Quick Hits, Vol. 357 (Vince Staples, Childish Gambino, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Foster the People)

Gene Hackman passing away had me kind of sad.  I'm not a superfan or anything, but he was an excellent actor who had appeared in several movies that I think were really important to me.  His Lex Luthor was a perfect blend of narcissism and malevolence, informing me early on about the best type of bad guy in a movie.  Hoosiers is an obvious thing for a dude of my age - seeing him believe in those boys and will them to victory will never get old.  Unforgiven was the first Western that I remember seeing that I didn't think was cheesy.  I've come around on the genre after watching many more westerns, but back when that came out I had only seen the ones Doug Cooper played at camp movie night where everyone groaned and put up with the ketchup for blood and racist stereotypes.  And I never saw Mississippi Burning until a southern history class in college and I can still remember how shocking it all was to me at the time.  He's been in so many other things, those were just the ones that really stuck out in my mind after I learned he had died.  Also, what happened to his dog, man?

Vince Staples - Dark Times.  I missed his set at ACL, and am a little disappointed with myself for doing so.  Always hard with the sub-headliners if I really want to see the big shows.  But his low key, straight-forward delivery always hits for me.  And the beats on here are solid too, even if not especially flashy.  And he can drop a great lyric too - the one that keeps catching my ear as we go through this disc is in "Justin," where he's macking on a lady, and he seems to be doing well, and then when someone else knocks on her door, she introduces our hero as "my lil' cousin Justin."  And then over the intro, he kind of mumble-whispers, "yeah, nice to meet you too."  So awesome.  You can just see it all in your mind's eye and that is so well done.  The woozy ass beat on "Shame on the Devil" is dope for sure.  But the top track is "Black&Blue," with 11 million streams.

That beat is more of a basic throwback that he gets to wander around on, but it works.  he just kind of bops along over the top of that soulfulness, but the lyrics on that one really don't stick for me.  "Little Homies" is kind of fun too, the beat reminds me of something else, and it is very danceable.  Good album.

Childish Gambino - Bando Stone and the New World.  Terrible disc.  I take back all the nice things I said about his last album.  The only redeemable tune on here is the Khruangbin one because he doesn't really do anything on it and they just groove.  As usual with rap music, way too long at 17 tracks and an hour long, but it feels, uh, like, angry?  Not angry, more like antagonistic?  Like he wants me to not like it?  You know how Kanye's most recent handful of albums lost all of the warmth and cleverness that made his original three albums so singularly amazing?  Well, this is a lesser Kanye trying to pull the same unpleasant, electronic tweak.  The opening song is a great encapsulation of that with a jarringly bad electronic track and unintelligible lyrics and space murder sounds.  I hate that one for sure.  Lots of R&B, less straight-on rap on here, which is always a disappointment as well.  The second track is the biggest one, "Lithonia" has 66.4 million streams.

All very bombastic and self-important, like a potty-mouthed musical number intended to be sung by an army of over-eager college theater majors in a future off-Broadway production of Gambino's as-ye-unwritten musical entitled "I Am Serious."  By the way, the real song does not end with bloodcurdling screams and whatever that was.  "Got to Be" piqued my interest just because he threw in some recognizable samples, but it still doesn't create something as clever as those parts.  But this is not an album made for me.

Jake Xerses Fussell - When I'm Called.  Hell of a middle name.  You really have to use that if you have been granted a name like that.  A friend of mine was a singer-songwriter for a while, and his middle name was Thorn, which sounded dope as hell when he used that as part of his stage name.  Zero recollection of how this homie ended up in my new music queue, but it is a really nice acoustic thing.  He was raised in Georgia and now lives in North Carolina, the son of "song-collecting folklorist parents," and it all checks out.  From digging around, it sounds like these are his original arrangements, but of old folk songs that otherwise would likely have been forgotten to time.  They're beautiful.  The combination of guitar and violin, playing together as he warbles along, in "Cuckoo!" is like a warm hug.  "Leaving Here, Don't Know Where I'm Going" sounds like a Townes Van Zandt lament, carried along by gently finger-picked guitar and piano chords.  Low stream count is sort of unsurprising here, but the last song is actually the most streamed, which is kind of odd.  "Going to Georgia" has 263k streams.

Like the rest of the disc, just basic accompaniment and his warm voice meandering along over the top of it.  Again, feeling the TVZ comp.  Really a nice disc of songs.  I love it.

Foster the People - Paradise State of Mind.  I can't decide on this disc.  It glides by without really making an impression as I work, but if I actually focus on it and pay attention, I kind of dig the funky wiggle of it.  But then I go back and start it over, and if I really listen to it, my ears glaze over with the slick production and falsettos and sameness of it all.  Nothing in here really grabs me as the reason to keep the disc around.  The top track is the second one, "Lost in Space," with 9.7 million streams.

That definitely has some funky wiggle to it, with some classic disco thievery being brought to today.  But again, it just kind of washes through and leaves nothing behind when I'm done.  Probably more fun to see live than to try to parse at your desk.  I'm good without this disc.

Quick Hits, Vol. 359 (Logic, Vince Staples, The Last Dinner Party, Vanilla is Black)

I had to go to Prosper, Texas last weekend for a kid's sporting event, and holy hell their high school was nice.  I remember this article telling me all about the school district and their growing pains, but seeing it in person was wild.  Nicer than my college, with amazing sports facilities.  I know it would be amazingly complicated to see, but I would actually like to know how funding goes for Texas school districts.  I get the idea behind the Robin Hood program and making sure that districts have equal funding that doesn't get them left behind.  But it would appear that some districts get filet mignon while others get ground beef, because our high school looks like a prison from a 70's sci-fi movie and theirs looked like Pepperdine.

Logic - Ultra 85.  I've defended Logic multiple times in this space, as I think he has some legitimate skill in speedily weaving cool sounding raps over interesting beats.  He can go cheesy as hell at times, and some of the skits he likes to lean into get exhausting, but overall I dig it.  As my wife and I drove a rental car through eastern Tennessee late last year, my "random" shuffle of my new music queue kept hitting tracks from this particular album, and her exhaustion because of the unrelenting pace of his raps has stuck with me ever since.  If I just hear the album opener by itself, a jazzy little ditty covered up by a speedy set of bars, I'm liking what he has going on.  But if you have to listen to an hour and seventeen minutes of this type of speed-show-off-flow, it definitely gets tiring.  And the weird skits about two spacemen dealing with robots on their ship or whatever really doesn't help.  But then one like "Deja Vu" comes on and I find myself bopping my head and enjoying the ride.  I don't know what to do with this.  "44ever" is the top track with 11 million streams.

You know you are monetizing things when under that YouTube video you can buy the U85 Elite Jumpsuit for $175 after you finish watching the video.  The interesting thing to me is that I am pretty sure that is not quite the same beat as you get on the album.  Why would they change it?  If I could eliminate all of the skits, and somehow add in some chill songs in here, this could be a good disc.

Vince Staples - Vince Staples.  When he came back to ACL last year, I realized that I had missed this 2021 disc in his catalog.  It's good stuff.  A concise (22 minutes) stack of head-nodding beats and laid back rhymes.  Feels reserved to me - there's no big track on here that was going to make the radio and the TikTok.  Album opener "Are You With That?" is the top streamer with 64.1 million streams.

See?  That is a nice little bop-along track.  You're not going to get hype with it, but you can roll your shoulders a little and groove along.  "MHM" is good, and "Sundown Town" is pretty solid too.  Not the best rap album of the year, but a fine effort.

The Last Dinner Party - Prelude to Ecstasy: Acoustics & Covers.  I feel like just the title of the album tells me all I need to know about the pretentiousness that is about to envelop my ears.  There are definitely some enjoyable bits of this album, but it is absolutely too long at 21 songs and 1:11.  And so theatrical and overwrought.  As I listen through it there are moments where I am like, "oh, okay, that sounds good!"  And then a minute later I am like "dear God when will this album finally end?"  "Nothing Matters" is the top track by a lot, and I agree.  155.7 million streams.

