Yonder Comes a Big Deal

By Kevin Broughton

Last year Sturgill Simpson made the best album in country music. This year – fittingly – he’s produced it. Go ahead and circle August 4 – release date for Tyler Childers’ Purgatory, and the day he’ll go from relative obscurity to the bona fide next big thing.

In the late summer and early fall of 2016, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy caught the collective eye of book critics and other assorted elites while shining a light on the forgotten white working class folks of Appalachia. If that award-winning book had a soundtrack, it’s Childers’ debut album.

We’ll chat with Tyler between now and then. Till then, here’s a teaser: “White House Road,” from his OurVinyl Sessions (also included on Childers' Red Barn Radio EP). Y’all ain’t gonna believe this guy.

Gif of Hot White Guy Holding a Puppy is the #1 Country Song

Ryan Michael Chadson performs "hot dude holding a puppy"
(©2017 Chadson/Renaldo/Gorley)

A gif entitled "hot dude holding puppy" has made country music history this week, becoming the first animated image file to claim the top spot on Billboard's Hot Country Song chart. Thanks to Billboard's new format-inclusive formula for calculating the popularity of country songs, the future is now ...and it's pretty damn hot!

Ryan Michael Chadson is the muscled hunk behind the "song," and he's as shocked as anyone at its success. "This isn't a country song." he told us, scratching his head, mussing his luxuriously gelled back locks of hair. "Like, how is it played on the radio? I'm so confused."

Popular syndicated country morning DJ Bobby Bones smugly told us "It's like I've said, country music is whatever country fans want it to be." "There's so much evolution in country music right now." he continued, "I'm humbled and excited to be just a small part of it by posting the gif on all of our social media accounts and discussing it constantly on my popular syndicated radio show! But I don't want any credit at all."

Chadson's girlfriend, Lucy Renaldo, also gets her first number one country song, her shadow visible for a millionth of a second in one frame of the hit gif. She is the only female artist in the top 100.

"It just goes to show that we need an itty-bitty, tiny, microscopic even, fleck of tomato mixed in with the lettuce to call it a salad," laughed radio consultant Keith Hill. "Now, if she'd have been holding the puppy, the song would've been dead on arrival, but that's just the way it is and nobody can do anything about it."

Those with a keen eye might recognize the name of a cowriter on the smash hit "hot dude holding puppy." That's right, it's Ashley Gorley, who converted the gif to black and white in Photoshop! This marks the 28,034th number one song for the Kentucky native.

Ryan Michael Chadson, despite his bemusement at the situation, is currently entertaining offers from Big Machine and Mercury. "Well, it beats software engineering, I guess" said Chadson as he perused a glowing email from Scott Borchetta.

Many in the online music critic circles are deriding the historic occurrence, including the typically curmudgeonly Farce the Music and Saving Country Music. Fans, however, see things much differently. "I love it!" said Chadson fan Kimberly Sparks, "Critics are just jealous haters. Who are they to define what a 'song' is?"

At press time, a Snapchat story of a hot bearded guy with a fidget spinner spinning on his abs was going for adds at country radio next Tuesday.

Bryan vs. Bryan

Alex Williams Performs "Ft. Worth Blues"

This guy's on Big Machine, but I won't hold it against him if he puts out songs like this and covers songs like this:

Exclusive Song Premiere: Johnny Dango "Western Front (War Hymn #2)"

Today, we've got a new song from Johnny Dango called "Western Front (War Hymn #2). It's a fun, psychedelic, honky-tonk tune with sing-along vocals and almost ragtime instrumentation contrasting the serious lyrics about wartime. Really unique and memorable stuff. RIYL: Kris Kristofferson, King Oliver, Flying Burrito Brothers, Commander Cody, Phosphorescent, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Dango has worked alongside Stoney Larue and Will & Lily Courtney (Brothers and Sisters), and has shared bills with Billy Joe Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker, Alejandro Escovedo & more. His upcoming record Recluse in Plain Sight was recorded by Steven Collins (Doug Burr, Deadman) at The Troubadour Studio in Austin, and comes out September 1. Dango has recently premiered tracks at PopMatters & No Depression, and was featured in the Americana Music Association's most recent newsletter...

Recluse in Plain Sight contradicts the standard, formulaic approach to Americana, toggling between timeless California Country string-infused ballads, psychedelic honky-tonk tunes, and last-call alt-country singalongs. The new LP effortlessly chronicles an arsenal of movements in the Country music genre while simultaneously channeling '60s Stones and Beatles psych grandeur. 

You can pre-order Recluse in Plain Sight at his Bandcamp page.

More information about Johnny after the song player...

Johnny Dango - Recluse in Plain Sight (out September 1)

From the hushed fields of Stillwater, Okla., to the raucous barrooms of Austin, Texas, the hard work and bloody fingers of singer/songwriter Johnny Dango have given rise to a cosmic honky-tonk thunder, a deliciously irreverent mix of downhome Americana and heady classic rock. Dango has paid his dues in bands such as Brothers & Sisters and The Memphis Strange, and as a sideman for country-rocker Stoney LaRue. And he’s shared bills with legends such as Billy Joe Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker and Alejandro Escovedo, over the years developing a unique and gorgeously tumbledown aesthetic that is potently concentrated in the neon avenues and creaking front porches of his debut solo album, Recluse in Plain Sight.

“I’m not into paint-by-numbers,” Dango says. “I have no interest in making another generic Americana record. There are already plenty of ‘em out there.”

As the varied tracks on this album unfurl, tackling themes of transience and displacement, Dango slowly reveals the inner mechanics of his influences. From the George Harrison-meets-Mott the Hoople guitar lines of “Hole in My Heart” to the psychedelic ragtime theatrics of “Western Front (War Hymn #2),” he continually smashes rules and upends expectations. While drunken rocker “Barfly” lives in the Stones’ world, sleepy piano ballad “Someday Soon”—written in a traffic jam on the way to a gig—tips its worn pork-pie hat to Tom Waits, Randy Newman, and Father John Misty. Traditional rural sentiments and Southern rhythms get twisted up on “I Was Wrong,” Dango’s “failed attempt at a bad country song,” during which he reorients well-worn sounds into potent ruminations that exhale ache. The off-center melodicism of his vocals deftly mirrors Recluse in Plain Sight’s stylistic realignments, an affecting rumble and shiver slithering through each bucolic chorus. And if a song happens to call for some dramatic Jeff Lynne-style synths, then so be it.

Recluse in Plain Sight—co-produced with Steve Collins—is Dango's resolute answer to the recent homogenization of the Americana landscape. This record isn’t stuck in a cycle of self-glorification, nor is it primed to pander to any awards ceremonies—it’s the result of a heart ready for examination and revelation. Driven by a need to stretch the comforts of his own influences, he positions these songs as rustic therapy and as a necessary escape from what has become a commodified musical perspective.

“It’s so weird how Americana spun off from country into its own thing, like, ‘We reject mainstream country music,’” Dango ruminates. “But then to go and behave the exact same way? I mean, they made up a whole new category, just so they could put on an awards shows and give themselves a trophy. It’s such a bunch of self-congratulatory bullshit.”

Instead of positioning himself as some sort of quasi-country savior, Dango takes solace in the creative freedom of his work, which reflects in equal measure the bold, psychoactive experimentation of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and the lost years when nascent country music was guided by torn hearts and the need to pass stories from one generation to the next. With the touring that will encircle the release of his upcoming record, Dango will be burning up the highways in search of like-minded souls for whom these authentic sounds represent more than just a passing interest. With Recluse in Plain Sight, he wants you to hear the past and future collide.