My dad died when I was 8 years old (which I appreciate isn't the most cheerful way to start a post). As a result, whilst my mum clearly told me a lot about him, there a number of gaps in my knowledge of the man. And, from a personal perspective given my love for music, probably the most glaring omission, was that I had no idea what kind of music he liked!
Fortunately that question was answered quite by chance when I was chatting to my cousin, Fred, in New Zealand via Skype early last year. Fred lived with my dad for a few years before I was born and he was reminiscing about him when he commented that my dad used to spend many years listening to country music on the radio. I think he was quite taken aback when I fell on the comment like you'd grab a beer during prohibition. I wanted to know which artists, which songs etc etc. As far as Fred could recall we were talking Hank Williams Snr, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell. "I'm pretty sure" he remarked "that when you were little, you would have had a lot of country music playing in the background.
I never knew! I certainly didn't recall country music in the background as a soundtrack as I played endless games with my stuffed toys and Matchbox cars. In fact, I don't recall hearing any music at all in the house, apart from the theme tune to Z Cars. The first record I can remember hearing was "Lily The Pink" by the Scaffold (Not the most auspicious start to a lifelong love of music) at a neighbours party. However, in hindsight, it did make an awful lot of sense. For one thing, I do distinctly recall that my father loved Westerns, particularly the TV programme The Virginian and anything with John Wayne in it. So it seemed a logical extension that he'd like country and western.
Moreover, it also seemed very logical given my own relationship with country and western. Although to be fair, it's been something of an "on, off" relationship. As with most teenagers in the late 70s/early 80s my exposure to country was limited to odd (in both senses of the term) tracks: "Stand by your Man" Tammy Wynette, "Coward of the County" Kenny Rogers, "Blanket on the Ground" Crystal Gayle and the terrifyingly unspeakable "No Charge" by JJ Barrie (easily one of the worst Number 1s ever). Clearly none of these songs were an attractive advert for the wider genre, which from a distance appeared to be populated by Men with BIG HATS, Women with BIG GRINS (and in the case of Dolly Parton, Big something else - I was a teenager after all- but let's not be crude here) singing twee and twangy songs about subjects that meant bugger all to a lad from East Kent: The Bayou (The what?), Riding horses across the wide open plains (If there were any fields round near where I lived some bugger would drop a motorway on em), knocking back whiskey (I was more a cider man in those days) and eating stew n beans off a tin plate (Sod off). Plus the fact remained that country appeared to be essentially a cheese fest, targeted towards "Old People" (A Generic Term used by teenagers in those days to denote anyone over 20)
So safe in my prejudices and preconceptions, I gave the whole thing a wide berth. Until I rocked up at the University of Kent and met a girl called Michelle. Now, it wasn't just Country that was off my radar. Up until that point in my life, my musical taste had been more or less entirely confined to pop and rock music albeit in its myriad forms. In my defence, this was because this was all I had been exposed to both through Radio and TV and the written music media (The various "inkies"). True, there was some coverage of Reggae (Largely Bob Marley and UB40) and Ska (Largely the late 70s ska revival stuff as opposed to the original artists) but of Country, Blues and Folk there was no sign.
Then, from my perspective, in 1986 along came Q Magazine. Now a lot has been written about Q Magazine (along with the other Music monthlies that followed in its wake) down the years and not all of it good: How it (ALLEGEDLY) led to the demise of the weekly Music Press, How in its early years it focused on CD product and therefore (ALLEGEDLY) contributed to the rise of MOR coffee table music, How it focused on established acts and dinosaur acts to the detriment (ALLEGEDLY.....actually no that's one definitely true- STOP putting U2 on the cover for heavens sake!) of new music. However, there is no doubt that as far as I was concerned it was Q that opened my eyes to the fact that the likes of Blues and Folk were not dead genres but were hale and hearty and alive and well in 80s Britain (As much as anything was alive and well in 80s Britain).
