Jan 21, 2020
| Volume XIX Issue 6 June 2009 |
From the President Board Positions Volunteers needed ASGRA BBQ at this month's trail ride Membership from our new membership chair Vagabond Chuckwagon This month's dinner location Music Review our man about town Coosie's Corner Recipe of the month Cowboy Music Cowboy Rough Monthly Calendar What's happening |
From our PresidentI would like to welcome Mike Benner and Patrick Hunter back to the Board of Directors. Mike stepped up to fill the Membership Chair position and Patrick will take over as Social and Entertainment chair. Thank you both for stepping up to serve your association. Jon H. and Jymmye Jaymes came on the Board as Membership and S&E chairs respectively in 2006. Their dedication to ASGRA showed in every event they were apart of. There aren't enough words to express to you both how much your service meant to me personally and to ASGRA as a whole. We still have the following positions vacant:
In the next few months, the Board will appoint an Elections chair. The positions that are up for election are President and Treasurer. Also up for election is the position of Secretary. DJ is filling the vacancy from the previous election. All are two year terms. Please consider serving in one of these elected positions. The question remains: Will ASGRA survive? Did You Know...?
Those are basic costs to hold an IGRA Rodeo. Our budget for Atlantic Stampede 2008 was $105,890. It cost a lot of money to host a rodeo. If you want us to hold another one, we need every member to help. Attend fundraisers, tell your friends to come out and support us. On the main page of the web site, you will find a link to donate to ASGRA. Consider making a donation to help us repay our debts from the 2008 rodeo and to help produce a rodeo in the future. Mike S. Donate using a credit or debit card to help ASGRA survive
[an error occurred while processing this directive] ASGRA has the following positions available:
We are also looking for people willing to serve as members of our 2009 royalty team (1-year terms):
Contact Mike at [an error occurred while processing this directive] if you are interested in serving in any of these positions. Mike S. June Trail Ride Will Include BBQ
Weather premitting, we will have a BBQ with hotdogs and hamburgers and their fixins at the ASGRA Monthly Trail Ride on June 7th. The trail ride will begin at 11am with the BBQ to follow right afterwards. If you are interested in attending contact Patrick aka Cowboy Ram, 202-352-2356 or via email at [an error occurred while processing this directive]. See details on our monthly trail rides.
Dear ASGRA MemberIn the recent newsletter, Mike Sanders asked the membership to step up if we wanted ASGRA to survive. As a result, I volunteered to take over the responsibilities of the Membership committee. I encourage all of you to reinvest your time and efforts back into the association. First, help me thank Jon for such an outstanding run as ASGRA's membership chair. Jon has consistently stepped up for the association. Not only has he been membership chair for the past 3 years, he was also last year's Rodeo Director, acting fundraiser, and anything else ASGRA needed to put on the rodeo. Thanks Jon and good luck in Texas! One of the duties of the Membership Chair is to actively solicit new members. To do this, we need to find ways to get you involved again and establish a communication between you and the board. I would like to use your email address to set up a mail group to let you know what's coming up with ASGRA and to solicit your questions on how ASGRA can better meet your needs and concerns. I promise you that your email address will ONLY be used for ASGRA activities. However, if you do not want to receive my emails, please email me to remove your address from the ASGRA membership email group. I plan to work closely with Patrick Hunter, the new Social and Entertainment chair to entice you back into the ASGRA fold. If many of you are like me, you hate the idea of going to local activities alone. ASGRA plans to organize activities that are group oriented so you will have lots of friends to go along with you. Please contact me if you have an interest in the following activities. Some of the planned activities include:
Activities already in the works include:
As you know these are difficult economic times for many of the ASGRA community and ASGRA as an organization. To keep the organization moving forward, I encourage all of you to renew your membership this upcoming year. If possible, please step up to one of ASGRA's premium membership levels. If you can't, why not get a friend to join? I conclude by asking you to please reconsider your involvement with ASGRA. We have had many great times in the past and with your re-involvement, we will again. Respectfully, 
Vagabond Chuckwagon is Back!!!
