Tag: country music review

The End of Yellowstone

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So, something happened to Yellowstone.  I think Kevin Costner got sick of playing cowboy “JR” and quit.  Well, good.  It’s a bizarre nighttime soap with a cast of characters that run the gamut from absurd, to revolting to demented.  Now granted, the visuals of Montana and the use of excellent non-mainstream country music does make watching the show interesting from time to time.  But it’s still a weird and wacky cartoon in my opinion.  But Camera Girl loves her some psycho-drama.  So of course we’re in.

And the current situation does appear to be headed for a small screen Armageddon.  The first episode opens up with John Dutton (Costner’s character) dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in the Montana Governor’s mansion.  His insanely driven daughter Beth and his likeable son Kayce converge on the scene to plan what to do about the death of their father.  But Beth is already sure that the death is murder set in motion by their adopted brother Jamie.

And she’s right.  The flashbacks show that Jamie is in cahoots with a vixen from a hedge fund company that will do anything including murder to get their hands on Dutton’s land to build a resort and airport complex.  And we see deals being made with black ops contractors and other ridiculous things.

Okay, so this could be a lot of fun.  I already know how I think this will end.  Kayce Dutton’s son is half Indian.  I’m guessing the ranch becomes a Native American possession with Kayce as the steward of the land on behalf of his son.  It goes along with a bunch of anti-colonial jibber jabber that Kayce’s wife was spouting a couple of years ago.

But the fun will be a full-fledged shooting war between the Dutton Ranch and the bad guys.  Who knows, there could even be tanks and helicopters with sidewinder missiles.  Kayce is the head of the livestock police (really?) and apparently that gives him access to armored vehicles and other military grade equipment.  He’s not just the dog catcher.

There will be bullets and rocket propelled grenades and all kinds of ridiculous stuff going on.  And as a finale Beth has sworn a blood oath that the last thing Jamie sees before he dies is Beth laughing at him.  Now that I’d like to see.  Because it is the outcome that the show has been working up to from the beginning.  Beth is barking-at-the-moon crazy but Jamie is a cowardly, smarmy, disloyal worm and seeing him get terminated by Beth will be enormously cathartic.  Of course, I’m pretty sure Beth and a bunch of other characters will probably end up dead too.  But that would make the whole crazy thing a little less improbable.  So sure, why not?

So, bring it on, bring it on, bring it on.  Let the lead fly and let all the cowboys, cowboy up.  We’re headed for the last roundup and when the dust settles all the black hats will be pushing up daisies and one cowboy and one Indian and their son will be left living happily ever after.  How can you not love that?  Well, sorta.

Little Songs by Colter Wall – A Country Music Review

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I’ve been a fan of Colter Wall since a friend of mine introduced me to his eponymous album, “Colter Wall.”  That collection had some very strong songs like Kate McCannon and Bald Butte.  And in general, that was a big album.  This month I got ahold of his album called “Little Songs.”  And that is surely an honest title.  The longest title clocks in at 4:32 and the shortest is 2:25.  And more than that, none of these songs is big in its impact.  They’re quiet, almost subdued.

They’re of the western genre in the country/western alliance and they have the understated manner of the modest inhabitants of the Great Plains, especially the northern expanse of the plains in Canada where Colter Wall hails from.  We hear about ranchers and cowboys and farmers and their work and their romances and their blues.  But there’s no shouting unless you count a little yodeling in one song.

So, this isn’t a collection to get you all stirred up.  It’s quiet and small.  I’m a fan of colter Wall so I’ll add these songs to my MP3 player and they’ll leaven my collection of country music with some of the softer notes that provide a counterweight to all the fussing’ and shouting’ that some of my other songs provide.  Your mileage. of course, may vary.

Hayes Carll – Little Rock (2005) – A Country Music Review

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I bought this album seven years ago and then didn’t listen to it until last year for reasons that I haven’t been able to remember.  And when I did, I just added it to a large rotation of music tracks so that I never even noticed that the songs were by someone new.  But today I played the album and said, “Hey I love this stuff!”  So, I looked him up and found out his genre is considered “Americana.”  I figure that means he doesn’t want to be called a country music singer because he’s a lefty and there’s more street cred with the hippies if you say you’re an Americana artist.  Well since I couldn’t find any offensive lefty stuff on his website, I haven’t cast him into the outer darkness.

This guy writes most of his own stuff and it’s good.  Stylistically, it’s all over the map.  There’s blues, country, rock and roll, folk and a mixture of acoustic and electric instruments.  He’s got sad songs and laments, comic songs and tales of the musician life.  It’s really hard to pigeon hole him.  His voice is a little ragged but definitely interesting.

