This Tornado Loves You – The Case for Country

By Bennett Owen

“Neko Case turned up 40 years too late to be one of the great country voices of the fifties.”

- Rolling Stone

Credit: MediaAuTimeout

And she’s a redhead.

“The ache in her voice is wrenchingly human.”

 - Spin

Credit: wbez

Did I mention she’s a redhead?

“Neko could harmonize with a garbage disposal and make it sound beautiful.”

- Anonymous Fan

Credit: Bloodshotrecords

Nice head of hair. Now that I’ve exposed my one and only human frailty, have a listen:

A tornado as metaphor for the inner turbulence of a tortured and beautiful soul.  Is there any other kind? 

On her website Neko exclaims that she can’t believe she’s got her own rock band. I wonder how difficult it would be to convince her she doesn’t. When I give her a listen (on a daily basis) I hear nothing but old school, traditional, honest to God country. Need some more proof?

Credit: nekocase

Look at her latest album cover, out there perched on top a horse. A Mustang. OK, it’s a Ford Mustang. Well, actually it’s a ’67 Mercury Cougar named Angie Dickenson. Granted, Neko takes the stage with alt. rock bands like The New Pornographers. She lives in Vermont, a long way from Nashville and avoids the country music capital because, “playing a show there has been hard on us.”  Read on for the story behind that cryptic comment.

But before you do, listen to that voice.

Some hear Patsy Cline, others say she channels a young Dolly Parton. She’s even been compared to Stevie Nicks although I’m not sure that was meant as a compliment. 

Case says she was obsessed with country music as a child growing up with her Grandmother. “It was like a soundtrack for the good times I had as a kid,” she remembers. You don’t have to read too far between the lines to know that those good times were few and far between.  As a teenage runaway, Neko developed a true passion for music that sustained her through many a rough patch. “It makes you feel like you’re not alone,” she told NPR.

Credit:Messyheadblues

The melancholy seeps into her lyrics … a writer of puzzling lines open to interpretation. The emotions they evoke are often sad yet completely avoid self-pity. Not one to use her craft for self-aggrandizement, or sentimental love, or settling scores, she points to Hold On Hold On as one song with biographical elements:

“The most tender place in my heart is for strangers. I know it’s unkind but my own love is much too dangerous.” 

Dark stuff and yet her live performances are invariably boisterous and energetic, as if she’s genuinely having a good time. With you, her one and only fan. It’s a uniquely country trait. Neko describes herself as a blue-collar musician … no dreams of selling out football stadiums, she thrives on the intimacy of sharing the same time and place with her audience, a sentiment captured in this exchange with Puremusic.com:

PM: I’m moved by how much you put into a song. I always feel like you’re actually giving the listener something as if saying, “well here I am. Here it is.”

NC: Ah, thank you. I try. If you were inside of my body you would be hearing, “I got to hit that note … oh my God they’re going to know I’m a fraud! Lift that note! Lift that note … aaaah!”

Her admitted pet peeve is auto tune and pitch shifting, the technological leveling of the musical playing field. She spurns the high tech, preferring endless hours of practice, constantly honing and refining the natural talent within her.  Now hear the result as she transform the childlike phrase ‘la-dee-da’ into a venomous, raging accusation:

Neko once asked a studio techie in Toronto how many people don’t use auto tune and he replied “You and Nelly Furtado.”  “I’m not a perfect note hitter either,” she admits, “but I don’t cover it up with auto tune.”

A technological crutch a lot of Nashville regulars rely on. Cruel irony perhaps that Neko has been handed the equivalent of a ‘you’ll never sing in this town again,” card and all that due essentially to a clothing malfunction. Suffering from heatstroke on a hot July stage she basically stripped down to the basic essentials and the Grand Ol’ Opry couldn’t ‘bare’ it. They banned her for life despite her profuse apologies. “I wasn’t trying to act cool,” she remembers. “I wasn’t trying to kick out the stage lights like Johnny Cash.”

Credit: unleashedsoulgaming

Frankie Ballard – A Buncha Talent

By Jim Poulton

Credit: MusicRemedy.com

Ever hear of Frankie Ballard? Probably not. It was only three years ago that he won Kenny Chesney’s Next Big Star competition for Michigan, two years ago that he staged his first showcase for record companies (he got a contract with Reprise Records from it), and a year ago that his first song, Tell Me You Get Lonely, was released (it made it to number 33 in the charts in early 2011). This week, he released his first album, Frankie Ballard.

Ballard is a young man from Battle Creek, Michigan (where they make Special K and Rice Krispies) who is definitely making a place for himself in the Country Music scene. This year, he’s going to be the opening act for Taylor Swift’s U.S. tour (hard to get much better than that), and he’ll also tour with the great Bob Segar.

Credit: Great American Country

Ballard’s music is probably best categorized as a country/blues/rock double-crossover. He has the country-boy persona down pat (he can say ‘thang’ with the best of them other sangers), but he also has the instincts of a rocker. His first hit, Tell Me You Get Lonely, is all country, but it also gives you a wall of sound reminiscent of 80s rock, and it even has traces of blues riffs (Ballard says he was influenced by Stevie Ray Vaughan, B. B. King, Buddy Guy, and Eric Clapton).