The chorus in this one, which comes on like a Blondie cover yanked out of the 80's, is where this one jams.  HAIM vibes too for me.  But this song really goes for the traditional rock tune structure, which is why I prefer it for sure.  A good number of the other songs on here feel more like they are trying out for Phantom with a handmade audition piece.  "Sinner" is pretty good too.  I feel like it is a foregone conclusion that these ladies will show up at ACL this year - feels like they keep adding more lady-dominated acts and this one has a little excitement behind it right now.  I'll let this go but keep my eye out to see if another album cuts down on the parts that miss it for me.

Vanilla is Black - U.Aint.Neva.Lied!  These dudes showed up last minute on the ACL poster last year, and I liked it enough to toss the whole album into my new music queue.  This disc is really enjoyable.  Parliament-style/Thundercat-esque funk, just catchy and groovy all the way down. And every time I think about their name again, I have that little blown mind moment one more time of being like, "WOAH, YEAH, IT IS!"  Peep "Mezcal" and see what you think - 151k streams.

This is one of the more aggressively paced tunes on the album, many others keep it more chill, but if that bass line doesn't get your head bobbing then I don't know what to do with you.  This gets me all sorts of wiggly.  I like that they went and rented some AirBnb in Marfa or something to shoot the video and just be chill.  Also, the triple hammock hanger move is tight.  Very much enjoy this one.

Quick Hits, Vol. 358 (Fontaines D.C., Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Pony Bradshaw, Sabrina Carpenter)

I just saw the Shaky Knees lineup, and I am immensely jealous at what they are getting out there in Atlanta.  Now, I know that many people would not be excited about My Chemical Romance.  I get that, but having The Black Keys, Vampire Weekend, The Pixies, Cage the Elephant, Public Enemy, TV on the Radio, Blink 182, Franz Ferdinand, Wet Leg, Devo, Lenny Kravitz, Spoon, The Deftones, and Weird Al?  Come on!  And that is even with Friday looking suspiciously like they still need to add 15 more bands.  I'd take this as the ACL lineup in a heartbeat!

Although, in what world are the Black Keys in smaller font than My Chem, Deftones, or Blink?  To me, the Keys are bigger than all three of those for sure.  Anyway, new tunes!

Fontaines D.C. - Romance.  The album opener and title track of this album comes on like a thuddingly strange combo of Metallica and a toy piano that really opens up the possibilities for the whole thing.  But it is the second song that has all the streams and the massively rad rocking sound that propels the album.  When I first heard this song, I thought this was IDLES.  The droning background vocals, the strings, the wild deep breathing during the chorus, the organ, the riffs - its unlike anything I can think of right now but pretty well rules.  "Starburster" with 50.3 million streams.

That video is unhinged.  Like a grimy Oasis who just may want to fight you instead of themselves.  Those deep inhales just make this seem so much more vital.  I wasn't sure about them at first, but now I think they rule.  "Here's the Thing" is a little brighter and catchy, but still great.  They can get shoegazey and Cure-ish at times too like on "Sundowner."  "Favourite" and "Bug" are jams.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings - Woodland.  I have decided in my own mind that Gillian Welch is one of my favorite singers of all time.  Maybe I will regret that large of a statement, but everytime I hear "Revelator" from 2001's Time (The Revelator), I get smacked in the face again by the pure beauty.  So, this is a joint record with David Rawlings, who I don't know from any other folky Americana bro, but they made something really nice together here.  I definitely prefer the tracks that really focus on Welch and just use Rawlings for harmonies, but I could just keep this disc running in the background of the next month and probably feel just fine about it.  Impeccable vibes.  Of course, though, TikTok's algorithm has skipped it entirely, and so the stream count is criminally low.  Top streamer is the first song, "Empty Trainload of Sky."  1.3 million streams.

That guitar tone is dope as hell, even before the voices dig in with smooth harmonic penmanship.  Without any doubt, I need to go back into the archives on this duo and see what else they have done before this disc.  Excellent stuff.

Pony Bradshaw - Thus Spoke The Fool.  This disc reminds me of Lyle Lovett's Step Inside This House era, which is a good thing.  Prior to being a musician, he was a sportswriter for a local newspaper, and then decided to give full-time music a shot.  He didn't even pick up a guitar until he was 25, but he had always written tunes.  The article I read said he was "raised in East Texas," but it doesn't give the town.  He tried out multiple colleges, ending up at the Air Force Academy before getting kicked out for underage drinking and fighting.  Real name is James Bradshaw, and now he is settled in Georgia.  If you want some pleasantly fun and generally uptempo country tunes, then this is your jam without any doubt.  "Going to Water" has the most streams with 352k.  Must be on a playlist somewhere for Americana tunes.

Excellent storytelling lines where you can really see his mom living in that house full of cats, or him wishing for a good night's sleep as he rubs his lady's feet.  That banjo rules too.  Really good tune.  Awesome to have two great vibe albums in a row right here, this one nails me despite a relatively relaxed demeanor.  Very good.

Sabrina Carpenter - Short n' Sweet.  This may sound false, but I am 99% sure that I just heard that "Espresso" song for the first time ever.  Nothing about it sounded familiar in the slightest to me.  As I understand it, that was a huge hit that got parodied on SNL and everything.  1.8 freaking BILLION streams.  Which is deeply weird, because growing up, I would have definitely heard the most popular song of the year.  Now, hearing it for the first time, it's sort of like seeing Shrek for the first time, after years of people telling me that it was hysterical, and ending up a little less excited about it because it couldn't live up to the hype.  This just sounds like Ariana Grande or Dua Lipa or whatever the newest disco-biting pop thing is.  I don't get the excitement?

She's very pretty, but the song itself just seems entirely generic to me.  I guess I'm not the target audience because I think coffee is gross.  We'll see, maybe my brain will ear worm it and I'll be singing this tonight, but right now I feel like "Taste" is a better track.  Makes me feel like an asshole to dismiss a huge star like this, but I just don't hear anything here that matters.  Some aspects of the poptimism movement make sense to me, but I still can't get my head around trying to act like all sugarpop matters. [finds out Carpenter is the headliner for ACL, sighs deeply, starts to write about how amazing her voice is...]

Stephen Wilson Jr.

One Liner:  Eclectic country/rock sound that grew on me

Wikipedia Genre:  Country

Home: Nashville (via Seymour, Indiana)

Sunday at 4pm on the Pony Up Stage.

Thoughts:  His Wikipedia entry is laughably sparse, but it does contain some interesting little nuggets.  He competed in boxing as a youth.  He considers Nirvana to be his chief musical influence.  He has described his own music as "Death Cab for Country."  His album was inspired by the death of his father.  There is a lot to unpack there, but I am going to just unequivocally state right now that this is nothing like Nirvana.  Don't get your hopes up.

His website claims he is influences by The National, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Nirvana.  I have never been able to jibe with The National.  Just can't get my head around the depressing vibe that runs through every song.  Two of my most-respected music guy friends think they are awesome, I just can't get there.

He really did give boxing a go as well, starting from age seven and going as far as being an Indiana state Golden Gloves finalist.  Certainly sounds impressive to someone who knows nothing at all about boxing other than I want to avoid being involved in it.  He left rural Indiana to attend Middle Tennessee State University in Nashville, where he also started an indie rock band called AutoVaughn.  According to his own bio, he spent "five years touring the world as lead guitarists with AutoVaughn" before turning to focus on his songwriting (and working as a research and development scientist at Mars (!?!?).  Do we have him to blame for all the weird ass M&M flavors now?  AutoVaughn has one EP available on Spotify, and it's not terrible.  Sorta Vertical Horizon-meets-Temper Trap?

