The 9513 - Country Music Blog

And now for your late, late news (an abbreviated edition), direct from the home office in Wahoo, Nebraska:

• Rosanne Cash responds to John Rich’s claim that her father would be a John McCain supporter:
  

  It is appalling to me that people still want to invoke my father’s name, five years after his death, to ascribe beliefs, ideals, values and loyalties to him that cannot possibly be determined, and to try to further their own agendas by doing so.

• Entertainment Weekly’s Chris Williman gives Meet Glen Campbell a grade of B+, writing that, “…the Wichita Lineman does imbue already good tracks like Tom Petty’s ”Walls” and Travis’ ”Sing” with a genuine sense of grandeur.”
• Mike from For The Record has written a short but worthwhile post about the potential globalization of Country Music:
  

  We were rolling down the road in our small bus in Kigali, Rwanda when we came to a stop in traffic. Next to us was a local man who was listening to music in his car. It was rather loud and the windows were down. What did I hear? Alan Jackson.

• Country, California, has a challenge for you. Say something nice about Rascal Flatts.
• Jessica Simpson is being featured in ADs for ABC’s “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night To Rock.”
  

  “I’ve gone back to my roots and come on over to country music,” Jessica says. “I just couldn’t be more thrilled for ‘Come On Over’ to be a part of this amazing night of country music.”

  Simpson will not, however, actually appear in the upcoming ABC special.

• The Tennessean’s Beverly Keel interviews Sugarland about their songwriting process:
  

  Bush: One of the things you do in this process is, you say, “What’s the emotional truth to this topic we’re writing (about)? What are you trying to really say?” Some things you do because they just feel good; some things you do because they are difficult. As Jennifer says a lot, we’re using a toothbrush to clean the archeological dig.

• The always entertaining and usually enlightening Bob Lefsetz wrote a long post on the his blog about Carrie Underwood’s “You Won’t Find This.” He loves the track, but some of his comments make me think he’s relatively out of touch with country music.
  

  Most listeners have no idea what it takes to write a song like “You Won’t Find This” and get it on a Carrie Underwood album. But, when they hear it, they understand.

  Amazing that such a process can result in such truth. But maybe that’s country. Whereas rap was the word of truth, today country is where you go for honesty. (Emphasis added.)

• Here are the winners of our Crystal Shawanda giveaway (selected by random number generator): Congratulations to Jenny, Marc, and Debbie Martinez. We’ll be contacting you soon to get your shipping information.

Over several days in the winter of 1993, during one of the worst ice storms in Tennesee history, George Jones, producer Brian Ahern and a boatload of country and pop stars retreated to the famous “Bradley Barn” studio to record Bradley Barn Sessions, an album of Jones classics performed as duets between The Possum and special guest stars. Upon its release in 1994, the resulting project was largely panned by critics as a good idea that failed to live up to its considerable potential, due primarily to the incompatibility of Ahern’s slick, over-orchestrated production with the sparse honky-tonk sound that made Jones famous.

If those words seem anachronistic in the review of an album released in 2008 one has only Bandit Records to blame, for seven of the twelve tracks on Burn Your Playhouse Down: The Unreleased Duets were recorded during the original Bradley Barn Sessions but didn’t make the album cut. Unfortunately, few of these unreleased tracks sound any better than their 1994 brethren.

It’s not that Ahern’s production is bad. In fact, by contemporary Music Row standards, it’s rather good. But for George Jones, even George Jones circa 2008, it’s just too layered. Much of the problem might be explained not by Ahern’s choices but Jones’ selection of companions: his studio musicians for the Bradley Barn Sessions included Marty Stuart, Ricky Skaggs, Leon Russell and Vince Gill, not to mention less famous virtuosos like Pig Robbins, John Hughey and Jerry Douglas, all vying for the chance to make their picking heard on a legend’s recordings, and it’s hard to imagine even the most strong-willed producer telling one of those luminaries that they really ought to sit one out. The result is orchestration that’s too thick, with too many musicians playing too many instruments, and much of the Jones magic gets lost in the process.

