Country Music Project

by Darah Welch | November 7, 2015 · 7:00 am

College and Country: how country music has transformed my college experience

Note to students: This is an example of Blog Post 5, which asks you to reflect on the experiences you have had with country music outside of class.

This year I have been so blessed to experience so many fun nights and adventures–and I owe several of these good times to the thrilling Austin country music scene. Here are a few of the fun things I have gotten to do this semester:

Brad Paisley Concert. It was early on in the school year but the Brad Paisley concert was quite an experience. Believe it or not it was my first country music concert ever. Of course I had been before to events where country bands were playing, but this was my first time seeing a big country star live. Pat Green opened for Brad which was exciting because I had heard of him and knew a few of his songs. They both played their hits and some other songs I had not heard before. The night was slightly rainy before but it cleared up for the concert and the weather was perfect. I danced and sang with my friends until the final song. It was the perfect first country concert!

11261199_10205049372816338_4008965929679170115_n Dance Across Texas (formerly Midnight Rodeo). Earlier in the semester a couple of my friends and I decided spontaneously to go two-stepping on a thursday night. It was labor day weekend and we were ready to kick it off by dancing the night away at Dance Across Texas. When we arrived we found that the entry fee had escalated quite a bit from before the transition from Midnight Rodeo. We were so excited to dance that it didn’t matter. We snapped a few pics and then ran inside to the tune of a familiar country song. My friends and I danced and sang all night long amongst the elderly folk, true Texan cowboys, and pool playin’ rednecks. Several times we formed a circle and danced with some elderly ladies who knew how to bust a move or two. The night was one to remember and I am looking forward to another spontaneous trip to Dance Across Texas!

Nashville. For my final country music experience I watch the pilot episode of the hit TV series Nashville. I’ll just say this–it was FANTASTIC. I’m honestly probably going to be hooked on it from here on out. The episode deals with an issue we have discussed in class, which made me feel like I had some insight that I would not have had otherwise. The main character Rayna has hit a point in her career where she is a little too old to be selling #1 hits and her label is losing money. They ask her to join tours with an up-and-coming country music diva Juliette Barnes. Rayna is so dismayed that her label would make her open for this young artist that she walks out on them. This reminded me of our class discussion on outlaws. Rayna is an example of a country music artist who will not allow her label to define her or stoop to the level of an opening act after building her career for over twenty years. I strongly recommend this show to anyone who is interested in learning about the business side of country music.

I’m so thankful for the fun times I have had this semester and I owe it to my country music class for pushing me to do things that I would not have even known about or considered before this year.

8 Comments

Filed under Blog Post 5, Dancing, Live Music, Movies and TV, Reflection

by Tyler Dial | November 6, 2015 · 1:00 pm

What it’s Like to be a New Songwriter in Nashville

The day after my last final exam of the 2015 spring semester, I loaded up my car with my suitcases, guitars, random dormitory decorations, and made the sixteen-hour drive to Nashville, Tennessee. I have always wanted to live in Nashville and after I got a part-time internship for Toby Keith’s manager, I was able to convince my parents to let me move there for the summer. My naïve intention was to leave Nashville in August with a handful of hit songs in my back pocket.

I don’t think any Nashville newcomer has had a better first couple days than I did. On my second day, I met with John Marks, the highly regarded radio programmer for the Sirius XM station, The Highway. He agreed to put my single, “Damn Good Time” on the air! From that meeting, we walked into the building next door and met with John Huie, the head of the largest booking agency in the country, Creative Artists Agency. It was a great introduction and he agreed to keep an eye on my progress in Nashville and invited me to a big CAA event. I also had a meeting with Mike Dungan, the head of Universal Music Group Nashville, who also said he’d keep an eye on my progress. The next day, I recorded the vocals for “Damn Good Time” with the famous Nashville producer, Chuck Ainlay, who had just received a Grammy for his work on Miranda Lambert’s Platinum.

After my honeymoon week in Nashville, I quickly realized that success wasn’t going to fall in my lap. Reality had sunk in. I was a nineteen-year-old in a big city full of talented songwriters who, like me, were chasing after the same dream. It wasn’t until I joined the Nashville Songwriter’s Association International when I made my first big step. I brought my guitar into the back room of the building and played my songs for the new artist representative. She immediately fell in love with my music and began reaching out to other talented songwriters to connect me with. That night I went to NSAI’s pitch to a publisher event where I was able to meet many other Nashville newbies. I showed up to NSAI on time, which was a huge mistake. The line was out the door and I was stuck in the back next to a few old-timers who were still trying to get their big break on music row. I asked one of them where he got his boots and he jokingly responded, “Hey son that’s a good song idea.” A few weeks later, I co-wrote one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written, “Where’d You Get Those Boots?”

As time passed, I started playing at better-known songwriting venues, such as The Listening Room, and I started writing with better writers who had publishing deals like my friend, Morgan Dawson.