Now, he's his own guy with one album, 2023's s∅n of dad.  It is outrageously long at an hour and a half and 22 songs.  Just Drake-levels of ridiculousness here.  Cut this thing in half, Stevie.  But, I kind of like the vibe of it anyway.  His voice, at times, reminds me of the current sound of Bruce Springsteen's voice.  Especially when he holds a note, it sounds like that slight age-spot warble that has crept in on Bruce's vocals.  But other moments make him sound like he is channeling his inner Sturgill Simpson, like on "Cuckoo."  His top track though it a little nostalgia nugget called "Year to Be Young 1994," with 10 million streams.

Sounds like Eric Church's "Springsteen" in the first piece when he is listing things from the past.  Heartfelt and genuine, I like it.  And maybe more so because 1994 was a pretty formative year in my past as well.  While writing songs, before he figured it out on his own, he got a few big stars to perform his tunes, with Tim McGraw recording one, and The Brothers Osborne doing another.  It is funny to read other biographical descriptions of this music because they are really taking the grunge thing seriously, calling "Mighty Beast" "a blast of skronky noise inspired by Wilson's love of Soundgarden."  Maybe, if you really squint your ears at that song, but this is like how Buc-ee's Classic Cane Cola sorta tastes like Coke.

But, honestly, as I bop along through this gargantuan album, it is good.  The duet with Hailey Whitters sounds great.  "For What It's Worth" is a catchy, harmonic little rock country tune.  "Father's S∅n" is a sad but lovely little tribute (and this is one of those that really brings Bruce to mind for me).  The line that "every bone's tethered" sticks in my brain. Same with "grief is only love that's got no place to go," that is a good line too. "Hometown" is classic sounding as well. He has a cover of "Stand By Me" in here that is pretty solid as well.  We'll do that one here as well.  3.3 million streams.

Sounds like Trigger there at the start!  Dude has a look for sure.  What up with those locks of hair in his face?  Also, what up with the feed corn salesman sitting in the high-backed armchair next to him looking on in rapturous silence?  What is going on here?  Is that a wax model?  Oh, no, he nodded a little bit.  I gotta say, he crushed the living crap out of that cover.  Freaking good.

I wanted to tear him apart because of his claimed influences, but honestly I have really enjoyed this album.  If he could have released it as two separate 11 song albums, I would have appreciated that restraint and consideration.  I can see him being very entertainingly earnest on stage.  Maybe worth it.

Quick Hits, Vol. 356 (Denzel Curry, Font, Jack White, Post Malone)

Denzel Curry - King of The Mischievous South Vol. 2.  Heck of a title for this disc, but he brings the exact kind of rap that I want to hear right now.  Brawny, tough beats that invoke the southern trunk rattlers of 20 years ago, along with a smooth flow over the top.  The trio of "SET IT," "HOT ONE," and "BLACK FLAG FREESTYLE" will give you the exact flavor I am talking about.  Loads of guests on here, from 2 Chainz and A$AP Ferg to newer dudes like That Mexican OT and Maxo Kream.  They bring a lot to the table, in my opinion.  Sadly, much of this is under-the-radar, except for the tracks with Ferg, Chainz, and A$AP Rocky.  "HOT ONE" is the biggest hit for sure - 47.7 million streams.

Dope intro, and then when the full beat kicks in I can't help but move.  Not sure how it can be both energetic and laid back, but it gets both sides and makes them into a sphere.  The tone of "fuck around and catch a hot one to yo temple, hoe" is wonderful.  And Ferg, as usual, brings the weird and wild to end the track.  I want to see a bulletproof vest made out of chinchilla.  Nothing on here makes me want to kick down entire skyscrapers a la RAMPAGE the way that his song "RICKY" did, but it is a good ass album of hot beats and fun little wordplay.  Makes me feel like a tough guy, which is half of the reason to even listen to rap - bump this in my car and feel very tough as I fetch some groceries at Randall's.

Font - Strange Burden.  Well, that is disappointing.  These guys popped onto the radar by being a late add to ACL a year or two ago, but at the time they just had one track.  That one - "Sentence I" - was a pretty fun blast of Parquet Courts/ Vampire Weekend guitarist/Strokes/spoken poetry/Anthony Keidis/more cowbell/ rock and roll.  60k streams.

" Font, an Austin-based band made up of Thom Waddill, Jack Owens, Anthony Lawrence, Roman Parnell, and Logan Wagner. Font began playing shows regularly in the beginning of 2022."  The problem here is that the rest of the album is no where near as good as that original track.  It can sound charming and catchy for fleeting moments, and then they seem to feel the need to muddy it up with unpleasantness.  I don't care for it.

Jack White - No Name.  Hell yes.  This is exactly what I need.  Sloppy, loud, brawny, unrepentant rock and damn roll.  I have a ticket to his show here in Austin in April or May, and am psyched to hear him do this stuff out loud.  Will need to make sure my earplugs are up to the task beforehand!  This feels like he intentionally went back to the studio on a mission to get back to basics and stop playing around with conceptual stuff.  This is just bashing drums and wailing guitar.  Like, "Old Scratch Blues" could have easily been a White Stripes track and it is unmistakable who is playing that guitar.  Annoyingly, the stream counts are very low for it - everyone is listening to stupid F-1 Trillion instead.  Top track is "That's How I'm Feeling," with 6.1 million streams and quite a bit of recent radio play.

Absolfreakinglutely.  My wife likely hates it, but inject that into my jugular with the needle from Pulp Fiction immediately.  "Bombing Out" is unchained too.  The whole disc has that same loud and proud swagger and it rules.

Post Malone - F-1 Trillion.  On the one hand, I actually dig the name of the album.  That makes me grin.  But my God this music is terrible.  I had a friend who generally has good music taste tell me last fall about how this was a really good album, and now I know that I must be mortal enemies with this man.  Almost every song has a massively popular co-star - Dolly, Hank, Paisley, Combs, McGraw, Wallen, Shelton, Stapleton, Strings, Roll - and yet every song just breaks my heart for the crushing awfulness of these generic arrangements and idiotic lyrics.  That being said, I enjoyed Strings' part in "MEXICO."  I haven't looked, but I'm guessing the Morgan Wallen tune will be winning the stream contest.  I'M SO GOOD!  It actually makes me pleased to see how badly this album is doing with streaming.  18 songs, and only five crack 50 million, with 11 at or under 30 million.  But the Wallen track, complete with lots of that annoying Post Malone vibrato, fires up 891.3 million streams.

TEAWMWAWRK MUCKZ DA DRIIWURR HELL IHAASSA HELL!  This disc has lots going against it in my mind, so it was going to be a heavy lift to be successful for me, but when you destroy even the classics like Hank and Dolly and the new classics like Stapleton and Strings, then you are not my friend.

Quick Hits, Vol. 355 (Johnny Cash, Painted Shield, Eminem, Johnny Blue Skies (Sturgill, dammit))

Johnny Cash - Songwriter.  Please just stop flogging the man's corpse!  These tunes were apparently recorded in 1993, just before Cash began his Rick Rubin phase.  The vultures stripped out the music that was recorded back then, just keeping his voice, and then adding in new instrumentation now.  It is fine, nothing in here is revelatory, and some of these tunes have appeared on other albums from Cash, either older or more recent.  The Dan Auerbach-assisted one is nice.  I just don't understand the need for it.  The version of "Drive On" in here is definitely worse than the one he made with Rubin a few years later.  Not very many streams either - top track is "Well Alright" with 3.4 million streams.

One of the YouTube comments said that this is genius.  C'mon, man.  It's a nice little bop that sort of sounds like "Tennessee Flat Top Box," but also seems like a throw-away little tune he wrote while thinking about doing laundry.  Cute enough but definitely not the level of genius.

