Country Music People December 2016 | Page 3

contents December 2016 Features 12 Dale Watson The ‘ Keeper of the true country flame ’ is as outspoken as ever . 20 Irene Kelley Kelly Gregory meets the hit songwriter and bluegrasser . 26 Sara Watkins Michael Hingston talks to the singer , songwriter and fiddle player . 50 Holly Dunn Walt Trott pays tribute to the late singer and songwriter . 52 Neil White Duncan Warwick talks Johnny Cash with the best-selling author . 58 Shakin ’ Stevens Jack Watkins meets a whole new rootsy Shaky . Reviews 30 CD Reviews 48 Live Review Regulars 4 News 8 Tour Guide 11 This Month In Country Music 18 Nice To Meet Y ’ all - Denny Strickland 19 The David Allan Page 25 The Nashville Skinny 29 Nice To Meet Y ’ all - The Reeves Brothers 49 Americana Roundup 56 Nice To Meet Y ’ all - Arty Hill 57 CanCountry Charts 64 Americana & UK Country Charts 65 Billboard Country Charts Courtesy of Billboard Inc . 12 cmp - DECEMBER 2016 THE OUTSPOKEN KIND DALE WATSON DECEMBER 2016 - cmp 13 D ale Watson is not just the ‘ keeper of the true country flame ’. Yes , he protects it , cossets it , and values it greatly , but he also likes to throw some petrol on it occasionally , or use it to light the odd incendiary device . All of which endears him even more to anyone who prefers their country music to sound like ‘ real ’ country music . For more than two decades he has been tirelessly hitting the road and building a fan base the old fashioned way . Once or twice major labels have come a calling but they were given short shrift when it was suggested that Watson soften his uncompromisingly country sound . Never one to shy away from issues , Dale Watson is the one artist who will say what most others are all thinking but are too concerned about record company and radio politics to say anything . As far back as 1995 , on his debut Hightone album Cheatin ’ Heart Attack , Dale was coming out in a Nashville Rash due to the direction country music was heading , and the following year he was pleading for DJs to ‘ speak up and say what ’ s wrong ’ on Real Country Song from his Blessed Or Damned release . There was also the straight to the point Country My Ass and more recently it only took Watson mere days to get his feelings on the Blake-gate story onto disc . Watson has also made a bunch of truckin ’ albums over the years , not for any reason other than he likes that truckin ’ sound … and he cares about preserving it ! If he fancies cutting an album of early Elvis tunes in Sun Studios he ’ ll do it because he wants to , and if his beloved honky tonk is in trouble he ’ ll step in and help by actually putting his hand in his pocket as he did with Ginny ’ s Little Longhorn in his hometown of Austin , Texas . He has since sold his share in Ginny ’ s but opened his own bar – The Big T Roadhouse – in St . Hedwig , just outside of San Antonio , where his recent live album - Live At The Big T Roadhouse , Chicken S #!+ Bingo Sunday – was recorded . Additionally , Watson has also just released an album of covers – Under The Influence – containing songs made famous by the likes of Merle Haggard , Conway Twitty , Ronnie Milsap , and Buck Owens , again because he felt like it . In fact , throughout his lengthy career Dale Watson has usually released a new record , sometimes two , every year , but possibly never before two in as many months . Dale Watson is a true maverick , and encompasses the true meaning of the term ‘ Outlaw ’ as well as Willie Nelson in the mid-70s . Not only that , but he can write songs to rival anything Haggard ever committed to wax . It ’ s no wonder he has become a hero to the fans of ‘ explicitly hardcore country music ’. And another thing , as well as his Remington (“ I liked it so much I bought the company ”) moment with Ginny ’ s , disillusioned with the label ‘ Country ’ and its associations with things with which he ’ d rather not be associated , Watson invented the term ‘ Ameripolitan ’ to refer to his musical style . That has since grown to become a whole genre embracing honky tonk , rockabilly , Western Swing , and Outlaw , and has held its own awards show for the past few years . Watson laughs hysterically at the suggestion that country music might be at its lowest point ever and concedes that singers , and fans , of real country have lost the battle , and despite all the talk of it coming back around in any mainstream chart is a pipedream . However , he still remains positive . “ Yeah , we have lost , but that ’ s why I took the right of Ameripolitan . I gave up then because it all started with Blake Shelton