My first month in Nashville was very intimidating. The lows were very low and the highs were really high. My confidence quickly grew and I was able to find a unique sound. Songwriters assumed I was a lot older and were astonished when I told them I was nineteen. When August rolled around, I had made so much progress that people close to me in the industry told me to stick around. Although I didn’t want to leave, I was ready to come back to Austin with the songwriting tools I had acquired in Nashville. As I drove out of town, I had pocketful of new songs I’m still crazy about and I knew that that wasn’t the last Nashville would see of me.

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Filed under Blog Post 4, Reflection

by Matt Wills | · 7:00 am

What The Country Music Industry Can Learn From Jason Eady

A good friend and I decided to go see the up-and-coming Nashville artist Chris Stapleton not too long ago, and while Stapleton put on a show that I will not soon forget, I found another star among the fray of openers that took the stage in a little honky-tonk down by the river in New Braunfels, Texas. Seeing that doors opened at 6pm that night, our group made the classic mistake of arriving right as the honky-tonk opened its doors in order to get the best possible spot for the Nashville star we were so eager to see. 3 small Texas country artists later, with still 2 more to go before Stapleton even took the stage, we discovered a red dirt artist who rivals the big Texas country names such as the Randy Rogers band or Pat Green: Jason Eady.

While many of the Texas country bands we saw at the River Road Ice House seemed to all blend together, their songs all sounding like the twangy slow songs occasionally accompanied by a steel guitar, something stood out about Jason Eady. He was an incredible performer, getting the crowd excited to hear music by an artist who has next to no presence on iTunes or Spotify and at many times throughout the performance I found myself surrounded by people two-stepping or swaying where they had been simply standing still for every other artist who had taken the stage thus far. My favorite song played by Eady (and one of my favorite songs of the entire night, believe it or not) was “Back to Jackson.” The song starts out with the typical neo-traditionalist sound of red dirt country music, but by the extremely catchy hook I couldn’t help but sing along. As someone whose music library is composed almost exclusively of country music and who is proud of their country music knowledge, I was genuinely surprised to talk to a local couple who had come not for Chris Stapleton (the main act and the talk of town in Nashville,) but simply for Jason Eady. The band has taken a genre which I found to be becoming a little worn out through songs which all sound too similar and cover the same couple topics such as back roads, the glorification of Texas and what it’s like to grow up in a little “water tower” town, reinventing the sub-genre through a mix of blues, Texas country a little small hint of Nashville’s polished style.

While it was great to hear an artist making Texas country a great genre again, there is a bigger lesson to be learned, both for listeners and for the Nashville music machine. Country music is a much more diverse genre than it is given credit for, or is approached by via the Nashville music industry. There are an unlimited amount of sounds that can be contained in the genre and so many topics that are yet to be explored. Why subject listeners to a legion of new songs that all sound the same or cover the same topic? When there is so much leeway concerning what can be produced musically, the country music industry as a whole is “dropping the ball” concerning new innovations in the genre, both musically and lyrically. Instead of giving listeners the same old thing they expect from country music, it’s time for the industry to mix it up a little bit and give audiences a taste of how diverse and unique country music can be.

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Filed under Blog Post 3, Live Music, Texas

by Dustin Hixenbaugh | November 5, 2015 · 1:00 pm

Disney-Country Collaborations

Woody's Round Up

The only thing that could possibly rival country music for its domination of the market in manufactured sadness and nostalgia is, well, a Disney movie.

So I guess it makes sense that the Mouse House and country music would team up now and again to prey on our emotions and leave a trail of our glistening tears in their wake. Two recent Disney-country collaborations appear on a new album of Disney classics reinterpreted by popular contemporary singers.

Called We Love Country, the collection includes two country songs. The first is “Let It Go,” performed as a duet between Lucy Hale and the Rascal Flatts. Since Frozen is still fairly new ~~and overrated~~, I didn’t respond strongly to that one. The second country song is Kacey Musgraves’s cover of “A Spoonful of Sugar” — a tune I strongly associate with my childhood. My mom and I watched Mary Poppins, like, daily, and I would stand on the staircase with an open umbrella and pretend I was flying. Musgraves keeps it bouncy and light, but like vinegar and baking soda the steel guitar and my memories of that singing nanny are a mixture that yield a predictable response. I sobbed.

I started this post intending to share my ten favorite Disney-country collaborations. But since I’m running short on Kleenex, I’ll just focus on the top five. They’re ranked in order of the least to most likely to leave me in a puddle.

5. “Will the Sun Ever Shine Again” (2004)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnMrUuE4CvE

Disney’s cow movie, Home on the Range, is a disaster except for this heart-wrenching ballad by country rocker Bonnie Raitt. For many people (myself included), feeling nostalgic often involves longing for home and brighter days. But how does one go on when there’s no way of knowing if the sun will shine again? The song is good and sad enough it almost makes me feel sympathy for that ditzy, selfish bovine with the voice of Roseanne.

