Farce the Music

May 14, 2021

Every Pop-Country Artist’s Next Album to Be “Country as Hell”

Spurred on by the popularity of somewhat neo-traditional artists Jon Pardi and Luke Combs, nearly every pop-country artist vowed this week that their next release will be “country as hell.”

“We’re even bringing in a violin player!” smiled Kane Brown, in studio working on his proper follow-up to 2019’s Experiment. “It’s gonna be country as hell!” Brown was said to be drinking moonshine from a jar and wearing steel toe work boots in the vocal booth to get into character.

Thomas Rhett recently released the album Country Again, Side A, which features two songs with the word ‘country’ in the title. “Yeah, we saw the writing on the wall…. errr, I mean, we felt that this was the natural evolution of my sound.” said Rhett. Critics and naysayers were skeptical but modestly surprised with the results.

The changing tides in Nashville have even spurred a peculiar support industry - the “country life coach.” Consultants have hired on with several pop-country artists to help them work on their authenticity, which seems ironic. “We’ve put (name excluded) on a diet of fried foods and got him out of the gym into the hog barn, ha.” said Richard Perkins, an authenticity coach. “We’ve taught him what a steel guitar is, and how to tie a trot line, not just sing about one.”

While the trend toward more organic and source-oriented country music is not unwelcome, one must question the motives for the turn. D-Lister Dylan Scott told us “Well, my management somehow works me a hit or two a year, but nobody’s ever heard of me; we had to do something …so we’re in the studio working on some country as hell country!” smiled the burly Louisiana native.

At press time, Sam Hunt had no plans to stop talk singing about small town breakups over trap beats.

May 13, 2021

New Video / Summer Dean & Colter Wall / "You're Lucky She's Lonely"

From her forthcoming album Bad Romantic, out August 27.

If Heaven Ain't a Lot Like...

Exclusive Song Premiere / Bill and the Belles / "The Corn Shuckin' Song"

Photo by Billie Wheeler

Got a fun song premiere today from Bill and the Belles. It’s a plain goofy Roger Miller-esque double entendre of a song and I think you’ll get a kick out of it. It’s a welcome reprieve from the always raging storms of life. RIYL: Roger Miller, Pokey LaFarge, Carolina Chocolate Drops. More information about the band and their forthcoming album Happy Again (out May 21) below the song player.

QUOTE from Kris Truelsen about the song

"A lot of things can be shucked and this is a song about just that. It was written in about five minutes which is probably the most organic songwriting experience I’ve ever had. What came out is undeniably ridiculous and fun! And we all like fun. I tried to harness all my Roger Miller Chi for this one. This was initially written as a jingle to be performed on my show Farm and Fun Time following a story delivered by a local chef who talked about creamed corn and corn shucking parties. Sounds filthy."

Bill and the Belles · 07 Corn Shuckin Song

PRE-ORDER HAPPY AGAIN

lnk.to/happyagain

LINKS

https://www.facebook.com/BillandtheBelles

https://twitter.com/billandbelles?lang=en

https://www.instagram.com/billandthebelles/?hl=en

Happy Again isn’t exactly happy. But the delightfully deadpan new album from roots mainstays Bill and the Belles is full of life, humor, and tongue-in-cheek explorations of love and loss. Out May 21, 2021 on Ditty Boom Records (distribution and promotion by Free Dirt Service Co.), Happy Again marks a new chapter for the group by featuring eleven all-original songs penned by founding member Kris Truelsen. There’s no dancing around it: this album is about his divorce. But the group has a knack for saying sad things with a bit of an ironic smirk, pairing painful topics with a sense of release and relief. Anyone who’s been to one of their shows can attest that you leave feeling lighter and refreshed. The band often jokes that their setlists appear mournful and angry, but if you don’t listen to the words, you wouldn’t know it. “One of the darkest times of my life turned out to be one of the most creative,” says Truelsen. “I realized, ‘My life is chaos. I need to write about this shit.’” This personal loss turned out to be a creative boon for the band. Many of the songs were cranked out in just a few months, two were even written the night before they were recorded. This raw songcraft, along with the deft production touch of Teddy Thompson, son of Linda and Richard Thompson, who encouraged using only first or second takes, gives Happy Again an emotional punch that deepens with each listen.

The core of Happy Again is the foundational Bill and the Belles quartet sound featuring Truelsen on guitar, fiddler Kalia Yeagle, bassist Andrew Small, and banjo/banjo-uke player Helena Hunt, recently replaced by Aidan VanSuetendael. The album is also gently supported by Nick Falk on electric guitar and percussion and Don Eanes on piano and B3 Hammond. Early fans of the band were hooked by their singing, and Happy Again continues to deliver stellar vocal trio arrangements, honed by Yeagle, that nod toward groups like the Ronettes and The Shangri-Las. The band began as a project to explore the sounds between rural and urban music, between vaudeville and down home roots, but they’ve arrived somewhere wholly their own. They revel in the in-between: deeply engaged with the stringband tradition and eager to stretch those influences to contemporary settings. Happy Again is the latest chapter of that ongoing story: what happens when a stringband from East Tennessee lays down a session at Motown. It’s a welcome evolution that feels familiar and timeless.

With all their tongue-in-cheek quips, you’d think Bill and the Belles avoids the tough stuff, however, that’s far from the truth. “Never Be Happy Again” is a laundry list of existential woes, and “People Gonna Talk'' profiles some of the frustrations of small-town living. “Make It Look Easy” is both an anthem for apathy and a proper “fuck off” to those who’ve got something to say about your life choices. And of course there’s “Sobbin’ the Blues,” Truelsen’s homage to the ‘talking blues’ numbers of the past, neatly tied up with a moral-of-the-story twist. Tucked in amongst the grief and jubilation of Happy Again are some noteworthy oddballs, including two songs that began their lives as jingles on Farm and Fun Time (the band’s live variety radio show now syndicated on PBS, reaching over 20 million homes): “Bye Bye Bill” (a tale about a pale ale drinking whale) and the “The Corn Shuckin’ Song” (make of it what you will). The band presents these themes simply and playfully, inviting listeners to reframe their own burdens and look to the future. “This was one of the first times I felt like I was writing country songs like my heros that were actually from my own perspective,” says Truelsen. “I quickly realized it made sense for us to break the rules.” The group subverts expectations for a stringband, taking a page from some of the finest early country and rock songwriters that drifted happily between genres. Truelsen describes the band’s mission: “One of my ultimate goals is to write songs that are hard to classify in a certain time period. To transcend the now.”