20191228_Grand_Country#22

The music industry is taking notice of singer/songwriter Ashley Wineland. In 2018, the Official CMT Artist was signed to a worldwide management deal with powerhouse entertainment company The City Drive Group. The Arizona-based artist next set her sights on Nashville – collaborating in-studio with one of today’s leading songwriters/producers, hitmaker Marti Frederiksen, who has also worked with Oklahoman Carrie Underwood, and with Faith Hill.

Her voracious vocals have left an everlasting impression with audiences across the U.S. This, combined with her colossal presence on social media, has amassed a fervent global fan base, also known as “Winelanders”. This new but impassioned spirit storyteller is on an ardent quest to bring back the core elements that are sorely missing from today’s country music, just the right kind of artist this show is looking for. Her song “Simple Life”, which has been the opener of today’s show, strikes a chord of authenticity as it captures the heartbeat of the heartland and the essence of the human experience, just as an old troubadour would do. Along the still short way in her musical journey, this young girl-next-door lends her time and talent to compelling charitable causes, showing that her voice is not the only good thing she has, but her heart is as big as the Arizona desert sky. Years of hard work, and a true connection to her fans have heralded her as “The Next Big Thing” in country music. We’ll say goodbye to her listening to two more songs. The first one called “She’s Gone”, single from 2018, and the second one is a version of LeAnn Rimes’s Christmas song “Put a little holiday in your heart”, taking advantage of the holiday season. Ashley Wineland.

Earlier this year, Grammy award-winning singer/songwriter and powerhouse vocalist Leann Rimes unveiled her last album “Rimes: Live at Gruene Hall” as an exclusive Record Store Day only, and released only on vinyl. Recently, during a sold-out show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, she announced that she had decided to make the record available worldwide across all digital and streaming formats to mark her 25-year career, being this one the first live album in her career to have been released. It is a collection of ten live performances from the world-renowned artist at Gruene Hall, which historically is known as “the oldest continually run dance hall in Texas”, to celebrate her love for all music ranging from rock, country, to blues and pop under one roof. We’ve just listened to her rendition to Patsy Cline’s “Blue”, song that marked her stardom at the early age of 13, just like Tanya Tucker did in 1972 with her song “Delta Dawn”.

We’ll listen to two more songs from the concert, “Streets of Bakersfield”, versioned from Buck Owen’s classic, and “The Bottle Let me Down”, from Merle HAggard’s unforgettable standard.

The difficulty that we face every time we want to find new releases and artists whose main aim is to save real country music and tradition from disappearing is staggering. But this is not something new, mainstream Nashville has always been in constant fight to get as much attention from audiences as possible, creating what has been always known as “crossovers”, that is to say, songs which don’t really pertain to one style exclusively. In the 70s there was a genre within country music coined “outlaw country” because there were a series of country musicians (mostly men) who resisted the temptation of recording music which would not really represent their stories. One of these several cases was impersonated by David Allan Coe, who recorded a version in 1975 of a song called “You never even call me by my name”, which had been written and recorded in 1971 by Steve Goodman and John Prine. The song was a satirical response and kiss-off to the country music industry placed in Nashville, which blatantly refused to acknowledge the artist’s fringe style. The song name-drops other outlaw country musicians in the lyrics, such as Waylong Jennings, Charlie Pride, and Merle Haggard.
The song, over 5 minutes long, is known for its humorous self.description as “the perfect country and western song”. It is widely accepted that a good country song lists clichés such as mama, trains, or trucks, or pick up trucks, or prison, or getting drunk. As the song didn’t mention any of these things, David Allan Coe and Steve Goodman commented about it and Goodman, who had penned the song, included a last verse on the record which had not previously been included in 1971 or 1975, but that has since been included in spoken epilogues when performed both on stage and in other albums, such as 1994’s Doug Supernaw rendition to the classic, which includes the old voices of the outlaw performers who had been mentioned in the original song, including David Allan Coe.
All of this has been explained because Leann Rimes, in her live album, has included her own version of the song, called “You never even call me by my name”. We’ll say goodbye to her listening to this beautiful song, to later listen to David Allan Coe’s original version, and finish with Doug Supernaw’s 1994 rendition.

