Eli Young Band

Country Music For Babies – A Calming but also Entertaining Playlist

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Continuing our exploration of country music for babies, our initial recommended calming-type playlist, in no particular order, is below. Normally I’d put my caveats, disclaimers and explanations here but Z is strapped to my chest and I want to make sure we hit at least the list before she wakes up. See bottom of the post for those disclosure notes.

  1. Love Without End, Amen – George Strait
  2. Even If It Breaks Your Heart – Eli Young Band
  3. Livin’ On Love – Alan Jackson
  4. I’d Love To Lay You Down – Conway Twitty
  5. Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good – Don Williams
  6. Take Me Home, Country Roads – John Denver
  7. Good Stuff – Kenny Chesney
  8. Humble and Kind – Tim McGraw
  9. Forever and Ever, Amen – Randy Travis
  10. Colder Weather – Zac Brown Band
  11. Follow Me – Uncle Kracker
  12. Springsteen – Eric Church
  13. Down the Road – Mac McAnally
  14. Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes – George Jones
  15. If I Needed You – Emmylou Harris or TVZ, both wonderful
  16. Angels Among Us – Alabama
  17. What Cowboys Do – Casey Donahew Band
  18. Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes – Jimmy Buffett
  19. I Hope You Dance – Lee Ann Womack
  20. My Church – Maren Morris
  21. God Bless the USA – Lee Greenwood
  22. I Wish Grandpas Never Died – Riley Green
  23. I’m Coming’ Home – Robert Earl Keen

Color on the list. First, no artist appears more than once. We could create a fine playlist with a much smaller handful of artists, but that wouldn’t be as fun for me and wouldn’t capture enough range for baby’s country music learning and enjoyment. Second, as I’ve done with other playlists, the number of tracks here roughly corresponds to how many tracks you’d be able to get onto a burnt CD of my childhood. Third, I’ve focused here primarily, though not exclusively, on calming potential. There’s a great playlist to be made for when you want to purely rock out with baby during awake time, but it’s not this one. Of course it’s not purely about calming – there is consideration given to quality of lyrics and themes and a number of other variables that I’ll unpack in a later post. And so, fourth, this isn’t even the top songs that I find most calming for either me or the baby or solely my favorite group of calming-type songs primarily because, as I’m learning in many other respects too, this playlist is not just about me and I want to try to capture some of those other variables. And as always apologies to the unlisted songwriters who I don’t think ever get enough credit.

If readers have any recommendations that I can add to Z’s playlist, please let me know!

CMA Does TV/Movies: Nashville

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I’ve recently been watching Nashville and it’s a pretty good show.

My favorite part is probably rolling over in my head the real life country stars the show’s characters are most similar to and presumably based on, and spotting real life happenings and incidents that make it into the fictional show. This feels like a topic the writers of the show must have addressed in interviews. But without having read those and just for a couple of the characters my sense is:

  • Rayna Jaymes: 30% Shania Twain, 70% Faith Hill
  • Luke Wheeler: 50% Tim McGraw, 30% Alan Jackson, 20% Luke Bryan
  • Juliette Barnes: 70% Taylor Swift, 20 Miranda Lambert, 10% crazy pills
  • Deacon Claybourne: 50% Robert Earl Keen, remaining % I can’t quite put my finger on
  • Will Lexington: 30% Jason Aldean, 30% Kenny Chesney, 30% Cole Swindell, 10% creative liberties

The music is good generally, both the character-related songs and various background music (recall hearing at least Eli Young Band and Zac Brown Band – ZB also making a cameo). And the acting is also good – especially Connie Britton, who if she’s not a super nice total sweetheart in real life is an even more remarkable actress. The exploration of the different strands of country music, record-label type wheeling and dealing, highs and lows of touring, writing, etc and similar themes are all interesting, and based on what I understand or suppose to be the case ring true to me. Re: different strands, the show is primarily focused on pop country, but there are plenty of explicit and implicit nods to especially alternative country and bluesy country, and also classic country and Americana. Some of the cameos are also great (e.g., Brad Paisley’s).

