Shades of Kristofferson showed up in “The Saddest Love That’s Ever Been Made” on 2009′s New Songs for the Old Frontier. On Mulligan one year later, “It’s a Long, Long Way” recalled Todd Snider’s “My Generation, Part II.” Sadly humorous character sketch “Tia Maria” (also on Mulligan) seemed torn from the shared notebook of John Prine and Blaze Foley.

I’ll bet you didn’t even know they shared a notebook.

You’ll find all of the above influences saluted on Ronnie Fauss’ latest collection, Any Lovin’ Way But Wrong, a covers EP that finds the Dallas singer-songwriter tackling “Clay Pigeons” (Foley), “Just the Other Side of Nowhere” (Kristofferson), “Happy to Be Here” (Snider), and “Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone” (Prine). If Fauss hadn’t already proven himself capable of writing original material of similar quality, this might seem a desperate and uninspired measure. But arriving at this particular moment – three solid EPs under his belt, the artist is preparing to kick things into a higher gear in the months ahead with work on his first full-length album – it’s more like he’s grounding himself in the work of some of his heroes, setting the bar against which we (and he) should judge his future output. The tightly-focused set of songs, and the way Fauss is able to quietly yet confidently make each his own, suggest that he has a solid idea of where he’s headed and all the talent it’ll take to get there. It’ll be our pleasure to watch it happen.

Samples from the new EP are below. At the moment, you can grab a free download of Mulligan at Ronnie Fauss’ website; I don’t know how long that deal will last, so you’re encouraged to act quickly if interested.

From the first few lines of self-penned album opener “All My Best Friends (Are Behind Bars),” it’s clear that Haigh is working in the same Texas honky tonk vein that produced ’90s stars Tracy Lawrence, Mark Chesnutt, and Tracy Byrd. Yet the breadth and quality of material on People Like Me suggest a seriousness and intent of purpose at odds with the pejorative connotations of the term “hat act.”

In fact, Justin Haigh is anything but just another hat act. Not just any schmuck in a Stetson is entrusted with top-shelf songs from Bobby Pinson, Kelley Lovelace, Erv Woolsey (George Strait’s longtime manager), Mary Gauthier, and Jamey Johnson on his sophomore album. Especially not without name recognition or major label backing. And not just any schmuck in a Stetson can do as much with such songs as Haigh does here.

While “All My Best Friends,” “Jack Daniels on Ice,” and “People Like Me” prove Haigh’s mettle with good-timing dance songs, “I Ain’t Leaving” (Mary Gauthier/Travis Meadows) and “Is It Still Cheating” (Jamey Johnson/Randy Houser/Jerrod Niemann) show him equally capable with uber-intelligent contemporary ballads and visceral Vern Gosdin-style heartbreak songs.

Waylon Jennings gets his due with a cover (a “Rose in Paradise” to equal the original) and title-centric tribute song, but the album is marked even more strongly by a different Texas singer-songwriter. Kevin Higgins, with whom I was not familiar before finding his name in the credits, contributes two of the album’s strongest tracks in “Monahans” and “In Jail,” both evocative story songs rich with dusty detail and sly humor. He wrote them, along with album closer “Gathering Dust,” solo. As a performer, Higgins fronts a Texas band called The Dust Devils. Here, he’s sort of the Billy Joe Shaver to Haigh’s neotrad Honky Tonk Heroes. If the album gets the attention it deserves, both men stand to benefit.

If smart traditional country with mainstream appeal is what you’re after, People Like Me does it better than any of the high-profile releases from Chris Young, Blake Shelton, or Ashton Shepherd due next week. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it show up on some Best of 2011 lists.

Artist Website | Amazon

Sample the first chapter below.

That someone was country music legend J. Claude Caruthers.

When said philosophical nugget was scratched into his autobiography, Nashville’s Shakespeare, Caruthers had no idea how true it was. He just thought it sounded cool.

Recently, that genius swallowed every ounce of the singer’s energy until he was a sleepwalking shell of a man. The exhaustion was so powerful, so numbing, he barely noticed Judy yanking off his scruffy boot.

See, Claude hadn’t slept for more than a week because that genius was currently suffocating beneath the greatest artistic achievement in Nashville history. Well, at least since Willie Nelson sculpted a Venus de Milo from rolling papers soaked in Coors beer.