Three of the remaining five songs on Burn Your Playhouse Down were recorded for but not included on 1988’s Friends in High Places, leaving only two tracks that do not directly parallel previous work. Album-opener “You and Me and Time” with Georgette Jones, George’s daughter with Tammy Wynette, is a worthy song about the dynamic between the child of a divorce and her single parent, and while Georgette doesn’t quite possess her mother’s trademark teardrop vocal, her sultry performance leaves little doubt about her parentage. Jones’ voice, however, is no longer of studio quality, and while 2005’s Kicking Out the Footlights…Again survived on the monumental occasion of Jones’ collaboration with Merle Haggard, his 2007 recording with Georgette doesn’t fare so well. “Lovin’ You, Lovin’ Me,” a recently discovered 1977 George and Tammy duet, appropriately closes the album but is an unremarkable addition to their combined catalog that should be valued only by fans desirous of a complete collection.

These two tracks simply don’t compensate for the remaining ten, which feel like a redundant mixed bag of songs that weren’t good enough to make two previous, related collections. Mark Knopfler’s vocal contribution to “I Always Get Lucky With You” is even worse than Jones’ performance on the opening track, while the exciting pairing of Jones and Dolly Parton on “Rockin’ Years” is undercut by hopelessly broken lyrics like: “rockin’ chairs, rockin’ babies/Rock-a-bye, Rock of Ages/Side by side, we’ll be together always.” “Selfishness in Man,” performed with Vince Gill, is inferior to both Jones’ solo version and the recent definitive recording by Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver.

The album’s few highlights include title track “Burn Your Playhouse Down,” performed with Keith Richards, which comes the closest of any song on the collection to actually sounding like a classic George Jones recording, and Mark Chesnutt’s appearance on “When the Grass Grows Over Me,” one of the great traditional weepers. However, even serious Jones fans can be excused for finding better ways to spend their hard-earned dollars, especially if they already own the two collections that spawned ten of the twelve tracks.

Crystal Shawanda grew up in the shadow of despair. A full-blooded Ojibwa, Shawanda was raised on the tiny Wikwemikong Unceeded Indian Reserve, a 160 square mile slice of land carved out of Ontario’s Manitoulin Island. It was a place, she remembers, where hopelessness was epidemic, where alcoholism and suicide were a way of life. A place where many could see no future, no sign of a brighter tomorrow, no new day dawning.

But Shawanda (whose last name literally means ‘dawn of a new day’), is a breathing beacon of hope, living proof that dreams dreamed at any point on the globe, no matter how desolate, no matter how downtrodden, can, with a little bit of hope and whole lot of hard work, come true.

Jim Malec: What were the winters like on Manitoulin Island, where you grew up?

Crystal Shawanda: They were pretty cold. Actually, I can remember them, when I was younger, to have a lot more snow. It doesn’t seem like there’s as much these days. But then again, I’m not there a lot anymore. It was a lot of snow, a lot of ice, and we went outside a lot. We didn’t spend too much time indoors. We were outside snowmobiling, sliding. I’m an outdoors kid–we had two channels on the TV, so I spent a lot of time outside.

JM: At what age did you start snowmobiling?

CS: I don’t even remember! My dad used to have a snowmobile, I think I was six or something–

JM: –Wow.

CS: I didn’t drive it! We would hook up things behind it and ride behind it.

JM: Let me ask you about something in your artist bio–which you penned yourself. You wrote: “I wrote my first song at 9, not knowing that songwriting would become my way of coping with the hopelessness I saw around me on the reservation. Growing up, I watched too many people lose hope and leave this earth…including cousins and many friends of mine. I watched as my brothers lost almost every childhood friend before they were 16.”

When you write that you watched people “lose hope and leave this earth,” are you referring to suicide?

CS: Yeah.

JM: Why do you think there was such hopelessness on the reservation? Was it economic? Psychological? What were some of the things you witnessed that made people lose hope?

CS: I think it was a combination of everything. The reservation where I grew up—I know I say this again and again—it’s a lot like small town America and Canada in a sense. There aren’t a lot of jobs there, there is no economy, there’s nothing to do, nothing to look forward to, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. And you know, sometimes it’s…

On my particular reservation, I think a lot of it was a chain reaction from things that have happened in the past. A lot of it is psychological. And I think some of us didn’t even realize it. I grew up seeing this hopelessness set in with not just some of my family members, but also my friends’ family members. And I actually consider myself one of the luckiest kids on the reserve. There were a lot of kids who had it way worse than I did. There were some people who suffered from alcoholism and depression in my family, but there were a lot of strong people who carried the whole family through. And I was very lucky that I was from a very close family, because we are so involved in each other’s lives and we’re always there for each other, and we’re always so supportive. I think that’s the only reason I came out of that with a good frame of mind.

