Pop with a Tennessee Twang

To hear some people tell it, country music is at a crossroads. One path leads to the Next Big Thing. The other runs off a cliff. Those people are wrong, of course. Country music is an entertainment Godzilla, a self-perpetuating creature that, over the past 40 years, has descended from the hills to the mainstream, and it doesn’t seem inclined to return. But as Nashville morphs its chief export into a more universally palatable product, it alienates a share of its customers. Some purists bemoan the abundance of “hat acts,” those interchangable, pearl-toothed baritones in boots and tight Wranglers. Meanwhile, innovators and traditionalists alike find themselves left off playlists. Maybe things are getting better; maybe not.

A Buck Owens bonfire

In another life, Buck Owens might have been a master of the blues, or perhaps a rock ‘n’ roller of the first order. As it happened, he developed a raw, real, instantly identifiable strain of country music all his own - but then he was raised on the Texas-Oklahoma border in the middle of the Great Depression, poor and white. If he was going to play music at all, it was going to be country music. Not that he didn’t gnaw on the fence a little. Lord knows, Buck angered a few DJs around the nation with his country-music interpretations of songs like "Johnny B. Goode." One station even threw all of Buck's song in a big pile and burned them.

That's the price he paid for an open mind.

Like guitarist, like son

Gene Moles made a name for himself recording for acts as eclectic as Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Jimmy Thomason and the Ventures. He made one more notable contribution to the Bakersfield music scene: His son, Eugene Moles, whose Nashville band has selected a name with a familiar ring: Bakersfield. And the roots of Bakersfield (the band) run deeper than just the Moles connection. Now, if Eugene Moles, Dennis Payne and Alvis Barnett just had a record deal.

Bakersfield Sound, the sequel

It's been almost10 years since Buck Owens or Merle Haggard had a No. 1 song, but their sound is alive and well. There's plenty of Telecaster twang in Nashville these days, but for a real slice of Bakersfield, check out Austin, Texas. Ask about the Derailers' version of "My Heart Skips a Beat" or Dale Watson's Merlesque "Nashville Rash." Maybe there's more of a connection there than meets the ear. "Austin, Lubbock, Dallas, San Antonio - they all seem to connect to the Bakersfield Sound," said Derailers lead singer Tony Villanueva. "So many of the Bakersfield guys were Texas immigrants, people who shared that spirit of hard working people. Hot weather, hard work and hot licks - that was Bakersfield, and that's Texas, too."

Like a house afire

If the members of Bakersfield’s hottest country music band look a little haggard these days, there is good reason for it. The six members of Big House have been across the country and back a half-dozen times since their debut album, “Big House,” hit the charts. Bleary-eyed or not, Big House bandmates will have to buck up: They're in demand like no country music act from Bakersfield since the Buckaroos. So why do their musical roots seem to emanate from Memphis as much as Bakersfield?

The sincerest form of flattery

When Buck Owens first heard the Tex-Mexy strains of “All You Ever Do is Bring Me Down,” his ears did a double-take. That wasn’t his voice on the radio, but it sure might have been. Radio listeners all over Bakersfield thought the same thing, and some phoned Owens’ station, KUZZ, to say so. A few wanted to congratulate Owens on his new song. The responsible musicians, of course, were the Mavericks, the Miami-based country band that makes no secret of its collective affection for Owens' “shuffle” style.

Too country for country

That's the kind of complaint Dale Watson gets these days. So be it, he says. Watson isn’t buying into cowboy-pop, that Velveeta version of country music that seems to have thoroughly infiltrated radio airwaves these days. Watson is a traditionalist of the highest order, a man of simple values and simple songs who wouldn’t mind seeing Nashville Incorporated dry up and blow away - just as long as it leaves behind the “fringe” purists with whom he most closely identifies. Watson, a 34-year-old singer-guitarist-songwriter from Pasadena, Texas, is now staking a claim to the legacy of Merle and Buck with an original sound that manages to capture the stylistic nuances of both.