At the 9:30 Club last night — with opening sets from Heartless Bastards and BJ Barham from American Aquarium — Old 97’s deviated from some songs’ typical arrangements, just to mix things up. The group switched to minor key for “Nineteen,” darkening a song about young love, and played the usually somber “Valentine” at a faster pace with a rougher style.

Never mind the Monday night gig: Old 97’s frantic “Every Night Is Friday Night” was just what the doctor ordered. Quipped bassist Murry Hammond, it’s “a song which makes us the Cheap Trick of alt-country.”

BJ Barham:

Heartless Bastards:

Old 97’s:

All photos by Erica Bruce

What does the man who said “no” do when everyone around him responds with a “yes”? That’s a question Sturgill Simpson had to ask himself upon embarking on his first recordings after his 2014 breakthrough, Metamodern Sounds In Country Music. That album, which showed a deep understanding of country’s formalities while playing on the individualistic rebelliousness of rock and enlisting the emotional power of soul, pushed the 37-year-old Kentuckian from a respectable spot in Nashville’s crowded talent pool right to its center. Supporting the album on the road with his dazzling band, Simpson became some folks’ rebel savior, furthering the never-ending quest for an authentic American sound. The more people heard him, the more he came to be viewed as a way out: of mainstream country formulas, of Americana’s staid streak, of indie rock’s occasional preciousness. Simpson became the answer to the answers that weren’t adequate anymore: “A Genuine Alternative To Alt Country,” as The New York Times put it just two weeks ago.

Simpson, however, is not an insurrectionist, a nihilist or a punk. He’s a thinker who likes to challenge himself, and is as interested in how the quest for order impacts life and art as he is in the moments that spin that order into pieces. On A Sailor’s Guide To Earth, he uses a highly disruptive yet also utterly conventional life event — the birth of his first son — to frame a song cycle about order and insubordination, the longing to fit in and the persistent urge to break away. “Keep it between the lines,” he advises his boy in the song of that title, a soul breakdown that starts with a military work song. But for Simpson, life’s lines are forever permeable. Just a few tracks later, he’s comforting the kid with a mystic’s vision of diffuse grace: “a universal heart, glowing, flowing, all around you.”

In both “Keep It Between The Lines” and “All Around You,” and throughout the album, Simpson takes as his cue the sounds of the late 1960s, when white and African-American musicians interwove rhythms in classic tracks that reflected the promise of the Civil Rights Movement. Simpson partnered with the historically minded horn section The Dap-Kings for five of the album’s nine tracks, and his own band, especially the organ player Bobby Emmett and the stellar guitarist Laur Joamets, fully embrace the funky mood. “Brace For Impact (Live A Little)” goes for the greasy country blues of Tony Joe White; “Welcome To Earth (Pollywog)” begins as a tender ballad only to jump into a serious Memphis groove halfway through. This is one way Simpson challenges those listeners who liked what he did last time; his country inflections remain strong, but without becoming a full-fledged blue-eyed soul singer, he’s insisting that his roots grow in the same ground where Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding once stood.

The album’s other major challenge surfaces within its storylines. Making his life an object lesson, Simpson reflects upon the ordering forces he sought as a source of aid, notably the Navy, where he spent three years rising from pollywog — a newbie — to shellback, a sailor who has crossed the Equator. His view of the military, like that of other post-Iraq troubadours like Hayes Carll and Corb Lund, is pro-troops but critical of policy, and A Sailor’s Guide ends with “Call To Arms,” a blistering protest song that has Simpson yowling, “This bull****’s got to go!” Other songs confront how soldiers get sucked into drug addiction (a subject his friend John Prine made essential to Americana music with 1971’s “Sam Stone”) and, in an empathetic reworking of Nirvana‘s “In Bloom,” how ubiquitous “pretty guns” help shape the kinds of boys to grow up to enter to the military. Interspersed with Simpson’s spiritual musings about interconnectedness, his sailors’ stories are relentlessly honest and sometimes brutal.