He’s definitely not mainstream commercial country which for me is kind of a good thing.  I’m going to have to get some of his other albums.  I recommend this one for country music fans.  Whether he’s filthy hippie or not is an open question.  I’ll have to do more research.

Eric Church – A Country Music Review

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A couple of years ago I bought all five of Eric Church’s albums (see playlists at end).  I had seen him perform a couple of time on one or the other of the Country Music Awards shows and I thought he was head and shoulders above the stuff that was getting played on the radio stations.  When all that Bro Country stuff started up ten years ago it sounded so awful and contrived and just plain stupid that I was glad whenever I found someone who could write meaningful lyrics and talk about something resembling real life.

Church portrays himself as a working-class kid who grew up in a small town filled with work that got his hands dirty and Friday nights filled with booze and girls.  And that’s what he writes about.  But he also sings about some less simplistic goings on.  His first album “Sinners Like Me” has a song called “Lightning” that is the execution day recollection of a man who killed a liquor store clerk while attempting to rob the store.  We get his thoughts seeing the mother of the boy he killed and his own daughter sitting in the viewing area.  It’s a powerful and skillfully done song.  And that album is full of good songs.

In his later albums he starts singing about his life as a grown man and we hear about his wife and kids and what it means to be a wild kid who has to become a grown up.  And to other grown ups this might resonate a lot more than another song about Jack Daniels kicking Eric’s butt on Sunday morning.

On the five albums I’ve got he has about sixty songs and I’d say I only truly dislike three songs.  And one of those is his tribute to pot which I guess is one of his vices.

There are twenty songs that I like a whole lot.  And the rest are regular good, meaning I can listen to them in the rotation without getting tired of them.  I think that’s actually very good.  Church has an interesting voice and I’d describe his music as country rock.

If you want a song writer that can write both the Saturday Night honky-tonk songs and also more thoughtful and realistic stories then Eric Church is worth a listen to see if he clicks with you.  I can say I highly recommend him based on my standards. I’ve bolded the songs I especially like.

Sinners Like Me (2006)

  1. “Before She Does”
  2. “Sinners Like Me”
  3. “How ‘Bout You”
  4. “These Boots”
  5. “What I Almost Was”
  6. “The Hard Way”
  7. “Guys Like Me”
  8. “Lightning”
  9. “Can’t Take It with You”
  10. “Pledge Allegiance to the Hag” (featuring Merle Haggard)
  11. “Two Pink Lines”
  12. “Livin’ Part of Life”

Carolina (2009)

  1. “Ain’t Killed Me Yet”
  2. “Lotta Boot Left to Fill”
  3. “Young and Wild”
  4. “Where She Told Me to Go”
  5. “Longer Gone”
  6. “Love Your Love the Most”
  7. “Smoke a Little Smoke”
  8. “Without You Here”
  9. “You Make It Look So Easy”
  10. “Carolina”
  11. “Hell on the Heart”
  12. “Those I’ve Loved”

Chief (2011)

  1. “Creepin'”
  2. “Drink in My Hand”
  3. “Keep On”
  4. “Like Jesus Does”
  5. “Hungover & Hard Up”
  6. “Homeboy”
  7. “Country Music Jesus”
  8. “Jack Daniels”
  9. “Springsteen”
  10. “I’m Gettin’ Stoned”
  11. “Over When It’s Over”
  12. “Lovin’ Me Anyway”

The Outsiders (2014)

  1. “The Outsiders”
  2. “A Man Who Was Gonna Die Young”
  3. “Cold One”
  4. “Roller Coaster Ride”
  5. “Talladega”
  6. “Broke Record”
  7. “Like a Wrecking Ball”
  8. “That’s Damn Rock & Roll”
  9. “Dark Side”
  10. “Devil, Devil (Prelude: Princess of Darkness)”
  11. “Give Me Back My Hometown”
  12. “The Joint”

Mr. Misunderstood

  1. “Mr. Misunderstood”
  2. “Mistress Named Music”
  3. “Chattanooga Lucy”
  4. “Mixed Drinks about Feelings”
  5. “Knives of New Orleans”
  6. “Round Here Buzz”
  7. “Kill a Word”
  8. “Holdin’ My Own”
  9. “Record Year”
  10. “Three Year Old”

Colter Wall – Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs – A Country Music Review

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Back in 2017 a musician buddy of mine told me he saw a young country singer in Nashville named Colter Wall.  He had a murder ballad called Kate McCannon on his album that once I heard it I really liked.  And once I heard the rest of the album, I thought was exceptional.  So, I’ve been following his music since then.  And he’s getting some good play on a few movie soundtracks and on the TV show Yellowstone.  I was looking forward to his album this year.  But I’ve been so distracted by the political horror show we’ve been living through that I missed the release.  I bought the album last week and finally listened to it today.  And it was a good listen.

