In Focus: Australian Country Music – part two

This is a three-part feature. Part one can be read here. Part three will be published tomorrow.

The Radio Bias

There are over 2,000 dedicated country music radio stations in America, represented in all major survey markets, including New York, LA, Miami and Chicago. With the advent of digital radio, it’s hard to pinpoint an exact figure for Australia but according to TMN’s chart records, we have around the figure of 284 country-dedicated stations. Interestingly, a recent study has shown 47% of people in regional areas listen to country music. Australia’s aforementioned geographical dwarfism can’t wear the brunt of the blame though. Radio support is key to the genre’s growth, but meagre promotional budgets and entrenched attitudes keep the genre perceived as a niche interest.

Tim Daley, Program Director at CMC (Country Music Channel), believes the lack of radio support here in Australia is due to an industry bias. “Mainstream radio, your Austereo and your dmgs, say, ‘Oh that sounds too country, our audience isn’t going to like it’, when in reality the audience is actually buying those records. So there’s a disconnect in what metro radio are playing and what the fans want.”

The genre’s landscape has vastly changed since the 1980s, when traditional country featured fiddles or steel guitars, and according to Daley, today’s artists are more accessible than ever. “If you look at Jason Aldean, if you look at Luke Bryan, if you look at Keith Urban, those artists are making the same kind of music that was being played on Top 40 radio in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s,” he tells TMN. “It’s really hard to find that more traditional country music in the current music landscape.”

What does air more frequently however, are crossover singles marketed as pop hits. Commercial radio may have been slow to give Taylor Swift’s breakout hit Love Story airplay, but after the track’s iTunes success and some sonic tweaking, the now global pop star is a commercial radio mainstay. Urban has also bore the impact of mainstream prejudice; it was only his recent stint as a coach on free-to-air’s The Voice Australia that placed his music into the consciousness of radio programmers. When Urban released greatest hits compilation The Story So Far in May, it debuted at #1 on the ARIA Chart, his highest debut on the mainstream chart. In September, his eighth studio album Fuse also topped the chart. The Grammy winner routinely sells out arenas in this country, yet it took a stretch on a top-rated pop show for his music to be picked up by mainstream radio, where it reached a previously untapped audience, and quickly sold Platinum.

Photo: Ken Leanfore

Australia’s predominantly cosmopolitan population means it’s a long, uphill slope for country artists looking to pursue music as a career. Melbourne singer-songwriter Jasmine Rae is one of the most marketable female country artists currently recording; the genetically blessed 26-year-old is one of just a handful of country artists to sign to a major label before the release of her debut LP, in 2008. Rae has been nominated for three ARIA Awards and had six #1 singles on the Country Chart, but her ascent hasn’t come without creative sacrifice. In August, Universal Music sent back the title track from her third LP, If I Want To, declaring the pedal steel guitar in the interlude would be off-putting to commercial radio programmers.

“The record company said this has a chance of crossing over but every radio programmer that we take this to will say, ‘it’s country, we don’t play country’.” Rob Potts, of Entertainment Edge, was navigating the counteraction when he spoke to TMN. “What we’re doing is remixing it. The irony is that it’s not even a pedal steel, it’s just slide guitar.”

Rae, a butter-wouldn’t-melt optimist, is less analytical. “I haven’t yet been played on too many mainstream country radio stations, so maybe there is [a bias], but I’m more focused on what I do have, and I’m very grateful.”

Rae isn’t an outsider here; the remixing of country tracks to generate wider appeal has been the norm since FM radio’s inception. The shocking part however is how quickly our record labels are to pander to the suppression. Country music is pivotal to our entrepreneurial economy and if the industry continues to segregate what’s accepted as mainstream, artists will struggle to have successful careers in the genre.

“The unfortunate part of that issue is that it really isn’t based in fact,” continues Potts. “It’s based on mythical history where ‘country’s not cool, people don’t like country’ – well that’s just a load of crap. Take Alan Jackson’s tour in 2010, he sold 55,000 tickets in half an hour; five shows, bang. Same with Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and Dolly Parton.”

Troy Cassar-Daley is one of Australia’s most celebrated country artists. He’s won multiple ARIA, APRA, Golden Guitar, and CMAA awards, yet the only time he has been heard on mainstream radio is to be interviewed for topical discussions or to promote an upcoming record.

“We generally don’t get that same support they get across the States,” he says. “I think we’ve been able to adapt though because touring has become a big part of what we do. But we’d have more sales for country if we had some dedicated commercial radio networks.”

Tamworth Country Music Festival Manager, Gavin Flanagan, was once on the other side of the fence. Like most in the radio game, his time as General Manager at 2TM Tamworth and as Program Director for Alice Springs Commercial Broadcasters (8HA/Sun FM) was spent meeting audience number targets and shying away from genres that didn’t test well. Country music has always been a slow moving beast in Australia and putting it up against impatient timelines and million dollar targets – which leave no room for a switch of the dial – is a risky bet.

