A feature on Boston Country
Good news about The Darlings. Stacey, you need to have a little "chat" with Steve about Hell Country --- Country music is singing the blues Once thriving, the local sene falls victim to changing tastes and talent drain By Steve Morse, Globe Staff, 01/24/99 Nashville stars are hitting it big in Boston. Garth Brooks and Reba McEntire have played the FleetCenter. Shania Twain and Travis Tritt have headlined Great Woods. Clint Black and Trisha Yearwood have stopped at the South Shore Music Circus. And George Strait is expected to headline Foxboro Stadium this summer, sharing a bill with the suddenly hot Dixie Chicks. Yet, while major tours are drawing large numbers in the Boston market, these successes have not translated to the local club scene, which has dried up dramatically in recent years. Indeed, the honky-tonks are fading fast from the city and its surrounding environs. Where there were once 20-plus clubs in the region offering four to seven nights of country music per week, there are now just a handful - and none in Boston proper. The scene has been decimated by changing tastes, by the line-dancing phenomenon (which in turn burned itself out), by a talent drain to Nashville, by dwindling radio support, and by an aging country audience that seems to only go out for special shows by the Garths and Rebas of the world. Nor is Nashville - apart from its top stars - immune from this identity crisis. Major tours are still doing well, but country record sales have slipped from a high of 18.7 percent of the overall market in 1993, to 14 percent last year, according to published trade reports. Country's roots are being eaten away, as more entertainers sound like glossy, adult-pop acts rather than twangy country singers. And more are trying to follow the path of Shania Twain and Faith Hill, who had puffy Top 40 pop hits last year, as the line blurred between the genres. In Boston, there are still some enduring artists keeping the flame alive - John Lincoln Wright, John Penny, Robin Right, Johnny White, and Allen Estes, to name a few. Plus, there are fresh faces in Dave Foley, Terri Bright, Paved Country, Mary Gauthier, and the Darlings - a new country-rock band that just won a national battle-of-the-bands contest in Nashville. But overall, the scene is singing the blues - the ''long gone lonesome blues,'' as Hank Williams once whined. ''It's really not a bad scene as long as you're willing to make no money,'' says a rather sarcastic Brian Sinclair, who has been a disc jockey at Saturday morning's ''Hillbilly at Harvard'' show on WHRB-FM (95.3) for 33 years. He's seen the comings and goings - mostly goings - of a Boston scene that is becoming more fragmented by the day. How fragmented? Try this: There is little overlap between old and new acts, and between acts that perform contemporary versus traditional country - shades of the same battle that exists between alternative and classic rock. Consumers are being left with a depleted sense of history (also a problem nationally when you realize that pioneer George Jones has no recording contract these days) and with a cynicism that suggests that someone has a better chance of winning the lottery than making it from Boston in the country field. Success in Nashville The only export to find significant success in recent years is Jo Dee Messina, a Holliston native who used to play the now-vanished jamborees around town. She moved to Nashville right after high school in 1991, then starved a few years before the fates smiled on her. ''It was a crazy dream to go to Nashville, but I'm living it. And God, it's great. I'm so lucky,'' Messina says. She's lucky to have escaped a club scene that is a shell of its former self. Just look at all the local clubs that have gone to hillbilly heaven: the Blue Star in Saugus, the Hillbilly Ranch in Park Square, Nashville North in the Theater District, the Adelphia in Dorchester, Kevin's Country Corner in Somerville, Sacco's in Watertown, Cowboys in Saugus, J.R.'s in Beverly, and the Wagon Wheel in Ayer. ''I can't supply a living to my musicians anymore,'' says John Lincoln Wright, a local legend whose group the Sour Mash Boys scrambles to find work where it can. Wright used to be a mainstay in the city, but his most regular gig now is playing Sunday nights at the tiny Middle East bakery room in Cambridge. Wright is one of a diehard group of country performers who blames the line-dancing trend for shredding the scene. Line-dancing - a kind of ''Urban Cowboy, Part II'' movement with dance steps done in line formations to DJ -spun records - rendered live bands superfluous. Line-dancers required bigger dance floors (hence they weren't interested in the smaller honky-tonks) and when they did show up for live bands, they often complained that those bands didn't play the exact rhythms of the songs that they had learned in their line-dancing lessons. ''We even use a metronome now to try to get the beats
Re: A feature on Boston Country