JM: You also wrote in your bio about Loretta Lynn being very important to both you and your mom. What is your earliest memory of Loretta Lynn? Is there a song that your mom used to sing, or an album that she used to play over and over, or something, musically, that really moved and spoke to a young Crystal?

CS: She played everything. She had a huge Loretta Lynn record collection. And what she played would always change. It depended what mood she was in. I think the album that really affected me the most, though, was Blue Kentucky Girl. Everything though. That’s what I love about Loretta Lynn–every single one of her songs captures a moment in your life or captures a feeling that you’re going through, and it’s all very honest and very real. And very vulnerable.

Watching my mom…even as a kid I could see that she found comfort in [Lynn’s] music. And even almost a friendship. I’d seen Loretta Lynn getting my mom through some tough times. I always wanted to do that for somebody else.

JM: Was music an important part of your community on the reservation? And, if so, does the music that you grew up around as a kid influence the music you make now?

CS: Definitely. There was a lot of music, both traditional and country. And there were a lot of teenagers who would start rock bands and stuff. They also had a lot of variety shows and talent shows—they used to have them a lot when I was a kid.

And then there was this group of musicians who would get together and play acoustic guitars and fiddles, and they’d all sing. Every single one of them was a singer. And I was drawn to them. They would actually come over to my house a lot and we would all jam out in my basement. I suppose it must have been pretty odd to have this eleven year-old kid jamming out with nobody under the age of forty. That was my favorite thing in the whole wide world to do. I struggled to find common ground with people my own age, and I found common ground in anybody that was involved with music.

I also spent a lot of time going to powwows, and my brother would listen to a lot of traditional drum music at home. I think the passion that’s within the traditional music, and the realness that’s in country music, is definitely…it’s all a combination of what my music is today.

JM: Your dad drove a truck, and you used to ride along with him when he had to make a run to Nashville. It must have been great spending that time with him. Do you have a lot of stories from your road trips?

CS: It was amazing. It opened up a whole new world to me and it made me curious to travel. I definitely credit my dad for giving me that yearn to wander, and to travel and to see things and to keep moving. I definitely get that from him. And my parents are the kind of people who love to turn work into fun, and I think that’s what my dad saw his truck driving job as, as a way to bring us out of the reservation and to see what was out there in the world. And it was always very important to both of my parents that me and my brothers understood that we had choices. And, if we wanted to, that there was a whole big world out there for us to discover.

I’ve seen a lot of the world driving in his transport, and it made me realize that if you want to get somewhere, all you’ve gotta do is get in the car and go.

JM: Speaking of Nashville, you recorded your first demo there when you were 12, right?

CS: Yes.

JM: Those were songs you had written yourself?

CS: Yeah. All the songs that were on that album, I started writing them when I was nine. I had a lot of songs done by the time I was twelve, but I narrowed it down to the eight that made the album. Now, when I listen to them, I kinda laugh because I’m talking about things that I shouldn’t even know about. You know, because I grew up listening to Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, and I’d seen people in my family going through the same things that they were singing about in their music. So, for me, it felt natural that that was what I was supposed to sing and that that what I was supposed to write. And, even as a kid, I didn’t think it was weird to be singing about mature things. I’ve always seen myself as, or considered myself, a storyteller. It dates back to the traditional days within my culture–within a community there were always storytellers. As a young child I learned that, and so I kinda applied that to how I would approach a song.

JM: What’s an example of some of those lyrics that you laugh about now? What’s one of those things you say you shouldn’t have known about?

CS: There were a couple of songs about cheating, and a couple of songs about…well there were a lot of cheating songs. [Laughter]. I don’t know what that says. I don’t know, some of the lyrics were…ah, I can’t even remember any of my own songs! But, believe me, they’re very mature!

JM: The first time you sang at Tootsies the owner offered you a regular gig. You turned it down. Tell me about that.

CS: Well, the first time he offered me a gig I was thirteen years old. And I didn’t even live in Nashville. So I kinda didn’t have a choice. I probably would have took the gig if I lived there. Or I would have tried to. But when I moved to Nashville the first time, I was sixteen years old, and when I came back to Tootsies again he offered again. Actually, every time I came in to Tootsies he’d always say, “Are you ready to come work for me yet?” And I would always tell him no, I’m not ready yet.

