Jim Mathis

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

What is “Country” music?

When we formed Sky Blue five years, one of the goals was to use a steel guitar in a non-country band. We called ourselves “Blues” and did everything with a blues flavor. Before long we were sliding to a more rock sound so we started calling ourselves “blues/rock.”

A while back we did a survey of our fans and one guy said he didn’t plan to come hear us because he didn’t like country music. This was kind of a “Huh?” moment. I'll admit, our picture looks kind of country.

Recently I was listening to our latest CD in the car when I switched over to a country station, and sure enough, it didn’t sound much different from modern country. If we opened for Sugarland, nobody would think anything about it.

So the question is, “What is Country Music anyway?” Our songs have good or clever lyrics which you can understand, and we use a steel guitar or dobro, and not much distortion on the lead guitar. Does that make us country?

What do you think?

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