My last reflection was on a Linda Ronstadt solo album, and I promised the next would be on this record, for the trio of Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, and Emmylou Harris is receiving a well-deserved star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Release date: 1987
Style: traditional country
People Who Might Like This album: fans of any of these three artists’ solo work, fans of any female group with three-part harmony
Standout Tracks: “The Pain of Loving You,” “hobo’s Meditation,” “Wildflowers,” “Those Memories of You,” “Telling me Lies”
Reflections: What a joy it was to revisit this record; I hadn’t listened to this in full in many years. As mentioned in the last reflection, Linda Ronstadt has been a really important artist to me personally, and she’s the reason I loved the Trio albums in the first place. Parton and Harris have been more important to country music, but it was Ronstadt whose music I loved first. Even to this day, I am not nearly as familiar with the discography of Emmylou Harris as I should be or as I’d like to be. This album, though, surpasses anything any of them could have done on their own, for it takes three already outstanding voices and puts them together in three-part harmony that can only be described as chilling.
Ironically, as I’ve been listening to this album, I’ve also been giving the new self-titled El Coyote record multiple spins. I should have a review on that project soon, but what I keep coming back to with the trio is that groups like El Coyote and others that are carrying on this tradition of three-part harmony in these modern days overwhelmingly lean toward the folk end of the spectrum. That’s no disrespect to any of these groups or to folk music, but there’s something about hearing Parton, Ronstadt, and Harris singing in perfect harmony with fiddle and steel and country chords supporting them that’s just beautiful and irreplaceable and hard to find in 2018. And to those that discount Linda Ronstadt as a singer of pop and rock who only crossed over into country briefly, this record and the other Trio material should solidify her place in country music history. It doesn’t get much more traditional than the Ronstadt-led “Hobo’s Meditation,” a song penned by Jimmie Rodgers.
It is true I came to appreciate these records first because of Linda, but each of the three has a highlight on this album. “The Pain of Loving You” is an excellent tune led by Emmylou Harris, and the Dolly Parton-penned “Wildflowers” is another standout. More than their individual highlights, though, this record is about the magic of these voices together, an album that none of them could have made without the others. It’s hard enough to write duets, let alone songs that fit three voices. Then, it’s difficult to make sure the voices all blend well, and care must be taken to ensure that each element of the harmony can be heard. They do all this perfectly, and bring character to these songs that none of them could have achieved on their own. Their star on the Walk of Fame is well-deserved, and this album has earned its iconic place in country music history.
While America’s mainstream is constantly stuck puzzling over the tomato issue and can’t seem to figure out how to launch women into the format at all, much less how to actually sustain their careers for longer than one hit single, Kasey Chambers is calmly churning out platinum records in Australia. While we give our country awards and airplay to pop stars, she’s become an icon by releasing music often more primitive and rootsy than much of our independent scene. She’s done it all on a major label as well. All are things from which America, the birthplace of the country genre where you’d think we’d have it all figured out, could take a lesson.
For Kasey Chambers, the obvious question is how would she follow 2017’s Dragonfly, an impressive double album that isn’t even twelve months old to American ears. It was an album that explored all of her many influences and styles, from the more traditional and rootsy to rock to country pop to gospel. The answer for Chambers was to strip everything down and record Campfire, an album she says she has wanted to make all her life.
I grew up in the remote outback of Australia living a unique lifestyle isolated from civilisation. The campfire was the heart of our existence: for survival, creativity, inspiration. We hunted all our own food and then cooked it on the campfire. My brother and I did all our schooling via correspondence around the campfire. We used the campfire for warmth and light. We gathered around the campfire at night to play songs together as a family. Our connection to music and the land has developed through and around the campfire since I was born, so it has always stayed with me as a special part of my life.
She enlisted some fellow musicians and longtime collaborators because well, you don’t sing around the campfire alone traditionally; they are dubbed the Fireside Disciples, and they consist of her father, Bill Chambers, guitarist and tour mate Brandon Dodd, and Yawuru elder Alan Pigram. The result is a really unique-sounding and special album.