When that boot finally slipped free, J. Claude’s tour bus was pounding down the road. Nighttime highway lights peeked through crushed velvet curtains and disappeared across the carpet. The singer’s bedroom occupied the cruiser’s rear and was draped from ceiling to floor in purple. It’d been nearly thirty years since the quarters were redecorated and they had barely been cleaned during that span.

Judy popped off the boot and fell backward onto Claude’s bed. The publicist, several decades younger than the wrinkled star, was a leggy dream with soft red hair now spread across the pillow. This was a treat since her locks were normally twisted up like a tight coil of copper wire. J. Claude oozed a long glance at her tiny feet, thin ankles and girlishly small hands. The five-time Country Musician of the Year made a big show of licking his lips.

Claude’s black sideburns were fading grey and his bones ached. But the songster didn’t notice when his heart got to beating like that. He assumed the handsomeness discussed in Nashville’s Shakespeare—rugged good looks that made the Marlboro Man feel “downright gay”—were responsible for Judy’s seductive tumble. His mind’s green lights flashed to crank up that famed Caruthers Charm.

Even though the exhausted flesh around them was puffy and discolored from insomnia, his eyes managed to sparkle with jumping jacks of trouble. “Take off your dress,” he said. “Stay a while.”

“No, thanks, my dress is fine,” she glowered and stood, finding sea legs as the bus swayed. Judy swept crumbs and cigarette ash from that blue cotton dress with a sigh. “Some days, Claude, you are like gum in my hair.” She tossed the boot in his direction.

“Oooh, that sounds kinky. I could get into that.”

Purple braided ceiling tassels, coated in three decades of nicotine, beat into the publicist’s head. Her stomach tensed. When J. Claude’s eggplant bedspread, violet wallpaper and lilac carpet mixed with the bus’ motion, she still ached with nausea, even after all these years.

Judy wanted to deliver a Hall of Fame scowl. She wanted to make Claude cry. Instead, she settled for her natural reaction of pity, marveling at her boss’ face, weathered by decades of smoky clubs and all-night gigs. “You have an interview. His name is Martin Dobson. He’s riding along until we get to Nashville. I’m going to patch him over to you.” She pointed at the dilapidated intercom system that was pretty hot shit back when the bus was new.

“Aw, relax,” J. Claude hopped down from the window seat. His strut was cracked and dry with beef jerky stiffness. His every movement was a faded copy of its once suave self. “Sit back down on the bed. Let’s me and you have a one-on-one business meeting first.”

The singer eyed a pinpoint scar on her nose: the telling remains of a long-removed piercing. Caruthers wondered once again if it was a diamond stud, a cute little hoop or a chrome ball. Who knew, because the carefree girl who once fit behind a nose ring was long gone. In her place was a woman strict with schedules, marketing agendas and Billboard chart figures.

Her only carefree moments were spent attached to a coffee cup. Strong, black java left a flavor in her mouth. She loved that taste.

“How about you act like a decent human being and let Mr. Dobson into your lair?” Judy’s face bunched and her arm made a dramatic swoop.

Claude’s bright green eyes lit with possibility, the way they always did upon discovering yet another distraction from life’s work. “I put the lay in lair, if you know what I—”

“Claude,” she clapped her hands for attention.

A shocked trail of cigarette smoke slithered from his lips.

“It’d be good for publicity if you spoke man-to-man.” She snatched a thermal coffee mug off a shelf and drank. Closed eyes. And breathed.

The guitar strummer painfully thumped onto the mattress. A skeleton of springs showed through the bed. He propped himself against a wood paneled wall where several holes had been patched with dull silver tape.

“No time,” he lifted Rusty from the floor and plucked a sour G chord. It seemed his guitar could never make up its mind about staying in tune, constantly wobbling back and forth.

Rusty, J. Claude’s maple acoustic, had seen better days. Caruthers refused to have any crew member so much as change a string since the Alice-to-Gwendolyn tour of the early 80s. Three decades of spilled beer, honky-tonk smoke and filthy finger picking covered the instrument in a thin layer of tar. “Now Judy, maybe you’re one of those mentally retarded kids I donate so much money to, but if not, you should know I’m writing the most important damn song of my life here. Probably the most important song the world’s ever known. Silent Night, Ground Control to Major Tom, Footloose, they’re nothing compared to this and you know it. Quit trying to distract me.”

