Year: 2011

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100 Greatest Men: #95. David Allan Coe

January 18, 2011 Kevin John Coyne 6

He wasn’t part of the landmark Outlaws album, but David Allan Coe has been more the living embodiment of that label than any other artist in the history of country music.

Coe was born in Akron, Ohio in 1939. He spent his youth in and out of reformatory schools, the beginning of a long history of run-ins with the law. After spending most of his twenties in prison, he moved to Nashville in the late sixties. His style was jarring, with tattoos, long hair, and piercings, and for a stretch, he lived in a hearse parked right outside the Ryman Auditorium.

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Choice Cuts: Kathy Mattea, “Beautiful Fool”

January 17, 2011 Kevin John Coyne 11

A repost from last year, in honor of Dr. King.

Beautiful Fool
Kathy Mattea
from the 1997 album Love Travels

Our antiseptic approach to the legends of American history often results in the life’s work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. being reduced to four words and a three-day weekend. To prevent this in my own mind, I often revisit “Beautiful Fool”, a Don Henry composition that can be found on Kathy Mattea’s 1997 album Love Travels.

What I love about this song is its realism and its willingness to take on two voices of perspective at the same time. As an older woman reflects on King’s impact on her country and the sacrifices he was willing to make, she remembers her far less charitable opinion of him when he was alive: “Walter Cronkite preempted Disney one night, and all us kids were so upset. We thought you were a trouble instigator marching through our TV set.”

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Single Review: Sugarland, “Little Miss”

January 16, 2011 Kevin John Coyne 15

“Little Miss’ is one of many socially conscious songs on Sugarland’s The Incredible Machine, but it’s the only one that truly works. It succeeds where the others fail for two main reasons.

One, it describes things as they are now, instead of trying to inspire us with idyllic images of how the world could be if we just, you know, did something. The details used to describe a woman who “is so much more than you like to talk about” captures the dilemma that faces so many women today with little descriptions that add up to a larger picture of all of the compromises that must be made to a woman’s ambition and talent for her to not offend those who might be offended by them.

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100 Greatest Men: #96. Gary Allan

January 15, 2011 Kevin John Coyne 16

He started off as a new traditionalist with only his raspy voice making him distinctive. But when he embraced his California country roots, he became one of the defining male vocalists of the early 21st Century.

Gary Allan Herzberg hails from California. He grew up in a musical family, and by age thirteen, he was playing honky-tonks at night with his father. His talent was evident even at that young age, and at age fifteen, he turned down his first opportunity at a major label record deal, opting to finish school instead.

He quickly became a big draw on the local concert scene, playing to overcrowded rooms but refusing to move up to bigger venues that wouldn’t allow him to play the traditional country covers that made up a big chunk of his set. He cut some demos in a small California studio in the early nineties, and the tape caught the interest of BNA Records in Nashville. But restructuring at the label prevented him from being signed.

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Single Review: Josh Kelley, "Georgia Clay"

January 12, 2011 Dan Milliken 7

He may be the latest of many pop dudes gone country, but I’ve got a feeling Josh Kelley could actually stick around for a while. Just because it makes business sense. He’s famous enough to enjoy name recognition, but not enough to seem like a desperate has-been for switching teams; plus you don’t need your music to be especially “country” to market it under that name now anyway; plus I suspect that lots of Lady Antebellum fans will be willing to give Charles’ big bro a shot.

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Single Review: Darius Rucker, “This”

January 12, 2011 Kevin John Coyne 8

Back in the nineties, radio remixes became widely prevalent in the pop, rock, and R&B formats. You couldn’t just send a song to radio as is, and call it a day.

Instead, programmers would get the same song in five different versions. Top 40 Mix, AC Mix, Dance Mix Edit. All the same song at the core, I suppose, but when the only thing left from the original is the artist’s vocal, it’s hard to know what the core of the song is.

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