Giovedì 18 Giu 2009, 11:50

I don’t know if you’re one to believe in ghosts or not, but one long-gone specter from country music’s past made a return to the charts this week. Gretchen Wilson popped up at #7 on the Top Artists with 17 people playing her music. This is the best showing for Wilson in months, with her generally showing up in the single-digit region. I tried to figure out why, as her new single, “If I Could Do It All Again,” is nowhere to be found on the Top Tracks chart. Her “Here For The Party” album is #10 on the Top Albums chart, so the best I could guess is that a bunch of people celebrated her new single by listening to all her old stuff again.

Poor Gretchen. I don’t know if there’s another country singer who better demonstrates the “chew them up and spit them out” aspects of fame. She burst on to the scene in 2004 and became the biggest thing to hit country music since the Shania Era. She was hot, she sang about kicking ass and redneck pride, she was part of the Muzik Mafia, she was hot, she had multi-platinum albums and an autobiography released in short order, she won CMA and ACM awards, she was hot. Then her singles stopped climbing the charts, the media moved on to something else, and her time as a top artist was over. In 2005. That’s not falling from grace, that’s plummeting off a cliff. At any rate, if the release of a new single can inspire so many people to revisit her music again, it shows that she’s not forgotten.

Elsewhere on the Top Artists chart, cowboy hats rule the roost, with Alan Jackson and George Strait tied for #1 with 22 listeners, and Dwight Yoakam was right behind with 21. Johnny Cash and Brad Paisley tied for third place with 20. Americana/alt-country fans tuned into a couple of Texas singers with new releases, as Steve Earle (14 listeners) and Charlie Robison (13) made respectable showings.

Ashton Shepherd and Lee Ann Womack are tied on the Top Albums Chart, with Sounds So Good and Call Me Crazy picking up a dozen listeners each. The Ashton Shepherd cult here is strong indeed, as those same dozen people play songs from that album without fail every week to keep her at or near the top of the charts. Taylor Swift wishes she had fans that devoted. The Top 10 Albums chart featured several other women who country music routinely ignores. Deana Carter’s Did I Shave My Legs For This? was #5 with 10 listeners, and Ashley Monroe, Dixie Chicks, the aforementioned Wilson and Sunny Sweeney all made the Top 10 with 9.

“Dead Flowers” by Miranda Lambert was the Top Track for the week, with 7 listeners. In the mass of songs tied for second place, we have “Big River” and “I Walk The Line” from Johnny Cash and “He Stopped Loving Her Today” from George Jones. Monroe has a couple of tracks, “Satisfied” and “Can’t Let Go,” and Zac Brown Band shows up with “Whatever It Is.” “People Are Crazy” is Billy Currington’s new single, and the fact that it already has 6 listeners bodes well for the song’s future and validates the title. In the “Walk of Life” wars, Dire Straits‘ version now has 5 listeners, and Shooter Jennings‘ didn’t even chart. Poor Shooter. He’ll have to take comfort in the arms of his actress fiancee.

Freebie Of The Week: I think everybody has found themselves in the position of discovering a band right before they broke up. I still harbor a little bitterness of paying for membership in the Southern Pacific fan club about 3 months before they split. More recently, I saw The Everybodyfields play in Georgia in late 2007 and was immediately taken in by the harmonies of Jill Andrews and Sam Quinn. They had some well-written songs to go with the voices, with heartbreakers mixed in with some absolutely lovely songs, chief among them being “Silver Garden.” While the instrumentation was minimal, they had a great pedal steel player who was content to add texture to the songs rather than drown them in Nashville gloss. I bought a couple of their CDs including their latest release, Nothing Is Okay and waited for their next release. I guess I’ll be waiting for a long time, as they announced their break-up last week to pursue solo projects. Fortunately, they left behind a couple of free live sessions, so you can fill out your catalog or discover a duo that fell just short of generating some real buzz. The two sessions are courtesy of Hear Ya and Daytrotter. Most of these songs are unreleased, probably for an album that will never see the light of day. Of the released songs, “I Can’t Sleep” and “Lonely Anywhere” are recommended, preferably with a shot of whiskey.