Country Music Blog: 2007 November

I could feel the excitement in the air as I walked toward the Ryman for the last show of Nickel Creek’s Farewell (For Now) Tour. As the lights faded, the crowd erupted with an eager anticipation that announced this was going to be a very special evening.

I’ve seen this band play before many times, but this was without a doubt, the most relaxed and self-assured I have ever seen them. They began with their trademark instrumental, “Ode to a Butterfly,” and seamlessly moved to the awesome single, “When in Rome.” The set list wasn’t chosen in order to promote one particular record, but instead seemed to provide an all-around view of the band’s history and the music they have recorded beginning with their 2000 self-titled debut (produced by Alison Krauss). Sean Watkins has commented that this leads to “no expectations” – and there certainly seemed to be a wonderful freedom in the way the band performed. They soon launched into a fantastic version of “House Carpenter” that gave Chris Thile his first real attempt to redefine mandolin playing – and he did so with a cracking solo that led the whole audience to react.

The performances in general were excellent and Chris, Sean and Sara have come an awful long way since the early days of traditional bluegrass. Nowadays, the band prefers to be known as “progressive acoustic,” and most of the set fell into that category. They brought up Benmont Tench, Fleck, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, who all visibly loved the experience. It was more than poetic that they finished their second encore with “I’ll Fly Away,” after all their statements on being progressive. The band plus special guests Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Fleck and Tim O’Brien ended the final show of Nickel Creek (for now…) with a mass chorus coming from the audience.

As they took their final bow after their third encore, it was touching to see Chris, Sean and Sara simply looking around the theatre and take it all in. This band changed the face of acoustic music and set new levels for the rest of us to aspire to. Congratulations are in order for everyone involved in this outfit, and let us all tip our hat as Chris strikes up the opening chords for “The Fox”! As one door closes, so others will open. Here’s to the past, and here’s to the future.

Twenty minutes before her second show of the evening, while eating a quick bite of dinner, Pam Tillis shared with me her excitement and passion for Christmas Dinner Party, which has made its home in Nashville’s stunning Gaylord Opryland Resort for three years. Running through Christmas day, she performs classic Christmas tunes, originals from her holiday album, Just in Time for Christmas and ever-popular favorites like “Maybe It Was Memphis” and “Shake the Sugar Tree.”

“It’s a family show,” she said. “I love it that there are people of all ages that can come and enjoy it. For some people, it’s a family tradition. They dress up, they come every year. I love being a part of that.”

The evening begins in an exquisitely decorated ballroom with servings of scrumptious stuffed chicken, mashed and sweet potatoes, corn casserole and more. Mouth-watering desserts of chocolate bread pudding and cheesecake soon follow along with the beautifully orchestrated performance.

“I know so many different unique Christmas arrangements and Christmas songs, but in the end, you’ve got to anchor the whole thing with classics,” said Tillis. Along with singing an array of popular Christmas tunes (like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”), several exciting surprises are scattered throughout the show. There is an elf SWAT team, comprised of three talented young dancers, “Cookie” the elf seeking the holiday spirit and even a “Jingle Bell Rock” duet via “elf satellite” with Tillis’ father, Mel. Pam even leaves the stage periodically to dance with crowd members. Her genuine and fun-loving nature only adds to this delightful musical experience.

“If I learned anything from my dad at all,” she said, “It is that. … There are better singers out there. There are people with bigger careers. But if I can go out and people feel like they got to know me a little bit and I could touch them in some way, and just be a real person, I love that.”

It may all start with a song, but sometimes it ends with a start. The very first time I heard Taylor Swift’s “Teardrops on My Guitar,” something about the end sounded familiar: “Drew looks at me/I fake a smile so he won’t see.” I just knew I’d heard it before. But where? Then it came to me -- in the intro. It’s the same exact line she starts the song with. It’s called a reprise, when an artist closes the song with the same lyric it opens with. Ever since, I’ve been keeping my ears open for more, and wondering what goes through an artist’s mind when they decide to bring back that first line. Is it because that one lyric is so damn good it must be repeated? Or do they lose steam at the end of a writing session and think “You know what? I’m out of ideas. Let’s just put that first line at the end, too, and call it a day.”

