Angie Johnson’s 2013 EP, Sing For You. Photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

By Bob Doerschuk

© 2013 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Apparently, it’s not enough for Missouri-born Angie Johnson to have served as an intelligence analyst in the United States Air Force; she also sang and toured with The Air Force Band. Then, following an initial attempt to find a break in Nashville, she studied psychology at Columbia State Community College in Franklin, Tenn., to help children and veterans struggling with PTSD.

When a soldier posted his video of Staff Sgt. Johnson performing Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” for troops in a spirited acoustic performance on YouTube, it eventually drew more than 3 million views. Millions more watched her during Season 2 of The Voice. Continue Reading

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Tate Stevens’ 2013 self-titled debut album. Photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

By Bob Doerschuk

© 2013 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Tate Stevens’ triumph on Season 2 of The X Factor confirms that Country Music is stronger than ever. More important, it heralds the arrival of a performer whose music is in step with what America wants to hear.

Read our review of Tate Stevens’ Self-Titled Debut Album >>

On his self-titled upcoming Syco Music/RCA Nashville debut, Stevens flaunts a raw vocal power. This Missouri native and one-time construction worker has clearly lived the life he sings about. When it comes to connecting to the real world of his fans, this ability to project from real experience can’t be learned in a classroom. Continue Reading

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Kacey Musgraves photo courtesy of Mercury Nashville.

By Bob Doerschuk

© 2013 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

One strength of country music is its ability to mirror real life. Rarer is the artist whose stories come to us not washed in neon but raised from a deeper, dreamier place.

Kacey Musgraves is one such anomaly. Born in Mineola, Texas, she made her performing debut at 8. A year later, she wrote her first song. She appeared on Nashville Star in 2007 and moved to Nashville shortly after that, just 20 years old.

Read our review of Kacey Musgraves’ Same Trailer Different Park >>

As a writer, she’s made a good start, placing songs with Miranda Lambert (“Mama’s Broken Heart”) and Martina McBride (“When You Love a Sinner”). A co-write with Trent Dabbs, “Undermine,” played on the second episode of ABC’s Nashville. Continue Reading

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Dustin Lynch's self-titled 2012 debut album. Photo by Anthony Baker, courtesy of Broken Bow Records.

By Bob Doerschuk

© 2012 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Lots of young artists come to Nashville to seek their musical fortunes. Dustin Lynch’s plans were more focused. He wanted to come to a specific part of Nashville — specifically, as close as he could get to the Bluebird Café so that he could hear and learn from the best songwriters in town as often as possible.

One day after his arrival, Lynch auditioned to play the Bluebird’s open-mic night the following evening. His performance so impressed host Barbara Cloyd that she offered to introduce him around the community. Not long after that, Peter Hartung, head of L3Entertainment and manager to Justin Moore, engineered a publishing deal for him. Word spread quickly of Lynch’s talent; in less than two years, he finished more than 200 songs.

Read our review of Dustin Lynch’s debut album >>

With his self-titled debut album on Broken Bow Records, another side of his talent emerges. Lynch’s vocals enhance his fine-tuned writing on 10 of these tracks — and the craftsmanship of those who penned the remaining three. The first single, “Cowboys and Angels” (Lynch, Josh Leo and Tim Nichols), is built on an image-rich lyric, which flows out conversationally through verses a relaxed 7/8 and then opens wide over a spacious backbeat on the choruses. Continue Reading

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Marlee Scott photo courtesy of Big Ride Entertainment.

By Bob Doerschuk

© 2012 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

An honor student in St. Albert, Alberta, Canada, Marlee Scott enjoyed junior high school, loved riding horses and showed promise in music. But while her mother thought it fitting for her to study flute, Marlee had other plans: She wanted an electric guitar and was determined to cut her first album at 15.

She missed that deadline, perhaps all for the better. One day when she was 16, Scott switched the car radio to a Country station and heard Alabama’s “Mountain Music.” Metaphorically, she hasn’t turned the dial since. With Rascal Flatts and Keith Urban among her models, she combined smooth timbre, interpretive sensitivity and a flair for emotional connection into a distinctive singing style. After hearing her Canadian debut, Souvenir, in 2007, Gerry Leiske signed on as her manager and oversaw the release of a self-titled second album the following year in Canada and Australia.

With Beautiful Maybe, produced by David Kalmusky, Scott breaks into the U.S. market on Leiske’s Big Ride Records. The title cut (written by Tania Hancheroff, Marcus Hummon and Tia Sillers) portrays different stages of life, each warmed by hope and energized by Scott’s soaring delivery. “Train Wreck” (Hummon, Sarah Buxton and Jedd Hughes) offers a more humorous take on a woman whose character reflects perfectly in the title. On the power ballad “Let It Rain” (Kristen Hall), Scott rides each dynamic surge without over-singing even as strings swell and cymbals crash. And on “Kiss of Coming Home” (Scott, Hummon and Laura Veltz), one of the two tracks that she co-wrote, she adorns the melody with ornamental phrases that connect unfailingly with the wistfulness of the tune.

IN HER OWN WORDS

SONG YOU’D LOVE TO COVER

“‘I’m Too Sexy’ by Right Said Fred would make for a very interesting cover — especially for a female Country artist!”

PET PEEVE

“I absolutely hate it when someone tells you they are going to call you right back and they don’t.”

SONG YOU WISH YOU’D WRITTEN

“‘Into the Mystic’ by Van Morrison.”

DREAM DUET PARTNER

“Having the opportunity to work with Vince Gill is hard to beat. He has one of the most beautiful voices and is such a wonderful person! I am so lucky he agreed to sing on one of my tunes.” Continue Reading

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Jana Kramer photo by Bryan Allen, courtesy of Warner Bros. Nashville.

