The surprise at the top end of Rolling Stone and Spin critics' albums of the year lists was The Guitar Song by a liberal country singer who's more Oprah than Opry
Hovering at the top end of Rolling Stone and Spin's albums of 2010 lists was a name unfamiliar to most British readers: Jamey Johnson.
As a socially liberal country artist singing about drugs, prostitutes and violence, he is an anomaly: a country star who's been adopted by alt-country and mainstream rock fans, hitting the Billboard Top 20 along the way. Johnson exists in a genre that prides itself as the music of the people (with a beating heart of blue-collar wholesomeness), fuelled by a Republican mind-set, at odds with the liberal world it sees outside its capital, Nashville.
Johnson's 25-song album The Guitar Song makes him a unique voice in modern country. Released in September, it tackled such honky tonk-free subject matter as race (California Riots) and abandoning Jesus, to pursuing a life-wrecking drug habit (High Cost Of Living). Johnson's unflinching storytelling and pared-down execution stood out massively when lined up between the gung-ho Republicanism of Toby Keith and the airbrushed heartache of Carrie Underwood.
Unsurprisingly he was ignored by country radio, the engine that fuels the multi-million dollar industry, but the liberal press took notice. Rolling Stone named him one of its 40 Reasons To Get Excited About Music in its April issue, citing him as bringing "badass country" back from the insincere grip of the likes of Lady Antebellum. Like Drive-By Truckers and Lucinda Williams, his musical jump-off points are the Highwaymen (Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson). These were the "outlaw" country musicians who worked outside the Nashville system, singing about drugs and politics, and flaunting a long-haired, denim-clad aesthetic that had more in common with the hippy movement than the God-fearing Grand Ole Opry.
For evidence of the twitchy relationship between church, state and the country music genre, you need look no further than the Dixie Chicks' "Bush-gate" affair which bought the ideologies of the country faithful into focus for the rest of the world to see. "Badass" Johnson doesn't fit into this at all. Appearing in 2005 as a fresh-faced star in the Travis Tritt mould, he was dropped after one album. Returning in 2008, he'd ditched the goatee and Stetson, gained some ZZ Top facial hair and a poise that, from watching interviews, suggest a man of serious intentions who you'd think twice about asking, "So, what do you think of Lady Gaga?" His 2008 album, That Lonesome Song, detailed his divorce in unflinching detail and was hailed by Slant Magazine as "too country for country".
That Lonesome Song may have opened the gates, but The Guitar Song was the revelation: an album that moved further away from both the country template and radio. (Pressed on his radio exile, he's stoically stated: "There's no answer I want to give on that.") That the Dixie Chicks incurred a parallel radio blackout is some sort of balm. They too were accepted by left-thinking music magazines and later expressed gratitude to be free of the confines of country.
Indeed, Johnson's already working with gospel legends the Blind Boys Of Alabama, a meeting of musical minds that's more filled with heart and soul than rules and expectations.
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