“Those kids aren’t retarded, they’re orphans. And you’ve been writing one song for three years,” her voice was bored, tired of arguing this fact every day. “And I really doubt it’s more important than Silent Night.” She shook her head and in a deep grumble whispered: “Probably not even Footloose.”

Claude offered the grungy guitar to Judy. “You want to try and be Nashville’s Shakespeare?” He tipped back his cowboy hat as if he and the redhead were nearing a gunfight. The hat carried as much gunk as the guitar and its snakeskin band was shredded. Caruthers was careful not to tip things too far and expose his bald spot.

Judy popped a shallow laugh. “Nobody calls you Shakespeare but you.” She swayed with the bus’ movements and waited for an answer.

“Somebody must, I mean it’s airbrushed on the side of the damn bus.”

Her eyes rolled and she shifted shoulder blades. Caruthers kept the room hot and the dress clung to her moist skin.

Judy took another relaxing breath and a quick coffee sip, reminding herself this was the life she’d chosen. There probably were better publicity jobs out there, but something kept her on board. Maybe it was when Claude showed frequent glimmers of innocence, those little dashes of sweetness once in a while. Or maybe it was because his artistic powers were still carved from granite. Love him or hate him, Claude was fun to watch up on stage.

Although that statement is as susceptible to exception as any other generalization, it held mostly true at Tuesday night’s Golf and Guitars charity concert at Haggin Oaks Golf Course in Sacramento, California. Preceded by a full day of golfing with — or, for those on a tighter budget, watching people golf with — celebrities in the rain, the mostly-acoustic concert started at 6pm and ran until almost 11. In that time, no fewer than fifteen Nashville acts crossed the stage, performing sets of three or four songs apiece.

The appeal of an event like Golf and Guitars is that it gives fans the opportunity to sample a variety of artists they might not necessarily make a special effort to go see at individual full band shows, all performing mini-sets under one large tent pavillion over the course of several hours. For the artists, it’s a great place to win new fans. For fans, it’s a great place to hear what artists actually sound like stripped of beefy backing and choreographed light shows. Oh, and all the proceeds benefit youth-oriented charities. Good karma.

While the concert was held inside a big tent — moved under cover in the final hours due to the inclement weather — its definition of country pitched a slightly smaller one. Roughly half of the night’s bill was comprised of twenty years worth of smooth male crooners from the pop side of country.

Larry Stewart offered solo spins on Restless Heart chestnuts “That Rock Won’t Roll,” “The Bluest Eyes in Texas,” and “Why Does It Have to Be (Wrong or Right),” with the audience doing its best to fill in the lush harmony support to which he’s accustomed. John Berry jived through “Kiss Me in the Car” and reminded everyone of what a career song sounds like with “Your Love Amazes Me.” Love & Theft offered “Wrong Baby Wrong” (a Stephen Barker Liles cowrite) and “Runaway” before being joined by Bryan White for “Amen.” White kept things uptempo in his own set (“Sittin’ On Go” and “Love Is the Right Place”), ceding part of his time to guitarist Scotty Alexander’s “Better Listen to a Woman.” After opening with “Old School,” fan favorite Chuck Wicks got swooning Conway Twitty-esque reactions with “Hold That Thought” and a new one called “The Whole Damn Thing” (sadly, this wasn’t the Those Darlins song about binging on chicken). Jimmy Wayne, whose hair is every bit as majestically feathery in person, showed a surprising amount of soul on set highlight “Do You Believe Me Now,” a song so monstrously large that it doesn’t even sound country when performed solo acoustic. Fittingly, he ended with his cover of “Sara Smile.” Just how pop is the talented Mr. Wayne’s country? Ty Herndon, who fought a flu to deliver solid versions of ’90s hits like “Living in a Moment” and “What Mattered Most,” seemed a stone cold traditionalist by comparison.

