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Features
12 Midland
Duncan Warwick gets the lowdown on the countriest thing in the Top 10 with Midland’s Jess
Carson.
20 CMA Songwriters Series
Some of Nashville’s finest songsmiths hit our shores recently and Spencer Leigh made
sure he was there.
November 2017
Hey, hey, it’s
MIDLAND
WHAT’S GOING ON HERE? A GENUINE, BONAFIDE
COUNTRY RECORD IN THE TOP TEN. DUNCAN
WARWICK ATTEMPTS TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF
IT ALL WITH MIDLAND’S JESS CARSON.
S
omething unusual has been going on on the
Billboard Hot Country singles chart in recent
months. Something very unusual indeed. You
could be forgiven for struggling to recall the
last time it happened. I know it sounds hard to
believe… but in a sea of pop and rap produced fodder aimed
at 14-year-olds there is one record that actually sounds like
a country record. Not only that but it sounds like a country
record that might have been cut by George Strait on one of
his early albums like Ocean Front Property or Does Ft. Worth
Ever Cross Your Mind, you know, the really, really good ones.
The single in question is Drinkin’ Problem - already more of
a grown-up subject matter - and the band is called Midland
and comprises singer Mark Wystrach, lead guitarist Jess
Carson, and bass player Cameron Duddy. If you put much
faith in Wiki they named themselves after the Dwight Yoakam
song Fair To Midland, but as Jess Carson shares shortly after
being announced as one of the acts coming for next year’s
C2C, “That’s the easy answer. It means different things to all
of us. To me it’s kind of like the three of us and everything we
do has to meet in the middle and geographically we’re were
all in different places when we started it - I was out in Texas,
Cameron and Mark were in different parts of California - so
we all had to come together to even do this.”
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NOVEMBER 2017 - cmp
24 Mo Pitney
A hero for traditionalists, Mo Pitney stops off for some shows on his way to Switzerland.
Duncan Warwick caught up with him.
eric
paslay
52 Chris Hillman
michael
tyler
Byrds and Desrt Rose Band founding member is grilled by Spencer Leigh.
60 Casey Donahew
Texas favourite doing it all himself for 15 years.
SPENCER LEIGH TALKS TO THE
COUNTRY MUSIC SONGWRITERS WHO
HAVE BEEN TOURING THE UK
O
n his 1973 album, Lullabys, Legends And Lies,
Bobby Bare recorded a funny yet touching Shel
Silverstein composition about a songwriter on Music
Row. It’s called Sure Hit Songwriters Pen and it
starts with a spoken introduction:
“There’s a tale going around about a guy who
writes a few songs, grabs his guitar, jumps on a bus, goes to Nashville
and overnight becomes a smash. This works for some of the guys
sometimes but there’s a whole lot of guys running up and down 16th
Avenue South here and you can see them at Tootsie’s and you can see
them at the Country Corner and they have a whole lotta dreams, same
way I had mine. Sometimes they come true and sometimes they don’t.”
The character in the song is “living on hope and Hershey bars” and
everything works out when he finds a sure hit songwriters pen, which
he soon loses. It’s very funny but it accurately described how Nashville
works and in that respect, it hasn’t changed all that much. Jimmy Webb
told me in 2013, “Most of the songwriters in the US have retreated to
Nashville; it is like The Keep. They are making their stand down there
but songwriting as an art form is in decline. Certainly the role of the
songwriter and the importance of the songwriter is not what it once was
in America.”
In other words, the collaborations around the Brill Building have gone
and everyone has headed to Nashville where all manner of songs are
being written. Songwriters no longer grow up in a vacuum. Many of
the country music songwriters of the 50s and 60s knew nothing but
country music and they weren’t interested in rock’n’roll and soul, not
to mention anything psychedelic. It worked in reverse too; there was
controversy when Dolly Parton had pop hits in the 70s and for a time,
she didn’t even mention “country” as it might have deterred new fans.
That was pointless as Dolly Parton was country every time she opened
her mouth and rock fans came to love her for it. Witness Glastonbury. I
can remember CMP being hesitant about printing an interview of mine
with Joe Ely.