Painted Shield - Painted Shield.  This came on to my radar last year when listening to ACL music - Britany Davis is a member of the band, but also Pearl Jam co-founder Stone Gossard is in here.  That piqued my interest.  The funny thing is that when these songs have played along in my queue as I have been working and not entirely paying attention to what is happening, I have heard two very disparate things that don't entirely fit, but they are what my brain came up with.  A few tracks sound sort of like a U2 B-Side, and somewhere in my New Stuff playlist I know there is a whole album of B-Sides from the Atomic Bomb sessions.  But then other songs make me think of the Queens of the Stone Age with a different, more chill lead singer.  Check "Evil Winds" and see if it doesn't remind you of something Josh Homme and company could put together?  And I absolutely dig both of those bands, so this sound is encouraging.  Top streamer is the second track, "Time Machine."  1.3 million streams.

Does that not sound a little like Bono doing his more recent singing style from those Atomic Bomb sessions.  I'M AT A PLACE CALLED VERTIGO! And then once the full band kicks in, those guitar licks make me think of the Queens.  Maybe just me, but I am feeling it.

Eminem - The Death of Slim Shady.  Ugh.  I think I went in to this recently, how a group of guys had a discussion on the beach last year at Spring Break about rappers that are still good.  One guy was very adamant that Eminem had never fallen off and was still throwing heaters.  Just take five minutes with this thing and if you truly believe that then I don't know why you are reading about music at all.  If your brain identifies this as a viable use of your brain space, then your brain needs no more music.  I will readily admit that some of the wordplay and bars on this are still top tier, and a few beats like the "Abracadabra"-sampling "Houdini" are fun.  But I bet he mentions Christopher Reeves ten times on this piece of trash.  At least that many combined mentions of retards and midgets.  I don't even care if he is trying to do a bit of moving along from his old shocking personality, at the same time he's still using those stupid things to move records.  I hate it.  And most of the beats are deeply boring, just a generic thump and snares.  Huh.  "Houdini" ends up being the top streamer too.  Sort of surprised.  543.9 million streams.

"I'm 'bout to reach in my bag bruh" is painful.  And he starts on some of the politically correct/woke stuff in here, but he really digs into on some other songs.  Like I said, he can still throw in some cool-sounding, intricate wordplay that rules, but lyrically it's pretty terrible.  Feels like he isn't moving forward, and nothing on here feels like a keeper that just needs to be heard.  Good with deleting.

Johnny Blue Skies - Passage Du Desir.  You'd hate to not be kept on your toes by my guy Sturgill Simpson, so he released an album under the name Johnny Blue Skies called Passage Du Desir.  Which translates to Passage of Desire.  The pseudonym apparently has to do with a promise that he won't release more than five albums of original material under his own name.  Which is sort of whack.  Anyway, this new disc is a little under inspiring for me, personally.  It sort of sounds like Sailor's Guide, but without those exciting horns and high energy riffs - takes a more quiet and soft tack towards the same oddball horizon though.  It isn't bad, like the funky little groove on "Scooter Blues" is tasty for me, but it mostly just cruises by with each listen.  It has grown on me since last year though, with some of the jammier elements starting to become more pleasant.  The closer "One For the Road" has some Allman-esque licks that I like and gets a little rowdy near the end.  Not many streams for the disc either - not sure if that is because of the pseudonym or just a lack of excitement.  Top streamer is called "Mint Tea," with 4.9 million streams.

Like I said, just kind of bops along and then is gone without leaving a trace.  I like the imagery of another band aid on this bullet hole, but I don't even think that is an original thought.  For sure Taylor Swift already used it, and I'd expect others.  Huh.  Morgan Wallen has a song named "Band-aid on a Bullethole."  So, there you go, the least original country guy out there already used that thought...  The album is nice, it's just not something that snags my attention.  I'd have preferred a little more excitement, but I'll take it over what most of the country world is producing right now.

Quick Hits, Vol. 354 (Petty Country, Jon Muq, Luke Combs, NxWorries)

Various Artists - Petty Country (A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty).  For people of a certain vintage - i.e. old dudes like me - this was a fantastic, time-honored tradition, to make an awesome tribute album to a top-tier artist that reinvigorated the songs with a new verve.  The best examples I can think of right this second, and maybe there are better, are Deadicated and Common Thread.  Deadicated was a rad collection of weird artists covering the Grateful Dead - imagine Jane's Addiction, Midnight Oil, Lyle Lovett, Indigo Girls, and Burning Spear all hanging out and remaking the Dead into their own image.  I loved it.  Common Thread had more in common with this instant album though, in that it was all country stars hammering out covers of the Eagles.  Clint Black, Alan Jackson, Tanya Tucker, etc. doing all the classics that the Dude would have hated.  I got that disc about the time that I arrived in college and I really loved it.  I used the pacing and style that Clint Black did for his version of "Desperado" when I used that song to try out for Little Shop of Horrors later in school.

Anyway, this is an overly long, bloated, buggy whip to the dead corpse of some of my favorite songs around.  I love Tom Petty.  I enjoyed hearing his music used in that Apple TV show Bad Monkey.  I liked hearing some of his tunes used this season for NFL games.  But the majority of this is like that garbage Twisters soundtrack where they took no name people to give them a shot at fame, or let bigger names come in and massacre what should have been held holy.  An hour and sixteen minutes of the bad kind of trouble.  It's not all horrible.  Chris Stapleton does a good job.  Steve Earle's mushmouthed pillow fight version of "Yer So Bad" made me smile.  Jamey Johnson sounds amazing.  Rhiannon Giddens sounds lovely.  Willie sounds fine.  But the Dierks Bentley version of "American Girl," the Wynonna & Lainey Wilson version of "Refugee," Justin Moore's "Here Comes My Girl," and Luke Comb's version of "Runnin' Down a Dream" are just painful.  The Lady A song sucks, the Brothers Osborne one is bad, and Dolly sounds run down.  A lot of these are very faithful to the original, they're just set up with lesser vocals and lesser instrumentation so that you just end up with a karaoke ass version of the song.  Like Midland doing "Mary Jane's Last Dance" and making it hollowed out and boring, but with more rad-itude.  Sadly for the world, the Dierks Bentley song is the top streamer, so here you go.  I have no clue how the Stapleton tune didn't do better than this.  2.1 million streams.

Mainly true to form, just feels like a plastic version that happens to include mandolin and banjo as this Nashville creature power-belts the lyrics with too much sheen and precision.  I hate it.  And if you read me frequently, you know how rare it is for me to straight up hate something.  More than happy to delete this disc from my queue.

Jon Muq - Flying Away.  This, on the other hand, brings me pure and unadulterated joy.  Dude was on the ACL poster last year (sadly, I was not able to see the show because he was weekend two only) but I kept the album to keep listening to it.  Every time the opening track starts to unfold in my ears, I feel so much peace and pleasure.  Fucking magical.  "Runaway" also happens to be his most streamed tune.  468k streams.

Luxurious beauty.  He is originally from Uganda, and his backstory is sort of fascinating, but the current chapter of the story is that he ended up in Austin, working with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, to make this album.  It is wonderful.  I hope that he gets all of the fame and fortune that should be coming his way.

Luke Combs - Fathers & Sons.  Combs is not someone who is on my radar in the slightest, so I'm not sure how this album came to be in my New Stuff list, but I'm honestly glad it was.  Cheesy as shit - just absolutely dripping in gooey American, plasticky cheese like a soggy nacho at the bottom of a paper bowl at a little league game - but also endearing to me in an unexpected way.  These songs are all, or at least mostly all, about fathers and sons.  And being that my son is now away at college for his Freshman year, hearing songs like "The Man He Sees in Me" or "Huntin' By Yourself" brings a different level of poignance that I never would have given them the time for ten years ago.  For example, the chorus to "Huntin' By Yourself," with these lines: "I already knew he wouldn't see a thing / Been three more times and it's always the same / 'Cause he moves too much and he talks too loud / But I don't mind 'cause I'm finding out / That even if it's just time we're killin', it's never felt more like livin' / They'll make you cuss and wear your patience thin / But next thing you know, they're all grown up and then / You're huntin' by yourself again."  All too damn true.  Like I said, sappy and cheesy, but also a well-crafted encapsulation of an emotion that I am living in today.  "The Man He Sees in Me" is the top track so far, with 53.3 million streams.