Tamworth Country Music Festival Manager, Gavin Flanagan with Carrie Underwood.

“My biggest regret from the years I programmed commercial radio stations was that I didn’t have the appreciation that I do now for country […] Country stars in the US still acknowledge radio as the key to success and I would love to see greater support for Australian country music from radio in Australia.”

One industry player who is in the thick of this battle is Commercial Radio Australia CEO Joan Warner. Warner may not share the opinion of her predecessors in this article, but she is actively lobbying for more recognition. Aside from the CRA’s teaming with the CMA (Country Music Association of America) to award a scholarship for an Australian Breakthrough Country Artist each year, the national industry body included a country music section at last month’s National Radio Conference titled ‘Why Today’s Country Music Doesn’t Suck (And How It Can Make Money For You)’.

“It’s a forty-five minute session with Shaun James (Head of Foxtel Music Channels and former Chairman, Warner Music Australia), Rob Potts and James Dein (CEO of the Gympie Muster Festival),” Warner tells TMN. “It will look at the multi-million dollar vibrant sector of the music business that has an ever-younger, growing audience and features artists like Taylor Swift, Lady Antebellum, Keith Urban, Florida Georgia Line, The McClymonts and many other young stars […] Commercial Radio Australia continues to be a supporter of Australian country music.”

Flanagan acknowledges some of CRA’s efforts, mentioning positive signs from narrowcast stations and privately owned regional radio networks. “I love what Grant Broadcasters are doing with the Hot Country format; the Super Network has always included country music as part of its programming. Ray Hadley (OAM, host at 2GB)’s a huge supporter, but I’d love to see it go further than that.”

The Secular Stereotype

The last year of the ‘90s saw the relationship between country music and cliché begin to cease. The straw-sucking, Akubra-tipping, bush balladeer redolent of the ‘60s and ‘70s – when Slim Dusty and Buddy Williams tuned into American idiosyncrasies – had become a bore. “It hasn’t been that way since 1999,” says Tim Daley (Program Director, CMC). “That’s just not what country is anymore, it’s a perception that is reinforced.”

The new wave of country artists collaborated with hip hop chart toppers, and it worked; female singers glazed country in accessible pop and brooded over lost love; young adults nationwide tuned in to Video Hits to watch what they understood was a Top 40 hit. Yet not even Nelly’s #1 Over and Over with Tim McGraw in 2004, his April release Cruise, with Florida Georgia Line (which debuted inside the Billboard Top 50), or Kasey Chambers’ crossover hits could change perceptions of the genre.

“If you watch breakfast TV and they talk about a country artist, David Koch or someone is going to make a joke about the mullets – when in fact, that hasn’t been the case for twenty years,” Daley continues. “He’s sitting on a perception that he formed twenty years ago that hasn’t changed. It’s up to us in the country music media in particular to try to change that perception.”

The problem has now manifested across all media; in the past variety shows like Hey Hey It’s Saturday, Bandstand and the Midday Show featured country artists in equal measure to other music genres. Today, the corporate snub on Australia’s country scene has destroyed the popularity that made it flourish.

“You put a country act on TV and they’ll go ‘Yeehaa, bring out the country act,’ which is very condescending,” says Rob Potts. “It’s a media perception that you’ve got to make fun of it, because people don’t like it.”

Conversely, the slew of televised talent shows like Australia’s Got Talent and The Voice, do feature one or two aspiring country artists, but after seven seasons of AGT and two of The Voice, we’re yet to see a country artist make it into the top three. Even those who rose organically are struggling to sell records.

Potts believes Australia’s biased media channels and the global franchises that drive them are partly to blame for the nation’s splintering appetite. “When you look at trying to establish new artists now, it’s painfully obvious that in the last ten years, really the only Gold or Platinum-selling artist has been The McClymonts.

Photo: Duncan Toombs

“We manage Morgan Evans and he’s touted by everybody as the hottest new star in the business, but we’re struggling to get record sales to a point where we can establish him as Gold or Platinum-selling artist, and that’s because we don’t have the variety television anymore. And radio – albeit there is more country music radio now where it really counts in those mainstream capital city and big regional markets – but they always say, and they’ve always said, ‘We don’t play country music’.”

Seasoned artists like Troy Cassar-Daley and Lee Kernaghan have held tight to the genre’s musical traditions. Both believe the sound is as indelible and all-encompassing as it was at the height of its popularity, however neither indulge the physical stereotypes to the extent some may think they do.

“We still end up at the odd show where people feel the need to set up the stage with hay bales for the show,” says Cassar-Daley. “I get a bit of a giggle out of it. We feed our horses hay – but I don’t take them to shows.”

“Sometimes when you’re asked to do photo-shoots for mainstream media they ask you to wear your country hat and boots,” adds Jasmine Rae. “I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t wear a hat and boots.’ […] They want to put you in a box because that way it’s easier for them to understand you.”