As you would expect, this is an acoustic affair; it’s not like you’re going to have a full band just waiting to pop out of the shadows and join you at your campfire. Acoustic guitar, banjo, and dobro are mostly what this record offers in terms of instrumentation, making it definitely very rootsy and giving it that warm feeling of sitting around the fire while someone absently picks a guitar. The Fireside Disciples are a great addition as well, as the harmonies really add to the mood of this whole thing. It’s fitting that the record opens with “Campfire Song” where you can hear the fire crackling in the background and they’re literally singing about dancing in the moonlight. “Go on Your Way” doesn’t even have instruments, it just forsakes that notion altogether and relies on their excellent harmony to tell the story. That adds to what they’re going for here, as you can imagine the atmosphere, sitting around a fire and someone spontaneously starting to sing, with the others joining in. “Orphan Heart” is the opposite, opting for instrumentation to back them throughout the song, but then fading out until it’s just Kasey and the Disciples echoing the refrain, “let me walk beside you” out into the night. Someone breaks out a harmonic on “Goliath is Dead,” as they sing in call-and-response style about that well-known biblical moment.
You can imagine as you listen to this that they’re all just sitting around having a really great time with each other. They talk and laugh openly between tracks, and in the nature of many Kasey Chambers albums, record some pretty ridiculous songs. “This Little Chicken” features Bill Chambers going on about having fried chicken for breakfast before breaking into a bluegrass tune about how this woman, or “chicken” won’t be back home again. “Big Fish” is literally a song about just that, catching fish. And “Junkyard Man” is like some old folk song you can imagine your grandmother singing that you’ve known all your life and think of with fondness but don’t really have any idea what it means. It’s like your family and friends were all just having a good time singing dumb songs together, but you could all actually carry a tune and play instruments, so it got made into a record.
Just when you think it’s all fun and not to be taken too seriously, though, they hit you with a song like “Abraham.” This one grieves for all the hurt and hopelessness in our world, and the fact that it’s stripped back so we can hear their harmonies and their emotion makes it all the more poignant. The same goes for “Now That You’ve Gone,” one of several tracks here where Kasey sings solo without the Disciples.
That said, therein lies my biggest critique with this album; aside from “Now That You’ve Gone,” the tracks without the Fireside Disciples participating vocally don’t feel like they belong. They are still acoustic and stripped back, but without the harmonies, the campfire atmosphere that this album was built on is lost. There’s a solo Kasey song here called “Fox & the Bird” which is about nothing–I mean, it’s about a bird who meets a fox, and he carries her home. It’s boring, and it doesn’t fit when the Disciples aren’t singing with her. Also, there’s a track featuring Emmylou Harris, and this is really cool since this is Chambers’ idol, but it doesn’t fit with the theme either. Also, and unfortunately, Emmylou Harris just sounds terrible vocally, and that’s upsetting on many levels. It’s like she’s out of breath or something. But even if she sounded excellent like she normally does, it’s still weird to have her here on a track with Chambers with no vocals by the Fireside Disciples. When the campfire theme is played out, it works very well, but it needed to be more consistent throughout the record.
It’s a solid album and certainly a unique one, and it was definitely a cool direction for Kasey Chambers after Dragonfly. The idea itself is a good one, and when Kasey and the Fireside Disciples stick to it, it works well. The warm, intimate vibe you get when listening to this is really special. The solo Kasey Chambers material sort of distracts from the thesis here and keeps a good album from being a great one, but Chambers is on a roll here. She’s released three good records just since I started Country Exclusive, and that hasn’t even been three years ago. I said recently on Twitter that if you’re not a Kasey Chambers fan, you’re doing it all wrong, and this album is just another exhibit for that argument.