However whilst I raided local record emporium for discs by John Lee Hooker, Oysterband and The Men They Couldn't Hang, Country still looked a step too far because the prejudice still gripped like a vice. And this was despite a significant development in the world of country music for the mid 80s saw the advent of "New Country". In summary, this was a group of artists who were looking to strip the cheese away from the music and take country back to its roots and they included Steve Earle, Randy Travis, Rodney Crowell, Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakam and Nanci Griffith (And more of Miss Griffith in a moment). However given my atrocious prejudices and my extremely limited exposure to the genre, I assumed that Old Country, New Country, Flush it down the Loo Country and gave it all a miss.
Which brings us on to Michelle. They say that going to University broadens your horizons. Well possibly, although I had already encountered alcohol, dodgy educational establishment food and lack of sleep before I rocked up on Campus. What I was now encountering for the first time though was people with broader musical taste than I. by and I large my schoolday contemporaries shared my adherence to pop (There was one lad who in the same day bought albums by Beethoven and Crass but he was very distinctly a one off!). Michelle, however, was a firm disciple of the ways of country and could not believe that someone such as I who claimed to be a music lover had never heard anything by the likes of Hank Williams.
The berating in this regard was virtually constant to the point where I thought it was worth splashing out a fiver just to shut her up! The question was which record did I choose, which is where Q comes into the tale once again as they had just published a glowing review of the latest Nanci Griffith album, "Little Love Affairs". This is not the place to wax endlessly lyrical about the magnificence of "Little Love Affairs" but suffice it is to say that I was blown away, albeit very gently. From the pastel pink cover, to the many songs about love in its myriad forms, it was unlike anything I had ever bought before. This is a man, remember, who had been bought up on "London Calling", "Setting Sons", "Searching for the Young Soul Rebels", "The Specials". All superb records of course but I had never encountered anything quite as delicate and downright lovely as this.
And in one fell swoop, my misconceptions about country were blown away. I plunged back into Nanci's magnificent back catalogue, went to see her at the Leas Cliff Hall, Folkestone (which remains one of the best gigs I have ever seen) and headed off to explore the works of Messrs Yoakam, Earle, Lovett etc. The penny of course had finally dropped that whilst Country music may be American down to its bootstraps and up to to the tip of its Stetson, the themes it addresses are universal, life, travel, love, DRINK, death- you know, the Good Stuff (Well, maybe not the last one but you get my drift). The only downside was that Michelle's nagging had been replaced with a highly irritating smugness but twas a price worth playing.
Country albums then featured heavily in my albums of the year for the next few years and it's influence reached a peak in 1994 when Ms Griffith's "Flyer" album fought a titanic battle with Mary Chapin Carpenter's "Stones in the Road". To this day I can't choose between them, largely because they are SO different. "Flyer" is Nanci's most commercial record by some distance and features collaborations with sundry members of Counting Crows, REM and U2 (Not Lord EGO, thank Goodness). "Stones in the Road" meanwhile is possibly the most emotionally draining and moving record I own. Both are amongst my favorite records ever.
From that point on, though, the influence of country in the Marsh CD racks began to wane. Sadly, in my view, "Flyer" was Nanci's last great record; Conversely Mary Chapin Carpenter has continued to make superb records more or less consistently ever since and is one of my all time favorite artists but has largely moved away from country into broader singer-songwriter territory; Steve Earle headed off into prison and upon his return from chokey never really made a record that engaged me, although Uncut Magazine will have an orgasm at the very mention of his name; Lyle Lovett married Julia Roberts and divorced Mister Tune and so on and so forth.
Meanwhile, from my perspective, the quantity of great new country artists basically dried up, although perversely the quantity didn't. If you are reading in America, I appreciate that this is a controversial statement but I blame Garth Brooks (And if you're reading in the UK, this isn't a typo, I didn't mean Garth Crooks, the gormless TV soccer pundit). As indicated, Country music has always been popular in the USA but in the early 90s, it became a commercial juggernaut and this was spearheaded by G.Brooks esq. His second album "No Fences" sold 17 million copies in the States alone (It, of course, sold 10 copies here in the UK). This was certainly no one off as he was a massive commercial force throughout the 90s, has sold over 190 million records worldwide and is the second most successful US solo artist ever behind E.Presley.