Taylor Swift’s not the only one doing it, although I did just hear it on her song, “Our Song”: “I was riding shotgun with my hair undone/In the front seat of his car.” In Garth Brooks’ “More Than a Memory,” he comes back to the opening line: “People say she's only in my head/It's gonna take time but I'll forget,” closing out the song with his penchant for melodrama. In Luke Bryan’s lament for another fishing trip with his grandpa, “Tacklebox,” he starts and ends with the vivid description: “It was two shades of brown, scratched-up plastic.” Little Big Town does it too, on “I’m With the Band,” opening and closing with: “Last night in Memphis, tonight in New Orleans/Tomorrow I’ll be miles from here, ain’t nothin’ to me, nothin’ to me.”

When Alan Jackson released “Drive,” he ended the song not with the intro lyric but with one close to the top when he closed with this: “It’s just an old plywood boat/With a ‘75 Johnson, and an electric choke.” In Joe Diffie’s “That Road Not Taken,” he reprised this: “Yesterday I missed my exit on my way to Sears.” Another example is Tim McGraw's "Don't Take the Girl": "Johnny's daddy was taking him fishing when he was eight years old."

Is the reprise merely making a comeback? Is it being, well, reprised? If I was a songwriter, I’d make sure the first line was a great one before I brought it back around again. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and all that. If it’s a trend that’s here to stay, I’m all for it. Because it may all start with a song, but sometimes it ends with a start.

New York City can often be intimidating, but when we were there, it seemed as though we were on the top of the world. As I entered the city I saw the stagehands picketing in front of Broadway theaters. It was one of the more interesting experiences of my life. Our venue for the show was in the middle of Times Square and the flashing signs, video screens and news tickers made for quite a scene as I entered the building. The New York show was very cool because it wasn’t in a traditional venue. Rather than rows of seating, it was more like a club and fans were right up at the front of the stage. As Jake Owen was opening the show, I stood and watched from backstage with Kristian Bush of Sugarland. After the first song, I mentioned that the fans were going to be right in his face and he was really excited about getting to play in such an environment.

As Jake Owen ended his set, he invited a member of the New York City Fire Department to sing “Yee Haw” with him. It was a very touching moment and a nice tribute to those who keep the city safe. Little Big Town performed an excellent set for the crowd as did Sugarland. For me, it was quite a rush to experience a true New York City crowd with a show of our magnitude. I’m sure that the experience is not singular to me, but that every crew member and artist felt it too.

We spent two weeks touring on the West Coast and we experienced a few situations that required quick solutions. After our first show, one of our tractor trailers experienced some difficulty in traveling to the next show. When we woke up in the next city, it was apparent that we were missing the trailer and some important cargo. For the better part of the morning, several of us had to make due with only a small amount of the tools we use in our daily tasks. Fortunately, our truck and the driver were safe and made it to the venue with enough time for us to put on a show!

Additionally, we were faced with the harsh reality of the fires in Los Angeles and San Diego. It was obvious that the areas were ravaged and smoke still hung in the air when we arrived. One meet-and-greet winner in L.A. told me stories about the fires and worried about the current situation. When she met Sugarland, they asked her about the fires and how she was coping. After their meeting, she told me how nice it was that they were concerned and hoping for the best. At our San Diego show, many firefighters were invited to attend the show as a thank you for their hard work. It was a humbling experience and I’m glad that we were able to provide some happiness and joy in a time of such sadness.

Johnny Cash liked an audience. That’s a conclusion easily derived from the first two Johnny Cash Christmas Specials, released on DVD this month by Shout! Factory and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The second CBS special, drawn primarily from a concert at the Grand Ole Opry House, aired 30 years ago (Nov. 30, 1977). It was markedly better than the 1976 effort, shot privately at Cash’s homes in Bon Aqua and Hendersonville, Tenn.

The earlier special is marred by problems both technical and conceptual. Billy Graham is too preachy; Tony Orlando dashes off some stereotypical (and not funny) city boy-visits-the-country jokes; Roy Clark sings “The Christmas Song” with a banjo on his knee, although no banjo notes are heard; and at the close of Barbara Mandrell’s “Steel Guitar Rag,” the clapping in the room is inaudible for a couple seconds, a sign that the performance was taped. Cash frequently seems wooden and uneasy.

The 1977 show demonstrates great progress. With people to play to, Cash is engaged, smiles often and makes a natural connection with his guests and the Opry House audience. At the time, Cash hadn’t yet been remade as a mythic figure. Standing on three-inch heels, he has a command that makes him a bit taller physically, and figuratively, than his fellow performers: Clark, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Statler Brothers, the Carter Sisters and Jan Howard. There’s also a moment of irony. Just 12 years prior, a chemically-altered Cash dragged the mic stand across the footlights at the Ryman Auditorium during an Opry performance, destroying each of the bulbs. In the 1977 special, a shot from the base of the stage presents Cash with the Opry House footlights commanding the foreground.