I also have to note that the backing band on that song is excellent.  Sounds like the folks who back up Allison Krauss.  "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" also rings very true to me, except for the divorce angle to it, but the idea of a song wishing his dad would take him out to the ballgame just to hang out.  A friend gave me tickets to go see a Texas basketball game with the boy before he went back to school, and it was a very fun evening.  The album is pleasing to me - very basic arrangements, kind of a slow burn of pleasant country tunes about young fatherhood.  I guess I don't hate all Nashville country as much as I thought.

NxWorries - Why Lawd?  This feels like a group especially created to get on a bunch of festival lineups this year.  Anderson.Paak with something called KNXwledge (and other guests here and there, like Dave Chapelle or H.E.R.), but it really just sounds to me like an Anderson.Paak album.  Unfortunately, that doesn't get me much, as my experience with Paak is that he'll have one banger per album (give or take), and it usually involves someone else elevating that track (like Mac Miller - RIP - or Bruno Mars).  The track with H.E.R. is the top track by a ton - 40.1 million streams for "Where I Go," while the next-closest streamer has 9 million for a Snoop cameo.

Total vibe track.  Laid back and smooth as hell.  Also, unfortunately for my tortured brain matter, pretty darned boring.  But as I have chronicled for years, I am just a bad student of the R&B/neo-soul world, so of course this misses my pleasure centers.  I'm okay without this.

Maggie Antone

One Liner: Varied selection of cover tunes turned into a nice little country set

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, but I'd call this Country

Home: Richmond, VA

Sunday at 12:15 on the Big River Stage.

Thoughts:  Well, I already like her name because Antone's is a dope old club.  And I've already heard her voice, even if I didn't realize it, because she is featured on a song by 49 Winchester, who was here last year, and Willow Avalon, who is here this year.  She has a distinctive voice for sure.

Her bio that is repeated in multiple places says that she won her parents over from a young age by singing along to the radio from her carseat, enough that they supported her through voice lessons, musical theater, and National Anthem gigs around their hometown of Richmond, VA.  She put out a cover of a Tyler Childers song that went viral, and after an album of covers, she fired out a real album of her own tunes, with a bunch of top tier collaborators in the writing room.

2022's Interpretations features two Childers tracks ("Lady May" and "Feathered Indians"), Dolly's "Jolene," Prine's "Spanish Pipe Dream," Blink 182's "Adam's Song," and then two I had to look up - Beyonce with "Daddy Lessons" and David Gray with "This Year's Love."  That is an extremely varied little jukebox!  The two Childers tunes are the top streamers, this is "Lady May" with 2.4 million.

The album version she did for that 2022 thing is better - cleaner, with better vocals for sure.  One album, other than the covers disc, 2024's Rhinestoned.  It has two songs that seem to have clicked, some are as low as 72k streams, but the top one is "Johnny Moonshine" with 5.7 million streamarooos.

MAGOOOOGGIE is for lovers?  Mmmmkay.  Catchy for sure, and her voice has a classic lilt to it that is really nice.  The lyrics to "suburban outlaw" are even better, with her taking down some dickhead guy.  None of this is going to change my life, but it's nice, legitimate country music.

Lynyrd Skynyrd

One Liner:  Southern rock kings (or at least their name)

Wikipedia Genre:  Southern rock, blues rock, country rock, hard rock

Home: Jacksonville, FL

Sunday at 7:30pm on the Showdeo Stage.

Thoughts:  Yes, I had to double-check the spelling of the band name.  I unapologetically love me some Skynyrd.  I know that is not a hot take - they are a pillar of the classic rock radio rotation for a reason, but I really dig it.  Like everyone else in the world, I had Skynyrd's Innyrds, the 1989 greatest hits compilation that went five times Platinum in the U.S.  And I know every song on there back and forth.  I was trying to think of what my actual favorite song is as well.  For a long time, it was "Simple Man," which is not even on that compilation that I owned.  That song still rules.  But, I think if I am being perfectly honest and not trying to bring it down a peg for being so popular and a punchline, "Free Bird" is still the best one.  But they have a murderer's row of classics - "Call Me the Breeze" jams.  "Tuesday's Gone" is in every seventies-centered movie ever.  Obviously, "Sweet Home Alabama."  

Let's back up, because one of the reasons this show will be interesting to me is that there are ZERO original members still in the band.  How weird is that?  So, some background.  The band formed, as My Backyard, in 1964 in Jacksonville, FL.  They were later called Conquer the Worm, The Noble Five, and The One Percent, before settling on the current iconic name.  The band name, as has been long mythologized, is after a gym teacher at their high school named Leonard Skinner, who was notorious for hassling the boys about long hair.  They became synonymous with Southern Rock by the mid-70's, but the whole shebang came to a quick end when their chartered airplane crashed in 1977, killing Ronnie Van Zant (vocals), Steve Gaines (drums), and a backup singer, and seriously injuring the remaining members.  They reunited for a reunion tour with Ronnie's brother on vocals in 1987, but by 2023, every founding member of the band was dead.  

So, now we have some other sort of thing coming to Austin - their photo on Spotify shows nine people who have an average age of about 97.  Wikipedia claims "There had previously been agreements about how many pre-crash members had to be in the band in order for it to be active and "legal", but this appears to be no longer applicable since Rossington's [the guitarist] death."  The lead singer is still Ronnie Van Zandt's little brother.  I wonder if he has the same pipes?  Of note, at least to me, is that their other brother Donnie was the founder of .38 Special.  That's a talented damn family!

Let's do a couple tunes.  They have a big pile of albums, but the real deal stuff is on the first four.  The first album is actually super impressive - 1973's (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd) - boasts five of their biggest hits with only 8 songs on the whole album.  I'm going to give you three of those (as if you need to hear these songs when they are still on the radio and in movies all the time.

"Free Bird," their second-biggest streamer with 736.7 million.

Hell yeah.  Perfect rock and roll song.

"Tuesday's Gone," 147 million streams, and a slow burn that reminds me of Dazed and Confused.

Great groove - and super long.  Both of those songs are insanely long by normal rock and roll standards.

"Simple Man," with 536.3 million, was always my choice for favorite Skynyrd tune.  So good to belt out in the car.

Another slow burner.  That is interesting, I never really realized how all of their big songs come on with a gentle lull before kicking in.

Kind of funny to me, this is sort of a jam band!  I never thought of that before, but now that my wife has become staunchly anti-jam, I have a stronger radar for such things.  And these guys absolutely fire off into extended jams where they feature their different instruments for long periods of time.  That is funny!

I found a live version from 2015, just to see what we can expect in 2025.  Pretty damn good, even if the voice isn't quite right.

The next album, 1974's Second Helping, has the true juggernaut of their catalog, which likely gets played at every Bama sorority house as the morning wakeup song.  "Sweet Home Alabama" has 1.4 billion streams.

Gotta say it always felt good to trash Neil Young in this song as I sang along about ten billion times.  And I like Neil Young, it just feels good to be a southern man who doesn't need his ass around!  Also, I watched the Auburn Alabama basketball game last weekend, and they played a snippet of this song every time they went to commercial.  C'mon TV programmer person.  That's all you have?

I think that is probably enough of the songs, honestly.  You know this stuff.  "Gimme Three Steps" is another classic - "you could hear me screamin' a mile away, as I was headin' out towards the door."  Even if it is not the original band members making up the current iteration, I won't be able to resist the chance to sing along to these classics.

Treaty Oak Revival

One Liner:  Way more Walmart rock than country

Wikipedia Genre:  Country rock, Punk rock (!?!), Southern rock

Home: Odessa, TX

Sunday at 3pm on the Big River Stage.

