Tom's Country View

Texas  is the second largest US-State, in terms of size as well as population. In other words, it is twice the size of Germany. So it should not come as a surprise, that is also has a music scene of its own, which very often remains fairly unknown outside of its statelines. Even a Texas Music Chart gets published on a weekly basis.

Waylon Jennnings is alive - at least this is what comes to mind, when listening to the current 2014-album of Sturgill Simpson ! It is stunning, how the critically acclaimed singer from Kentucky sounds, if you are familiar with the legend of Waylon Jennings . Just close your eyes and you are inclined to believe, you are listening to a lost Wayon song from the 1970s. In February of 2002 Waylon Jennings died from diabetes complications at the age of 64. It would cleary fill more than one blog entry to discuss the life of the famous country outlaw. But I guess anyone who has ever paid some attention to country music, will have run across the man, who so often gets mentioned alongside Willie Nelson . Not only because the two had become friends, but also because both of them had bravely turned their backs on Nashville in the 1970s and gone to Texas to create their own brand of Country Music, influenced by the Hippie-Folk-Rock sounds around then and there. In May of 2014 the vir...

"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose " Many may be familiar with this line, without potentially knowing where it comes from. Other may know it from Janis Joplin and her hit ' Me & Bobby McGee '. But only few may know, that the song was written by Kris Kristofferson. Born and raised in Texas, Rhodes scholarship in Oxford (England), Helicopter pilot in the US Army eventually brought Kris Kristofferson to Nashville in 1965 to try his luck at music. Being very shy on stage, he was more interested in combining his love of Hank Williams and his interest in literature as a songwriter than being a singer on stage. Soon he got a reputation in Nashville for writing songs in a new poetic style that talked about sexuality very open and yet spoke directly to people in the stories he told. While he was trying to meet ends in Nashville, he managed to meet Johnny Cash. The way he made him listen to one of his songs by landing with a helicopter in Johnn...

" Growin' up in little pink houses, Makin' out on living room couches, Blowin' that smoke on Saturday night, A little messed up, but we're all alright ... "

It's been over 20 years since Tim McGraw has released his first album ("Tim McGraw", 1993 ). And this makes him one of the few, who is still being played on the radio in 2014. And Tim McGraw, the singer and by-now actor (a.o. " The Blind Side " with Sandra Bullock , 2009) can still be found on the charts! With some 40 million units sold in the US, Tim McGraw is the something like number 8 on a list of best selling solo artists across all genres. Only very few have managed to stay successful over such a long time span, and re-invent themselves. But maybe that is the secret to his success! Not only can he display a body at 47, which should could be the envy of Superman, as well as a successful marriage with singer Faith Hill , but he also managed to keep his music full of surprises. To draft his 20-years career in the entertainment business would not fit in this one blog entry, so I am going to focus on his most recent outputs, to see what makes him so suc...

There is no doubt, that songwriting done right, is an artform! With its typically limited time in song length it has to use words in the most efficient way to put emotions and pictures in the listeners hearts and minds. Thoughtful videos typically build upon the lyrics and evolve the stories to create actual pictures to the words. And as we know, sometimes they say more than a thousand words. Country music is about life and it os telling the stories that happen when life happens, like no other genre. But once in a while a song comes along, that is exceptional in the way it creates a story. One such song is ' Pony Express ' and I need to call it a 3-dimensional song! 'Pony Express' can be found on the 1986-album by Alabama called ' The Touch ' and it closes the album as a true story song with a length of almost 8 minutes (7:53). It was written by Buddy Cannon, Ken Lambert, Dean Dillon and Alabama bass guitarist and singer Teddy Gentry . On all ea...

If you have never heard of Sam Hunt , don't worry! However chances are, this will definitely change this year, as his name is traded as one of the next big things coming from Nashville. Sam Hunt was born in 1984 in a small Georgia town, where he started to pursue College Football. However when it seemed that his successes there would be limited, he moved to Nashville as a songwriter. In September of 2013 he independently released a first single ('Raised On It') and a month later a 15-track digital album via his website, called ' Between The Pines - Accoustic Mixtape '. Early in 2014 he was eventually signed by MCA Nashville with the first official single ' Leave The Night On ' currently receiving good radio airplay. So while we still have to wait for the official major label debute album to be released, the self-produced 'Between The Pines' gives hugely exciting insights into what hopefully to expect! Sam Hunt seems to come at the ri...

When I had the pleasure of attending the Phoenix show in 2010 on their final " Last Rodeo Tour ", I knew they would be missed! According to some sources, the second most successful musical duo in music history behind Simon & Garfunkel: Brooks & Dunn had quit their highly successful career after 20 years and some 28 million albums sold. Naturally music would be part of their life after Brooks & Dunn. When Kix Brooks tried one album, that wasn't really that successful, he more successfully switched to 'American Country Countdown' show host and other ventures (acting, running a winery). Ronnie Dunn , the significant voice in B&D and heard on the majority of their songs as lead vocal, started also with a solo project, in which he obviously put a lot of heart and blood, as documented by the excellent ' Making Of ' video he did for the self-titled album. In addition there were a couple of highly professionel videos produced for so...

Today I received the new Brantley Gilbert CD in the mail. Yes, I am still buying physical CDs! Although the days may be numbered as I now mostly listen to music electronically while on the go - plus files do not take up as much space as physical media. In any case, I was excited and curious what the first full major-label release for Brantley Gilbert would sound like. Commercially it already is one of the most successful albums of 2014 by selling 211,000 copies in its first week and debuting at No.1 on the country albums chart and at No.2 on the pop charts behind the new album by Coldplay. Brantley Gilbert walked into the spotlight kind-of unplanned in 2010, when Jason Aldean recorded two of his songs for his 2010-album, the title track ' My Kinda Party ' and ' Dirt Road Anthem ', respectively going to No.2 and No.1 on the country singles charts. Those hits kick-started Brantley's career into the mainstream and resulted in a reissue of his album ...

One of the exciting parts about music is, that it is alive and you never know, when you discover something new, that completely fits your taste. It may be because lyrics are important to you and those lyrics simply hit a nerve for you, it may be that you like the beat and rhythm it throws at you, it may be the atmosphere and feeling it conveys or simply the singer and his/her voice or a combination of parts or all of these aspects. There is a certain excitement that comes with such a discovery and that's what I felt when I first heard the sound of ' Funkabilly ' and Joanna Cotten! I had neither heard of this singer nor of her music before, but I was discovering Funk music at that time and was curious how this could possibly mix with 'hillbilly' music. What the word combination of the album name and title track already hints at, is a mix of various musical styles. Her home page fittingly states: "A sultry slide guitar, the lonely moan of a blu...

From the rich musical universe of Texas comes a driving sound that walks the line between Rock and Country . With its rock band outfit, which omits steel guitar and fiddle, but adds some sprinkling of Mandolin and Banjo, John David Kent delivers some kind of heartland sound, that successfully fuses rock and country into something commercial and yet raw. In 2011 John David Kent released his self-titled debut album as a Texas (Country) Music act. While the album cover which depicted JDK as some longhaired-bearded Cowboy in a long dust coat, the music was not western-style, but contemporary rocking Texas Country style, stressing the Country-part of it. I put it on my wish-list but it never really ended up in my buying cart. When I stumbled across the release of his sophomore album on one of my 'music-discovery-internet-surfs' and listened to the track excerpts, I was immediately grabbed and this time, the cart was succesfully filled. " Before the Sun Come...