This box mentality has gone: the young songwriters may respect the
tradition they have inherited but they listen to chart music, hence you
have crossover artists like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift.
angaleena
presley
randy
houser
Country music still appreciates the importance of a good song and
it is great that its trade organisation, the Country Music Association,
should promote the CMA Songwriter Series. In recent years they have
brought it to Europe and their tour in October 2017 was in its standard
format – four songwriters sitting on stools with acoustic guitars and
performing single songs in rotation with anecdotes of how they came to
write them. The performers were Randy Houser, Eric Paslay, Angaleena
Presley and Michael Tyler, none of whom are household names in the
UK and their songs are little known. Having said that, there is a hard
core of country fans who know them well and when I caught the tour at
St George’s Hall in Liverpool, they came on stage to a warm reception
and someone shouting “I love you, Randy!” to which he replied, “I love
you too!” Randy recognised someone in the front row who had seen him
in Oregon. He said, “Anytime you want to come to a show, let me know
and I’ll put you on the guest list.” His fan commented, “You might come
to regret that.”
St George’s Hall was built in the 1840s and it contains a decorative
gold-coloured concert room in which both Charles Dickens and Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle have performed. When the comedian Rich Hall
was doing stand-up last year, he remarked, “I feel like I’m in Liberace’s
intestines.”
The performers were overwhelmed by their surroundings. Eric Paslay
told me, “When I saw pictures of this hall, I couldn’t wait to play it.
Whenever I am on the road, I look for museums and antique stores, and
it seems to me that the whole of the UK is an antique store and I love
it.” As John Stewart once remarked, “Of course we have some great old
places in the States but we tend to stick McDonald’s next to them.”
Twenty-three year old Michael Tyler told me, “I come from a town
Thayer, Missouri in the middle of nowhere, just 2,000 people. When I
was young, I went to some big cities like Boston and LA, but I’m still a
small town country boy and coming to the UK is amazing, informative
and enlightening. Liverpool is insane and I’m trying to imagine what it
would be like on a sunny day!”
MT, as he is known, was overjoyed that some of the audience knew
his work but his first single, They Can’t See, has had over two million
hits on Spotify and many of them will be from the UK. It’s a love song
with a sensual twist: “I’m in love with everything they can’t see.” It has a
catchy arrangement but it works just as well acoustically. “I wish my first
single had been as good as that,” mused Eric Paslay.
MT was concentrating on his debut album, 317, so called because
that was the number of miles he travelled from his home in Thayer,
Missouri to his lodgings in Nashville when he was 18. There isn’t a song
called 317, though there should be, and the songs reflect his family
background: Hey Mama is about his brother telling his mother about
his girlfriend. When he sang about a relationship with a difficult girl, Too
Bad You’re Crazy, Eric Paslay remarked, “She took the wheels off your
jeep?” “Well, she took my coffee table actually.” “How did you feel?” “I
wrote a song about it.”
As MT sang Somewhere On A Beach, a country hit for Dierks Bentley,
I realised that I preferred his simple, unadorned arrangement as the hit
single was not that imaginative. I think MT has the better voice, although
the obvious artist for this song is Jimmy Buffett. The audience knew the
song too as they shouted “Hell, no” at the appropriate spot.
MT has come up quickly, being heard and appreciated by Jason
Aldean’s producer, Michael Knox, when he was only 14. “I’d been
writing songs since I was 12 but I was playing the drums at first. It’s very
difficult to sing and play the drums and I think Don Henley and Levon
Helm are just incredible. All you need to write a song is a couple of
chords and then I was off. I sent some stuff to Michael Knox and when
he responded, I freaked out. He didn’t know I was only 14 and he asked
me if I was playing in Nashville! We booked something and he came to
see me. He wanted me to find myself as a writer and as an artist and
that took four years. I then went to town and he got me a publishing deal
with Peer Music. He hooked me with some co-writers which was really
cool as I would see different perspectives on the same idea. I grew up
from sitting in with those writers.”