Thoughts:  As their biggest track kicks off, my immediate reaction (having never heard this before right now) is that the rock and roll tinge is legit in here, and that their lead vocalist has an odd vibrato and nasal pitch that reminds me of the singer from BR5-49.  

The band is originally from Odessa, formed in 2018 as a cover band who got their own chops writing things and released their own debut album in 2021.  Their Wikipedia entry is pretty well nonexistent.  I now know the names of the band members, the names of their albums, and that they opened for Koe Wetzel in 2024.  I had never heard that name before, until recently someone at work was trying to sell four tickets to the San Antonio Rodeo to see Koe (don't know if you say that as David Alan Coe, or like Chloe but without the l?) for $350 a piece.  And they weren't like, on stage and didn't appear to come with a new car.  WTF man.  $1400 to see Not-David-Allan-Koe?  Anyway, I like the band name, even if it has nothing to do with the Treaty Oak here in Austin that some asshole tried to poison a few years back.

I searched for the band to see what else I could find out, and the top suggested "People also ask" thing from Google was "What is the controversy with Treaty Oak Revival?"  Apparently, some people got uptight about the lyrics of a song that says “He takes off his wedding ring, As she’s taking off her top.”  People got mad about whether this was about infidelity or the life of a prostitute.  Which, uh, why do you care?  Why are people so damn weird now?  But also, the damn song is EXTREMELY about a prostitute!  "tryna make a little bit of cash and she'll be your honey in a room, for the money, she's just tryna make it fast."  The last three lines are "you can find her on the corner"!!!  So freaking stupid as hell!  Anyway, the lead singer apparently told a crowd at a live show that the song is about a "hooker wanting a better fuckin' life."  So there you have it - both about infidelity and prostitution.  Hope the dipshits on TikTok are pleased now?  I'm not, I am just angry at how dumb people are.

Two albums - 2021's No Vacancy and 2023's Have a Nice Day.  Their top songs are from the first album, but I don't personally hear a massive difference between the two.  Maybe a little harder edge to the newer album, with a touch more country in the old disc, but they both skew rock.  Top track is "Missed Call," their only track with over 100 million at 110.1 million streams.

After a little while, the rock in this has started to feel a little treacly, just because of how same-ish it is. Making me think of Nickelback with these bitchin' drum fills just pounding it out as they transition from verse to chorus and sing about a slut in a red and black tube top.  That top track from the new album is called "In Between," check out those modern rock drum beatings!  76.8 million streams.

I feel like this is too far into the rock side of things, and its the bad rock that belongs in the sale rack at Walmart.  That being said, I am sitting here bobbing my head with this - I can't deny that it is catchy and pounding in a way that catches me up for a minute.  But if you told me this was a new single from Puddle of Mudd trying to make a comeback, I would not doubt you for a minute,

I'll also note that the articles and notes about them routinely call them "from West Texas."  I just looked at a map to make sure that I would agree with that characterization, and in this instance, I am on board.  I get tired of people claiming West when they're not, but my personal opinion radar will allow Midland/Odessa the West Texas status marker. 

I should love it - I definitely like rock and roll more than country - but this isn't doing it for me.  Like a watered-down level of rock with this fella spitting bile in a southern twang over the top.  I'll probably end up watching it and loving it!

Lanie Gardner

One Liner:  Techno party at her top end, generic soft-pop country at the bottom

Wikipedia Genre:  No Wikipedia, but country

Home: Nashville

Saturday at 12:15 on the Showdeo Stage.

Thoughts:  That is an odd little juxtaposition.  Her top song on Spotify is a David Guetta EDM remake of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" with 71 million streams.  Which is entirely out of character for the rest of her catalog, which is starts off with a vaguely rockin' generic pop tune from the Twisters soundtrack.  That is her only song without David Guetta that breaks a million streams.  Before I start research, I'm calling it that she was on some sort of singing competition show.  That Twisters song is her top streamer with 1.9 million.

I know that there is banjo involved in that song, but I just don't hear country at all.  Straight soft-rock pop to my ears.  Generic and unmemorable.  

I was trying to get some work done and just let this play, but it sort of sucks so I need to dig in and write it up so that I can move on.  Way too poppy for what I want to hear.  Apparently, she covered "Dreams" and uploaded it, it went viral, and so she was invited to do the Guetta remix as well.  All of the bios that I read feel like they were poorly written by AI with too many superlatives.  "A true embodiment of passion and perseverance, Gardner is not just a singer; she’s an inspiration, breaking barriers and pushing boundaries in the music industry."  Blech.  I have literally read four things about her and know next to nothing about her background other than the fact that her grandfather wanted to go to Nashville and be famous.  She's with the Jonas Brothers' label too.  Great.

In one of her videos, she sort of looks like Pete Davidson because of the darker eye sockets.  That is likely not a nice thing to say.  Sorry.  One album - 2024's A Songwriter's Diary.  Top song is "Mountains and Miller" with 294k streams.

That one is less poppy than some of her other tunes, nice little slice of nostalgia folk.  Weird thing - YouTube has multiple clickbait farm videos with titles like "Shocking Update - What Happened to Lanie Gardner After American Idol!"  I tried watching one, and it super did not tell me that information.  Zero mention of American Idol in the video.  Just the same crap that she grew up with musical family and blew up after a cover of "Dreams."  Annoying.

I'm good without seeing this one.

Alan Jackson

One Liner: One of the greatest country artists ever

Wikipedia Genre: Neotraditional country, bluegrass, gospel
Home: Nashville (via Newnan, GA)

Saturday at 8:30pm

Thoughts:  This feels like a big bite to chew.  But I guess I wrote about George Strait before, so I can get through it on Alan too.  I have written before about how country music was not my first love, and how it took me a while to come around to it.  I was bitchin' and loved rock and roll, man.  So, when other kids in high school were loving Garth and Alan and Clint and Shania, I was looking down on them for their terrible and simple tastes.  But as high school wore on and I figured out a lot more about who I was and what this music was really about, I came around.  And so, my first recollection of really giving in to Alan Jackson was after buying his greatest hits CD - 1995's The Greatest Hits Collection - and adding that to the rotation in my CD changer in my car.  I don't know why I have this particular specific memory, but I recall being on South Lamar, right next to where that old movie theater became a Strait Music (and is now abandoned, I think), driving north towards my mom's new house, and listening to that disc.  It's still a damn solid collection of tunes.

His albums start with 1990's Here in the Real World.  If I am being honest, I figured he would have been around in the 80's as well, not just kicking off in 1990.  The biggest track off of that first disc is "Chasin' That Neon Rainbow."  80.5 million streams.

That video whips ass.  "Audition time!"  "Wanted" is a good one too - this feels like before those sorts of songs sounded super cheesy, although I know it is cheesy, at least it felt like the original cheesy tune and not some Music Row automaton today trying to emulate that prior schtick.

Next was 1991's Don't Rock the Jukebox.  That title track was freaking great too.  The abrupt change in tone between the chorus (which starts the song) and the piano-driven verse is perfection.  That is the top song on this album by a long ways.  95.6 million streams.

The spoken interview at the start of that video is fantastic.  His moustache is an extra character in that play.  Excellent video.  Everybody wants to hear that George Jones.  The Panhandlers just dropped his name too.  But also, I just think this is a great song - well written with the double-entendre of him feeling sad and not wanting someone to play rock and roll on the juke.  This album boasted four number one songs - the title track, "Dallas," "Someday," and "Love's Got a Hold on You."  "Midnight in Montgomery," which has always sounded like Garth Brooks to me, only made it up to #3 on the charts, but I think it is great.

So, Jackson is originally from Newnan, Georgia, which is about 40 miles southwest of Atlanta.  Born in 1958, so he is 66 now.  Like he says in his songs, he had four older sisters and then little Alan.  His parents went by "Daddy Gene" and "Mama Ruth," and also like in "Home," they really did live in a small home built around Alan's granddad's toolshed.  That is wild.  After graduating high school, he started singing with a band called Dixie Steel, while working construction and playing small clubs around Georgia.  When he was 27, he and his wife Denise moved to Nashville to give music a real shot.  His wife was a flight attendant, and apparently she met Glen Campbell on a flight and asked his advice on Alan's career.  Glen hooked Alan up with his manager and the rest is history.

