Another Take on “Is Country Music Dead?”

Randy Meeker sent us this insightful email. Enjoy …

“Another take on “Is Country Music Dead?”

Real Country music is alive and well, it just doesn’t get the attention¸ airplay, TV shows, Radio coverage that it used to. And probably rightly so. The music has changed, as have the instruments we each play have improved. I play pedal steel, lap steel, straight steel and dobro. I also have or do play guitar, baritone guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, mandolin, some double bass, keyboards, and whatever else I can get my hands on.

I love country music, and Americana music, and bluegrass and folk and classic rock, blues and jazz. Does Pedal Steel fit into those genres? You betcha! – however, other instruments sometimes fit better. Music, by its nature, is ever evolving as the genres have to be to accept new submissions into their fold.

What may not have grown or changed is the music fan’s acceptance of those fundamentals. Sometimes as we mature, we focus in on what we like, what speaks to, what expresses how we are feeling down to a point of a single artist or a single group of like artists. Nothing else will satisfy these discriminating listeners. Cross-Over marketing is trying to blend the hype and crowd of aging Rock and Roll markets with the fundamentals of good country (songwriting, vocal mixes that you can hear the words) and penetrate the market of the baby boomers, gen X’ers and more as the demographic and purchasing trends are ever changing.

Add to this that the model of music distribution has completely changed, there are few Big Label promotion campaigns and now the world of Indie Songwriter, Singer, Performer targeting YouTube, iTunes, Reverb Nation and all the other media sources that are web based, there is shrinking need for physical media when so much of people’s musical content is streamed via on-line sources.

All these changes actually have changed the game in favor of country artists, no longer do you have to put up with the antics, shenanigans and shams of Music City. You can grab your computer and put down your own cuts, buy studio quality sidemen online, you can fly your music to a producer that can tweak and twist it around, mix it down and put together an amazing product without having to cough up a ton cash.

However¸ if you want the best, you will still have to travel to Nashville to get the A+ players, pay them triple scale, find a producer that can convince them to work on your project, and rent some very expensive state of the art studio time to get a product that sounds just like all the other songs being produced today. Some things do not change. There is just so much more available today.

Go for it, Life is short, Play Loud!

Randy Meeker”

With warmer weather coming and everybody getting geared up to play the coming season, it’s time for a string and bar sale and we’ll make it good through the last day of March. Order a standard size Cobra Coil bar at the regular price and we’ll throw in 3 sets of Cobra Coil E9th Premium strings for free. It won’t show up in the shopping cart, but when we see an order, we’ll automatically include the 3 sets of Cobra Coil E9th Premium strings for free.

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