Barry Blackwood
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Posted 1 Aug 2006 8:34 am |
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Article in today's Sacramento Bee newspaper:
No home on the radio
Those who hanker for 'real' country in these parts say the pickin's are too slim
By Sam McManis -- Bee Staff Writer
Sacramento had been a one-horse -- er, country- radio station -- town for pert' near three years before listeners tuned in one morning and found an alternative to ratings giant KNCI (105.1 FM).
Well, critics say, not really an alternative.
More like a carbon copy.
It all started last month when KCCL (101.9 FM) abruptly dropped its "Boss Radio" oldies-rock format to try its luck in the country genre as "The Wolf," featuring a playlist nearly identical to KNCI's. That is, it began playing top hits from the usual crop of mainstream Nashville artists -- your Kenny Chesneys, Tim McGraws, Rascal Flattses, Gretchen Wilsons.
Listeners howled at "The Wolf" -- some in protest, some in glee. And some, such as Sacramento resident Adam Smith, expressed the desire for something rarely, if ever, heard on commercial country radio these days: diversity.
"Personally," Smith writes in an e-mail, "I prefer roots and alt-country, what I call real country."
By real, Smith means songs from artists whose musical emphasis is more organic and acoustic than the slickly produced, three-minute tunes dominating the top 20 country singles charts.
And that means artists such as Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, who haven't been played on the radio in decades. Americana artists including Lucinda Williams and Rodney Crowell, whose songs blur the line between blues, rock and country. And artists such as Steve Earle and James McMurtry, whose left-leaning political songs alienate them from many mainstream country fans.
It's not as small a niche as one might imagine. Those on the so-called fringes are starting to make some noise.
Cash's new posthumous CD, "American V: A Hundred Highways," debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard country charts three weeks ago. Bruce Spring-steen's experiment in bluegrass music on his latest concert tour is drawing sellout crowds. And the Dixie Chicks, once the darlings of country radio before bashing President Bush, have the nation's top- selling album despite almost no mainstream country airplay.
So, why are we still hearing the same Big & Rich and Brooks & Dunn songs over and over on country radio?
It's simple: Majority (and money) rules.
Of more than 2,000 country stations nationwide -- the top radio format, by far -- fewer than 100 play "classic country" and only 15 are labeled "Americana," according to the Inside Radio magazine database.
"The country music community is divided into basically two groups -- the musical snobs and the musical cattle," says Rusty Walker, a consultant who has helped shape programming at more than 500 country stations since 1983. "I'm a radio snob, and we make up 8 to 10 percent of listeners. The cattle make up 90 to 92 percent.
"Now, if we snobs want our own radio station, dad-gummit, we've got to force a whole lot more people to like it as much as they like the hit stations. And that's not going to happen."
Locally, the country audience seems overwhelmingly "contemporary," according to Greg Cole, music director and afternoon DJ at KNCI. He rejects the "cattle" reference, preferring to call his and other mainstream stations "mass- appeal" outlets.
"And a lot of the music within the Americana format is not what you'd say is mass-appeal," Cole says.
Still, "part of the unknown is how many people would discover that this type of music resonates with them if they were exposed to it," counters Wesley Robertson, host of the weekly alt-country "Rockin' and Stompin'" show (at 2 p.m. Saturdays) on noncommercial KVMR (89.5 FM) in Nevada City.
KVMR is one of the few stations in the area playing alt-country, bluegrass, folk and Americana. Despite its weak signal in Sacramento, program director Steve Baker says, its programming draws the most listeners during the week, many from metropolitan Sacramento.
Other options include "The Eclectic Dinosaur" on low-power KDRT (101.5 FM) in Davis, "Blue Dog Jam" on KXJZ (88.9 FM), and several shows on Access Sacramento's cable TV radio channel.
There's also satellite radio. Both Sirius and XM have 24-hour channels that specialize in Americana, bluegrass, folk and "outlaw" country. Several Internet alt-country stations broadcast, as well.
But the majority of listeners continue to turn to commercial radio. And whereas several rock genres (top 40, alternative, heavy metal, classic) are represented on stations, the same cannot be said for country.
The reason, according to Sirius director of country programming Scott Lindy, is that the overall sound of mainstream country is essentially the same as 15 years ago.
"It's still being made in that sleek, polished, heavy-layering, perfect-timing Nashville sound," says Lindy, who spent many years programming top country stations in Baltimore before coming to satellite radio in 2004. "There's not enough sonic change in styles to make it attractive."
Of course, no one would dispute that an Americana artist such as Emmylou Harris sounds different from Shania Twain. But, in other cases, Lindy says, the difference isn't that distinct.
One recent afternoon on Sirius, for instance, the outlaw country channel played back-to-back songs (Allison Moorer's "Take It So Hard" and Buddy Miller's "Love Match") that had the same mid-tempo groove and strong hooks that a listener might hear on mainstream country radio.
They are sonically similar. Even so, they're no Kenny Chesney.
"Coming from the perspective of a mainstream programmer, there's a disconnect," Lindy says.
"There's a radio consultant I know who calls it 'familiarity breeds content.' Content in radio means ratings, and ratings mean big, big money," Lindy says. "If you stretched your play list to include, say, Shooter Jennings, you're rolling the dice for millions of (advertising) dollars."
And that's a bet many mainstream stations aren't willing to make.
Cole says KNCI does occasionally take chances. For instance, he says, the station was one of the few mainstream country stations in the country to play songs by the bluegrass-infused group Alison Kraus & Union Station.
"We are open to new things, if they fit with what we're doing," Cole says.
However, "to a large extent, you have to worry more about driving people away (from new, untested artists) than you are of attracting them."
That is not a concern for the few stations playing Americana artists. It's all about attracting new listeners, especially ones who dismiss country music as "all hat, no cattle."
Jeffrey Green, director of the Americana Music Association, says listeners attracted to this genre are open to musical experimentation.
"These songs deal with complex themes and sometimes have complex arrangements," Green says. "They aren't songs DJs can talk over and that you can get through in three minutes. It's more like the old album-rock days. I don't want to say it's more of a thinking person's country, but we aren't talking ditties here."
Americana listeners also tend to be more liberal, Green says, adding that only 15 percent of Americana listeners identify themselves as Republicans; the rest are Democrats or independents.
Three of the song-of-the-year nominees for the 2006 Americana Music Awards have left-leaning political themes -- McMurtry's "We Can't Make It Here," Crowell's "Don't Get Me Started," and the Dixie Chicks' "Not Ready To Make Nice."
KVMR's Robertson calls it a distinction between what he terms "real country" vs. "safe country."
"You can be political, but it must be the conservative take on things. Usually, commercial stations won't play any song that has lyrics that may offend a listener or advertiser," Robertson says. "The 'real' country artist writes his lyrics based on what is on his mind and heart and what he has seen and learned."
Good luck catching any of these three songs on mainstream country radio.
As Walker, the country radio consultant, says: "The consumer is king."
Which leads me to the old adage, (developed over 30 years playing music for a living)"The customer is always wrong." |
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