I acknowledge and bow before these staggering statistics but I have never "got" Garth Brooks. To my mind Randy Travis (STOP tittering at the back) did what Garth did much better. It wasn't that his records were bad, they just lacked the rebel spirit of a Yoakam or an Earle, the outsider heart of a Chapin Carpenter or the beauty of a Griffth. Above all, they lacked subtlety and heart. I have no issue with a record being commercial but blandness is something I need to have a word with.
However I might have thought that (and for all I know, you might think that) but 17 million US sales say that there's gold in them there stetsons and in a development that only a cretin would call unsurprising the country music market was flooded out with Brooks soundalikes, Big, Commercial sounding records that bypassed your heart and went straight for the wallet.
Now I have followed the American Music Charts down the years but fully appreciate that many people in the UK do not so the commercial domination of Country Music stateside may have passed many British chappies and chappesses by. However they would get a rude awkening. One day circa 1996 when Britpop still dominated the airwaves here in the UK, I can imagine the wife of one Robert "Mutt" Lange (Producer of such rock opuses as Brian Adams' "Reckless" and Def Leppard's "Hysteria"stuck her head round her hubbie's recording studio door and said "Hey Darlin'! Ya don't fancy producing my next album, do ya?" (Or words to that effect) to which the lad Lange thought "Sounds like a laugh" and so was born Shania Twain's "Come on Over".
If "No Fences" was Huge, "Come on Over" (which it most certainly did to the UK) was the size of Antarctica. It sold 40 million copies worldwide and is the biggest selling country album ever and the biggest studio album by a female artist. These days, many people will openly deride this record but the chances are that they own it. Now, there's a whole blog to be written about why "Come on Over" didn't open the doors for a country music avalanche but the succinct answer is that in many ways it probably wasn't country at all, it was certainly a long way from Johnny and Hank. A new phrase was born, "Country Pop" and lo, just as hordes of Garth soundalikes has come cascading onto the airwaves, so enter stage left onto the American Stage, a veritable wave of country pop.
It was at this point that I decided to close the door on Country Music once again but this time I felt it was through well informed choice rather than blind prejudice. I had as little time for Ms Twain and her ilk as I did Brooks and the Brookettes. I put my arm around Mary Chapin Carpenter, said "You don't belong with all this razzmatazz, Mary" and headed off.
Over the years, as one should and must, I have cast a weather eye of the Country pastures but found little to grab me. I admired the Dixie Chicks views on George W Bush but found their music of less interest. And on the subject of matters political, Steve Earle had developed into the conscience of a nation, grown an alarming beard but had become an artist far easier to like than admire, Alison Krauss had a lovely voice but I couldn't quite get there even when she dragged that old rock God, Bob Plant, into try and convince me. Finally a young lady called Taylor Swift ran up to me saying "You might like these "Speak Now" and "Red" records" but at best I thought she was Shania's kid sister and at worst I worried that she might be BIEBER's girlfriend and told her to be about it.
I appreciate that at this point, someone may grab me by the elbow, shove their grizzled face into mine and growl "Americana"!" at me through yellowed teeth. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that one of the features of the late 90s and 00s was the rise of Americana (Wilco, Lambchop, Jayhawks etc) and that Americana is no doubt strongly related to Country, in my mind it is still a separate genre (Although there is no doubt that musical pedants can and indeed do argue for hours as to which genre the likes of Lucinda Williams and Roxanne Cash fit into, keeps 'em off the streets)
Anyway, back to the matter in hand. 2013 dawned when suddenly I started tripping over albums which suggested that something good might be growing in the country garden again. First up was "No way there from here" by Laura Cantrell. I'm not sure where I first encountered mention of Ms Cantrell but I was intrigued by the fact that a) She was being likened to Nanci Griffith b) She'd been going for well over 10 years and I had never heard of her and c) John Peel stated that her debut album "Not the tremblin kind" was possibly his favorite album of all time (I never knew that Lord Peel was at all interested in country!). So I hunted down "No way there from here" and was immediately smitten (No 3 in my Top 10 albums of the year). Yes, there were certainly overtones of Nanci but Laura was undoubtedly her own artiste. What sold me was the strength of the songs, they were lovely things, fragile yet feisty, full of regret and hopeless romanticism. Timeless. I immediately purchased the back catalogue (And John, you are spot on- "Not the Tremblin Kind" is a thing of beauty).