Cash shot at least 10 Christmas specials, so it’s possible that more DVDs may appear in coming years. Quality-wise, they’re likely much closer to the 1977 show, which is far superior to the inaugural installment. But that ’76 edition has one small charm: Cash’s former home burned to the ground this year, but this show captures a view of its quiet majesty from Old Hickory Lake and a peek at the living room, with its stone walls and wagon wheel beams. The structure underscored the solid and earthy nature of the Man in Black, who came alive most when he had people, and not just a camera, to entertain.

The best musical performance at the recent Medallion Ceremony at the Country Music Hall of Fame, I think, came when Bobby Bare sang “Detroit City” to honor HOF inductee Mel Tillis. Bare sounded as sharp and incisive as ever, and it reminded me anew of his remarkable career.

Along the way in that career, Bobby Bare and writer Shel Silverstein did some amazing things together with music. Their musical partnership resulted in some marvelous songs and a number of them are reprised in one of this year’s best reissues. Lullabys, Legends and Lies was released in 1973 and included the hits “Marie Laveau,” “The Winner,” and “Daddy What If” (recorded with five-year-old Bobby Bare Jr.). But this new, re-mastered version of the original album includes some other Shel-Bare classics.

Like the inimitable “Quaaludes Again”:

She fumbles and stumbles
And falls down the stairs,
Makes love to the leg of the dining room chair.
She's ready for animals, women or men.
She's doin' quaaludes again.

And there’s “Rough on the Living,” a spot-on tale of a fading country star’s death and the subsequent crocodile tears shed over him. His ex-wife, who had divorced him, becomes the grieving widow on the news. His former producer, who had dropped him, speaks movingly of his devotion to the dead star. You know how it goes.

They're plannin' a book for September
Showin' his plain country roots
Any they're sellin' the rights to the movie
And the Hall of Fame's gettin' his boots
At the funeral somebody recited a poem
That told how he suffered and bled
Nashville is rough on the livin'
But she really speaks well of the dead.

This live version of another Shel song, “Drunk and Crazy,” isn’t from the album, but it’s of a piece of what Bare and Shel were doing then and captures the exuberant spirit of that free-wheeling era.

I guess you can never count a good song out, no matter how ancient it is. Who would have thought that a lament as creaky as “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” might appeal to modern ears? But it did. Thanks to the Coen Brothers’ refurbishing, it became the crown jewel of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack album, slugged its way to No. 35 on the country singles chart and, in 2001, won a Grammy for best country vocal collaboration (with Alison Krauss’ sideman, Dan Tyminski, providing the lead vocals). Even more remarkable, that same album contained Ralph Stanley’s spooky a cappella rendition of “O Death.” While that song never charted in Billboard, it did earn Stanley a Grammy for best male country vocal. Both songs have been around so long that no one knows for sure who composed them.

In 2005, CitiBank debuted a TV commercial that showed an elderly couple bantering and singing outdoors, she plucking an autoharp, he a mandolin. The ad was a snapshot of folks in their “golden years” who had handled their money well and were now making the most of their leisure. But what really attracted my attention was the song they sang. It was “Happy, Sunny Side of Life,” a tune made famous by the Blue Sky Boys some time around World War II. The commercial was so popular that it gave the two performers, Mo and Loretta Lebowitz, something of a second career. They are currently touring festivals as “Loretta & Mo -- The Bluegrass Couple.”

Lately, you may have seen the L. L. Bean commercial of a guy shoveling his way through an enormous snowfall. The music that accompanies the spot is “Footprints in the Snow.” Bill Monroe had a Top 5 hit with the song in 1946, and that’s the version I remember. But the one used on the commercial, it turns out, is even older. It was recorded and released in 1939 by Cliff Carlisle, older brother of the late Grand Ole Opry star, Bill Carlisle. His was not the first recording of the song, however. That distinction, I am told, belonged to the West Virginia Ramblers, who cut it in 1931 as “Little Foot Prints.”

There are plenty more mossy treasures out there, so keep ‘em comin’. I’m waiting for somebody to dust off “The Girl in the Blue Velvet Band.”

(Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

As we all sit back and ask ourselves why we always eat too much turkey this time of year, cast your thoughts over the new ambitious release, Song of America. It tells the history of America through song, inviting artists as diverse as John Mellencamp, Tim O’Brien and The Blind Boys of Alabama to tell the stories of America’s discovery and the immigration, assimilation, social conflict and resolution that followed.

