Alternative Country May Be Next Dominant Wave

Sun., Jan. 5, 1997

Jack Hurst Chicago Tribune

The most intriguing topic of speculation for the next few months, as it has been for the last several, concerns the kind of country music that will become dominant next and, in becoming dominant, rev up Nashville’s national sales engines again for the climb to the next plateau.

Festooned with generic cowboy hats, the current scene has lost a little of its market appeal and excitement of the early ‘90s and is thirsting for the rise of its next corps of superstars. The conventional wisdom is that, because the cowboyish-clothes-and-“positive”-love-songs approach has begun to appear old hat, the next Nashville thing will be a movement coming from a different perspective.

Today’s most likely candidate acts, at least in the eyes of media critics, appear to be so-called “alternative” country ones. These, while being denied wide airplay by diversityfearing country radio, have been stirring a disproportionate amount of excitement with music that is fresh, vibrant, youthful, innovative and steeped in the very tradition that recent mainstream country radio seems to hate.

The leader at the moment seems to be Junior Brown, a little man in a big hat who plays a combination guitar/ steel guitar, sings in a deep voice remindful of Country Music Hall of Famer Ernest Tubb, and owns the Country Music Association’s 1996 Video of the Year award for his wacky “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead.”

Somewhere fairly close behind Brown is BR5-49, a kindredly off-thewall collection of amiable misfits from Nashville’s seedy Lower Broadway who sing a ton of old, traditional, drinkin’ and cheatin’ songs as well as some originals in the same style that they wrote themselves. They do it all with an intriguing retro-but-contemporary flare which includes a little exuberant R-rated language that helps keep them on the cutting edge.

The alternative-styled group that has penetrated furthest into the mainstream so far is the Miami-rooted Mavericks, who are more contemporary-flavored than the other two and this fall won the CMA’s Group of the Year award for the second consecutive time.

Although the critics (including this one) love these acts, don’t bet that one of them or even one like them will become the next Garth Brooks.

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