do. We do stuff more up-tempo than what people are used to. It is fiddle, guitar, drums, banjo and bass, but it’s got an almost punk beat to it. We love experimenting with different sounds.”

After signing with Capitol Records in 2005, the band released its debut major-label album, Dream Big, which produced a Top 25 hit on the Billboard Hot Country chart with the title track. The song was also picked as the theme song for NBC’s prime-time show “Three Wishes,” hosted by Amy Grant. Dream Big also featured a second release, “Banjo Boy” that failed to chart but did have a music video that was in heavy rotation on CMT.

“I would describe the Dream Big album as good music with a positive theme running through it,” says Shupe. “It’s got something for everyone. I know that’s a generic answer, but in this case, it applies. It’s got love songs, up songs and down songs. It has a theme that’s acoustic based and is music with a positive outlook. We experimented with some rapping-like lyrics on some songs. It has a lot of different elements like that.”

“That was a fun time. We enjoyed the ride–literally. We got to ride around in a big bus. We got to walk the red carpet. It was nice to see that side of things for awhile. We played nearly every festival alongside a lot of great acts and other great musicians. It’s kind of like everything you can imagine. You just show up and they’ve bought you lots of clothes. We got to travel all over the country, flying tons. For a while there, we were doing everything we could imagine.”

Continue Reading…

Songwriters: Christopher DuBois & Ashley Gorley.

Exactly one year ago, Lee Ann Womack released a collection of whiskey-and-heartbreak laced neo-traditional country music that included songs about bars, dying relationships and domestic abuse. That collection, titled Call Me Crazy, was masterfully sung, beautifully recorded, splendidly arranged, wonderfully written, and, of course, a complete commercial failure.

Maybe a major label country artist who chooses to record and release an album comprised of mostly down-beat (mostly traditional) country music deserves to be called crazy. It was, after all, a miracle that “Last Call” managed to wiggle its way to hit status (thanks for that hook, Johnnie Walker Red), and there was scant hope for anything else from the disc to find a home alongside Jimmy Wayne and Billy Currington.

Fortunately, Nashville is a town where a songwriter is always waiting in the wings with a musical Prozac, and Womack’s new single (from an as-yet undefined project) is proof positive that the medicine works; Womack’s syrupy delivery is more than a few personalities removed from the sultry and smoky vocals on Call Me Crazy, with her rendering of this song’s idyllic world layered in pastel rather than neon.

In fact, if “There Is A God” was any more warm and fuzzy, it would be a bunny. A big, fat Easter Bunny with a basket full of clichés instead of candy.

“There Is A God” amounts to a slideshow of inspirational lifescapes—from running horses to flocking birds to sprouting seeds—all of which are offered as proof that “there is a God.” Of course, there are some fireflies, some babies and some abating cancer thrown into to mix…what inspirational country song would be complete without that trifecta?

Country music has a long history of incorporating Christian and gospel themes into both its mainstream and its ancillary branches, and even some of the genre’s most hardened outlaws have turned their musical eyes towards heaven. Here, however, Womack offers what is less a profession or discussion of faith and more a rejection of reason and logic. After going through a laundry-list of beautiful things (like a raindrop falling onto your tongue), the songs asks, “how much proof do you need,” eventually winding into the bridge and, thus, the pervading theme that binds all of these disjointed lyrics together: “Science says it’s all just circumstance/Like this whole world’s just an accident/If you wanna shoot that theory down/Just look around.”

While the overriding message of the song is that we can see God’s existence in everything around us, the writing errs when it ventures into a debate about the merits of logic and science (and the relation of those things to spirituality). The proclamation that “there is a God” does not need to also undermine and misrepresent what are almost universally accepted explanations for various scientific processes, and the fact that the song is willing to attack science makes the lyric come off as more political than it needs to.

After all, there’s a pretty famous song that makes essentially the same points without going down that road:

Everytime I hear a new born baby cry,
Or touch a leaf, or see the sky
Then I know why I believe

That song, “I Believe,” is a personal, specific declaration of faith. “There Is A God” is a pandering declaration of ideology masquerading as abstract inspirationalism–and a disappointing entry from a woman who has produced some of the most compelling country music of her generation.

Listen: Lee Ann Womack – “There Is A God”

• In an interview with American Songwriter’s Lynne Margolis, Lyle Lovett commented on the possibility of recording with Joe Ely, Guy Clark, and John Hiatt.
  

  We have recorded. It’s mired in the record deal. We recorded three nights in Redwood City, California, a couple of years ago and it’s all ready to go, if we could get the business end of it [together]. … I’m hopeful that we can eventually put it out.

• Watch the new video for the Toby Keith song “Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song).”
• The New York Times‘ Jon Caramanica on the new Carrie Underwood album Play On:
  

  [...] Ms. Underwood has honed a series of familiar poses — faithful girlfriend, scorned girlfriend, all-American girlfriend — each as technically well executed as the last. She’s a great model — the best in all of country, and perhaps all of pop. Certainly that’s made many of her songs, including several on “Play On,” musically and emotionally complacent, testaments to the limitations of great structure. “Look at Me” smolders but never sizzles, and “Undo It” never fills in the gaps between bruising choruses.

