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August 2018
Features
Girl
GoinG
Somewhere
12 Ashley McBryde
BY KELLY GREGORY
The Girl Going Nowhere singer is a girl going somewhere. She talks to Kelly Gregory.
16 Richard Lynch
All round country. Raised on a farm, he builds barns by day. By night he keeps it traditional.
Could he be any more country?
W
e’ve all heard the story thousands of times before
about the girl who moved to Music City with dreams
of becoming the next big country music star. Some of
them make it. Most don’t. So I suppose it’s not all that
hard to believe that Ashley McBryde did not have the overnight
success that it may look like she had from over here in the UK.
Eleven years ago Ashley McBryde moved from small-town
Arkansas to Nashville where she plied her wares in dive bars,
trucker bars, biker bars and honky tonks with hopes of until
finally securing her major label deal with Warners in 2016.
“I was usually four hours a night and it was usually just me and
a guitar, even though my band and I have been playing together a
really long time it wasn’t always cost effective to take them. So it
was just me a lot of the time. Sometimes it was thrift bars where
they didn’t even turn the TV down, you know,” laughs McBryde
who wrote her first song aged 12. “And during a ball game for
some reason they’ve got you up there playing music at the same
time and so it was a bit of a competition. There were nights that
you are the thing that’s happening and then there are nights that
you’re just a jukebox behind the thing that’s happening in those
bars. I really came to a good understanding with it and really got
to where I loved it. I wouldn’t trade that for anything; it was a
good education.
“I think if I had done it with a goal in mind of having a record
deal all the time, if that was the only thing I was shooting for,
then I probably would have gotten a little discouraged, a little
tired, or a little unfocused. But I just wanted to write songs and
Ashley McBryde
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22 Brendan Malone
From working the door at Robert’s Western World to saving the honky tonk one Tuesday
night at a time with Honky Tonk Tuesdays and his band The Cowpokes.
LYNCH
By day he builds barns and by night Richard Lynch plays
country music as traditional as it comes. He speaks to
Duncan Warwick.
The alt. country hero is a respected elder statesman, a master of his game, and back with
one of the finest albums of the year for which he’s hooked up with Linda Gail Lewis.He was
willing to talk to Duncan Warwick.
W
e all like a good moan and there’s nothing to get a
country fan going like the state of country music.
Maybe that’s why Richard Lynch’s record - Country
Music Isn’t Country Anymore - from his latest
long player Mending Fences did rather nicely for
the Ohio-based singer. The title alone is enough to get some people
going, but not only is Richard Lynch determined to keep his sound
traditionally based he is country in every sense of the word. Brought
up on a farm, he has a successful career building and designing barns
behind him as well as having been a singer for 30 years. Not only
that, but on his own ‘Keepin’ It Country’ Farm he holds country music
events throughout the summer.
“I’m about 30 miles north of Cincinatti, that’s where our farm is.
We have a beautiful farm and we have a facility, I built a big barn back
in 2015 and about four or five times a year we have a country music
concert right here on our farm in our barn. We do that four or five
times a summer. That’s really fun because we get to bring country
music to the country.”
On the day we speak Lynch had been out building a barn earlier in
the day. Charming, polite, and as traditional in the way that he goes
through life as he is musically, Lynch exclaims, “I’m real disgusted with
the way mainstream radio has turned. I don’t begrudge anybody the
music, but call it what it is, it’s certainly not country music today,” at
the mention of cutting Country Music Isn’t Country Anymore and how
he relates to it personally.
“I’m very fortunate that that song came my way. Mister Nick Nichols
out of Nashville wrote the songs. When we’re recording an album
we’re either looking for music that kinda hits home with me. Of
course, for me it’s got to be traditional country music. I like writing
but I also have other writers on my album. so when I heard the song,
Country Music Isn’t Country Anymore, it just summed it up. That’s
basically how I see things.
I t’s all about the money for the industry. The industry has taken a
very lucrative genre of music that was ‘country music’ and they’ve
kept the name and changed the format, the sound, the direction of
what our music is. Everywhere I play, I play all over the country, I’m
always told the same thing, people walk up to me and they thank me.
