Saturday music: If you don't love country, you hate 'mer'ca

I'll veer off from political puns and references today.  I ignore most awards because most music awards don't deserve any attention.  One of the few award sets that I don't ignore is the "Americana Music Association" award list.  What, you may ask, is this genre called, "Americana?"  It's... um... not well-defined.  However, given the structure of my music posts, you might not be surprised by my interest in what gets classified as "Americana."  Much of it is what used to be called "Alt-country."  No, it has nothing to do with the "alt-right."  Nothing.  It is an old and mostly-abandoned term for non-mainstream country music for proto-hipsters and music snobs.  (Hi!)  Eventually, the term, "Americana," wound up being used to encompass not only "alt-country," but also some of the other genres that fans of "alt-country" also appreciated, like what used to be called "roots-rock," blues, bluegrass, and a bunch of other forms that I appreciate deeply.  Of course, I'll throw out the old line from Big Bill Broonzy here.  "It's all folk music.  I ain't never heard a horse sing a song."  (Attribution problems are common, but it's Broonzy, who is occasionally featured here on this blog).

Anyway, the Americana awards list was released, and it was rather interesting.  If you pay attention to the music posts here, you'll note Jason Isbell, I'm With Her, and I'm pretty sure I used Mary Gauthier at least a couple of times before I made the music posts searchable.  And, when the other names are people like Brandi Carlisle, I give you my permission to care about these musicians.

They also decided to give a "Trailblazer" award to k.d. lang.  She's not my kind of musician, but she is interesting.  Think about what it meant in the 1980s to be a clearly gay country musician.  And get famous.  Sort of messes with people's images of what country music is and was, doesn't it?  I've addressed that issue before, in several ways.  From her perspective, it took a hell of a lot of courage to break up country's shit, and the fact that she found an audience in country tells you something about your assumptions about country's audience.  Even in the 1980s.

Like I said, I'm not really a fan of her music, but she can sing, and she's got more courage than any of the posturing, posing, phony tough guys Nashville sells under the "All Hat-No Cattle" label.  Then again, in a fight against any of those twerps, my money'd be on Sarah Shook.  And no k.d. lang, no Sarah Shook.  Here's Sarah, being a badass...

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers, "No Name."  The studio version is on Sidelong.

Don't look for her name in the pop-country charts.  Her name is only written in... uh... fuck.  I can't write lyrics.  At that point, would be plagiarism anyway.  Her name is written here, OK?  It's written here.  "Pleased to meet you..."

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