A Country Way of Life

Some fans went into Country2Country 2023 with a lack of trust in the booking agents. In the tedious modern fashion in which people display their ignorance like a badge of pride, they boasted that they had a new favourite band: Old Crow Medicine Show, with emphasis on the ‘show’. Three years after their original booking, the group threw in songs by Kiss, Alabama and Jerry Lee Lewis.

They closed their set with Will The Circle Be Unbroken, which has been sung every Saturday night for a century (including during a global pandemic) at the Grand Ole Opry. The institution chose them as their 201^st members back in 2013, following their immediate predecessors The Oak Ridge Boys, Rascal Flatts, Keith Urban and Darius Rucker.

I first heard of the band I’ll refer to as OCMS back in the mid-2000s when Mark Radcliffe played their three-chord jam Tell It To Me on his late-night Radio 2 show. They are back in the UK with three shows at the end of October, including one at the very unbluegrassy location of Hammersmith Apollo, which is about as bad as The O2, for their world-class party music. Needs must, although they are booked into the Ryman in Nashville on New Year’s Eve for their version of Jools Holland’s Hootenanny (hootenanny).

Have they changed direction on Jubilee, their eighth album and the follow-up to last year’s Paint This Town? (It’s actually ten, but two are conveniently unmentioned.) Have they gone into smooth jazz or power-pop? Not a chance. With the great Matt Ross-Spang back on production, it’s the same old-time music, but this time they have drafted in Sierra Ferrell on two tracks and (a real coup) Mavis Staples, who appears on One Drop, the gospel singalong that brings the album to a triumphant close.

Mavis was famously admired by Bob Dylan, whose album Blonde on Blonde was recreated by OCMS a few years ago and whose ‘rock me, mama’ fragment Ketch turned into a picaresque journey to Roanoke called Wagon Wheel. Mavis also sang The Weight during the Last Waltz concert film which brought the curtain down on The Band, so this is a nice full-circle moment for all concerned. With all but one member of the group now deceased – discounting Dylan, who at the age of 82(!) is preparing for dates next year – Ketch carries on the music of what Greil Marcus calls ‘the old, weird America’.

Two songs on the album remind the listener of The Weight: the band hang on the word ‘call’ for four beats in the chorus of Smoky Mountain Girl, while the song’s famous descending instrumental melody appears after the first chorus of the gentle hobo song Nameless, Tennessee (‘only God knows where I’m going’).

The opening track is a hymn to the power of music: we should all follow in the example of troubadour Jubilee Jones, although not by coming to such a sticky end as he does. Ketch’s somewhat reedy voice struggles to get to the high notes, but it remains true that ‘if you got the dream, set it free’. The cover of the album by Noah Saterstrom reflects this line in art, and I’d love a print to stick on my office wall.

The album’s impact track was the lovesick lament Miles Away, which has a fabulously rich chorus and impressive middle instrumental section. It also amps up to the final chorus with a neat crescendo, and it’s bold of the band to place it second on the tracklist, in case people think they’re in for another round of rootin’ and tootin’. Ketch wrote the song with his friend Molly Tuttle, whose albums he produces and with whom he is hosting this year’s IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards show. It would sound great coming from Backwoods Creek; in fact, Ketch’s voice is right in singer Jamie Wood’s wheelhouse.

There is, though, plenty of bluegrass, as befits a band who have had six of their albums top that genre’s charts in the States. I Want It Now is not a version of Veruca Salt’s tantrum in the Wonka factory but a two-minute party song calling for partying, hillbilly music and something to drink. ‘Bring along your sister!’ is a t-shirt slogan in the making and this will go down well at the Ryman Hootenanny (hootenanny).

Keel Over and Die (‘let me fall in love and holler from the grave!’) has fiddle and harmonica jousting after the second chorus, while minor-key banjo runs introduce Allegheny Lullabye, where Ketch’s hillbilly refuses ‘to be a slave to the iron and steel…it’s factory, gas station or join’. Wolfman of the Ozarks, which namechecks the mountain range which birthed bluegrass music, begins with a howl and has the irresistible chorus ‘sooey baby!!’ When they bring in a jaw’s harp, the instrument that goes BOOOOING!, the seduction is complete.

Did you know some states still haven’t banned cockfighting, which was the association football of its day? Belle Meade Cockfight is a rollickin’ good time which makes me wonder why OCMS haven’t set the sport to music until now. Sierra Ferrell gives as good as Ketch as they recount their meet-cute, which will I think be the most memorable highlight of the hootenanny (hootenanny) and Hammersmith Apollo show. Amazingly, Sierra is due to play Petco Park, San Diego’s baseball stadium, in December, which is another weird place for old-time music.

Shit Kicked In, the other Ferrell feature, could have been written and recorded any time in the last 100 years thanks to its New Orleans jazz feel, prominent banjo, kazoo(!) and mention of ‘voodoo hoodoo’ in the chorus. The band have studied the greats and are continuing the traditions of American music, that great gumbo which has so far given the world hiphop, jazz and the mountain-dwelling folk troubadour.

Daughter of the Highlands reminds the listener that some music pre-dates American country music, which was twisted into new shapes having been brought over from Scotland and Ireland, as this interesting piece by a promising writer makes clear. Recent OCMS recruit Mason Via, who co-wrote seven of Jubilee’s tracks, croons the story in a high tenor as the protagonist searches for his daughter, with the arrangement creating the musical equivalent of Scotch mist. Fans of Nickel Creek, who themselves are in the UK this very week, will enjoy this song, which could have been written any time in the last 500 years.

Once again, OCMS have delivered a superlative collection of songs. I’m closer to 40 than I am to 30, so maybe I’m the right age to be an acolyte for OCMS’s new take on old-time music. Really, this music is for anyone, from four to 94. If Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen have helped put country music back at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, neophyte country fans should consider OCMS as their introduction to the best of what the genre has to offer.

I am sure they’ve choreographed it on purpose. Both Zach Bryan and Turnpike Troubadours released albums on the same day, August 25, the better to show the world that the real epicentre of country music is not Nashville but Oklahoma.

Six years ago, when Turnpike released their last album A Long Way From Your Heart, Zach Bryan was uploading songs on to Youtube and gaining attention with his song Headin’ South. You can follow the soap opera of what Turnpike and their leader Evan Felker have gotten up to since 2017 by pumping ‘Turnpike’ into Saving Country Music. That website is dedicated to promoting the best of the Red Dirt scene which operates independently from what comes out of Music Row. In brief, there were substance abuses, cancelled or awry shows and an indefinite hiatus announced in 2019 which was reversed in 2021.

Turnpike, a self-proclaimed ‘bar band from Oklahoma’, previewed their sixth album A Cat In The Rain across three dates at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. They also made an appearance on the biggest country music morning show hosted by Bobby Bones, whose wife is from Turnpike’s home city of Tahlequah, Oklahoma. This is Ozark country, deep in Cherokee County.

The music Turnpike and Zach make is, or seems to be, true and real and unprocessed. As with Tyler Childers and Sturgill Simpson, this is anti-commercial music which is thus marketable in opposition to, say, Luke Bryan or Chris Young. It’s all a bit Bill Hicks, whose skit about marketing also takes in ‘the anti-marketing’ angle. Indeed, perhaps Zach Bryan is the country version of Bill Hicks, or a symbolic figure like Che Guevara: what he represents is often more important that the content of his message.

Something In The Orange was America’s top rock song as well as country song, charting at number 10 on the Hot 100. The album American Heartbreak helped Zach dominate the rock charts – go look at the stats – and the ACMs gave him New Male Artist of the Year so they could share his cool quotient. The week of the album launch he played what used to be known as the Staple Center in LA, which can seat up to 20,000 for a concert.

Unlike Zach, Turnpike have never had a hit single, though their last two albums both reached the Top 20 on the Billboard 200 which ranks album sales. This may be because Turnpike put out their music on their own Bossier City Records imprint. They encompass country, folk and rock, according to the strict genre stratification that pre-dates free-for-all streaming.