And I guess for me, the way I felt was, if I wanted to get up on that stage where all these wonderful musicians were up there pouring their hearts out, then I needed to bring something to the table. I needed to live in Nashville and learn from them and watch them and listen to them. I needed to figure out who I was as an artist, so I could know, you know, who do I want to be on that stage? Who am I really? And I wanted to stay true to that, I didn’t want to just get up there and be a singing jukebox. That was really important to me, to learn from the masters who were down there on Broadway, you know, living it every day. So, for me, I wanted to have the right songs and I wanted to get the right band together.

And then I finally got to that point where I was like, I need to just hit it strait on. Just go with it. And, obviously, as an artist, I’ll keep evolving and I’ll keep learning, but I definitely learned the most while I was playing at Tootsies.

JM: I read somewhere that someone told you that you sing like you were born with a broken heart. Who told you that, and do you think it’s a fitting description?

CS: That was Jim McBride.

I think, to an extent, it is a good description. I’m very open with the fact that I’ve always let music be the way I deal with things, and all the feelings that I keep inside of me, I let them out on stage. Everything from the past, everything that’s happening in my present-day. And I think I sing for those who can’t, or can’t anymore—people who…

I really let people’s stories affect me. Not only my family, but people in my community. People I’ve met along the way. Stories that I hear on TV or that I read in a book. There’s a lot of pain in the world. And I can identify with that.

JM: What did you hope to achieve, artistically, with the record, Dawn Of A New Day?

CS: I think we just wanted to capture a combination of everything that I am as an artist and that I am as a person. The whole album is very passionate. It’s emotional. It’s very real. It’s honest and it’s vulnerable. And I’m really proud of the fact that every single story on this album, every single song, is, in it’s own way, a message of hope. I just truly believe that no matter what your background is, you’re gonna be able to connect with every single song on this album. It might help you through a tough day or it might be something to sing along to on a great day. It’s about real life and being able to laugh at it.

JM: Tell me about the album’s opening track, the song “Evolution.”

CS: I didn’t write it. But when I heard that song, I was like, “Hey, somebody’s been stalking me.” It felt like I could have written that song because every single line is very true and very real. It’s very me.

JM: Is that your favorite song on the album?

CS: I couldn’t possibly pick a favorite song on the album. It really depends on what kind of day I’m having, or what mood I’m in. They’re all my favorite, they’re all special in their own way. I mean, I’m really proud of the fact that with this album I didn’t just say, “Ok, I’ve got a record deal, let’s get an album out as soon as possible.”

It was kinda like, if I had the chance to say one thing, if I had one chance to say one thing, what would I want to say? And I think we captured that on this album.

JM: It’s a little unusual, in the current radio climate, to debut as an artist with a ballad like, “You Can Let Go.” Tell me about that song and why it was chosen as the first single?

CS: Because it is so powerful. For me, I didn’t even think about whether we should pick and uptempo or a ballad. For me, it was kinda like, “Here’s this amazing song that I connect to in every way and that takes me a million different directions.” And if it brings that out of me, what could it bring out of other people?

JM: What is country music?

CS: It’s a way of life. It’s common ground to stand on so that we don’t feel alone. And it’s cheap therapy.

All photos used in this article by Russ Harrington, courtesy of RCA Nashville.

• Patty Griffin performed an invitation-only show with keyboardist Ian McLagan and a string quintet in New York the same day her album Children Running Through was released last year. The fruits of that performance will be released on Sept. 9 on a digital album titled Patty Griffin: Live From The Artists Den. Paste Magazine has the track listing.
• By now everyone knows that Don Helms put his signature steel on over 100 Hank Williams recordings, but William Grimes mentions in The New York Times that at the time of his death, Helms was working with Vince Gill on an album of uncompleted Hank Williams songs.
• In his review for Chris Knight’s new album, Heart of Stone, Amber Waves of Twang’s Chip Frazier says Knight sings to the common man in the manner of Cash and Haggard.
• Amanda Palm has a Q&A piece with Brandon Rhyder:
  

  What was it like having Radney Foster as a producer?
  I think this is some of the best, if not the best production he’s done. Everything sounds so full and amazing. From top to bottom, it’s the record I’ve always wanted to make, and I think it also sounds, sonically, the way I’ve always wanted a record to sound. It’s not too polished, but it sounds pretty.

