My series on country music is over, but I wanted to provide a response to a comment. Raven expressed an opinion that modern, pop country music seems to have lost the Outlaw edge. That's true. It has.
But there are some out there who are pushing the edge still, and one of them is Hank Williams Sr.'s grandson. If you look into his music far enough, you'll find a lot you don't like. He's part of a country band, a punk rock band, a metal band, and pushes out without regard to what people will be ready to accept. So, you know, be warned.
Here's a couple of easier to digest things to get you started.
Here's him doing a couple of Outlaw classics.
...and some less easy things, which some of you will not like, and some of you will like even better.
This next one is NSFW at all... but for the record, he doesn't like pop country either.
And then there's this one, featuring a "hellbilly" sound.
So if you're interested in edge, it's out there. He's far from the only one; if you liked the more radical pieces, you might also try the Pine Box Boys and see where that leads you. They have less range, but they're very good within their range, and are linked to a lot of other bands who are looking for the edge.
If you didn't like Hank Williams, stay far away from those guys.
9 comments:
Other alternative country would be some Big & Rich and Cowboy Troy.
Something I like about country is the genuine diversity. In a drive to work I can hear a pro-Christian ballad, a rocking song about drinking and getting laid, a song written & sung by a soldier about his tour of duty in Iraq (Luke Stricklin) or a patriotic tune (Toby Keith comes to mind), a song about doing all kinds of crime, funny songs, sad songs, angry songs, stupid songs, and probably some other kinds of songs I'm not thinking about at the moment. The one kind of song that doesn't play well is the anti-American rant, and I'm fine with that.
Clarification, Big & Rich aren't alt country per se; I used 'alternative' up there as a plain old adjective w/o thinking of the usual connotations of 'alt' in front of a genre.
Old 97s, on the other hand, are. They're kinda fun.
I seen him interviewed, and I suspect he's a tweaker.
I'll bet daddy and grandpa ain't too proud of him.
Or maybe they are?
I gather he and Hank, Jr., don't get along. Hard to say about his grandfather, who was a man with a very wild lifestyle by the standards of the day.
"Hard to say about his grandfather, who was a man with a very wild lifestyle by the standards of the day."
Yeah. That old saying about traits skipping a generation seems to hold in some families. Distance vs. proximity to the parent/authority figure to be rebelled against or romanticized as the case may be. To be, or not to be...
P.S. Most enjoyable series and comments on the two major music groups. Well done.
Have not listened to the Hank 3 songs yet, but I think you are messin' with some long buried latent desire, putting up all this country music-
I found myself intently studying pedal steel guitar instructional video's on you tube last night at 12pm.- and I don't even have a pedal steel........!
And while I'm thinking about C&W, July 28th, next Saturday, is the National Day of the American Cowboy... FYI.
I'm glad you've enjoyed it. It was sort of a wild hare that came over me to do it, but it's been fun.
July 28, eh? I'll have to post some Marty Robbins tunes.
Grim, you might add an Ian Tyson song or two for current cowboy music. He's a Canadian western song-writer who owns and works on a ranch in Alberta. Back in the 1960s he was half of Ian and Sylvia ("Four Strong Winds") but his more recent work is very cow-y. Try "Own Heart's Delight," "Claude Dallas," (lots of pedal steel), "La Primera, Spanish Mustang" or "50 Years Ago." His setting of "Wind in the Wires" is the best I've heard, and "Old Double Diamond" and "MC Horses" catch the flavor of old ranches now gone. His best albums, IMHO, are "Cowboyography" "All the Good 'Uns," "Eighteen Inches of Rain," and "I Outgrew the Wagon." "All the Good 'Uns" is a compilation.
LittleRed1
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