Rather than harp on about genres in a world that doesn’t pay attention unless you crunch data for a living, I should examine what makes these albums Red Dirt music. What’s the message, and what medicine are Turnpike and Zach Bryan selling?

Just as Bruce Springsteen spent the early years of his career working the bars of New Jersey and has now spent four decades bringing the bar-band spirit to stadiums with his tales of workin’ men, so Turnpike and Zach can do the same. Turnpike’s band arrangements put them at the front of the movement they spearheaded in the 2010s; there are sharp mid-song solos from guitar, pedal steel and fiddle. The mountain music of North Carolina’s Avett Brothers is another touchstone, with Evan’s clear and declarative vocals emerging from the back of his throat, much like Zach’s or Parker McCollum’s.

Mean Old Sun sounds earthy and organic, especially with wordless harmonies backing Evan up in the verses. The chorus of ‘the dawn is yet to dry the dew from off my Sunday clothes’ shows a poetic touch with its alliteration and imagery. Evan’s recent setbacks are reflected in The Rut (‘the temporary shelter was a welcome compromise’), and the title track has the line ‘if pressure makes a diamond, babe I still might come out clean’, which reminds us that Oklahoma had coal mines and industry. 

The road song Three More Days (‘break it down, take it to the next town’) was written by John Fullbright, a former Turnpike member who has gained a reputation as a songwriter’s songwriter. Brought Me briefly mentions a ‘thousand-person choir’, which is smart given that Turnpike drew that audience of 2000 at the Ryman. The voices in the crowd will yell along to Chipping Mill, another song with a magnificent passage of pedal steel and a driving beat over which Evan sings of doing ‘real dumb things’. The line ‘We were howling at a ghost without a name’ is the type of line that begs to be bellowed, like ‘So Sally can wait’ or ‘Turning through sick lullabies’.

Lucille is a waltz where Evan’s troubadour literally has an old flame (a ‘bonfire’) burning as a memory, and whose chorus culminates in the mysterious line ‘I wonder who’s keeping the baby tonight’. There is a magical moment in the bridge where the band offer strong harmonies that poke through the arrangement. East Side Love Song (Bottoms Up) begins ‘You’re such a sight in the dashboard light’ and continues in that vein, with some pretty banjo high up in the mix.

Closing track Won’t You Give Me One More Chance opens with a verse of harmonica, perhaps intentionally reminding listeners of Bob Dylan, and has the narrator begging to be forgiven. ‘I don’t believe we’re through/ Come and lie with me like the way you used to do/ You’re the only thing I’ve got to hold on to’ is direct, sincere and puts the man well behind his partner in terms of agency. Again, the pedal steel backs up his melancholy, and the band sing an antiphonal chorus which will involve their audience too.

How odd to see a cigarette on an album cover in this decade. Zach Bryan, who holds one in his mouth on the cover of his self-produced self-titled album, has to make concessions to his hit-making status, or perhaps gladly accepts the help from other acts. The piano-led Hey Driver (‘you can drop me off anywhere’) will gain The War & Treaty’s country gospel new fans, and it is helpful that Zach calls out Michael by name. Sierra Ferrell duets with Zach on the love song Holy Roller (‘I found God in your eyes’), singing every word with him in harmony, and Kacey Musgraves co-writes and helps Zach sing I Remember Everything, a break-up song where both parties have their say.

The Lumineers appear on Spotless, where the hypercritical Zach calls himself ‘a self-destructive landslide’. The song is one of many where the familiar I-V-vi-IV chord progression shows up, as Zach keeps the arrangements clear and simple. Overtime begins with the opening melody from The Star Spangled Banner, then four cymbal crashes introduce a rebel-rouser with a strong trumpet for accompaniment. Strangely Zach pulls back for the chorus, perhaps allowing the imagined audience to shout along a cappella.

East Side of Sorrow has a major-key singalong chorus, the best on the album, which initially comes from the mouth of God, who advises Zach to push aside his sadness, ‘let it be then let it go’. It’s a serenity prayer sung with gusto. Summertime’s Close is a quieter campfire singalong with a harmonica underscoring the melancholy of the lyrics and acoustic guitar: ‘I lost faith in the world a long time ago…the Lord don’t ever come back here now’ sings Zach’s narrator.

Ticking takes the theme of Three More Days by Turnpike (‘time ticking on the interstate…I hate that I ain’t close to you’) and Zach remembers being called ‘the reckless, restless, hopeful one’. The pair of Jake’s Piano/Long Island, bang in the middle of this 55-minute set, comprise an old-fashioned country lament where Zach comes round and round to the fact that his ex is absent (‘you’re still gone’). His voice cracks in places and the piano notes are sustained for added pathos. Drums come in for the Long Island section where Zach admits to numbing his pain with alcohol (‘my mind ain’t well).

Fear and Friday’s (sic) appears as a poem and a song, with a swipe at the ‘music machine’ on the former and with harmonica, a loose guitar solo and a 4/4 kick-drum beat on the latter. Zach fair bellows the punchline ‘you only love me like you mean it when it’s after dark’. El Dorado (pronounced ‘dough-ray-dough’) also shows his knack for a chorus, which is at odds with the lyrical telling of a break-up.

There is terrific blood-related imagery on Tourniquet and rapid-fire storytelling on both Tradesman (which has another swipe at the ‘rich boys’) and Smaller Acts. The latter has been recorded on location beside a bullfrog, which is more interesting than the song itself.

Local pride comes out, as it often does in Zach’s music, on the closing track Oklahoman Son. ‘You can’t hide where you’re from’ might be a bumper sticker or t-shirt slogan, and Zach chooses to let the morose lyrics and melody stand out unvarnished by anything but the chords of an acoustic guitar. Turnpike don’t do this on their album, but the introspective ballad suits Zach’s untrained voice which is now familiar to millions.

Red Dirt Music is full of passion, emotion and full-throated singing. It doesn’t need to be political, although the number one song in America certainly is. Writers use their inner turmoil and romantic relationships for material, and choose instrumentation to match their imagistic lyrics, be it piano, fiddle or acoustic guitar. It is participatory music that involves the audience and might well tell them something about themselves.

That’s why these two albums will be given such a push, especially by those who want to ‘save’ country music. This is traditional music which sounds like real, rural America, and the ‘music machine’ will always seek to give people what they want. If they want Turnpike and Zach Bryan, why not stick them in arenas and auditoriums to give as many people as possible the chance to sing along?

Tim McGraw has a new album out called Standing Room Only. Using the tracklist, I’ll show you how to create an album for a Legacy Artist, an act who had money flung at them when they were younger than the age of 40 and who is now playing the hits for eternity while leaving gaps for ‘one from the new album’.

Most listeners and concert attendees – perhaps even at Country2Country 2024 where a lot of sleuths have concluded he will appear – are over the age of 40, given that McGraw started gaining fans in 1994. Darius Rucker and Brad Paisley have recently put out songs that remind listeners of their mortality and McGraw follows suit with the title track. He’s thinking of a crowded church for his funeral and the ‘headlights in my procession’ rather than the accumulated possessions and grudges. I imagine he still wants to go rocky mountain climbing too, and this new song can sit beside an older, more famous concert staple.

Remember Me Well has a gentle beat and rapid-fire lyrics with which McGraw asks his lady either to forget him or cherish the memories of the ‘beach motel’ the pair spent time in. The ‘middle four’ incorporates four bars of guitar over which McGraw sings ‘somewhere down the road’; happily, there is an extended wigout like on Highway Don’t Care. The guitars chug away on Hold On To It, which begins with the line ‘regret can be hard to forget’ and continues with a series of homilies from a man in his mid-fifties who has lived a lot of life.

‘Turn up every love song!’ is one of them, sage advice on a Legacy Artist’s album since we’re due to get one or two here. Ah, here’s one. The song Her is a power ballad which puts his beloved on a pedestal (‘if there’s a bright side then she’ll find it’), just like Brad Paisley did on My Miracle. Cowboy Junkie brings in some fiddle and sounds like a lazy afternoon on a front porch, and is a song about a guy in a Stetson who is loved for all his perfect imperfections. These two songs will enable McGraw’s live audience to squeeze the hands of their own partners in spite of their own flaws and foibles.

