The One Year Country Music Appreciation Guide

I really tried to pull something together for this week. I know it's early in a project like this, and that's an important time to set a rhythm, keep things moving. On the 24th, Putin ordered an invasion and siege, with the intent of taking control of, Ukraine. This is a labor of love, not a labor of me getting paid and keeping food on the table. So with extra things happening, I had to prioritize my paid work over this. And I really am sorry about that. I know that a lot of folks could probably use something a little lighter to focus on right now. But that's not me. You should probably have gotten the picture by now: my love for country music stems, in large part, from the dark, seedy underbelly of it. And nobody needs that. I thought about doing protest songs, war songs, songs about peace...none of it felt right. What does feel right? If you click HERE or on the sunflowers up above, you'll be taken to the donations page for Voices of Children, a Ukrainian charity dev...

  And I’m already back. Who’d’ve thunk? Since I took care of all the rigmarole in the last entry, let’s not fuck around with anything: today we’re talking about Carolina Chocolate Drops . I was originally going to include Rhiannon Giddens in this, but after musing on it, I honestly think she just deserves her own article at a later date. It’s not fair to her to write an article about a band she was in 8 years ago and have her as a passing note when she has more than established her own country sound in the interim. Same incredible voice, but the vibe is all her own. So Carolina Chocolate Drops. A group of multi-instrumentalist Black artists and vocalists, doing old-time music, americana, and classic country. And already, I can here some Nice White Person™ clacking away at their keyboard, ready to tell me how CCD isn’t really country. 1: I refer you back to the article by Elamin Abdelmahmoud I referenced in the Charley Pride entry and 2: if you really want to quibble about whethe...

So this week was supposed to be about the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Rhiannon Giddens, and it was supposed to come out on Saturday. But I've been on deadline for a writing project and I just wasn't able to pull it off. I want to be able to do CCD their proper due, because they're amazing. So I'm dusting this one off. It was supposed to come a little later, on, but I already have it written up, so I'm not going to make this any later than it already is. So let's talk about The Chicks . And you can't talk about The Chicks without A: talking about how they dropped "Dixie" from their original name and B: talking about the Iraq War. Yeah. I know. I thought we could move past it too, but it's integral to The Chicks and any conversation about them, because they are one of the very select, very few actual victims of cancel culture. You can find much more detail about this from other places, but the short version is: The Chicks opposed the Iraq War,...

Well, it’s Black History Month. A time to look at the history of Black people and Black culture in the United States, good, bad, and ugly. And I’ve been saying for a while that I was absolutely going to talk about the Black history of country music, so this seems like the perfect chance to do so. However, before you get all your education on this subject from some schlubby white dude, I strongly recommend that you take a look at actual Black people talking about this subject. Marcus K. Dowling over at The Boot has a great article detailing some of the major Black musicians vital to country music as we know it, and Queen Esther’s article for BlackHistory.com goes a lot more into some of the foundational influence of Black artists and Black culture on what we now know as country music. And Elamin Abdelmahmoud had an amazing piece in Rolling Stone in 2020 about life as a Black country music fan, which also showcases some of the history and a lot of the great Black country artists ...