A Country Way of Life

Demi Marriner – The Things We Didn’t Say

I went to see Elles Bailey earlier this year. Demi Marriner was on backing vocals with an ever-present smile. At one stage Elles kindly allowed Demi to plug the release of her long-awaited debut album, which follows a pair of EPs, one of which was recorded live on location.

Mother and Cold Coffee both appeared on Demi’s 2017 EP Dandelion and are re-recorded for this new 11-song collection. The former, which is now taken a tick slower, is an ode to parenting which opens with some pedal steel: ‘she’s fighting a battle with a loaded gun…a soldier trying to make her mark’. The latter is a waltz full of woe: ‘it’s your turn to be kicked while you’re down…you tasted better the first time around’ is a delightful punchline.

It’s one of many songs where the narrator is full of agency, doing stuff rather than having stuff done to her. Opening track Sins is another such track, with a mood-setting guitar line full of reverb. Demi’s narrator asks if the object of her desire is ‘worth my sins’, which is amazingly brash line, and the confident arrangement culminates in a great final minute.

On Stay, which is deceptively toe-tapping, Demi sees ‘spite’ in how she was treated, ‘losing who I thought I knew’, but she concludes ‘I didn’t mean to break your heart’. The Golden King starts with Demi declaring how she gets ‘a little lost sometimes’ and even as she warns off her current suitor she wants someone to hold and be held by. Such is the push-me-pull-you nature of love.

Distorted Desires and Last Summer are much more poppy. The former outlines Demi’s dilemma as to whether to fall for someone; the arrangement reflects this, cutting some bars short. The latter has her in a more confident mood, ‘not willing to settle’ with a guy who was in her life last year and who has ‘a lot of nerve’ returning to see if she is still keen.

Little Boy is a song I’ve heard Demi play live, marvelling at her vocal tone and ear for a melody. The album version adds a fiddle for a folky feel that breaks into something rockier in a chorus which has what Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze would call a ‘fistful of chords’. It also dares to end on an imperfect cadence, which more songs ought to do to leave the listener in suspense.

One Way Conversation is a duet with Tom West, who in the first verse sing about writing and throwing away letters, which is quaintly retro in 2023. The harmonies and gentle arrangement recall the duo Turin Brakes, while I heard parallels with Mama Cass’s Dream A Little Dream in the ode to friendship Don’t You Worry, which ends with a marvellous dominant chord, which more songs out to do to leave the listener cooing with delight.

The album closes with The Light, a nice summary of the album’s musical and lyrical moods. Our unsure narrator is in two minds over whether to fall in love or not, but she makes her decision and lives happily ever after. The song ends on a triumphant tonic chord, supplied by the string section which had joined Demi for the song’s coda ‘You were the light I thought I’d lost’.

Having already had terrific sets from Robbie Cavanagh, Morganway and Kezia Gill, this year is chock full of fabulous albums by rootsy British acts. It’s a golden age.

Lori McKenna – 88

Just in case nobody knows Lori McKenna, she’s the songwriter’s songwriter who wrote Girl Crush (with Liz Rose and Hillary Lindsey) and Humble and Kind (alone) and whose last two albums have been stunning. The Balladeer came out in 2020, which I called ‘grown-up songs for grown-up listeners’.

Here are ten more, Produced by Dave Cobb in a new studio in Georgia rather than Tennessee. Lori’s friends Barry Dean, Luke Laird and Hillary Lindsey helped her write over Zoom, probably after a long catch-up session. The blokes co-wrote Days Are Honey, which I think on purpose uses the chord progression from Tracy Chapman’s Baby Can I Hold You and features some advice on life’s unpredictability. Hillary lends her voice to Killing Me, a toe-tapper at odds with its lyric (‘trying to make you happy is killing me’) that reminded me of Sheryl Crow singing a Ron Sexsmith song. I replayed it instantly.

In an amazing credit which will stand out on a packed CV, rising rocket Stephen Wilson Jr was on the call for closing track The Tunnel, which is another one which originated in Lori’s mental scrapbook. It starts with the idea of an underground tunnel that kids would run across and ends with a message to carpe the diem.

There are also two co-writers of her own bloodline: son Chris helped her write Happy Children, a take on Bob Dylan’s Forever Young, and eldest child Brian was there for the title track, which references the year of his birth and sees Lori look back on life as a young mum. ‘I’ve been your biggest fan since 1988’ will strike the heartstrings of every kid born in that year (hello!) with a similar cheerleader for a mum. How many country songs are written by and for mums in 2023, let alone 1988?

The Lord gets a mention on several tracks on the album, including 1988, The Tunnel and The Old Woman In Me, a meditation to match Lori’s song When You’re My Age that throws forward in time so that the narrator effectively sits on the front porch looking in ‘dreaming bout yesterday’. How many country songs are written for grandmothers in 2023?!

The album’s sonic inspiration was rock from the Lilith Fair era, acts from the time before Americana was so called, and the arrangements suit Lori’s folky voice. Letting People Down begins with the line ‘staring at trophies in milk crates’ and seems to document the way the narrator gave up on her dreams (‘I still count every unplanted seed’). It’s also rare to hear a songwriter actually say ‘I’m sorry’, although I’m not sure why or to whom she is apologising.

The Town In Your Heart was a wise choice of single, with another toe-tapper of a guitar part that disguises how the narrator is carrying the love of an old flame with her. Wonder Drug is a triple-time tune which could have been a showstopper in a musical, since it seems to summarise the life of a wretched character who succumbed to ‘a monster’ that wasn’t love. The song ends with Lori’s narrator intoning ‘I was too late’.

Growing Up is a reminiscin’ song which mentions ‘backyard dirt’ and ‘Lemonade stand summers’, namechecks Oprah and spends the middle eight going back to visit the house that built her. Each chorus has different lyrics so it reads more like a poem than a song, and there’s a ringing F-sharp major key signature to add wistfulness to her ruminations.

Wistful ruminations would actually summarise this album and Lori’s career quite well.

What a night of country music. The band already have a date in the calendar for November 2024 at the same venue, which attendees of the show could buy a ticket for on the way out thanks to a QR-encoded flyer. It’ll be hard to improve on what GlasVille are already offering.

I spoke to drummer Joe Hele a few days before the band drove down to London from Glasgow, via gigs in Manchester and Wakefield. He promised a show full of energy and expertise, but he never mentioned he’d be wearing a kilt or that the frontline entertainers would be in boots. The five-piece band, dressed to impress, played for two hours with stamina and enthusiasm. The audience’s age ranged from teenage to grey.

The setlist was perfectly paced. Opening with Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy), the band rolled out anthems from five decades of country. If you have a skilled fiddler like Jenna Hood, it’s almost sacrilege not to play the Charlie Daniels song about the devil, and if you have a Saturday night crowd there must be Wagon Wheel, Redneck Woman, My Church, Somebody Like You, Chicken Fried, Beer Never Broke My Heart and Friends In Low Places, the evening’s closing track which included the naughty third verse.

There were two songs carried over from their days as a band who played songs from the show Nashville (hence the name): Don’t Put Dirt on My Grave Just Yet and Telescope are both Juliette Barnes classics which major in power chords and sat comfortable within the contemporary radio smashes. Both were sung by Laura Kenny, with guitar solos by Michael Smith. Michael helped warm up the voices of the crowd early on with the simple four-note bellow of Snapback by Old Dominion.

The singalong continued with the Taylor Swift-assisted Highway Don’t Care (‘I can’t live without you baby’), where the band’s cowboy-hatted guitarist aced Keith Urban’s solo. Given that the set is configured months in advance, it was too late to drop Jimmie Allen’s Freedom Was A Highway, but the melody isn’t alleged to have committed any crimes so the three-chord marvel sounded magnificent in the middle of the set.

Songs from Shania’s catalogue made two appearances with You’re Still The One and Man! I Feel Like A Woman! Dolly’s song reminded us about working 9 to 5 while Cam’s response to Jolene, Diane, was also full-throated. To cram in two ladies for the price of one, there was an impassioned cover of Never Wanted To Be That Girl, the reigning Country Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards which brought Ashley McBryde and Carly Pearce together.

It is incredible to note that Country Girl (Shake It For Me) is over a decade old but shaking a tush will never go out of style. Nor will Life Is A Highway, from a Disney movie that came out almost two decades ago, and Carrie Underwood’s majestic Before He Cheats. Achy Breaky Heart has now been adapted for football terrace chants and it will still be sung in 30 years just as it is sung three decades after its release.

With any luck, GlasVille will still be packing in venues with a show that distils country music down to its good-time roots: riffs, melodies, clapalongs and a ruddy good time.

Hailey Whitters – I’m In Love EP

Dixie Musgraves is back, although this EP must have been delayed by the 64-week(!!!!) chart run of Everything She Ain’t, the whisky soda/Corona song from Hailey’s 2022 album Raised. This six-track EP, which also includes that song, is again released on Big Loud, which proves why Morgan Wallen (the label’s flagship act) was so pivotal to the success of other country acts, much as how Coldplay sold out stadiums to keep the other acts on EMI making music.

Hailey herself is releasing this off the back of playing stadiums as Shania Twain’s opener, and she’s out with both Eric Church and Luke Bryan later in the year. That’s an interesting trio and it means her set has to appeal to pop fans, rock fans and Luke Bryan fans. The EP’s euphoric, toe-tapping title track will make them all happy. There’s plenty of rural imagery and namechecks for George Jones, plus the great zeugma ‘He’s in Levi’s, I’m in love’. Once again the humble skillet gets a mention in a country song; James Daykin should do one of his great Entertainment Focus pieces on it!

