Brad Paisley Celebrates First Father’s Day As A Father
- Hope everyone had a good weekend and a special Father’s Day. I had plans to make it a Walker family double header with Django on Friday and Jerry Jeff on Saturday, but plans fell through, and Sunday I visited my dad. Overall, it was a very relaxing weekend. Now we’re back today with what seems like a ton of news.
- Take a minute to visit The Lost Highway, the latest addition to the country music blogospehere. The Lost Highway is authored by Matt (not The 9513’s Matt), who has been around for quite a while on one site or another, and named after the Hank Williams song.
- Come late July the Derailers will be releasing a tribute album to Buck Owens. Take Country Back is hosting an article that details the band’s humble beginnings.
- Also in late July, the 24th to be exact, Universal will release “The Great Lost Performance,” a Johnny Cash performance from 1990 found in the vaults. It’ll be the sixteenth Johnny Cash set released since his passing in 2003.
- Jack Sparks uses his unique brand of colorful language to kick start his list with the first ten of The Top 100 Country Songs of All Time. I wouldn’t even know where to begin a list like this, but Sparks fills his No. 1 spot with Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I could Cry”.
- In Toby Keith’s short Q&A with the Associated Press he talks a little about his new album and performing for troops overseas.
AP: You recorded two songs by outside writers on this album, Love Me if You Can and White Rose. That’s rare for you.
Keith: Both are so damn good I couldn’t resist. They’re very well-written. I’ve been sitting on White Rose for five or six years. Craig Wiseman wrote Love Me if You Can, and the amazing thing is it’s exactly where I stand, word for word. I couldn’t have written it any truer. When one of those comes along, once in a while you have to record it. I think your ego is too big if you don’t.
- John Goodspeed says Kenny Chesney “knocked the socks off the packed crowd” in San Antonio last night while Pat Green stole the show from Sugarland and Jennifer Nettles “charmed the audience with her sassy enthusiasm.”
- Speaking of Father’s Day, yesterday was Brad Paisley’s first as a father himself. The Tennessean has a lengthy article about his fatherhood, family, superstar status, and the things that motivate him now. I caught the tail end of Paisley’s special segment on GAC last night as my dad was waiting for PBR to start, and I’m digging “Letter to Me” off his album that comes out tomorrow, 5th Gear.
- Hazel Smith recounts the events of the CMA Music Festival and claims that the outstanding performance of the week belonged to Miranda Lambert. “The girl knows how to play a guitar and sing. She can flat sell a song. Give her a year, and let’s see where she goes. Her career is about to explode.”
- Another leg of the Last of the Breed tour will kick off in August.
- NPR has a recording of the live performance Ryan Adams gave a few days ago in Philadelphia.
- Tracy Lawrence is the first country artist with his own record label to have reached No. 1 with the debut single release on that label with “Find Out Who Your Friends Are”. It’s also his first No.1 since 1997.
- Wrapping up another concert review, this time for Marty Stuart, John Goodspeed says “With Stuart and the Superlatives pumping its lifeblood, country music is staying alive, too — and touching hearts.”
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Don’t confuse disappointing with worst, as that list would most likely be dominated by obscure indie knockoff bands along with a couple of mainstream releases. There has to be a modicum of expectation that’s dashed upon the release of an album for it to qualify for the year’s most disappointing.
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Brad Paisley // Hank Williams // Johnny Cash // Kenny Chesney // Last Of The Breed // Marty Stuart // Miranda Lambert // Pat Green // Ryan Adams // Sugarland // The Derailers // Toby Keith // Tracy Lawrence
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June 18, 2007 at 1:45 pm Permalink
Jack doesn’t have comments enabled on his site, so I’ll comment on his Top 10 here.
It’s very hard to argue about lists like these but I have a hard time lending credibility to any list of the top ten country songs of all time that does not include “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” This is just one of the notable omissions from Jack’s Top 10, but it’s the most glaring. Of course, he prefaces his list by stating that he doesn’t respect anything that’s come out of Nashville in the last 30 years, which includes “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and a lot of other great music. He’s simply refusing to consider about half of the genre’s history.
Besides, I have trouble swallowing the country purity argument when the Rolling Stones and Carl Perkins make the top 10.
“Loving Her Was Easier” is a bizarre choice. “Folsom Prison Blues” is, in my mind, one of the most overrated songs of all time, but it’s difficult to argue with. “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” is not even Hank Williams’ best song, let alone the best country song of all time, but again, it’s very difficult to argue against such undeniably excellent songs. The Willie Nelson medley is really a cop out. Each of the three songs featured in the medley could make the Top 100 on their own, so to say that a low-impact live medley of the three is the fifth-best country “song” of all time is a very strange choice.
June 18, 2007 at 3:33 pm Permalink
Yeah, Matt, I agree…especially with the idea that it’s wrong to discount any era. Just because you may not personally like the styles of a certain period doesn’t mean you can disregard those styles and remove them from the genre!
I have a hard time lending credibility to any list like this that doesn’t outline the basis for its selections–why are these songs in the top ten? It looks like a “favorite” list to me, and that’s ok, but if that’s what it is that’s would it should be called.
And besides that, “best” is such a subjective term…I’d rather see something like this called, “The 100 Most Important Country Songs,” or “100 Most Notable..” — you get the idea.
This Top-10 is just bizarre.
And this quote:”The problem is that those with the talent are in the background, playing instruments and providing vocals to peacocks and peahens, who flash into the spotlight, make obscene amounts of money,” is just mind-bottling. I think most Nashville artists would like to know who, besides the top handful, are making obscene amounts of money.
June 18, 2007 at 4:13 pm Permalink
RE: Jack Sparks’ list.
In his opening paragraph, Sparks comments, “This is my 15th Annual post of the 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time, starting with the first ten…”
In his blog’s archive, you can find his lists from previous years. There’s quite a bit of overlap in the songs from year to year, but he gets into greater detail as to his “intentions” for the list, which seem to be of issue here thus far, in some of the earlier installations of the list.
Obviously, any list of this sort is going to be subjective– surely David Cantwell and Bill Friscks-Warren would wonder where “Help Me Make it Through the Night” is– but I think the breadth of knowledge of and the respect for the genre he displays in his annual “Top 100″ list more than silences any doubts as to his credibility for including or not including any particular song.
But the point, of course, of any list like this is that it start a discussion (it must be a new development that his comments have been disabled) and he his unique point-of-view and his writing style both guarantee that will happen. I certainly hope he writes up the remainder.
June 19, 2007 at 8:48 am Permalink
If Sparks were attempting to sum up the opinion of the community of critics and historians as to the conventional-wisdom country canon, I’m sure “He Stopped Loving Her Today” would at least be in the Top 3. I don’t think that was his aim. Luckily, there are approximately 10 trillion other lists out there with “He Stopped Loving Her Today” at or near their top, so I’d say that’s pretty well covered already.
I happen to think “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” is Hank’s best song, but that’s probably because I’m a depressive. So everything’s subjective.
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