Engine 145 - A Roots Music Publication

I’m sometimes asked —sympathetically or suspiciously—why I don’t write more negative reviews than I do. It’s not some physical disability that prevents me from turning my thumb down; there are simply so many projects (all media included) being released now, more than I could ever discuss, and life’s too short to spend much time or [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Fall Words and Music; History Worth Catching"

It’s been a long time since a genre’s experienced a shift like country did at this year’s Country Music Association Awards. With no Garth-like mandate, no behemoth sales figures a la Kenny Chesney’s ticket sales or Taylor Swift’s album numbers, the advent of a whole new guard descended in one three-hour primetime special. Suddenly, outliers [...]

Continue reading "Outliers and the “Old Guard”: The 2012 CMA Awards"

He doesn’t sing about much. Not really. Back water towns with water towers, driving with no place to go, working with one’s hands, no real arc for what the future holds, needing to believe and finding little to put one’s faith in. An American Dream that’s faded, now torn and shrinking. The will to survive [...]

Continue reading "Nothing Much Goin’ on Around Here: Jason Aldean Makes Nowhere Big Business"

September’s the month country and its cousins honor music and music makers that the Media Barons-That-Be don’t consider ripe for prime time—anything more than five minutes old, anything with specialized appeal, artists who don’t universally look like aspiring starlets or teen idols (sorry, Junior Sisk, Richard Thompson, and Billy Sherrill) and anybody at all besides [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: The Ryman Awards Show Season"

It’d be too easy to be cynical given the way legendary country acts of the last 30 years – see the Judds eternal farewell tour or Alabama’s three trips through many markets final trek – have cried wolf about “last” tours. But something  about iconic Hall of Famer George Strait – known to many as “King [...]

Continue reading "The Cowboy Rides Away: Retiring or No, George Strait Announces Last Tour"

In the biting album track “The Long Run,” the title track, but never single from the Eagles’ follow-up to Hotel California, Don Henley practically spits out the rejoinder, “Did you do it for love? Did you do for money? Did you do it for fame? Think you had to, honey?” with all the churlish invective you’d expect [...]

Continue reading "Idol Hands: The Trouble with Keith Urban, Fame & Talent Shows"

In a world where faster, better, louder and especially newer matters, the 46th Annual Country Music Association Awards nominations speak eloquently to that truth. But as the dust from the nominations settles, the realization that it’s not just that truth, but the notion that many of the genre’s bedrock acts for more than two decades [...]

Continue reading "When the Water Sheds: What the 2012 CMA Awards Nominations Really Mean"

  At the height of the alternative country scare in the mid- to late- nineties, Iris DeMent became one the most revered singers claimed by the field—although you would most likely find her CDs for sale in the folk bins (they had bins in those days), and since she regularly stunned audiences live and on [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Iris DeMent Returns; Crenshaw & BRox Rock"

There comes a time when the success one has is heavier than the reality of being suspended where one is. For Taylor Swift, with her catching-on-the-notes little girl voice, the break-out at 15 meant speaking truth to reality for a world of girls who’d been marginalized for their wide eyes, Hello Kitty backpacks and youth. [...]

Continue reading "Suspended Animation: The Incredible Lightness of Being Taylor Swift"

  A half-year in which such major contributors, true giants, as Kitty Wells, Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson are suddenly no longer with us (among too many others, it sure seems, lately), could produce a major case of seasonal distress disorder in itself for a lot of us, Meanwhile, so many have been taking to [...]

Continue reading "Roots Watch: Lights in the Country Tunnel?"