I honestly think that, if was a young steel player or singer- and had the inclination, I'd be headed for Austin.

The question is... is it likely that will ever happen and, if so, where could it possibly be?

This post was prompted by a post elsewhere re: "CMT's 100 Greatest Country Songs" and how event like this can rewrite history. I agree. I'm also troubled at some of the so-called "authorities" who are pontificating on this show.

It really is murder on music row. It appears to me that real country music is doomed unless someone starts a revolution.

Muscle Shoals, Macon, Detroit and Memphis have gone by the wayside. Myrtle Beach and Branson cater to the "tour bus" crowd. Where else is there?

What do some of our Nashville and Austin steeler buddies think about this?

Rick
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Rick McDuffie

Marlen SD-10, Sho-Bud Professional S-10, '78 Howard Roberts Custom, '72 Les Paul Deluxe, Fender Telecaster Custom

....seriously, I don't think there is anywhere left to "migrate to", and even Branson is on a downward spiral to extinction!

Edit: Found it.

quote:

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Can't speak for steel players specifically, but for bands in general, Austin (a little like Nashville I bet) suffers from a pretty severe imbalance between supply & demand. Good paying in-town gigs are few and far between. I'm giddy if I make $50 for a night's work. You'll often have to pay for parking if the gig's downtown, too (!)
The best I've ever done was with a group from San Antonio, playing steel "on call" when they were within a couple hors driving distance...then I paid $5-$10 in gas to make $50-$100 in one of the outlying honky tonks...
--Nathan Delacretaz

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The performers and musicians who created and supported traditional country music are dying, just as their audience is dying. When they are gone, the venue will be gone, and their heritage will be the domain of only a few purists and collectors.

I feel priviledged to have lived and worked during that golden era. I am sad that it is almost gone and that so many contemporary musicians will have missed it.

Other than the Steam Powered Tractor Museum nearby there's PLENTY of room for a new "Broadway", and "Opry".

A train runs through town and theres a laundromat.

Just a thought..

EJL

Other Steven,
You know what I blame this on the invention of? Technology. I'm sure many of you remember the 1960's when automation really started becoming popular with homemakers in the kitchen and all this new technology was supposed to make our lives easier and give us more free time to do the things we really want to do. What it did was make us lazy, especially kids born after about 1980. From their frames of reference Elvis and John Lennon have always been dead.

One thing that technology HAS done for us is to remove geographic boundaries... witness what's going on right now with this Forum. This would've been unthinkable 10 years ago. The world is a much smaller place.

So... maybe country music doesn't NEED a geographic center in the same way it once did. The next "music city" may exist in cyberspace!

I remember when friends of my Mom and Dad used to leave work on Friday and drive all night in order to get to Nashville in time for the Opry on Saturday night (this was before I-40!) They'd get a motel room Saturday, get up Sunday a.m. and drive home... they'd be able to get 2-3 hours of sleep before work on Monday a.m. BUT NOW YOU CAN TUNE THE OPRY IN ON CABLE TV... or go and see your favorite artist at the RBC Center or the Omni.

By the way, do you guys remember when MAJOR country music shows used to take place at the local high school auditorium or at the armory? Those were the days when there wasn't enough money in it to draw a second glance from NYC or LA. The industry's success has been its undoing. (sigh) Isn't that often the case?

Maybe we were better off in those days, in many ways.

Rick

[This message was edited by Rick McDuffie on 10 January 2004 at 05:38 PM.]

As the road sign says,
"New York is big, but this is Biggar !"

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Steelin' away in the ozarks and life,
Scott
www.scottyhenderson.com

ps

I wonder if 50 years from now some other new age steel forum will be discussing recent deads of the old school ,hard core country artists like Mcgrowe,Chesney,Hill etc...

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[This message was edited by Damir Besic on 11 January 2004 at 09:59 AM.]

If you guys are just talking about playing classic country you could be busy here but you would have a hard time paying rent. The country bands are pretty weak compared to Nashville and Texas.

Bob

[This message was edited by Bob Hoffnar on 11 January 2004 at 10:01 AM.]

quote:

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It may be after a lot of us are gone, but there will be a resurgence and a small but loyal group of followers will keep it alive. Nothing as good as our kind of music can ever die.

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Roy, you're right... I hope. I recall a conversation I had with Leon McAuliffe back in 1975. I was on Alvin Crow's band and we were doing a big WS show with the TX Playboys. I told Leon I thought it was great that Western Swing was making a comeback. He said "yeah Herb, it's wonderful. It's too bad I'm too old to enjoy it."

About moving to Austin: the town is better for live music opportunities than where you're currently living, I can almost guarantee that. But it is not the 1970's anymore. And be aware that Austin is the most expensive city in Texas to live. Bring your day job with you... and money.

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Herb's Steel Guitar Pages
Texas Steel Guitar Association

[This message was edited by Herb Steiner on 11 January 2004 at 11:03 AM.]

For you guys that like to trash NYC have fun complaining. But if you want to be busy playing with some of the best and most challenging musicians on the planet come on up.

Just so you guys know the corporate suits doing the most damage to country radio work out of San Antonio, Texas. So don't keep pointing your fingers at Nashville and NYC.

Clear Channel Communications (parent company of Premiere Radio Networks, Inc.) 200 Basse Road San Antonio TX 78209 Phone 1-210-822-2828

Lowry Mays, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
LLowryMays@clearchannel.com

So if you need to blame a geographic location because it makes you feel good the most likely city to blame would be San Antonio. Or you could blame Bentonville, Ark for the Wal-Martization of local cultures.