That title track and the song Mellencamp were co-written by Nicolle Galyon, who signed Hailey to her Songs & Daughters imprint. Our small-town narrator hits the road with her beau and has her ‘heart go Mellencamp’, via references to Jack and Diane in the lyric and the melody, where a mandolin plucks the root notes of part of that song.

Bad Love was written with two of the best in the business, Jimmy Robbins and Hillary Lindsey. Driven by the same twang that drove Chattahoochee, Hailey reminisces about all the heartbreak that has led her to happily ever after. I am positive her audience, whether Luke, Eric or Shania fans, will chant ‘Bad love! Bad love!’ along with her. I also think nobody else in town would put out this song, which helps the EP stand out in the market.

Tie’r Down has a banjo and fiddle intro before Hailey comes in with a description of a Southern girl with ‘a mind of her own’ who is after monogamy but, though ‘you might tie the knot, you can’t tie her down’. The arrangement and character are pure country, with an attractive chugging rhythm.

Countryside Chick, which borrows some of the chords from Jana Kramer’s forgotten classic I Got The Boy, is another one of those songs that contrast the ‘concrete jungle’ of the city with the attractions of a country girl. Hailey’s narrator twists the idea of being someone’s ‘side chick’ into a chick from the countryside. The arrangement is so breezy it’s like Hailey is a siren to whom resistance is futile. Bring on the album.

Neon Union – Double Wide Castle Sessions EP

All together: Nashville needs to adapt or it risks irrelevance. The latest non-traditional outfit to try for success in this most traditional genre come in sideways from pop: Leo Brooks has been a sideman for Señor Worldwide, Mr 305 and king of the dancefloor Pitbull, while Andrew Millsaps is a former athlete. They are now signed to Jay DeMarcus’ Red Street imprint, and they stand out from the pack because they embody the meaning of the Stevie Wonder song Ebony & Ivory. Let us pass over the fact that the man who signed them to his JAB imprint Jimmie Allen is indisposed, and trying to turn himself into a stand-up comedian, pending allegations of despicable conduct. (Neon Union featured on a track from his so-so album Bettie James.)

Their own EP contains five tracks where the pair are together in perfect harmony. In the same way that there’s a whole genre of music Produced by Dave Cobb, Neon Union embody Produced by Dann Huff, fitting into the genre alongside Keith Urban, Tim McGraw and, handily, DeMarcus’ old band Rascal Flatts. Redneck Rich starts with a dirty riff and the line ‘I ain’t Elon Musk’ (rhyming with ‘out of this truck’). Perhaps a five-year moratorium on songs about how we’re rich even though we’re poor should run through Music Row. How You Don’t has a similar feel, comparing city life with life in the country, where alarm clocks go off at 4.15am. We get all the old familiar rural tropes: catfish, corn, trucks, ‘hicks in the sticks’ and how ‘Shania Twain is still fine’. Bingo!

Some big names have contributed tunes to the project. Bob DiPiero was involved in American Dirt, which has some fun baseball metaphors in the first verse and a gentle rootsy arrangement to accompany all the old familiar rural tropes: Goodyear tyres, blankets on the ground, the Flag, ‘middle of nowhere’ and rows of corn. Bingo again!

The chirpy rocking love song This Thing was written by Craig ‘Big Loud’ Wiseman among others and shares a spoken-sung verse with Boys Round Here, which Wiseman also wrote. More crass critics than I will point out that rapping on a country song sounds so much better when a black guy does it than when a guy from Oklahoma who used to have a mullet tries it.

Hillary Lindsey and Hardy wrote Country Radio Song, probably in 20 minutes before lunch, tossing out smash hit titles: Cowboy Take Me Away, I Love This Bar, Chicken Fried and on and on. I like the old-fashioned notion of calling the DJ up when the guys can click a button and dance with their partner to Mama’s Broken Heart themselves. The song proves that you can hit familiar themes but coat them in new clothes, which is all part of how country music moves into the new age.

‘It’s not red or blue, it’s green.’

This will be Rupert Murdoch’s epitaph when the reptilian owner of Sky shuffles off this planet. He was justifying the decision to let Mike Lindell advertise his pillows on Fox News while Lindell alleged that the 2020 US Presidential election was rigged against his friend The Donald. Fox settled a case for an enormous sum just as they were about to go to trial over defaming the company who makes the machines which count the votes. It is hard to see Fox as a credible news outlet today.

As you would expect, this fortnight’s Outrage concerns Jason Aldean’s video to his iffy song Try That in a Small Town. Jason’s wife Brittany appeared on former Fox host (and supporter of the ‘rigged election’ theory) Tucker Carlson’s show last year, where she was given three minutes to promote her clothing line which launched off the back of saying some gender critical things on social media. This was the episode where Carlson called Maren Morris a ‘lunatic’ and the world at large learned of Morris’ nickname for Aldean, ‘Insurrection Barbie’.

Aldean has sought to monetise her views and speak up for children who ‘should have parents that love them and advocate for them’, rather than help a child choose their gender, what Tucker calls ‘castrating’. Outrage and media appearances are not red or blue; they are green.

And so to country music. I realised the day after writing a piece about Red and Blue Country that the genre should really be referred to as Green Country; odd, as red and blue form purple when mixed together! Marty Stuart’s words have reverberated in my mind since I first heard him say them on his visit to play Country2Country in 2017. The truth about country music, Stuart said, is that it is a business as much as entertainment, and we should imagine ‘a man carrying a briefcase in one hand and a guitar case in the other’.

This is why the Country Music Association are so keen on exporting country around the world, which acts as a loss leader and lures folk from those countries to Nashville. Let the bachelorettes come in their plastic hats to the bars named after the stars whose snap-tracked songs have dominated radio since Florida Georgina Line released Cruise! Whether you’re from Georgia or Georgetown, red or blue, your greenbacks are welcome!

When I was writing my piece on country music for The British Country Music Festival, it occurred to me that I didn’t know the politics of many of the performers who play, and fanatics who attend, gigs in the UK. I presume they don’t hold grudges against people who may have voted to leave the EU in 2016 or voted Conservative in the 2019 election when it was clear Dominic Cummings was a psychopath with his own rules. But I’m less interested in the views of those people than whether they are excited about a new Chris Stapleton album; in fact, he’s one of those acts whose politics I do not know.

Nashville is a big tent which contains ‘many fine people on both sides’, to quote a man who used to be blue, then switched to red, but is only interested in green. This is the same argument Michael Jordan used when he failed to support a black Democrat over a less amenable Republican; in jest, he told his team-mates that everyone bought his Air Jordans, so why pick a side? He said it in 1990 and the quote was re-examined in The Last Dance, a documentary that arrived in spring 2020 just before the killing of George Floyd, which I think is the ultimate viral video.

Since the twin pillars of modern America – that killing and the storming of the Capitol nine months later – it seems that silence is now violence. Twenty years ago, silence was advisable given what happened to the band now known as The Chicks. In a time when radio was king, the queens were victims of a boycott. In the UK this summer, they supported Bruce Springsteen and were in turn supported by Maren Morris, two acts who have nailed their colours to the blue side of the aisle in opposition to the red side.

On that side lies Kid Rock, who has also changed his shirt. He was part of a fundraiser for Haiti in 2010 alongside Sheryl Crow and Keith Urban, at a time when Barack Obama was President. His forlorn promise for change now seems as long ago as Natalie Maines’ shame at being from the same state as George W Bush. Significantly, smartphone technology was just coming in to put social media in people’s pockets. In 2010, Elon Musk was just the business guy who sold Tesla cars and wanged on about hyperloops.

A decade later, with Musk following Steve Jobs as a subject of a Walter Isaacson biography, Kid Rock is irrelevant in contemporary music and spends most of his time popping up adding his two cents (because it’s not red or blue, it’s green!) on political matters. ‘You can’t cancel me!’ he told Fox News. Tourists of all stripes can visit a bar on Lower Broadway bearing his name, but many will realise that they are by proxy supporting a friend of The Donald, who sent Kid Rock a video message to play at his live shows. Other ‘Red Country’ acts include John Rich, Aaron Lewis (formerly of Staind) and Travis Tritt, who are also legacy acts rather than hit-makers.

The Blue Country acts are those who support more liberal politics; not just Maren, but her fellow Highwomen Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby and Amanda Shires. Her husband Jason Isbell uses his social media feed and his status as a fearless independent act to speak truth to the power of Music Row. Everyone has their tribe today and country music can help you create a playlist depending on your political opinions, which I will not be so reductive as to boil down into easy headings. It does seem, however, that Red Country bangs on about the flag and the military a lot more than Blue Country does, much like the current Conservative government used the UK flag during and after the pandemic.

Instead, I’ll ask you to consider country music in 2023, especially the acts who travel to Europe to entertain fans in Europe and across the world. Note how Carly Pearce and Lainey Wilson are being pushed to the front of the ‘girl-singers’ line. I think they are replacing Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert, who have been the only durable female performers in country in the last two decades. Both of them have headlined Country2Country – Carrie was due to headline the first Long Road festival had illness not waylaid her – and have come back to promote their big recent releases, commanding impressive ticket prices. I know more about Miranda Lambert’s love of dogs than her own politics, while Carrie Underwood, the All American Girl from Oklahoma, unites fans as the singer of the theme song for TV football coverage.