Now his 2017 album had a sort of alt-country feel to it.  This album is a straight up western music album.  There are songs about cattle farming and rodeos and cowboying and gunfighters.  You see Colter is from Saskatchewan Canada which is north of Montana and is still like what we think of as the old west.  None of these songs are as emotional or quirky as some of the stories on his 2017 debut and none of them knocked me out of my chair but I thoroughly enjoyed the familiarity and simplicity of the western tunes.  The guitar and fiddle play are pleasing and Colter’s baritone sound is easy to listen to.

If you’re looking for some new music and like old time western music, I think you’ll enjoy this album.  I did.

Here is the song list:

Western Swing & Waltzes

I Ride An Old Paint: Leavin’ Cheyenne

Big Iron

Henry And Sam

Diamond Joe

High & Mighty

Talkin’ Prairie Boy

Cowpoke

Rocky Mountain Rangers

Houlihans At The Holiday Inn

Yellowstone – A Television and Country Music Review

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Camera Girl is a remarkable human being but she is, foremost, a woman. And any husband worth his salt will tell you that’s not an unalloyed blessing. One of the many things that separate women from rational human beings is their love of soap operas. And this includes that bane of late 20th and early 21st century life, the nighttime soap. Luckily when we were young, we had children so we were too busy in the heyday of nighttime soaps to watch Dallas, Dynasty, Knots Landing, Melrose Place and the rest of that bilge.
But now that we are mostly empty nesters it’s no longer safe. And every once in a while, Camera Girl will reach beyond her annoying predilection for cop shows and look for something truly awful. And so it is that I have been dragged kicking and screaming into the demented saga that is Yellowstone. Kevin Costner and a mostly unknown cast (at least to me) ride horses and shoot guns up in Montana trying to preserve their Ponderosa sized cattle ranch from the real estate speculators, Indian tribes, disloyal cowboys, hedge fund pirates and other assorted lunatics who all seem to need killing. And kill them they do. Their enemies end up shot, stabbed, drowned, blown up, or pushed off cliffs more or less with impunity. And within the family, hatred and dysfunction are on full display. The daughter is a foul-mouthed man-eating lawyer. The lawyer son is her foil that she despises, berates and occasionally assaults. The cowboy brother is the hero, I guess. He’s a decorated war hero and his Indian wife and son have left the reservation and live on the ranch now.
The show truly is a ridiculous nighttime soap with egregious plots and ridiculous dialog. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised when I started hearing some of my favorite country artists on the soundtrack. Colter Wall, Tyler Childers, Chris Stapleton, Ryan Bingham and a bunch of other good to excellent country acts provide at least an interesting aural experience to go along with the annoying goings on at the Dutton family ranch.
One other saving grace that the show possesses are the vistas and landscapes that seem to surround you wherever you look in that magnificent big sky country. The juxtaposition of soaring snowy mountains, cascading rivers, verdant plains and technicolor blue skies can be seen sometimes all in one shot. You often find yourself wanting to yell at the actors to shut up and get out of the camera’s field of view and stop ruining the experience of just seeing and hearing the grandeur on display. But unfortunately, thy will go on yammering about whatever crime or deal they are conniving that week.
So that tells you all you need to know about the show. And honestly there is no way I can say I recommend this train wreck of a television experience. It’s a ghastly offense against story-telling. If you’re an enormous Kevin Costner fan I guess you can justify watching it to see him. He is one of the better parts of the show but even that isn’t saying much. And you can just listen to the soundtrack without watching the show. And I’m sure National Geographic has tons of documentary footage of Montana and Wyoming wilderness to watch anytime you want.
I, on the other hand, have to watch. Camera Girl is a woman and therefore barbarically cruel. I can always hope it will be cancelled soon. Damn you Costner.

Brad Paisley – A Country Music Review

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Paisley’s been around since 1998 and has had a long string of hits.  He is a favorite of concert goers.  I like his comical songs best.  Among the best are:

  • I’m Gonna Miss Her
  • Alcohol
  • Ticks
  • I’m Still a Guy
  • Online
  • Crushin’ It
  • Celebrity

And as a husband I think of “I’m Gonna Miss Her” as a masculine anthem.

 

But Brad has other types of songs.  He can write a love song or a serious or a sad song and some of them are pretty good like:

  • This Is Country Music
  • A Man Don’t Have to Die
  • Toothbrush
  • Waitin’ On a Woman

All in all he’ got a lot of good music.  Of late I think he’s had a falling off.  But his earlier hits are solid and I still enjoy them, especially the comical ones.

And, of course, he gets extra points for his relationship with Bill Shatner.