Roy,
Exactly what you are talking about is happening here in NYC. On any given night in Brooklyn there at 100 Hank tunes being played at bars all over town. The great stuff will never die.

Many people have prophesized the end of the world. So far, none of them have been correct. I'm betting they won't be, at least not in my lifetime.

Just because the "Country music" that you knew and loved does not draw in droves of audiences anymore does not mean there aren't people who will be there to appreciate it after its heyday. I put my experiences as a case in point. Charlie Vaughn kindly invited me to come out and hear the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame jams this past year. I can count the number of songs that were played that I knew on the fingers of one hand. At the same time, it was great to hear them played, especially live.

There were two other young men about my age, one who sang on the stand there, and another who I believe did a set with a group in the bluegrass room that I missed. There was also a young lady there who I don't even believe was in high school yet, who played two numbers on fiddle with the guys in the country jam room. It's because these guys are out there still playing the music they love that makes it possible for it to be passed down the generations. I can guarantee you that it won't ever be played like it was "back then," but as long as it's taught, you can be rest assured that someone, somewhere, is still playing it.

When the "Fusion Jazz" movement arose, the older players and critics cried foul and said that it would be the death of jazz. Well, by that point, the audiences for bebop groups had thinned out, yet the fusion jazz audiences began to build. And it was through the fusion jazz that what came before was connected to present. Some of those people in the audience even went so far as to explore "what came before the present; what influenced the present," and "re-discovered" for themselves the treasures of the past: the John Coltranes, the Dave Brubecks, the Thelonius Monks, the Barney Kessels, heck, maybe even going back to the Duke Ellingtons.

Some of those audience members are musicians who will start playing the old time music to replicate it. One could maybe find it difficult to believe, but there are still some bands out there, such as the Jim Cullum jazz band, that play Dixieland Jazz, a form that came several generations before fusion jazz, and they still have audiences. The audiences are, of course, small, and oftentimes enjoy the music as a novelty, but maybe a young musician in the Jim Cullum jazz band audience will go on to continue keeping Dixieland Jazz alive in its true form. Likewise, yesterday I talked to a tenor saxophonist who plays Parker and Getz tunes at various gigs here in Athens, who is a fine fellow and player. Jazz did not die.

More often, though, musicians, will assimilate the sounds of the past, absorb them, and combine them with the sounds that come from their own explorations and experiences, to craft something that feels personally "theirs".

I think every generation of music depends on this second process. Every new "style" or "genre" of music is the product of two things: the music that came before it, combined with the new generation's struggle for a unique identity.

This means that earlier generations of music continue to live on through the current generations. There is still Hank Williams, Sr. in Montgomery Gentry, even if you don't think you can hear it because of all the other influences that factored into their sound. Each generation reinvents the wheel, and even though it looks like a square, it's still a wheel at the core.

Perhaps the music business has been perverted by people in suits who don't care for the music that they seek to make their fortunes from. That is something I can neither confirm nor deny. Yet, even if industry moguls are leading audiences to bad water, you can't deny that the majority is still drinking. It is your responsibility as a musician to play what you find as your truth with integrity and conviction, and lead your audiences to good water. If things work in your favor and they drink, congratulations, but if not, you will not feel downtrodden because you know you've been doing your best. Either way, you can not stop playing with integrity and conviction, and you can not give up faith, or you've already failed what it is you set out to do, and you become part of your own problem.

So keep playing, and trust future generations to do well.

Thank you for attention and patience. I will return it.

Chris

[This message was edited by Chris Lasher on 11 January 2004 at 11:39 AM.]

quote:

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When I ask young people why they don't like country music, its always the same answer: They don't want to hear about losing their woman, or their dog dying, or whatever.

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Edit: Ah! Perhaps I misread! If you are talking to young people who don't even listen to what is called "country" today, and that is there response, that is understandable. I don't think that is an audience you could really aim to court, just as old-school hip-hop troupes aren't trying to court you.

[This message was edited by Chris Lasher on 11 January 2004 at 01:01 PM.]

"The heart of Country music recording industry is right here in Nashville and radios are playing only what they get payed to play by the big labels anyway"

Of course, he was a Roy Acuff man back then. I'm sure he see things somewhat differently now.

This post wasn't intended to pit traditionalists against modernists... it was more about how "real" country music might thrive outside Nashville... and how "unsigned" artists might continue to have places to play.

I guess I WAS suggesting that this IS "the peoples' music" and that it'll continue to thrive as a cottage industry regardless of what the big money says.

I think it's erroneous to believe that all young people are negative about traditional country, or that the older crowd doesn't like the rockin' stuff. My Mom, who's 70 now, is a serious Charlie Daniels fan... and I (cut my guitar teeth on Led Zeppelin and Grand Funk) love to hear the steel guitar and twin fiddles. The world just ain't that black and white.

And, like any real child of the 60's, I'm always in the mood for a revolution.

Rick

[This message was edited by Rick McDuffie on 11 January 2004 at 01:55 PM.]

quote:

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They don't want to hear about losing their woman, or their dog dying, or whatever.

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That can't be the reason, or even a reason.

Operas haven't died. Why do people go to the Opera? Have you ever seen or heard of an Opera that wasn't about murder, suicide, death, infidelity, and/or adultury?

Haha, oh, come on, I know you grinned.

Rick, I think Country music will thrive anywhere it's played with true spirit. I'm still confused as to why you want to have a music city different than Nashville, which is just a figurehead for Country music around the world. It might be easier to start a revolution within "the system" than it would be to try to build another one to compete.

And my apologies for drawing this further into a old v. new topic.