Music- Dylan Tennison

Colter Wall: Country's most exciting new talent

By 

Dylan Tennison 

Mainstream country has always managed to boss it's way on to the air waves as America's most beloved genre of music. The rein stone clad and Nashville honky Tonks promote a style which has been around since the days of the late great Hank Williams Sr.
Musician Catherine Popper took to social media recently to share an interesting quote which I believe all true fans of country music would recognise,
    "Come to Nashville because of the music...Leave because of the music".
    For over sixty years Nashville has been at the epicentre of all things country. The Grand Old Oprey, Nashville's most famous music venue has hosted some of the biggest names in music starting from King Hank, including the likes of Patsy Clyne and Johnny Cash.
    Nashville over the years has become more of a tourist attraction than the centre of musical endeavours. A place where any fool in a cowboy hat can pick up a guitar and call it country. A place which has become as manufactured as Simon Cowell's XFactor. The voice of the greats seems to missing from this new generation of stars. Lyrics about loneliness, hard drinking and womanising have been replaced with cheesy choruses and tacky stories of teenage romances.
    Enter Colter Wall.
    David Bowie once described Bob Dylan as the man with a voice like "Sand and glue" and this is one from a huge list of similarities the young man from Canada shares with his idol. Wall balances the medium of Americana and country, telling stories of southern towns and bar room brawls with voice which seems much older than a man who's just into his twenties.
    His 2015 EP release titled 'Imaginary Appalachia' transports us back to a much more pure, naive music industry. A time when the likes of Townes Van Zandt, Robbie Robertson and Kris Kristopherson wrote sweet love songs, letters to towns and landscapes which influenced every chord they ever played and every lyric written.
    Wall's true talent is found in song writing, sculpting heart felt songs in a way which are laced in true human emotion. Nothing is contrived. You can listen for just a moment and hear the truth in the young man's voice. You can clearly hear the influences which have shaped him growing up as a young man. It's all there. The darkness of Johnny Cash, The wildness of Waylon, the yearning of George Jones, the blues of Van Zandt and probably the most important, the ability to write commercial music whilst not submitting to any conceived ideas of what mainstream music is.
 
You can download Colter's EP 'Imaginary Appalachia' from I Tunes.