Yet Simpson always keeps his biggest challenges for himself, and throughout this openly personal work (which he self-produced instead of turning to his friend and usual partner, Dave Cobb), he recognizes fatherhood as a different kind of call to arms — or perhaps, a call to become disarmed. The string-kissed “Oh Sarah” communicates serious pathos about his marital inadequacies; in “Breakers Roar,” another introspective ballad and the closest thing on this seafarer’s diary to a lullaby, Dan Dugmore’s steel guitar forms iridescent pools around Simpson’s solitude. The song, so pretty, is about depression. But tenderness — for his son, for his wife, and maybe even for those many strangers who have come to love what he does — brings Simpson back. “Open up your heart and you’ll find love all around,” he sings. Doing that, he finds a new way into “yes.”

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

In this 2003 session, Haggard and his guitar (gifted to him by Randy Travis) join David Dye in the World Cafe studio. Haggard reminisces about his childhood and about playing gigs all over Bakersfield, Calif., where he was born: he says he performed “bar room music” by day and rock ‘n’ roll in the clubs at night. The music coming out of his hometown at the time challenged a musician so much more, he says, than did the music of Nashville. In another interview highlight, Haggard talks about his belief that politicians need to stop dancing around real problems and just come out with the truth — a feeling that still resonates for so many Americans.

Join us in remembering the great Merle Haggard. Listen back to the complete 30-minute interview in the player above.

Copyright 2016 WXPN-FM. To see more, visit WXPN-FM.

Judging from the way commentators have been carrying on about the male-led renaissance of defiantly old-school outlaw country (you can get the gist from this GQ piece declaring Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson “Country Badasses Who are Shaking Up the Nashville Establishment”), it would appear that the scene is in sore need of heroines. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t good candidates around. Margo Price is the most promising one; for a little while now, she’s been grinding it out beneath the radar, fashioning her vintage sensibilities and spirited persona into a winning combination, and this promises to be the year people take notice.

There was a time when Price put most of her energy into fronting a chooglin’ roots rock outfit called Buffalo Clover, performing throwback country on the side with Margo Price and the Price Tags, a loose collective of Nashville talent. When the Price Tags’ bookings picked up, thanks in no small part to her flair for projecting honky-tonk realness, Price was savvy enough to see the potential in working that musical angle.

The crafting of an artist’s narrative and image — what autobiographical details and creative inclinations are accentuated; whether the music’s framed as a cultural birthright or the fruit of sweat equity, inspiration or willful nonconformity — certainly plays a role in how her output’s received, and by whom. Price draws a little bit from column A, but also columns B, C and D, a combination that backs up her bona fides as a country-singing underdog and indie darling in the making. To start with, there was a farm in her family, not to mention a great-uncle who penned an early hit for Reba McEntire. Upon moving to Nashville, Price and her bandmate/husband Jeremy Ivey scraped by for years, supplementing their bar gigs by waiting tables, teaching dance classes and installing siding. Here’s the real kicker: They sold their car and hocked her wedding ring to foot the bill for recording at Memphis’s mythic Sun Studios, only to emerge with an album they couldn’t find a label for. Their last hope was Third Man Records; mercifully, Jack White’s outfit snatched it up.

It’s a compelling story, but the even more remarkable thing is how Price harnesses its emotional authority on her 10-song debut, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter. In the six-minute epic “Hands of Time,” she unfurls a tale of disheartening setbacks and demeaning indignities, both lived and imagined, starting with a sigh of resignation and clawing her way to stubborn resilience in a string-swathed climax. She’s spun a whiskey-soaked night into a barroom testament to the temporary relief of heartache (“Hurtin’ [On the Bottle]”) and a brush with the law into a jailhouse lament of forfeited freedom (“Weekender”). “My old man, he ain’t got the cash to even go my bail,” she moans over a brisk country shuffle. In “This Town Gets Around,” she’s feisty and indignant, taking on such music business shadiness as the unwanted sexual advances of powerful men, scoffing, “Well, there’s a saying goes, ‘It’s not who you know, but it’s who you blow that’ll put you in the show.'” You can feel her burning her fortitude as fuel with every world-weary line.