When in doubt, a Legacy Artist should draft in Lori McKenna. Nashville CA/LA Tennessee (what a mouthful) is yet another song that contrasts the city and the country, instead imagining a hybrid utopia fit for a ‘cowboy heart’ who will travel anywhere to be with his beloved. The album ends with Letter From Heaven, a very pretty song which you can tell from the opening phrase is a Lori McKenna composition. ‘Try hot sauce on your PB&J’ is a quirky line that sums up the missive from the narrator’s late mama, who reminds McGraw that ‘life is short’ and maybe he should make up with his dad. Legacy Artists can step into moralistic, almost Contemporary Christian music, as Blake Shelton did with Savior’s Shadow, and if mama lends a hand, so much the better.

Lest we forget, it was McGraw who first recorded Whiskey and You, which Chris Stapleton reclaimed on his own album. On Hey Whiskey, McGraw addresses the spirit which ‘hid the lie and made me tell the truth’. For a man who famously swore off alcohol and replaced it with intensive workout routines, this is very on brand. The arrangement is painfully Adult Contemporary, with a woozy sonic bed with plenty of pedal steel. Whiskey appears in the opening couplet of Fool Me Again, as does Keith Whitley, an act who had hits in the late 1980s when Tim was a teenager. He provides a song for Tim to sing as his heart breaks to the sound of yet more pedal steel, an ideal instrument to be found on a Legacy Artist’s album.

There’s more alcohol on Paper Umbrellas (‘won’t stop the rain’), a meet-cute that opens in a tiki-bar. Tim can’t be leaping about like guys half his age, so he’s sat down on a barstool advising his new friend to drink away the pain with ‘something that’ll work in half the time’. Again there’s a well-spun homily: ‘When love don’t shine like you thought it would, ain’t nothing quite like good tequila straight’. There are some gorgeous diminished chords and (yep) more pedal steel to match the sadness of the lyric, which is wistful and perfect for a Legacy Artist’s album.

Beautiful Hurricane sounds like it was left off a McGraw album from 1996, thanks to its gentle opening passage. Our narrator is coming back from Baton Rouge but heads to ‘a bar on a beach’ where he meets another lady, or a metaphorical lady in the form of a hurricane. ‘“You must be lost”…I guess I was,’ sighs McGraw, who turns this fleeting episode into a lesson in how to capture good moments. It seems he is looking back decades, a Legacy Artist in his mid-fifties recalling a younger man’s lost weekend.

The tempo is raised slightly on Small Town King, a Good Ol’ Boy song that ticks off the same rural references as other songs of its type, such as McGraw’s Good Taste In Women: mama, John Deere, dirt, ‘the heart of a fighter’, Chevy, guitars, scripture, back roads, the Lord. It’s a country song about country people and perfect filler for a Legacy Artist’s album.

There also needs to be a song about songs, like This Is Country Music or Nashville Without You or Land of a Million Songs. Some Songs Change Your World underlines the fact that ‘you won’t find the magic in the melody or the words’ but in the way a song on the radio accompanies the moments that bring people together for the first time. It’s a smart idea and very meta, as McGraw himself has spent 30 years creating such songs. The final two minutes of the song is instrumental, since a Legacy Artist needs to duck out and allow the expensive string section and boisterous rock guitar to do the job his voice cannot do.

So there you have it: homilies, country love songs, thinkers to go with drink, rural checklists, the words of mama and a whole lot of pedal steel. Find your own Legacy Artist and make your own album!

Jill Andrews – Modern Age

In a move that suits this very modern age, Jill Andrews has more or less released her latest album before it has come out. I remember seeing a poster for the final Radiohead album which read something like ‘The number one album: out Friday’. This makes a nonsense of the recorded music business, since Radiohead put out A Moon Shaped Pool digitally before it came out on CD. So why buy the CD?

British fans might want a souvenir of Jill’s music after she comes over here to play The Long Road and a series of dates, but they have already been able to try most of her new album. I am sure plenty of listeners have compared Jill’s gentle, high voice to that of Sarah McLachlan.

Six tracks have been dripfed since March, when the impressive Dark Days was the first to be rolled out. Connection begins with the line ‘What is love in the modern age?’ and has an arrangement which recalls a song called Change The Sheets by Kathleen Edwards. High Fives is similarly blood-pumping, while Better Life (‘they could never save you…were they worth the sacrifice?’) is far more wistful and sees Jill’s voice hit the high notes of her register.

Opening track 80’s Baby is a gentle reminiscin’ song where Blockbuster gets a namecheck. Wrong Place, Wrong Time has a cello accompaniment, massed harmonies and some gorgeous chords underscoring a melancholy lyric.

The four tracks saved for release week are: Kids, another softer song about growing up that has a poppy chorus (‘you gotta give it time’) driven by a drum loop; Patience, a supremely melodic song whose confident narrator is ‘ready’ for what the world will throw at her; the groovy Sensitive with an uplifting near-wordless chorus that will go down well at The Long Road; and closing track Boundless Love, where Jill surrounds warm lyrics with double-stopped strings and a lambent piano line.

This is Adult Contemporary Country music which listeners should not ignore.

Mikhail Laxton – self-titled

Mikhail Laxton was born in Australia, where he appeared on The Voice and made Delta Goodrem turn her chair. He’s now based in Canada, although his music sounds like the type they love in Western Europe too: his album reminds me of any number of acts whose lyrical and musical content are influenced by the blues, rock’n’roll and soul. Let’s name this genre Kravitz, since old Leonard couldn’t fit in a box or genre 30 years ago, so why should Mikhail?

Mikhail is from Mossman and there’s a groovy track of that name that paints a fine picture of the ‘paradise’ where he grew up, with a coda full of loud, happy whistles. It taps into his decision to go back in his music to who he was, always good advice for a creative artist. What Can I Say lingers on the death of his mama, ‘the woman who’s given me everything’, while Dying To Let You Go chronicles Mikhail’s dad’s addiction over pedal steel and a triple-time beat. It’s a big gospel number in the tradition of Hold Back The River, a song he sang on The Voice Australia in the battle round.

Fans of troubadours like James Bay and Foy Vance will like Mikhail’s music, which is sweetly sung in a high tenor. Leaving You With Less (good title) is a driving song with a wild electric guitar part, a confident vocal and a narrator ‘still shaking’ as he heads towards the horizon. The quality is high throughout the record. There’s a funky sex jam (is there any other kind?) called Slow Motion and he finds himself ‘drowning in your love’ on Streams.

There is also a pair of break-up songs: Maybe It’s A Good Thing (‘that you let me down’) and End of the Road, where the guitar reverberate to match Mikhail’s held notes. Something That Was Gone is a lament which sees the narrator try to move on with his life, and It’s Your Time is a joyous carpe diem song (‘yesterday’s behind you’) that reminds me of Fanny Lumsden’s new album.

Four-String Cowboy and closing track You Come To Me have pedal steel accompaniment which would make Mikhail perfect to hear in the mix on a Country Kravitz playlist full of acts who plough their own furrow and don’t want to be stuck in a box.

Incidentally, have you noticed how these days it’s easier to tick a box when you don’t put yourself in a box?

Rob Jones & The Restless Dream – Trees EP

Production on this four-track set comes from Mark Lewis, a member of Lauren Housley’s band of Northern Cowboys. CJ Hillman is roped in to provide his trademark pedal steel which is as much a part of UK music as Paul Franklin’s presence is on tunes from Music Row. Again, you must listen to Paul’s album interpreting Ray Price’s catalogue with the help of Vince Gill.

Much of this EP sits in the same groove as Phil Vassar’s work, not just because there are pianos prominent on the intros of Cut So Deep and Ballerina. The former also has strings and Rob singing of the nature of love, ‘drowning in a breathless sleep…searching for my shadow’. It’s gorgeous and very hummable. The latter, which is outstanding, adds some funky guitar and the word ‘concertina’, which is a word Vassar would crowbar into one of his songs; like Rob’s, they have a great grasp of melody and prosody.

