Remember that Keith Whitley post from three weeks ago? I’d like to isolate part of it for discussion. Namely, this part:
Is a classic country voice doomed to keep on rerecording the old classics? Who’s writing modern classics worthy of such a voice? Would Keith Whitley be having this same problem if he were alive today?
This was in reference to Daryle Singletary, who seemed to have trouble finding really solid original material early in his career and has basically been relegated to a classic country cover act for the past decade or so. Singletary is an extreme example, but many of the golden-throated singers who haven’t done multiple cover albums – the other Whitley disciples, Josh Turner, Jeff Bates – face essentially the same problem: Their voices are usually a lot better than their songs.
Maybe their material isn’t any worse than that of their contemporaries, but we expect more of them because their voices give us the idea that they’re capable of delivering it. When you hear Chuck Wicks or Rascal Flatts do a trite love song, you might (hopefully) dislike it, but there’s no sense of wasted potential. Those acts are doing exactly what they’re meant to be doing. That’s their best, take it or leave it. Conversely, when you hear Daryle Singletary having “Too Much Fun” or Josh Turner declaring that “Everything is Fine,” even if you enjoy it, you can’t help but wonder what they could do with a really great, meaty country song. They’re skilled enough as vocalists to make trifling radio fare likable, but their voices seem made to sing classic country. Until they deliver on that promise, they’re just neotraditional teases.
So, what to do? They could devote themselves to covering the old classics and watch all commercial relevance fly out the window. Or they could look for new classics. But where would they find songs like that? Who’s writing them? And is the search worth the trouble, given how much easier it is to skate along on middling material?
Plenty of people are writing them. For some reason it always seems like these guys with humongous traditional country voices never seek out the really great songwriters. Can you imagine, say, ‘Josh Turner Sings the Darrell Scott Songbook’?
That’d be amazing.
By the way, I didn’t intend for “Who’s writing them?” to be a rhetorical question. I was hoping people would start throwing out some names, so I’m glad you kicked things off right. ;-)
Mike Stinson, Dave Gleason, and David Serby (all California guys) are writing them, and I’m sure a lot of other people are too.
but people have this notion that real country music doesn’t sell. Well real country music isn’t being promoted, so of course it’s not selling.
Whatever, for guys like Josh Turner they are faced with a choice, do I want to make sure I’m a famous singer and possibly be a great country artist, or do I want to make sure I’m a great country artist and possibly be a famous singer.
As my Darrell Scott article at CU suggested ( sorry for the shameless self promotion), I believe that Darrell Scott is one of the great writers of today who will be counted among the legendary songwriters someday. We just need these people like Turner and Bates to figure it out too so that my prediction can actually come true. It’s interesting that you mention Bates, because I’ve always liked his voice but have not liked even one of his songs that I can recall at the moment. So, in that vein, Josh Turner is doing better than Bates because he at least has more than a few that I like.
–Leeann
Shameless self-promotion is encouraged, but you have to do it up right. Here’s a link to Leeann’s Darrell Scott article.
They couldn’t go wrong with the Jim Lauderdale songbook either.
This may sound goofy, but one big challenge with guys like Turner is to find a song whose lyric offers enough breathing room between notes so that the size of his voice doesn’t crowd out the meaning of the words. That’s why he excels with Shawn Camp songs, which tend to be classically simple and direct.
That’s really interesting. Can’t say I had ever thought of it before, but it makes a lot of sense.