CMT Blog: Cyndi Lauper

Red, white, blue and a little steel guitar is all it takes to make you proud to be an American, and this list of the top 10 patriotic songs include some real sparklers.
 

Golf courses across America are preparing for the new tour dates announced by Vince Gill, which really pick up speed in mid-August.

The designers on HGTV’s Design Star find a real fine place to start with a new celebrity client: Sara Evans. Watch this Sunday (7/6) at 8pm CT.

Gretchen Wilson’s new single, “Work Hard, Play Harder,” will be featured in a marketing effort for the TNT series, Saving Grace.

It’s hard to one-up Cyndi Lauper, but Miley Cyrus seems to have nailed it on this sample of her upcoming cover of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

The results of a recent In Touch Weekly poll are in, and Jessica Simpson’s simpsons are the best pair in Hollywood.

“I kind of always had a romantic notion about what Nashville was like,” says Katy Kattleman, better known as the fashion designer Katy K. “It’s funny, I thought Nashville people were going to be dressed in Western all the time and I’d find Nudie suits in thrift stores.”

Beginning in the early ’80s and after attending fashion school, Kattelman began making and selling her own designs at a trendy hotspot in New York. When stylish petty coats became all the rage, she found herself dressing the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Whitney Houston. She quickly found herself moving up the fashion chain and continued to hold onto her love for Western wear and ’50s style. By the time the mid ’90s rolled around, Tower Records was taking over her building and she began feeling the crunch of high-priced New York rent. So, she packed her bags and fashion expertise and made the big move to Music City.

From the time she opened, she’s helped dress the likes of Dixie Chicks, Alan Jackson, Emmylou Harris, Nicole Kidman, Montgomery Gentry and Jack White, to name a few. “When Porter Wagoner came in last summer, I was so excited,” she said. “He was just so nice and just to see somebody like that. I meet so many different people in the store and it still is a thrill for me.”

Kattleman’s clothing isn’t simply limited to Western wear. She designs and/or sells burlesque garments, 50s and 70s influenced attire, rockabilly wear, Manuel-inspired suits, vintage apparel, children’s clothing, unique boots, hats, belt buckles and custom-designed clothing. “I adapted a lot when I came down here,” she said. “It wasn’t what I thought Nashville was going to be but I really like it. I like the way things have turned out.”

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes you stumble across an album that’s so wise and well-crafted you feel there’s almost a moral duty to spread the word about it. That’s how it is with Robert Hazard’s Troubadour, a collection of original “folk” songs that brings to mind the earnestness of the young Bob Dylan and the dark rural poetry of such country music standards as “Long Black Veil,” “Miller’s Cave” and “Green Green Grass of Home.”

To the degree that Hazard is known at all outside his hometown of Philadelphia, it’s probably for having written the frothy Cyndi Lauper hit, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” You will find few traces of that kind of adolescent lightheartedness in Troubadour. For the most part, the songs are world-weary dispatches from a man who’s been around and has got to keep on moving. In the title cut, for instance, Hazard places himself in the company of lyrical wanderers Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. But it quickly becomes evident that he’s no longer animated by the youthful sense of adventure and promise they embodied in their music. He’s been out there too long, trying to strike a balance between freedom and road fatigue: “The spotlight’s a light bulb and the stage is a floor,” he sings. “If this place don’t like me, there’s ten thousand more.” Then, there’s the corrosive loneliness: “I miss someone dearly but need someone more / While the waitress cleaned up, I would wait by the door.”

Elsewhere, Hazard reflects on obsessive, poisonous love (”I Still Believe in You”), guilt (”Blood on My Hands”) and embracing one’s own private darkness (”Nobody but the Night”). It isn’t all gloom, however, not by a long shot. Hazard is absolutely jaunty in “My Lucky Hat,” deliriously smitten in “She Loves Me Too” and reassured by the abiding strength of human relationships in the majestic “Bound.” Released late last year on Rykodisc — and “discovered” last week by me — Troubadour sounds like a strong contender for a folk Grammy. And if that award eludes him, there’s ten thousand more.