By now, he is one of the best-selling musical artists of all time, with over 75 million albums sold worldwide.  35 number one songs (which is freaking nuts), 9 multi-platinum albums.  Two Grammys and a pile of other awards.  Country Music Hall of Fame.  Grand Ole Opry.  Georgia Music Hall of Fame.  Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.  Probably 38 other halls of fame as well.

His next album, and the biggest of all, was 1992's A Lot About Livin' (And A Little 'Bout Love), which features his biggest tune by a ton - "Chattahoochee."  303.3 million streams.

I loved that video a million years ago.  I absolutely remember those shots of him water skiing in his hat and ripped jeans.  Perfection.  The lyrics are perfection too - capturing the aimless confusion and hopefulness of that stage of a teenager's life.  Also has "She's Got the Rhythm (And I Got the Blues)," "(Who Says) You Can't Have It All," two other songs using parentheticals in the titles, and the very fun "Mercery Blues."  This one was a massive album, got him a few CMA Awards for song of the year and other things, went six times platinum, and reached #13 on the regular Billboard charts.  One crazy thing, in this day of over bloated albums from hell, is that this is just a tight little thirty-minute album.  I've listened to it several times this morning and it keeps being over so quickly!  Drake could never!

Finally, the last mega-album in his catalog was 1994's Who I Am, which went four times platinum and features four #1's - "Summertime Blues," "Livin' on Love," "Gone Country," and "I Don't Even Know Your Name."  "Gone Country" is the one of those that has stood up to the test of time, with 122.3 million streams today.

Again, the intro to that video sort of rules.  Excellent song, which expertly foretold the current climate where, yet again, everyone is going country.  2024 - Post Malone and Beyonce, two of the biggest pop stars around, putting out a country album, 30 years after Alan told us this was coming.  He knew the landscape of the world even back then.  After the blockbuster Greatest Hits album, his next two were less large - 1996's Everything I Love and 1998's High Mileage have some smaller hits and the dopey ass "Little Bitty," which boasts 170 million streams.

Cajun style, baby!  After those two, he took a detour by releasing an album called Under the Influence, which is entirely made up of classic covers.  Like the exceedingly great "It Must Be Love" or "Kiss an Angel Good Morning'."  That was the first album since the early ones that didn't hit #1 on the country charts.

Right as the millennium was rolling over to 2000, he and George Strait made an angry old man tune to decry the state of country music as it angled towards pop and away from their neotraditional sound.  "Murder on Music Row" was not on an album - it appears to be on Strait's 2000 greatest hits package called latest greatest straitest hits.  It's not a great song, but I'm sure having two of the all time greats scold you for putting money over artistry can't feel great.  Then, in 2001, Jackson fired out a 9/11 tribute song called "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" that is a little more soft rock schmaltz than country, but it ended up on his 2001 album Drive.  There is a tune on that disc that has a ton of streams though, the most of any song after his early hits days, that I couldn't recall at all when I saw it sitting there - "Drive (for Daddy Gene)" has 149.1 million streams.

When the chorus kicked in, that sounded familiar.  Definitely not a song I was familiar with though.  Cheesy as all hell, and yet I find myself getting a little misty-eyed anyway thinking about those times driving with my own dad and then my own kids.  Alan (or his Music Row writers more likely) knew what he was doing with this one.  Dammit, I'm giving the youngest some driving lessons this weekend.

Speaking of family, he married his high school sweetheart, Denise, the same one who got him his big break with Glen Campbell.  They've been together for 40+ years, and had three daughters together (who very well may be the stars of that video above).  Denise wrote a New York Times bestseller called It's All About Him: Finding the Love of My Life.  He really was close with George Jones too, singing "He Stopped Loving Her Today" at Jones' funeral.

2004's What I Do has no songs with more than 3 million streams.  2006's Precious Memories was apparently a gospel album he did for his mother, and it has some bigger streams counts for those traditionals.  2006's Like Red on a Rose was apparently panned by his fans because he let Allison Kraus produce and it became a softer, bluegrass-y album that his fans thought was wrong.  One song barely breaks 4 million, most are under 500k.  2008's Good Time gets him back in the saddle of the classic stuff - both the title track and "Country Boy" have over 100 million streams.  "Country Boy" doesn't ring a bell at all, this is definitely after I stopped with this sort of Nashville country.  Here is "Good Time," with 120 million streams.

That one sounds familiar.  Not a very good song, but if his critics had hated his last one and he wanted to get back to his roots, this one is definitely there.  Sounds like a drum machine in there for a bit too, which is unfortunate.  2010's Freight Train has another song with a lot of streams but that landed outside of my brain space.  The title track has 79.2 million streams.

He didn't even make a video for it!  That is disappointing.  At least I get to watch the mullet flow while jamming the song up above.  A little too repetitive for me to really get behind it.  The music underneath the lyrics sounds great, but I'm not catching the feeling from his sentiment.  2012's Thirty Miles West didn't get much traction.  Same with 2013's Precious Memories Vol II and 2013's The Bluegrass Album.  I actually enjoyed that last one, but I just dig bluegrass music.  "Blue Ridge Mountain Song" made me happy and sad at the same time.  2015's Angels and Alcohol didn't spawn anything big, and nor did 2021's Where Have You Gone.  I will say that his voice is just as golden as ever on that 2021 album - only a touch of that husky deepening that strikes so many of the old guard as they age.  Some of it very much sounds like George Strait to me.  Nothing new since then, and in fact Wikipedia says that he told the world that his 2022 tour would be his last.

Apparently in 2021, he told the Today Show that he had been diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.  CMT is a form of muscular dystrophy that can affect balance, but is a hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy of the peripheral nervous system characterized by progressive loss of muscle tissue and touch sensation across various parts of the body.  When he disclosed the diagnosis, he mentioned that he has become uncomfortable performing because he has trouble balancing and stumbling.  Which is sincerely awful.  I am truly excited to get to see him play, but I sure hope that he is able to find some comfort off of the stage soon.

All in!  

Quick Hits, Vol. 353 (Good Looks, Robert Earl Keen, The Decemberists, The Pollies)

Good Looks - Lived Here for a While.  Great little band and a good, tight album.  They came to ACL a year or two ago, if I recall they were a late addition to the poster.  Local dudes, and one of them almost died after a car accident of some sort.  Why am I trying to say all of this from memory?  Dope.  Here is what I found before: "And according to one article I read, one of them was hit by a car right after they released this album and played a gig at Hotel Vegas, putting in the hospital with terrible injuries and a Go Fund Me to help him pay for it all.  Damn!  I guess he is doing better now! The members of the band are from different smaller towns in Texas - and some of them met up and honed their skills at the Kerrville Folk Festival.  Singer Tyler Jordan claims it was seeing Spoon's ACL taping that cemented his need to move to Austin to make music.  That is cool."  And the opening track is a good Spoon comp - very much sounds like something the Spoon guys would have done.  "White Out" is another Spoon-ish song, that also has good lyrics about a gentrifying neighborhood.  The album opener is the top track with 255k streams - "If It's Gone" has the line that they named the album after.

I really want to go see this band play live.  Their sound is warm and yet still fun and catchy.  The whole album is really good, and I felt the same way about their first disc.  I hope these guys get a shot!