4. The Robin Hood (1973) soundtrack

I’m not sure how the Disney execs came up with the idea of hiring Roger Miller to write the songs for their movie about a medieval English thief. Probably, they wanted him to bring the same zany fun to the film that he had brought to songs like “Dang Me” and “King of the Road” in the mid ’60s. In fact, with the songs “Oo De Lally” and “Not in Nottingham” he gave the movie a soul and an emotional punch. “Oo De Lally” is as much an introduction to the characters of Robin Hood and Little John as it is a testament to their friendship.

3. “On the Front Porch” (1963)

If nostalgia had a voice it would sound like Burl Ives. Though he was a celebrated folk/country singer and an Oscar-winning actor, he is best known for voicing the character of Sam the Snowman on the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special. In Disney’s Summer Magic, he plays a wise country bumpkin, and in one of the film’s best moments he gathers the other characters together to sing along on this ode to family, friends, and the simpler days gone by.

The song was written by Richard and Robert Sherman, who composed the songs for lots of the movies I obsessed over as a kid, including The Sword in the Stone (1963), Mary Poppins (1964), The Jungle Book (1967), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977).

2. You’ve Got a Friend in Me (1995)

Pretty much the whole point of Toy Story is to bring the tears of nostalgia into its viewer’s eyes. Do you feel guilty even considering trashing a stuffed animal you haven’t touched in ten years? Blame director John Lasseter. “Woody’s Round-Up,” performed by Riders in the Sky, appears in Toy Story 2 and is the franchise’s most traditional country song, but the tune that brings these movies’ fans to tears is “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” At the end of the first film, the song is performed as a duet between Randy Newman and alt.country singer Lyle Lovett. Like Woody and Buzz, they’re an odd but perfect combination.

1. “Baby Mine” (1996)

This song from Dumbo is one of Disney’s most enduring classics. In 1996, Allison Krauss covered it for the album The Best of Country Sing the Best of Disney, and though the single floundered on the charts it netted her a Grammy nomination.

Like Mary Poppins and Toy Story, Dumbo isn’t just a movie I watched as a child — it’s a movie about the experience of being a child. How better to remind viewers how it felt to be both scared and comforted as a child than through a lullaby? Krauss’s version adds a bridge and a modern sound, and though the original brings me tears, it’s the cover that makes me melt. I sing the song pretty regularly to my own son at bedtime, which means my emotional attachment — not to mention the puddles of tears — will only grow in the years to come

Nostalgia is a difficult topic to discuss with other people because we all have such different experiences. Do Disney movies give you the same feels that country music does? What Disney-country collaborations that I’ve left off the list do you remember and love? Share in the comments!

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Filed under Lists, Movies and TV, Reflection

by Stephanie Sebo | · 7:00 am

What I Grew Up To

Imagine every time you got into the car to go to a basketball practice, church or just out to dinner you knew exactly what to expect. Well, for my siblings and me, we did know what to expect. My dad would always play 3 country artists. I grew up in a small town in Maumelle, Arkansas and I can honestly say listening to these three country artists almost every day truly shaped sweet memories of my childhood.

Garth Brooks

I know what you’re probably thinking… “Of course, who didn’t listen to him?”, but you’re right! To me, listening to Garth Brooks is a classic memory. Now, my dad and I tended to be a bit theatrical at times, so when it was just him and I in the car on the way to some event, we would always play “When the Thunder Rolls”. What a better song to play when you’re planning on acting and being all dramatic, right? I mean, really, who can’t resist to belt out and dance during the thunder parts of the song. The next most played Garth Brooks song was, of course, “The Dance”. My dad knew this one a lot better than I did, but I enjoyed it just as much.

Dixie Chicks

Here we go, another wave of childhood memories come flooding back anytime I hear ANY of the Dixie Chicks songs. “Good Bye Earl” is still my jam until this day. While at the time, I only thought of it as a fun, upbeat song, I still bolt it out today knowing it is about domestic abuse. I think it’s a song that catches people’s attention and brings awareness to a serious issue. “Ready to Run” also deserves a huge honorable mention because my sisters and I use to act out that song all the time. While these are two of my favorites, every Dixie Chicks song that comes to mind has a unique place in my heart.

Shania Twain

I saved good ole Shania for last because it’s a personal favorite. Her songs bring back probably the sweetest memories I have. Mainly because my dad belted out her songs louder than anyone, and if you knew my dad, you’d know why this was such a funny and entertaining site for me. “That Don’t Impress Me Much” and “Man! I Feel like a Woman” are easily my top two favorite songs by her. I mean, come on, can you imagine your father singing “let’s go girls” at the beginning of the song “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” and that not bringing a smile to your face? I didn’t think so.

No matter what I tell people about my childhood from Arkansas, no story is told without mention of at least one of these country singers. That is how I know country music has touched my life and I have grown a genuine sentimental value from listening to it.

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Filed under Blog Post 4, Country Pop, Dancing, Garth Brooks, Reflection, Women