Nobody asked for a cover of Fast Car by Tracy Chapman but Luke Combs, as respectfully as he can, took it to number two on the Hot 100. He plays two dates at the O2 Arena in October, fulfilling his brief as CMA Entertainer of the Year. His music is organic, with live drums, piano ballads and traditional instrumentation that stretches to bluegrass. Yet he is capital-R Relatable, singing about love, loss and good times in a way that sticks to the Garth formula.

Is Garth an ambassador for Blue or Red Country? He’s certainly a Green Country act, given his status as the biggest-selling country act of the CD era. Garth played shows in Central Park in the 1990s, hosted his own TV specials and released a song called We Shall Be Free to capitalise on his status as a chart-topping album artist who had exploded into country consciousness in the New Traditional era of the late 1980s. I always laugh when I remember Garth put up one album against The Beatles’ Anthology set and thought he could match their sales (not a chance), but I commend his chutzpah.

It is at this point that the words Chris and Gaines appear, although that pop project gave him a pop hit with Lost In You. His dreams of making a movie were quashed, and I reckon those plans had more to do with trying to conquer a new medium than for any financial imperative; by that stage, like Morgan Wallen in 2023, Garth Brooks had it all.

Today, Garth tours across America in Red and Blue areas because it’s Green that interests him. Not for nothing did he prevent his music from all streaming services save his own GhostTunes, which was absorbed into Amazon Music. That is the only place you could hear his recent album Fun, as well as his back catalogue, digitally; otherwise you have to do the old-fashioned thing and buy the CD, or go to the show and hear it in the flesh.

The new trend for artists is to release albums with 20 or more tracks, following on from Morgan Wallen’s success with his double album Dangerous. In 2023 alone, Nate Smith and Ashley Cooke have brought out bumper sets, while Wallen’s ploy to put out an album with 36 tracks has meant One Thing At A Time has dominated the album charts since its release because of its vast quota of streams. The Man Who Said The Word knows that Green is the colour of his success.

At the end of July 2023, three country songs are among the four biggest in America. Only a member of BTS upsets the hegemony, with Aldean joining Wallen and Combs in the upper reaches of the Hot 100. Aldean has done it by leveraging the outrage that saw the video to his song banned without a given reason by Country Music Television (CMT), who in recent years have opened their viewers to acts from minority groups including women (although it’s fun to note that the number one album in America is by Taylor Swift, who recorded Speak Now when she was still pitching to country fans).

Aldean is able to get into people’s homes, trucks and cars via his decades-long support from TV and country radio; at the ACM Awards he had a lock on Best Male Artist (2013-15) and Entertainer of the Year (2016-18), but he has won neither category at the CMA Awards. It was Aldean who sang Dirt Road Anthem, which brought in the Era of the Bro and was written with Colt Ford, a flag-waving figure for Red Country.

In a time of division, country music seems to be promoting positivity, which is neither red or blue but green. Those bachelorettes at Lower Broadway bars leave their politics at the door and hand over their money to forget about their troubles. Two acts commented on how the whole argument was negative in tone, forgetting that negativity is what media organisations have latched on to since about the time The Donald declared he was running for President.

It was interesting to see Jake Owen (‘I’ve spent my entire career trying to promote positivity’) stick up for Aldean in the social media echo chamber argument that always accompanies Outrage. Broken Bow artist Blanco Brown shared a screenshot of a text Aldean sent him after Brown was hospitalised for an accident with the bizarre excuse ‘texts don’t have tone’; Try That in a Small Town did not ‘align with positivity’ and we should instead ‘question the songwriters’. Jason Isbell raised a chuckle when he dared Aldean to write a song himself instead of using a pool of writers; the counter to this is that Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley didn’t write their hits, nor in the main does Jake Owen, who coincidentally has a new album called Loose Cannon out now on Big Loud.

Isbell is very good at breathing in the oxygen of publicity; after all, it’s not red or blue, it’s green. I wonder if he’s tempted to put out a video that pokes the Red Country bear or if it’s more trouble than it’s worth. The danger is that artists turn off vast chunks of people because of their beliefs. I am certainly less keen on RaeLynn now that I know some of her political views, but I’d still go and see her if she came back to the UK. I don’t think I’d ever see Aldean just because I think his live vocals are weak and there are too many guitar solos.

I hope that Aldean is not held up as an avatar for Red Country, and that he thus becomes Mr Small Town as a result of having his biggest hit. I fear that that’s exactly what he and his label both want: to shore up his existing fanbase and spend the rest of his career working the Skillet Circuit.

After all, that Big Green Tractor he sang about isn’t blue or red.

It’s time for another piece where I take an album and, instead of reviewing each track, I simply state which playlist each track should be added to. I do this when an album has over 18 tracks because it stops being an album and can be described as a data dump. Jimmy Robbins has been hired to give Ashley Cooke’s double-album of 24 songs the same pop/country sheen that he gave albums by Kelsea Ballerini, Maddie & Tae and Maren Morris.

Ashley is going out on tour with Luke Bryan this summer to promote her music, having been out with Cole Swindell, Jordan Davis and Brett Young: Corporate Country stars, all four of them. As with Ernest and Morgan Wallen, she is on Big Loud Records, and has been joined in the writers’ room by plenty of A-Listers: Emily Weisband, Corey Crowder, Trevor from Old Dominion, Hunter Phelps, Hillary Lindsey, Jessi Alexander and Sasha Sloan. There are a couple of outside writes which have been gifted to her by, among others, Ryan Hurd, Lainey Wilson and Devin Dawson.

Matching the rollout of Wallen’s album, fully eleven tracks from Shot In The Dark were pre-released. Many of them are gentle wisps of songs with wire-brushed drums and frothy melodies, with Robbins’ production seeming to obey a brief that the music must be targeted at women between 18 and 34.

Enough To Leave: ‘To Have or Have Not’

Your Place: ‘It’s Over, Get Over It’

Mean Girl: ‘To Have or Have Not’ (this is a smart song with a hook that says ‘This might be mean but I don’t think he means what he says’. It did not surprise me at all that Nicolle Galyon was involved with it)

Shot In The Dark: ‘Country Wedding Song’

Tastes Like: ‘Country Music and Alcohol’ (our heroine needs ‘a refill’ not ‘a rebound’)

It’s Been A Year: ‘December 31 Montage Music’

Getting Into: ‘This Is Me’ (Ashley warns a suitor to ‘know what you’re getting into’ but it sounds painfully MOR)

Back In The Saddle: ‘Meet-Cute’

Running Back: ‘Reminiscin’ (there seems to be a surfeit of country songs about gridiron, though the position lends itself perfectly to the double meaning as Ashley would ‘come running back’)

Dirt On ’Em: ‘Small Town Checklist’ (programmed drum track and wide-open power chords to praise a country fella who wears Levi’s)

Never Til Now: ‘Country Wedding Song’ (rebel settles down)

The other 13 tracks arrived on July 21 and can be moved to the following playlists.

See You Around: ‘Breakups Make Me Miserable’

Moving On With Grace: ‘Country Music and Alcohol’ (‘I’m moving on with Jack’)

I Almost Do: ‘Breakups Make Me Miserable’ (the hand of Trevor Rosen from Old Dominion is obvious on this melancholic soft rocker)

Good Thing Going: ‘Meet-Cute’ (a nice chugging guitar and a Kelsea-type lyric)

Next To You: ‘Country Sex Jam’ (singer/songwriter-type acoustic ballad and a 100%-er from Ashley)

Good To Be Back: ‘Country Music and Alcohol’ (an infectiously catchy way to start the ‘second disc’ of the album)

What Are You On Fire About: ‘Don’t Mess Me Around’ (written by Lainey Wilson and Luke Dick, partners accuse the other of having a wandering eye)

Say No More: ‘Breakups Make Me Miserable’ (written by the great Donovan Woods and the underrated Devin Dawson, Ashley warns her soon-to-be ex not to bug her cos ‘if it’s over, it’s over’)

Tryin’ To Love You: ‘Written by Hillary Lindsey’ (Ashley complains in a supremely melodic way about how tough it is to love her man)

Build A Bridge: ‘It’s Over, Get Over It’ (written by Ryan Hurd among others, this song’s chorus actually is ‘get over it’)

Get You: ‘To Have or Have Not’

Gonna Get: ‘Don’t Mess Me Around’ (Ashley boasts she’s the best he can get)

State I’m In: ‘Breakups Make Me Miserable’

If this were a 15-track album, it would match the excellence of Megan Moroney’s (but it’s not a competition, especially one that pits girl against girl). As you would expect of a Big Loud release, it’s organic, melodic and full of guitars. The presence of some of Carrie Underwood’s collaborators helps make the songs pop but Ashley is less belty than Carrie, instead with the gentle larynx of Kelsea Ballerini. In fact, there is an airbrushed quality about her voice, which means you focus on the song and the lyric rather than the performance.

It’ll do well with an 18-34 female demographic, and I am sure we will see Ashley on the main stage at Country2Country 2024.

Tyler Farr put out a six-track EP last week which sums up the state of country music in 2023. It’s the same state that it found itself in when Garth Brooks put out We Shall Be Free in 1992 or when Alan Jackson asked where we were when the world stopped turning, the Song of the Year in 2002.

