by Julian Spivey
Jason Boland & the Stragglers brought their unique brand of real country music to Morrilton, Ark. on Saturday, Feb. 22 with a terrific set at Jose’s Supper Club.
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Boland is probably the most famous, and certainly one of the best, artists in a traditional sounding subgenre of country music known as red dirt country, popularized by acts from Texas and Oklahoma. Red dirt country doesn’t get much airtime on the radio, but has developed a loyal following from fans discontented with today’s mainstream country music. The medium is obviously influenced by traditional, honky tonk and outlaw style country music and comes off as more naturalistic, true to what many believe country music is supposed to be.

Boland’s honky tonk performance on Saturday night was exceptional from the very first performance of the title track off of his most recent album, 2013’s “The Dark & Dirty Mile” to the finale of his encore somewhere after one in the morning.

Boland’s lyricism is strikingly beautiful in its naturalism/realism and his rich baritone twang rivals anybody in the genre and fits his songs perfectly.

It’s a voice that lends itself incredibly well to rocking honky tonkers like the crowd favorite “When I’m Stoned” and softer tunes like his newest release “Lucky I Guess” alike.

Boland held myself and much of the likely few hundred person audience captivated throughout his entire set that reached almost two hours in length, with the supremely talented Stragglers entrancing us all night with their beautifully sounding backing music – especially Roger Ray on steel and lead guitar and Nick Worley on fiddle, one of the best in the business.

 The Morrilton crowd couldn’t get enough of Boland’s tunes that many of them knew every word of by heart and the singer seemed highly appreciative of the crowd’s response to his work.

His set spanned his entire 15 year career, with classics from the early days like “Pearl Snaps,” “Truck Stop Diaries,” “Shot Full of Holes” and the beautifully written/sung “Somewhere Down in Texas,” one of the many favorites of the crowd, and stuff from his two most recent albums ‘Dark & Dirty Mile’ and “Rancho Alto” (2011). Some of the newer stuff consisted of the excellently traditional sounding “False Accuser’s Lament,” the very song that thankfully introduced me to Boland with its unique take on a story similar to Lefty Frizzell’s classic “Long Black Veil” and “Electric Bill,” which he remarked that he hopes is the first ever “Americana or country song to reference drones” and I believe he’s right. It’s also one of my favorite country lines of the last year thanks to its tongue in cheek quality: “When they need to take a closer look at what it means to love/They can watch with a drone from miles above.”

Being a relatively new fan of Boland’s, it’s hard to find terrific artists like him today unless you almost accidentally come across them online or via the occasional country radio station that has the balls to play them (Morrilton’s own KVOM 101.7 was one of those stations until they castrated themselves recently), so a lot of his older music was introduced to me through this concert and I loved every bit of what I heard. Songs like “Bourbon Legend,” “Blowing Through the Hills” and his version of the Tom Russell written “Gallo Del Cielo” are exactly what I view country music should be and his utterly beautiful “Comal County Blue” is without a doubt one of the best written country songs of the last decade. The performance of it jaw-droppingly good to boot.

Other perfect performances from his Saturday night show include the ball-busting “Pushin’ Luck” from “Rancho Alto,” “Down Here in the Hole” from that same album, the nice story song “Ludlow” from his most recent album and his rocking cover of the Don Williams classic “Tulsa Time,” which he cut on his fantastic 2010 live album “High in the Rockies.”

It’s incredibly hard to choose Boland’s best performance of the night, as I’m sure you could attest to if you’d seen him, but my favorite would have to be the one he capped his encore with “Outlaw Band,” a Bob Childers written song that highlights “High in the Rockies” and sounds like everything red dirt country is supposed to be in five minutes. The song also features one of the greatest fiddling parts to kick it off by Worley that I’ve heard in quite a while.

If you want to hear real country music than Jason Boland & the Stragglers are a revelation. Check them out online if you’ve never listened to them and find them at a local venue live if you want one of the best concerts you’ll ever see in your life.       

by Julian Spivey
There’s not much to get excited about these days on country music radio, but a few years ago while driving around town I caught Kyle Nix’s opening fiddle part of Turnpike Troubadours’ “Long Hot Summer Day” while randomly flipping around the radio dial and instantly knew I’d found something special. I went home, looked up the band on Spotify and quickly found out that the Troubadours were the best act today in country music – despite never having heard them played once on mainstream country radio. Hell, they were too country for country radio.
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A few days later while scanning through radio stations again I found Robert Earl Keen’s “I Gotta Go” and then Jason Boland’s “False Accuser’s Lament.” My ears and brain were left stunned as I had given up on hearing new, great country music ever again. The station was KVOM 101.7 FM out of Morrilton, Ark. and it instantly became a pre-set on my radio and ever since KVOM has introduced me to the wondrous world of Red Dirt Country – a much too excluded and hidden subgenre of country music and likely the last bastion (along with possibly the all encompassing Americana) for traditional sounding country music.

The reason why I hadn’t been previously introduced to this fantastic music was that it was so scarce on the radio. In fact, this small town Morrilton station was the only radio station in all of Arkansas where Red Dirt Country could be found. This essentially made KVOM the best radio station statewide.

Every year on this very website I do a list of the best country songs of the year and many of those best country songs of 2013 were found by me on KVOM like Wade Bowen’s “Songs About Trucks,” Josh Ward’s “Promises,” The Departed’s “Prayer for the Lonely,” Chris Knight’s “Nothin’ On Me” and Randy Rogers Band’s “Trouble Knows My Name.” These terrific songs have absolutely no play or hope of being played on mainstream country radio, because they simply don’t fit into the pop/rock/hip-hop infused stuff that is being called “country music” these days.

But, as long as I had KVOM I didn’t have to worry about never hearing these great country songs on the radio.

And, then something horrible happened.

Midway through last week I was driving home from work and KVOM played Dwight Yoakam’s “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere,” Toby Keith’s “You Ain’t Much Fun (Since I Quit Drinkin’) and Alabama’s “Down Home” back-to-back-to-back. All great songs, indeed, but I literally had to make sure my radio wasn’t set to The Wolf 105.1 out of Little Rock, my go to station when I want to hear the classics of the country genre. I hoped this was just some sort of fluke, but I’m not that dumb. Immediately I realized that KVOM had undergone a silent, unprofessionally without notifying its listeners I might add, format change. Later when I heard Jason Aldean’s “Night Train” and Thompson Square’s “Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not?” it quickly donned on me that the station was now a “best of the ‘80s, ‘90s and today” format, which really made me cringe, despite much of that music being excellent. It made me cringe because today there are basically two types of radio stations – those that play current Top 40 and those that play the hits from the “’80s, ‘90s and today” – and every last damn one of them sound the same.

It also made me cringe because I knew that was it for Red Dirt Country’s exposure in Arkansas. I knew there were not going to be others like me influenced by this wonderful music by a one-of-a-kind radio station in this state.

It’s truly irritating for multiple reasons. Not only are people like me now devoid of this great music, not only has KVOM become like almost every other station on the radio dial, but it’s also lost the one thing that it really had going for it, the one thing that set it apart from other stations, that one thing that made it special. That just doesn’t sound like a good business process, but, oh well, it’s their business … it’s to be seen what impact the format change actually has on the station.

Judging by the responses on KVOM’s Facebook page the reaction to the format change doesn’t seem all too positive.

It’s just a shame to see another great small town radio station die off, but it’s even more shameful when it’s by its own hand.