Reviews
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One
LIVE FROM NASHVILLE, TN
TUESDAY
night
at a
time
HONKY TONK
AWAY FROM THE ROWDY BARS OF NASHVILLE’S LOWER BROADWAY, OVER
IN EAST NASHVILLE, THERE’S A PLACE WHERE HONKY TONK IS ALIVE AND
WELL EVERY TUESDAY NIGHT - AMERICAN LEGION POST 82. THE MAN BEHIND
IT IS ALSO A MEMBER OF THE RETRO OUTFIT THE COWPOKES, AND ONE OF
THE KEY PEOPLE AT ROBERT’S WESTERN WORLD.
TUESDAYS
EVERY TUESDAY
Charts
17
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30 Album Reviews
49 Live Review
4 News
8 Tour Guide
21 The David Allan Page
29 Corner Of Music Row
50 Nice to meet y’all... - Cliff Westfall
53 Americana Roundup
60 Nice to meet y’all.. - Wes Youssi
13
RICHARD
54 Robbie Fulks
Regulars
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8PM
Y
NO COVER
AMERICAN LEGION POST 82
3402 GALLATIN PIKE, NASHVILLE, TN.
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OU KNOW THE FEELING. YOU’RE IN NASHVILLE,
the home of country music, you think you’ll take a
stroll down Nashville’s tourist epicentre of Lower
Broadway and check out some real honest-to-
goodness country music. The trouble is, walking past
the myriad of watering holes your ears are assaulted
with pretty much everything other than country.
Rock, blues, more rock, R&B, still more rock but even
heavier, but no country. Even the famous Tootsies is
a far cry from its glory years as a hang-out for Marty
Robbins and Patsy Cline. We’ve all been there, haven’t
we? Who would’ve thought it could be so hard to find
country music in Nashville for Christ’s sake? So you
head towards the one place you can be sure of being
reminded why you came to town in the first place -
Robert’s Western World.
Nestled in what has become the most desirable piece
of real in town Robert’s hasn’t changed in years.
You can hear the likes of Joshua Hedley, Sarah Gayle
Meech, Dave Cox, and it was where BR5-49 solidified
their sound. They also sell a decent burger.
Robert’s also became a Mecca for classic honky
tonk enthusiast Brendan Malone, who moved to
Nashville from California and started working at
Robert’s. “I started off by working the door about five
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Wild!
The Joker is
R O B B I E
F U L K S
A 20+ year recording career has seen the Chicgo-based singer songwriter go from alt. country
hero to respected elder statesman and even gathered Grammy nominations along the way.
Never one to be predictable, his latest release finds him teaming up with Jerry Lee’s l’il sister Linda
Gail Lewis and sees the duo in Gospel, rock’n’roll, and even swing territory alongside some of the
best hard country songs you’re likely to hear this year.
By Duncan Warwick
Photos: Andy Goodwin
I
f there was any real justice in the world, or
at the very least in country music, Robbie
Fulks’ name would spoken with reverence to
his songwriting skills in the same sentence as
Roger Miller. He can write a funny song that
on the face of it might be lightweight as well as
he can pen a country song to rip your heart out. Even
though he was a staff writer for Songwriters Ink (think
Joe Diffie and Tim McGraw) for five years in the 90s he
never reached the dizzy heights his talents deserve.
Gaining recognition among the cognoscenti with
the release of his Bloodshot Records debut, Country
Love Songs, in the mid-90s, he delivered a masterpiece.
However, in a marketplace already starting to change
in the post-Garth explosion Fulks was probably too
country before he even really got going.
By the time his follow-up, South Mouth, was released
in 1997, the inclusion of his song Fuck This Town – a
scathing jab at the machinations of Music Row – hinted
that all might not be well with Fulks’ foray into the
mainstream.
However, with Country Love Songs and South Mouth
Fulks had ensured a place in the heart of hardcore
honky tonk fans for a long time to come. Fast forward
twenty years and Robbie Fulks is considered one of the
elder statesman of alt. country who has maintained his
edge while remaining on the edge for all these years.