Tyler’s friend Jason Aldean, who signed him to his Night Train imprint on Broken Bow and is a producer on the EP, has been in the news after releasing a video to his woeful song Try That in a Small Town. He claims it’s about wanting ‘a sense of normalcy’ and ‘a feeling of community’ across the nation but he doesn’t do it in the best way, certainly not like Tim McGraw with Humble and Kind, Brad Paisley with Last Time For Everything or Maren Morris with Better Than We Found It.

Many thinkpieces about Aldean are available if you need to know more, including this one from Saving Country Music which argues that Aldean is ‘not trying to create a big tent’ with his music but instead providing ‘voyeuristic escapism [from] suburban boredom’.

His label knows exactly what they are doing: feeding the Outrage Machine and ensuring that Aldean’s song gets the same attention as the smashes from Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs. A few months ago, I wondered how many of Aldean’s many, many number ones had made any impression outside country radio or his fanbase. I now know it will be at least one.

Tyler brought in Aldean for Damn Good Friends, a song on his second album for Sony Music in 2015 that featured A Guy Walks Into a Bar (written by Old Dominion) and Better In Boots (written by Naomi who used to be in Runaway June!). He had previously had a hit with Redneck Crazy, so it makes sense that a decade later he is still singing about Rednecks Like Me: ‘My God, I’ve got it made,’ he sings on the title track, which runs through family, children, partying at weekends and standing for the National Anthem because ‘freedom isn’t free’. It sounds like music for a video montage of soldiers passing out from military school: ‘I’m red, white and blue – how about you?’ he asks, daring the listener to say, ‘No I’m not actually that patriotic really but the Superbowl is fun!’

In this interview with American Songwriter, Tyler says that his audience ‘believe in the same stuff as I do, which is God, family, friends, freedom, hard work’. Tell You ‘Bout That is similarly muscular, ticking off rural stuff – catfish, trucks, ‘back 40’, grandaddy and Jesus – in a way that has not just been done but been done by Aldean many times. His entire brand is to sing about southern life for an audience of southerners, and Tyler Farr is sticking to the script. Even the guitar solo seems copied and pasted from an Aldean song.

Questions is a power ballad where, among other queries, a young and innocent Tyler asks his dad why he uses Jesus’ name in vain if he loves him so much; he resolves to ‘do better’ as a father of his own daughter. First Rodeo is a heartbreaker (‘save your games and your sorries’) where Tyler refers to himself as a ‘good old boy’, while Silverado Gold is a reminiscin’ song with a driving arrangement. That song in particular shows off Tyler’s voice, which is a much more stylish instrument than Aldean’s.

The EP ends with Country As Shit, a collaboration with Jelly Roll, who is also making an enormous splash on the country side. ‘Round here the trucks stay muddy!’ Tyler bellows after a DJ Khaled-style ‘Let’s Go!’ from Jelly Roll, whose rapping reminds me of Steve Earle’s comment that commercial country is ‘hiphop for people who are afraid of black people’. I also found it odd that Tyler namechecks the outlaws Willie and Waylon, since their careers were in opposition to the mainstream; indeed, Willie founded Farm Aid which is resolutely apolitical.

In 2015, Grady Smith wrote a piece for the Guardian’s music blog which used the success of Jason Isbell to show that some acts don’t need country radio to succeed. ‘Country fans are finding music on their own,’ Grady writes, with acts no longer fighting the ‘fruitless battle’ over what country music really is. ‘Country radio isn’t backing down from its data-driven quest to make country sound as broadly consumable to as many people as possible…The schism of country music,’ he concludes, ‘has officially begun.’

As outlined in the book Rednecks and Bluenecks by Chris Willman, country music is always at war between its Republican side and its more liberal one. The book came out in 2005, in the aftermath of The Chicks’ fall from America’s biggest country stars to personae non gratae. Ironically, by talking about politics, they were doing what Aldean has been doing for years, especially after the Route 91 massacre in Las Vegas when he went on Saturday Night Live and played Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down. He introduced it with the words: ‘When America is at its best, our bond and our spirit is unbreakable.’

Nashville is now a tourist trap known as Nash Vegas, with the Opry and Lower Broadway catering to visitors from out of town, but out in the East of the city live the freaks and alternative cats. In Franklin, where Brad Paisley lives, sundry conservative pundits have moved in. I expect he will be asked about politics when promoting his forthcoming album Son of the Mountains, his first since 2017’s excellent Love and War whose title track drafted in John Fogerty.

Taylor Swift was kept away from political pronouncements early in her career so she wasn’t ‘Dixie Chicked’, while the recent piece in the New Yorker by Emily Nussbaum said Morgan Wallen has ‘split the city’. I hope Aldean doesn’t turn into an avatar for Red Country, as Wallen seemed to have been in the aftermath of Saying The Word in 2021.

I wonder if this path is wise for Music Row, and especially Broken Bow who are already dealing with the Jimmie Allen debacle. Country music is at the top of the charts with Wallen outselling and outstreaming every pop album, Luke Combs acting as a sort of Ed Sheeran figure and Jelly Roll and The War and Treaty respectively bringing religion and gospel back into the genre. And they want to stir the pot and get lazy clicks for songs about small towns?!

Perhaps they don’t want to lose the constituent redneck fanbase while also attracting folk on the coasts and abroad. What was the ‘bro-country’ movement in which Tyler found himself if not a way to keep Red Country fans sweet while the CMA began to start Country2Country in the UK and Australia, sending Tim McGraw, Eric Church, Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert and Darius Rucker to represent the desirable face of country music. Like Janus or Two-Face from Batman, country has two competing elements and it remains interesting to see how they are reconciled.

The 2015 festival was the Year of the Bro: Luke Bryan, Aldean, Brantley Gilbert (Big Machine’s dimestore version of Aldean) and Florida Georgia Line all performed. In 2023, all the bros had disappeared from the main stage save perhaps from Mitchell Tenpenny, who once sang a song called Bitches. Lady A were back once again to headline, reprising their 2015 set thanks to Need You Now, a song that was pitched at both Red and Blue because no matter your politics, sometimes at 1.15am you think of your ex. I couldn’t be able to tell you if any of the trio are Red or Blue in their own lives.

Tim McGraw and Tyler Hubbard wanted us all to ‘come together’ on the song Undivided, which annoyed me. It felt cynical, especially as it came out in time for Joe Biden’s inauguration, at which Garth Brooks sang Amazing Grace then shook hands with Barack Obama and George W Bush. We might hear plenty more ‘Can’t we just all get along?’ songs to counter the message of Try That in a Small Town, in the same way that we now have Lainey Wilson and Carly Pearce to take on the mantle of A-List women in country music to prove that it isn’t just a load of boys on the charts.

What I try to do with these pieces is to contextualise the music within the business of country. Increasingly, and this is not something I enjoy doing, politics come into it but I haven’t tweeted since last November, when I realised that I lived without Twitter for so many years so why can’t I go back to those days? Country music is about people and their lives, and it remains perfectly fine for Aldean and Tyler Farr and Jelly Roll and Wallen and Combs (who once sang of Blue Collar Boys) to reflect their audience in their songs and reflect it back at them. It worked for Bruce Springsteen, after all.

When two things meet, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, according to Newton’s Third Law of Motion. Newton didn’t consider the monetary value of this reaction, or how the Outrage Machine could monetise this. If people realised this, they wouldn’t be so keen to rush to condemn or support Aldean. Once again, Trigger from Saving Country Music is excellent on this.

Tyler Farr’s six new tunes should be heard as country, rather than Red Country, but they won’t be because everyone has to pick a side in today’s battles (in the absence of a major battle involving American troops). It suits everyone making money off the Outrage Machine in the Attention Economy, and I wish it would stop. Can’t we all just get along??

Colter Wall – Little Songs

The man with the deep voice returns with his fifth album, his first since the enjoyable Western Swing & Waltzes set. Colter Wall is now working in partnership with RCA Records, who have read the runes and are throwing money at a very independent spirit, who has just turned 28 (even the country stars are getting younger these days).

I remember first listening to Colter when he was emerging as a star and felt like his voice was like lava oozing out of a volcano, slightly worn and cracked as it came out of his larynx. It hasn’t changed, and it’s joined by pedal steel on opening tune Prairie Evening, which morphs into a waltz that is in turn joined by a fiddle. It sounds like the kind of music Luke Combs would listen to on a day back at home with his family. The Last Loving Words is another waltz full of imagery (cattle and their ranchers on ‘the wide pecos’) and mystery in exactly what ‘cowmen remember’ from the days before ‘the time of the drover’ passed.

There is a lot of heartache across the album. The Coyote & The Cowboy has Colter’s narrator getting ‘high on a bottle of rye’ as a harmonica blasts and the low strings of a guitar solo growl in response to his cowboy’s lament. Honky Tonk Nighthawk (good title) comes in at a not so little 4 minutes 32 seconds, with its 12-bar blues coming around again and again as Colter shuffles ‘on the hardwood floor’, eventually fading out to end the first side of the album.

Side two begins with For A Long While, where Colter notes that ‘the more you roam, you long for home’ more too, the same as it ever was (I love the line ‘in an old analogue style’). It was one of three pre-released tracks from the album, the others being the contemplative waltz Corralling The Blues (which actually includes the word ‘contemplation’ in its first verse) and the delightful Evangelina, which is an old Hoyt Axton Tex/Mex tune that Colter treats with the same respect that Steve Earle treats Guy Clark songs.