Paul Heaton is another antecedent, though Rob is far less prolix than the great British writer. Caroline is full of imagery – fountains, lagoons and ‘turpentine’ – that is a cross between Fleet Foxes and Eagles, another very obvious influence on any country-rock act. Heart of the Storm sees Rob wave goodbye to a former flame, with some massed harmonies on the chorus that undercut a gentle melody.

I am positive I won’t be the first to compare his voice to Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes but there’s plenty of grit in his voice that makes this a really strong set of songs.

Reid Haughton – self-titled EP

UK acts are no longer preferred to open for big American acts visiting our shores, which means that acts like Reid Haughton can be ‘soft-launched’ as amuses-bouches before the main course.

In Reid’s case, he has already warmed up Jon Pardi’s crowds and will do the same for those of Randall King in the UK and Germany in September. Reid has support from Luke Combs, who signed him to a deal at his RiverHouse label (fun fact: Billy Strings is on it too). His seven-track EP came out back in May and is a Sadler Vaden production; having also worked with Morgan Wade, Jason Isbell’s guitar player is becoming a go-to guy for rockin’ country acts, although the connection is easier with Reid as like Isbell he’s from Alabama too.

The power ballad She Is (‘everything I ain’t) appears on the EP in a full-band and acoustic version, with the latter gaining more streams from fans. The other two impact tracks are Day You Don’t, a funky come-on that reminds me of Wilder Woods, and Can’t Please ‘Em All, where Reid advises the listener to ‘keep truckin…till you find the grass that’s greener on the other side’. It reminds me of Charlie Worsham’s work, and not just because of the swampy groove and clean, clear vocal style.

Reid’s support set might feature any or all of the EP’s four other tunes. Say Less is a description of a lady who seems to have listened to Jung Kook from BTS’s new song about making love every day of the week, or indeed any rock song from between 1968 and 1985. Born To Do is almost soft-rock in its setting of another meet-cute, as Reid meets a firecracker of a girl who will ‘leave your heart black and blue’. These rock’n’roll tropes have come into country music via Isbell, whose album Southeastern (Produced by Dave Cobb) is getting the tenth anniversary treatment at the end of September.

Cuttin’ Me Loose (with no G!) starts with a riff and has the same sort of narrator who appeared on Combs’ When It Rains It Pours, shrugging and moving on without his ex. The chorus is itchy (‘she’s been telling eeeverybody’ is magnificent) and the vocals are decorated with echo from one of those old-style studio mics. Should’ve Thought About That, an outside write from Combs collaborator Jonathan Singleton among others, is a new spin on Sunday Morning Coming Down: from the opening image of Reid listening to ‘an over-you record playing’, to a chorus that catalogues the drinks he has consumed, or needs to consume, to get over a one-night stand and/or that ex.

As happened when Coldplay were holding up EMI in the late 2000s, the big money from Combs’ success can help nine other acts gain fans through trips abroad. I hope Reid is allowed to return to the UK after his visit next month, as there is much to admire on his EP.

Nathan Mongol Wells – From A Dark Corner

I missed the two albums by Dallas quartet Ottoman Turks, which came out in 2019 and 2021. The latter set included a song called Cigarettes & Alcohol which is not a cover of the Oasis anthem but a fun toe-tapper that would sound great in a honkytonk. The band’s lead singer Nathan Mongol Wells goes it alone on his debut album. Coincidentally his bandmate Joshua Ray Walker put out his covers collection a few weeks beforehand.

Beulah Land was one of the impact tracks to announce Nathan’s album. There’s some fairground organ, lazy piano lines and vocals that 9 out of 10 listeners would compare to Tom Waits. Ditto Rather Go To Hell (‘than go to work’), the type of two-fingered salute that seems to be threatened by Artificial Intelligence. How can one complain to The Man when the jobs are done by machines?

Juarez is where Nathan is off to buy new boots and find some cool women to hang out with ‘if it’s the last thing I do’, with his vocals accompanied by a shuffling beat and a Duane Eddyish guitar solo. There are some lovely washes of pedal steel on In Years and Honest Drinking; I like how the latter track changes time signature briefly to reflect the lurches and habits of the narrator. Road To Hell, meanwhile, is a two-minute barnstormer that reflects the lyric of a band going off to play a barnstorming set.

Taken For A Ride is a five-minute waltz that has Nathan defending himself at the end of a relationship while chastising himself as ‘a coward’ and ‘a loser’. Two Heads is a slacker’s song which Nathan drawls in character, suggesting that he and his beloved ‘sleep in together’ to avoid the fussing and fighting. Knew You, with its honky-tonk shuffle, throws forward to a time after the relationship when ‘alone ain’t so bad’.

First Day It’s Warm is a reminiscin’ song that has the feel of a Willie Nelsonish front-porch finger-picker and conjures up plenty of imagery with a lot of bonhomie: ‘Even the cattle are glad winter’s over!’ he sings, and rhymes ‘arrest us/Texas’ to raise a warm smile that mimics much of the rest of the album.

Rhiannon Giddens – You’re The One

This is Rhiannon’s first album under her own name since 2017, and the first to contain entirely original material. Her partner Francesco Turrisi is not billed, as he was on the two collections in the interim, and Rhiannon was also a quarter of Our Native Daughters who put out an album in 2019. She recently added a Pulitzer Prize to her MacArthur Genius Grant, on top her work with the Silkroad Ensemble, which prompted Jon Pareles to begin his New York Times profile of her: ‘Rhiannon Giddens has earned a little fun.’

‘Fun’ is writing her own songs, a serious pursuit for many of her contemporaries, and recording them at the renowned Criteria Studios in Miami where The Bee Gees hid in the late 1970s to escape the Disco Sucks era. By her own admission she is passionate about ‘banjos and slavery’, working on audio series about both of them.

The album is framed by opening kiss-off Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad and the closing hoedown Way Down Yonder, which will be the highlight of her forthcoming live shows, but there’s room for social commentary too. Another Wasted Life, where the chorus hammers home the title, tells the listener about a man from The Bronx, Kalief Browder, who killed himself after three years’ imprisonment (‘a punishment taken further’). Its sonic choices seem deliberately to remind the listener of Curtis Mayfield’s Blaxploitation movie soundtracks, while the practice of setting newspaper stories to music is an old folk staple, something Bob Dylan did on many occasions.

The title track is a joyous song from a mother to a child, full of gratitude for a newly ‘technicolour world’ and perfect for current or prospective parents. Yet To Be is a similarly jaunty tune with a peaceful coda about a pair of teenage runaways, the man played by Jason Isbell who matches Rhiannon’s holler.

Rhiannon’s knowledge of popular song enables her to dip back into a century or more of music. Who Are You Dreaming Of takes the classic arrangements of pre-rock’n’roll balladry, with a flute answering her effortless croon, while You Put the Sugar in My Bowl and Hen in the Foxhouse both reach back to the bawdy songs of the early blues era; in fact, they could both be songs by Sister Loretta Tharpe or Big Mama Thornton.

You Louisiana Man begins appropriately with some Cajun accordion and breaks into Afrobeat – the Fela Kuti kind, not the Burna Boy Afrobeats – that rather undercuts the narrator’s heartbreak (‘you stole my breath, you took my soul’). Wrong Kind of Right begins ‘Woke up this morning’ but it’s a waltz rather than a blues, with Rhiannon’s narrator almost sighing as she tells the listener of the unrequited love she feels for her beloved. If You Don’t Know How Sweet It Is sees Rhiannon stand up for herself and ordering her beau to ‘get the hell out my kitchen’.

Rhiannon’s album comes out on the same day as World Music Radio, the latest album by Jon Batiste. Both are critically acclaimed multi-instrumentalists who are in the middle of durable careers and who seek to unite with their music, rather than divide. While pundits draw attention to a song written by a farmer about politicians, it would be far more humane of them to send their acolytes to this excellent album.

Beth Bombara – It All Goes Up

Beth Bombara plays guitar and drums with Samantha Crain but is stepping out front with this album, her second, overcoming her onstage anxiety which has until now kept her away from the lip of the stage.

