Contemporary country is pure BS

Every time I get drunk in a bar with karaoke, that's the one I look for.

 

The aforementioned Brad Paisley is one of the few popular country artists who has great musical chops. He tends to get a little carried away with the goofy songs sometimes, but he's a hell of a guitar player.

EDIT: I tried to like Shooter Jennings, but I can't. If his last name was Kopinski, he'd be sacking groceries at an A&P in Brentwood.

 

Well, good luck with that anyway. Cory never went mainstream — he works the Texas circuit and makes a shitload of money that way. He's never signed with a major label, so looking on iTunes may be a waste of your time.

Cory, early Pat Green, Reckless Kelly ... that's a good start. Checking out Gruene With Envy may be helpful as well.

You may find Texas Music Cafe of interest, as well.

 

Saw Morrow at Luckenbach about five years ago. In a dirt-floor shack about the size of my kitchen. Cool dude.

 

Walt Wilkins, who at one time played guitar for Pat Green and might still, is another very good singer-songwriter who tours almost exclusively in Texas. I've been trying to catch him in concert for years, but I'm a little far away from the Lone Star State.

 

Contemporary country is country in name only.

Conway Twitty, these peeps ain't. If Loretta Lynn were in the grave, she'd be a spinnin'.

 

But hasn't Nashville's raison d'etre (just wanted to throw in a fancy-shmancy word that country doesn't use) forever been to sand the rough edges off of every artist? Billy Sherrill tried to drown George Jones in the deep end of a pool of syrupy strings for years. Floyd Cramer's piano tinkling was a golden shower to wash away any rural dirt. The Outlaw movement started when, the early 70s? Heck, the Jesus thing is even sanded down -- does anyone release anything as gloriously religiously crazy, on the side, as the Louvin Brothers' "Santa Is Real?"

The big difference now is that a lot of crap that filled country radio 40 years ago has long died out, while the actual talent is remembered, so we don't have the disadvantage of hearing every would-be hick as we do today. Also -- and rock 'n' roll ended up with the same conundrum -- the artists themselves have grown wiser about how to make a living and not get screwed, so instead of Tammy Wynette getting molded and ripped off, Reba McEntire and her ilk are active participants in every business decision and musical decision. Jones overcame the strings because he was such a knuckleheaded hellraiser that nothing could stop him. These newer artists are way too mentally stable to overcome the blandness they themselves are very accepting of.

 

So are listeners who can't, or won't, differentiate between marketing and actual musical acumen.

 

Right on, bubs.

My music collection is littered with Keith Whitley, Earl Thomas Conley, Hank Sr., etc., but I will be damned if I'm going to enjoy half the garbage put our by mainstream country artists today.

I love country music. REAL country music.

 

Well, it's a lot like NASCAR. The series has long been trying to get away from its moonshine roots, but once it really started to expand outside its shitkicking base, and that equated into piles of money no one of that ilk had ever seen before, that effort went into overdrive. Garth Brooks = Jeff Gordon.

 

No offense, but this right here would be the problem.
I moved to the northeast 25 years ago, right about the time country music started to suck. All my neighbors here like to tell me how much they LOVE country music ... what they mean is, nobody makes the soft rock 70s schlock they grew up liking, so they've migrated to the kind of crud celebrated by the Country Music Awards. If the Carpenters and the Captain and Teneille (sp? I'm not googling that shit) were making music today, it would be "country" music.

 

I never thought I'd say this, especially not at the same time, but fuckabuncha Bubbler and pallister.

George Strait is my god. So there.