There once was a time when the term “country music” brought to mind images of the kinfolk gathering on the back porch with a fiddle and a banjo to play the old tunes that everybody knew since they were no taller than alfalfa in June. Most everybody could play a little. And them who couldn’t play could sing along in time. And that was good enough. Drums? Didn’t need them. Electric guitars were fancy gadgets for those big city folks – where they had electricity.

Sometime after the second war to end war, the record industry came along and made country music into something else. They added citified sounds with choirs, and violins, and horror of horrors – drums. If you are old enough, you will recall there once was a time when drums were not allowed on the Grand Ol’ Opry stage because drums weren’t country. But the Grand Ol’ Opry reflects the industry, and the industry, which is managed more by accountants than artists, says country music has drums and electric guitars.

The ultimate insult, though, was what Waldo Otto, of Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers, called the “electric table.” Somebody took a Hawaiian steel guitar (perfectly charming in Hawaiian music), added a bunch of rods and levers, plugged it into the wall, and somehow convinced the unsuspecting public the “pedal steel” was an essential part of country music.

The hats got bigger and the volume got louder until today we have Garth and Shania banging out noise louder than a diesel train whistle blowing in a tunnel – sound that has a lot more in common with Eminem than it does with Jimmy Rogers or the Carter Family. Country music has become a parody of what it once was. There are plenty enough city slickers wearing big “cowboy” hats fresh out of the box and boots that have never been – well, you know where they’ve never been – who enjoy Garth’s red-neck rock concert to make it incredibly profitable. But what ever became of that down home country sound we love? Is there still a place for the simple banjo and fiddle sound?

Of course there is. You can’t fool the public for long. Our sound is still there, but since that other sound claims to be country, friends and neighbors had to call the acoustic music something else. Thanks to Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs we know it today as bluegrass.

Of the old time music, Everett Lilly said at this year’s RockyGrass, “We never called it bluegrass. It was just country music, or hillbilly music. But it was the same thing.”

The phenomenal success of the O Brother Where Art Thou sound track and the Down From The Mountain concerts stands as evidence there is still a huge demand for old time country music. Down From The Mountain has had two sold-out concerts in Denver CO this year. Both Denver CO area public TV stations have shown the Ricky Skaggs All Star Bluegrass Celebration program repeatedly during their fund raising drives. (The July 10 showing on KRMA-TV in Denver CO featured your friendly local CBMS volunteers taking pledges.) A recent CBMS presentation of Kane’s River and Open Road at Swallow Hill was standing room only. Clearly, the audience is there.

And yet a popular topic of conversation at most any bluegrass gathering these days is, “Why won’t they play bluegrass on the radio?” And, “Why can’t local artists get air play?”

Those big, megawatt, citified “country” stations, like Denver CO’s KYGO, boast of playing country music, yet continue to play the same short play lists of red-neck rock over, and over, and over, every two hours, every day, day after day, until a body could just rip the speakers out. If you listened carefully you might have heard “Man Of Constant Sorrow” once or twice thanks to the overwhelming popularity of the O Brother soundtrack, but you can bet it was played grudgingly.

Ricky Skaggs? Nickel Creek? Don’t think so. Pete Wernick? Kane’s River? Ha! You jest, Shirley.

You can check out today’s play list on KYGO at their website: http://www.kygo.com/home.

So let’s back up and take another look at the situation. Confusing as it may be, these days country isn’t bluegrass and bluegrass isn’t country. Sure, bluegrass is more country than country, but country is Nashville, and Nashville is a city, and that ain’t country. So country is whiny steel guitars and ear splitting Telecasters, and that ain’t bluegrass. So, hereafter in this article bluegrass is good music, and country is something else.

With that in mind it only makes sense that a country station like KYGO isn’t going to play bluegrass. Commercial radio conglomerates, like Jefferson Pilot (KYGO, KCKK, et al) and Clear Channel Communications (KBCO, KBPI, KTCL, KRFX, et al), conduct extensive research into what their target audience wants to listen to. And that’s what they play. And that’s all they play. Face it, Garth Brooks and Ricky Skaggs play different kinds of music. People who tune in to hear Garth may not want to hear Ricky. So don’t turn on KYGO expecting to hear bluegrass.

Jerry Mills, host of the long running Rocky Mountain Bluegrass program on KCKK (AM 1600) tells us, “The station wants to find songs to keep people tuned in.” Their research is aimed at finding the songs that are currently keeping the listeners’ attention. “A single ratings point can mean a lot of money over the year to the station,” says Mills.

KYGO plays top forty country. Their business model says if they deviate from that for even a minute, listeners are going to switch the channel, and once gone they may never come back.

We don’t know what the business model says about the listener who has heard the same song eight times in the course of single day and gets so disgusted they switch the channel and never come back.

That may explain the other business strategy of buying up all the stations in town so that a listener can switch stations all they want and still wind up hearing the same commercials.

Once upon a time federal law said no one owner could monopolize a radio market, but the Communications Act of 1996 changed all that. Thanks to that legislation a company can now own up to eight stations in any market. In the Denver CO market, Clear Channel dominates the pop/rock stations, and Jefferson Pilot owns the country stations. According to a recent study by Forrester Research, Clear Channel owns 60% of pop/rock radio nationwide. So competition is effectively eliminated and the conglomerates can dictate what is available on broadcast radio.

There is yet another phenomenon that tends to stifle good music on the air. Fifty years ago the record producers used to pay stations and disk jocks to play their tunes. It was called “payola.” But payola was not quite legal, and when the practice was exposed it caused one heck of a hubbub. People lost their jobs.

“(Alan) Freed became the symbol for these questionable dealings, and eventually wound up pleading guilty to a couple of commercial bribery beefs. By 1965, when a discredited and destitute Freed died at age 43, laws were on the books that made direct payment for airplay a criminal offense.” (Westword, Oct 18, 2001)

So the industry had to find a loophole. The law doesn’t have any restriction against having a middleman handle the money exchange. Thus “independent radio promoters” were born.

The independent radio promoter is hired by the record industry to pitch their music to the radio conglomerate. The conglomerate, wishing to avoid any hint of impropriety, only accepts music offered through the independent radio promoter. The promotion company, in turn, pays the conglomerate for exclusive access to their programming people. The payola is no longer “direct” and is therefore legal, but the money still goes from the industry to the conglomerate to play their music. A rose by any other name is still payola.

This then becomes a stumbling block to the small independent producer who can’t afford the fees to get the independent radio promoter to listen to their tunes. According to an October 18, 2001 article in Westword, one independent radio promoter, Coast to Coast Promotions, typically charges $600 a week per song.

Call it what you like, it still requires a substantial bribe to get your music to the conglomerate.

In August, Forrester Research reported music sales are down 15% in the past two years. The industry claims this is due to Internet radio and music exchange systems such as the now defunct Napster that allow people to swap pirate copies of their CD’s. Forrester opines it is due to the general downturn in the economy and other competition for the entertainment dollar.

A music lover might conclude the decline is due to the lack of quality music coming from the industry. With all the really great music that can be heard at RockyGrass, Swallow Hill, Telluride, and elsewhere, you would think the industry would be cranking out better stuff. It surely is a puzzlement.

Next month: The Radio Conundrum, Part 2 - Solutions

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