If I could just weigh in on this "selling out" discussion...
The term "sell out" gets thrown around way too loosely when talking about music. Too many "fans" are ready to call an artist a "sell out" at the drop of a hat, just as soon as that artist's career path deviates from what the "fan" thinks is best. I wrote this on a thread last week, but I think it warrants mentioning again: there's a difference between a guy's music growing and his music being changed by outside influences and straying from his roots. The "sell out" term gets applied to both situations when it should really only be applied to the latter.
As a songwriter matures in life, as he grows up and settles down with a wife and kids, his music is going to grow and mature with his life if he's any count as a human being and a songwriter. Don't get me wrong, I loved Pat Green's "Here We Go" and "George's Bar", but it's unfair and immature to expect him to do nothing but write alcohol and bar anthems his entire life. If that's all he's capable of doing, he's really not much of a person or a writer.
Pat didn't "sell out" when he got a major record deal and put out the "Three Days" and "Wave On Wave" albums. A lot of people called that selling out, but those albums came across to me as a sign of growth and maturity, and it seemed obvious that the ones complaining were the ones who hadn't grown up beyond their own personal "Here We Go" lifestyle. However, Pat did develop a problem after that. The "Lucky Ones" single was a step over the line, and the "Cannonball" album was a huge disappointment to me. Not that he was growing, but that his style had completely changed. When I heard "Dixie Lullaby" on the radio in Lubbock, I about died. To me, that wasn't Pat growing as a writer, that was Pat cashing in on the Nashville phenomenon of hitting it big with sentimental and sappy songs that appeal to the middle-aged female who makes up a huge part of the country radio demographic.
Someone hit the nail on the head above, talking about how Pat built his career on being the openly “anti-Nashville” guy, and then turning his back on that sentiment and becoming extremely mainstream Nashville. The problem is not that Pat became a Nashville guy, it’s that he chanted “Nashville sucks!” for years, and then became a Nashville guy as soon as the opportunity arose. If Pat hadn’t been so anti-Nashville in his early days, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation.
I’m always amazed by the segment of Texas country fans who think that it’s a “you’re with us or against us” situation when talking Texas v. Nashville. I wonder how many of those fans a) know who Guy Clark is, and b) know that he’s made a nice chunk of change by having Nashville artists record his great songs.
Serious fans of country music don’t blame Nashville songwriters for the problems that we have with the country genre. Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel said it best one day on XM Radio: the state of country music is fine, there are a lot of great artists and writers making great music; the state of country radio, on the other hand, is a different story. There’s a lot of great music being written every day in Nashville, but you never hear most of it, because the execs of the record companies and radio chains aren’t interested in putting that kind of music on the radio.
Don’t throw everyone in Nashville under the bus just because mainstream country radio sucks and Pat Green decided to change his style in the middle of his career. There’s still a lot of great music being made in Nashville, and a lot of great music being made in Texas. Let’s be thankful that we have the opportunity to hear a lot more of it on the radio than we did a decade ago, even if the execs of the record companies and big radio chains don’t acknowledge it.
