Sturgill Simpson Slams ACM’s, Garden & Gun for >>>

[Dianna]

>>>>> Merle Haggard

www.savingcountrymusic.com/sturgill-simpson-slams-acms-garden-gun-for-disrespecting-merle-haggard/





Well, this is a side of Sturgill Simpson we haven’t seen for a while. But one that is completely valid as a close, personal friend of Merle Haggard during the country legend’s final years.

Last week, the ACM created a new award called the ‘Merle Haggard Spirit Award’ that was said to honor the contributions of Haggard by acknowledging artists who exemplify his uncompromising integrity and “singular vision in carving an indelible path in country music.”

“Merle passed shortly after our 2016 awards show and after this year’s Special Awards were announced,” says ACM Board President Ken Tucker. “That said, there was simply no way the Academy could hold what may be its most heartfelt event — ACM Honors — without creating a lasting way to acknowledge his legacy.”

It was announced Monday morning (8-29) that Miranda Lambert would be the inaugural recipient of the award.

Some may have noticed, despite including the name of a country legend, Saving Country Music had not mentioned this distinction as it could be considered a little disingenuous coming from the mainstream country music establishment. That is exactly how Sturgill Simpson took it, and slammed the award Monday morning in a statement.



Many years back, much like Willie and Waylon had years before, Merle Haggard said, ‘Fuck this town. I’m moving.’ and he left Nashville.

According to my sources, it was right after a record executive told him that ‘Kern River’ was a bad song. In the last chapter of his career and his life, Nashville wouldn’t call, play, or touch him. He felt forgotten and tossed aside. I always got a sense that he wanted one last hit..one last proper victory lap of his own, and we all know deserved it. Yet it never came. And now he’s gone.

The story of Merle Haggard telling off CBS Records executive Rick Blackburn are well-documented.

Sturgill Simpson continues…

I’m writing this because I want to go on record and say I find it utterly disgusting the way everybody on Music Row is coming up with any reason they can to hitch their wagon to his name while knowing full and damn well what he thought about them. If the ACM wants to actually celebrate the legacy and music of Merle Haggard, they should drop all the formulaic cannon fodder bullshit they’ve been pumping down rural America’s throat for the last 30 years along with all the high school pageantry, meat parade award show bullshit and start dedicating their programs to more actual Country Music.

Along with twisting off on the ACM’s, Sturgill also took the opportunity to take on Garden & Gun magazine, after they promised Sturgill that Merle Haggard would be on the front of an issue in which he appeared in an interview with Merle. However at the last minute, the magazine put Chris Stapleton on the cover.

He was so excited about it and it goes without saying that I was completely beside myself along with my Grandfather who has always been a HUGE Merle fan. We spent the whole day of the interview visiting in his living room with our families and had a wonderful conversation with the journalist. Then we spent about two hours outside being photographed by a brilliant and highly respected photographer named David McClister until Merle had enough…he was still recovering from a recent bout of double pneumonia at the time and it was a bit cold that day on the ranch.

But then at the last minute, the magazine’s editor put Chris Stapleton on the cover without telling anyone until they had already gone to print. Don’t get me wrong, Chris had a great year and deserves a million magazine covers…but thats not the point.

Its about keeping your word and ethics.

Chris also knows this as he called me personally to express his disgust at the situation. Dude’s a class act.

The editor later claimed in a completely bullshit email apology to both Merle’s publicist and ours (Chris and I share the same publicist) that they didn’t get any good shots that day.
David McClister..
2 hour shoot..
no good photos..
OK buddy,..whatever you say.

Though Sturgill was apt to go off on the country music establishment earlier in his career, he recently has been playing a much more docile role. Sturgill is even being slowly accepted by the Nashville establishment. It was announced last week that he is being considered for three categories at this year’s CMA Awards. But that won’t stop him from speaking his mind.

“Some days, this town and this industry have a way of making we wish I could just go sit on Mars and build glass clocks,” Sturgill says.

Chris Stapleton, Garden & Gun, Merle Haggard, Sturgill Simpson

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[erik]

Think Sturgill is a little sore? Seems he has a right to be.

In truth, the Nashville establishment never really treated "The Hag" with the kind of respect that a legend of his stature should have been treated, even when he lived there. But the ironic thing is that the ACM, the Academy of Country Music, was actually an L.A.-based institution formed in 1966 to recognize the contributions made by country artists and musicians in the western part of the United States, including those of the Bakersfield Sound, which Merle helped invent to begin with in the 1960s. Now, however, it is not much more distinguishable from the CMA (Country Music Association), except now its awards show is out of Las Vegas as opposed to Los Angeles (where it used to be) or Nashville (where the CMAs are).

This imbroglio involving Merle is just one more indication of just how f***ed up country music is nowadays (IMHO).

[Dianna]

So this guy responds. September 3, 2016
Jason Isbell & Others Respond In Depth to Sturgill Simpson’s Comments

Jason Isbell & Others Respond In Depth to Sturgill Simpson’s Comments, including uber DJ Bobby Bones who says, "If you hold on to your roots, you don’t grow.”

www.savingcountrymusic.com/jason-isbell-others-respond-in-depth-to-sturgill-simpsons-comments/





Now that some of the dust has settled since Sturgill Simpson made his inflammatory comments about the mistreatment of Merle Haggard on Monday (8-29), many others have taken the opportunity to weigh in on the matters on both sides of the country music cultural divide.