  Be sure to click the music player to the left to listen to Rhyder’s CD, Every Night, due out tomorrow.

• Country, California’s John Maglite put together a playlist of songs dealing with addiction. He writes, “I tried to avoid songs that treat the subject too lightly (”Stay Away from the Cocaine Train”) or too obliquely (”The Bottle Let Me Down”) in favor of songs that look specifically at the psychology of addiction and its destructive impact on addicts and their loved ones.”
• Listen to the Lucky Tomblin Band on Mountain Stage via NPR. Tomblin leads a band of veteran musicians who perform songs from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s.
• KUT has a live performance from Heybale, featuring piano ace Earl Poole Ball, who was part of the house band for The Johnny Cash Show, and Redd Volkaert, who toured with Merle Haggard. Both are also part of the previously mentioned Lucky Tomblin Band.
• Someone claiming to be John Carter Cash left a comment on Real Country Radio’s critical post on the upcoming Johnny Cash Remixed project (via Country, California). Commenting on the same album,Chip Frazier says he was skeptical, but after taking a listen he considers it really cool.
• Sean O’Hagan has a review of David N. Meyer’s biography of Gram Parsons, Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music.
• There’s a discussion going on in the forums about songs that should have been singles, but for one reason or another were never released. A fairly nice list of songs has accumulated, so check some of them out or contribute some of your own to the list.

Songwriters: Rory Feek and Joey Martin

Having not watched one minute of CMT’s Can You Duet, I assumed that a new duo named “Joey + Rory” – really, “Joey + Rory” – would be some MySpace-loving aspiring Disney stars from the likes of Nashville Star’s Laura & Sophie or Pearl Heart. Color me pleasantly surprised that Joey + Rory turned out to be two fully-grown adults singing a mature (well, ok, mature-themed), delightfully acoustic country barn-burner.

When it comes to acoustic music on country radio, there’s Sugarland coffee house-strumming acoustic and there’s Dixie Chicks Home bluegrass-infused, Music Row-be-damned acoustic. Joey + Rory’s debut is much closer to the latter than the former, and it’s arresting to hear what nearly qualifies as a bluegrass song performed by a straight-laced contemporary country singer. Country radio hasn’t had a single with a strong dobro part since Billy Currington’s “Good Directions” (2006) and I can’t even remember the last single with a string-burning bluegrass acoustic guitar part (Alan Jackson’s “I Don’t Even Know Your Name” hit way back in 1995). Give Joey + Rory credit for ditching the Telecaster-heavy arrangement they used on Can You Duet for a delectable, honest-to-goodness country song.

While the instrumentation is refreshing enough, it’s great to hear a cheating song on country radio, even if “Cheater, Cheater” isn’t exactly of the tear-your-heart-out variety. It’s actually downright frivolous, but that just makes it all the more fun. And really, are you allowed to say “ho” on country radio?

Still, it’s not all good for the new duo. Joey Martin doesn’t yet sound like a professional vocalist; “Cheater, Cheater” is oddly phrased and somewhat colorless, which I attribute to Martin’s continued quest to discover the personality within her vocal ability. Rory Feek provides barely audible harmony vocals, suggesting that Joey + Rory is newest member of the Brooks & Dunn and Sugarland lineage of unequal partnerships. And that name: even in a MySpace world, I have to think that “Joey + Rory” is too juvenile for the country radio audience.

But the one thing that should be right for the country radio audience is “Cheater, Cheater.” Play it.

Listen: Joey + Rory - “Cheater, Cheater”