And it’s worked. 317 is an exceptionally good debut album. I was
amused that the album gives credit for hair, which is plentiful, and make-
up, which is nil. MT dresses down. I once spoke to the 50s singer Anne
Shelton who had just seen Emmylou Harris on TV and was horrified that
she was wearing jeans. To her, Emmylou was a female singer letting the
side down. I feel a bit like that when I see a performer like MT on stage
in torn jeans. Isn’t it mocking the people who can’t afford new clothes? I
blame Bruce Springsteen for this.
Some of Michael Tyler’s songs fall in with that new genre, Bro
Country (Brother Country) which describe songs about six-packs,
barrooms and girls. “Oh, don’t say that. It’s not a term that performers
like. It’s not new either. Country singers have been singing about bars
and girls and trucks since the 60s.” Indeed – and now the industry has
combined it with bad 70s rock. It could even be that the very diversity
of Nashville has resulted in the music losing its way although clearly, it
is very good for business. Traditional artists are now at the margins and
this is where Americana comes t o the rescue.
Even more along Bro Country lines, although I’ve now been told not
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Reviews
30 Album Reviews
49 Live Review
50 Book Review
Regulars
4 News
8 Tour Guide
10 The David Allan Page
18 Nice to meet y’all - Emily Herring
28 Week In The Life - Jerry Douglas
51 Americana Roundup
58 Nice to meet y’all - Hang Rounders
62 Nice to meet y’all - Amy Westney
Charts
64 Americana & UK Country Charts
65 Billboard Country Charts
Courtesy of Billboard Inc.
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MO
Pitney
DUNCAN WARWICK MEETS THE YOUNG TRADITIONALIST BUT
FINDS WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO WAIT A LOT LONGER FOR ALBUM
NUMBER TWO.
I
t feels as though we waited
forever for Mo Pitney’s album.
Singles like his debut, the Bill
Anderson co-written Country,
and follow-up, Boy And Girl Thing,
tantalisingly hinted that the young
man from Illinois was the pure country
singer we’d been missing for so long all
wrapped up in a lanky frame.
Pitney’s record label, Curb, no doubt
disappointed by the performance
of the singles which barely scraped
into the Top 50, didn’t seem in much
of a rush to release Pitney’s album
Behind This Guitar and it was a good
couple of years after his debut single
that it finally appeared. The likeable
singer made a brief solo tour of the
UK recently at the behest of his record
label to do a few gigs and a bit of
promotion on his way to Switzerland’s
Gstaad Festival.
Pitney reflects that label boss Mike
Curb is an old school record company
guy who had hoped for a hit single
ahead of the album release. “They
hoped to kind of link arms with radio
in order to get a kind of slingshot
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effect for the record and that never
quite reared back and happened the
way that they hoped it would. So all
the growth from the record now that
has happened I’m just tremendously
please with knowing that it didn’t have
huge radio success yet people are still
grabbing it.
“There was a lot of hoops to jump
through to try to button it all up. Some
of it was just musical but the other
part of it was just label and things
even outside of the label that caused
things not to work out properly and I
was trying to be patient. I wanted to
recognise that God’s timing is perfect
and I think we did avoid some pitfalls
that were standing in front of us by
kind of the delayed release of it all. But
it all worked out.”
Pitney’s most recent single was
Everywhere and failed to chart despite
being just the kind of song Tim
McGraw might have taken to the top
of the charts if he hadn’t already cut a
song of the same title. Pitney wouldn’t
have minded if he did and laughs, “I
would let him.
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Page 24
CHRIS
HILLMAN
THE CO-FOUNDER OF THE BYRDS, AS WELL AS THE
FLYING BURRITO BROTHERS, MANASSAS, AND DESERT
ROSE BAND, CHRIS HILLMAN IS BACK WITH A TOM
PETTY-PRODUCED SET - BIDIN’ MY TIME.
SPENCER LEIGH ASK THE QUESTIONS.
