Country music drought is over

By JENNIFER CHAPIN HARRIS, Gazette Intern

Thursday, July 6, 2000 -- For years, fans of country music have had to search out live shows and hunt for their rhinestone rhythms on just two stops on the local radio dial.

This weekend, a Valley performance drought in ends when the Northampton Airport hosts a "Country Barnstormin' Concert" featuring Toby Keith, on his 39th birthday. Local bands including Cottonwood, Flaps Down, the Lonesome Brothers and the Don Campbell Band will also play Saturday.

The festival's tickets have sold quickly, lending credence to the beliefs of die-hard country fans that their favored music is more a part of the Valley's cultural fabric than a glance at monthly music schedules suggests.

But as popular music, country doesn't play regularly in the clubs and halls that have made Northampton and surrounding towns an entertainment nexus.

"It's not as widely accepted as down South, but the listenership is strong," said Chip Miller, program director of WPKX in Springfield, a country station. "Surprisingly, some of the stereotypes of country music don't have merit in the Northeast. It's a mainstream format these days."

Nationwide, country music fans suffer from a public image as country bumpkins who like their style of music because they don't know any better.

That's why some fans hide their interest in the music, secretly buying Shania Twain and Faith Hill CDs. Doctors and lawyers who like the music might listen to it while driving to work alone, keeping the volume low enough to evade their co-workers' suspicion.

Northampton Airport co-owner Richard Giusto says he believes country music has gained in popularity in the Northeast over the last few years. Six years ago, Giusto booked a country band to play at the airport and found that it "drew a tremendous amount of people." It's helped, he notes, that country music has itself evolved - at least the most marketable sort - and grown more like rock.

Ever since that early success, he has wanted to organize a full country music festival. For Giusto, country music, the Fourth of July, barbecues and warm summer nights all go together.

"It's not all that twangy stuff any more," Giusto said.

The credit - or blame - for the shift in country music goes to Garth Brooks, most say.

With such hits as "Friends in Low Places" and "Unanswered Prayers," Brooks showed the world that country music is more than just twang. It can be as fun and hip as rock music.

"There's been a renaissance of country music since Garth came along," said Miller, whose station plays country music for an audience evenly split along gender lines and between the ages of 25 and 64.

"Garth made the music a little edgier, a little more rock in the country," Miller said.

The Northampton shows this weekend are just part of a summer of country in the Valley. In August, the Statler Brothers will play in Springfield's Symphony Hall.

Al Zar, owner of Zar Entertainment Group, which books the Statler Brothers across the U.S., said in an interview from his Missouri office that the band will also play in Lowell and in New London, Conn., this year.

For that band, New England remains a beachhead not yet conquered. New Englanders listen to country music less than the rest of the country does, Zar acknowledges. In the past 12 months the Statler Brothers have played four times in New England, versus 14 concerts in the Midwest and seven in the Northwest. Zar has already booked concerts for 2001 in other states but not in New England.

Despite a smaller number of country music concerts here than elsewhere in the United States, country music is now "one of the most popular formats" of music in New England, according to Glen Cardinal, co-owner WPVQ-FM in Whately, which plays country music for an audience from Springfield to Brattleboro.

"I think the draw is it's music you can understand. It doesn't shatter the eardrum. It's pleasant to listen to," Cardinal said. "Country music lyrics are about life itself, relationships, fun stories."

Northampton resident Steve Samolewicz, who plays guitar for Flaps Down, concurs: "The draw of country music is that the lyrics mean something. The music talks a lot about family, and positive values," said Samolewicz, who is 42 and makes a living as a lawyer.

The 5-year-old band's five members are local men who grew up together and now play original songs. While their musical tastes are diverse, since they've worked together, band members have "moved towards the country side of things," Samolewicz said.

Local country bands often perform at area bars. Such local acts as the Lonesome Brothers and Shorty and the All Stars have played at the Hotel Warren in South Deerfield.

Betsy Shea, the bar's owner, likes to book country bands. "The bands that do the best here are the bands that people can dance to."

Shea notes that many of the country bands playing at the bar have "kind of a rock influence, (but) even the rock bands play some country hits because it gets people up and moving."

Although modernized country music has grown popular among mainstream listeners, traditional country music has not disappeared from the area.

While the American Roadhouse Band is a rockabilly rhythm-and-blues band, it covers songs from "classical old-time country material mixed in with our own stuff," says lead singer Betsy-Dawn Williams.

She points out that the term "country music" describes a wide variety of music genres, from classical cowboy tunes to the hits one now hears on the radio.

Williams enjoys singing songs by country greats Patsy Cline and Kitty Wells, which she describes as "roots Americana music."

"We play things we really love to play. Our tastes are centered around the home turf," she said.

While the five-piece band mostly plays songs its members write, they add "archival gems" and lesser known songs that they enjoy, but not current country songs.

Williams, a Northampton resident and administrative assistant at the University of Massachusetts, also sings for Western Heirs, which specializes in old-time country and cowboy music. Yet because there is little demand in the area for such music, the band only performs a few times a year.

Even if the traditional side of country music struggles, the category as a whole won't disappear soon.

At Wal-Mart in Hadley, country music sells as well as rock music, the two top selling music categories. The store's general manager, Charles Hedden, estimated that 30 percent of the music his store sells is country, with Faith Hill and the Dixie Chicks among the top-selling artists.