★★★
- Gunslinging Rambler: 👍🏻
- Honey Babe: 👍🏻
- Shoot Dem: 🤷♂️
- Our Life: 🤷♂️
- Red Sky Morning: 🤷♂️
- Rappalachia 6: 👍🏻
- Ain’t No Stopping: 👍🏻
- Down By the River, Down By the Sea: 🤷♂️
- Country Blues: 🤷♂️
- Western: 👍🏻
- Bound to Ride: 🤷♂️
- No Going Back: 👍🏻
- Crossbow: 👍🏻
- Dollar Boss: 🤷♂️
- Till My Last Shot: 👍🏻
After listening to and really enjoying some old country yesterday, in the form of Waylon Jennings’ Honky Tonk Heroes, I decided today that I wanted to hear some Blue Grass. I spent about 15 minutes trying to find an album to listen to, and eventually sort of gave up. Bluegrass is like Jazz for me, in that I absolutely love a lot of it, but I know very little about what artists or albums or even sub-genres I like. So I searched around for the best Bluegrass albums, and settled on one I can’t even remember the name of now. But it was the first Bluegrass album to win a Grammy. (Side note: Bluegrass wasn’t even a category for the Grammys until 1989! That seems crazy to me.) Anyway, that album wasn’t available for streaming on Apple Music or Spotify. Then I poked around some more and decided I’d listen to New Grass Revival’s self-titled album, except that wasn’t available either. Searching for whatever the original album I wanted to listen to was and New Grass Revival, I found a couple of the artists’ other albums and then a crap load of compilation albums, but totally struck out in what I was actually looking for.
Then I decided I’d listen to Ganstagrass, because it’s contemporary so it should be available streaming. Then I tried to find the album that Long Hard Times to Come is on because it’s the theme song to Justified (which is how I discovered Gangstagrass to being with), but it turns out that that song isn’t on any of their albums. At this point I threw my hands in the air and listened to Rappalachia because it was their album with the best name.
I liked Rappalachia, but not nearly as much as I’d expected. after a couple of tracks I came to realize that the more Bluegrass-y and less Hip-Hop-y it was, the more I liked it. I realize that that’s essentially only because I was in a Bluegrass mood and not a Hip-Hop which is kind of unfair to dock it points for. But I’ve done it anyway. I’ll probably listen to more Gangstagrass for this blog because I liked the album enough, and I love that their combining two genres that have no business being combined. Next time I’ll try to be in the right headspace for it first, though.