A lot of the songs were written on a classical guitar, which allows for more lyrical melodies to emerge than your usual acoustic six-string. Her vocal style has the gentle coffeehouse feel of singers like Jewel or Norah Jones, as she exhibits on opening track Moment, a carpe diem song inspired by the quieter lockdown period. The old Polaroid picture gets a namecheck, as it did on Miranda Lambert’s Automatic.

Curious and Free begins ‘I was 17…dancing along to the radio’ and has our narrator accompanied by a string section for extra gravitas and solemnity. She wants to rediscover her teenage self, looking back on when she headed for the coast and fearlessly climbed trees. Give Me A Reason (‘I let you in every time you breathe out’) swaps the strings for a gnarled electric guitar and a slow triple-time drumbeat, while closing track Fade uses a soft keyboard setting to underscore a lyric full of advice for the addressee to not ‘let your fire fade’.

Electricity (‘was it all for nothing?’) deals in similar themes with a rather understated guitar solo soaked in reverb. What You Wanna Hear is a lover’s tiff that includes words like ‘banshees’, ‘insecure’ and ‘insincere’, set to a bossa nova groove. Get On (‘with your life’) has plenty of dynamic interest (louds and softs) where Beth’s vocals are in the foreground, which must sound odd for a musician used to a supporting role. That topic is alluded to on Carry The Weight, ironically enough.

Lonely Walls (‘the bend will surely break’) is a mellow love song driven by quaver patterns on the guitar and a long instrumental coda that reminds me a lot Aimee Mann’s work with Jon Brion. As well as having an old-fashioned fadeout, Everything I Wanted has a sugary chorus and itchy guitar part that helps it to rival the songs on my new favourite album by another Beth, Cosentino.

In short, this is terrific indie-minded folk-rock, the genre that morphed into alt.country then became Americana and that was pioneered by the recently deceased Robbie Robertson. It’s best listened to at dawn or dusk, so find the right moment to give it a go.

Miles Miller – Solid Gold

Like Beth, Miles Miller is also a sideman to another musician, in his case the drummer who keeps time for both Sturgill Simpson and Tyler Childers. His debut album, produced by Sturgill who also plays drums, is out on Thirty Tigers and takes the form of a song cycle about heartbreak.

His voice is in the spirit of James Taylor or Don Henley, as on the gorgeous country-rock of Don’t Give Away Love and the melancholy thinkers Even If (‘your love will last’) and Passed Midnight (‘I see you in my glass of wine’). There’s class and poise across the album, from the slide guitar used on A Feeling Called Lonesome to the complaints of the flight of My Sanity (‘come back to me’) which end the album’s first side. The acoustic feel returns on the album’s closing pair Always November and I Wish, which show sophistication and an appreciation for classic songwriting.

Perhaps the listener can tap their toes while wearing the Highway Shoes that Miles sings about, advising them to ‘put down the phone, turn off the news’ much like Lukas Nelson did on a recent album. The middle eight of that song has chords which have come to be known as Beatles chords that briefly take the song somewhere else before recapitulating to the main theme. It then flies off again thanks to a wigout that must have been driven by Sturgill Simpson, who is a fan of extended jams.

After all that walking, Miles ends up Where Daniel Stood on an acoustic song which intentionally sounds like a hymn, thanks to its simple chord palette and a direct lyric. Seeing Clear sounds (again intentionally, I think) like Jessica, the Allman Brothers song that was the theme to Top Gear; Miles even describes himself as a ‘ramblin’ man’ in the lyrics, referencing another Allman Brothers jam.

This music never goes out of style and Miles has borrowed from the best of his record collection, which is nowadays just a click away to allow anyone to dip into the classic songs of the ‘classic rock’ era.

Four years after their debut and after shedding two members including Brit Jordan Harvey, King Calaway return with a second album which builds on their friendship with, of all people, Zac Brown. It’s helpful that the band’s drummer, Chris Deaton, has a father who puts together the TV show that supports the CMA Awards, but it’s less helpful that country music has always been shy of male vocal harmony groups. It has been said that Rascal Flatts and Florida Georgia Line both had aspects of a boyband – haircuts, fashion, Gary LeVox’s sex appeal – but having five blokes in a line just looks like One Direction.

The quartet opened for Dustin Lynch last year and Zac Brown fans will see them earlier on, so how can they appeal to Zac’s fans who might scoff at a male vocal harmony group?

Best Thing About Me Now kicks off the album with an emphatic I-vii-IV chord progression (the Hey Jude one) over which the band sing complimentary things about a girl who is (alert Grady Smith) ‘doing what you do’. Denim Jacket (‘nobody wears it like you’) is a little funkier and doesn’t tell us anything new about breaking up with someone; it’s an example of ekphrasis, a poetic device where the singer or poet describes an object then zooms out to make it mean something.

Love is also in the air on What I Know Now, a sweet meet-cute with some reverb on the guitars, and Ease My Troubled Mind, where the guys hang on to the ‘ee’ sounds of ‘ease’, ‘free’ and ‘please’. There’s a nice long fadeout to bring the first half of the album to a close, which suggests the boys have been listening to lots of old albums with their producer.

Perhaps Steve Miller Band LPs were also on rotation, which explains the presence in parentheses of that band on the song I’m Feeling Good, which was written by Aldean’s core writers of Wendell Mobley and Neil Thrasher. It will prompt one of the band to shout ‘Who loves Steve Miller Band?’ at a wise audience of Zac Brown fans, who will enjoy chanting the song’s title. Again, there are strong whiffs of Hanson in the harmonies.

There are some big writers in the credits of the album’s 16 tunes, not least Zac (who produced half the album) and his bandmate Ben Simonetti who feature on When I Get Home, which opens the second side of the album. It’s one of Zac’s plinky-plonk acoustic songs, in the form of a letter from the road; I won’t spoil what happens for the middle eight of the song but it proves that when he can be bothered, Zac is one of today’s best arrangers in country music.

The super pair of Brandy Clark and Jaren Johnston submitted High Cost of Loving You, which is driven by a Bo Diddley rhythm from guitar and contains some band harmonies which will help the song pop live. This is a world away from their vanilla debut album.

The title track has the band thinking of getting off the road and back to Tennessee while a harmonica blends with their harmonies; Adam Craig’s sophisticated songwriting is evident. California Gold is in 12/8 time. It opens with images of canyons and rivers, then breaks into a smooth chorus that seems inspired by Zac Brown’s song Free or Highway 20 Ride. Yet it also sounds a bit like A1 or Boyzone thanks to the high vocal line, much as how Hometown Night’s rocking stomp and close harmonies remind me of Hanson. The Other Half (‘can’t get over you’) was one of the album’s four pre-released tracks; reminding me of The Script and every boyband heartbreak song, it is perfect Radio 2 playlist material.

Two hip acts are drafted in for the sake of credibility. Hailey Whitters adds her Dixie Musgraves sound to the amiable Let It Flow, playing a ‘blue-eyed rebel child’ who is the object of a tuneful bit of reminiscin’ that reminds me of what Love and Theft were doing a decade ago. Marcus King does his blues-rock thing on Heathen, a song about a femme fatale which is just short of six minutes. What luck that Zac has friends in bluesy places.

There’s also a fiddle-led cover of Vince Gill’s magnificent When I Call Your Name, which will prompt one of the band to shout ‘Who loves Vince Gill?’ at a wise audience of Zac Brown fans. It’s high time the underrated, understated Vince got the same kind of appreciation that Brooks & Dunn have received in recent years; he’s the Mayor of Music City for a reason and, as I always say, a quintuple threat: singer, songwriter, guitar player, scratch golfer and husband to Amy Grant. Check out his album of Ray Price covers, ably assisted by Paul Franklin on steel guitar.

Dive Bar is a campfire singalong rather than a honky-tonker where the band hope to be ‘telling tipsy stories…Walk in as strangers, walk out as friends’. The melody is just far enough away from Ed Sheeran’s What Do I Know to avoid a lawsuit. Closing track The Dash is a carpe diem song that takes inspiration from The Climb (‘they don’t hand you a map’) and would fit onto Christian radio thanks to imagery in the chorus including tombstones, ‘pearly gates’ and ‘the Good Lord’.