While Price and her crack band revive an array of hard-edged country sounds from the ’60s and ’70s, leaning on robust guitar twang, her postures and performances occasionally echo a superstar of that era: Loretta Lynn. Witness the likeness to Lynn in Price’s delivery on “About To Find Out,” as the younger singer’s tart tone and lusty, on-the-beat directness dress down a deceitful blowhard with tough talk and needling wit. Price proves she can muster a no-nonsense vocal attack like some of her idols, but she also sings with fantastic elasticity and self-awareness. What she’s putting out there is powerful and rings true.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

It’s easy to understand why other singers took to his songs — Stapleton writes lyrics that sound classic but never dated — but his softly creaking voice gives them the home they deserve. And even though those songs stand plenty well on their own, it’s nice to have a little support. When Stapleton stepped behind the Tiny Desk to play selections from Traveller, he was joined by his wife Morgane on harmony vocals. Between patient, detailed songs of devotion to love, Los Angeles and liquor, they paused for banter about the summer heat in D.C. and the large number of guitars Chris owns (“Not supposed to tell that part,” he said to Morgane).

Watch him hide behind a large hat, a beard and a battered vintage guitar; watch her smile at him during “More Of You” with a combination of admiration and affection. Like the songs themselves, their performance is full of private moments worth sharing widely.

Traveller is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon)

Set List

• “More Of You”
• “When The Stars Come Out”
• “Whiskey And You”

Credits

Producers: Jacob Ganz, Morgan Walker; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Morgan Walker, Lani Milton; Assistant Producer: Mina Tavakoli; photo by Lani Milton/NPR

For more Tiny Desk Concerts subscribe to our podcast.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Contemporary country music has gotten an especially bad rap in recent years, routinely dismissed by outside observers as mindless, artless, suburban party fare. If ever there was a band equipped to challenge those characterizations, it’s Old Dominion: singer Matthew Ramsey, guitarist and keyboardist Trevor Rosen, guitarist Brad Tursi, bassist Geoff Sprung and drummer Whit Sellers. Several of them have been buddies since their college days in Virginia (hence their adopting one of the state’s nicknames as a moniker), and all boast successes as Music Row songsmiths and sidemen, credits that made industry types — including their producer Shane McAnally, one of Nashville’s leading hit-writers and savviest musical minds — take notice.

The title of Old Dominion’s major-label debut Meat And Candy refers to a desire to mix seriousness and pleasure, but while there’s heft to these 11 tracks, it doesn’t come in the form of weighty subject matter. The meat is found in the first-rate craftsmanship that these guys bring to one of popular music’s abiding themes: savoring fleeting pleasures.

The cover art — a pinup girl displaying a surreal array of gumdrops and marshmallows, ham and meatloaf at a vintage candy counter — calls to mind late-’90s pop-rock irony and impishness, the sort of thing you might see on a Blink-182 cover (see: Enema Of The State) or hear in a Barenaked Ladies lyric. These are helpful reference points, too, considering that the five members of Old Dominion — one of country music’s few current, self-contained bands — write clever songs, work in various combinations and sometimes with outside collaborators, flesh out their own taut and tuneful arrangements, and attack their parts with playful precision. Plus, in Ramsey they have a singer whose conversational phrasing and witty inflections can split the difference between flirtatious and flip.