After a brief May break, the Vagabond Chuckwagon is back on the road for June. This month we'll kick off the summer season with a tropical breeze… well actually a Caribbean Breeze (http://www.caribbeanbreezeva.com/main.html). Time for some Nuevo Latino cuisine in Arlington, VA! Join us at on Friday June 12 at 7:30pm. Caribbean Breeze is located at 4100 North Fairfax Drive in Arlington, VA. They have live entertainment and dancing on Friday and Saturday nights and an outdoor patio for dining so it sounds like a really fun location for a warm evening. The menu is very innovative and has a wide variety of Latin-inspired dishes, with an emphasis on fresh seafood. I don't know if they take reservations, but I'd like your RSVPs by noon on Monday June 8, please!! I will call and reserve a table if they do. You can contact me via email at ajtygger@aol.com or on my cell at 703-371-7865. Come on out for another fun evening with your ASGRA friends and family! Friday June 12, 2009 7:30pm 4100 North Fairfax Drive Arlington, VA 22203 Phone: (703) 812-7997 Lonni La Bel 
Music ReviewsPatrick Hunter 1 star - Sucks, save your money and buy a beer 
Jason Michael CarrollGrowing Up is Getting Old What I like most about Carroll's sophomore CD is the melodies in the music. They really move and contain some of the things that I think makes great modern country music. There are lots of drums and guitars (steel and electric). The music is prominent enough to make its presence known but not so prominent that it overwhelms Carroll's made-for-country voice. This CD is a real dancer's CD. Every single one of the songs is a two-stepper's dream - sorry swing folks. Out of the two-steppers that are loaded on this CD my favorite would be "Barn Burner". It's got a real quick step without being heart-racing to it. What makes this great is the melody. It's got some real fast and smooth guitar licks in it. You can just see folks racing around the floor to it. "We Threw it All Away" is another good two-steppin' song that uses its title to as an ironic commentary on young lovers who end up with a pretty happy life despite the town and everyone thinking they, as the title says, threw it all away. I like it because it is such a change to the stories that are sometimes sung in country music about a young life misstep that causes misery and heartache before, or sometimes lacking, the it-all-worked-in-the-end finish. Here the all works out in the end happens without that. You might find yourself thinking 'ya right' to the last lines of the songs, which are a bit corny, but regardless of that. I like it when someone brings something new to a well worn theme and Carroll does that here. Though filled with great dance music, I was disappointed that there isn't a song that I could truly connect with. I found a few to which I could nod my head to the truth in them, but the lyrics were lacking for me. They didn't grab my heart the way that I desire from my country music. Among the nod-my-head-to-the-truth tunes, "Happened On a Saturday Night (Suzie Q)" tops the list. This song sings about those dramatic scenes that take place all across the country: two folks who are in love with each other but are too stubborn to admit it. The story is a little long for me to explain outright here. I'll just say it includes a guy drowning his sorrows in drink, a waitress, a honky-tonk, someone getting punched in the face and the girl declaring her love for the knocked out guy. Bring back memories for ya? (grin). The song "Where I'm From" has a line in it that I identify with strongly: "I'm from [where]...a courthouse clock…still don't work". For years in my town there was a church that had a clock in the steeple that read something like 4:20 on one side of it, 3:45 on another and 4:05 on still another. The hands stayed in that position until I was past my teens and I know there is many a town across this country that is similar in this aspect. It's just one of the quirks of them that strikes ya as funny when you hear it in a song. What I liked most about "Where I'm From" though was the ending of it. In the song a country fella and a city person meet in first class on an airplane. Unlike what might happen in a Vivid Man Video, the two just talk and when asked where he's from, the singer replies with the chorus: I'm from the front pew of a wooden white church At the end we find out the guy in the suit originally came from a country place as well. Having this ending helped to drive the message home of how good it is in the country for some folks. It was a subtle and somewhat unexpected ending. Typically, songs like this have the superior tone where we're telling the ignorant city folks just how nice all those things they view as backwards can be. It was nice to have a song that flaunts the joys of small town life without that superiority to the city tone overtly thrown into it. It showed that lots of people have to those places and how it never really leaves them even if they leave it. Though the songs on Growing Up didn't quite grow on me, it is a likeable CD. With Carroll's voice and the fun melodies of the songs helped to keep the music from getting old. I will say that Carroll, certainly, has a great future ahead of him. He's got a voice that could easily succeed Waylon Jennings. Jason Michael Carroll has that quality that was born to sing country. It's just a little bit deep and has just that rub of raw in it. It's almost like God had a vocal chord or two left over from putting together Trace Adkins and just stuck them up on a shelf for a decade and half before stickin' 'em in Carroll's throat. This man has that classic country sounding voice that people yearn for when they remember classic country and he matches it well with the music. Even though on this CD I didn't find any song to connect with I really did connect with the melody and Carroll's voice and will be looking forward to hearing them on successive CDs. 