The biggest rule of hanging with these guys is that you’ve got to have a killer soul face. To illustrate this point, I made a Pop Country Soul Face™ collage to show variations of proper form:

Former Trick Pony wild man Ira Dean and recent Warner Bros. signees The Dirt Drifters brought some rock energy to the proceedings. An unadvertised late addition to the lineup, Ira Dean was a welcome surprise, with a set heavy on his familiar cowrites. He began with “Feelin’ Like That” (Gary Allan) and “One in Every Crowd” (Montgomery Gentry), then proceeded to his upcoming single “Beer or Gasoline” (a previous album cut for Chris Young) before settling into a ballad called “Still Hungover You.” It was The Dirt Drifters, though, who brought the night’s most hard-charging set, eliciting more excitement with less name recognition (their first single came out in February and hasn’t even broken into the Top 40 yet) than anyone else. Culling the best of their upcoming debut album — “Always a Reason,” “Married Men and Motel Rooms,” and “Something Better” — they literally had people singing along and dancing in the aisles to unknown songs. Their gritty country-rock sound and penchant for rural storytelling puts them firmly in the Steve Earle/Chris Knight vein, with hopefully just enough polish to sit comfortably beside Swift and Chesney. I’d like to see these guys do well. I think they might be our best shot at hearing anything like Earle on country radio again.

It wasn’t until the final two acts that the show veered toward the neotraditional side of modern country music. Jason Michael Carroll ran through his biggest hits (minus downcast “Alyssa Lies”) while working the stage and front section of the audience, posing for pictures with a seemingly unending stream of eager female fans without missing a note. He also bravely sported a faded pink shirt. Clay Walker, no slouch in the spiffy shirt department himself, subscribed more to the Strait ‘stand and deliver’ school of performing, an approach that works perfectly fine when you have a collection of hits as familiar and as infectious as “If I Could Make a Living,” “What’s It to You,” “Then What?” and the more recent “She Won’t Be Lonely Long.” The final act to take the stage, Walker was also the first to wear a cowboy hat, an impressive distinction given that he was preceded by fourteen other country acts. This never would have happened in the ’90s.

Female performers were in relatively short supply, but the ones present were well worth hearing. Julie Roberts bookended the highlight of her set, a duet with guest guitarist Chris Roberts titled “Back to Me and You,” with nice takes on “No Way Out” and hit single “I’d Sure Hate to Break Down Here.” Deana Carter hit a bit of a lull with consecutive slow songs — including a lovely version of “You and Tequila,” the current Kenny Chesney/Grace Potter single she cowrote with Matraca Berg — before leading one of the great singalongs of the evening with a more familiar Berg collaboration, modern classic “Strawberry Wine.” Meghan Linsey, joined by Joshua Scott Jones as Steel Magnolia, proved an imposing vocal presence, bringing her Tina Turner-style pipes to bear on two singles and an album cut (“Without You”) that only just managed to deserve the talents of either her or her Big Kenny-sounding singing partner. Now that we know they can definitely duet, perhaps some more memorable material is in order.

Returning host Jack Ingram didn’t perform his own set, but did mix in a song here and there while introducing other acts. With a vow to continue hosting these shows as long as he’s asked, there’s no reason for the organizers to consider replacing him. Ingram’s amiable presence, and occasional quips at the expense of the artists he’s introducing, is the thread that ties everything together and keeps the momentum up even as the show winds well past its fourth hour. As hosts go, he’s a catch.

By the time all was said and done, tens of thousands of dollars had been raised for the Morton Golf Foundation and the Keaton Raphael Memorial for Neuroblastoma. Not that anyone involved really needed another reason to feel good: The music itself would have been quite enough.

You can find larger images of all the performers on the Country California Facebook page. Be sure to ‘Like’ us while you’re over there; you never know what cool stuff we might post.

Recorded at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio B with a band built around his Fabulous Superlatives, Ghost Train: The Studio B Sessions is ostensibly Marty Stuart’s love letter to traditional country music, but it also serves as a handy distillation of everything lovable about the artist himself.

After all, who else cedes precious album time to let legendary steel guitarist Ralph Mooney pick and slide his way through “Crazy Arms” more than a half-century after Ray Price made it a country standard? Or digs up, and reanimates (in rocking Marty Party fashion), forgotten gems like Don Reno’s “Country Boy Rock and Roll,” and Warner Mack’s “Bridge Washed Out”?

About the worst thing you can say about the Stuart originals that make up the rest of the album is that they’re better echoes of past classics than classic compositions in themselves. Yes, there’s a lot of Haggard in “Branded,” a lot of the Louvin Brothers in “Drifting Apart,” and a lot of Cash in “Hard Working Man.” Of course, the recitation “Porter Wagoner’s Grave” is positively haunted by the spirit of its namesake. But that’s sort of the point: Stuart is paying tribute. His affection is palpable, and the songs and performances (including a duet with Connie Smith!) are routinely excellent, if not classic.

