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Country Beef: What's Stewing in Nashville and Beyond

Welcome to Country Beef, a regular peek into what’s going on in Nashville and beyond .

On a recent trip to Nashville, I heard a lot of gossip about some of our favorite stars. Most of it wasn't true (or so I'd like to believe), but it occurred to me that country fans have an insatiable appetite when it comes to the latest goings on in the lives of their favorite country performers. Gossip aside, here's a look into what's going on with some of the biggest names in country -- Tim, Faith, Taylor. Get the idea?

Video: Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift recently sat down with MTV News to discuss her new album, as well as various other matters of the heart and mind. Taylor-Tay, bringing the juxtaposition hard with a black turtleneck cropping her insane and intimidating blond locks, takes some veiled shots at her Prince-Charming-who-wasn't (aka Joe Jonas Put on Blast Chapter XXIII), and talks about her love of writing songs ... a love seemingly equaled only by dating and getting dumped by sleepy-eyed virgin pop icons and then blowing up their spot on MySpace.

Swift says that she would love for one of her songs to be used as the hook to a hip-hop song. According to the twang prodigy, "something people would not be expecting at all." Thus ruining the surprise factor of a blitzkrieg Plies/Tay Swift collabo, seeing as how we actually are expecting it now. Which makes this dreamer a little sad. "Love Story (A Gal & A Goon Remix)" sounded promising.

Further Viewing:
Taylor Swift Interview [MTV.com]

Nashville Wrap-Up: I've Got the Post-CMA Blues

Just put my feet back on terra firma after a hectic plane trip back from Nashville. But the hassles of missing luggage, serious turbulence in and out of Houston (where I changed planes) and over-packed carriers have done nothing to dull the glow of my trip to the CMA Awards. And you know, I miss Nashville already!

CMA Awards Nominees: Pirates, Poets, Ex-Girlfriends & Blondes

As the Country Music Association gets ready to bestow their highest honor on a handful of hopefuls on November 12, let's take a look at some of the categories and wax theoretic on this year's CMA Award nominees.

CMT's Todd Hedrick and Rhapsody's Country Editor Linda Ryan, weigh in on the CMA nominees and give their two-cents on who should win, and who will most likely win. We will try to separate the hope from the hype. The stallions from the ponies. The hits from the hicks. You get the idea.

[Click the "Continue Reading..." link to listen to a playlist featuring the music discussed in this post.]

The Reverend Peyton and Too Slim Make White Blues Matter

Maybe it just means I’m turning into an old grump, but 2008 will go down in history as the first year in memory that I actually wound up liking two albums by bands of white people that hit Billboard’s blues chart. First there was Too Slim and the Tail Draggers, from Seattle. Then there was The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, from Indiana. Both are trios, both spend a lot of time on the road, both play guitar better than they sing, both record for small labels, both I never heard of before this year, and both like to eat.

Kid Rock's Big Wheels Keep on Turning

Maybe it’s about time people stopped underestimating Kid Rock. Just a year ago, you might have been forgiven for thinking he was a has-been – and if so, it wouldn’t have been the first time the charts later proved you wrong. I mean, how many Kid Rock albums has this happened with? Months after it seemed a lost cause, last fall’s Rock N Roll Jesus wound up in resurrection mode this summer, just like his long-tailed 1998 breakthrough and career album Devil Without a Cause, and 2001’s “Picture”-spurred Cocky before it. Buoyed first by a late spring tour with Reverend Run, Peter Wolf and whatever street survivors own the Lynyrd Skynyrd logo these days, then by a late-breaking single that crossed from country -- Kid’s fallback format -- to pop and rock radio, Jesus wound up re-lodging itself in the top 10 around Independence Day. The seasonal bent of “All Summer Long” -- an appropriately lazy, unabashedly manipulative and eventually inescapable late-'70s-Seger-style reminiscence of pre-Internet-era teenaged deflowering and marijuana consumption in northern Michigan that makes no attempt to disguise its “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Werewolves of London” steals – proved such perfect timing that two knock-off cover versions wound up charting to fill the digital-sales gap. And this week, Kid’s own Atlantic-era catalog finally makes its digital debut – exclusively on Rhapsody.

Live: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival

It’s Friday at rush hour, and the show has only begun on the N Judah train line. Regular commuters clutch their briefcases, terrified, as a crowd of rowdy interlopers -- many in cowboy shirts, many in no shirts at all -- pack the car. The route is headed toward Golden Gate Park, where the eighth annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival commenced this afternoon, and two of the car's more enthusiastic riders are stone-giddy about the opening day headliner: "Robert f*ck*ng Plant, man," one says to the other in the blown-mind inflection that's the universal dialect of the three-day event. San Francisco might host a slew other open-air music festivals, but Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a multi-stage festival of roots rock, country and bluegrass (paid for by San Francisco venture capitalist Warren Hellman) is probably the one that most accurately reflects the eccentricities of its host city. Starting with Robert f*ck*ng Plant.

Legendary and Glamorous Southern Soulsters Live Up to Their Adjectives

Even in the grits-and-gravy world of chitlin circuit Southern soul, the Legendary Moody Scott may not genuinely qualify as a bona fide legend. And likewise, I don’t doubt that there are more glamorous singers out there somewhere than the Glamorous Bertha Payne. But that they bill themselves thus only makes their homemade records more endearing.

The Jayhawks: Hollywood Town Hall Meeting

It seems like everyone has one of those records, the album that caught them in crosshairs, at just the right moment. Usually the providence of 15-year-olds, it's some piece of music that connects in a nervy, serendipitous, oversized way to become not only a favorite, but a bellwether for life itself -- from personal style and social appointment. In a recent interview with Brian Wilson we talked about his, the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," a tune that he listened to obsessively as a youth and claims changed his life. For me, the moment came standing in (now defunct) Blue Moon Records, Traverse City, Michigan, with the Jayhawks' Hollywood Town Hall on the earphones. Taking in the sleeve -- black and white photos of a band that oozed nerd-tough, corduroy-sheathed Midwesterness, liner notes by Joe Henry (brilliant in themselves, you can read them on a similarly obsessed fan's Myspace profile here) -- I was no longer doomed to the fate of a rudderless, pimple-crusted teenager at the insufferable whims of the program director at Z-93 "Rock of Mid-Michigan."  I was born again. All I needed was that record and a new (used) corduroy jacket.

Alan Jackson's Country, Right or Wrong

For some reason, I thought 2008 might be the year that country music helped articulate the Democrats’ Southern strategy. Guess I was wrong – for one thing, the Dems turned out not to have a Southern strategy. (Thanks, John Edwards!) Then John Rich, who not too long ago was explicitly circumventing the two-party system in “Love Train,” turned out to be music’s most sycophantic mouthpiece for certain corrupt and dangerous serial liars. Toby Keith’s embrace of Obama was admittedly unexpected good news, and it was stirring to hear Brooks & Dunn’s great “Only in America” after Obama’s convention speech (even if the duo’s not necessarily on his side). But none of this has really translated as new songs; my favorite politics moment of the country year is still Alan Jackson fondly remembering “Georgia boy just like me” Jimmy Carter in “1976.” Which doesn’t quite make up for "If Jesus Walked the World Today,” where Alan asserts that a modern-day Son of God would be a Chevy-driving hillbilly, and "preach in some little country church, outside the city." Wait, let me guess – he wouldn’t be a community organizer either, right? What bigoted bull. But at least it gives me a peg with which to deal with Jackson’s six-months-old Good Time album. (Neat how I did that, huh?)