Whether it is to stop them being dropped or to help Zac ‘F— the haters’ Brown get back into the industry’s good books, the album is a success. The band have found their sound and it won’t just be Zac Brown acolytes who appreciate it.

After profiling The Wolfe Brothers and Morgan Evans earlier this year, I spotlight recent releases from Fanny Lumsden and Brooke McClymont & Adam Eckersley

One of the leading lights of the Australian country music scene are the couple Brooke McClymont and Adam Eckersley. Both Brooke’s band The McClymonts and Adam’s own band were on the line-up for Country2Country Australia in 2019, which took place over the last weekend of September in two cities, Sydney and Brisbane. Tim McGraw headlined a bill which included Kelsea Ballerini and Midland, as well as local stars Sinead Burgess, Lacy Cavalier, Casey Barnes, Travis Collins, Andrew Swift, Jody Direen, Judah Kelly and Kaylee Bell.

At January’s Golden Guitar Awards given out by the Australian CMA, Casey won the Album of the Year award, while Kaylee Bell also picked up an award for a duet with New Talent winner James Johnston. Brooke and Adam were Group or Duo, a category they have locked down over the year: The McClymonts have won it seven times, Adam’s band once.

Brooke and Adam grew up on the same street and married in 2009. They eventually made music together and released their debut album in 2018, which brought them to the UK for Buckle and Boots the following year. It was part of a cultural exchange with Tamworth Music Festival, which has continued into the post-pandemic era and saw Josh Setterfield come to the UK for this year’s festival.

Brooke & Adam followed their debut with Up, Down and Sideways, distributed through Universal Music Australia via the Lost Highway imprint. The pair won both Song and Single of the Year at the Golden Guitars: the former for album closer Star of the Show, a lullaby dedicated to their now ten-year-old daughter, and the latter for Memory Lane, a wistful reminiscin’ song told from both narrators’ perspectives. This double has often happened in the awards’ history: Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson did it in 2009 with Rattlin’ Bones, and Troy Cassar-Daley likewise in 2010 with Big Big Love. Kasey repeated the feat in 2011 and Travis Collins did it in 2017.

Opener Country Music, You and Beer has the pair admitting to their faults and addictions – he has the propensity to ‘tell inappropriate jokes’, she can’t stick to diets or fit into a pair of jeans – but through it all they both have ‘everything I need right here’. It is the type of song that has been cranked out on Music Row for about 50 years, sung with charm and empathy. Brooke’s line ‘I’ll raise a glass to my fat ass’ is a t-shirt slogan. On Don’t Give Up On Me Yet, the pair sing to each other to look over the aforementioned flaws, with some fiddle poking through in the choruses.

Other familiar country beats are hit across the album. Roll On Baby and Rock Bottom are chirpy tunes about playing music on the road with, respectively, some fine handclaps and some fine fiddle. The vocals remind me of other famed Nashville-based acts: Adam sounds like Charles Kelley on the Radio 2-friendly ballad Lost If I Lost You, Brooke like Carrie Underwood on uptempo love song What Are You Waiting For. She runs through a series of rural images like rain on a roof and sings in the chorus that ‘there’s a whole lot of country to explore’. There is a funky guitar solo in the middle.

High on a Monday gently runs through a typical week, with less in the way of making love than Craig David’s tune and more self-examination, although a well-placed expletive does in a way refer to what Craig does on four days of that week. This is followed by Wild Side, where music fills the time when there’s just the two of them about; it reminds me of Why Don’t We Just Dance, the Josh Turner smash.

The album fits the general genre of Non-American Country Music, with the sort of MOR pop arrangements and themes of love that comprise the music of The Shires. I hope the pair can come back for a working holiday in 2024. This September they are playing a Dolly Parton Festival opening for Kelly O’Brien’s tribute to Dolly, then they hop on a boat for Cruisin’ Country along with compatriots The Wolfe Brothers, Casey Barnes, James Johnston and a whole heap more. Yes we’ve got Buck N Bull’s cruise on the river Thames but this is a different league!

Fanny Lumsden was in our hemisphere this summer to promote her album Hey Dawn, which magnificently included a set on Pilton Farm in Glastonbury. She is a perfect booking given that she spends a lot of time on the road. The triumphant opening and title track kicks off an album with optimism and suitably sunny harmonies, which is maintained on Great Divide (‘you reap what you sow’). That song is full of the elements, with rain, snow and wind (‘impossible to capture the breeze’) appearing in the lyrics but the production is so bright and shimmering.

You’ll Be Fine and When I Die are even spikier, more alt-rock than country and perfect for leaping about to; on the former is the cathartic line ‘we’re all a little broken and in need of fixing’, while the latter has an image of Fanny’s ashes being catapulted into the air. ‘Stick to your guns, choose your own fate!’ is a wise bit of encouragement. Millionaire is also a rocker on which Fanny reminisces about her first car and first job (‘even ten bucks made you feel rich’). It’s easier to be a millionaire in Australia, though, since one Aussie dollar is worth 52p.

Piano ballad Ugly Flowers dispenses with materialism and emphasises the bonds of family, with a wonderful image of multiple birthday cakes. The trumpet solo puts the icing on the cake. Enjoy The Ride is another gentle tune that advises the listener to grit their teeth, unclench their fist and take a deep breath, while Lucky is a cute waltz led by Fanny’s fluttering alto and some vocalised ‘oh-oh’ sections. This is participatory music which raises the audience up to the level of the person onstage.

Soar is a lyric full of self-empowerment and self-effacement (‘gonna bust out of my skin’) with a major-key arrangement. Handclaps are not optional, nor is singing along during the extended outro. Closing track Stories posits that we are the product of the tales ‘we tell ourselves, passed down generations quietly shaping everyone else’. It fits perfectly beside Humble and Kind as a song which can move the heart and the head, and it rounds off an exceptional album that is an advertisement both for Fanny and the independent Australian spirit.

Despite the long-haul flight needed to get here, I hope we see Fanny Lumsden, and Brooke & Adam, soon in the UK.

Do I really need to tell you what Brett Young’s new collection Across The Sheets sounds like? There are six new ballads written with the likes of Jon Nite, Ross Copperman, Julia Michaels and Jimmy Robbins. Through instrumentation and lyric, they all portray Brett as a sensitive soul: he wonders if an ex ever shares his feeling that they Let Go Too Soon but concludes that Love Goes On. After all, he enjoyed a Dance With You and she ‘loved this sinner Back to Jesus’, even though he was made to feel Uncomfortable (‘chills go up and down my spine’) by her loveliness.

Nonetheless, Brett thinks, I Did This To Me. That song begins with a hummed hook and Brett calling himself ‘selfish [and] reckless’ in pushing his love away. Silly Brett, this isn’t in character! He is supposed to be a shoulder to cry on, a reliable Robin. There’s also a remake of a track from his first album and a cover of Don’t Take The Girl by his Big Machine labelmate Tim McGraw, the Brett Young of 1994. Indeed, every year Nashville introduces what I call a Hot Sexy Guy into the market.

It’s more interesting to place Brett Young and his new collection in the context of the HSG.

Garth was that HSG once. So was Clint Black, who is coming to the UK as an adjunct to an NFL weekend in London at the end of September. I guess Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell and John Denver, who all got TV shows off the back of their HSG-ness, count too. Tim McGraw may have been initially marketed as an Indian Outlaw but very quickly he spun his marriage to Faith Hill as part of his HSG brand. He even grew a beard for Country Strong, something Garth did for his Chris Gaines character!

Billy Currington is, I think, the ultimate HSG. Or maybe it’s Joe Nichols. In fact, who would win in an Adonis-off between Hot Sexy Billy and Hot Sexy Joe? Check out the swarthiness, the pectoral muscles, the cheekbones! My partner picked Joe Nichols and his dimpled chin, but it is a subjective call.

Nashville, in case you don’t know, sells country music and also makes country stars. Dolly Parton might be bigger than them all, with her massive hits (credit for that goes to the writer Sarfraz Manzoor), so it works with what used to be called ‘girl-singers’. But I’m more interested in the marketing of the Hot Sexy Guy and what it tells us about the boardrooms of Music Row.

