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Is there a young country artist today who will sustain a career to equal the late Slim Dusty, pictured at the dinner celebrating his 50th anniversary?
Photo Jon Wolfe
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TIME to think about a favourite coffee table and bar room question: What is the state of country music today?
Some of it's selling. Most of it is not, so what is the future ahead for the industry and its supporters?
What do you have lined up in your CDs player right now? Are you listening to major Australian artists such as Lee Kernaghan, Beccy Cole, Gina or Troy and the usual suspects, or are you more into the independent style of material on offer? Or is it the American brand of country that comes blaring out of your speakers at home and on the road, listening to the cars driving into Tamworth in January gives a good impression that people listen to.
All types of country.
Most of our visitors to Tamworth in January come to hear the Australian country music experience - bush ballad, country rock, western swing bluegrass, hillbilly and country & western, country folk, rockabilly and American country. There is something in every one of these genres that appeals to me. Does that make each of them more or less country music? I don't know, and I'm not sure that I really do care anymore.
It's the music that I like and I know many country music fans feel pretty much the same. Whether or not that makes it true country music I think is up to the listener, the CD buyer and the real fan base - the ticket buying audience.
I have always believed that the listener has shaped the music perhaps more than the artist has in country music. Radio has historically played a major role in determining an artists success or non-success and many a good artist has fallen by the way because of not being picked up for airplay by radio.
Nowadays video clips play a defining role in the promotion and success of an artist or group and with cyberspace opening up new avenues of exposure, we will see unknowns become sensations overnight. That is fine, but whether they can build a sustainable future concert career as Slim, Tex and Buddy did, really depends on the industry and public support for the Australian country music industry now and in the future.
Every genuine country artist has been a listener who turned into a recording and performing artist. Most great country artists recognise the wants, dreams, triumphs and tragedies of the fan and you can hear those needs addressed in their music and the lyrics. Country music has been steadily evolving since its beginning, and it will continue to do so, as more national and international pop and country artists merge, but it has to be a two way street.
So what is the state of country music today?
I think that musically it is probably the strongest that it has ever been in modern times, with true representation of all styles and forms of country music.
But the question remains - “Why is our country music industry still battling to prove its worth, to itself, to its peers, to its supporters, and struggling for government and commercial backing?”
We have all asked the question?
What do we have to do to make our industry a more secure and profitable place to work and flourish? Is it better management, better support, better promotion, better leadership? It is all that and a whole lot more?
Until we have a strong united, innovative and positive leadership and a real industry support framework for artists young and old happening within the country music industry, we are not going to see any real change in the present situation.
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