Nathan Pope of News OK spoke to Jason Isbell on the subject ahead of a show the songwriter and Sturgill Simpson friend will play at the Criterion on September 12th.

“You know Sturgill. He’s fired up. He speaks his mind,” Isbell said. “I mean, he’s not gotten any support from mainstream country, and I haven’t either. I’m happy they seem to care about Chris Stapleton a lot. Any time I see him getting respect from that side of the fence, I think it’s a good thing for everybody. I think Sturgill was mad, and I’ve talked to him since then. What he was fired up about was the fact that they sorta co-opted Merle Haggard’s name and his legacy for business purposes. They’re a business. They’re out to make money. That’s not an excuse, but that’s their only goal. That’s it.”

Isbell went on to say that even though Chris Stapleton is finding a lot of support, it’s primarily driven from the fans, not the industry. “The only reason Chris is a success is because people enjoy the music that he’s making and they’re willing to buy it. That’s the only thing they care about. If he was somebody else and didn’t have good songs and people were buying those then they would make whoever that was a big deal.”

Others have weighed in on the issue as well, including Nate Rau writing for local Nashville paper The Tennessean, not taking exception as much with what Sturgill said about the disrespect of Merle Haggard, but more how he characterized Nashville.

“Setting aside the fact that the ACM is not based in Nashville, Simpson certainly brought up some valid points about Music Row and its cruel nature toward artists whose profitability begin to decline,” Nate Rau says. “However, if Simpson is truly serious about leaving town, then he is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Whatever his issues with commercial country music, there is a significant sector of the music industry here that has been supportive of Simpson’s career.”

Country journalist David Cantwell, who wrote a well-received biography on Merle Haggard, responded with his own observations on Slate. Though most of Cantwell’s observations come in the form of reflections on Haggard’s career, he does say about Sturgill and his remarks,

“There was the militant opposition between what gets played on the radio and what Simpson termed ‘actual country music,'” Cantwell says. “There was the condescending claim that country audiences are dupes, the unwitting victims of ‘formulaic cannon fodder bullshit’ that’s been ‘pumped down rural America’s throat for the last 30 years’ (and this about a genre that hasn’t been primarily ‘rural’ since before Merle Haggard started cutting records in the early 1960s). There were the studied sour grapes of complaining you haven’t been embraced by either the mainstream country industry or the mainstream radio audience even while boasting you neither need nor desire such acceptance.”

However what Cantwell’s piece and others seem to miss is that Sturgill’s original post said nothing about being bitter against the industry—it only dealt with his issues about the disrespect of Merle Haggard. Only after his post went viral and folks began to respond did Sturgill mention that he would be “blackballed” from the industry. And even then, it seemed more about an acknowledgement of the facts as opposed to the swallowing of a bitter pill. Nonetheless, Cantwell does a commendable job framing Merle’s career while using Sturgill’s comments as a backdrop.

Two people who had surprisingly measured responses were Jason Aldean, and pop country uber morning host Bobby Bones. Jason Aldean asserts that people in Nashville do respect Merle and are aware of his contributions to country.

“I don’t know Sturgill, never met the guy, but I know he’s a great artist,” said Aldean. “The flip side of [his argument] is I feel like everybody in this town – every artist, every writer, every producer – we all are very much aware of the contribution [Haggard] had to this business.”

But like David Cantwell, Bobby Bones took the leap of faith that some or most of Sturgill’s comments were rooted in a bitterness against the industry for not finding more success, when Sturgill’s career has been a resounding success when measured against his peer group of independent artists. On his August 30th show, Bones discussed the subject extensively, saying that he has invited Sturgill on his show before, and Sturgill has declined.

“I like Sturgill Simpson. I respect him, because he’s been able to do it pretty much independently,” Bobby starts off saying. “I also love it when artists speak their mind. I love the fact that he’s speaking out, even if I disagree with him.”

But then Bones says, “There is no such thing as ‘actual country music.’ … That’s you’re definition of country music. Don’t put it on me. So I have a problem with that.”

Bones also went on to assert, “If you hold on to your roots, you don’t grow”—-turning around the often-used phrase in roots music, “You can’t grow if you rip your roots out of the ground.”

READ: Sharp-Tongued Criticism Has Always Been Country’s Way of Preserving the Roots

Whether for or against Sturgill Simpson’s comments, in a week that saw the annual ACM Honors gala in Nashville and the announcement of the CMA Awards nominations, it was Sturgill Simpson that dominated the news cycle and had everyone talking, while you now have folks like Jason Aldean going on record saying Sturgill Simpson is a “great artist,” and Bobby Bones saying, “I like Sturgill Simpson.” Like many current events in country, it will be hard to tell just what impact Sturgill Simpson’s words will have on the music until some more time has passed and we can reflect back. But one thing is for sure—the impact will be remembered.

Bobby Bones, David Cantwell, Jason Aldean, Jason Isbell, Nate Rau, Sturgill Simpson

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[erik]

Methinks Jason the Bromeister doth proteste too much, and rather hypocritically. If he and his Bro contemporaries were really that serious about the contributions that Merle made to the business, then they’d set about writing things beside screwing on tailgates down dirt roads, and drinking enough beer to be legally intoxicated within 30 minutes. But they're not. CASE CLOSED.