Some of the lyrics summon fresh language for youthful obsession. In “Crazy, Beautiful, Sexy,” Ramsey’s smooth-talking protagonist wants to “be the stamp from the club that won’t wash off your hand,” an image of persistence that’s as precise as it is unexpected. His exasperated delivery of wet-blanket lines in “Said Nobody” sets up a chorus’ worth of wry philosophizing about how unlikely anyone would be to turn down a fun night. “We Got It Right,” “Till It’s Over” and “Wrong Turns” all celebrate ephemeral moments, emphasizing sensuality over sentimentality, but the band really makes its point with “Song For Another Time,” an anthemic number that name-checks generations of popular odes to getting caught up in the moment; it’s a songbook populated by Neil Diamond and Tom Petty, Van Morrison and John Mellencamp, George Strait and Katy Perry. That’s the lineage Old Dominion wants to claim.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

At 19 and 20, Madison Marlow and Tae Dye aren’t typical pop undergrads. They met at 16 because they shared a vocal coach, and were ambitious enough to regularly drive between their Texas and Oklahoma hometowns to collaborate. (Supportive parents helped.) At 18, they moved to Nashville and signed a development deal with Big Machine, the label whose most successful artist, Taylor Swift, has embodied the spirit of white middle-class young adulthood for nearly a decade. Maddie & Tae have been carefully groomed to be different than Swift, however — the duo’s sound is firmly rooted in the country harmonies and acoustic instrumentation that Swift has abandoned, and its songs stress the themes Swift only occasionally, if brilliantly, touches upon: friendship and female rivalry, girl-power independence and, most of all, the emotional challenges that arise when kids upon whom hopes and dreams have been pinned find themselves at the moment of impact with their own futures.

Start Here, released on Big Machine’s affiliate label Dot, is a historically minded set that strongly connects with the realities of life for today’s high-achieving (and, let’s be honest, privileged) kids, who have more freedom than ever but also more expectations pinned to them. In “Waitin’ On A Plane,” the tear-jerking ballad “Fly” and “Downside Of Growing Up,” Maddie & Tae tap into the story of arrival that’s always been key to country’s small-town-to-the-big-city mythos. Co-writing with mentor Aaron Scherz and a handful of top Nashville songwriters, they play upon familiar imagery while livening it up with telling details. (When Maddie sings of wishing her dad were nearby in “Downside,” you can just picture the leaky kitchen sink in her new apartment.) Romance is part of this moment, but Maddie & Tae’s love songs are almost always about something else, too: being outdoorsy in “Shut Up And Fish,” loving life on the road in “No Place Like You,” being queen of a neighborhood in “Your Side Of Town.” Romance never solves things for Maddie & Tae. It’s a good part of a busy life; sometimes it’s not worth it. The most enduring romance celebrated here is the creative friendship embodied by the duo’s flawless, mobile harmonies.

Producer Dan Huff, known for guiding some of country’s most pop-wise artists (Faith Hill, Keith Urban, Hunter Hayes), highlights the interplay between Maddie & Tae’s voices, while also honoring their professed main source of inspiration, the Dixie Chicks, in tracks that have plenty of twang and open space. “Girl In A Country Song,” the sassy protest against bro-country sexism that gained the duo its first hit, sits comfortably here among ballads and light rockers that are also playful, but which don’t play as comedy. (“Shut Up And Fish,” the album’s other novelty song, works by capturing the spirit of a vintage Grand Ole Opry skit.) The production is bright and ready for the radio, but the songs always return to a tone of reflection and gently nurtured hope. Maddie & Tae have a shining future before them, but this is an album the pair can only make once — at this age, in this special circumstance, with nothing fully resolved. “It’s my time to paint a little streak on a blue sky,” they sing in “Waitin’ On A Plane.” Those streaks only last a while, but the changes they mark are what make a young adult her own person.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

But Musgraves also kicked off her set by showcasing four songs from the new Pageant Material. That album, her second, has its own share of anthemic odes to individuality — including the title track, which Musgraves performed at the Tiny Desk. But she also took the time to showcase some of Pageant Material‘s subtler material: “High Time” and the gorgeous ballad “Late for the Party” both sway sweetly in the hands of the singer and her impeccably dressed band.