Robert Earl Keen - Western Chill.  Weird album.  Feels like one of those label compilations you used to get, where one hot artist would be on there so that you'd buy the disc, and then the rest of the album would be up-and-comers who the label was hoping would pop by being associated with the big guy.  That being said, I kind of like the relaxed and dorky meandering of the title song.  Singing about drinking beer (which he doesn't do anymore) in his cabin for one, or skinny-dipping with the sirens from Oh, Brother.  It won't enter his top songs compendium anytime soon, but it is pleasant anyway.  But after that song, you get one from Bill Whitbeck, and then a track from Brian Beken, then Kym Warner, etc.  Don't get me wrong, they are nice little Americana/country tunes, but they aren't REK.  The one that I really honestly enjoy a lot is the Irish breakdown stomper of Kym Warner's "Hello Stranger."  The stream numbers have to honestly hurt Keen's feelings a little bit.  I'm not going to add them all up, but I bet he doesn't have 350k streams total for all 14 of these tunes.  Jeez.  It is surprisingly not the top track, but I'm giving you the title song anyway.  42k streams.

Like I said, kinda dorky, but still fun.  The other tunes on here that feel like they are really just REK songs aren't better, but they have a similar vibe.  "Let's Valet" feels like he just came up with that idea to be a title for a song and spent twenty minutes coming up with words that rhymed.  Sort of the same for "Balmorhea," like he was thinking "I need to make a better song mentioning that cool little town than those damn Robison brothers, let's throw this sucker together."  You know what is weird?  Good Looks had a song on their first album called "Balmorhea."  Woahhhhhh.  I do love that spring fed pool out there.  Magical.  I don't think I need to save anything from this though.

The Decemberists - As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again.  I like these guys a lot, but I frequently let them fall off of my radar.  When at their best, they sound like their music could be new stuff from R.E.M., which had been my favorite band for decades.  I actually had a discussion with someone at a show a few years ago about favorite bands, and their theory was that you can't name a defunct band as your favorite.  I don't know if I agree with that rule, but it has stuck in my brain since so that I know think of Stipe and Co. as a former favorite band.  Damn stranger-my-wife-struck-up-conversation-with!  So anyway, this album is very nice.  Starts off with a poppy little nugget of jangly 60's-tinged pop rock called "Burial Ground" that is the most streamed tune on here.  A sad 2.3 million streams.

The juxtaposition of lyrics about meeting at the burial ground while happy guitars and synths tangle around each other is great.  Is it about killing yourself at the graveyard?  Or about having a dance party at the graveyard?  Unclear, but it's snappy!  And the album goes for all sorts of feels - "William Fitzwilliam" has a country lilt; "The Reapers" is a classic Decemberists song with opaque lyrics about some vaguely historical-sounding event and eight or nine instruments bopping along; "Born to the Morning" sounds like The New Pornographers.  The problem is when you get to the final song, a 19 minute and twenty-one second meandering freakout container that should be shortened to two minutes or shot into the sun.  Or maybe split into four songs?  I dunno, just know that the entire thing is too much.  Good disc tho.

The Pollies - Transmissions.  Weird thing on the ACL poster this year.  I jammed The Pollies for a while, wrote them up, and was very excited about them showing up at the Festival.  Fuzzy rock and roll goodness right up my alley.  Only to realize that the poster actually said some other dude + The Pollies, so it ended up being like a soul thing instead, which I liked immensely less.  On the other hand, this disc is great stuff, reminds me a little of Ryan Adams.  I know we are not supposed to like Ryan Adams anymore, but I really liked a few of his albums.  Gold is great stuff.  Anyway, this is not him.  The only famous connection here is that one of the Alabama Shakes people is in this band.  Or was.  I don't recall anymore.  Anyway, no one listens to this album, and its their loss.  Top song is "Hold On My Heart," with 33k streams.

"Knocking At My Door" has a very annoying, very unnecessary sloppy freakout in the middle that just does nothing for me.  I really dislike it.  And as soon as it is over, you get back to a Ryan Adams-singing-over-Paul Westerberg-jangle tune and all is right with the world.  Overall, I liked it enough to add it to the queue as I listened to the ACL bands, and I think that still holds true.

Flatland Cavalry

One Liner: Lubbock's own Americana posse

Wikipedia Genre: Country, Americana, folk rock, Texas country
Home: Lubbock

Saturday

Thoughts: Funny thing, I've written about two of their albums, but never really written much about them.  Meanwhile, in my mind, I felt like I had probably written a full-on biography on them by now.  May just be I'm thinking of someone else.  Either way, this is good stuff.

Flatland was formed in Lubbock in 2012 by vocalist Clete Cordero and drummer Jason Albers.  They had previously performed together, since Junior High, and then even more when college roommates in Midland, but then moved to Lubbock and put together the rest of the band - currently at 6 members.  Their first album was 2016's Humble Folks, which I reviewed a few years ago:

"An in-law went and saw this band live a few weeks back and loved the show.  I had never heard of the band so I thought I'd check it out.  Pleasant enough Texas country stuff, in the vein of Pat Green.  In fact, the lead singer frequently sounds like Green.  "A Good Memory" is a good place to start to hear that similarity.  The hit on here is the one featuring the excellently named Kaitlin Butts [who is also going to be at Two Step this year!].  Who is either an heir to the HEB fortune and therefore it makes sense that she kept that surname, or was hoping for the old Beavis and Butthead crowd to find her and push her into stardom, or has a fantastic seat.  I'm going to imagine it's number 2.  Huh huh, cool.  Butts.  Anyway, "A Life Where We Work Out" boasts 89.6 million streams (up from 4.9 when I first reviewed this), which is damn solid for a Texas country band I've never heard of.

Nice little tune - her voice is nice.  I've been through this album a few times, and if I were still in my Americana 4 Lyfe mindset from post-college, I'd probably hold on to this one, but as it is, I'm cool letting it go."

At the time that album came out, they were getting Turnpike Troubadours comparisons, which totally makes sense.  That disc made it up to #17 on the Billboard Americana/Folk charts, which is also kind of impressive to me.  Before their next album, their original fiddle player left the band and was replaced.  2019's goofily named Homeland Insecurity was the next one, and it is pretty similar to the first one.  The big hit off of that one is a gentle ballad named "Sleeping Alone."  62.2 million streams.

Re-released on a new Greatest Hits album this year, that is where that cover art came from.  Sad as hell song, right there, but also beautiful.

The next disc was 2021's Welcome to Countryland.  No hits on there anywhere near as large as the last one, but "Gettin' By" is sort of up there, for this band.  29.1 million streams.

I was definitely hoping that this would have been a cover of the Jerry Jeff song instead.  But as it is, that is a nice little ditty.  A little Nashvillian for my tastes, with trite lyrics mixed in there, but for some reason I really like the organ.  I also wish they could have synched the nodding heads in that tour bus with the beat of the song.

Finally, we get to 2023's Wandering Star.  Here is what I had to say in my review:

"Flatland Cavalry - Wandering Star.  I don't think I've ever heard a single song from these guys, but I've heard them mentioned with the sorts of bands like Turnpike Troubadours for years.  This is their new 2023 album, and it is really solid southern rock/Americana stuff.  The album keeps starting over in the playlist and I really enjoy the sound.  Like, "The Best Days" is just a really lovely little violin-infused rocker that makes me happy.  "New American Dream" has some good one liners about how we're all going to hell while staring at 5 inch screens.  "Last American Summer" is a wonderful capture of nostalgia for some awkward moments from adolescence.  The top track is "Mornings With You," which features Kaitlin Butts (who is married to the lead singer of the band).  Just over 3 million streams. (up to 6.1 million now)

Why does YouTube call these "Official Visualizer"?  It's a music video.  Visualizer makes it sound like it's just going to be random light show graphics or something, not a nice little short movie about being in love.  And a nice tune about trading in the long night party time for a relaxed morning with a love.  "The Best Days" reaches out for really being a rock and roll tune, but with a pile of fiddle as well.  “The stars go on forever, like a billion fireflies, we’re glowing dust just burning out, lucky to be alive.”  I dig it."

I'd definitely go see this.  My personal opinion is that Turnpike is a better band, but I think they're in the same neighborhood and so this show could be really fun.