Postcard 15: 29/04/2024.
For this week's postcard, we lean into the year of the cowboy. Giddy up, it's country time!
We’ve had more mail folks! This time from my good pal Tom. His request (complete with Star Wars image) is below:
“Hi Chris,
I love your Postcards. You’ve curated some great playlists for so many different feelings.
I must be getting old because I find myself wanting to wander the wilderness as a cowboy. I love Karl Blau, and the track I Pity the Country by Willie Dunn. BUT I WANT MORE!
Anyway, I’m hoping you’ll be able to recommend some modern tracks that make me feel like I’m stoking a fire on the Great West.
A fan,
Tom x“
Well Tom, saddle up. It’s time to wrangle some country songs.
Opening your postcard this week is an absolutely cracking track by Link Wray, a Shawnee country/rock musican who is credited for inventing the power chord (that fact blew my mind). I originally found this on what is now one of my most spun compilation records - Country Funk Volume 1: 1969-1975, put out by Light in the Attic records (Yes that’s a real genre of music. Yes it is as excellent as you would expect). ‘Fire and Brimstone’ is originally off Wray’s eponymous 1971 record, which also contains another track that has appeared in a previous postcard, albeit in cover form (‘Fallin’ Rain’, featured in Postcard #06, is a reworked and very extended cover by Karl Blau, who also has an excellent country covers album that I can also thoroughly recommend). Anyway, enough backstory: this track is fucking cool. Like, makes you want to strut down the street in sunglasses cool. I just love how much spark the recording has, straddling the line of the ramshackled and the polished. You can almost feel the band smiling at each other in the studio, knowing they’ve fucking got it. The bass playing does an excellent job of elevating the track into something really great, keeping the track both propelled and grounded, but also being free enough to noodle about and find its own space. If you don’t slap your knee along to this one there might just be something wrong with you.
Next up, we’re moving to the 21st Century and to one of my favourite recent country tracks. I’ve been following Courtney Marie Andrews now since 2016, and to me she’s one of the most underrated gems in modern country music. Whilst she’s put out an excellent selection of records over that spell of time (2016’s Honest Life is definitely worth a listen), her underrated record from 2022, Loose Future, is in my opinion her best. It takes everything great about her music - tight songwriting, incredible vocal performance, honest and affecting lyrics - and matches it with production (thanks to Sam Evian, who’s also been featured on a previous postcard) that lets those elements sing in a way that country music often doesn’t. ‘Thinkin’ On You’ is one the more straightforward tracks on the record, but that’s underselling how good it is. This song just soars. I can’t get over how good that main melody is, and how it just rolls around so naturally. Courtney, whose voice is always stunning, gets to shine in a more subtle way here, almost dueting and trading off parts with the violins and general instrumental swell in the chorus. This is feel good, optimistic country music at its absolute finest.
For the closing song on the postcard, I have to confess that I’ve broken the rules a little bit - but it’s for a good reason, I promise. Whilst I’ve always loved country music, Megan’s love of the genre has been directly responsible for introducing me to a whole wealth of new styles and artists over the years, and in particular opening my eyes to the joys of bluegrass music. I can distinctly remember the first time I heard the live version of “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn” by Allison Krauss & Union Station. Meg and I were scooting about London in her old Smartcar, and she had the CD of their live performance at Louisville Place, Kentucky, on. I must admit, I fully cracked up laughing on hearing the first lines of the song (they are very very silly and I love them). But by the time the full band comes in, my god. I still get goosebumps every time I listen to it. There’s something about the connection of bluegrass players, the way they read each other, the way they really savour and respect each others performances, that makes live bluegrass shows entirely electric. That is something that just screams out of the speakers when you play this song. I’ve not yet had the chance to see Allison Krauss & Union Station live, but if I do I really, really hope they play this song. I honestly think I would cry.
The Tidal link is here for any of you folks who need it. I know country can be a divisive genre, but I hope that even if it’s not your cup of tea that maybe there’s been something on this mix that’s surprised you. We’ll make a cowboy of you yet, pardner.
Postcard 15: 29/04/2024.
Link Wray - Fire and Brimstone
Courtney Marie Andrews - Thinkin’ On You
Dillard & Clark - Don’t Let Me Down
The Flying Burrito Brothers - Do You Know How It Feels
The Byrds - I Am a Pilgrim
Rose City Band - Lonely Places
Patsy Cline - Strange
Sturgill Simpson - Voices
Willis Alan Ramsey - The Ballard of Spider John
Allison Krauss and Union Station - The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn (Live from Louisville Palace, Kentucky / 2002)