Organic, Melodic, Harmonic and Sonically Pleasing Country Music.

 Little Big Town – A Place To Land (Equity Records 2007)

It was very easy to dismiss Little Big Town as Sony Nashville’s attempt at creating a boy/girl group like some pop labels had done.  It seemed to be a cash grab by the label and upon hearing the overproduced self-titled effort (From 2002), along with looking at the glossy glamour shots in the liner notes, I had to agree with that sentiment and so did country radio and the fans.  Promoted to the T of more than a million dollars, the band was a colossal bust.  Fast foward a couple years to 2005 and the quartet of Jimi Westbrook, Philip Sweet, Karen Fairchild and Kimberly Roads Schlapman had decided to write and record their own album with noted producer Wayne Kirkpatrick before shopping it to labels.  The band joined forces with new independent label Equity Records.  Their new organic sound was a breath of fresh air and radio fell in love with their singles and album “The Road To Here.”  A million plus albums sold later and Little Big Town is back with their third album, “A Place To Land.“ 

Garth Fills a Void With The Ultimate Hits

 Garth Brooks  – “The Ulitmate Hits” (Pearl Records)

For about 10 years Garth Brooks was an undeniable force. He went to places few, if any, country music artists went before. He topped the Billboard album charts, he had songs cross-over without remixes; he sold out concert after concerts. Even if ‘traditionalists’ didn’t much like his brand of post-(Merle)Haggard country mixed with a heavy dose of 70’s pop/rock, Brooks brought country music into the mainstream in a way it has yet to leave. Sure, it’s not pop but the genre certainly still has a firm grip on Garth’s style. Garth ‘pioneered’ it and artists like Rascal Flatts and Kenny Chesney continue to do remarkably well with it. So, with that said, the ‘retired’ Garth Brooks has returned with his first career-spanning greatest hits package. The phrase “career-spanning” is an apt description because, ever the marketing juggernaut, Garth has re-released all of his previous releases in various incarnations about a dozen times. However, his lone retrospective, “The Hits” was a limited-release of 10 million albums that were sold between 1994 and 1997 or so. Garth even buried the ‘masters’ of that record underneath his Hollywood walk-of-fame star to ensure that his label at the time, Capital Records, wouldn’t continue to repackage his stuff.