• Joe Nichols discussed his new album and the song “An Old Friend of Mine” in an interview with CMT Insider.
• Shirley Jinkins reviewed Billy Joe Shaver’s Saturday concert where he opened with a new song, “It’s Always Been That Way (Since the Get-Go).” Watch a performance of the song on YouTube.
• For episode 25 of Nashville At Nite host Carrie Smith interviewed members of the band KingBilly.
• Country Universe’s Kevin J. Coyne wrapped up his countdown of the worst singles of the decade with “Part 4: #20-#11” and “Part 5: #10-#1.”
• Ellen DeGeneres skeered Taylor Swift purdy good.
• Juli Thanki covered Thursday’s Ricky Skaggs concert:
  

  Bill Monroe has passed on, but Skaggs invoked his spirit throughout the night, covering a block of Monroe songs from the late ’40s and relating one choice piece of advice the master gave him: “You gotta whip that mandolin like a mule.” Seems like Skaggs took it to heart, not only with the mandolin, but guitar and banjo as well.

• Lyle Lovett came out on top in this week’s batch of album reviews from Country Weekly’s Chris Neal with four stars for his album Natural Forces.
• Pierre Cabrol, the architect who designed the Grand Ole Opry House, passed away at the age of 84. (via That Nashville Sound)
• Patty Loveless on her latest album, Mountain Soul II:
  

  “This one’s a little different than the first Mountain Soul,” Loveless said. “I bucked and kicked a little at calling it Mountain Soul II, but I understood what the record label (Saguaro Road Records) was trying to do, which was to inform fans a little about what the content is. But I wanted to hear steel and electric guitar, and blend things and make it sound more Americana than Mountain Soul was.”

• Kelly Dearmore asked Drew Kennedy to discuss two of the songs from his new album, An Audio Guide to Cross Country Travel.
  

  “Sharon Springs” is a song that I wrote about a couple of people that I know, people that shoot themselves in the foot every time something good comes their way. I think everyone knows someone like that. You can do everything you can think of to help them out, but sooner or later you come to grips with the notion that it’s just a part of who they are. They don’t know how to move forward unless they break-down whatever it is that’s right in front of them. It’s not an easy process to watch, that much I know for sure.

  Head over to The Gobblers Knob to see what he has to say about “St. Abilene.”

Thankfulness in country music can often be sarcastic, as in “Thanks A Lot,” or humorous, like “Thank God and Greyhound.” But with this month’s playlist we’re going to be serious, and check out some songs on which artists count their various blessings.

• 20. “Thank God For The Road” – The Flatlanders
  “When you’re trying to save your own soul/Thank God for the road.” Spoken like a group of true road warriors.
• 19. “Thank You For A Life” – Kris Kristofferson
  After the life he’s led, Kristofferson is probably thankful just to be alive at all.
• 18. “Lucky Stars” – JP McDermott & Western Bop
  DC’s red-hot rockabilly man JP McDermott tackles this Buddy Holly-meets-The-Mavericks song written by Western Bop guitarist Bob Newscaster.

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In Thursday’s News Roundup, Brody included a link to a Billboard feature on Taylor Swift’s new platinum edition release of her album Fearless, which hit stores on Monday.

The CD/DVD set will have a variety of new content, with six new songs and video extras including her video collaboration with T-Pain on “Thug Story” and exclusive new behind-the-scenes photos shot by Taylor’s brother, Austin K. Swift.

In the interview, Swift explains her reasoning for re-releasing the album, and in the official news release, Big Machine’s Scott Borchetta offered his take:

“Taylor’s fans have an incredible appetite for her new music and her ongoing life experiences. The two million-plus fans who bought Fearless within weeks of release last year are screaming for new Taylor music and Taylor has delivered,” says Scott Borchetta, President/CEO of the Big Machine Label Group. “There are six new songs, over fifty new photographs from the Fearless Tour 2009, a beautiful new collector cover, all of the videos from all of the hit singles and tons of new Taylor video footage. Taylor is all about engagement and staying engaged – the fans are going to love this.”

Commenters on the news roundup had mixed reactions to the new edition, including Sam:

Yes, Lucas, I stick with that even if the average fan is 12 years old. Even if the kid doesn’t know a “deluxe edition” is likely to come out in 8 months, there is hardly any significant trickery involved. (I imagine that even if many of these fans were told that a deluxe edition would come out in eight months, they would buy the initial edition the week of its release, anyhow, and still buy the deluxe one later).

Products of all sorts are updated from time to time, and even though some buyers may be unaware of said updates, this hardly seems like a deceitful practice to me. The product is put on the shelf, it is priced, and if the consumer gets what he or she thought he was getting, I just don’t see any trickery. Maybe there would be some if the label said, “We absolutely promise that we won’t release a deluxe edition next Christmas, so there’s no need to wait to purchase” and then it did release such an edition. But otherwise, I don’t see any significant trickery.

I don’t think its “trickery” for Craig Morgan to rerelease his current CD with the “Bonfire” track either, nor do I think its trickery for a group to release a version of a CD with “exclusive bonus content” to one retailer only.

I can understand that some fans may not like the practice. They may want to own “everything” that Swift releases and be a bit peeved because, to own “everything” they essentially have to buy what is almost the same product two times. But if they do decide to buy twice, I don’t think they have been tricked.

Of course, this practice certainly isn’t unique to Swift. What do you think about album re-releases that, as Sam puts it, essentially require you to buy the same product twice in order to own new music by the artist? Which artists’ re-releases have you bought (or considered buying) to get your hands on bonus tracks? Was it worth it, or did you feel manipulated?