The 9513 - Country Music Blog

When the venerable Vercher boys let me know recently that things were drawing to a hard stop for this site, I can’t say that I was entirely shocked, because a) they’d made it clear, even publicly, that tending to this work was beginning to demand drastic amounts of time they’d not quite expected, a real [...]

Continue reading "Scanning the Countryside: No Last Word on Country"

By now, there’s not a recording artist, country or otherwise, who hasn’t heard that we’re in a new era — fundamentally, a singles era. They’ve all heard how CD album chart leaders are topping those charts with lower sales figures than anyone can remember. And they’ve all heard horror stories (as have followers of The [...]

Continue reading "Scanning The Countryside: What Artists Want From CDs—Still"

If you want to start a heated discussion among a bunch of devoted country music fans or music makers, no matter what stripe, style, or era of country music they call their own, bring up the question of today’s mainstream country radio. You’re certain to hear some railing from somebody about a longstanding set of [...]

Continue reading "Scanning the Countryside: Country Radio—Your Way"

There have always been some who see country music and jazz as opposite ends of the American music spectrum—one down home, emotionally straightforward and inclined towards the well-understood and safe; the other urban, sophisticated, even intellectual, and born to go off on unfettered, exploratory tangents. You could, of course, hear that opposition expressed by fans [...]

Continue reading "Scanning the Countryside: Country—and All That Jazz"

Some of country’s less-heralded, less-promoted releases of the past year are not only very well worth hearing, they also introduced or re-introduced ideas which this writer, for whatever it’s worth, would like to see more artists and producers take up. Among the strongest 2010 releases was the only marginally noted Amber Digby & Justin Trevino [...]

Continue reading "Scanning the Countryside: Duos and Demos"

As Chris Neal pointed out in his thoughtful “C Word” post on this site earlier this month, arguments over what’s country and what isn’t, how modern and pop or traditional-sounding the music ought to be, how ass-kicking or dignified, are all never-ending. Anybody who’s been following some of the recent spirited discussions (and occasional over-the-top [...]

Continue reading "Scanning the Countryside: Speaking Country’s Language"

Caring about country music enough to devote years of attention to the questions its continuing, always-evolving existence raises—what it is, where it’s come from, where it gets on and off, how it speaks to those it speaks to, how all of that (or any of that) matters—that sort of serious devotion, the sort where you [...]

Continue reading "Scanning the Countryside: Country History, Then and Now"

You’ve probably noticed the tremendous amount of energy and verbiage being expended online these days, in all sorts of places, by people who feel attached to some ongoing or even, often, some abandoned recording format. The conventionally-sized CD album, regularly derided for years—not less in country than in other musical genres— as often an over-priced [...]

Continue reading "Scanning the Countryside: Right-Size Me"

Photo courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum I was privileged to be on hand in August for all three of Buddy Miller’s Artist-in-Residence shows at the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Ford Theater, the first of which marked the theater’s reopening after its repair from damage in May’s Nashville flooding. These [...]

Continue reading "Scanning the Countryside: Country’s Buddy"

I’ve been listening to country music–not just hearing it in the background, but, as well as I know how, listening to it–for close to 45 years, and writing about it in various public places, off and on, for about 35. The publications and online outlets that have chosen to publish what I’ve reported and observed [...]

Continue reading "Scanning the Countryside: On Writing About Country"