Ballard’s blues chops are even more audible in A Buncha Girls. He’s a confident guitarist who does his own leads – and is good enough to deserve to. While the lyrics in A Buncha Girls at first sound a bit sophomoric, they get better midway through:

“They got high-dollar jeans, belly-button rings, pretty pink painted up toes,
They’ll drink your drinks, make you think, you’re their right-now romeo,
They say sha-la-la, hey hey hey with the band and party all night long,
Laugh about it in the morning, lookin’ at all the pictures and blame it on alcohol.”

Check Ballard out at his website here. You can see a different version of A Buncha Girls on his home page, and there is a two-part interview that will introduce him to you. I think you’ll be hearing more from this guy.

Sean McConnell - Texas Star

By Jim Meyer

Sean McConnell. Photo courtesy of LoneStarMusic.com

As I've said in this column, my best source right now for new country music is a little radio station in Fort Worth, Texas: KFWR (aka "The Ranch"). They play music by Texas artists ONLY -- and, frankly, it's the only kind of country music I listen to these days.

They've been featuring a singer-songwriter who's really caught my attention -- Sean McConnell. Near as I can tell, he grew up in the Boston area and is now based in Austin. He's written songs for some of my favorite Texas groups, including "In My Arms Instead" (the Randy Rogers Band).


 
The first time I heard "Lie Baby Lie," I stopped what I was doing and just focused on the blazing vocal, the chord structure and the main riff. OK, this song is probably more "rock" than "country" -- but good music is good music, regardless of category.

There are several videos of this song floating around the web. Here's the best one I've found:



The good folks over at Lone Star Music have put together a page with lots of his songs on it.

Check out one of my favorite McConnell songs, "Reckless Love." You can hear it on Lone Star Music or on YouTube:

While I was researching this post, I came across another radio station that plays Texas music, with a few "classic" tunes thrown in for good measure: KTWL in Hempstead.

Cool Water – The Sons of the Pioneers

by Jim Poulton

My wife and I grew up in different states – she in a small town in Montana, and I in a middle class subdivision of Salt Lake City. But we each had a favorite album that we listened to over and over as children. And we discovered a little while ago that it was the same album: Cool Water by The Sons of the Pioneers.

Left to right: Tim Spencer, Bob Nolan, Hugh Farr, Roy Rogers (Gus Mack, announcer). Photo courtesy of bobnolan-sop.net

The Sons of the Pioneers have left a long (and dusty) trail in the history of cowboy music. Starting in 1934, their original members included Tim Spencer, Bob Nolan, Hugh Farr and Roy Rogers (of Dale Evans fame). They were about as famous as you could get in those days:  their music appeared in over 90 western films, and they are the authors of some of the most iconic cowboy songs that have ever been written. Bob Nolan, the main songwriter in the group, wrote Cool Water and Tumbling Tumbleweeds, two songs that have defined the west as much as cattle and rattlesnakes.

Bob Nolan. Photo courtesy of bobnolan-sop.net

Here is Cool Water, from an original 78rpm Gramophone:

And here’s Tumbling Tumbleweeds:

You can also listen to dozens of different versions of each song by following these links: Cool Water;  Tumbling Tumbleweeds.

As a group, The Sons of the Pioneers are still around today. They’ve won about every award possible in the country/cowboy music genre, including the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Western Music Association Hall of Fame, the Smithsonian Institute’s ‘National Treasure’ Designation, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, and the Golden Boot Award. They even have their own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. More than that, though, they are the group that was instrumental in putting cowboy music on the map. Before them, there really wasn’t much of a genre called cowboy music. After them, cowboy music was ridin’ easy in the saddle. As Doug Green of Riders in the Sky put it: ‘Any of us who sing Western music, it all goes back to the Pioneers.’ 

Photo courtesy of bobnolan-sop.net

Actually, people were paying attention to cowboy songs prior to the appearance of The Sons of the Pioneers. In 1921, N. Howard (‘Jack’) Thorp collected and published a collection of cowboy poems and songs. The volume is now in the public domain, and you can download it for free here. Or you can purchase a more recent edition here.

Here are the first two stanzas of The Cowboy’s Life, heard by Thorp ‘at a little round-up at Seven Lakes, New Mexico, by a puncher named Spence’:

The bawl of a steer
To a cowboy’s ear
Is music of sweetest strain;
And the yelping notes
Of the gray coyotes
To him are a glad refrain.

And his jolly songs
Speed him along
As he thinks of the little gal
With golden hair
Who is waiting there
At the bars of the home corral.

PATSY CLINE - Walkin' After Midnight

by Jim Meyer

Patsy Cline was killed in a small plane crash near Cambden, Tennessee on March 05, 1963. She was just 30 years old. Just days before, she'd told her friends, Dottie West and June Carter of a sense of impending doom and had even written out a will on a piece of Delta Airlines stationary. One always wonders what could have been...but then again, her musical legacy is sublime.

Having spent the afternoon listening to Texas music,  I went off looking for more traditional fare. This is my absolute no. 1 favorite Patsy Cline song.  Yes, I like it more than "Crazy" and "She's Got You":

I challenge you to listen all the way through without taking a shot (or several) of whiskey. Produced by the mighty Owen Bradley, founder of the "Nashville Sound."

Just about every female country singer out there has tried to imitate her -- but I've heard only two that got it right. One is k.d. lang, and the other is LeAnn Rimes. This is downright scary:

By the way, the Patsy bio-pic "Sweet Dreams" is not terribly realistic, but you do get to watch Jessica Lange for two hours, and she had the good sense to just lip-synch the originals.