Garth Brooks Is Officially Unretired; Opry Planning Wednesday Night Show; Sunny Sweeney’s New Demo
- A newly unretired Garth Brooks performed the first of his Vegas shows this weekend. The Los Angeles Times and USA Today have the details.
Do we really believe it was as much of a struggle as Brooks let on to honor requests for deep catalog material such as “Mr. Midnight”? Given the occasional flub, he was nothing if not sincere. When one woman shouted for “The Change,” he briefly fiddled with his guitar before conceding, “No, I can’t play it” — then set the instrument aside and delivered a couple of verses a cappella.
- Eleven Hundred Springs posted behind-the-scenes footage of their crazy life.
- Ralph Stanley packed the Birchmere on Saturday, but Post Rock’s Dave McKenna says the overabundance of gray hair is cause for concern about the commercial half-life of bluegrass.
- Guit-steel progenitor Junior Brown isn’t fond of today’s country musicians:
“They’ve ruined it. They’ve hung themselves over and over again. There’s no credibility left in country music,” Brown says by phone from his Oklahoma residence. “There’s no more honesty in it. It’s like some really bad heavy metal that couldn’t make it.”
- Country Universe kicked off a countdown of the 201 greatest singles of the decade.
- No Depression’s Kim Ruehl shared her list of the top 20 albums of 2009 and Grant Alden ruminated on the albums that will best help him remember the closing decade.
- The Opry is looking into adding a Wednesday night show next summer.
- Sunny Sweeney posted a demo of one of her new songs to MySpace. Look for “Helluva Heart.”
- The DC9 at Night music blog muses that if 2009′s best alt-country proves anything, it’s that yes, Willie Nelson is still a badass. Those Justin Townes Earle and Guy Clark guys aren’t bad themselves.
- My Kind of Country’s Occasional Hope listed her top 10 singles of 2009.
- Paste magazine’s Rachael Maddux attended her first Billy Joe Shaver concert and believes she witnessed the oldest living punk in America.
- Recommend 10 tracks from 2009.
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If you’re not in the Christmas spirit yet, then you haven’t watched Music Fog’s recent recording of John Cowan performing “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”:
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Billy Joe Shaver // Eleven Hundred Springs // Garth Brooks // Guy Clark // John Cowan // Junior Brown // Justin Townes Earle // Ralph Stanley // Sunny Sweeney // Willie Nelson
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December 14, 2009 at 11:25 am
Well I’d have to say that I prefer Occasional Hope’s singles list over Kevin Coyne’s. I haven’t heard most cuts on either list but Hope picked some of my favorite songs off of the Holly Williams and Patty Loveless (M.S. II) albums while Kevin picked among my least favorite songs. Also, Hope included a Joey + Rory song and that scored big brownie points!
Ralph Stanley has been a big name in the bluegrass realm for sooooo long its not surprising his audience would contain a lot of senior citizens. Ralph’s been building a fan base for decades and his voice isn’t what it used to be. I see this as neither surprising nor anything to be concerned about as it relates to the overall bluegrass scene.
Sunny Sweeney’s label needs to offer some new music from her for sale! Its been a couple of years since “Heartbreakers Hall of Fame” first came out and its like the Big Machine/Republic Nashville label has kept her inside a cage since then! I wish Sunny had just stayed away from the big Nashville label machine and kept doing her awesome “thang” in Texas…
I totally agree with Junior Brown’s sentiments about mainstream country music these days!!! Isn’t that a surprise?…(lol)
December 14, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I like Junior Brown but I don’t know if I’d call what is played on mainstream radio as “some really bad heavy metal that couldn’t make it.” Now if he’d had said “southern rock,” I’d certainly have seen his point but clearly he hasn’t listened to much Heavy Metal to know what it really sounds like.
December 14, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Making a generalization about the bluegrass audience based on who turned out to one (1) particular Ralph show is a bad idea.
And how about that Shad Cobb – Cowan’s fiddler. One of the best!
