Country Music Industry / Nashville ..What a mess

TommyBoy · Posted 20 Jan 2000 2:24 pm

Well heard today Country Music Sales are off 30% .

Alan Jackson is not gonna tour much in Y2K so he took his band off salary .

Need I say more... Depressing enough .

Alot of good players are sitting @ home or playing for tips in Nashville waiting to see if or when touring will begin .

Only about 1% of the new musicians in town are playing & thats for free just to sit in somewhere .

People are wearing shirts that say
" Nashville Formely Known As Music City "
Info boards in all the music stores are full of people wanting to play .

The Music Stores are full of used equipment on consignment ...HELL I SAW A SESSION 400 THE OTHER DAY FOR $125.00

And Artist are getting Dropped from record labels everyday..

We need some Randy Travis' to pull it out again & put us back to workin...

What a mess !

Joe Casey · From: Weeki Wachee .Springs FL (population.9)

It will get worse before it get's better. Tnn can take a lot of blame ,but the money moguls whose labels flooded the market with pure CRAP are pulling out now that the water has reached it's level. Major Country Stations are about to change formats. Oh well. Country lasted this long it's still bigger then all of us. Toby Kieth did the Tampa Stadium ala Lip sinc and no band.

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cjc

Donny Hinson · From: Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.

Yeah, sidemen are losing their jobs, sales are off 30%, and some unfortunate "money mogul" will have to make ends meet this year on 35 million instead of 50 million...life's tough all around!

Bill Stafford · From: Gulfport,Ms. USA

I still say you should write that book, John. And a "research trip" to Dallas in March would really be nice. See you there?????????

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Jerry Hayes · From: Virginia Beach, Va.

Yeah Sleepy,
Your girl friend likes what it does for me! Now back to the subject at hand. It's such a shame for all of this to have happened to our music. I thought we were going on the right road for a while with groups like Shenandoah, Diamond Rio, and others. The group thing really has worked well for Rock and Roll. They used to say how loyal country fans were but that's not true anymore. Talk about loyalty, the rock people have it all over us. Groups like the Rolling Stones prove that. They can still sell out stadiums. We have an amphitheater here in Virginia Beach which constantly sells out show with old "Has Been" rock acts. It's these d@mn corporations who own these stations and don't give the DJs any input in the programming anymore. We have a station here now which plays "Classic Country" and it's growning more each week. They play a lot of Haggard, and Jones and those boys and it's great. The DJs get to program their own shows and that's the way it used to be. Kenny Dail and I alternate on steel with a band here called The Classic Country Band and they don't play anything newer than 20 years old. The only thing that's holding these guys back is their "Pickin' and Singin". If not for those two things they'd be really good.

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Have a good one! JH U-12

[This message was edited by Jerry Hayes on 21 January 2000 at 07:09 AM.]

Jeff Coffell · From: Killeen Texas

Hey Guys

I'm from central tx and have a little band that only plays traditional country music for the most part. I agree that we all should stick together when it comes to tradition. The rockers do have it on us. We are very fortunat to have a 40 and over age group to play to. We stay very busy and wind up turning down gigs because of our day jobs. By the way our steel player is SKEETER BLACK for Dallas TX. He's great and has gotten me started and excited about the steel. We'll see you guys in DALLAS

KEEP PICKIN TRADITIONAL COUNTRY

Jeff Coffell · From: Killeen Texas

Oh Yeah

Our little bnd is called PLUMB COUNTRY we've been together since 1988 and started out as mostly plumbers and plumbing suppliers. visit our site when you mail me just click on

Bill Terry · From: Bastrop, TX

What I want to know is where is that $125 Session 400????

Johnny Cox · Posted 22 Jan 2000 8:03 pm

Someone said, when all this is over that country music will still be around but not as big. "GOOD" Thats most of the problem. It's too dadgone big now. If there were not 100s of 1000s of dollars to be made by the pop and rock execs, artist and producers then they would leave and it would get back to being about music and not about money. I have no problem with the musicians, they are just trying to make a living. It's the BIG MISIC BUSINESS that is killing country music. They are not happy just reaching the country fans, they want to sell to the pop and rock fans. It's ok if they don't like country music, not everyone likes pop and rock. The pop and rock industry is not doing one single thing to win over the country market. I just don't understand why so called country producers can't be happy with producing country records. But then again we all know why they do it. MONEY, it ruins everything else so why should we be exempt.

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Johnny "Dumplin" Cox
"The Time Jumpers"

John Steele · From: Renfrew, Ontario, Canada

I think Johnny's dead right. The country music audience has been artificially inflated, augmented by lots of people who don't really care about it, but are just camp followers. Next year it will be Limbo Dancing, or gawd-knows-what.
But as musicians, we surf the waves of these ups and downs. We snarl when the music becomes commercialized, but we take the extra gigs. Then we it calms down, and the gigs are fewer, we snarl about that.
Geez, we're snarly.

-John
p.s. play whatcha like (!)

Smiley Roberts · From: Hendersonville,Tn. 37075

S.J.
Good news: Step One Records is still around.
Bad News: Ray Pennington is,now,out of the picture. That's all I know. I wonder what this means for The Big "E"?

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