NEW ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Jana Kramer

By Bob Doerschuk

© 2012 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Jana Kramer insists she has a Michigan accent, especially when she says “Oh, geez!” True, she does hail from Rochester Hills, north of the Motor City. But when she sings country, she sounds like someone who’s right at home drawling “y’all.”

Just listen to “Why Ya Wanna,” from her self-titled debut album, scheduled to release June 5 on Elektra Nashville. Written by Catt Gravitt, Christopher Destefano and Ashley Gorley, it’s a tricky number in some ways, with a catchy swaying beat that contrasts with heartbreak lyrics. Yet Jana finds the pocket between these two qualities, never losing hold of or overselling the melody. There’s a conversational element to her vocal, with dropped “g”s and artfully shaded vowels; listening, it feels like she’s both commanding the stage and sharing her thoughts with a best friend.

We hear this same believability in the dance-friendly “What I Love about Your Love” (Brian Dean Maher, Skip Black and Laura Veltz). This time Jana delivers a playful rumination on romance (“It puts the ‘hon’ in my honey”) as the band locks onto a medium-tempo groove. And here, too, her sunny, intimate spell feels much more Tennessee Titans than Detroit Lions.

Actually, none of this is surprising. Jana was raised on a musical diet of Patsy Cline, which she listened to while baking cookies with her grandmother. And she knows how to get into a lyric. As Alex Dupre on The CW’s “One Tree Hill,” and on previous appearances in NBC’s “Friday Night lights,” HBO’s “Entourage” and The CW’s “90210,” Jana has applied her acting skills to tap the essence of her role.

Does she do the same through her music? As folks back home might answer, “Yeah, you bet’cha.”

IN HER OWN WORDS

MUSICAL HERO
“James Taylor.”

DREAM DUET PARTNER
“Johnny Cash, but since that can’t happen, I’d say Adam Levine.”

SONG YOU’D LOVE TO COVER
“‘Strawberry Wine,’ by Matraca Berg.” Continue Reading

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The Dirt Drifters

By Bob Doerschuk
© 2011 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Words like “gritty” come to mind when The Dirt Drifters take to the stage. Of course, there’s no shortage of grit out there, but something in the sound of this five-piece separates it from the pack.

Maybe it’s the vivid images on these 11 tracks performed by band members: drummer Nick Diamond, lead singer/guitarist Matt Fleener, singer/guitarist Ryan Fleener, bassist Jeremy Little and singer/guitarist Jeff Middleton. The images — cigarettes and beer cans on “Sun Goes Down” (written by Matt Fleener, Middleton and Rivers Rutherford), the bullet holes, blue lights and traces of cheap perfume on “Married Men and Motel Rooms” (Middleton, Mark Irwin and Josh Kear) — seem to have been scraped up from a cellar of hard-time memories. (The group wrote or co-wrote all but one track on the album.)

Then there’s the performance, the power chords, the galloping groove that feels like you’re taking corners a little too fast on “Something Better” (Diamond, Matt Fleener, Ryan Fleener and Middleton), the blue-collar epic that John Mellencamp might have conceived had he grown up in a Southern factory town (“Always a Reason,” Ryan Fleener, Middleton and Justin Wilson), the way that lyrics come to life in the union of Matt Fleener’s whiskey-rough lead vocals and pristine backup harmonies.

5 Things You Don’t Know About The Dirt Drifters >> Continue Reading

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Aaron Lewis, lead singer of Staind.

By Bob Doerschuk
© 2011 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Not every newcomer can persuade Charlie Daniels, George Jones and Chris Young to join in on his debut single. Then again, Aaron Lewis isn’t your typical newcomer. He’d already built a massive following as frontman for Staind when he came down to Nashville to explore a side to his music seldom exposed on the alt-metal circuit.

Town Line, produced by Lewis and James Stroud and released on R&J Records, brings that side to life. These five songs and two bonus tracks, all written solely by Lewis, combine sensitivity and introspection, poetic soul and fierce pride in his roots. Lewis is in fact a product of rural America, raised in Vermont and exposed by his grandfather to Merle Haggard, Hank Williams (Senior and Junior), fishing, hunting and communion with nature. Continue Reading

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Photo by Mark DeLong, courtesy of the CMA.

By Bob Doerschuk
© 2011 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Before getting into the often raucous heart of The House Rules, jump ahead to the last track, one of only two not written or co-written by Christian Kane. If his cover of Tracy Chapman’s heartbreaking masterpiece “Fast Car” is all you heard from this album released on Outlaw Saints in partnership with Bigger Picture Group, you’d know that Kane possesses depth as a lyric interpreter that stands him apart from many of his peers.

It’s important to understand that from the top, because it lets us hear more clearly that on the riff-slamming single and title track (written by Kane and Blair Daly), the banjo-studded swagger of “Callin’ All Country Women” (Kane, Jerrod Niemann and Jimmie Lee Sloas), and the steel sweetened rocker “American Made” (Kane, Wayd Battle and Steven Carlson), his connection to the material is unusually insightful. As a singer, Kane knows how to bring each of these songs to life, whether an intimate narrative or a call to party fast and hard. Continue Reading

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Photo by Kristin Barlowe, courtesy of the CMA.

By Bob Doerschuk
© 2011 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Some people were born Country. Brett Eldredge came to it a little late — but once he got there, he dug in deep and made it his home.

Growing up in Paris, Ill., Eldredge spent a lot of time hanging out at the local lake. He played baseball, basketball and football in high school. He enjoyed all music, especially big-band swing. Hearing Brooks & Dunn when he was 16 put Country in the center of his map, but the full-blown conversion didn’t occur until his sophomore year at Chicago’s Elmhurst College, when he visited Nashville for the first time. Continue Reading

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