Death of Rock 'n' Roll

@fleschler, I understanding your being bored by what the music biz is currently pushing as Country music, but there is a thriving underground of real Country you may not be aware of. It is a community of songwriters, singers, and musicians playing authentic Country music, not Pop "Country". Their music is not heard on the radio nor rewarded at the ACA Awards TV Show, so they hold their own Americana Awards Ceremony annually (videos available on You Tube).

The community is comprised of names such as Jim Lauderdale (who has hosted most of the AAC shows), Buddy Miller (and his wife Julie), Emmylou Harris, Iris Dement, Patty Loveless, Marty Stuart, Chris Hillman (The Byrds bassist, his latest album produced by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers), Rodney Crowell, John Hiatt, Ricky Skaggs, Del McCoury, Johnny Staats, Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch, and many, many more.

In addition, many of the studio musicians and songwriters who were the foundation of the late-60’s/early-70’s Country-Rock and Singer-Songwriter music coming out of Los Angeles have relocated to Nashville. Even the great guitarist/songwriter/singer Al Anderson of Rock ’n’ Roll band NRBQ (a favorite of Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, and Dave Edmunds) has done the same, to focus on a songwriting career.

Many of the above can be considered somewhat of "crossover" artists; not pure Country, but rather a mix of Country, Hillbilly, Bluegrass, Blues, and Singer-Songwriter. That is one reason the community has adopted the genre name Americana, the coverage of which is provided on the No Depression website.

Remember, most of the original white Rock ’n’ Rollers were southern hillbillies, who grew up listening to The Grand Old Opry on the radio (there was not yet any television), the cathedral of Country music in the 40’s/50’s/60’s. It was when in the mid-50’s they mixed that Hillbilly music with the also southern rural Blues, that what we now think of as Rock ’n’ Roll was created (ignoring for the sake of this discussion the fact that Big Joe Turner, Louis Jordan, and other black singers were already doing a very similar music as early as the mid-40’s). many of those white Rock ’n’ Rollers---Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, Johnny Burnette---continued to dabble in Country, some even moving over to it completely. Old Rock ’n’ Rollers don’t die, they just go Country ;-) .