Best Of 2007: Country

10. Kellie Pickler's "Performance" on "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?"
Did you see it? This was actually more amazing than the 2007 CMAs. The answer to the game show's rhetorical moniker turned out to be a resounding "no." Just when you thought that there was nary a blonde who could upstage Miss South Carolina, to do so, such as? Along comes Kellie Pickler's possible career killer. I mean really, people ... isn't this kind of ignorance illegal?

9. Watching Blake Shelton and Band Map Out His Rhapsody Originals taping...
... was even more entertaining than his triumphant performance, which came out sounding like he brought a rowdy roadhouse party over to the recording studio.

8. Just Fall to Pieces by Dave Gleason's Wasted Days
Yeah, I'm somewhat biased. I'll admit it. I've played music with Dave Gleason's Wasted Days before (one time filling in on rhythm guitar at a Hell's Angels party). But he really came into his own on his third album. Oh, you can still hear hints of Gram in the lyrics and bits of Don Rich in the picking, but these songs are truly Dave's. Nobody else in 2007 was blending the fuzzed out distortion of '60s psychedelic rock with the harmonies of Memphis soul and the honky-tonk of Bakersfield. Nobody, but Dave Gleason that is.

7. Sand by Sand
For my ears, this was easily the best country (Okay, country rock) reissue of 2007. Sand were a Portland, Oregon outfit; I first learned of their 1973 self-titled debut over nine years ago from my friend Sam Graw over at Dwell Magazine (he and I used to geek out a lot on obscure '70s country rock). With its perfect songs, airtight harmonies and mellifluous pedal steel, we literally played this record so much that we wore the grooves out. It's that good. Every song here rules. There is zero filler. So finding out that Sand was reissued this year made me a very happy man. Listen to that pedal-steel solo at the end of the first song and try not to smile.

6. Loveless by Japancakes
If Cowboy Troy taught us that country + rap = crap, then Athens, Georgia's Japancakes has showed me that pedal steel + shoegazing = bootgazing, and sorry, C.T., but I prefer the latter. I can't help it! Growing up in northern California during the '90s, we basically had two choices on college radio: shirtless dudes from Seattle in big cargo shorts whining into their microphones about how unfair it was growing up as a middle class, suburban, latchkey kid, or the innovative and artful masterpiece known as My Bloody Valentine's Loveless which inspired me to spend the last decade of the 20th century digging into a slew of U.K. dream pop. Hearing an otherworldly dexterous pedal-steel player approximate MBV's wistful vocals and howling guitars feels like someone plucked this idea from one of my dreams and turned it into a tangible reality.

5. The Year Skateboarding Met Country Music
2007 was the first time I ever noticed my two biggest loves coming together on a couple of occasions (outside of my head). This funny little video by Elizabeth Cook came to my attention after interviewing her in Nashville this year. Oh, and here is some crazy-rad footage of the Halloween party at Burnside in Portland, all set to one of my favorite songs by the late, great Johnny Cash.

4. Heartbreaker's Hall of Fame by Sunny Sweeney
I am so thankful that there's someone in country music keeping hardcore honky tonk alive. After hearing countless, headset-microphone wearing, country-pop stars singing about how great Jesus and the war are, listening to Sunny Sweeney's timeless twang for the first time felt like coming home to an ice cold beer after having worked at a juice bar in a shopping mall all day long. Getting to interview her in Nashville was even better than I could have imagined because we got to bro-down and geek out over old country records.

3. Standing Next to Gram Parsons' Nudie Suit
While visiting the Country Music Hall of Fame this year, I got to finally stand in front of the suit that helped make my favorite Flying Burrito Brother a country music icon. Words can not express what it was like to stand in the reflected glow of its glimmering rhinestones. After staring intensely at it for a while, it kind of spooked me out how all the emblems on this legendary suit -- the weed, pills and girls -- were all a part of his untimely death and how those flames on the legs reminded me of Phil Kaufman burning Parsons' stolen body out at Joshua Tree's Cap Rock, where a crude but endearing little shrine now resides.

2. Interviewing Emmylou Harris
This was even better than standing next to the signature suit of her aforementioned soulmate, especially the part when she told me exactly how they first met. Before the interview, I had been going through another big Emmylou phase, listening to all her old vinyl in my apartment and loading up my Sansa player with her latest box set, so getting to interview her while I was in this headspace was right up there with ...

1. ... Meeting Porter Wagoner
While attending 2007's Fan Fair, my friend John Zarling showed me the true meaning of Southern hospitality and got us backstage passes at the Grand Ole Opry. It was there that I met Porter Wagoner, just months before he passed away. Here is another account of my admiration and experience. Meeting the man in purple wasn't only my number-one country music experience of this past year -- it was probably the best moment in my geeky little music-loving life.

Further Listening:
Rhapsody's Year in Country Playlist