At the end of it all, of course, comes “Follow Your Arrow,” punctuated by all the crowd participation you’d expect from a song with “Make lots of noise” in its chorus. Musgraves made a point of showcasing her gentler side in this Tiny Desk Concert, but as it so often does, rowdiness prevailed in the end.

Set List

• “High Time”
• “Family Is Family”
• “Late To The Party”
• “Pageant Material”
• “Follow Your Arrow”

Credits

Producers: Bob Boilen, Morgan Walker; Audio Engineer: Neil Tevault; Videographers: Morgan Walker, Colin Marshall, Lani Milton; Assistant Producer: Elena Saavedra Buckley; photo by Lydia Thompson/NPR

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The Knoxville native ought to make further inroads into both camps with The Blade, a canny and consistent star turn that’s equally at home in mournfully evocative ballads like the title track and in irresistible rippers like “Winning Streak.” The latter could have rocked roadhouses in the ’50s, the ’70s, the ’90s or beyond, and it’s a perfect encapsulation of Monroe’s place on a continuum of smart, playful women in country stretching back well beyond Dolly Parton.

Monroe convincingly embodies many familiar perspectives on The Blade, while still offering fresh lyrical spins: She’s the optimist who’s through with obstacles (the peppy album-opener “On To Something Good”), the cynic who itches to leave home behind (“Dixie”), the wanderer who can’t help but leave emotional carnage in her wake (“I’m Good At Leavin'”), the hard-bitten sinner with nowhere left to turn (“If The Devil Don’t Want Me”).

All the album’s missing is a splashy, conversation-starting novelty single like “Weed Instead Of Roses,” which provided a huge jolt on Monroe’s terrific 2013 solo breakthrough, Like A Rose. But The Blade aims to do more than start conversations; it’s here to win hearts en route to cementing Monroe’s status as a superstar. It’s sure to do the former, so don’t be surprised if the latter falls into place behind it.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Davis and Richards — the Washington Post pop-music critic — began the indie-folk project Paint Branch in December 2010, releasing their first tunes under the name in 2012. This time, they sounded different, but the partnership felt the same.

“It seemed natural to work together again,” says Davis, 38, who’s also played in D.C. bands Georgie James and Title Tracks. “Chris said, ‘Hey, whenever you want to start your country band, let me know.’ We tried it, and it worked.”

On June 15, Paint Branch released its second set of recordings, a self-titled EP that recalls some of the recognizable sounds of Davis and Richards’ earlier work — two are new versions of songs that first appeared on the band’s full-length debut, I Wanna Live — but with a deeper exploration of folk, country and lyricism.

“We have a chemistry, because we’ve done this before… but it is still different, because this wasn’t the way we were writing songs before,” Davis says. “The way we are writing in Paint Branch is a distinct thing.”

The EP’s “a little bit country” feel isn’t just found in its music: Paint Branch recorded the release near Springfield, Virginia, on property owned by the duo’s pal, Elmer Sharp, who plays drums on the record. They tracked the songs in a shed fashioned into a studio.

Davis’ desire to hone in on songcraft is particularly evident in the EP’s opening track, “Patented Plagiarists” (listen below), which sets a tone that’s both mellow and subtly aggressive.

“The theme to that song is sort of in praise of people who do, and don’t say,” Davis says. “I like people — and maybe even strive to be someone — who just go and do it and don’t seek congratulations just because [they] showed up.”

But Davis acknowledges that his song could be heard in other ways.

“It’s hard to explain your own song, because hopefully the lyrics do that for you. But they don’t always,” the songwriter says. “What makes sense to you is a personal thing… and everyone projects their own interpretation onto the song.”

Paint Branch plays Red Onion Records July 19 and Paperhaus (as part of the In It Together Fest) July 30.