saying what he said but he was actually saying what Nashville really meant so I knew it was over at that point . It wasn ’ t going to get any better . “ Our goal is to make a music chart of our own with Ameripolitan . The thing is , this kind of music was never meant to be a big thing , y ’ know , it was never meant to be mainstream . It just appealed to mature-minded people and the mainstream is … “ Of course I grew up with this and I liked it . I was never a rebellious teenager musically , so when I heard my dad doing it I always liked it and the people that he liked I liked . But , I can ’ t tell you how many people come up to me and say , ‘ Yeah , my grandad used to listen to Merle Haggard and stuff . I didn ’ t like it . Now that I have Duncan Warwick catches up with the “ Keeper of the true country flame ” and finds it is still burning brightly in Dale Watson ’ s hands . DECEMBER 2016 - cmp 21 20 cmp - DECEMBER 2016 Irene Kelley W hen Irene Kelley arrived in Tennessee in 1984 the sleeping giant of the Nashville music machine was just waking up to a more roots-based music following a decade in the dozy doldrums . The seeds had been sown with George Strait , who had already been having hits for a year or so , and the garden was being tended for the new country explosion that was a year or two off . Record labels were clammouring for more roots-based music after years of pop influenced material , which meant artists such as Ricky Skaggs , Sweethearts Of The Rodeo and Keith Whitley were starting to garner attention from major labels . It was an exciting time for country music . “ Oh it was ,” agrees Kelley . “ It was really just coming up . Randy Travis was just starting to come up , Ricky Skaggs had just got to the country scene after playing in JD Crowe ’ s bluegrass band and I ’ m watching these guys like Ricky and Keith Whitley and Carl Jackson , and these guys are all bluegrassers and they ’ re all getting major label country deals . Vince Gill also , because Vince was in Byron Berline & Sundance Band , and also Marty Stuart . So it was really exciting for me to see that because I could see that the heart and soul of bluegrass was very much part of country .” Nashville afforded her that and , after discovering her flair for songwriting in her teenage years , Irene Kelley left behind her life in Pennsylvania to start a new life in Music City . “ I came to Nashville to be a singer and , much to my surprise , I was touted as a writer and a lot of my songs were starting to get more attention than I was as an artist . I continued and I ’ m fine with that , that ’ s fine . When I moved here , though , I moved here to be an artist and so that ’ s been sort of up and down but the mainstay has been the songwriting and I ’ m really grateful for that and that ’ s wonderful . The songwriting part is always a good thing and it ’ s probably good for me because I ’ m more of an introverted person anyway so I can dig into my songwriting and that ’ s always there for me . And then when I go to do an album I kind of know when and what to record and if I have something missing in the repertoire I just say , ‘ Well , I ’ ll just write one like this because this is what I need — this kind of tempo or this kind of statement .’ So , being a writer , that ’ s really helpful in that way ,” says the Latrobe , PA . native . The give and take between singing and songwriting came full circle when Kelley struck gold and managed to get her wellknown song - A Little Bluer Than That - cut by Alan Jackson . “ It was really great . That was my second cut and I sang on the record . I sang the harmony part in the studio ,” she reminisces . “ The first one [ cut ] was actually by Carl Jackson . He recorded the song on CBS , it was a single for him with a 64 in Billboard and it was a song called You Are The Rock ( And I ’ m A Rolling Stone ). I wrote that song by myself and then I wrote with Nancy Montgomery and we wrote Love Can ’ t Ever Get Better Than This . Ricky [ Skaggs ] and Sharon [ White ] had that out as a single in 1988 and it was in the Top 5 . Then , just a couple of years ago , they did a whole album of duo songs and they rerecorded the song and put it out again on the Skaggs Family label .” Irene Kelley could have given Patty Loveless a run for her money , and when MCA signed her back in the late 80s maybe that was what they had in mind . “ Well , I was working with Nancy Montgomery and at the time her husband , Marshall Morgan , had a studio and that ’ s where we wrote the Ricky Skaggs song and we were just trying to get songs cut ,” states the well-respected singer and songwriter . “ So we wrote the song and Marshall recorded the demo for us to be able to play for Ricky and we got to work in the studio to sing the female part . He just got interested in what I was doing and talking to me about helping to find a label and going in and recording stuff . So we recorded about six songs and somebody , a friend of ours , took it to MCA Records and played it for them and they said they wanted to release the whole album . So we finished the album up and we ended up having two singles come out but the album never came out .” Bluer than that ... “ I feel like bluegrass is the last frontier of traditional country music .”