Before I get too in-depth about this album, I would like to talk about what Sons of the Palomino are trying to do here. With this album, the band tries to recapture an era and a feel, that of the Palomino, a club where classic country stars played during the 80s and 90s. Megan told me I should read the band’s biography before listening to the album, and though I would have liked it anyway given how country the material is, I’m glad I knew all of the information about the band’s goals going in. It helps give the album a special feel.
As for the album itself, I did not love the whole thing. There were songs that I felt were too sleepy for my taste, like “Old Roads and Lost Highways”. Then, the album had a couple songs which I did not connect to emotionally, like “Whiskey Years”. I should have liked the latter more than I did, as it tells the tale of a man looking forward to the day where he can be sober and not have to drink his pain away.
For all of the lackluster moments on this album, though, I felt a real love for the instrumentation. Even on songs I did not care for, I always loved the actual musicianship. The steel guitar, fiddle, piano…it all goes back to the days of an older style of country. It’s a style that I personally gravitate toward, so even when I was ambivalent about the actual lyrics, I always liked the instrumentation.
With all of the things I didn’t personally get into about this album out of the way, let’s talk about the good stuff. The first track, “Runnin’ Around,” is what convinced me I needed to hear what this band were selling. It’s a mid-tempo country song about a man who knows his girlfriend is cheating, and how he won’t be there when she comes looking for him. Done a million times? Sure, but this band makes it fun, and again. The instrumentation here is stellar. The next song, “Authentic,” brings in something else unique about this album. At various points, there are featured guest stars singing in parts of the song. Well, the band certainly couldn’t get more “Authentic” than John Anderson, and let me tell you. Hearing him on this track was awesome. The actual lyrics tell of being real and true to yourself, and not trying to be some fake version of country. In the days of pop country, and many people not knowing what country really is, this song is a must-listen. “Countryholic” is pretty hilarious, as the song discusses a man who just loves Waylon and Willie, steel guitar, and boots. It’s a bit cliché, but I chuckled a few times.
I liked the slower and more feeling-driven “Outta This Town”. It’s all about a man who can’t seem to leave his hometown. The planes never stop there, the train never makes a trip to the town, and he gets a woman pregnant and marries her. Thus, he’s stuck in the town. This one features Emmylou Harris on backing vocals, and I thought it made a nice change from all the faster songs. As much as I’m bored of all the drinking songs in today’s mainstream country scene, “Hole In The Wall” was an easy listen. I didn’t love it, but it was pleasant enough. The lyrics revolve around wanting to find a little bar with cold beer, a small dance floor, and a jukebox. I just liked the instrumentation, the lyrics, and everything combined to make this an enjoyable, if not completely amazing, song. My favorite emotional song is definitely “Unbroken People”. It’s all about feeling the pain of losing loved ones, but leaning on platitudes people say like “everything will be okay,” or “you’re gonna make it.”. This was the song that really resonated with me emotionally, where most of the others failed to do so. Finally, there’s “Used to be a Country Town”. I loved Gretchen Wilson’s part of the song, and it really just made me want to go listen to more of her music. The song itself is all about how they used to party in a town that used to be country. They wasted their money, but they had fun doing it.
Overall, I liked this album. The guest stars featured made it really unique. There were some I actually missed until I later went back and looked at who was featured. I did not catch Vince Gill or Jamey Johnson. The musicians did a wonderful job at bringing back the sounds of 80s and 90s country, too. I love good piano, fiddle and steel guitar, and I got all three of those in spades. Lastly, I must talk about the skills of the lead singer. Jeffrey Steele has quite the vocal range. When I was first listening to this album, I thought there were more guest stars than the site of the Sons of the Palomino alludes to. In fact, it’s just that Steele can sing in both very low and very high registers. It’s pretty awesome stuff. I think if you like the 80s and 90s era of country music, you are doing yourself a disservice by not checking this album out. The instrumentation is great, there are some really well-done songs here, and seeing names like John Anderson’s on a contemporary project like this is really cool.