• The International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) announced the nominees for their 19th annual awards. Dailey & Vincent leads the list with a total of 10 nominations and a big congratulations goes out to CMT writer Craig Shelburne, whose writing is a constant source for our news roundups, for his nomination in the Print Media Person of the Year category. Check out the list and go leave your predictions in the forums.
• Test your country music knowledge on recent and not-so-recent happenings with Chet Flippo’s 20 question quiz.
• Go watch episode six of Nashville at Nite which features interviews with Emily West and Texas native, Matt Jenkins.
• Olivia Newton-John’s new album, Olivia Newton-John & Friends, is due out on September 2nd and will feature a duet with Keith Urban on “Sunburned Country,” a song the two co-wrote for an earlier Newton-John album released in 2002.
• The third singer featured in MLB.com’s series linking Country Music Hall of Fame members to baseball is Bill Monroe–who could have been a player had it not been for his poor eyesight. However, he didn’t let his eyesight keep him from fielding a team of band members and road crew to play games on days leading up to their shows. Previous featured singers included Roy Acuff and Charley Pride, while others following Monroe in the series include Gene Autry, Hank Snow, Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves and Conway Twitty.
• Vince Gill and Amy Grant are performing not one, but two of their annual Christmas shows this year. They’ll be held on back to back nights at the Ryman.
• Galleywinter is holding a Brandon Rhyder listening party for his new album, Every Night, on Sunday at 7pm. Rhyder himself will be available to answer any questions you have and to give away prizes.
• A Photocrap exclusive cover of Darius Rucker’s forthcoming album.
• Jessica Simpson has samples of three new songs from her debut country album available on MySpace. Look for “Remember That,” “Do You Know” and “Pray Out Loud.”
• When talking about music, Andrew Dansby says Lyle Lovett is quick to turn into a humble fan and his tastes come across as panoramic, “admiring guys like Glen Campbell and John Denver, who had an easy way around a gentle melody, but also those like Townes Van Zandt and Eric Taylor […].” He says one of the best clues to Lovett’s musical makeup isn’t even a piece of music:
  

  In the liner notes to I Love Everybody (1994), he credits a guitar lick on one song to Taylor … sort of. Actually he credits the lick to Eric Taylor as taught to Taylor backstage by Van Zandt, who’d heard Lightnin’ Hopkins play it live. Rather than putting a journalism degree to use chasing money trails, he follows things like guitar licks.

  Fans of Lovett who have grown accustomed to years between new releases should be excited to find out that he hopes to do some recording this December.

• NPR has an interview with Glen Campbell and samples from new and old songs, plus a teaser to an in-studio acoustic performance of Jackson Browne’s “These Days.”
• Trace Adkins and Dierks Bentley are among artists who have live DVDs of their appearances on the Austin City Limits series being released this fall. Other artists already included in the series that have new DVDs being released are Merle Haggard, Lucinda Williams and Waylon Jennings.
• Don’t miss the two giveaways currently running on The 9513. The first is for three autographed copies of Crystal Shawanda’s album Dawn of a New Day with posters and the other includes three copies of Heidi Newfield’s recently released album What Am I Waiting For. Entering is easy, so uh, what are you waiting for?

Songwriters: Miranda Lambert

Miranda Lambert sheds her renegade persona and exposes her vulnerable side in her latest single, “More Like Her,” the fourth from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and the first solo-penned track to be released from the album.

It’s interesting to note that upon the release of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the marketing and chatter centered around Lambert’s cultivated renegade image, but that died with the extended radio run of “Famous In A Small Town” and never really resurfaced during the 30 week run of “Gunpowder and Lead.” It looks like the death of that image has allowed the focus to center on her artistic merits, netting her Album of the Year at the ACM Awards, but it’ll be interesting to see if it garners her any more commercial success. At the pace they’re going now, it wouldn’t be out of the question to only see new music from Lambert every two years, after four singles have had their chance to run the gamut.

Based on personal experience, Lambert sings about her role as the losing participant of a love triangle in “More Like Her.” The details are ambiguous, creating a lack of a complete narrative, but this allows Lambert to explore her own internal emotional conflict. Vindication, stubbornness, self reliance, and mostly inadequacy make up the emotional complexity as Lambert wonders what she should have done to keep her man and if trading her pain for love would have been worth betraying her personal values.

Whether or not this one has any potential at radio remains to be seen and they certainly aren’t guaranteed to latch on to it, despite her previous two singles making her highest chart climbs to date. The song’s slow tempo, which is the polar opposite of “Gunpowder and Lead,” is quite unlike anything else currently in the Top 40. While the change of pace is certainly refreshing, “Desperation” or “Love Letters” would have made for better releases in today’s radio climate.

To wrap it up, the song is a little ambigous, unlike anything on radio, and not catchy in a singable sort of way due to it’s slow tempo. Commercially, it doesn’t look like it has much going for it and probably wasn’t the best choice for a single. However, Lambert sounds great and sells the song with her performance, making for a worthwhile release. This kind of material, as opposed to her tough-chick-done-wrong romps like “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and “Gunpowder and Lead,” is where her real promise lies and hopefully will become stronger as she develops her craft. Moreover, the song’s uniqueness compared to Top 40 radio is a plus and it’s nice to see something sent to radio for its artistic quality rather than its commercial viability.

