Just what is country music and where is it going are two questions which cross the lips of discerning country fans every once in a blue, lonesome moon. While the likes of Faith Hill, Shania Twain and the soon-to-retire Garth Brooks sell albums in their millions, reaching out to people who like safe, sentimentalised, saccharine music, there is another strand of country music running alongside trying to keep up. Alt.country (or Americana, American Roots, Insurgent or Hardcore Country) is unlikely to overtake its commercial counterpart, however. Part of the reason for this is that alt.country music has a harsher, more distinctive edge, musically and lyrically, and is therefore unpalatable to the public at large. Poor lambs.
In Irish terms, there are very few music acts that could safely be termed alt.country. Recent Irish contenders include The Great Western Squares (they looked as strange as their music was genuine) and El Diablo (they connect with Gram Parsons as much as Will Oldham). Elder lemons such as Niall Toner and The Fleadh Cowboys could be numbered as staunch keepers of the flame, but beyond this paltry amount you'd be hard pressed to come up with more names - quite amazing when you consider how strong a background country music has in Ireland. Which makes it all the more interesting that an underground fanzine and a new country music club look set to alter preconceptions about the genre.
"If you had told me in the Radiators From Space days that within a few years I'd be listening to country music, I probably would have punched you in the face," says Steve Averill, the man behind the journalist/musician nom de plume Steve Rapid, all those smart, art-designed U2 album/single covers you have in your collection, the fanzine Lonesome Highway and the soon-to-be-up-and-running hardcore country music club Twang (at The Shelter @ Vicar Street, Dublin). "It's as strange to me that I really like this music as it is to people who think it strange. But I wouldn't be listening to the music if I didn't find something that I really relate to and enjoy."
Many moons ago, Averill used to be a bona fide punk rocker, interested in the music of the moment. Then he changed from The Clash, Sex Pistols and 999 to electronic and noise experimentalists such as Cabaret Voltaire, Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails. During this particular musical phase, he started to listen to early new country music by the likes of Dwight Yoakam and Rank & File. "Whatever was in it brought me into it," he says. "I've never liked country mainstream - couldn't stand The Eagles or Kenny Rogers, and so on. But when I began to hear all these nasal voices singing, I saw a rawness and an energy there that I would have related to punk. From Dwight Yoakam I went to a guy called Vernon Oxford, and then to Hank Williams Snr. "If you listen to the lyrics and the music, there's the same kind of feeling and honesty that is in punk. That's when I began to explore the music a little bit more deeply."
In tandem with his passion for music is an interest in writing about it. He has written regularly for Hot Press for some years, supplementing his obsession by spearheading various fanzines along the way. Lonesome Highway is his latest, a 1,500-plus print run free-sheet (Averill reckons there isn't a market for it) that covers its costs through sponsorship and advertising. Handed out at gigs and available from various record shops in Dublin, it's a labour of love for Averill and his team (RTE Radio One broadcaster Sandy Harsch, Anna Livia broadcaster Kirsty Fitzsimons, Ronnie Norton and Sean Patrick Donlan) to bring reviews and interviews to people who don't get mainstream press coverage. "We attempt to bring some kind of design sense to Lonesome Highway but in some ways it's fanzine anti-design. We try to bring out four issues a year of face-to-face or phone interviews - and none of it is re-written press releases. If, for instance, no one is touring then one issue might take a little bit longer to get out."
Averill thinks that only fringe country acts are credible enough for rock aficionados. Cult acts, from Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris to Lambchop, Will Oldham and Willard Grant Conspiracy have a querulous view of life, one that is subjective, confessional and resolutely genuine. And people younger than your average Garth Brooks fan are getting into country music through the wide parameters of Americana, through coverage in music magazines such as NME, Uncut, Mojo and Q and through essentially underground ventures such as Averill's.
Which brings us to another avenue for appreciation of the music: Lonesome Highway's club presentation, Twang. "Whenever I go to gigs, the house PA has stuck on a totally inappropriate CD that had nothing to do with the music," says Averill. "So we said to promoters that if we went on before the main act we'd set the atmosphere." Support slots to Steve Earle, Sonny George and Gillian Welch followed, with the Lonesome Highway team subsequently asked to gather their collective CD cases and present themselves as a four-pronged full-blown attack.
The result is a club where, in Averill's words, "people can get to hear their favourites and new music they haven't heard that they might be interested in. We're also trying to get a dance thing going, an opening for Texas two-stepping and other close contact dancing. It'll be an environment where you can go along, have a chat, have a beer.
"Line dancing? They can do it on the street! The space isn't there, and we wouldn't encourage it, anyway. We want to see people dancing in a proper old-time fashion, actually holding someone else as you dance. It's a novel concept, but it might just catch on."
Twang supports Will Oldham on January 21st at Vicar Street and Neal Casal on Tuesday, January, 23rd, at Shelter @ Vicar Street, Dublin. The first Twang club night is Tuesday, February 27th and thereafter, the last Tuesday of each month