This is a three-disc collection of material recorded especially for this project, overseen by none other than former U.S. attorney general Janet Reno. Songs from America’s fabric have found their way into some very unlikely hands: take Del McCoury singing “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” or Mellencamp on “This Land is Your Land,” and you get the idea. These are not simply novelty versions. Each song stands on its own merit with the artistic bar set very high by some very creative people. Even Alan Jackson’s reflection on 9-11, “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning,” gets a stark and organic approach by The Wrights. This, by the way, is on the same release that features O’Brien accompanied only by his fiddle and performing “Thousands are Sailing to Amerikay.” If you’re tired of predictable and uninteresting records, then this has surely to be on your Christmas wish list.

The only downside of this release is that it’s BIG! In an era where some folks release just 32 minutes of material and call it an album, this is the equivalent of suddenly switching from a steady diet of hot dogs to an 18 oz. sirloin steak. You have to be prepared to take this collection in bite-size portions; otherwise you’ll feel overwhelmed – not unlike a Christmas feast as a matter of fact!

I was salivating over the holiday sweets in Williams-Sonoma over the weekend, when the voice of Dolly Parton singing “Hard Candy Christmas” clawed its way into my brain and stayed there ALL DAY. In the song, Dolly has just been dumped and doesn’t see how she’ll ever get through the holidays. To wit: “Maybe I’ll clear my junk. Maybe I’ll just get drunk.” Not too merry. Still, she won’t let sorrow bring her down. The song rivals George Michael’s “Last Christmas” as one of the most crushing Christmas songs ever, yet so easy to sing along with. In this song, he gives his heart away, only to find out that it was “regifted” the very next day. The nerve! He spends the rest of the song convincing himself that next year he’ll find someone even better under the mistletoe.

The singer Leigh Nash, formerly of Sixpence None the Richer, released a digital EP last year covering both of these songs, and it’s a special treat. I’m wary when artists sing “O Holy Night,” because as much as I love the song, only a few people can belt out that big note with conviction, but still sound reverent. Nash’s take on the hymn is rather subdued, and very sincere, and it’s the spiritual highlight of the project. Along with “Wishing for This” (the title track, which she wrote), Nash offers lovely renditions of Ron Sexsmith’s “Maybe This Christmas” and Kate York’s “Eternal Gifts.” All three songs suggest that there’s always room for self-improvement, and that the holidays are an ideal time to turn things around. That’s a Christmas gift that keeps on giving.

However, being sort of crotchety, I must warn you that the first song is “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which is undoubtedly my least favorite Christmas song ever. The woman gives every possible explanation why she couldn’t dream of spending the night -- and yet SHE WON’T LEAVE!! The art of flirtation is lost on me, I guess. Besides, like Dolly, I have better things to do around the holidays. Maybe I’ll hit the bars. Maybe I’ll count the stars until dawn. Me, I will go on.

I only bought one album the summer I lived away from home. It was Mindy Smith’s One Moment More. I immediately purchased it after hearing the title track only once on the radio, but that one time was all it took. It touched me in such a way that I had to hear it again and as often as I needed. Listening to this song was as if I was back at home, missing and remembering.

My grandpa always sat at the end of the table. My brother and I fought over who got to sit by Aunt Rene, and mom and dad had their usual places. The dog sat underneath my father’s feet, hoping for scraps that my brother and I always dropped, mostly on purpose. Due to Aunt Rene’s insistence, I even helped with making the dressing. The least I could do was tear the bread into tiny pieces, right? But, if you know me, you know I don’t take a fondness to cooking or food preparation. (The first time I made chocolate chip cookies, I put the egg in the same bowl as I warmed the butter in the microwave.) The table would be set with turkey, homemade mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans (from Lee’s Famous Recipe at my request), crescent rolls, pumpkin pie, etc. We were all together for that one moment in time.

Mindy Smith wrote “One Moment More” after her mother passed away from cancer. You can feel her longing and begging for her mother to come back. This song and video does not require glitz or glam, but merely the truth and the raw emotion of a lonely and mourning heart aching. You can see and feel a daughter’s desperate cry to the woman she misses most in life. My mother lost her mom when she was 15 and I can’t help but think of how she too must have felt like this. Smith once told me during an interview, “I almost feel like it’s a tribute in a sense, a way to bring my mom where I go and to what I do.”

What a beautiful thought. Though I’ll still look at the end of the Thanksgiving table expecting to see Grandpa’s smiling eyes and Aunt Rene’s old and withered hands, I’ll smile and be thankful for those moments I’ve had and for those special moments I still have left with those I love.