Jon Pardi opens his new album with this wonderful “Old Hat”, a wonderful anthem for old cats that aren’t ready to give old hats the boot, as he says in the lyrics, that is to say, he’s not ready to stop wearing his hat because it isn’t fashionable in the music industry nowadays. This album has odes to cowboys, sweet memories about old times, and tributes to the old-timers who make the best drinking buddies in street joints. Pardi got to the top of the country charts the old-fashioned way: through slow, steady work. His first two albums found the Californian singer focusing his music on hardcore basics and it turned him into a star, so it comes as no surprise that he doesn't mess with the great formula for its 2019 sequel, Heartache Medication. Reuniting with his co-producer Bart Butler, Pardi barely takes a glance at the present on this album. Proof of that is the second song, the one giving name to the album, “Heartache Medication”, where the lyrics explain that the best formula to get over his lost love and heal his heartache is taking steady dosis of hardwood floors, jukebox country songs, beer bubbles and neon signs that can be found in honky tonks, which is the name for old country bars that can be found in Texas along the roads.
Written by Rhett Akins, producer Bart Butler, and Jon Pardi himself, we’ve just listened to this wonderful honky tonk song called “Me and Jack”, a song that reminds us of the good ole country music of the 1990’s made by such wonderful artists like Joe Diffie, Travis Tritt, or Garth Brooks, to name a few. The fact that I say Garth Brooks is no coincidence. While growing up in Dixon, California, Jon fell in love with country music when he was still a kiddo, inspired by the karaoke machine in possession of his grandmother. He was drawn to hardcore singers ranging from classic singers like Geroge Jones, to more contemporary but still traditional like George Strait, and he took a liking to singing while performing at his dad’s birthday party when he was just seven years old, in which he sang the classic “Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks.
Country music is all a great family, where such things as songwriter Rhett Akins, whose heydays as a singer happened in the 90s, can collaborate in this wonderful album next to other songwriters whose hey days are happening right now, as is the example of Eric Church and Miranda Lambert, who wrote the next ballad we’re about to listen, with singer Lauren Alaina singing next to Jon Pardi in “Don’t Blame it on Whiskey”, a song talking about a couple with troubles. There we can listen to such lines as “the sober truth”, or “let’s get down to the bottom, and not just the bottom of the glass”.
Wonderful two more cuts extracted from this wonderful album. “Tied One On”, an hemorrage of honky tonk to the core, followed by “Buy that man a beer”. This new record of Jon Pardi is not country music by close approximation, but really the nitty gritty of it, and taking into account that this album has been produced in Nashville, it is a truly remarkable thing taking into account the 95% of what is being released in Music City, USA.
It is quite surprising that this guy is in fashion there, and he cojntinues to be one of the top releases in all of country each week. Regardless of his country roots and his attachment to traditional country, he’s still willing to collaborate with his contemporaries in the mainstream, he is leading by example and being a gentleman about it, proving that strong country sounds can still be successful to wide audiences if they’re just given a chance and opening doors for other performers to do the same.
We’ll say goodbye to Jon Pardi with two more wonderful tracks, “Call me country”, an anthem similar to the classic “Murder on Music Row” that in the 90s George Strait and Alan Jackson sang to complain about an evidence nowadays: that Nashville has killed real country music by erasing it from mainstream radios on the grounds that it is not marketable or fashionable any longer. And the wonderful “Just like Old Times”, where the steel guitar cries just like old times, as the lyrics say. A complete breath of fresh air, that given the opportunity, you should possess in vynil, like the good ole days.
Inspired by the music of Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn that her grandmother would play when she was growing up, Charlie Marie chose the burden of performing country music in a classic style. As a Rhode Islander, this music comes from an obvious and sincere passion that translates into the stunning results of this wonderful EP of just 5 tracks that does what most country records fail to do in 10 or more, which is to connect with the audience on a deeple human level, and satiate the expectations present in the avid country listener. Even though she was raised in the north, whe is no stranger to life in the south, as Charlie Marie attended Blemont University in Nashville, and participated in some co-songwriting sessions while in the city, getting a segirous does of the culture and influences she had enjoyed from afar from many years before. We’ve just listened to “Countryside”, a lesson into the foolhardy notion that country music is onlyu for those in designated regions. Let’s listen to two more songs from this Extended Play before we say goodbye to her beautiful voice. The first one, “Shot in the Dark”, a wonderful ballad of a woman who finds desperate love in a honky tonk, falling in love with a cowboy who will just be her next one-night stand. And we’ll say goodbye with “Rodeo”, another wonderful ballad. This being her second album makes me think that though this is not her first rodeo in the music industry, we’ll soon listen more from this talented voice. Remember her name: Charlie Marie, from Rhode Island.
Don’t regard Ian Noe as just another songwriter trying to gain national attention. This Kentucky-born original from Beattyville is almost stepping into Americana music, borrowing heavily from songwriters such as Prine, Dylan, and Guthrie. Both folk and country could fight to claim primary rights for Ian Noe’s music, and his music and songwriting make a strong case for inclusion in both.
On this album called Between The Country, people die, and the light of the world is clouded out by the gloom of hard times, broken hearts, and troubled minds. The American dream is forgotten in the struggle for everyday survival, where death isn’t always regarded as a catastrophic outcome, but is sometimes seen as sweet relief from earthly burden, and one marks themselves fortunate if they even receive a proper burial. We’ve just listened to “Irene (Ravin’ Bomb)”, the hard story of a Kentuckian girl with a troubled past.
There’s no mistaking that some of Kentucky’s most depressed regions fuel such harrowing accounts of life and death, whether it takes shape as a murder ballad similar to those in the historical past, or an account of meth addiction that’s all too real today.
We’ll finish today’s show with two wonderful country songs from this fantastic artist, Ian Noe, with “Barbara’s Song” and “That Kind of Life”.
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