To hear Curtis Grimes sing is to take a trip through the heart of country music. Grimes was raised listening to Alan Jackson and George Strait. A contestant of 2011 reality TV show “The Voice”, Grimes ended up finishing as a Top 10 Finalist of Season 1. We’ve just listened to “Ten YEar Town”, a beautiful country song which talks about how difficult it is to be a country artist who wants to make it singing traditional country. Ten years is the time it seems to be taking Curtis to get to mainstream on his own, with his own talent, which as a matter of fact is exactly the message of the previous song. In fact, he openly critizices the fact that they don’t know song standard songs like “You never even call me by my name”.

We’ll say goodby to Curtis with a promise to listen to more stuff from him, listening to his last two singles released in 2019. The first one, called “Still”, about his Texas origins, and the second, a great rendition of a bluegrass classic, “I saw the light”, that I hope you enjoy as much as I will.

Since they started back in 1953 officially as a duet in Knoxville in Tennessee, marking 1959 as the year when they released their first album “Country Pickin’ and Hillside singing”, 31 have been the complete Long Plays that have been released by this duet formed by Sonny Osborne and Bobby Osborne, or as they are known all around the bluegrass scene, “The Osborne Brothers”. Born in Hayden, Kentucky and raised in Dayton, Ohio, they started flirting with instruments in 1949, ten years before they decided to form the duet of talented musicians. Their career spans 70 years, and 66 as a duet in itself. For that matter, the brothers have released a compilation of bluegrass representative of their fruitful career.

We’ve first listened to the song “At the First Fall of Snow” opening this compilation called “Blame me”, released under the record label Royal Bakersfield Music. Both brothers are still alive, even though they retired in 2005, with Bobby still working in a band called Rocky Top X-press. We’ll listen to a few more songs from this unforgettable and talented musicians of bluegrass: “Banjo Boy Chimes”, and “There’s a Woman behind Every Man” from 1959.

The Osborne Brothers met a great number of virtuoso musicians such as Bill Monroe, considered the father of Bluegrass music, or Earl & Scruggs, another historical and talented duet. Dozens of thousands of fans still rage when they get ahold of a collection such as this double album, containing 26 songs, two more than their 1991 double CD called “Once More”. We’ll say goodbye to these Brothers listening to one more song from this album from 2019, “Old Hickory”, a great instrumental, and “Nobody’s Darlin’ but mine” from the 1991 double collection “Once More”.

From the year 1991, just as The Osborne brothers were releasing this “Nobody’s Darling but Mine”, the Ka’au Crater Boys from the beautiful islands of the state of Hawai’i released their debut album called “TRopical Hawaiian DAy”, with this rendition to Jimmie Davis’s “Nobody’s Darling but Mine”. The Hawaiian duo teamed Troy Fernandez and Ernie Cruz. Formed during the mid-1990s, they issued a series of LPs including Tropical Hawaiian Day, the one we are visiting today, Valley Style in 1993, and On Fire in 1994, before disbanding in 1997. The name Ka?au Crater Boys refers to Ka?au Crater, an extinct volcano above the Palolo Valley of Oahu, near to the Palolo housing community in which Cruz and Fernandez were raised.

Between 1991 and 1997, the Ka‘au Crater Boys rode a wave of success that earned them a Na Hoku Hanohano Award for Best Contemporary Album in 1995, the one called “On Fire”. Brimming with youthful energy, the duo’s songs conveyed the wonder of the islands and the ocean, and often the intensity of romantic love. Fernandez’s embellishments on the ukulele—roller-coaster scales, cascades of thirds, thrilling tremolos—showcased the instrument to a new generation. But as there is no better way to describe it than by listening to some songs to understand the blend between bluegrass and Hawaiian beautiful ukulele sound, we’ll listen to two more songs included in this album from 1991. “Hana Calls”, and “Still the One”.

When Troy Fernandez left the duet, we started recording solo, including covers from country musicians such as Hank Thompson, from whom he played the country classic “The Wild Side of Life” in his album called “Strumming My Ukulele”. In many occasions he has commented that he got turned on mostly to country-western by Ernie Cruz Jr., because his dad was a famous country-western singer. He was in Hawaii and all over in the mainland, and he would even perform with the duet on occasions. No doubt that the band sounds so great and country even in their debut album. We’ll say goodbye to our show with two more songs from the album, and a third song from a different artist.

The two songs we’re going to listen to, included in this “Tropical Hawaiian Day” are “Guava Jam”, and “Sweet Lei Ka Lehua”, this last one sung in Hawaiian language. And to finish this show we’ll wish you happy holidays in Hawaiian in the voice of Kacey Musgraves, who has released a country album holiday special with 10 classics, including “Mele Kalikimaka”, Hawaiian’s way to say “Merry Christmas”.