The title track has the touch of Paul Simon or Randy Newman: ‘there’s a lady on the highline…considers selling out or pitting in’, he sings, and describes a man with a ‘high-dollar habit’ which songwriting can finance. Standing Here is one of those country songs about doing nothing at all, spoken-sung by Colter with plenty of fiddle and lap steel guitar to give him a chance to stand and stare, while Cow/Calf Blue Yodel proves that he has studied the great hillbillies like Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams.

It is fun to note that RCA hold the copyright in Elvis’ catalogue, and here’s Colter playing music that would have fitted on radio beside Elvis’s Sun Records releases in the mid-1950s, or even captured on disc or notebook by Cecil Sharp, Ralph Peer or Alan Lomax back in the 1920s. Machines might be able to make music today, but ask them to artificially create hillbilly music and they might as well ask why when we’ve got all those other types. Colter Wall seems to know why.

Gabe Lee – Drink The River

Grady Smith is a big supporter of Colter Wall and he is also a fan of this Nashville bartender. Gabe Lee’s fourth album follows nine months after his third, which came out last October on Gabe’s own Torrez Music label. I wonder if anyone is beating down his door to sign him or if they know that he is a proud indie act who has heard enough horror stories from his time as a city resident. In this great interview with No Depression magazine, Gabe compares Music Row to ‘a concrete truck’ smashing everything in its path.

Gabe made his Opry debut the weekend of the album’s release (Grady was there), which is a great vote of confidence from the organisation. The nine tunes here build on his brand of poetic singer/songwriter with folkish arrangements full of mandolin and pedal steel; as ever, when I hear bluegrass instrumentation, I reach for Nickel Creek as a comparison but, listening back to his catalogue, I feel Gabe has a kinship with Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, one of my favourite contemporary songwriters thanks to his honesty and melodic songwriting.

The pair share a similar worldview where folks, mainly the writer himself, are trying to do good and overcome their foibles. All I Can Do is Write About It sounds like both a Dawes songtitle and a Dawes song, with Gabe’s narrator pouring his life into a song while praying to the Lord. The dobro and fiddle solos, from Lucciana Costa and Jason Roller respectively, are unexpected and delightful.

The first three tracks all lack much of a drum part, driven by the strings and adhering to the rules of bluegrass. The Wild is a love song disguised as introspective chastisement (‘I’m a reckless child born to the wild…misery weighing down on me’), while there’s a lush fiddle part on the self-explanatory Even Jesus Got The Blues. The title track is delightful and is almost bluegrass gospel thanks to its chorus: ‘I can love you until the tide pulls me under by and by’.

Their placement at the top of the album serve to ease the listener into the record, and to warn them that Gabe is not going to blast them with rock as he did on the opening track to Honky Tonk Hell. Heart Don’t Break finally brings the drums in properly as Gabe utters a toe-tapping confession to his beloved. He uses ‘caterwauling’ in the second verse and in the chorus sings that ‘there’s a fine line between the darkness and the dawn’.

The understated arrangement adds harmonies from Costa, who also lends her vocals to Merigold, a song which dares to use ‘cancer’ and ‘kudzu’ in the same stanza and references the ‘cast iron’ skillet that Jason Isbell recently sang about. It’s lazy to lump Gabe into the same school of modern songwriter as Isbell; plenty will do so, especially because, as with me, the fiddle and female vocal might make them think of Amanda Shires’s role in Jason’s music. Gabe doesn’t dispel the allusion with Lidocaine, a song Jason would have written before he got sober and whose lyric is self-reflective (‘Lord I know I’m not insane’) and sung from the back of the throat.

Eveline was one of the songs he played at the Opry. It brings together all the album’s elements, with Jason’s fiddle louder than usual in the solo to contrast better with the mandolin and cello which accompany Gabe’s story (‘hand me the keys, I’ll give you a ride’). Property Line is a nice coda to the album, where Gabe speak-sings a song with three vignettes, one of which includes ‘knucklehead fools’ warned away from his father’s land in Birmingham (Alabama, Isbell’s home state).

After enjoying Brennen Leigh’s album, her homophonic fellow songwriter Gabe Lee has matched her for musicality, wit and faithfulness to American music. He’s over in August for The Long Road and I hope he adds his own headline show.

Track45 – Grew Up On

In 1983, Michael Jackson was the biggest act on the planet but was contracted to appear with his brothers on a massive tour. This would only happen if a domineering dad still affected a superstar’s career. The release of Track45’s third EP made me think of Michael and co.: the three Johnson siblings Ben, Jenna and KK have rather been overshadowed by the phenomenal success of Ben’s songwriting, which includes the award-winning Lee Brice song One of Them Girls and cuts for Hardy, Dierks Bentley and Weezer (All My Favourite Songs). He also co-wrote In The Bible, a song on the biggest album in America this year.

I’m a violinist and so is KK, while Ben also plays cello and Jenna plucks a mandolin, so they’re actually more like the Kanneh-Mason family than the Jacksons, making Ben the Sheku of the bunch (Sheku was the cellist at the wedding of Henry Windsor and Meghan Markle). Recently their song Family was spun into a dancefloor jam by David Guetta, and the trio stick their own version on to the EP.

Before it, there are five tunes written with some of Ben’s A List pals. Drinkin’ and Thinkin’ has three of the best, Ashley Gorley, Hardy and Hunter Phelps, and there are fine sibling harmonies in the catchy chorus where they reminisce over old photos. When you write hundreds of songs, it must be fun to come up with a middle eight that includes ‘the combination/ of your memory and intoxication’.

Phelps also co-wrote Hate Me, a plea from KK’s narrator to help her let go of an ex with yet more marvellous harmonies. Nicolette Hayford (who records as Pillbox Patti) was there for PCH, a glossy tribute to the Pacific Coast Highway which counsels the listener ‘don’t fall in love in California!’ I love the image of a ‘denim jacket blue’ sky. Incidentally Jon Ronson has been extolling the virtues of the celebrated road on a BBC Sounds podcast that is worth a listen.

Jonathan Singleton was in the room for Grew Up On, the project’s gentle and melodic lead track which begins with KK admitting that she calls mama on a bad day. Her fiddle also makes an appearance to add to the mood of the track whose message is ‘you’ll never outgrow what you grew up on’. It is so important to note that these backroom boys like Phelps and Singleton help to carve the sound of acts like Wallen and Combs as much as the stars themselves; it takes a Music Row village to raise a chart-topping smash.

Last Man In Tennessee is a funky list song where KK pops into a bar and finds ‘a whole damn crew’ including Jack, Jim, ‘Johnny on the jukebox’, the Dallas Cowboys on the TV and God to talk to as well. ‘I got nickels that I’m spending like Benjamins’ is a fantastic line that sums up the terrific nature of the EP.

Dylan Marlowe – Dirt Road When I Die

Talking of backroom boys, Dylan Marlowe was part of the team who wrote Last Night Lonely for Jon Pardi, a three-chord marvel that hit number one. It got him a spot to open for Cole Swindell, who is a fellow Georgia boy and whose voice sits in the same range as Dylan’s. As part of one show last year Dylan covered Springsteen by Eric Church, so we know where his heart lies.

The smooth opening track of this eight-song set, which he calls an EP, is Record High, a soft tune where Dylan mourns the end of a relationship. What I Know Now similarly addresses his ‘stupid self’ who let his girl go. You See Mine (‘you’re riding round in his truck’) is country radio fodder which was written with (him again) Hunter Phelps and Chris Young’s main collaborator Corey Crowder.

The piano-led ballad You Were Right (Nat’s Song), written with Andy Albert, has a happier narrator who is head over heels in love, while Seth Ennis was in the room for Empty Shotgun which begins ‘Hey Mr Mechanic’ and uses a truck as a metaphor for singledom (ie the shotgun seat doesn’t have his girl in it). There is an Aldeanish guitar solo and very contemporary production from Joe Fox, who might well have played that solo because he also plays guitar for Matt Stell.

The title track has a hooky singalong (‘take me down that dirt road when I die’) which is perfect for arenas and for emphasising the inevitable nature of death. There is another Aldeanish guitar solo in the middle and a gospel choir, of course, but Dylan’s voice isn’t a powerful one and it sounds more like a prayer to himself.

Rich Kids is a reminiscin’ song akin to Track45’s Grew Up On; ‘we didn’t have much but we had it all’ is a familiar trope for songwriters, although the song is full of images like scratchcards and Silverados. Grew Up Country also bigs up the redneck life, ticking off beers, 4x4s and creeks. It’s exactly what Luke Bryan was doing ten years ago but with a Wallenesque sheen. I hope it sells.

First of all, Kezia Gill is by her own definition a singer/songwriter whose music can work as country too. Secondly, through the efforts of Bob Harris and Gary Quinn as much as her own, Kezia is the great hope of UK country music. I will try not to treat her as an avatar or exemplum, a foundation stone upon which the scene can build a decade after the rise of The Shires, who had Kezia open for them last year. Her music deserves to be treated on its own terms.

If you haven’t listened to (or watched) Kezia’s podcast Do You Know Any Oasis, it’s a fantastic listen. Alongside commadre Jade Helliwell, who provided backing vocals for Kez at her recent show in Hyde Park, Kezia talks about standing up for herself out in Lanzarote, where she played the expat bars for seven years, and her imposter syndrome. This is a woman who, since her introduction into the UK country scene, has played pretty much every festival and possesses one of the most passionate fanbases who tuned into a year’s worth of Friday Night sessions during the pandemic.