There is what feels to me like a bit too much soap opera style over drama. But I don’t have concrete suggestions on how that might be done better, plus the emotions drawn out are credible and at least to me surprisingly meaningful, so ultimately that’s overlookable. I don’t feel like viewers get the same window into the city or region in the same way we do for say NOLA in Treme or New Mexico in Breaking Bad, but there’s definitely authentic incorporation of classic country music and Nashville locations and backdrops. And at the end of the day the show does double duty for country music fans since viewers get to watch an entertaining TV program that’s also about and featuring country music.

Good show. Would recommend.

TX Independence Day NYC 2018

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On the heels of a somewhat lackluster performance in November and sandwiched in between CBD and PFG, I didn’t expect Eli Young Band to be the highlight of the show, but they absolutely crushed it! Vocals were on point, energy and enthusiasm levels very high. Fingerprints songs were sprinkled in as were a couple of covers, but right from the start of their set with Jet Black & Jealous and When It Rains this felt like the EYB music that I fell in love with years ago and a reminder of just how talented this band is. Crowd seemed more into Saltwater Gospel, Drunk Last Night and the cover of Come Together – but I preferred Always the Love Songs, Guinevere and their cover of Learning to Fly which surprisingly no one in the crowd seemed to know. I thought the renditions of Dust (a good song, but not one of my favorites of theirs) and Even If It Breaks Your Heart were especially strong – lots of emotion and energy in the vocals.

EYB 3-9-18

For some reason the show was scheduled for a Friday night which prevented a number of my friends from making it out, but we managed to squeeze in a few pre-concert drinks and made it to Terminal 5 right for the start of Casey Donahew Band’s set, though unfortunately missed Wade Bowen. CBD, as usual, was pretty electric – I haven’t yet seen them play a show where it didn’t seem like they were having a great time rocking out and where it didn’t feel like they’d rather be up on that stage singing their hearts out than anywhere else in the world. Set list was strong, and it seemed like the band was particularly into it with Double-Wide Dream, 12 Gauge and Stockyards. Newer songs from All Night Party were woven seamlessly into the set, and I particularly enjoyed Kiss Me – which is even better live, with a little more grit and rock and roll – and Country Song – a song just constitutionally suited to be played in concert.

Casey Donahew Band 3-9-18

Pat Green, too, seemed very much at home and happy to be playing in NYC. In addition to his usual concert set, it felt like a bonus to get to hear a few songs which don’t seem to be concert mainstays like Somewhere Between Texas and Mexico and Here We Go, and Texas On My Mind which I’ll always have a special place for even if not written by PFG since this was the first Green recording I ever heard. One of my buddies who couldn’t make the show this year would have been disappointed that neither Girls From Texas nor Down to the River made the set list, the latter of course never making it despite our best efforts at encouragement. Maybe the surprise stand out for me this year was While I Was Away. A number of the songs on Home have been growing on me since I first heard the album, and even if Green didn’t pen this one his delivery rings so true that it’s hard not to be moved by the song.

Pat Green 3-9-18

Awesome show this year, and hats off as always to these Texas artists willing to share a little country music with us folks in NYC.

Eli Young Band @ Brooklyn Bowl

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Country music in NYC is always a treat and I’d been looking forward to seeing EYB at this show for a long time. The last few times I’ve seen them they opened for different pop country superstars – I want to say Kenny & Tim at Gillette Stadium and then Kenny and ZBB at the Georgia Dome. Before that I’d seen them as part of the Texas Independence Day line-up in NYC – pre-Life at Best and Crazy Girl – but I don’t think I’ve ever had the chance to see them headline.

Brooklyn Bowl turns out to be an absolutely awesome live music venue, and it was great to get to celebrate my sister’s birthday over some country. For about the first half of the concert we were bowling, which turned out to be a mixed blessing since while bowling is up there with country music among my favorite things, it was tough to focus on my pin action and give EYB the attention they deserve at the same time.

EYB 11-12-17

The set list, comprised of EYB’s “oldies”, stuff from their new album and a bunch of covers, felt unusual. In terms of old stuff, I couldn’t have asked for a much better song list – Jet Black & Jealous, Skeletons, Small Town Kid and Guinevere are some of my very favorites. Interestingly their set list had When It Rains on it too (one of my enduring favorites), but Skeletons was also penciled in and their sound guy said it was an EYB game time decision which of the two to play but that they wouldn’t play both. This old stuff is what I came for. Especially with this band, there are so many more classic songs I wish they’d have played – Radio Waves, Get in the Car and Drive, How Should I Know, So Close Now, Oklahoma Girl.