There’s one for everyone: Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley, Kip Moore, Jason Aldean, Kenny Chesney (who married Bridget Jones for real), Chris Young, Jordan Davis, Thomas Rhett, Rhett Akins, Brett Eldredge, Luke Bryan, Jake Owen, Dylan Scott, Morgan Wallen, Tyler Hubbard AND Brian Kelley in the same band, Dan AND Shay. But not Gary LeVox; they don’t call him Gary LeFace.

Consider Michael Ray. If you were a music executive looking to make money, you’d sign Michael Ray if you saw him at a writers’ round by his muscles alone. He looks good in magazines, is aesthetically appealing and he can also sing and play guitar. His debut hit Kiss You in the Morning went to number one on radio, followed by Think a Little Less (written by Thomas Rhett) and One That Got Away (written by Old Dominion). In 2020, the smooth Whiskey & Rain sped up the charts thanks in part to his divorce from Carly Pearce.

In 2023, in lieu of a third album, Michael Ray put out a perfunctory EP called Dive Bars & Broken Hearts, with a title track written by the same blokes who gifted him Whiskey & Rain. I saw nothing whatsoever about Michael Ray’s EP on the Country Music Attendees Facebook group, and I read not one review of it.

The set was produced by Michael Knox, who now has a Hot 100 number one song to his name thanks to his work on Aldean’s song about small town violence. Hate This Town, in particular, is almost an Aldean homage right down to the production on Michael’s voice, while Workin’ On It is a Wallen reject passed on to the closest HSG, who just happens to be a divorced bloke with ‘too much Kentucky in my Tennessee’.

This summer Michael Ray is out on the county fair circuit, even playing the National Sweetcorn Festival in Illinois, and dreams of being asked like his ex-partner to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry; he’s played the show 70 times. Jon Pardi, a Californian HSG, will be inducted as member number 225 in October. Carly Pearce was number 215.

Billy Currington didn’t bother publicising his 2021 album Intuition, his first since 2015 and one of the most unsatisfying albums of recent years with very little to recommend it. He was a reliable hit-maker between 2003 and 2016, with 11 number ones and a role as the guy on the country version of Shania Twain’s song Party For Two. He went out on tour with Carrie, Chesney, Lady A and Tim McGraw and headlined his own tours in the late 2010s, in spite of being convicted of abusing an elderly gent and having to take anger management counselling.

In November 2023, Billy turns 50. He is officially a legacy act, like Brad Paisley or Tim McGraw or the ultimate Hot Sexy Guitar Guy (you thought I’d forgotten him) Keith Urban. I wonder what it is about Keith that attracts thousands of people to his gigs: is it the guitar playing, the smooth voice or the cheekbones? Would Keith or Luke Bryan have been American Idol judges without their telegenic faces that look good in front of TV cameras? Of course not, and they wouldn’t have sold so many concert tickets either. Even Luke Bryan is a legacy artist now, although he has kept his gig as host of the CMA Awards along with Peyton Manning, who has a very good booking agent.

Nashville knows that sex sells as much as a good voice does, and there’s a friendly media entrusted to promote their acts with photo spreads and TV specials. Heck, Garth was given hour-long concerts on TV where he smashed up guitars when he wasn’t singing ballads in close-up. Today, Instagram must be a gift to HSGs, since they can publicise themselves with no need to get a radio play, concert bookings or TV specials.

HSGs like Brett Young have their wedding photos in People magazine, gender reveals and births reported on and their names kept in circulation to help remind the country audience that they exist. Do you even think of Dylan Scott unless you see his face? He’s an HSG signed to Curb Records, the label which made McGraw a star, although there seems a saturation of HSGs today.

Brett Young is taller than most, rivalling Charles Kelley of Lady A, Jon Pardi and Matt Stell. There’s a whole cavalcade of HSGs knocking around town, some with very similar names: Tyler Booth, Tyler Rich, Michael Tyler, Chayce Beckham, Chase Matthew…I’ve even missed some of the HSGs in the charts at the moment who are Xerox versions of more successful HSGs: Bailey Zimmerman, who is basically Morgan Wallen, and Kane Brown, who does the same thing as Thomas Rhett and who has followed Tim McGraw in bringing in his wife as a duet partner.

Imagine just selecting the next Hot Sexy Guy from the hundreds who must be knocking around Nashville at any given week. How do you decide? Do you do it by how many chin-ups they do at the gym? The number of girls who like a TikTok post? Whether they have a nice smile?

I asked members of the aforementioned Facebook group who their favourite HSG was. Cheekily the first response came from Ben Gurney who suggested his Journey Home bandmate Andrew Jones, whose new song My Old Street is very good. Myra Hardie wishes Billy Currington would do less surfing and more music, but that was the only mention he got. There was appreciation for Charles Kelley and Kip Moore (‘I’d climb Kip Like a tree’ said one respondent), and one lady was happy with any one of Brett Young, Brett Eldredge or Luke Bryan (you can’t pick all three, Emily!!).

Parker McCollum also got a mention, proving that Texas is still rolling out HSGs four decades after George Strait took the cowboy to the urbs. Ditto Drake Milligan, a great suggestion after he launched himself into the world thanks to Simon Cowell’s show America’s Got Talent. When someone suggested Zac Brown with a ‘licks screen’ comment, I wondered what flavour he would have. Sweet tea? Pecan pie? Chicken, fried?

Beth Knight realised that Jackson Dean was ‘still practically a child’ so went for Charles Wesley Godwin, who will bring out an album next month on Big Loud Records, while Kirsty Magee fell for Bryan White in the 1990s, ‘though he was more cute than hot/sexy’. (She’s correct: his cheeks look squeezable.) She adds that ‘Brett Young only had to look my way when I saw him in Cambridge and I was all hot and bothered’. Such are the effects of the Hot Sexy Guy.

Lucy Wedge reminds me about Midland, whose singer Mark Wystrach was on the books of a modelling agency. It’s surprising that country music executives don’t hit up the same models who appear on TV dating shows, which are often soundtracked by HSG hits. In 2017, Russell Dickerson performed his slow-burning ballad Yours on The Bachelorette. This is the ultimate synergy: a show about hot sexy people featuring a song by a Hot Sexy Guy.

Why not go the whole hog and call the genre Hot Sexy Guy Country? That’s practically what country radio has been about for the last 20 years anyway!

Joshua Ray Walker – What Is It Even?

What a smart choice of release. Joshua Ray Walker’s new album of covers picks 11 songs by female artists and cranks them through his gifted larynx. He may intersperse his set with these interpretations at The Long Road – which he was due to play last year but pulled out of due to illness – or at shows in five UK cities including the hip Hackney venue Oslo. He’s also due to warm up the Mavericks crowd at the end of September, and their fans would go wild for any of these covers.

This isn’t goofy like Hayseed Dixie, but heartfelt and with a focus on the melodies and performance. It’s actually a good way to convince non-believers that country has plenty of merit.

What if the Blues Brothers covered Whitney Houston? was the inspiration for both his version of I Wanna Dance With Somebody and the album as a whole. Answer: it sounds a lot like I’m Your Man by Wham! A take on Dolly Parton’s Joshua, which may have been an easy choice for a guy with that name, is led by a guitar in dropped-D tuning and a sung-spoken vocal inspired by outlaws like Waylon Jennings.

Joshua opens the set with Cuz I Love You by his fellow Texan Lizzo, whom I am positive will invite Joshua onstage at one of her shows (pending those pesky allegations). He also transforms Halo, by another Texan lady who these days dwells in the ionosphere, into a foot-stomping bluegrass jam that its writer Ryan Tedder would surely give a thumbs-up to. There’s a classic country reading of Blue, a singer’s dream which was the first single released by Jackson, Mississippi’s LeAnn Rimes when she was 13.

Linger by The Cranberries remains a song that moves its listener, even with Kyle Gass from Tenacious D adding a cute recorder solo. Believe by Cher will be playing in 2098 a century after it brought its creator and the autotune setting to prominence; Joshua plays it straight and layers some pedal steel over an undeniable melody.