After several EPs and an early album which have included songs she has disowned for not being true to her, this set of ten songs released on w21Records captures Kezia Gill as she is in 2023. Having already played Country2Country and warmed up Bruce Springsteen’s crowd this year, Kez is preparing to play very high up the bill on the Sunday of the Long Road. Then she’ll be in rehearsals for a headline tour in October where she plays eight gigs inside nine days including stops at Glasgow Oran Mor and the sizeable Lafayette in Kings Cross. The tour is being put on by Country2Country and Wasserman Music, which is as close to major-label approval as an independent artist can get.

Rather than signing to Warner or Sony, as The Shires, Ward Thomas (who are now independent) and The Wandering Hearts did, Kezia is taking the indie route like Ferris & Sylvester, Morganway and Elles Bailey. The music of all three of those acts can be described as ‘country-adjacent’, a mix of blues and rock’n’roll that form styles that are specific to these acts. If I were an NME writer in 1991 where three acts doing similar things can form ‘a scene’, I’d try to give it a name like ‘New UK Country’. Use it if you want to!

The gnarly Smokey fits into the genre, with Kezia describing a man who relishes his outsider status. Written with the album’s producer Ben Haynes, it starts the second side of the album with intent. Sweet Spot follows with a similar sound and a familiar theme of partying after a long, hard week. I don’t know who plays the solo but it elevates the track and is impossible to sit still to! As Kezia sings on the track: ‘Wooo!’

There are plenty of moods across the ten songs on Misfit. The production is punchy and of major-label standard; this is a world away from the sometimes shy and retiring type of country music even from 2016 when I started investigating the genre. The air-punching title track kicks off the album with some woahs and guitars in a major key, with Kezia’s narrator singing of ‘seven years of bad luck waiting for the storm to pass’. Is this a reference to her time in Lanzarote?

I don’t know why she waited until the album’s release to put this song out; it would have made a killer first single although of course the Friday Night Crew have known its brilliance for months if not years. Kezia trickled four of the album’s tracks to streaming services in advance of its release, including House On The Hill. That song has a familiar driving rock rhythm and an equally familiar theme that Dorothy from Wizard of Oz hit upon a century ago; there’s a nice nod to ‘the deserts of Australia’, where Kezia performed as part of the Tamworth festival in 2019.

Whiskey Over Ice, a simple ditty comparing a bloke to various types of alcohol – ‘like tequila, I could reel ya’ is a great line – was written to a brief but then taken back by Kezia because it would sound great in her own festival set. When Bob Harris gave it the world exclusive first play, I wound back the radio and played it twice more: it has attitude, melody, riffs and a delightful vocal and was a great taster for the collection.

There are some break-up songs, naturally. Tonight is in an off-kilter 7/4 time signature with brushed drums, some twinkling percussion to match the stars; this stands in opposition to the gloomy lyric (‘the silence is disturbing’). The melody and mood is vaguely Celtic, and it feels like a short story where the birds are singing outside but Kezia’s ‘eyes are sore’. Like I Did Before, written with Kaity Rae, is a lachrymose break-up song led by piano and with a believable vocal; I am a sucker for any song that uses a diminished fifth chord (here an F minor in the key of B-flat). Price Of Loving You finds a silver lining in the cloud, and I can hear a gospel arrangement with a big choir behind her.

No Idea is a toe-tapper where Kez namechecks Google and realises not even a search engine has all the answers for how to lead a life. The theme is similar to the one explored in Dead Ends and Detours, and this song shares that one’s determination of the narrator to ‘just figure it out!’, pushing self-doubt to one side with a shrug. I reckon Kezia’s younger fans will go nuts for this song, as its simple message, sugared with the album’s best chorus, is universal.

They’ll love Dear Me too. I heard Kezia play it live recently and was impressed with her delivery and the honesty of the lyric: it’s a letter to herself that closes the album, with a cello in the background, on which she looks back to the person she was at 16 and 21. ‘Things work out in the end…You’ll be okay,’ she consoles herself and by extension younger listeners. Again, I don’t want to make Kezia some sort of symbol for the future of country music in the UK, but on the day that Rita Ora puts out an album of anonymous dance-pop with the might of BMG’s promotion and marketing budget, there is more heart and emotion in Kezia’s independently release collection.

As Bob Harris has realised, the more you shout about someone, the more people are converted to their cause. He has picked a fine star to champion and I hope the likes of Jade Helliwell, Gary Quinn and Gasoline & Matches find a similar audience whenever they put out a full-length album.

Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real – Sticks and Stones

Lukas Nelson will never struggle for money because of the royalties from writing Shallow, a number one hit across the world. He can thus afford to split his time between Austin and Hawaii when he isn’t gallivanting around America as a road warrior. He came over to the UK for a much-delayed set of shows in June 2023 and previewed songs from this album, the eighth with his band if you discount their work with Neil Young.

The London crowd went wild for the new tracks, including singalong gospel-roots track Alcohallelujah and the prestissimo Ladder of Love, which could be an Old Crow Medicine Show tune and has a chromatic climb that mimics the lyric. He confidently played the album’s groovy title track (‘dust to dust we’re all just pushin’ dirt’) at the top of the set, which is where it sits on the tracklist too on this 35-minute album of 12 pieces in an American style.

The delectable More Than Friends, the excellent collaboration with Lainey Wilson, has been a smash on Texas radio. It is one of many tracks which possess a great transition from one section to the next, proving that these are songs meant to breathe on the road. Wrong House is a brilliant idea with a berserk narrator. Lukas breezes in, having ingested some mushrooms, and smells something nice in the kitchen before realising with a ‘Wait a second, who is that??’ that he isn’t where he thinks he is.

Every Time I Drink (‘I think of her’) sets a sombre lyric to a breezy arrangement, while If I Didn’t Love You could also have a more mellow setting (like Just Outside of Austin) instead of one with a barrelhouse piano solo that makes the listener tap their toes. Overpass is full of wisdom and recalls the philosophical elements of A Few Stars Apart: ‘Better look quick cos it ain’t gonna last’ he sings of sighting a rainbow.

Harmonica blasts and dominant seventh chords bring in All Four Winds, which sounds like it was written in Hawaii (‘where the sea and the sky meet’). The twang finally gets a rest on the acoustic tune Lying, which plays on the dual meaning of the word (‘I’d be lying if I wish I wasn’t lying here with you’) and could have popped up in A Star Is Born as a duet between Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga.

Closing track The View is another acoustic tune where Lukas’s narrator is content to look at his beloved, even to the extent that he pays a doppelganger to go out on the road and sing his songs! He is deliberately close-miked so the warmth of his vocal can shine and end the album on a high that is consistent with the rest of it.

Icarus kicks off the second side of the album with a honky-tonk feel and advice for the narrator, a self-proclaimed bachelor, to ‘settle down, you’ve had your fun!’ The middle eight contains the brilliant line ‘milk your heifers teat by teat’, proving that Lukas has no interest whatsoever in courting country radio like his dad did before Willie realised it was more profitable to be king of the Red Dirt out in Austin. Lukas is a worthy heir to the throne, even if Willie shows no signs of stopping in his tenth decade on earth!

Randy Rogers and Wade Bowen – Hold My Beer vol. 3

Toy Story, The Godfather, The Hangover, and now the all-singing, all-dancing, all-Texan Hold My Beer project which unites two of the sharpest acts on the Red Dirt scene in a short third set.

The first volume of Hold My Beer emerged in 2015, right when I was getting into contemporary country music. The second in 2020 sounded far beyond most commercial or Corporate Country and was one of my favourite releases of the year. Randy Rogers has been a key supporter of Parker McCollum’s music while Wade Bowen has focussed on the Texan market since he abandoned his attempt to make it in Nashville; he had one hit on radio in 2011 and put out his last, terrific album in 2022 on Thirty Tigers, who also distribute Lukas Nelson’s music.

In an interview with Entertainment Focus, Randy said that it’s sometimes harder to write fun ‘goofy’ songs ‘without it being corny or cheesy’. One such tune is the perky I Moved Into A Bar, where the pair seem delighted that ‘she moved out’ and now they can hang with ‘Jack and Jim Beam’. ‘My glass ain’t half-empty cos it’s always full’ is a t-shirt slogan. Jon Pardi should cover it, and not just because Wade’s voice matches his own range and tone.

Shooting Hand is a little Western movie pastiche which opens the six-track set. Sheriff Wade has made the mistake of dancing with Randy’s lady and a shootout ensues. The imagery is as terrific as the arrangement, where pedal steel pops up. It reappears on the rocking, anthemic waltz It’s A Beautiful Day (‘for drinkin’!), a heartache song where ‘the ballgame is on and my baby is gone’. Aaron Raitiere co-wrote it; like a clutch pitcher, he always delivers.

The ruminative Things That Never Change mentions ‘new money’ in the first verse and a ‘big old high-rise’ in the chorus but ‘classic jukebox songs’ like Time Marches On and Sweet Caroline will play on forever. It sounds like a Tim McGraw song, as does Dumb Kids, which was written with legendary songwriter Allen Shamblin, the other guy who wrote The House That Built Me. Great country songs are full of imagery that conjure pictures in the mind: verse one is a tableau of a mum calling her kids in for dinner, while verse two lingers on fake IDs and trying to pick up chicks to kiss under the bleachers.