. Kelly Gregory talks songwriting , coal mining , and her new album - These Hills - with the bluegrass queen . DECEMBER 2016 - cmp 27 26 cmp - DECEMBER 2016 T he excellent new album Young In All The Wrong Ways is the third release for singer , songwriter and fiddle player Sara Watkins . It has been four years since her last solo outing Sun Midnight Sun , but being a solo artist isn ’ t the only string to her bow ( so to speak ) and she keeps herself very busy with numerous projects . Many musicians view being a solo artist or part of a band as a binary decision , but Watkins appears to have covered many aspects of band , solo and collaborative projects over the last couple of years . Sara was a member of the band Nickel Creek since the age of 8 , along with her older brother Sean Watkins and virtuoso mandolinist Chris Thile . The band had been on hiatus since 2007 , but they came back together in 2014 to tour and release an album of new material . Sara and Sean also run a monthly residency in Los Angeles called The Watkins Family Hour , where friends such as Fiona Apple , Benmont Tench , Don Heffington and Greg Leisz come along and share favourite songs . Last year they took the Family Hour out on the first US tour . Then there is the band I ’ m With Her , where Sara toured with two other talented singer songwriters : Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O ’ Donovan ; Sara also toured the UK with the super-ensemble the Transatlantic Sessions in January 2015 and there was a tour with Patti Griffin . That is a lot of different projects . I recently had a chat with Sara over the Sara WATKINS phone from her home in Los Angeles and we discussed her new album and her myriad other musical activities . I asked about the Nickel Creek reunion a couple of years ago . “ We had a fantastic time , we love singing together . It was great because we wrote so quickly and we recorded [ the album ] really quickly , which was different for us . We were in the studio for thirteen days and it was fantastic – a really fun experience .” Sara explained that her intention was to take some time out to make the new album , but it didn ’ t turn out that way . “ Last year was supposed to be an off year so that I could record this album and finish writing the songs . It ended up being filled with all kind of fun projects that I hadn ’ t really planned on , they just kinda happened . The Family Hour was a really special tour . It is a residency that we usually do one place in Los Angeles , but we took it around the country . Our friend had asked us to make a record to document the Family Hour band at his home studio . This guy Sheldon Gomberg has a great set-up and for two or three days we went down to his place and recorded some cover songs that we do . We had some time and we thought ‘ maybe we should do some tour dates ’ and Sean [ Watkins ] said ‘ why don ’ t we put out this album and tour it ?’ We made this tour that I will never , ever forget . We travelled round the country . In towns where we knew people , we invited them to be a part of the show and to sit in and bring some songs and to share on this collaborative tour . It was really special . We continue to do the monthly show in Los Angeles . I don ’ t think we will go out on tour for a while , but it was really special .” The producer on Young In All The Wrong Ways was Gabe Witcher , fiddle player in Punch Brothers ( the band that is fronted by her Nickel Creek bandmate Chris Thile ). With both artist and producer being fiddlers , it is a surprise that the instrument is featured so little on the record . “ It was a conscious decision not to have a ton of fiddle on the album , because fiddle is a very strong impression . We wanted the violins to be represented in the string sections , where there is a little orchestration that happens on the album , but we didn ’ t want fiddle licks everywhere , because it is