Help Us Curate: Good Country Music
After writing my eloquent and diplomatic piece rant about contemporary country music today (it’s just as bad as that other CCM!), I wondered how we could crowd source all the good country music into one spot. Since this webzine is The Curator, I thought to myself the most productive thing to do at this point is to curate a list of good country music artists. These country music acts should be contemporary, so naming the greats (Cash, Lynn, Jones, Williams, Twitty, Cline, etc.) is not necessary. We want to know who is making good country music right this very moment.
Here’s all you have to do:
- think of up to three great country artists
- list them in a comment
After two weeks we’ll cull the list down and then have a debate. Hopefully we can get to a Top 20 list of Curator fan’s top country acts.
To help you get started, here is my suggestion for the list: Dierks Bentley.
Happy listing!
One of the challenges in naming current artists is defining the pool from which one may draw. The rise of alt country and alt folk and the willingness of artists to work across or to blend/bend genres makes it difficult to identify those who are “country” artists. As this post suggest, it is hardly satisfying to settle for those the industry puts forth as country artists.
I might suggest Jessica Lea Mayfield, Delta Spirit, Elvis Perkins in Dearland and Ferraby Lionheart, though you’ll find that their work often strays from (or only sometimes strays into) what might be considered country.
I’m not sure where the line is between country and folk, or country and bluegrass, but in any case I’d say Joe Pug and the Punch Brothers.
Old Crow Medicine Show, David Rawlings/Gillian Welch, Chuck Ragan, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band (country-blues) and some innovative folks like: Crooked Still and Punch Brothers.
I don’t know the line between folk/bluegrass/country but my votes are Gillian Welch, Patty Griffin and some local VA boys- The Steel Wheels.
Zoe Muth out of Seattle is one of the best I know of right now.
1) Dwight Yoakam – seen him 7 times going back to If there was a way album.
Most recently with Eddie Perez (who replaced Pete Anderson) in NYC ’08.
2) Emmylou Harris – beautiful voice and soul. Voice is angelic and can elicit tears.
Seen her four times, once with Elvis Costello and once with Linda Rondstadt.
3) Steve Earle – masterful first album, Guitar Town. Has evolved from outlaw to
A troubadour with social and political Conscience.
4) No penalty for additional choices- Lucinda Williams and the Little Willies with
Norah Jones.
The Band Perry, Alison Krauss and Union Station, and Lady Antebellum
Personally I love Josh Turner. It’s a fun blend of old-timey and more contemporary sounds. I grew up in Virginia, so country music is part of remembering home and family. I love that it’s outrageously sentimental. In any case I love Stanley Fish’s words about country music–the maudlin, the unabashed:
Every time I return to it after an absence, I am struck again by the power and integrity of country music. In part it is the lyrics, self-consciously clever (“If I said you have a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?”), alert to and accepting of contradictions (“She’s a Saturday night out on the town/Church on Sunday girl”), precise in their observation of small detail (“She left the suds in the bucket and the clothes hanging out on the line”). In part it is the structuring of a narrative (usually unabashedly maudlin) by a line that gradually changes meaning, as when George Jones sings, “He stopped loving her today”, and reveals in the last verse that he has stopped only because he is dead. In part it is the affirmation and exploration of a raunchy Christianity that holds drinking, cheating, criminality and Jesus in a volatile and energising mix. In part it is the extraordinary musicianship of pianists, fiddlers and guitarists who bear comparison to members of any symphony orchestra. And most of all it is the fact that when I’m in the car searching for something to listen to, the sound of country music, even in just a few notes, is unmistakable. Country music knows what it is. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2007/feb/03/weekend7.weekend5]