The pair draft in Rhett Akins to help write We Ain’t The Only Ones, a three-chord jam that celebrates the camaraderie of the Red Dirt scene. It’s a starter park for those unfamiliar with it and there are namechecks for Pat Green, Parker McCollum (‘making all the girls scream’), Willie (‘still playing shows like he was 19’), Ray Wylie Hubbard, Cody Johnson, ‘Flatland and Turnpike’ and the late lamented pair of Guy Clark and Jerry Jeff Walker.

Wade and Randy have plenty of folk who will hold their beer and like Lukas Nelson they once again uphold the Red Dirt family tradition.

It is so easy to forget the pandemic-induced pause to live music. In 2019 Jessica Lynn booked a UK tour for 2020; the New Yorker finally came across in summer 2023, bringing an energetic set to a venue I thought was going to be a sweatbox but which was so well air-conditioned that I had to put a jumper on.

Before Jessica’s set came a fine one-two punch to open the evening’s entertainment. Paris Adams seems to be challenging herself to write poppy songs with odd titles, like Psychopath and Stupid, and threw in a cover of My Church too. Backwoods Creek reprised their Buckle and Boots set with George holding a bass with illuminated fretboards and a sort of claw-shaped body. At the back, drummer Jack offered great cymbal work and at one stage showed off his prowess with an all-too-brief solo. They might be the best rhythm section in town.

Then come not one but two lead guitarists, Jonny and Yan, who either battle or double one another, sliding up and down the fretboard. No wonder singer Jamie gave Jonny a kiss at one stage! The band’s current line-up seems to be its final and finest form, like when a Pokemon evolves to its most advanced creature. The band’s newer songs like Lucy, Bless Your Soul and Alright are settling in nicely alongside old chestnuts like Morphine, while Walking In Memphis is a very well-chosen cover that shows off Jamie’s vocals. It has been terrific seeing the band take shape over many years and soon they ought to headline The Lexington in their own right.

‘We’re family!’ announced Jessica Lynn before introducing her mum on keys, her dad on a Hohner McCartney-type bass decorated with the pattern of the American flag, her husband on guitar and one of her ‘bridesmen’ on drums. The band had been due to play Tennessee Fields in 2021 but couldn’t fly over in the end due to someone in the band testing positive for Covid. George from Backwoods Creek was due to play bass that day and, two years on, was able to fulfil his commitment on the slow burner Better Than That, which was the highlight of a brilliant set.

That song and the positivity anthem Worth It were on last year’s album Lone Rider, while Jessica also aired sultry new song Mixed Signals and a poppy tune about having a ‘crazy idea’. I can’t remember the last time I saw such an energetic performer: Jessica punched the air, invited the audience to boogie with her and at one point sang a song called Something Good with the lyrics, ‘Clap your hands, sing with me!’

She also slipped in covers of Shania Twain’s Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under, which has one of the best key changes in country music, and a fabulously punchy Respect where the blue lights behind her went strobe crazy. She also delivered a soft take on Landslide, visibly emotional at finally being able to sing for her British fans. This was her seventh gig in the UK inside eight days, and the band are returning to the Continent to finish a tour which started in Germany at the end of May.

I am positive the gap between visits to our shores will be much shorter next time, and Jessica and family are a perfect antidote to media warfare and mortgage woes. Learn more about Jessica here.

We know country music needs to evolve. Part of its evolution has been to take in wider audiences than the traditional WASPs and hillbillies in the American South. With Jimmie Allen now persona non grata after effectively being #MeToo-ed out of town – although he of course is contesting the charges, as is his right – it falls to a guy who grew up on the Tex-Mex border to be Music City’s latest diversity hire. He’s even on Stoney Creek, the label which has just defenestrated Allen. It is part of Broken Bow Records which has made millions off Jason Aldean, the WASPiest of the WASPs.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh on Francisco Gomez aka Frank Ray and too cynical about the team launching his debut album into the market. It’s produced by Frank Rogers, who masterminded the career of Brad Paisley, and has been teased in live shows where Frank Ray has been opening for Old Dominion. He also has a charity which benefits the mental health of policemen, which reflects his former job in law enforcement.

Frank wrote all but two of the tracks, which include the big frothy smash Country’d Look Good On You, which came out back in 2021 and appeared on his 2022 EP Getcha Some. Five other tracks roll over from EP to album. Streetlights sounds like Dan + Shay with mariachi trumpets and a touch of Spanish thrown in. Y’all Showed Up begins with some ukulele and explodes for a fast-paced chorus which mentions Ferraris, while Somebody Else’s Whiskey is good fun, a kiss-off where Frank is delighted to have broken up with a girl who is drinking elsewhere.

Late is a ballad where Frank laments that his beloved’s poor timekeeping is ‘part of the deal’ but hey, ‘some things you just can’t rush’. Out On Me (‘let’s take your wound up and unwind it’) is a party jam with some funky chords that I am sure Thomas Rhett has already written but which never gets old.

The new tracks include the other outside write, Party With Strangers, which was co-written by the always great James T Slater. The fun opening riff grabs the listener immediately then Frank enumerates the magic of friendship and the ‘colourful cast’ that make up a set of potential drinking buddies. ‘Mi cas’ es su casa!’ sings Frank in a nod to his USP.

Frank Ray is genre agnostic, which may be a way for Broken Bow to target as wide an audience as possible in a way Aldean cannot do. Let It Drop (‘like the ball, Times Square, New York City’) gets an ‘uno, dos, tres’ count-in but otherwise it’s another funky TR-type pop tune about doing nothing. Wasting Your Words is a fine Latino pop song that slinks along prettily, while cautionary tale Prettiest Girl At The Bar namechecks George Strait and sounds a lot like his masterpiece The Chair in spite of its boyband harmonies and downtempo pop groove. Spring Break keeps that sound and includes some delightful falsetto and vocalising at odds with a lyric which tells of how Frank’s crush did ‘a number on me’.

We Got Em is a typical Southern pride song that lists rural stuff (whiskey, beer, cornhole, ‘sweetcorn on the grill’) with a nice chromatic descent at the end of each phrase and the addition of the exotic sounding ‘Reposado’ tequila. ‘Mi cas’ es su casa!’ sings Frank, again, in a nod to his USP. Back Before My Time is another concession to country fans, with George Jones getting a namecheck, a ‘blue collar/holler’ rhyme in the opening verse and a dirty riff anchoring the song.

Learn Something New is a set of life lessons, including laundry advice and praying to the Lord, which peak in the chorus which is full of loneliness and regret: ‘Not every angel flies, some just drive away’ is a good kicker. Big Fan is the album’s token big ballad which fits well beside Die A Happy Man, as Frank sings the praises of his beloved’s God-given grace in an informal way (‘Yeah you’re the Man!’).

This may sound like Corporate Country with an eye on markets outside the South, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Frank become the breakout hit of Country2Country next spring. If Thomas Rhett ever needs a break, Frank Ray will step into his monogenre shoes.

Rodney Crowell – The Chicago Sessions

Slowly but surely, Jeff Tweedy has become Mr Americana. When his first band Uncle Tupelo came along in the early 1990s, critics had to invent a genre for them: ‘alternative country’. Furthering his cred, in the last decade alone Jeff has worked as producer on albums by Mavis Staples, Richard Thompson and Norah Jones. He has also put out an excellent and candid memoir, a guide to songwriting called How To Write One Song and, of course, he has cranked out and toured albums with both Wilco and his own band Tweedy, which features his son Spencer on drums. I suppose that is what sobriety does.

Rodney Crowell is one of the patron saints of alt.country, having forsaken a life of radio hits to operate instead at the margins where he can do what he likes and keep his audience entertained. He follows his 2021 album Triage with a ten-song set recorded in Tweedy’s Loft in his home city of Chicago. I bet the pair of them had fun trying out the many, many guitars in the building.

Crowell wrote nine of the ten tunes, throwing in a cover of the lovelorn country waltz No Place To Fall, written by Townes Van Zandt. You’re Supposed To Be Feeling Good, addressed to a ‘soulmate’, was recorded by Crowell’s pal Emmylou Harris back in 1977, the year of Rumours, and there are sunkissed harmonies and melody lines which will never go out of style. He has replaced a line in the chorus about prophets with the topical ‘one big lie’.

Opening track Lucky, where Rodney ‘wouldn’t be standing here today’ without his beloved, starts with some barrelhouse piano and a tight band arrangement which introduces Rodney’s opening line: ‘Once upon a way back when, misery was my best friend’. There is a great middle eight, a long fadeout and a warm narrator. It sounds like The Band which, to remind you, is the gold standard of roots music because it’s hard to improve upon.

There is similar heart and soul to Loving You Is The Only Way To Fly, which floats on a bed of brushed drums and is beefed up by backing vocals from Tweedy and supporting harmonies from the song’s co-writer Sarah Buxton. Obviously, it sounds like Wilco, and Tweedy’s production matches the depth and quality of its frontman. Oh Miss Claudia is the sort of Chicago blues that could have been written in the genre’s heyday a century ago; it is anchored by a thick double bass at the bottom end and a dextrous Guy Clarkish guitar part.