I
suppose you would say that Chris
Hillman is semi-retired. We don’t
hear so much of him these days
but he has released his first album
in seven years, appropriately
called Bidin’ My Time and produced by
Tom Petty. I gave it a five-star review in
September and it will probably be my
record of the year. Bidin’ My Time is up
there with the fine albums he made with
the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers,
Manassas and the Desert Rose Band, not
to mention his various solo projects. He
has also been a ‘go to’ session musician
on guitar, bass or mandolin and he is
an excellent vocalist, whether singing
harmonies or lead.
In 2005, Chris toured the UK with
Herb Pedersen, previously of the
Dillards, the Hot Band and the Desert
Rose Band, and I spoke to them before
their recent¬¬ appearance in Chester.
I was delighted to speak to Chris again
and because he has had such a full
career, I didn’t repeat any questions
from the previous interview. So if you
want more of Chris, look up the old one!
Chris, you were born in Los Angeles in
1944 and raised in San Diego County.
If we could travel back to your
teenage years, what would we find in
your record collection?
Well, in 1955 and 1956, I was right there
and loving everything that was coming
out. I loved early Elvis Presley, Chuck
Berry, Little Richard and Fats Domino. I
would save up my money to buy their 45s.
My brother gave me his 45rpm record
player when he went to college. It had a
big fat spindle on it and it only took 45s.
Rock’n’roll went to sleep about 1959 and
then folk music emerged in our culture – it
was really an extension of the bohemian,
beatnik era– and it was popular on college
campuses. All the guys in the Byrds came
out of folk music. I suppose it is a bit like
John Lennon picking up on skiffle music,
certainly with a lot of the same songs.
So then you were buying different
records.
Yeah, the New Lost City Ramblers, Pete
Seeger, Leadbelly – I loved Leadbelly –
and maybe a Woody Guthrie record. My
father had an album of Woody Guthrie
on 78s, he must have bought it in the late
1940s – I never knew he had that until
later. It was folk music first and then I
discovered Flatt and Scruggs and Bill
Monroe in 1961. It was difficult to find
the records I wanted where I lived and I
used to look all over for them but then I
put them on the record-player and tried
and figure out what they were doing.
You preferred that to instruction
manuals?
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Exactly. I did have some songs written
in tablature with each note displayed
but I was too impatient to learn that
way. I would listen to the record and
I would get most of it and the parts I
didn’t get I would make up. We didn’t
have all the learning tools that people
have now. I’ve gone on YouTube and
learned some things from different
sources on the internet. I was looking
at Sister Rosetta Tharpe the other day
and figuring out how to play her guitar
style. She was wonderful and when I get
the ballot from The Rock And Roll Hall
of Fame, I am going to submit her name.
She should be in there. She was so good.
What good my vote will do, I don’t know.
(Laughs)
Did you know Tom Paley of the New
Lost City Ramblers has jus t moved into
a residential home in Brighton?
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I just loved
what he did. When I saw the band and
saw Mike Seeger playing a Gibson F-5
mandolin and I thought, “Oh my god, I’ve
got to learn how to do that.” They were
wonderful and Tom Paley had this great,
two-finger style banjo playing. It wasn’t
like Earl Scruggs and it was an old-time
banjo style. Just wonderful. I would drive
a 100 miles to see them at the Ash Grove
in Los Angeles when I was in high school
and 15 or 16 years old.
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Page 52
CASEY
DONAHEW
C
asey Donahew isn’t too keen on
pigeon-holes for the music he
and his band have been making
for the past fifteen years. Don’t
call it Red Dirt, or Texas country, and it’s
probably best not to mention frat-boys at
all. “I usually just say Texas music from
Texas,” says the singer who began his
musical dream with an acoustic gig at
the Thirsty Armadillo bar in Fort Worth’s
Stockyards in the Fall of 2002.
“It’s such a broad brush; there’s so
many different sounds. Some people
say Southern Rock and you go back to
Charlie Daniels or Outlaw country with
Willie and Waylon and I think there’s
just a long history of guys making their
music and doing it underground. It’s
just independent music. We did all this
on our very own without a record label
and, I don’t know, I make Casey Donahew
music, that’s all I know.”
