Music

They sure aren’t the trendiest tickets in town: Carlene Carter has downgraded from Shepherds Bush Empire, Willie Nelson’s lost a second night at the Apollo and Johnny Dowd is as persistently underappreciated as any songwriter setting out their stall as a sort of biblical Beefheart is prone to be. But this week there’s a great opportunity to sample three generations of country, from the sensitive croaking of 72-year-old Nelson to the, er, grizzled rants of 49-year-old Johnny Dowd. Hell, it’s not exactly a genre that lends itself to youthful bloom.

Carter Family member Carlene toured with her stepfather Johnny Cash at the age of 12 and by her late teens had cultivated an image as the ‘wildchild of Nashville’, announcing that she was ‘putting the cunt back in country’, living on a diet of heroin and ice-cream, and posing with her acoustic guitar in thigh-length black leather boots and not much else. Now 52 with a mahogany voice to match her new brunette hair, she’s jettisoned that ‘Barbie doll aspect to me’ and is touring her first album since 1995 following the deaths, in
2003, of her partner of 16 years, Howie Epstein, her mother June Carter Cash, her stepfather Johnny Cash and her little sister, Rosey. Personal tragedy being the very lifeblood of country music, this flurry of activity is perhaps not so surprising.

What is surprising is the quality of much of new album, ‘Stronger’, from the bristling, key-climbing country rock of opener ‘The Bitter End’ to the power ballad ‘Judgement Day’ and the cold hard truth of the line, ‘I’m gonna lie on this floor in my black funeral dress, and grieve for the man who held my heart in his hands’. Gulp.
You probably know all you need to know about Nelson: he still looks like a beach-bum Gandalf, has increasingly taken to wearing his hair in little plaits like new pal Snoop Dogg, and recently released another album of  wonderfully soppy, sepia country-folk. But you may not have heard of the Texas-born Dowd, who steers on the surreal, alt.gothic side of country and is plugging ‘The Drunkard’s Masterpiece’, a three-step opus that toys with metal and jazz and includes a track called ‘Putting Lipstick On A Pig’. Which, we’re sure you’ll agree, is an essential life skill for any conscientious cowboy.

Further listening: www.tinyurl.com/34jgky