This is a live recording of Starry Skies from "No way there from here!"
However, it still seemed like Laura Cantrell was something from of an exception and not really representative of what was going on in country as whole (which seemed to me to be not much). Whilst being born in Nashville, she moved to New York and certainly didn't seem to be part of the Nashville establishment. The same also be true of the next artist I stumbled over and that was Caitlin Rose and the album "The Stand-In" and this was where I encountered a curious phenomenon, the American country artist who appeared to be getting more exposure over here than Stateside. For the British music press (such as it is these days) seemed to have taken her very much to their hearts. To be fair, she was musical catnip to Uncut, who have always not just flown the flag for Americana but made the ruddy flag and the pole as well, and they took her under their wing. But to my ears, "The Stand In " was not a pure Americana record (And lo and behold, we're back in that "Where does one end and the other start?" argument) even though there was a cover version of a Felice Brothers song thereon along with songwriting credits for Gary Louris, he of Jayhawks fame, it was too bold, too bright (I tend to find some Americana very murky), too feisty. To be fair, it wasn't a pure Country record either as parts of it were very Fleetwood Mac influenced. Again then, it was evidence that something was going on, albeit, once more, away from the mainstream.
This is "Only a Clown", the first single from "The Stand In"
It was then that the mainstream stuck his head above the parapet and said a very vigorous "Hello!" in the form of "Same Trailer, Different Park" (One of the Great Album Titles of recent years) by Kacey Musgraves. Like Caitlin Rose, Kacey came to my attention through widespread coverage in the British Media (What's going on? Don't they have a reality TV show to cover). But unlike Caitlin Rose, "Same Trailer, Different Park" had already done brisk business in the States (Half a million sales, No 2 in the Billboard charts, the debut single "Merry Go Round" sold a million copies) so commercially this was the real deal.
So intrigued I rushed out (well rushed to the computer) and bagged a copy. The first thing that struck me that, unlike "The Stand In", this was a pure country record, largely acoustic. The second thing that struck me was that Kacey was young (Born in 1988). Along with all the other myriad prejudices listed above, I had the idea that country was largely made by "old people" and largely listened to by them too (The writer of this is 50, I rest my case) but here was a young talent coming to the fore. And there was no doubt that Kacey was undoubtedly a talent. She was involved in the writing of all the songs on the album. And they were great songs, the majority of them struck through with a vein of melancholy and regret remarkable for someone in their 20s. The most striking thing though was the lyrics, intelligent, sharp, with great one liners ("Jack and Jill went up the Hill, Jack got hooked on booze and pills"). She reminded me of Aimee Mann, which is high praise indeed.
Here's the first single "Merry Go Round"
What particularly intrigued me was that reading through the articles it appeared that she was not alone. Reference was made to a wave of great female country singer songwriters from Nashville. Brandy Clark (who had helped write 3 songs on the album), Ashley Munroe (who apparently was in a band called the Pistol Annies along with Angaleena Presley and a woman called Miranda Lambert who the article implied everyone had heard of, except I clearly hadn't) and Sunny Sweeney. I vowed to check these people out straight away.
Except I then found myself "in between jobs" and therefore the album checking went on to the backburner. However when I came back "on line" in late summer 2014, one of the first albums I encountered was a country record but a VERY different beast from the ones referred to above. I had asked my good friend Gareth Williams if I had missed much whilst I had been away so to speak and he recommended that I check our Eric Church's album "The Outsiders". He advised that we were in the territory where Outlaw Country met 80s heavy rock. I was frankly unaware that such a territory existed. I was also completely unaware of Eric Church as this was not a name (or an album) that I had encountered in the pages of Q, Mojo or even Uncut. Initially I was somewhat alarmed as I thought that Eric was the country singer who had publicly supported George W Bush's re-election in 2004 and got involved in a public feud of the Dixie Chicks over matters political. However that was Toby Keith (Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks famously wore a T shirt at the Academy of Country Music Awards in 2003 with the letter FUTK thereon. She claimed that it stood for Friends United in Truth and Kindness. Virtually everyone else thought it stood for F@@k U Toby Keith!) and not Mr Church.
