Country Mike Blog

Carter's Chord

Mike Sudhalter  |  December 6, 2007

As I wrote in my last blog, I'm not much into Christmas music. But I was pretty impressed with a new female trio, Carters Chord performing their rendition of "Santa Baby.".

Their secular single, "Young Love" - not a cover of The Judds song - although that would have been OK, is very good. This trio is on the ShowDog Nashville label owned by Toby Keith, and they seem to have a great balance of traditional and contemporary sounds.

Hopefully, this group will make a big impact in 2008.

How long before West Virginia's favorite son, Brad Paisley covers the state's favorite song, "Take Me Home Country Roads." The video to his most recent song "Letter To Me" is pretty neat. It features Paisley returning to a reunion at his high school near Wheeling, W.V.

How about Country Weekly having just a page on the late Hank Thompson, but a big cover feature on Ronnie Dunn and Kix Brooks on their "interests" of collecting Russian art and winemaking, respectively. I thought I was picking up a magazine about country music, not about lifestyles of Nashville's rich and famous.

The latest issue, however, had nice articles on the late Chris LeDoux's band, Western Underground, and Merle Haggard's bluegrass album. Now performing with Western Underground is Dustin Evans, a longtime and well-known independent country artist who hails from South Dakota.

So you've got to give credit where its due.

Would someone bring back recitation songs? I've been listening to a lot of Red Sovine songs. Right now, "Giddy-Up Go" is playing. I don't see these types of tunes returning. I don't see the country music audience wanting to hear them, but hey, we can be nostalgic about the past, right?