Are Colter Wall, Zephaniah OHora Being True to Themselves on Latest Albums?

Photo: La Honda Records

by Julian Spivey
Two albums that are going to be immensely popular among non-mainstream country music fans were released on Friday, August 28: Colter Wall’s third studio album Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punch Songs and Zephaniah OHora’s sophomore release Listening to the Music.  
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They are two albums that I have some issues with.

If you’re looking for a complete review of these albums you can find those elsewhere and some of the ones I’ve seen so far are truly glowing in their praise for both Wall and OHora. I’m not here to break these albums down track-by-track because my issues with each are more so with the actual artists than necessarily the songs they have recorded.

I like Colter Wall. I thought his self-titled debut in 2017 was pretty good and the track “Kate McCannon” from that album made this very website’s list of the 100 Best Americana and Country Songs of 2017 in the thirteenth position. I saw Wall in concert in Little Rock, Ark. that year and he put on a terrific show. I felt his debut showed signs of a great storyteller who would mix traditional country and folk music with more modern tales.

But since then his music, while still traditional and, honestly, sounding great sonically has seemed to be content with just remaining old-timey folk and Western music. His 2018 release Songs of the Plains was basically exactly what the title suggested and his newest release Western Swing & Waltzes is much of the same.

If that is who the 25-year old native of Saskatchewan, Canada is than that’s terrific, but how many 25 year olds only care about trail songs and old-timey Western tales?

I love traditional old country music and much of the reason why I listen to non-mainstream country acts is because of this. When you listen to mainstream country radio it’s like many of those artists have never heard a classic country song. Wall certainly has, but sometimes I feel like he’s trying completely to capture an older sound he’s so obviously entranced by that he doesn’t attempt to give us anything modern.

He clearly has a fan-base that loves his old-timey style and I would never tell an artist what they should and shouldn’t record, but I don’t find much of anything on his last two releases that simply doesn’t bore me. I felt similar two years ago when Joshua Hedley released his critically-acclaimed debut Mr. Jukebox, which had a couple of songs I really liked in the title track and “Weird Thought Thinker,” but I felt tried too hard to be the countrypolitan of 1960s Nashville without making much of an effort to live in the modern world.

Not too long ago I remarked on social media that I felt Wall could take a few pointers from his fellow Canadian country singer-songwriter Corb Lund, who has managed to remain traditional while also writing songs that sound like they were written this century. Again, that’s my wish for Wall, not a command to be someone he isn’t if he’s truly this dust-covered plainsman he sings like. 

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Photo: Last Roundup Records

My biggest issue of the two albums released on Friday is Zephaniah OHora’s Listening to the Music. It certainly seems OHora has been listening to one certain artist’s music in general and that artist is the legendary Merle Haggard.
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Now Haggard has certainly inspired just about every modern artist I like to listen to in some way or another, but OHora seems to be a bit more than inspired by “The Hag.” He seems to want to be him or potentially even think he has become him.

The very instant I heard the first release from OHora’s album “All American Singer” in early June I felt I was listening to a Merle Haggard song, specifically from his uber-patriotic era of the late ’60s when he was recording “Okie From Muskogee” and “The Fightin’ Side of Me.” Maybe it’s because Haggard is one of my top three all-time favorite artists, but it quickly began to rub me the wrong way.

Now if you don’t care about certain things and just want to hear something that sounds like it could’ve been recorded by Haggard in his heyday you damn well might find you love OHora’s album. It might even be your favorite release of the year.

But when I hear stuff like “Living Too Long,” which sounds like a blatant attempt at being “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink” I just can’t believe what I’m listening to. It doesn’t seem authentic and I freakin’ hate hearing about authenticity in music because it usually comes from some stodgy jerks like the one’s who bitch about Midland for the way they dress. I realize to many reading this I’m going to be thought of as the stodgy jerk, but I can’t get over the fact that OHora seems like he’d be a good Haggard impersonator at one of those Legends shows in Branson or Vegas.

It just seems manufactured intentionally and the thing that makes it seem more so this way is that OHora didn’t really sound like this to me on his 2017 debut This Highway, which still sounded like throwback country music, but not like a carbon copy of Haggard’s discography and OHora’s voice didn’t quite have that Haggardness to it that it does here.

Most artists have their own little unique qualities in the way their voices and even music sounds that makes them stand apart from everybody else. Believe it or not I can’t think of two artists who I’ve ever thought, “man, this sounds like this other guy” or that I’ve ever confused for being another artist. I just don’t hear that uniqueness on OHora’s Listening to the Music. I hear Haggard, but with the fact that the songwriting isn’t quite as good as Haggard’s. I can see why that would actually make many listeners dying to hear something like Haggard today happy, but for me I’d just rather throw on an actual Haggard record.

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