So I purchased said album! I don't often say this but this is genuinely one of those albums that you need to hear for yourself as I don't think my words can do it justice. Certainly no genre tag can. I have heard it described as Country Rock. However to my mind that label conjures up images of The Eagles, whereby one imagines something mellow and laid back. This record is about as laid back as a kick in the nuts (And more about gonads in a minute). It is certainly a country record, particularly in the slower tracks. Songs like "A Man Who Was Gonna Die Young" and "Dark Side" are the purest of country, particularly in the manner of delivery and lyrical content. But "The Outsiders" is also a Rock record. In fact, the Title Track and "That's damn Rock N' Roll" are the most straightforward, fist pumping ROCK AND ROLL songs that I've heard for many many years (I can see where the 80s heavy rock references come from). And right from the sleeve (which is GREAT), you can see that Eric sees himself as a Rocker, the leather, the dark Glasses.
But let's move on from waffling about genres (which Eric himself has denounced in any case). This is an extraordinary record. I listen to loads of albums, some good, some an absolute dog's breakfast. One thing, though, that all the great ones have in common is that they grab your attention, some immediately, some take a little longer but in the end they mesmerise and they enthral. And that's what "The Outsiders" does, it part of course it's the quality of the songs (That's a given on a great record) but in particular the thing that strikes me about it is the sheer chutzpah and scale of ambition. The record sounds huge and often treads that fine line between magnificent and waaay over the top (Helloooo "Devil, Devil (Prelude Prince of Darkness)" which is the hitherto unchartered area where country meets Ozzy Osbourne meets Rush) People often describe ambitious artistes as having balls, well the man who made "The Outsiders" has the most enormous pair of Cojounes! Since listening to the record I purchased Eric's previous album "Chief", it's a fine record but "The Outsiders" is a leap into the stratosphere. It's as if Eric has gone "Right, now I'm going to make the album I want to make, all bets are off". This may not sound remarkable until you look at the state of much mainstream music over the last ten years Amy begot Duffy begot Adele begot Emile. All those identikit bedwetting bands from the 00s: Travis/Starsailor/Snow Patrol. The interchangeable Sheeran/Smith/Ezra axis. Monstrously refreshing to see a mainstream artist taking risks. And monstrously refreshing it was a success that paid off commercially with "The Outsiders" ending up as the 10th best selling album of the year in the USA.
Here's my favorite track "Talladega"
At last the penny dropped that if I was going to go hunting for great new albums by great new artists (to me, anyway), and trust me, I always am, then Country was a place worth looking. So, where next? I then resorted to old mate, Allmusic, went on Eric Church's page and looked at the "Artists Similar to" link.
Miranda Lambert!
Her again! It was here, gentle reader, that my brow slightly furrowed as the link showed the cover of Ms Lambert's latest album "Platinum" (See picture above), which showed an undoubtedly attractive blonde lady and brought to my mind the concern that we were either looking at ANOTHER Shania Twain clone or Lee Ann Rimes circa "How Do I Live", neither of which appealed frankly. However Allmusic gave the album 4.5 stars, which was high praise and the review sounded tempting so in for a penny...........
Those of us that plough the furrows of the musical wastelands searching for new treasures dream of what happened to me next, that moment when amongst all the chaff, the droning and those bloody awful troubadours who think they're Bob Dylan circa "Blood on the Tracks", you discover a new Favorite Artist and as an added bonus, your album of the year!! Yes indeed, 20 years on from the titanic MCC/Nanci struggle, Country was back at the top of the Marsh charts!