It is deeply American music and Rodney’s very American vocal finds him, at 72, at the same point of his career as a Paul Simon or a Randy Newman. Like that pair, Crowell’s songwriting mastery allows him to give weight to each syllable, as on the bluesy Somebody Loves You (‘or so we’ve been told’) which rhymes ‘knee’s on your neck/neglect’, and Ever The Dark, where he spits out the word ‘kaput’ in the second verse of his lament.

Tweedy and Crowell wrote and share vocals on Everything At Once, which simultaneously reminds me of the Lennon/McCartney duet Two of Us and the George Harrison composition Here Comes The Sun thanks to its toe-tapping beat and major-key setting. Making Lovers Out of Friends has the understated feel of a Willie Nelson tune from the mid-seventies, with the hortatory heartache in the line ‘If you want to keep me close, then don’t be mine’. It was written with Ashley McBryde, whose Lindeville project of last year pitched her as an act on the borders of Music City A-Lister and Arkansas-raised outsider, showing that she knows that her lineage is more Crowell than Reba.

The album closes with Ready To Move On, which begins with a Paul Simon-type spoken delivery that namechecks the novel Don Quixote, which both Ashley and Rodney could not get onto country radio. This is SiriusXM Country, not meant for wide consumption but to be appreciated like an aged whiskey, less IKEA and more bespoke furniture.

Tommy Prine – This Far South

As with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, so to John Prine whose son Tommy has gone into the family business and is due in the UK for The Long Road to promote his debut album This Far South. The two producers on his debut album are Ruston Kelly and Gena Johnson, an RCA Studio A cat who worked on albums by Caitlyn Smith, Brett Eldredge and the recent releases by both Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell.

The opening track Elohim, whose title denotes a Hebrew name for the Lord, sets the scene and puts what is known as clear blue water between father and son. Tommy offers not gentle folk but thrusting rock’n’roll sung with the throatiness of Ruston Kelly and the verbosity of Jason Isbell.

Crashing Again has the feel of Zach Bryan’s loping melodic rock, with a slide-assisted guitar line bookending the start and end of the song. Cash Carter Hill, which gave its title to an EP which previewed four of the album’s 11 tracks. opens with a minute of Tommy playing solo like a troubadour before the band join him in what will be a highlight of his live set. It is one of many songs in 6/8 or 12/8 time which gives a swaying, swinging feel to the songs.

Two more of the EP’s tracks show the duality of Tommy’s sound. There’s the rollicking bang of Mirror and a Kitchen Sink that starts the second half of the album, while the slow-burning ballad Reach The Sun sounds like lighters in the air: ‘Please pick up, I need someone,’ begs Tommy’s narrator. As is common across the album, Tommy’s voice is strengthened by double-tracking, which serves to improve the album’s anthemic quality.

The title track was the album’s impact track, what used to be called ‘single’. Tommy finger-picks a melody line and has a narrator talking to an angel, with a voice that reminds me of one of my favourite roots-rock groups, Bear’s Den. The songs do too: By The Way (‘people say I look just like you’) and Some Things are aurally pleasant tunes with fine, warm choruses that arrive in the right places.

Boyhood adds some pedal steel to vignettes full of climbing trees and paternal advice which are meat to John Prine fans (he also sings ‘I wish I could talk to my daddy today’ on Some Things). Family likewise inspires Letter to My Brother (‘I think we could save the world’), where Tommy whisper-sings all but the final verse to match his fatigue.

Fittingly the closing track is called I Love You Always, another track with the feel of a waltz which double-tracks Tommy’s vocals. It is enlivened by a string section and is an eloquent way to end a great debut project.

When I received an email from John Finch in early May, I didn’t realise that by July 4 I’d be starting a project that would take me up to the end of the year.

Inspired by his zeal and enthusiasm for British country, the stand-up bassist and stand-up fella convinced me to join him on his journey, as if I were one of the 12 apostles coming to Jesus. John had heard some of my UK Country Top 40 radio shows which put together a subjective and objective countdown of acts who were either making big waves or threatening to do so. I interviewed several of the acts too.

For 2023, as part of my efforts in service of The British Country Music Festival, I had had an idea to put together a compilation of sorts which would be dedicated to UK country, in the spirit of the NOW Music series, which incidentally puts out its 115^th set at the end of July. Once again, there is no British country on it, nor is there Morgan Wallen’s Last Night.

Acolytes to the UK country movement support the scene any way they can: buying merchandise, attending shows and, in John’s case, starting a Youtube channel called The Bridge Country. The first Honky Tonk Cabin appeared in February 2022: John linked music video clips with his own presentation, a style I have aped for my show.

He brought up the centenary in July 2023, completing 100 shows which have grouped acts who were playing festivals like SpeedFest, Country on the Clyde, Buckle and Boots and Country on the Coast and Buckle & Boots. It has also shone a spotlight on individual artists like Emilia Quinn, Jack & Tim and Vicki Manser. I hope to do the same with the UK Country Top 10.

Over 15 episodes which will go live at 10am fortnightly on Tuesdays I will present shows complete with 10 songs on a theme. The first four shows will form a Starter Pack for new fans, bringing them up to speed with the ten biggest artists, albums, vocalists and musicians in the genre. In the autumn I will focus on the songs themselves, spotlighting opening lines, love songs and songs to make love to, those to accompany drinking, heartbreak and being on the open road. Plus what I call self-empowerment songs which stir the listener to action, like all the best pop music.

By the end of 2023 I hope to have taken in the modern gamut of UK country in all its forms, celebrating the work of these passionate artists and serving them up in a way that attracts new ears and reminds older ones why they love those acts in the first place.

Subscribe to The Bridge Country Youtube channel so you never miss an episode, the first of which is live right now here.

We know exactly where we are from the first few bars of Brennen Leigh’s eighth album. A pure fiddle line introduces Running Out of Hope, Arkansas, where our narrator complains that she is ‘damn near 33!!’ There are solos from both a mandolin, played by Marty Stuart, and a retro-sounding lapsteel.

This could be Loretta, Dolly or Rosanne Cash, a sound that has more or less disappeared from country radio since 2001 despite Nashville’s attempts to push Carly Pearce as the heiress to the sound. Don’t forget that she was ready to leave Music City and that she made two albums of pop-country before Dear Miss Loretta and a high-profile made her marketable.

Brennen Leigh doesn’t need magazine spreads or big promotion pushes. The music is more than enough to pique a listener’s interest. Chris Scruggs, bassist in Marty Stuart’s band The Fabulous Superlatives and one of the unsung heroes of country music today, produces the set and lets each instrument breathe and sometimes cry.

Brennen put out a covers album in 2015 dedicated to songs by Lefty Frizzell. Guy Clark also gave her his seal of approval. ‘I’m in love with this idea of the real Nashville, the idyllic golden age’, she has said, referring to the late 1960s. Her website allows you to buy a t-shirt, beer koozie or cap with the logo Bro Country Ain’t No Country, so you know where her allegiance lies. Here’s a t-shirt or ballcap slogan: Brennen Leigh is Pure Country.

I’m kicking myself for missing her when she passed through the UK over the weekend of Black Deer festival the week of the album’s release. Her European tour finished up in Norway, and later in the year she’ll head to Australia with Asleep At The Wheel to promote their 2022 joint-release Obsessed With The West.

There are uncredited vocal contributions on the album from Rodney Crowell, another Guy Clark apostle, which shows that game recognised game, as the kids say. You can hear Rodney on the shuffle When Lonely Came To Town, which personifies the concept of loneliness who ‘moved from room to room’. Brennen wrote the song with the Hall of Fame songwriter Thom Schuyler, whose song 16^th Avenue was the one I thought of when Brennen mentioned country’s golden age even though it was written in 1982. (Fun fact: Schuyler was head of RCA Nashville when they signed Kenny Chesney and Lonestar, so he has golden ears too.)

Some of these tracks have fine, retro titles and a sound which updates old-time honky-tonk for a modern ear, such as Somebody’s Drinking About You and Mississippi Rendezvous. On the latter she soars on to the top note for the line ‘a dream that can’t come true’ which falls onto a lush diminished chord. I’m Still Looking For You, written with another Guy Clark acolyte Noel McKay, recasts the old ‘woman done wrong’ trope as Brennen’s narrator pines for her ex (whose mark on her is ‘a faded tattoo’) even though she is in a happy relationship.

The arrangements are just magnificent throughout. The Red Flags You Were Waving (‘with bitter tears I’m blinded’) has a dobro, fiddle and piano floating on top of an acoustic toe-tapper of a beat. The title track has all the ingredients of a classic country song, with some Floyd Cramerish barroom piano and band harmonies that emphasise the title when it comes around. Both The Bar Should Say Thanks (‘for all the good times I’ve brought with me’) and Every Time I Do have superlative middle eights. The former has both a key change and the apt line ‘barroom philosophy’.

I love the imagery on closing track You Turned Into A Dragon, where the fiddle returns to underscore the narrator’s lament. Oddly she brings back the earlier image of the ‘faded tattoo’. There’s a sweet shuffle on the road song dedicated to the ‘diesel-burnin’ road-hoggin’ Carole With An E, ‘a highway queen…doing her thing in the left-hand lane’ who used to live next door to Brennen. Even if she is a figment of her songwriting imagination, I believe her.

This is absolute top-shelf country music and one of the albums of the year. Pour yourself a drink, sit on the patio and let its premium quality wash over you. Then tell someone about it.