Someone said they’d like me to do a feature on Jamie Lin Wilson, and that day has come. I am excited to feature Jamie on this Female Friday.
How You Might Know Jamie
Much like her friend Courtney Patton, whom I covered two weeks ago, you might not know Jamie Lin Wilson if you aren’t familiar with the Texas scene. If you are, she’s a member of the Texas-based group The Trishas. She can often also be found singing with Courtney.
Bio
From a 2014 article by The Daily Country, on the influences for her debut album,
The type of music she likes to make is, she says, influenced by “the greats” — Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson, Guy Clark, Townes van Zandt, John Prine, Rodney Crowell and Tom T. Hall. But it’s equally inspired by those friends and contemporaries, including the Trishas and song-swap pals like [Courtney] Patton,Drew Kennedy and Owen Temple. “Their style creeps into my style and vice versa,” she says. “I love that. We’re a little team.”
From an interview with Newslang on her style of songwriting:
The song I wrote with Jason [Eady] and Adam [Hood], we started with a photo. I sent this picture of an old abandoned house in Yancey. The yard is overgrown and the windows are broken. It hasn’t been lived in for a very long time. There was a chair on the porch facing out that had been there ever since the last people moved out. They left this chair on the porch. I took a picture of that and sent it to them saying that there was a song in this picture and we needed to write it. That was one of the easiest co-writes because we all had the same image. Half of co-writing is trying to get that same image in your head. We figured out that was a great way to co-write.
Jamie Lin Wilson has gained a great reputation in the Texas scene as a singer and songwriter. However, for many years, she was simply a collaborator on other projects. Her career began fifteen years ago while she was in college; she was simply inspired by the sight of Natalie Maines, the former lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, singing and playing guitar. Shortly after this, Jamie started a band called the Sidehill Gougers (later known only as the Gougers) and began writing songs. She released a solo EP in 2010 called Dirty Blonde Hair and made a name for herself as a member of the Texas-based female group the Trishas. During a Trishas hiatus, Jamie Lin Wilson finally took time out of her life–which by this time included a marriage and three children–to record her first full-length solo record. Holidays & Wedding Rings, released on May 19th, 2015, has been met with much-deserved praise and appreciation. Finally, people everywhere are being exposed to one of Texas country’s best-kept secrets.
Why Jamie Belongs on Country Radio
Her case is similar to Courtney’s; as I said with Courtney, I am not going to spend time explaining why independent/Americana/Texas artists deserve to be treated fairly in the mainstream. This is a headache-inducing topic that can only be improved through sources such as Saving Country Music, Country Perspective, and this site that give these artists an equal playing field and hopefully more fans. This post, however, is about Jamie, and what she brings to country music in general. Well, firstly, and I don’t know why I have to keep writing this sentence on these features, she’s country! This should need no further explanation. She has relatable, real-life experience in her songs–you don’t have to have partied in every cornfield and club in the South to relate to her lyrics. Similar to Courtney’s, her songwriting tells the stories of real people in real-life situations. Like Lindi Ortega’s, Jamie Lin Wilson’s voice is unique. Blake Shelton would say, if somehow she were ever able to stand before him on The Voice, “There’s no one quite like you in country music right now.” Well, Blake, this is because mainstream Nashville doesn’t want originality, and that’s what Jamie has to offer.
Tracks I Recommend
Most Jamie Lin Wilson apologists will say I shouldn’t pick apart Holidays & Wedding Rings, and indeed it is a great album. These are just personal favorites.
