“Big Iron Train”, the name of this song included in the last album published by Ben Jarrell called “Troubled Times” that we started introducing in our last show. This native son of the state of Alabama published some months ago the best album of this year, plenty of outlaw country of great authenticity, to the extent that one cannot stop listening to it once and again. This is the kind of record I’d like to play in every single show, but unfortunately it is quite hard to find real good music newly released, so when one bumps into one long play like this one, it is just red meat for hungry ears. The album was published at Southern Grounds Studios, in Nashville, and in it we can enjoy Mike and Steve Daily, father and son, playing the pedal steel (Mike), and the Lead Guitar (Steve) respectively. We’ll listen to a couple more songs from the album, “Black Helicopter”, where I can hear a little bit of Waylon Jennings, and “My Old Friend”, with a clear similarity to Garth Brook.
After being semi-retired for 14 years, Garth Brooks wasn’t convinced he could jump back into mainstream country music and touring at a level with which he was confident. Things had changed since 2000, when h announced his retirement. At that time, smartphones didn’t exist, and cellphones weren’t predominant, let alone Facebook, or music streaming services. As for new music, Brooks released “MAn Against Machine”, his first album of all-new material in 13 years, in 2014, then “Gunslinger” came along in 2016. Now, in 2019, Garth Brooks has released several songs, the first of which is this “All Day Long”, with jukeboxes, beer and pool in place of boots and cowboys hats. Singing in his most affected drawls, Brooks celebrates the barroom life in a 90s style production. At 56, Brooks remains a master of the country song. Proof of that is that he was nominated for Entertainer of the Year at the CMA Awards (the big brother of the awards show) in 2015. He didn’t win, but he did take home such trophy in 2016 and also 2017. But curiously enough, most fans can’t hear it because Garth is notoriously protective of his music, removing any recording or live performance that pops un on You Tube at lightining speed. He even withheld his songs from digital services until 2014, when he went all-in with a digital music provider called GhostTunes and then partnering up with Amazon as the only digital service carrying his new music and back catalog. Anyway, it is my opinion that by withholding his latest offering from services like AppleMusic and Spotify, the latter of which still mainaing a free option, Brooks is shooting himself in the foot with younger listeners, don’t you think? And even with his Amazon deal, Brooks holds fast to his decision to not allow his songs to be downloaded as individual tracks, so “All Day Long”, the song we’ve been able to listen to, is available for streaming only, included in his forthcoming album “Fun”. We’ll say goodbye to Garth, and his work only available in pre-order fashion, listening to two more songs, the first of which called “Stronger than me”, and then a collaboration with Blake Shelton called “Dive Bar”, which is now on country radio. A Dive Bar is a colloquial AMerican term for a disreputable bar, where local residents gather to drink and socialize... and to listen to country music, of course. The song is at this point sitting on the number 25 of the Hot Country Songs from Billboard magazine.
Blake Shelton, the artist collaborating with Garth Brooks in the last song we’ve aired possesses a worm, masculine ease that has given his rowdier numbers a sense of sly humor, but this relaxed touch also made him an effective crooner of ballads, the ace in the hole that helped him cross over from country to the mainstream in the 2010s, reason why he is a superstar on TV, especially in the American version of “The Voice”. A native of Ada, Oklahoma, Blake picked up the guitar in his early adolescence and started writing songs not long afterward. He left his home state for Nashville just two weeks after his high-school graduation in 1994, bitten by the musical bug. The legendary songwriter Bobby Braddock, who penned George Jones’s “He Stopped Loving Her Today, discovered Blake in the late 90s and brought him to the attention of Giant Records, recording an unstoppable career in 2001 with the release of his first single: “Austin”. Blake is also known for marrying (and later divorcing) Miranda Lambert, a runner-up on Nashville Star, a show similar to that of “The Voice”. Regardless of their successful careers, and their loyalty to country music, both Blake and Miranda, still publishing today, have gotten a bit detached from what pure country music used to be. We’ll say goodby to Blake Shelton listening to the only song from his last album, called “Texoma Shore”, that can be considered within the standards of bearable country. The name: “Hangover Due”.
Seventh album in her career, spanning almost 15 years now, Miranda Lambert has just released “Wildcard”, a new chapter in her career. Coming from her last album, called “The Weight of These Wings”, a very moody album that found the singer sorting through the emotial wreckage of a public divorce from Blake Shelton, Lambert has decided to look on the brighter side for this last piece of work. She has also parted ways with Frank Liddell, her producer since she started in this music business, to hire Jay Joyce, who also worked with the Brothers Osborne and Eric Church. The first track we’ve listened to is “Locomotive”, the seventh track into the album, so you can imagine that the first 6 we not that good. Before talking a bit more about this CD, let’s listen to a couple more songs: “Tequila Does”, and “Track Record”.
“Wilcard” is almost constructed as a jukebox with songs completely unconnected one with another. There is no doubt that Miranda Lambert is delighted to venture outside of her comfort zone. The album departs quite a lot from traditional country, indulging in the retro-80s rock and electronic R&B. Perhaps “Wildcard” isn’t as emotionally resonant as some of Lambert’s other records, but there’s no denying that she’s delivered exactly what she intended with this album, which is to experiment. Also remember that Miranda relies more on country when she publishes with her band “Pistol Annies”, the last album of which, we aired in this show months ago. We’ll listen to one more song from Miranda, called “Dark Bars”, and we will say goodbye to our show detoxing a bit with supertraditional country in the form of a duet called “Steel Blossoms”. Sara Zebley and Hayley Prosser are two former elementary school teachers who met in Pennsylvania while playin in separate proyects. Immediately noticing a musical kinship between each other, the Steel Blossoms were formed, eventually reclocating to Nashville and spending ample time developingt their songs and sound on the road and house concerts. Whatever your mood or sensibility, the Steel Blossoms have you covered, and show a pretty unbelievable range and proficiency with whatever they choosde to pen and sing about. As we are running out of time, we’ll go with the promise of picking up the rest of the album for next edition. We’ll say goodbye with the song that opens the album “You’re the reason I drink”, and the amazing tune “Pick me Up”. So remember, first Miranda Lambert’s “Dark Bars”, and then Steel Blossoms’s “You’re the reason I drink” and “Pick Me Up”.
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