While “Hangman” (cowritten with Johnny Cash just days before he died) is indisputably the showpiece, the rest is not that far behind. Altogether, Ghost Train is a rich, immensely rewarding collection that radiates love and affection for real country music. It’s up there with The Pilgrim as one of my favorite Marty Stuart albums.

Brennen Leigh is a young honky tonk songbird who has released a small handful of albums since migrating from Minnesota to Austin in 2002. Like Stuart, she doesn’t have the most distinctive of voices – she sounds very much like Miss Leslie and Melonie Cannon, for example – but she uses what she’s got to tremendous effect. While Ghost Train seems somewhat curatorial in its approach, The Box is wholly in the moment. It’s just that Brennen’s moment happens to be deeply informed by Emmylou Harris, George Jones, Melba Montgomery, and an unapologetic Louvin Brothers obsession.

Leigh’s grasp of tradition is deceptively organic. The first time through, I was sure I’d been beaten at the game of digging up obscure, heretofore unheard classics. “Big Horn Mountains” was obviously a bluegrass standard I’d somehow missed. “Hear My Little Bluebird Sing” was probably a dressed-up Carter Family track – why, why hadn’t I paid more attention to that Carter Family set? Then there was “Distracted,” first sung by… Patsy? Ella Fitzgerald? I even searched Google for the original Louvin Brothers version of “Are You Stringing Me Along,” which Leigh sings in beautiful close harmony with brother Seth Hulbert. Come to find out, there is no original Louvin Brothers version. That album highlight, like every other track here, is a modern composition. All but two of them were written or cowritten by the artist herself.

Judging from the ledger of live performances that is Youtube, this album has been years in the making: videos of these songs date back to at least 2008. That explains some of the ‘lived in’ quality of the performances, but not all of it. The rest, I suspect, can only be chalked up to talent and taste. Jim Lauderdale’s supporting appearance on the title track seems a ringing, and well-deserved, endorsement of both. (Lauderdale also appeared on the indie, and later Big Machine, debut of Leigh’s close friend Sunny Sweeney.)

An album that sounds this good musically, with songs of such uniformly high quality, is an impressive accomplishment by any standard – even more so for a relatively little-known act operating on what I can only imagine to be a relatively shoestring budget. Big labels and big money can polish (almost) anything to a likable sheen, but there’s a magic emanating from the heart of The Box that can’t be faked or easily replicated. Is it too early to call this one a classic? Pick up a copy for yourself and let me know. Here’s hoping some enterprising label sees fit to give it the wider release it deserves.

The result is an approachable, lovely memoir brimming with humor and humanity, one that never loses its voice even as it navigates matters of divorce, addiction, death, and brain surgery. Cash has a novelist’s sense of detail, a keen ability to choose the most telling memories and convey them in the most artfully economical fashion. She treats her subjects (including herself) charitably, never painting them into corners, always allowing for their foibles and complexities.

Through it all, she’s her own woman, smart and urbane as heck but with sense enough to laugh at herself and obvious affection for the family that produced her, and the happy home life she has gone on to create for herself as an adult.

This isn’t just a great Rosanne Cash memoir. It’s a great memoir, period, recommended equally to those interested in Cash’s life and career and to those who just love to read great writing.

You can read an excerpt here (via American Twang) or order the book from Amazon.

As a songwriter, though, her sensibility is firmly country. On “Just What I’m Looking For,” sung with Elizabeth Cook and Tim Carroll somewhere in the background, she’s feeling a little dangerous, throwing herself into the arms of a man she knows will probably be nothing but bad news in the long term. Meanwhile, title track “Under the Rushes” is a classic story song about emergent womanhood, delivered with strength and clarity from an omniscient distance. The album’s most country moment, though, is “Makin’ Love,” on which a duet vocal from Chuck Mead proves a nice but ultimately unnecessary bonus: Beasley could just as easily have carried the song on the strength of her own performance.

Whether Under the Rushes has any impact with the general audience or not, it should be on the radar of the Nashville recording community, if only so they can pillage it for wildly successful cover versions as they do (or once did) with new releases from Bruce Robison and Radney Foster. At her best, Beasley is that caliber of writer. Here Nashville, I’ll do some of the work for you: resilient Texas rocker “Heart Like a Wound” belongs on Miranda Lambert’s next album, and “The Little Things” is a classic Pam Tillis torch song. Oh, and if Beasley doesn’t have a hit with the title track, some other Americana chanteuse probably could.