such a strong personality . Gabe [ Witcher ] who produced the album and I both come from the fiddle world , so you would think we would be biased towards the fiddle , but we wanted the album to be about the lyrics and the songs and less about that strong personality . It didn ’ t seem to fit the arrangements that are built into the songs .” Sara ’ s previous two releases included a handful of covers , but the songs on the new album are all written by Sara and have a general theme of change and renewal . “ It does seem like there is a theme on it . It just so happens that I had more things to say , I guess . I had more songs leading up to the making of this album than I typically do . I intended to record a song that my friend had written , but it didn ’ t seem to fit the album . It stood out as being from a different voice lyrically , so we didn ’ t end up completing it .” S ara has always had an attractive voice , but on the new album she has discovered a larger dynamic and emotional range . She uses the controlled power to great effect in the title track and Move Me . “ Yes , I do find my singing changing . I sing out quite a lot on Sun Midnight Sun . There is a song called When It Pleases You that I sing really out on . In the course of the four years since that album came out , there has been a lot of touring that has allowed me to experiment a bit more range , not in terms of notes scale , but dynamically and tonally . A lot of these songs came from a very guttural place , lyrically . When you are in a transitional place in your life , sometimes there is upheaval that you have to deal with . I think that these songs feel , to sing , the way I felt when I was writing them .” The upheaval isn ’ t one specific event , more a periodic reassessment of her life . “ For me it is a transitional thing . Every five or ten years we all go through these periods where we re-examine where we are and reconsider some life choices , or notice ‘ I didn ’ t mean to be here this long or live in this town or job for so long ; actually , I don ’ t think that anymore ’. Just Michael Hingston catches up with the super-talented singer , songwriter and fiddle player . “ You would think we would be biased towards the fiddle .” DECEMBER 2016 - cmp 53 52 cmp - DECEMBER 2016 B y day Neil White is a criminal lawyer , by night he is a bestselling crime fiction writer , which in itself sounds like a character one might find as the star of a book or film . He also happens to be a Johnny Cash fan , something he was destined to inherit from his father whether he liked it or not , for Neil would be awoken to the sounds of his dad playing Johnny Cash records every weekend – literally … EVERY WEEKEND ! “ We lived in a council house in Wakefield and he used to work in shoe shops and didn ’ t work on a weekend and so you ’ d hear a needle go on a record and that was it , you ’ d hear Johnny Cash all day . I remember as well there was a picture of Johnny Cash on the wall above the TV . Even right through the 80s when Johnny Cash ’ s fame was slipping slightly it was just Johnny Cash and that was it . He was a one-man man shall we say ,” reminisces White , illustrating the sheer devotion to The Man In Black . The sounds of Johnny Cash permeating his bedroom walls as a youngster has inspired White ’ s latest work which moves away from his crime fiction best-sellers like Cold Kill , Beyond Evil , and The Death Collector to the story of ‘ A father and son , the open road , and Johnny Cash ’ for his latest novel Lost In Nashville . In the book , the main characters are a successful lawyer and his estranged father who take the trip of a lifetime through Johnny Cash ’ s life . They visit where he grew up and the places he sang about in the hope of reconnecting once more , and every chapter is named after a Cash song . With a change of name from White to Gray ( James Gray is the lawyer in the book ) Lost In Nashville could almost be an autobiographical work . However , while White admits he felt the need for a certain amount of poetic license with the characters , his research and Cash knowledge is right on the money . So much so that as well as being a darn good read and working on several levels , the novel could be used as a travel guide should somebody be inclined to follow in Johnny ’ s footsteps themselves . White laughs at the mention of the colour-swapping name change and says , “ That ’ s my wife ’ s maiden name actually , that ’ s the reason why I chose it . The book went through a number of changes because the book came about when I was looking at a map one day and I said , ‘ I ’ d love to go to where Johnny Cash grew up .’ I think I found his house on some kind of online estate agency in America and thought it ’ d be nice to go there . I thought I could maybe chat to the guy who lives there because my intention initially , about ten years ago or maybe more , was to write a book almost like a bit of a Bill Bryson type thing - A journey through the South and meeting people on the way - that was my kind of approach initially . But when I came to writing it I just found that that wasn ’ t my skill , shall we say . “ I ’ ve always been a novelist and I just found it hard to make it funny or witty and it sounded like a Wikipedia entry trying to get all the detail in . So I thought instead I could do it as an autobiography and do it as if I ’ m travelling with my dad who is a huge Johnny Cash fan . So I wrote it that way and I just found that the autobiographical stuff made it too much like I was trying to get too much detail in when the readers aren ’ t interested in me , they ’ re interested in Johnny Cash . I therefore thought I needed to kind of cut out the autobiographical stuff and so I kept it … The general theme of it is autobiographical but the actual facts of the character aren ’ t . I am a lawyer in the North West and I do have a father who lives on the East Coast of England but I ’ m not a fancy lawyer with a fancy … I can ’ t say not a fancy wife — she wouldn ’ t like me saying that would she — but we ’ re just an ordinary couple of lawyers who live in Preston . I ’ m not a big city flying Manchester lawyer and I do get on okay with my dad . So I kept the general theme but the nuts and bolts are fictional . It was a way of telling the story of Johnny Cash , really .” And the story of Johnny Cash has become a labour of love for the Preston-based novelist . “ It ’ s a book I ’ ve wanted to write for about ten years , possibly more . It was always a book I wanted to write as opposed to books I ’ m contracted to write . That ’ s why I self published it , because I didn ’ t have the patience to hang around for a publisher . If anyone steps in I ’ ll let them have it but I wasn ’ t patient enough with it to … I wrote it , wanted to get it out there , and that was it . “ I submitted my last fiction book in January which was a little bit early — my deadline was the end of March — so I thought , ‘ Right , I could probably take about four months off and just write it .’ I ’ d done the trip with a view to writing the book . When I had the chance and I reached 50 last year and I got permission from my wife to do it , so I thought , ‘ Right , I can go . For my 50th birthday present I ’ m doing this trip .’ I managed to buy myself four months off my normal writing job to do it on its own so that ’ s how it worked out .” The level of detail in Lost In Nashville is stunning as well as educating , but not only does the reader learn of places of importance WIDE OPEN ROAD Best-selling crime author Neil White made it his mission to follow in the footsteps of Johnny Cash for his latest novel , the story of a father and son on the journey of a lifetime - Lost In Nashville . He speaks to Duncan Warwick . All photos by Neil White and used with permission Main pic : Kingsland , Johnny Cash ’ s birthplace . “... what I remember as a kid was that he only ever liked Johnny Cash . There was nobody else .” Page 12 Page 20 Page 26 Page 52 DECEMBER 2016 - cmp 59 58 cmp - DECEMBER 2016 W hen the stats men got to work on the career of Shakin ’ Stevens a few years back , by the time they ’ d tallied up all the 1980s hits , they worked out that they amounted to 254 weeks - a combined total equivalent to five years - on the UK pop singles charts . He ’ d had four number 1s and sold more singles than anyone . As well as being virtually a resident performer on the lost lamented Top of the Pops , he ’ d also built massive following in Europe . Yet I get the feeling he has got equal , if not more , joy and fulfilment in making his latest album Echoes Of Our Times , a curious hybrid of country blues and folk rock which has been warmly received in the Americana field . Having met Shaky for a chat recently , I have to say I can ’ t ever recall interviewing an artist of similar stature who demonstrated such immense personal excitement about all aspects of a new album , from the process of recording it , to rehearsing it for live performances , and even down to the artwork and sleeve notes . I find the experience totally moving . Shaky ’ s always been a personal favourite , but his creative commitment to this project has revealed a completely new dimension . “ We ’ ve had to release this ourselves ,” he says of Echoes . “ Once we ’ d got all the music together , we took it to a few people , but they ’ d all say : ‘ Oh , lovely album , but your early image was so strong .