Jason AldeanWide Open Jason Aldean is another country singer who's voice I really like--I also like the face and the body, too, but we'll write about the music first. He's got that college band quality to his voice. As opposed to someone like Jason Michael Carroll who has a deep, older guy sound to his voice, Jason has that young buck appeal to his voice. Though he is 32, he actually sounds like he's in his 20s. I was surprised to find out that he was not. Additionally, he has a very soft quality to his accent. It is a little bit more flat than that of someone like Billy Currington who is also a Georgia native. Like some of the past few artists that I have reviewed lately, Aldean 's voice also fits well with his music, which is what I would call progressive country. We start out the CD with "Wide Open". The story about when we were all young and the world really was wide open for us. This song sets the tone for most of the CD. The driving guitars and drums help to move the music along and carry us with it. "Crazy Town" is another running melody tune and is my favorite of the CD. Not only because Nashville is a favorite of mine (howdy to all the Smokys), but also for how it wraps up the hopes and dreams and reality of those country hopefuls that move to music city: Roll into town It's a crazy town ...Cut your teeth in the smoky bars and live off the tips from a pickle jar To follow on "Crazy Town", four tracks down the CD is the song "Keep the Girl." The song sings specifically about whether you chase your dreams and loose the one you love or "Keep the Girl" and possibly loose the dream. Though many of us have not had a dream of running off to Nashville, there are a number of us who have had some kind of personal or professional ambition that put a strain on a relationship; forcing us to choose similarly to "chase the dream or keep the girl [boy]". I'm amazed at the ability of the writers, Jason Adlean, Neil Thrasher and Wendell Mobley, who put this feeling into a song. It is one of the shining examples of why country music is so great. "Big Green Tractor" charmed me even though it starts out cliché; the story of a fancy city girl come to the farm. What saves it from being another country-guy-charms-the-city-slicker tune is its bouncy melody that borders on cheese but in a good way and its message about how sometimes it is the simple things, or more specifically, the simple dates that are the good ones. The dates where it is not about what you do, but about just being in the company of one another that makes it a good time. "The Truth" deserves a mention because I like a song that makes me really listen to it to find out what it's about. I like that the words captured my attention enough to make me want to find out what the heck the theme and story of the song is really about because I don't understand it listening passively. I like something that takes a little bit of effort in order for it to make sense. I won't spoil the message of "Truth" here for you, I'll let you find out for yourself like me. It's worth it. "Love was Easy" is another one that captured my attention due to the line in it that says "that feeling we found in the back seat of my car." Aside from bringing back some memories for me of steamy windows in a white Ford F-250, "Easy" is a good song in its theme that when you get older and life becomes more saturated in your relationships, love gets hard. Aldean sings about how you get away from those times as a youngin' when your moments were about countin' stars, makin' out and just being young and in love now that you have to pay bills and meet the mortgage. In its tone, though it does not state this explicitly, it conveys that though those times are something that can still be captured now and then if we don't let those moments pass us by due to being busy with life. Now, you know that I can't let this CD review close without talking about the jewel box and booklet. As mentioned in the opening paragraph I find Jason Aldean very easy on my eyes. He's definitely on my Hot Country 100! Whoooooeee! So, I was looking forward to the booklet and some pictures. I was only mildly disappointed when I opened it. There are a total of 6 pictures of this peach of Georgia man in the CD Booklet. Additionally, there are 3 pictures of Jason on the jewel box. Out of those pictures about 4 of them are really eye catching; where they provide a good shoot of Jason in all his handsomeness that just strikes ya when you look at the picture. What I found disappointed about the others was the muted color in some of them or the absence of it. I'm all for making CD booklets a work of art, but I consider Jason as man to be a work of art; one that I would much prefer to see in full color. On the positive side of the CDs package construction it is made completely without any kind of plastic. An A+ on the green aspect of the CD. If you notice in the above paragraph, I've been refereeing to the jewel box vs. the jewel case. That is because the material used is stiff cardstock. It is definitely not a case in the traditional sense of the word. The only problem that I have with the box's construction is that the opening is at the top. This allows for the CD and booklet to fall out at various times when I was pulling the CD off the shelf; putting it back; bringing it into the office, etc. I appreciate Broken Bow Record's attempt to make it a bit more easy access than having the opening on the inside, but they need to work on making it just a little more secure. As much as I have enjoyed the CD and enjoy the man singing on it, I still can't give it four stars. If you are a Jason Aldean fan, then by all means run on out and get this CD, but for those of you who are more passive country collectors hold onto your money until it goes on sale. It is a CD definitely worth having, but not one that is worth having right now. In the meantime, this Adean fan will be saving up his money to join the Aldean Army fan club. That way I'll have not problems accessing those color photos of this country cutie. 
