Do you feel inadequate, do you just feel out of touch, that you don’t know what’s going on, and when people play you new stuff you think it’s discordant and lousy?  Then you’re about to be rescued.  By Little Big Town.

From: Tommy Daley

Bob- I don’t know if you’ve heard about this country band or not but they are the closest thing to Rumours era Fleetwood Mac I’ve ever heard. They are called LITTLE BIG TOWN. Bones is the name of this track. The album is great. I’m just a fan and thought you might dig this.

Now Mac Mail embeds the MP3 right into the message, so I clicked the triangle to let the track play and I heard THE CHAIN!

It might be hard to understand how big Neil Young was at the time of "Harvest", so big that he spawned an imitator, America.

Now eventually America found its own sound.  Wimpy AM fodder that you wanted to shake from your sleeves.  But the debut was a distillation of the sound Neil Young evidenced on his early solo albums.

America hit.  With "A Horse With No Name".  Vapid lyrics, but the right sound.  But on the album, there was that VIBE!  Just listen to "Sandman", it’s dark.

This Little Big Town track "Bones" sounded SO much like "Rumours" era Fleetwood Mac that I was a bit creeped out.  It was as if someone had literally cloned the original group.  And when I found out there were two women and two men and relationship drama…

Then I started investigating, and the resulting tracks I downloaded from their 2005 LP, "The Road To Here", were not imitation, they held their own, and they made me feel good.

I went to college in the country.  That whole Paris Hilton thing, the hair, the makeup, the designer clothing, that didn’t wash in Vermont.  Where you had to endure the elements to get to your next class, to dinner.  It was not about sheen, what was on the outside, but who you truly were, what was on the INSIDE!  And when I started to listen to "Boondocks" I was reminded of nights at Mister Ups, down  by Otter Creek.

The raging bar was the Alibi.  On the other side of the bridge.  At the Alibi, the jukebox ruled.  But at Mister Ups there was live entertainment.  The singer was Peter…  God, I looked him up in the early days of the Net, I suddenly can’t remember his last name.  But it doesn’t matter.  He wasn’t that good.  Oh, his covers of James Taylor, et al, were good facsimiles, but his original material…it was a disappointment.  But the vibe…

I can still remember that vibe.  Sipping on endless beers as you looked through the plate glass into the environment.  On Tuesday nights, I believe that was when Peter’s stop was in Middlebury, we’d trek down, oftentimes through blowing snow, but when you LIVE in the country the weather’s not an impediment.  You might stay home when it rains in L.A., but you still go if there is snow in Vermont, and upon arrival you stamp your boots on the floor of the overheated room and unwind your clothing thereafter, revealing the real you inside.

I like a bludgeon record.  I can’t live without "Back In Black", but too much of what passes for hip subsequent to Kurt Cobain assaults my exterior, but doesn’t penetrate.  I haven’t decamped for country,  but hearing Little Big Town I wonder if I’ve been out of the loop.

From: Tommy Daley

On Nov 27, 2006, at 10:48 AM, Bob Lefsetz wrote:

"You’re right, tell me more!"

2 Girls and 2 Guys. I’d heard one of their songs on KZLA (before they flipped formats to pathetic) and it just sounded hillbilly but the sound stuck in my head. Then I saw them perform "Bones" on the CMA’s and they stole the show. They even looked like Fleetwood Mac. Dry ice all over the stage and spooky backdrops. They looked like the 70’s. So I went and got their album and the first 4 songs are great and the rest are pretty good. They have the country lyric cliche thing but damn they can sing and write melodies. I guess they are doing pretty well in the country world but there is nowhere to see or hear it in LA (#1 country sales market)

I like them because they write and perform their own music. And they do it well. One of the guys just married one of the girls so it could be some fun drama down the road.

Couldn’t find the CMA performance on You tube, but here is the aol session.

Little Big Town – Bones (AOL Music Sessions)

Shit, they’d already made it and I was OUT OF THE LOOP??

But in 2006 so many of us are out of the loop.  Top Forty isn’t the best forty tracks in the land, but the best pop and URBAN cuts.  And as much as we can’t deny a hit, a catchy song, we were schooled to like something deeper.  So, we’ve got nowhere to turn.  We just keep looking on and saying no, no, no, no to the mainstream.  We need to be turned on by buddies, we COUNT on our brethren to connect us.  We don’t believe in the filters, and we CERTAINLY don’t believe in the manufacturers.

You can check out that AOL performance on YouTube, but I’d say to skip it.  It lacks a certain passion and energy, it’s like Little Big Town is afraid of fucking up.  But some of the user posted video…  You’ll get it.

Check out this: Little Big Town – Bring It On Home (Live)

I’m not singling this cut as the best, but you’ll marvel.  That when the guy opens his mouth, he can SING!  And when the babes come in, you’ll think it’s the seventies all over again, you’ll remember when you went to the show for the music, not the spectacle.  And read the COMMENTS!  You can’t buy that passion.

Next check out the band’s MySpace page: Little Big Town.  Click on "Bones" to hear that Fleetwood Mac-style track Tommy e-mailed me about.  But all the cuts are winners.  Especially "Boondocks".

Now I’ve done a bit of research.  There is a wild card songwriter involved, this guy Wayne Kirkpatrick, who co-authored Clapton’s "Change The World".  But are we really gonna argue about credibility with what passes for music TODAY?

If you’re too hip for the room, that’s fine, wear your black and sit in that darkened room.  But for the rest of us, who don’t want to read a manual to comprehend what we’re listening to, who like if it’s palatable up front, Little Big Town will do just fine.

Not every Little Big Town broke big in the seventies.  But it was not unusual for something purely FM to break on the AM.  If only mainstream radio started opening up its playlists again, people might believe, instead of viewing stations purely as outlets for advertising.  Expose more stuff like this, and the business will be healthy again.

P.S. I remembered Peter’s last name, ISAACSON!