I get that, Smitty. And it may be that you just decide they aren't for you. Nothing wrong with that. But I think maybe I know what could be your sticking point on these guys and the other artists that you mentioned.Smitty wrote:I have tried and tried but just don't get it. They have a few really greatly written songs but it just hasn't clicked for me like it has for others I guess. All the cancelled dates with flimsy excuses and the Miranda Lambert gossipy shit further turns me off.
I mean I know if Rodney, Cole and Iowan dig em then there's something there so I'm sure it's a "not you, but me" issue. To be honest though I haven't been than enamored at hardly any of the new darlings of the Americana scene; hell it took me awhile to come around to Sturgill and while I love Tyler Childers but not to the degree that most seem to. That may be part of my ambivalence towards TT; new americana/alt country acts just haven't grabbed my attention because no matter how solid they are, it feels like I've heard it before. I have similar issues with American Aquarium and acts like Cody Jinks, Colter Wall, etc.
If I was looking at TT or Sturgill, Colter Wall, Tyler Childers, Cody Jinks etc as alt country or Americana, I think maybe something wouldn't sit quite right with me.
TT and all these others are not alt country. They aren't Americana. To me, what they really are is a new batch of really fine country artists. That's it. I think if I thought of them as either of those other two categories it wouldn't quite work somehow.
They are just country. I won't rehash what a pile of crap mainstream could try is. We all know it. But these artists are just country artists, really good ones, who don't have a home there because they actually play country music. Tyler Childers has even said as much. He came out and said he is not an Americana artists, doesn't see the need for that label at all anymore,and that what he is is a country artist. Sturgill has said the same thing.
To me once you look at them in that light it works much better.
Now I struggled with Colter Wall. I just did not like his voice at first and it took a while to acquire a taste for it. But Clams and a few others sang his praises so that I kept going back to him and now I'm a big fan. Sturgill though, I freaked out the first time I heard him and had a similar reaction to the first time I heard the Truckers. Like I had found something I had been looking for.
Glad to hear TT are back on track.