And indeed, this was a COUNTRY record, probably the purest country record referred to here. It was as if it turned up in the room wearing a "Country and Proud (Oh and if you don't like it, you can piss off)" T Shirt. Indeed the first thing that struck me was what a confident record this is. Bearing in mind the amount of information there is about music these days, it is rare to first encounter an artist when they're on their fifth album (which is what "Platinum" is) but then I suppose I had been away from Country for almost 20 years, there was a lot to discover. Anyway I was unaware of Miranda's back catalogue, how she had developed as an artist, how this record compared to her others etc. But even coming at things cold, it sounded like she was in a similar position to Eric in that she was making HER record and damn the consequences. Although the consequences have been very pleasant indeed, 500,000 albums sold, No 1 in the Billboard chart for 4 weeks, featured in numerous critics "Best of 2014" lists (including No 5 in Rolling Stone and a Top 20 placing in Spin Magazine where she rubbed shoulders with arty bobbins like Flying Lotus, FKA Twigs and the inevirtable War on Drugs).
The confidence manifested itself in a number of ways. Firstly it immediately struck you as a big, bold, brassy (Not as in brass section!) record, it jumps out of the speakers and it swings and swaggers, it's an incredibly alive record. Then you notice that although it is clearly a Country record, there is an amazing variety to the tracks, there's honky tonk, there's country swing, there's bluegrass, there's a country style arena song with a chorus the size of a Aerodrome (The Magnificent "Automatic"), there's a distant relation to Queen's "We Will Rock You"("Somethin' Bad) (which makes sense of the fact that she covers ZZ Top's Gimme All Your Lovin' live), there's swaggering rock and roll ("Little Red Wagon"), It's a record that never stays in one place from one track to the next.
The record is also incredibly confident in that it defies all conventional wisdom about how an album should be structured these days. For a start it's an hour long. In them old days, it would have been a Double Album (Oh, the Horror, etc)!! To be fair, conventional wisdom has a point. I tend to find that anything over 40 minutes usually contains filler at best or noodling bollocks at worst. Amazingly, this has neither (although I would be fascinated to hear what the country version of noodling bollocks would sound like, Hank Williams meets the Aphex Twin perhaps?), there is not a duff track here. Secondly, it appears to have been sequenced by a madman! Conventional wisdom dictates that you start with your strongest songs, smuggle anything half-arsed in the middle and then finish on a bang. This starts with probably one of the most conventional songs on the record "Girls". As a song, it's fine and dandy but not a starter, that was surely the title track. And then it finishes with "Another Sunday in the South" which is lovely but not the big finish (which is probably "All That's Left"). But it still works!!
The next thing that strikes me (and this is something I particularly love about this record) especially after having heard all of Miranda's other records is that at this stage of an artists career (particularly in country), there is normally the temptation to do something completely different or write a massive commercial smash, a crossover hit which often means a saccharine ridden ballad. The recent career of Taylor Swift is a classic example of the first situation. Now one should stress that I am sure it was entirely Taylors decision to make "1989", a pure pop record through and through with nary a trace of Nashville, rather than some faceless suits forcing her down that road (Indeed I imagine that said suits went somewhat pale upon hearing the opening strains of "Welcome to New York" which sounded more like OMD circa "Architecture and Morality" than anything that's come out of Nashville in the last 50 years), it's also an excellent record.
Whilst there are slower songs on "Platinum" (The beautifully reflective and wistful "Smokin' and Drinkin'", "Automatic" and the lovely "Holding on to You"), there's nothing here that could be mistaken for Whitney Houston. Moreover, rather than go crossover, it's as if Miranda has decided to dive deeper into Country. In particular there is a stupendous middle section to this album that consists of three songs that could have been written before the advent of Rock and Roll "Old Shit" (which starts with the sound of a needle being put on a record and crackles all the way through), the wonderful Bluegrass of "All that's left" (I defy you not to sing along) and the rollicking honky tonk "Gravity is a Bitch".
