The Folk & Country Desk:

Good country music that isn't Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Gillian Welch or Lefty Frizzell, please. All of them are great, but if you need to be recommended them then you are a fool.

(By the way even though I refuse to be a memeber of staff, my recommendation is James Hand, a 50something year old who has finally released an album after years of playing the same few bars in Texas, I saw him live a while ago and he was fantastic - now being championed by Willie Nelson, who does know a thing or two about such matters).

Also, what is the difference between Country & Western and Country and why is C&W poo?

Oh, and Alt-country - the most stupid name for a genre ever?

From Wikipedia:


Country music, also known as country and western music or country-western, is a blend of popular musical forms originally found in the Southern United States. It has roots in traditional folk music, Celtic music, blues, gospel music, and old-time music and evolved rapidly in the 1920s. The term country music began to be widely applied in the 1940s and was fully embraced in the 1970s, while country and western declined in use.

However, country music is actually a catch-all category that embraces several different genres of music: Nashville sound (the pop-like music very popular in the 1960s); bluegrass, a fast mandolin, banjo and fiddle-based music popularized by Bill Monroe and by Flatt and Scruggs; Western, which encompasses traditional Western cowboy campfire ballads and Hollywood cowboy music made famous by Roy Rogers, The Sons of the Pioneers, and Gene Autry; Western swing, a sophisticated dance music popularized by Bob Wills; the Bakersfield sound which used the new Fender Telecaster guitars, a big drum beat, and dance style music that would catch your attention like "a freight train running (Buck Owens)" (popularized by Buck Owens and Merle Haggard); outlaw country made famous in the 1970's by Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, Jr., Willie Nelson, and Merle Haggard; Cajun style music from the Louisiana Bayou; zydeco; Evangelical Christian inspired gospel; oldtime (generally pre-1930 folk music); honky tonk; Appalachian; rockabilly; neotraditional country; and jug band.

Each style is unique in its execution, its use of rhythms, and its chord structures, though many songs have been adapted to the different country styles. One example is the tune "Milk Cow Blues", an early blues tune by Kokomo Arnold that has been performed in a wide variety of country styles by everyone from Aerosmith to Bob Wills to Willie Nelson, George Strait to Ricky Nelson and Elvis Presley.

Iron & Wine and Calexico? Country? You having a laugh?

I've just checked the video and read a bit about 16 HP/Wooden Hand they sound alright, but to slightly misquote Hank Williams III - That ain't country.

Don't mean to be unecessarily rude, but those suggestions are pretty rubbish for someone who has asked for Country, especially with the artists I have given as a starting point.

I'll try The Handsome family, but Neko Case and Bonnie Prince Billy (in fact most Will Oldham stuff) bores me a little, and from the starting point I gave that really isn't the kind of thing I'm looking for. (Merle Haggard, Carter Family, some of Kris Kristofferson's better stuff, perhaps?) I also think that copy and pasting from Wikipedia should be banned, if I wanted to look that up I could - and that is a particularly bad wiki article in my opinion.

I'm hoping that this is constructive criticism, and maybe it was a little naughty to put you to the test like that, but I could have got all that from a thread on EMT. This could be a really good group, but you need to either raise your game or stick to what you are actually expert on.

Is he having a laugh?

Get on this side of the desk, ljbates, and do it your way.

Iron & Wine and Calexico are alt-country.

Ok, I realize you may shoot me down for making some of these suggestions, but you also need to realize that your starting point is rather difficult -- you need to be more specific about what it is exactly that you want; do you want modern country that remains true to its roots, or would you look some older country in the era of Cash, etc?

I know these first two are obvious, and judging by the fact that you listen to Cash and Nelson, I imagine you probably already know these guys, but here goes nothing:

The Outlaws - Green Grass and High Tides

The Highwaymen - Highwayman

And now for something completely different:

Blue Rodeo - Casino / Five Days in July:

Sun Volt - Trace

Loretta Lynn - Coal Miners Daughter / Van Lear Rose

Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Come On, Come On

Golden Smog - Down By The Old Mainstream

Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne

The Sadies - Stories Often Told / Favourite Colours

Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys - Country Walk / For The Last Time

Lefty Frizzell - Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers

Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard - Pioneering Women of Bluegrass

Buck Owens - I've Got A Tiger By The Tail

BR5-49 - Self-Titled

Donovan - A Gift From A Flower To A Garden

Greg Brown - Further In

I'm sorry, modern country has headed in a direction that is far from traditional country -- after all, Nashville basically disowned Cash, remember? So, it makes it a bit difficult to recommend many modern country artists, but regardless, that was my list.

jeffrey lewis is great anti-folk

if you like jolie holland....try the The Be Good Tanyas

she was often a guest, and was around the band since they started but never really in the Band ...i'd go with Blue Horse


The Coo Coo Bird

Don't You Fall

from wiki:

Anti-folk (or antifolk) is a genre of music related to punk rock and American folk music that originated in the mid-1980s in New York City.

Anti-folk had its roots in punk rock, and is still considered by some to be an active subgenre within that scene. By a loose definition, Anti-folk combines the raw, abrasive, and frequently politically charged attitudes of the punk scene with the sounds of American folk tradition.

This genre takes the earnestness of politically charged '60s hippie music and subverts it into something else: music that sounds raw and authentic, but mocks the seriousness and pretension of the established mainstream folk scene and also mocks itself. In Anti-folk, self-mockery and self-aggrandizement have somehow fused, just as political commentary fused with poppy love songs in the sixties.

more on anti-folk....

I agree.

But I suppose I got an answer. Even if it's what I could have found myself instead of any kind of insight.

if you like indie and folky stuff, you might want to check out my radio show there are playlists, random music posts and some reviews on the site, mostly alt country, but also indie pop and lo-fi stuff..