Interesting article. I missed this when I was looking through the Globe on Sunday. Yup, it can sure be grim here if you're in a local country band and aren't playing at rock clubs (as several do). Morse didn't mention the Fritters, who I think highly of (particularly the Rose Maddox-ish vocals of their singer, Betsy Nichols), though they rarely play live - maybe once every couple of months - so the omission is understandable. Nor did he mention the Stumbleweeds, who *do* play live around here at least two or three times a month, so there's less of an excuse there. Nor did he mention the Bag Boys, who hold court every Saturday afternoon at the Plough and Stars in the heart of Cambridge (Paul Burch fans--word is that he's coming up to Beantown in the next couple of months to do some recording and playing with them). Since when has Loosigian been in the Darlings? What happened to that guy Rik (the one who looked like a leftover member of Slade) who used to play guitar for them? Y'know, I'm happy that a local band won that contest and everything, but I've seen those guys five or six times and I've just never been able to warm up to 'em. Loved this part: WKLB, which sponsors a country festival at Great Woods each summer (with Nashville headliners) and cosponsors summer events at Indian Ranch in Webster, has no time slot devoted to local music, but ''that's not to say there won't be one in the future,'' says music director Ginny Rogers. Well, I'll say it: No, there won't be one in the future. --Jon Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wollaston, Massachusetts
Re: A feature on Boston Country
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Morse didn't mention the Fritters Who've broken up Jon...sorry to be the one to break the news. Rumor has it that Betsey will be trying to advance herself as a guitarist and strike out on her own at some point. The other band that Fritters members are in - The Pineapple Ranch Hands - a hawaiian country swing band - are doing quite well though...coming to a Hellcountry show near you. This article was mentioned to me about thirty times in the last few days, and I'm wondering how he could overlook Hellcountry if he's on my mailing, and email lists. Maybe being ignored is better than being lumped into something though, and he was pretty far off target about the scene. Enough, my blood pressure is rising and I'll be damned if I'm going to let itg. Nice to have Country Standard Time do a feature on the Hellcountry series this month though, and issues are all over (insert your) town with the Steve Earle / Del McCoury cover. Stacey Hellcountry "supporting the Boston area twang scene" http://www.hellcountry.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: A feature on Boston Country
WKLB, which sponsors a country festival at Great Woods each summer (with Nashville headliners) and cosponsors summer events at Indian Ranch in Webster, has no time slot devoted to local music, but ''that's not to say there won't be one in the future,'' says music director Ginny Rogers. Well, I'll say it: No, there won't be one in the future. Now, now, you can never be too sure. Our biggest local mainstream country station - CMA Large Market Station Of The Year WUBE-FM - recently allocated a hefty 2-hour time slot each week to classic country. Of course, it's 6-8a Sunday morning, and "classic" means from the 1980s... Jon Weisberger Kenton County, KY [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.fuse.net/jonweisberger/
Re: A feature on Boston Country
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dang it, but how ironic that Country Standard Time gives Hellcountry it's due, while the Globe misses the point altogether. Yah, but the Herald just emailed that they're putting something in this week and want an interview so f*** 'em I sayg. Some folks out there *do* actually know something about the scene they write about. Stacey (who's very excited to have Elena playing Hellcountry Friday) Hellcountry "supporting the Boston area twang scene" http://www.hellcountry.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A feature on Boston Country
On Tue, 26 Jan 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you want my advice, based on my experience as having had the Bourbonaires called a psychobilly band in the Globe a couple of months back, is that this kind of crap simply happens. I don't know if it's symptomatic of the Globe's widely-perceived decline, but, yeah, it could have been better. I'm surprised that Morse missed it, though, particularly since he made such a point about local country acts having such a hard time playing out. He also neglected to mention "C.S.T." at all, in spite of the mag's regular championing of local country acts, so don't feel too put out. Jeff's probably peeved at the guy, too. Stuart Munro and I have long had a running debate (which he's kept me up-to-date on, sending me this article a day before it was posted here) on which Boston Globe critic is doofier, Morse or Sullivan. A couple of Sullivan's recent malpropisms have been pretty entertaining, I have to admit. But ever since Morse wrote for Pop Top, a local monthly rag in the mid-'70s (where he reviewed country almost exclusively), my attitude toward him has been "If he can get it wrong, he will." At best, his blinders can be pretty huge. Bob Oh yeah: However much the Globe has declined, it's still far, far better than any media outlet in Chicago.