Miranda Lambert - “More Like Her”

After ten years as the lead singer of Trick Pony, Heidi Newfield followed her calling to a solo career and teamed up with famed producer Tony Brown to create What Am I Waiting For?, a remarkable solo debut album that critics have lauded as a mature project that showcases Newfield’s artistic evolution:

“The studio marriage of Heidi Newfield and producer Tony Brown is a match made in heaven.”
–Billboard Magazine

“A Lucinda Williams cover, cuts by George Strait favorite Dean Dillon and evocative Music Row outsider Lori McKenna and numerous co-writes by Newfield, who’s no mean songstress herself, all in the hands of veteran producer Tony Brown, set a commendably high standard, even if What Am I Waiting For doesn’t quite live up to its lofty aspirations.”
–The 9513

“What Am I Waiting For captures the essence of traditional country females such as Tammy Wynette, making for a refreshing oasis in a landscape of polished, pristine pop-country music. Unlike the images churned out on Music Row, life isn’t always airbrushed and pretty, and Newfield’s music is about accepting life, and her past, without resignation, but with responsibility and hope.”
–The Tennessean

“A startlingly sensitive, fully rounded album that reveals heretofore unheard dimensions in both [Heidi’s] personality and her talent.”
–Country Weekly

“There isn’t a lot of mainstream country music made these days that seems to speak for, and to, actual adults. Heidi Newfield’s first solo album attempts to fill that void, and she has crafted an album that could only have been made by a woman who has a lot of living behind her, but still quite a bit to go.”
–Country Universe

“Newfield is far from a one-trick pony, making one of the year’s best country albums.”
–People Magazine

We have three copies of Heidi Newfield’s solo debut, What Am I Waiting For, for three lucky readers. To enter to win a copy, leave a comment with the name of the member of a duo or group (current or historic) who you would most like to see establish a solo career. Eligible comments must be posted by 11:59 pm on Monday, August 18th.

Watch the music video for single “Johnny and June:”

• Jamey Johnson is joining Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Kenny Chesney and Dave Matthews for the Farm Aid music festival in New England on Sept. 20. Maybe this will end up being the first step towards a Jamey Johnson and Willie Nelson studio collaboration. Or maybe I’ll just keep on dreaming my dreams.
• Keeping with the Jamey Johnson theme, Chris Neal has a short Q&A with the new age outlaw in Nashville Scene:
  

  Did you have any hesitation about sharing all that darkness with the people who are going to hear the album?
  You always do. Believe it or not, I’m a pretty private guy. I don’t really welcome that many people into my direct situation. But when you go to write a song, you owe it to your listener to give them complete honesty, to tell them the full story in a way they can hear it, understand it and apply it to their life. If you can’t do that, it’s like peeing in your pants: You might get a warm feeling, but nobody else really cares to know. [Laughs.] I’m putting one out there to the guy or girl sitting at the end of the bar who doesn’t understand the feeling they’ve got going on because somebody left ‘em. I want to let those people know it’s going to be all right. Hell, I’m laughing about it already.

• Ralph Emery will serve as a special guest emcee for the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame’s induction ceremony on Aug. 16 in Carthage, TX. The inductees are Buck Owens, Mickey Newbury and The Whites.
• Peter Cooper lists a few of the artifacts to you can look forward to if you plan on visiting the humble, yet informative Kitty Wells exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
• Edd Hurt has his own piece on the Kitty Wells exhibit, but focuses more on telling her story chronologically.
• If you missed the May release of The Wager, a movie starring Randy Travis in the leading role, fret not, Real Country Radio has a review and links to a press release and the movie trailer so you can get a feel for Travis’ acting chops.
• Lost Highway Records will release the new Lucinda Williams album, Little Honey, on Oct. 14.
• Lyle Lovett took the audience on a two-and-a-half hour tour through his 20-year catalog on Tuesday night at Austin’s Long Center. John T. Davs says this year’s edition of the Large Band was typically top-heavy with talented veterans, including mandolin maestro Sam Bush, George Strait’s fiddler Gene Elders and A-list session drummer Russ Kunkel.
• Watch the new video for John Michael Montgomery’s “If You Ever Went Away.”
• The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum may be forced to pony up $1.5 million if it wants to keep a mandolin owned by Bill Monroe, Mother Maybelle’s guitar and two other guitars owned by Johnny Cash. The instruments were donated to the museum by the late Robert W. McLean, who used investors’ money from a Ponzi scheme he was operating to purchase the instruments. When he took his life last September, he owed the investors more than $63 million. (via The Bluegrass Blog)
• Check out the new song, “Too Hard To Say,” from Danielle Peck on her MySpace.
• Although Patsy Cline is one of the most celebrated country singers in history, Craig Shelburne says you’d be hard pressed to find much in her hometown of Winchester, Va. that honors her. But a not-for-profit organization called Celebrating Patsy Cline is trying to change that.
• Listen to Suzy Bogguss on Mountain Stage via NPR.
• Ray Waddell describes the new Waylon Jennings/Shooter Jennings collaboration album titled Waylon Forever:
  