…’ So there ’ s no big record company behind this .” That makes its success all the more satisfying . It shot to number 22 in the Official UK Album chart , his highest position for a new studio album since 1983 , peaked at number 13 in the Physical Sales chart and got to number 2 on the Americana chart . It might be a case of “ thank God ” though to his fans , because Shaky has had so many setbacks in recent years that I wonder that if Echoes Of Our Times had bombed , it might have been a psychological death blow to a great career . Maybe that ’ s being melodramatic because , to borrow the title of one of the album tracks , Shaky clearly still has a lot of “ fire in his blood ,” and has had a burning desire to show us something different for a long time . “ I have been frustrated in my career ,” he admits , “ and feel I was never given a chance to show what I was capable of .” Unsurprisingly , some reviewers have expressed surprise at finding that Shaky , the boppin ’, finger-clickin ’ party song maestro , was capable of producing something so dark , intense and powerful . Shaky always knew how to whip up a storm , but , jeez , some of this stuff is moving with a capital ‘ M ’. But it ’ s not really a case of ‘ and with one bound our hero transformed himself into a purveyor of gritty roots music .’ The subject and tone of Echoes may be very different from anything else he has put out as a record , but the bluesy , countrified leanings of the man born Michael Barratt in the Cardiff suburb of Ely in 1948 have been there pretty much from the start . “ In the early days I used to do Hoyt Axton ’ s Maybellene , and Lightning Bar Blues ,” he recalls , laughing . That suggests a man who knew his Chuck Berry and other early rockers , but who also had an ear for different interpretations , and realised that it wasn ’ t enough to just to do a cover of a song to get noticed , but that you also needed put a personal stamp on it . With his great rockin ’ Welsh band The Sunsets , he did George Jones ’ s White Lightning , and Tennessee Ernie Ford ’ s Shotgun Boogie . Shakin ’ Stevens and The Sunsets kept the rock ‘ n ’ roll flag alive when it was deeply uncool . When they supported the Rolling Stones one time , a critic sniffed that they looked like “ they stepped in from the local Palais circa 1958 .” It ’ s normal to praise the likes of Dr Feelgood now as the pub rock precursors to punk , but the Sunsets , an equally fine band who Wilko Johnson himself thought highly of , never get a mention . That ’ s rockabilly for you . Never knowingly oversold by the music press . The Sunsets never had a hit , but Shaky ’ s success on the West End stage in Elvis ! enabled him to launch a solo career , signed to Epic . Where The Sunsets had kept rock ‘ n ’ roll alive on the underground scene , now Shaky was part of the neo-rockabilly revival in the mainstream . Hot Dog , his first hit , though only a modest one , was originally released by Buck Owens , as Corky Jones , for the Pep label in 1956 , but Shaky ’ s reboot was much better . It had Albert Lee on guitar , and BJ Cole on lap steel , as opposed to pedal , bidding to revive the ambience of the early Bill Haley rock-country-swing hybrids , and the sounds of Tennessee Ernie . T he follow-up single Marie Marie was another cover , this time of a Dave Alvin song , and was the first Shaky single to make the top 20 . These recordings may have lacked the rawness of 1950s rock , but they ’ ve worn well , in fact sound even better today than in 1980 . They ’ re examples of Shaky ’ s talent for taking an indifferent song and making it something special . Marie Marie had Mickey Gee on guitar , and the latter ’ s solo on another old song totally reenergised by Shaky , the huge This Ole House , surely owed much to Joe Maphis , the pioneering country guitarist of the 1950s who worked with Ricky Nelson . Shaky was on the road to history now , but looking back he admits to naivety and that he should have changed his manager and his musical direction in the mid-1980s , not long after he had a hit with Turning Away , which had been a Billboard Country smash for Crystal Gayle . SHAKIN ’ STEVENS “ I have been frustrated in my career ... and feel I was never given a chance to show what I was capable of .” Jack Watkins finds out how Shaky found his roots . Page 58 cmp