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Satellite Radio Nabs Outlaw Country Acts
02/26/2005 7:55 AM, Reuters
Paul Heine
Jeremy Tepper was spinning tunes
from the second-floor DJ station at New York's Irving Plaza one
night in March 2004, between live performances by BR549 and the
Mavericks. As was his custom, he closed with C.W. McCall's
"Convoy."
Before the song finished, "Little Steven" Van Zandt leaped
from his seat in the VIP lounge, walked over to Tepper, put his
arm around him and muttered, "You're my guy."
Tepper had no idea what Van Zandt was talking about.
The next day, Tepper was uptown, meeting with Steve
Blatter, VP of music programing at Sirius Satellite Radio.
Blatter proceeded to outline Van Zandt's concept for a new
Sirius channel that would replace the Border, where Tepper, a
music journalist and rabid record collector, worked as a DJ.
Sirius staffers weren't having much luck locating all the
songs on Van Zandt's impossibly long list. "Yeah, I've got
those at home," Tepper recalls saying, boasting of his
50,000-title collection.
Van Zandt joined Sirius as a creative adviser in January
2004, but the seeds for what would become Outlaw Country first
hatched in his bandana-covered head a decade earlier.
SQUEEZED OUT
"There were too many cool things falling between the
cracks," he says of where commercial country radio was. "All
the things that got squeezed out happened to be all the best
stuff. I thought ... 'How can we have a country format and not
include Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and George Jones?"'
More about an attitude than a genre, Outlaw Country, which
bowed in April 2004, defies the boundaries of traditional radio
formats -- and, sometimes, good taste. Because of its ambitious
musical palette and because it breaks so many programing rules,
it's a format that would drive most conventional programers to
drink.
Purposefully wide in style and era, it runs the gamut from
a novelty song like Kinky Friedman's "They Ain't Makin' Jews
Like Jesus Anymore" to '50s Everly Brothers; it can segue from
Ray Wylie Hubbard's "Cooler-n-Hell" into Dusty Springfield's
slow-burning "Son of a Preacher Man."
Bucking the trend of highly researched, narrowly defined
formats, the channel connects the dots among Texas swing,
rockabilly, country that twangs, country rock, alternative
country and three generations of Hank Williamses. Built on the
premise that "cool is timeless," it covers a wide swath of
rebellious American music.
"We sprinkle in some rockabilly and some truck-driving
songs, and we have an awful lot of fun," says Tepper, who acts
as the channel's format manager/morning man.
'COUNTRY WITH TEETH'
Sirius director of country programing Scott Lindy refers to
Outlaw Country as "music for the unoffendable" and "country
with teeth. It's a little rawer, a little more guitar-driven,"
he says. "Because of their content or edgy nature, these are
the songs that don't get played on traditional country radio."
Nashville-based Lindy, who joined Sirius in 2004, adds,
"The common element is the artists all have a deep love for
country music, making it their way, not really concerned about
selling albums or pleasing anyone but the barroom in front of
them."
While the library stretches all the way back to the '30s,
Outlaw Country also champions new talent, including Elizabeth
McQueen & the Firebrands, the Skeeters and Rex Hobart & the
Misery Boys.
"We wanted to make a home for a style of country that's
probably not going to get any love outside of a barroom,"
Tepper says. "This is that jukebox in a honky-tonk bar where
all the good country songs that aren't played by commercial FM
went."
FALSE THEORIES
"I don't think we're giving the audience enough credit,"
adds Van Zandt, who has had direct contact with thousands of
music fans after three decades with Bruce Springsteen & the E
Street Band. "We impose these ideas on the audience, like young
people aren't going to like old people, and old folks don't
like new music and all these false theories that we have now
disproved."
The outlaw name carries to the DJs too. Each episode of
Mojo Radio concludes with the sign-off, "See ya later,
fornicators!" You can credit (or blame) Tepper for suggesting
the recruitment of afternoon DJ Mojo Nixon from mornings at
classic rock KGB San Diego. Nixon, also renowned as an
in-your-face satirical new wave rock performer, is beyond
irreverent.
At the channel's core is a collection of radio orphans --
artists that have been peripheral to other formats but never
really had one to call their own.
Besides seminal '70s country rock bands, the channel also
embraces the alternative country that began with the arrival of
Uncle Tupelo in the '80s, along with pretty much everything
else that fits the vibe, including a new breed of
genre-expanding artists that ascended the country charts in the
late '80s, bringing an influx of adults with them.
Reuters/Billboard
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