December 14, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I think Junior’s right. What I hear lately seems to be influenced more by AC/DC than Hank. Craig Morgan even names them in his “Redneck Yacht Club” rehash “Bonfire”.
December 14, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Congratulation to Miss Reba who has a #1 on Mediabase and hopefully also #1 on the Jan 2 Billboard update…I don’t believe they have one next week.
http://www.mediabase.com/mmrweb/insideradio/charts.asp?format=11&showyear=y&dpt=n
I believe this will be the first #1 single by a solo female artist not named Carrie/Taylor since “Jesus Take the Wheel” hit number one during the Spring of 2006.
December 14, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Country music has always been about recording/writing songs which are based around your influences. The thing about our current slate of Country artists, is that they were influenced heavily by 70s/80s Rock, and with some, Pop. Sadly (??) it’s today’s rock which claims Classic Country as their biggest influence. I recall Merle Haggard complaining awhile back in a publication about how he didn’t get any respect from today’s generation of Country acts, and felt respected more by the Rock world than the Country one.
Just some food for thought.
December 14, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I recall Merle Haggard complaining awhile back in a publication about how he didn’t get any respect from today’s generation of Country acts, and felt respected more by the Rock world than the Country one.
It’s a curious situation. A lot of rock acts respect people like Haggard, Cash, Nelson, etc. but wouldn’t be caught dead at a Jason Aldean concert. I remember hearing Mick Jagger rave about Dwight Yoakam in an interview a few years ago. Elvis Costello has professed his love for George Jones. When indie-rocker Ben Kweller made a country record, he seemed to take influence from Hank Sr and Buck Owens rather than Rascall Flats and Kenny Chesney.
December 14, 2009 at 6:39 pm
On Sunny Sweeney’s my space page, is this song: “you don’t know your husband like I do.” If that isn’t Tiger Wood’s through and through, I don’t know what is. Did she write all that music on her page? Damn fine.
December 14, 2009 at 6:41 pm
But again, Steve – I think the point isn’t whether today’s rock acts are influenced by TODAY’S Country acts, because certainly today’s country isn’t based on today’s rock, for the most part. A good example is Jimmy Wayne’s cover of “Sara Smile”. Such an odd thing, on the surface, but again – that’s where Jimmy’s influences lie, and not with Waylon, Willie, et. al.
December 14, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Matt: I think Junior Brown is looking at 80′s hair metal.
December 14, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Attention: Jamey Johnson / Early Opry Alert! Tomorrow night’s Opry will feature Jamey Johnson, Terri Clark, Darryl Worley, Chris Young, and best of all Jimmy Wayne singing “Sara Smile”! (lol) Maybe Jimmie Dickens will not be feeling well and Jamey can do the entire last half hour rather than Jimmie doing his overly long routine of stale jokes and crappy novelty songs that weren’t that good even when new. Oh well…
Opry Schedule: http://www.opry.com/TicketsAndInformation/ThisWeek.aspx
December 14, 2009 at 8:05 pm
I really hate when I visit musicians’ MySpace pages and they have three different genres listed under the name; i.e “country/rock/acoustic pop” or something in that vein. I just looked at Sunny Sweeney’s page and she has:
SUNNY SWEENEY
Country / Country / Country
My kind of gal.
December 14, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Joey + Rory News Alert from CMT.com:
“In addition to these philanthropic projects, Joey & Rory have also been busy adding the finishing touches and tweaks to their sophomore album due out next April. As Martin described their upcoming new music, fans can expect a sound that’s “very acoustic” and “a little bluegrassy.” However, she says not much has changed from their first album, save more time devoted to songwriting and Feek being featured more as a vocalist.
“Of the entire record,” she said, “that’s what I’m most excited about — for people to hear how wonderful of a singer my husband is.”
Link: http://www.cmt.com/news/country-music/1628229/joey-rory-get-to-the-heart-of-what-matters.jhtml