With wretched timing, one of his covers is Nothing Compares 2 U, which reminds me that for 30 years Sinead O’Connor operated at the margins of the music business because she was a difficult woman. It is sad, as ever, to only see mass praise once it garners clicks for major websites. I am sure (and this was not at all Joshua’s intention) that people looking for versions by Sinead or Prince will stumble upon this interpretation, which adds an organ on the fadeout and will surely be part of his live show, if there was any doubt.

The only new song to me was Goodbye Horses by Q Lazzarus, a new wave tune which was released in 1988 and gained prominence when it was included on the soundtrack to The Silence of the Lambs. Kele from Bloc Party has also updated it, and his version compares well to Joshua’s barroom rocker propelled by guitars. I can’t believe it took this long to turn Sia’s Cheap Thrills into something that would fit on the soundtrack to a Clint Eastwood Western, or to beef up Regina Spektor’s Wonderbread advert Samson, keeping it as a torch song.

If you’ve not heard of Joshua Ray Walker, the time is right to go back to his original songs, and to ensure you catch his set at The Long Road. I think he’ll be the breakout star.

Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway – City of Gold

Along with new spins on pop songs, another way to get people into country is to bamboozle them with class until they surrender. Molly Tuttle’s first album with her band Golden Highway came out last July; I thought Crooked Tree was ‘wonderful, full of nature, empathy and musicianship’ and it was correct to believe her mantelpiece, which has awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association thanks to her superlative voice and guitar work. Molly and the band are nominated for Crooked Tree the album and song at the 2023 IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards, with added nominations for Entertainer and Group of the Year. They must overcome the might of Billy Strings, who won the first category in 2021 and 2022.

Bluegrass music is not about awards but prizes and garlands make it more useful for casual fans of the genre to find a way through the thicket of versatile musicians. She’s opening up for Dierks Bentley, Charlie Crockett and Dave Matthews Band this summer, and Dave joins the band on Yosemite, where the pair try to escape their circumstances because ‘sometimes the road is the best remedy’.

Once again Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show is her accomplice, with dobro wizard Jerry Douglas co-producing the set with Molly, giving her the mark of approval from known figures. The excellent opening track El Dorado was the track chosen to promote the album, while she also takes us to the ‘red dirt hills’ of Evergreen, Oklahoma, albeit the subject of the song wants to run away to ‘greener fields’, preferring to ‘saddle up’ rather than ‘settle down’.

San Joaquin and the pro-weed Down Home Dispensary (‘hey Mr Senator!’) rollick along at an ever faster whip, with skilled accompaniment from fiddler Bronwyn Keith-Hynes and mandolin from Dominick Leslie. Next Rodeo has the groove and message of an old Dolly Parton song, with old familiar chords and a resolute message to ‘giddy up and go’ after heartbreak. I can hear Luke Combs covering this.

Where Did All The Wild Things Go? reminds me of (obviously for a bluegrass tune) Nickel Creek thanks to a prominent combination of rapid-fire lead vocals, mandolin, fiddle and mixed harmony vocals, plus the emphatic title which punctuates each stanza. Goodbye Mary could also be a Creek tune with Molly plainly singing the protagonist’s tale whose plot I will not spoil; the arrangement matches the poignancy of the lyric.

When My Race Is Run and Stranger Things (‘I am the daughter of a woodcarver’) slow the pace down and linger on their elegant arrangements. On the former, Jerry Douglas briefly pops up on the dobro and it is impossible for Alison Krauss not to influence Molly’s delivery. Fans of her work with Union Station will find much to enjoy on the album, which is apt given that Jerry was in Alison’s band.

Alice in the Bluegrass (great title) resets the Lewis Carroll story to Appalachia, which makes me wonder why nobody had done this before and if Molly can do this with other children’s stories: Harry Potter and the Biscuits of Carolina, maybe? More Like a River is a love song that rolls on like water even though the couple may be apart (‘we got love that won’t run dry’), while the album ends with The First Time I Fell in Love, a waltz where Molly reminisces about a high school crush who made her feel ‘topsy-turvy’ and – in a plot twist! – ‘in love with myself’. It’s sophisticated and timeless, like the album as a whole.

How thrilling for bluegrass fanatics that Molly has a two-week tour booked for the UK tour for January 2024, with an appearance at Cadogan Hall and another not far from me in St Albans supporting the acclaimed guitarist Tommy Emmanuel.

Lewis Brice – Product Of

I saw Lewis Brice, brother of Lee, when he came to Whitebottom Farm to play Buckle and Boots in 2019. I was immediate enraptured by his song Blessed, which was delivered with plenty of gusto. At long last, four years later Lewis puts out his debut full-length album, which is a tiddler at ten tracks and just over 30 minutes. It is produced by Zac Brown’s pal Ben Simonetti, who in some places is unafraid to make Lewis sound like Bon Jovi or Hootie and the Blowfish.

The title track, which features Lee Brice, starts things off. It’s a series of boasts about the type of small-town guy Lewis is (‘a hard-working, God-fearing blue-collar son of a gun’) set to a heartland rock guitar part. It has one of those choruses that condense an entire life in a song, and well done to the pair for getting the assonant ‘funnel cake kiss at the county fair’ into it.

Lee also helped Lewis write Sad Song, which is conversely a happy song about how being in love makes it tough to enjoy depressing tunes, and Together, one of those songs where Thing A goes well with Thing B, such as Lewis’s chest and his beloved’s head.

There are country tropes that we have heard many, many times before. Shadow has Lewis comparing himself to ‘a silhouette’ basking in the light of his beloved, while acoustic ballad Right Love and wedding song First Time will both make gig-goers hold one another a little tighter at a Lewis Brice show. They can jump around to party song Seeing Summer (‘I’m high as a kite’), which will sit well beside Lee’s song More Beer in a Country Tailgate Party DJ mix.

Heartbreak is a hoary old theme that Lewis uses for several tracks. Back of My Mind is a break-up tune with an emo-friendly sonic bed and vocal style, while the hooky Goodbye Beer (‘ain’t nothing colder’) sees Lewis go to Mexico to ‘tip her back some let-her-go’. Thanks for the Heartbreak sees the best in a bad situation, ‘the pain that led to brighter days’.

Like Lewis himself, this is a pleasant album which showcases a great knack for melodic songwriting. He might not have career songs like I Don’t Dance or I Drive Your Truck, but he’s worth a listen.

Susto – My Entire Life

Another release on New West Records, this fifth album from Justin Osborne’s band will also appeal to fans of nineties alternative rock. There’s reverb on his voice on opening track Rock On, which is about being on tour with ‘the microphone blues’, and a psychedelic guitar part on the trippily titled Mermaid Vampire, which is a homage to music that is almost six decades old(!).

I can’t help making musical connections. Closing track Break Free, Rolling Stone has a guitar tone that reminds me of the middle of Wichita Lineman. Double Stripe opens with a similar guitar figure to Love’s Alone Again Or and has a lazy, Laurel Canyon feel. Tragic Kingdom is similarly retro, and I think I spot a more obvious allusion to No Doubt, who put out an album of that title, in the lyric ‘Don’t speak and it fades away’.

Mt. Caroline, Rooster (‘you can’t put it all back in the bottle’) and Optimum Artist (the line ‘love is all that matters in the end’ is sung in falsetto) all settle into a more country groove, with vocals coming from a contemplative narrator. Cowboys and Hyperbolic Jesus are both terrific slices of country-rock with wonderful band arrangements that best sum up the Susto sound.

The title track, which was also the lead single to trail the album, has Justin wanting to be a bird with bright feathers. Its buoyancy contrasts with Tina, which opens with the image of Justin’s sobbing mum, ‘two years now…a widow’, to a soft accompaniment, and pleading questions – ‘Are we all just falling to pieces?’ and ‘With drugs like that, who needs life anyway?’ – add to the pain the narrator feels.

This is music for sophisticates who know their rock, and a good way back into the genre for anyone who feels they don’t have enough of it. After all, it’s a heritage genre now with very little to add to the greats of the past.