An indie album on which I can recommend at least half the tracks is a rarity, so you can bet that checking out Beasley’s previous album, Good Samaritan, just got added to my musical to-do list.

Download the album now from Amazon MP3

Give It Away, Give It Away
Want to check out Under the Rushes for free? Comment below by next Friday (July 23) for your chance to win one of two extra copies from our prize shelf. You have nothing to lose and only good music to gain.

7/25 Update: Winners chosen. Congrats to Joe B. and Rick! We’ll be getting in touch.

Here’s my day in photos and pithy commentary. Albums for most of the individual artists will be going up on our Facebook page, so be sure to ‘Become a Fan’ or ‘Like’ us over there if you want to see those as they’re posted.

Tyler Reeve reeled in some early arrivals with sturdy Texas country-rock and a regrettably fiddle-less cover of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” He also sang with this member of Heidi Newfield’s band.
Sarah Buxton and Jedd Hughes, now known as Buxton Hughes, put on what was probably the most charming small stage performance of the day, including “Outside My Window,” “Stupid Boy,” Jedd’s “High Lonesome,” and an Australian song called “G’day G’day.” They have great rapport.
Swapping songs with Buxton Hughes was Dave Pahanish, one of the parties responsible for Toby Keith’s “American Ride.” With sunglasses on, he looks like the rebel brother of Dave Haywood. His performance of “What Am I Waiting For” was especially good, though not so good as to forgive “American Ride.”
I missed the beginning of Emily West’s set because it overlapped with Sarah Buxton’s on the other small stage just across the way. Obviously someone in scheduling has a sense of humor. West was very possibly the best pure singer featured all day, with “Rocks in Your Shoes” being especially well-received by the crowd.
The Lost Trailers had the distinction of being the first act up on the main stage. They’re breaking up after this year. No word yet on when the CMT tribute special will air.
Jonathan Singleton and The Grove was one of the most rock-leaning acts in a fairly rock-leaning lineup, but that Singleton fella does have one cool voice. I wasn’t surprised to see them drawing a considerable crowd
The Eli Young Band followed The Lost Trailers on the main stage. This guy isn’t Eli Young.
Heidi Newfield wasn’t shy about reminding the crowd of her Northern California roots, and they received the local-girl-made-good’s mix of new songs and Trick Pony favorites (plus “Johnny and June”) enthusiastically. She was pulling in enough people, and has a large enough catalog of hits, that they probably should have given her a spot on the main stage. One of the later acts apparently thought so too. More on that in a bit.
Meanwhile, crowd pleaser Jack Ingram was inviting a bunch of his fellow performers to the main stage for a “Barbie Doll” chorus and giving away his boots during “Barefoot and Crazy.”
Eric Church gave a fiery, dynamic performance that likely won him some new fans. It’s hard to imagine anyone who has any appreciation for his recorded music being disappointed by his live show.

Then there were the members of Little Big Town, who are almost impossible to get in one shot when spread out across an enormous stage unless you’re sitting way back… in the boondocks. Their harmonies easily filled the amphitheatre, sounding every bit as good as they do in the studio.


Beginning with “High Cost of Living” and Keith Whitley cowrite “Lonely at the Top,” Johnson treated the crowd to the most traditional country to be heard anywhere at Throwdown. He ceded part of his time slot to Heidi Newfield, allowing her to do one song on the big stage, before calling Little Big Town out for “Macon” and dueting with Eric Church on Hag’s “Are the Good Times Really Over (I Wish a Buck Was Still Silver).” Predictably, nothing got the crowd going quite like “In Color,” which turned into a thousands-strong singalong.
Montgomery Gentry was technically the headlining act, but I weighed my desire to see them (and my suspicion that nothing could top Jamey Johnson) against my hatred for post-show traffic jams and decided to get a jump on the competition by ditching out after the first couple songs. I’ll go ahead and guess that Eddie Montgomery twirled the mic stand a few more times and there was a big finale involving other performers and explosions.

All things considered, a solid day of music and fun for anyone even remotely interested in the sounds of mainstream country music today and tomorrow. Assuming there is indeed a second annual Country Throwdown, it’d be nice to see a wider range of country styles featured and perhaps the addition of one or two bona fide legends to round out the bill and give context to the work being done by some of the younger acts.

As far as first attempts go, though, this was a pretty satisfying one.