Billy Ray CyrusBack to Tennessee When I first heard this album, I thought to myself 'Billy Ray what the heck are you doing?' There was a little bit of head shaking going on as I heard the pop-rock that vaguely channels Elvis. I hoped that Billy Ray would not disappoint me as the album progressed. He did not, but I wasn't exactly thrilled with the album either. Throughout the whole album there is a synth-country sound to it. You can really tell that Disney had a hand in this one. The sound feels as though it is set up to appeal to the market of more mainstream or progressive country parents who's teen and tween daughters may be watching Hannah Montana on their Saturday mornings. "Thrillbilly" is the best example of this. The song speaks of all the things that hillbilly's would get a thrill from: bonfires, driving down dirt roads with the headlights off, flipping off barn roofs into hay stacks, four wheelers and the like. It does have some fiddles in it and could make a real good line dance, but in terms of country anthems for backwoods fun it's a little too main street in its melody than dirt road. Another example would be the could've-been-bluegrass "Country as Country Can Be." This one starts out with what has the potential to be a really good bluegrass song, but in the middle of the tune the electric guitar gets amped up and takes over the melody. And really off the wall is the song "Real Gone"; the hardest driving tune of them all. The tune sounds like a bar band tune, but certainly not a honky-tonk bar. So what the heck do I like about this album? Well, one of the better tunes is "A Good Day." This song is a little more toward country rock with a softer melody. It's not so much the melody that catches me about this song, but what it says: Yeah, those are the times I like that the song recalls those special moments with your significant other where you really connect with one another. You, then, recall it in your mind and just smile at the feeling that it still gives ya. Another good tune is the flirting with R&B "I Could Be the One." West Coast Swing folks pay special attention to this song. It is one that you could really have some fun with. The lyrics all revolve around the unlimited possibilities about what could happen between two people who meet: good and bad: I could be your too much Tequila mistake ...I could be the arms What I like about this is so much is the melody of the song supports its playfulness. It's that pick-up moment that we experience where we are trying to charm the socks off of someone done in a musical form. As a dance between two people in the literal and figurative sense you can imagine it being something coy with lots of sly grins in it. Closing out the CD is the song "Butterfly Fly Away"; a duet with daughter Miley. I was thrown off at first when I heard her singing. I knew who it was, but because she sings the first verse on her own my thought was that Billy Ray just added the song due to nepotism. He joins in on the chorus and sings successive verses, so clearly I was wrong. It is a duet and a sweet one at that. The song is about how you help your child grow and learn and transform from a caterpillar to a butterfly, who eventually will fly away. The sweetest part of the song is the chorus which alludes to those special songs that parents and children share with each other: Caterpillar in the tree I also like that Billy Ray is generous with the music on Tennessee. There is a lot on here; 12 tracks total, including the afore mentioned duet. That alone I consider worth my money. There is also enough of a variation on the CD that you could find at least one track like for yourself. But as a whole, I was expecting something more country and little less polished and shiny. I will say though that Billy does have the voice to push further than some other artists into the territory that he has ventured. I also commend him on doing something different with his music. Trail of Tears was a masterpiece and a different musical style than you would find in airplay country. Unfortunately, with Billy Ray's latest album, I don't see a lot of airplay happening with it on my CD changer. 
One to Watch
Patrick Hunter Coosie's Corner
Chuck Wagon Chicken Fried SteakIngredients
Directions
Cowboy Rough
by Jack Hannah, sung by Sons of the San JoaquinAlbum: From Whence Came the Cowboy 
For a limited time, Cowboy Frank is providing a stream to listen to this great song as sung by its author. Listen while you read. (should play on any player)
The cowboy lifts the doggie from its bed of snow
Cowboy rough, cowboy tough, cowboy tender
A cowboy, if he's real, will always show he cares
Cowboy rough, cowboy tough, cowboy tender
He'll try and lift your spirit when it's cold and low...
Cowboy rough, cowboy tough, cowboy tender Maybe that's why he's a hero still today! The next newsletter deadline is June 29. Send your articles to [an error occurred while processing this directive] |
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