As well as official releases for labels like Bloodshot,
Geffen, and YepRoc, are many self-released, and often
self-indulgent, releases which make for a vast and
varied Fulks catalogue. Not all could be considered
straight country, and sharing the disappointment of
one such release not being country in print, some
journalist or another, alright, it was me, made me think
that he might not be so keen to talk to yours truly. And
if you too had witnessed the way he blanked me in an
Austin bar you might think that too. Despite that, I have
remained in awe of his talent since day one. Now, with
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64 Americana & UK Country Charts
65 Billboard Country Charts
Nice to meet y’all...
I
f the brief bio of Portland Oregon honky tonker
Wes Youssi doesn’t immediately make you warm
to him then you either have no sense of humour,
or irony, or both. In it he claims to have “bused
tables in Indiana, punched someone in the face,
been laid-off, married, made children, lived in Detroit,
ate a cockroach, shot down a tree, and unknowingly
purchased a former cop car. His dream is to get back to
the old woods; before they get cut down.” And all that in
38 years.
His music is twang-laden honky tonk from a part of the
USA that seems to be gaining a reputation for exactly that
just lately.
“I think Oregon has a history with Twang & Country
that goes a ways back, and may only now be getting
recognition,” reckons Youssi.
“I came across two guys many years ago that started my
journey in the Northwest country: Texas Jim Lewis (1950s
artist) and Buzz Martin (1960s artist). I know there are
many more, but being the type of person that fixates on
a few albums/artists, I locked in on these two fellas. This
was their ‘stomping ground’ and they wrote and reflected
the Northwest experience with gumption. It made me
conscientious about the value of regional sound.
“As for what I heard on the street, having moved to
Oregon in ’95, there was already twang coming from the
bars. Some of my earliest experiences were going to the
White Eagle on country songwriter nights and listening
to solo artists performing. Local artists like Caleb Klauder
had been involved in folk rock regionally and began
doing bluegrass and country music and I gravitated to the
venues where that music was performed. Unbeknownst
to me during that time, bands like The Rockin Razorbacks
were doing rockabilly and country songs as well. Later
on, I discovered more of the local history, learning that
Willie Nelson passed though here, and that Loretta Lynn
resided in Washington and got started singing throughout
Washington and Oregon. I recently read that one of the
gentlemen that was instrumental in getting WSM going
was from Pendleton Oregon. Anyway…a lot of history
Courtesy of Billboard Inc.
out this way, but not so much vocal recognition it seems.
Much of it is buried in books, or still being written down. I
am still learning all the time.”
Somehow Wes Youssi’s rather wonderful album Down
Low managed to get past us earlier this year but fans of
honky tonk, a touch of Hank, and the occasional ‘stroll’
will find much to their liking amongst the dozen tracks.
Youssi describes the album as, “classic American honky-
tonk country music.
“The emphasis is on the story within the song, and the
instruments whine and growl at the appropriate times to
support the various emotions. In the spirit of honly-tonk,
the bar room is a type of church where all stories (good
and bad) can be shared and at the end of the evening,
you leave feeling a bit better about things. It has always
been my intention to honour those that have come before
by learning from their song writing craft and melody, but
when it comes to writing my songs, speaking with my
own voice and experiences. I want to be alive right now
as a story-teller, but create songs in a timeless American
tradition. I don’t feel constrained by the genre, I feel
empowered by its structure, and where necessary, will
deviate when the emotional content of the song requires
it.”
“One of my favourite stories was this cowboy coming
up to me after a set break and saying (more like
exclaiming), “Man this is GOOD OLE ROACH STOMPING,
SHIT KICKIN, COUNTRY FUCKIN MUSIC”. I love that
description, and I don’t think he could have said it
better. So wherever that kinda music exists is where I’ll
be enjoying other’s company. Today’s music is so many
things. I suppose I reside in the bones, conjuring up a
devil of a good time.
“Sometimes I feel like the current state of country
music is kinda like a dog show… fashionable in-bred dogs,
selling a lot of canned dog food, but they’re really not so
good for the health and genetics of any dog long term.
Country music, and really any type of music or art needs
to be saved from the pitfalls of hype and style which often
undermine the message of authentic artistry.”
WES YOUSSI
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