COUNTRY CRUNCH

I’ve noticed that most of the newly released albums by the current crop of country artists are pretty much panned by The Times’ pop music critics. There’s a reason for the poor reviews: Almost all of the material coming out of Nashville these days is pure unadulterated crap.

As a musician and songwriter, I tend to listen carefully to how songs are crafted (key word). The music from Music City USA is being written for nothing less than mass consumption and raking in big bucks. There is, for the most part, no soul, no passion, no substance. It is all “cookie-cutter country,” the disco of the ‘90s, if you will.

You’ll hardly ever hear songs as deep and moving as the works of Merle Haggard, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Harlan Howard or Gram Parsons. Those folks were (and are) lyrical geniuses, never production-line serfs.

But country music is still alive and well. You’ll find it in Austin, Texas, and in L.A. too, via such people as Dwight Yoakam, Nanci Griffith and Lucinda Williams, et al. You’ll find it every year at GramFest in Joshua Tree. Good country is still out there. It’s just moved slightly west.

JIM REEVES

Whittier