EYB Set List 11-12-17

The new stuff, and by this I mean the Fingerprints songs, was difficult for me to appreciate since my familiarity with most of these songs (save Saltwater Gospel) was generally limited to my having listened to the album on Spotify a couple times over the preceding few days. Maybe it was this lack of familiarity that made the show feel a bit disjointed, rather than not liking the new songs. I suspect the former since EYB has such a solid track record of material and my sister likes the new album.

And then there were a whole bunch of covers which I didn’t quite understand, especially given how much gold of their own EYB has. When they first played David Lee Murphy’s Dust on the Bottle I said OK because that’s a great song, but they went on to play a strange mix of too many other covers including Come Together and No Woman No Cry mixed in with Small Town Kid. I definitely appreciate musical variety and it can be fun to see artists performing others’ work especially if it seems like they are really having fun with the material, but I didn’t love how the chosen songs were worked into and meshed with the set here.

EYB 2 11-12-17

All in all a fantastic concert. Eli Young Band is still one of the best, and seeing them live was a lot of fun. As a side note, EYB will be playing at 2018 TID in NYC – a welcome return to the event after an absence of a few years!

Song Analysis: EYB’s Saltwater Gospel

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In the interests of not burying the lede: I don’t have a problem with Saltwater Gospel, but I’m not crazy about it. I don’t think it stacks up against some of EYB’s very high quality songs, but at the same time it comes across much better performed by them than it would have if the song had gone to one of the pop-country regulars.

Eli Young Band has been one of my favorite groups for a long time. I remember seeing them way back when they were an opener at Texas Independence Day in NYC all the way up to what I think is the most recent time I’ve seen them: playing at the Georgia Dome with ZBB and Kenny Chesney. They’ve always deserved (and craved) a wider audience and it was awesome to see them get just that with Even If It Breaks Your Heart and Crazy Girl. (They’re also schedule to play in November at Brooklyn Bowl – more about that in a future post.)

My first reaction to hearing Saltwater Gospel was that it felt like a Florida Georgia Line song. And sure enough EYB didn’t write the song and the songwriters – Ashley Gorley, Nicolle Galyon and Ross Copperman – initially seemed to have folks like Kenny and Jake Owen in mind for the song. I’ll save for another day the so interesting topic of commercial songwriting and an exposition on singing/ performing versus singer-songwriting, but suffice it for now to say that there’s a whole to be said for folks performing their own material or, in the absence of that, at least only recording other folks’ songs that are authentic expressions of the singer’s own thoughts and feelings.

The articles I’ve read about SG take great pains to point out that, in their view, this isn’t just another “beach song”. That’s right in the sense that the song isn’t about loading your truck up with Bud lights, picking up some girls in swimsuits and going down to the beach to party. The other point the articles seem to focus on is that the authors have professed that they don’t want the song to be listened to as a diminution of the importance of actual church-going. I didn’t interpret the song that way (though I don’t think the music video helps) and any bone to pick I have with the song isn’t on that account.

Saltwater Gospel does have a nice point. It is definitely awe-inspiring to stand at the edge of the ocean and feel the power and majesty of what God created. Listening to the song more casually the first few times (i.e. at the gymnasium and not focusing so intently on the lyrics) I interpreted the song as a quasi-baptism song, with the singers relationship with God consummated via the ocean standing in for the formal religious rite. On closer listen, I think this is reading too much into the lyrics, and maybe this would have been too far anyway, but the nice point of feeling the awesomeness of God’s ocean still stands. In a world where there’s an embarrassment or reluctance, if not outright cynicism, towards declaring reverence for something , it’s no small feat to identify something as meaningful and stand behind it.

For me, this is the song’s success: the recognition of this awesomeness. I don’t think the song’s lyrics are so adept at developing this initial recognition – the Amens and “I’m in heaven watching all these waves roll in” feel ham-handed, although I prefer and like the lyrics of “When I’m lost I know where to get found again” and especially “Yeah, I got all the proof I need.  And it sure makes me believe” the latter of which I think really encapsulates the point of the song. Overall my take-away is that the song doesn’t feel much like EYB but despite some pop-country trappings, has something original and meaningful at its core that appeals.