The next extraordinary thing about this record is that it is so fully of character and personality. Clearly I have never met Miranda Lambert and only know her through her records but it strikes me that there is a lot of her in these songs. She is from Texas and proud of it, clearly hasn't forgotten her roots, has had her heart broken and got back up again, doesn't suffer fools gladly (especially those of the male persuasion and Lord knows there's enough of them), respects the past and likes a beer (Hooray!). And that's just for starters. "Hard staying sober" is both brutal in its honesty but wonderful in its defiance, when you listen to it, you know many of us have been there! Leading on from that, she is a magnificent lyricist. The title track "Platinum" contains the best line I heard in 2014 "Whatever kill you, only makes you blonder, my heels and my hotels, they just got taller" plus it contains the word "irrefutably" as more songs should, More than any other album I heard in 2014, the album is shot through with a fantastic sense of humour (As a brief aside, why are so many records these days so self important and staggeringly po-faced?). "Priscilla" likens Miranda's lot (Her husband is fellow Country superstar and US The Voice presenter, Blake Shelton) with that of Elvis Presley's Missus whilst the afore-mentioned "Gravity is a Bitch" is a hilarious depiction of the ravages of the ageing process.
And here it is
And for Good Measure, here's "Automatic"
In short, it's the best collection of songs I heard in 2014 and the most entertaining (And despite what PJ Harvey fans would have you believe, "Entertainment" is a"Good Thing" when it comes to a record) album encountered last year. It's wonderful and made me desperate to hear more Miranda. So, as stated I went out and bought the back catalogue which is a thing of joy and beauty forever and lo and behold, a Marsh Favorite Artist was born (And they don't come along very often, let me tell you)
Furthermore, it finally blew the doors right off the barricades (Yes, yes, I know that barricades don't have doors but bear with me here, OK?) of any lingering preconceptions that I had about Current Country Music. If I had been paddling in 2013 and waist deep with Eric, once I had heard Miranda, I wanted to go Skinnydipping in those Country waters, which I acknowledge is an image that no one wants to entertain! All I have really listened to over the last 2 months has been Country and so far I have unearthed the following treats:
"The Big Revival" by Kenny Chesney. Apparently Kenny has been going for years so I've got a bit of catching up to do. This is his 2014 album and it's the musical equivalent of being confronted by a giant cute puppy, It's BIG, it's fun and it really wants to be liked. The ghost of John Cougar Mellencamp circa "American Fool" hangs around and I cannot hear without grinning like a Buffoon.
"Provoked" by Sunny Sweeney. I can't get into "The River and the Thread" by Roseanne Cash (It probably needs more time than I have been able to give) but I can't for the life of me work out why that record has been lauded to the skies whilst (over here in the UK at least), no one outside me, my 5 year old son and the weird bloke from down the road who keeps lurking outside my house and peering through the windows has heard of this wonderful record. A truly gifted songwriter, who deserves wider recognition
"American Middle Class" by Angaleena Presley. This record is the classic slow burner. When I first heard it, my CD players were still swamped by Miranda Lambert. This is a far less immediate record than most of hers so it got overlooked. However it reveals it's charms over time. Again a great songwriter (Country really does have a lot of them at the moment) and this is a fascinating look at life in C21 Middle America.
"From Where We Stand" by Ward Thomas. This record is unique amongst all of the above because this band are from Hampshire (NOT New Hampshire). Yes, it's that rarest of beasts, UK Country and it quite, quite lovely. Wonderful harmonies, some great 70s singer songwriter influences and I can't wait to see them live in a couple of months
And that's just the top of the iceberg. The following are sitting waiting to be listened to "Like a Rose" Ashley Rose, "Painkiller" Little Big Town, "12 Songs" Brandy Clark, Both Pistol Annies records arrived today, 10, 000 Towns- The Eli Young band, "Riser" Dierks Bentley. And who knows what delights remain undiscovered in the country fields or what treats 2015 may bring. Seriously there aren't enough hours in the day!
Which brings us back full circle I guess. Quite my Dad would have made of Eric Church when he cranks it up to 11 (and possibly beyond) on "That's damn Rock and roll" I don't know but I'm sure he would have liked the cut of his jib! Everything else here, I'm sure he would have loved! When I listen to and love all this wonderful music, I can only wonder whether all that country that my Dad had on the background as I was hurtling Matchbox cars down a racetrack is now revealing it's subliminal influence. Who knows but if it is, Cheers Dad. I owe you a beer when I get to Heaven!