And that independence has worked
out rather well for him. The Casey
Donahew Band, despite doing everything
for themselves, have charted several
albums on the Billboard Country chart
and topped the Texas charts. “Yeah,
we’ve charted. The last several records
have charted the first week on Billboard
pretty high. We had a single that got into
the 40s…Our first single that we tried to
push got into the 40s and we’re going to
try to push another single pretty soon,
going into Christmas, I guess.
“It’s always been really important for
me to be in control of the music that we
make, to be in control of our career. My
wife has been our manager since the
first day we got started and she’s still
our manager today. I just want us to be
in control of our own destiny and make
sure that what I’m saying and how I’m
saying it, and the songs I sing are genuine
when it comes to me. We’ve recorded like
85 songs or something like that and I’ve
co-written 80 of them.”
A big fan of 80s and 90s country it was
Garth Brooks who really inspired this
Texas boy to entertain. Whilst at college
he witnessed the growth of the Texas
music scene with artists such as Pat
Green and Randy Rogers beginning to
make their mark, and with a strong work
ethic Donahew went from seeing Pat
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DUNCAN WARWICK CATCHES UP WITH THE CASEY
DONAHEW BAND FRONTMAN WHO IS CELEBRATING 15
YEARS IN THE BUSINESS WITH HIS LATEST RELEASE.
Green sell out Billy Bob’s in Ft. Worth to
doing the same some two years later.
Donahew’s latest release celebrates 15
years of him being in the business, with
some of his earlier recordings that have
since become fan favourites being given
the treatment he thinks they deserve
alongside some of his biggest crowd
pleasers. “It’s pretty much 15 years from
the first night we ever got on stage. So
the beginning of my musical journey
was 15 years ago and we went back and
recorded a bunch of songs from the early
days of this band. We wanted to go back
and…When we first started out we didn’t
have any money and we didn’t have very
much means so we went out and scraped
together all the money we had and made
the cheapest record we could. We’ve
been playing a bunch of those songs for a
decade and a half and we just wanted to
go back and give some new life to some
of those songs that we’ve been playing
for so long.”
With his first album reportedly costing
just $1500, Donahew adds, “That was
just all the money we had. We could have
spent more but we didn’t have any more
money. It’s pretty raw and sounds like
a $1500 record, so I wanted to go back
and pay tribute to those songs that got us
down the road for so long.
“I think hard work is the key to all
success. It was building a fan base and
servicing our fan base - putting on live
shows that the people enjoy and people
are excited to see and we take a lot of
pride in what we do on stage. We grow
fans to want to come back and want to
bring their friends and I think that’s the
most important part.”
Recently visiting London as one of
the artists on the Texas Music Takeover,
now in its second year but still relatively
under the radar, Casey Donahew has
found himself playing to somewhat
smaller crowds than he is used to back
home, and he rather likes it. “Yeah, it
kind of takes you back to your younger
years when you first got started. I like
the change up; it’s a little smaller, a little
quieter, and you kind of go in there and
you get to sell yourself again. You get to
start over and it’s just about the music.”
Having previously charted without
really even trying, Casey Donahew is
turning up his efforts to reach greater
heights. “There’s a lot of stations through
the South and there’s some dedicated
chart and radio stations that just focus on
our music, and we’ve been out pushing
on mainstream radio the last year.
We’ve been out doing radio tours which
is kind of a new thing for us, meeting
with people and trying to get my head
wrapped around the Billboard Country
music charts. It’s a different game and
it’s a cutthroat game, for sure, especially
when you don’t have a big label behind
you to help. So we’re out there fighting
the good fight and trying to get our music
out there to as many people as we can.
“It’s expensive. There’s no doubt about
that. And it’s difficult and major music
labels have a serious financial interest in
making sure that we don’t succeed.
“We tour the country and it seems to
be the same effect over in the States.
We’ve kind of gone and did what we did
in Texas from coast to coast. It’s a slower
way of doing things than normal, going
to Nashville and getting a record label
and getting a song on the radio and then
going out and touring. We’ve kind of
done it the other way, we’ve gone out and
really did the underground spots and
built a fan base and then try to pursue
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the radio.”
Casey Donahew: 15 Years is available now.
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