1. “Just Some Things” (featuring Wade Bowen)–Holidays & Wedding Rings
2. “Whisper on my Skin”–Holidays & Wedding Rings
3. “Here Tonight”–Holidays & Wedding Rings
4. “She’ll Take Tonight”–Holidays & Wedding Rings
5. “You Left my Chair”–Holidays & Wedding Rings [this is the song written with Jason Eady and Adam Hood]
As mentioned in Female Fridays, Faded Gloryville is Lindi Ortega’s fourth album for Last Gang Records. She brought in producer Dave Cobb from 2013’s Tin Star, as well as Colin Linden from 2012’s Cigarettes and Truckstops. Dave Cobb seems to be on a roll–he worked on Jason Isbell’s Something More Than Free as well. Lindi experimented with “a more Muscle Shoals sound,” for which she got help with Ben Tanner of Alabama Shakes and John Paul White of The Civil Wars. The result is the most soulful album of her career to date.
The album opens with “Ashes,” which is also my favorite track. Basically, the premise is that she was once in love, but now the fire has burned out, and he has left her with “these cold, dark ashes.” Lindi’s voice soars through this song, singing, “Darling, this is madness, why don’t you come back to me? Don’t leave me in the ashes of your memory.” The title track is similar to “Tin Star” and is an ode to the disillusioned dreamers who feel like there is no hope left. However, unlike “Tin Star,” which was only for musicians, this feels more universal. It is a theme that I feel Ortega uses too often, but this is still a good song, and I prefer it to “Tin Star.”
“Tell it Like it Is,” takes a more bluesy, soulful approach. Lindi is trying to persuade a man to stop pretending and “tell it like it is.” It’s a more interesting version of Clare Dunn’s “Move On.” Next is “Someday Soon,” which is one of the more relatable songs on the album. Lindi says she’s been “spending all my nights on someone that just ain’t right” and looks forward to a day “someday soon” when she can move on from her disappointing life. This is another song that stood out for me and will hit different people in different ways. Lindi then does a cover of “To Love Somebody,” and although it is unique, I prefer the original. Some people will probably love it, I am just not one of them. It was released ahead of the album, and it was the only song I heard beforehand that I didn’t like. I haven’t warmed up to it much.
“When You Ain’t Home” is an upbeat song ironically about the narrator feeling lonely while her lover is away. I said before that I hear Dolly Parton, Stevie Nicks, and Emmylou Harris in Lindi’s voice, depending on the song, but never have I heard so much soul in her voice. I can’t think of anyone to compare her to, and while it sounds less country, it makes her sound even more like just Lindi. This side of her adds to the individuality that she so obviously prizes. I can’t say I love this song, but I do love what it brings out in her.
“Rundown Neighborhood,” is a lighthearted track about two friends who look out for each other in a bad neighborhood. They are “bad for each other,” but that’s all right because they will always have each other’s backs. Among other things, they share whiskey, rum, cigarettes, and weed. Next is “I Ain’t the Girl,” a relatable song in which Lindi tells a guy she’s not the girl for him because he’s too straight-laced. She likes “long-haired guys” who are “rugged with tattoos,” and he wears a suit and tie. It’s a fun song, but it speaks to many people who feel like they are with the wrong match. As a girl who doesn’t like pretty boys like the one she seems to be describing, I am a little biased toward this song.
In “Run Amok,” Lindi pours out her frustration with someone who is doing “every crazy drug,” alcohol, etc. It’s upbeat and catchy, but a line still caught my attention–“When you run with the devil you burn everything you tuch, bridges and money and everyone you love.” In the end, she finally gives up and decides, “I’ll just let you run amok.” The album slows down to close with “Half Moon,” a thought-provoking ballad. This is actually one of my favorite songs on Faded Gloryville, but I was surprised that I enjoyed it because it is one of those that has to be heard to appreciate. She compares people–or at least herself–to “Half moons hanging in the sky,” with something to hide, but still shining some light. This is probably the most country song on the album, and the mystery in her voice fits the lyrics very well.
All in all, this is my favorite Lindi Ortega album as a whole. Some people will not like it as much as her previous material because of the more soulful songs, but I think this is more in her wheelhouse. This is also a better mix of ballads and upbeat songs, as well as a better balance of lighthearted and dark material. Faded Gloryville is a solid album and one that I would recommend, especially for people who have just been introduced to her work.
