It performed well on the country charts, but is best known for being one of their biggest mainstream crossover hits. Sometimes artists celebrate general small-town life rather than specific places, and this Montgomery Gentry tune did just that. Backed by a simple chorus, Crow’s heartfelt verses piggyback on the vibe of Abilene rather than any details about the city – proving the power small towns have to invoke feelings. Sheryl Crow’s offering is a great example of a town as the backdrop to a story rather than the star. Many artists have memorialized Abilene, including country legends George Hamilton IV and Waylon Jennings. Cher’s gender-swapping version made it big on dance charts around the world, and country megaband Lonestar hit the top 10 with it in 2003. The tune wasn’t just a big hit for Cohn either. Cohn has said that the song is autobiographical – it depicts life in the Tennessee town, referencing landmarks and places important to him. Memphis is officially (according to the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum) the most-referenced city in recorded music, appearing in over 1,000 songs, and Marc Cohn’s might be the most famous. From old school swing to hard rock (and everything in between) songwriters love them some good ol’ U.S. Country stars especially have waxed melodic about their love of small-town life, with everyone from old-school crooners like Merle Haggard to new-country stars like Jason Aldean memorializing good times in small places. Not that all of this is successful - it can sound too goofy at points - but it's wilder and stranger than most contemporary country albums of 2004, and a whole lot more fun, to boot.Photo courtesy of World Adult Kickball Associationįor decades, musicians have been writing about the special kind of romance found in small-town America. Much of Horse of a Different Color plays to that audience, but the surprise is that the rowdiness is tongue-in-cheek and that Big & Rich are musically clever, filling the record with big hooks and unbridled weirdness. Like the D, they even have a theme song in "Rollin' (The Ballad of Big & Rich)" - which bizarrely enough sounds a bit like Tenacious D, which isn't nearly as bizarre as how the melody of "Wild West Show" recalls Nirvana's "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" - and they have no compunctions about being flat-out silly, which is good, since that silliness brought them a big novelty hit in "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)," a song designed for drunken shout-alongs in sports bars. All of this makes Big & Rich hard to peg, particularly because they come across as a big-boned, country variation of Tenacious D or Ween - talented musical pranksters who treat everything as a lark, but have the musical skills to back up their boasts. They can certainly craft a kicking country song, as the backwoods ballad "Deadwood Mountain" proves, but they don't settle for that, preferring to spike predictable song structures with considerable doses of goofy humor or, better still, to fly beyond genre and concoct gonzo amalgams of country, arena rock, and rap. In fact, they throw conventions out the window on their 2004 debut album, Horse of a Different Color.
Who sings big rich town professional#
Like many professional country musicians, the duo of Big & Rich - Big being Kenny Alphin, while Rich is John Rich, a former singer for Lonestar - are based in Nashville, but that doesn't mean they follow all the conventions of Music City.
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