  The album features relatively faithful, if edgier, renditions of Jennings standards like Neil Young’s “Are You Ready for the Country,” Rodney Crowell’s “Ain’t Livin’ Long Like This,” and Jennings’ own “Waymore’s Blues”; a stirring ballad reworking of “Outlaw Sh*t” (previously released as “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand”), a cover of Cream’s “White Room,” as well as the never-released, Waylon-penned “I Found the Body.”

• Nashville Star winner Melissa Lawson has a date with the Grand Ole Opry on Aug. 16.
• If you’ve started planning next year’s vacation and need help deciding on a destination, check out the Grand Ole Opry Classic Country Cruise. Opry stars Mel Tillis, John Conlee and Jeannie Seely along with T.G. Sheppard and Mandy Barnett will provide entertainment, answer questions and share stories.
• Here’s the video for Kenny Chesney’s “Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven,” featuring Bob Marley’s band, The Wailers.
• People.com has the first public photo from Jewel’s wedding. Ty Murray proposed to the singer on her birthday back in May and kept it a secret from everyone, including family, until after they eloped. Murray says the couple has already begun work on starting a family.
• Linda from Still Is Still Moving posted the story behind Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard’s recording of the Townes Van Zandt penned “Pancho and Lefty.” According to Joe Nick Patoski’s biography, Willie Nelson: An Epic Life, Willie stirred Merle from sleep at four in the morning.
  

  Merle shuffled into the studio, bleary-eyed and more than a little spaced-out. Willie handed him the lyrics he’d scribbled on a brown paper bag. Merle ran through the vocals with Willie as they both got a feel for the song about a Mexican bandit and his inscrutable friend, both of them living outside the law. The tape rolled. Merle nailed his vocal in one take and went back to his bus to sleep. The next morning, he found Willie on the golf course and asked if he could do another vocal of the song they’d recorded a few hours earlier.

  Willie laughed and shook his head. “Hell, the tapes’ already on the way to New York.”

• A recent Rodney Hayden newsletter says you can still pick up advance copies of his new album, 12 Ounce World, on his website or at a show, but they’ll be running out soon. After that, you’ll have to wait until the first week in November when it’s released by Smith Music Group.

Songwriters: Josh Gracin

The fourth single from Josh Gracin’s sophmore album, We Weren’t Crazy, falters in the same way that so many of today’s love songs do. It’s generic and devoid of imagination.

Despite initial marketing that touted the album as deep and personal, “Unbelievable (Ann Marie)” is anything but deep or personal. Sure, the name of Gracin’s wife is tacked onto the title, explicitly making her the subject of the love that Gracin croons about, but the lyric has been written in the same way a million times before. Take this line for instance: “Got your breath on my skin and the taste of your kiss.” How many times has the same sentiment been expressed in the same way throughout the past decade? The entire song is littered with the same kind of banal lines that could have been lifted from any generic love song. Where are the love songs with imagination like “Natural High?”

Truely, there’s nothing unique about the vocal, lyric, production, or melody. None of those properties are exceptionally poor, but as a whole, it’s exceptionally bland. It’s not simply enough to go through the motions and put together a technically competent song; without a distinguishable characteristic, it’s simply uninteresting.

And how, exactly, is something like “Unbelievable” supposed to advance Gracin’s career? He has no defining characteristics himself and this song doesn’t do anything to help remedy that, causing him to blend in with a crowd of middle-of-the-road artists. Granted, the previous single, “We Weren’t Crazy,” did make the top 10, but it did so quietly, and who could honestly describe it as a hit?

Listen: Josh Gracin - “Unbelievable (Ann Marie)”