It's country with a different accent
By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer
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| Rick Shea's kind of country acknowledges influences ranging from Merle Haggard to Bob Dylan. It's a lot more personal than the tunes being cranked out by Nashville. "Mainstream country music today has gotten away from just about everything that I like about country music," the 49-year-old says.
Rick Shea with The Hawaiian Blues Mango Band, featuring Bla Pahinui 8 p.m. today at Waimea Falls Park, Pikake Pavilion 9 p.m. Saturday at Anna Bannanas $20 each show 638-8511 for Waimea Falls Park; 946-5190 for Anna Bannanas Rick Shea's essential California country/alt-country rock artists (besides himself, of course): Dave Alvin |
Just try to find a bin at Tower Records or Borders for California country, West Coast country, Southern California roots music or Bakersfield country — some of the more common labels stamped on the electrified, rock 'n' roll-influenced challenge to mainstream Nashville tedium. (Bakersfield, by the way, is the former California roadhouse haven where many of the genre's most famous musicians rocked a now mostly shuttered honky-tonk scene).
Legendary Cali-based artists like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard took the music to a '50s and '60s peak of million-selling albums and bragging rights as one of country's most influential genres. In the '80s, Dwight Yoakam's stripped-down honky-tonk rabble rousers and bittersweet ballads gave California country another resurgence — this time, from roots rock fans. The Randy Travis-lovin' Nashville mainstream of the time, however, mostly ignored it.
These days, California country's torch and twang is carried by a small, loose-knit community of little-known musicians like Shea who struggle to generate commercial notice (critics, no surprise, love the stuff) while remaining true to their artistic integrity. Shea — Honolulu-bound this weekend for a couple of performances with the Hawaiian Blues Mango Band and Bla Pahinui — has been writing and performing his own takes on the genre since gaining a toehold in the SoCal honky tonk scene in the mid-'70s.
"Mainstream country music today has gotten away from just about everything that I like about country music," said Shea, 49. "It's very bottom-line and very commercial. It's narrowly focused as far as the audience it's trying to reach and the sentiment it's trying to approach that audience with."
A listen to a couple of Shea's solo CDs, "Sawbones" and "Shaky Ground," offer the classic giveaways of a neo-traditionalist. The country roots are there — most evident in Shea's rich baritone and skilled way with an acoustic or electric guitar twang.
But then you get a taste of Shea's obvious appreciation for intelligently vivid singer/songwriter musings — here, alt-country rock figureheads like Lucinda Williams and Neko Case come to mind. Blended into Shea's instrumental work are blues, folk, rock, Celtic and even Tejano flourishes.
Shea's influences include Haggard, Owens, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, and country music's hands-down greatest balladeer George Jones.
"The country music that I like came out of the '60s and the '70s, where the subject matter was 'almost anything goes,' " said Shea. "It was much more direct, and there was a real human element. Most of the artists tended to have a lot more to do with creating their own songs, so there was much more of a personal statement involved in everything." Take that, Shania!
Shea hits the road most frequently these days with former Blasters front man and Grammy winning alt-country rocker Dave Alvin. On the solo tip, Shea sticks closer to home, playing bars and clubs in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
He laughed at a request to briefly describe his style of music (difficult, at best, he insisted). He did agree, however, that it was singer-songwriter based.
"There's a real strong country element, probably most (noticeable) in the way I approach songs vocally and the way I sound singing them," said Shea. "Musically, I tend to think that there's usually a lot more going on. Some of the elements are very much folk music. And there's certainly some more traditional rock 'n' roll elements to it."
