Country music sure has changed since the days the people of the Appalachians were singing the songs their Scottish and Irish ancestors brought over with them from across the water. Not only does the majority of so-called country we hear today bear no relationship to any of those traditional songs, listening to it you'd be hard pressed to understand why the heck it is even called country as it has nothing to do with country life or the people who live it. What far too many of these groups, or performers, have done is use the sentimental nature of the old folk songs as inspiration for their material and wrap the result in the tinsel of pop music.
That they still seem to think they're qualified to sing songs about farmers, long distance truckers, and the beauty of trains is a bit of a joke, especially when you consider the closest most of them have come to any of the above has been passing them in their converted tour buses. It's no wonder that the majority of what you hear on the "country charts" sounds about as sincere as a politician caught with his hand in the cookie jar or an evangelical preacher with a prostitute. While recent years has seen something of a revival of interest in the traditional style of music, the chances of you getting to hear it on the radio on a regular basis remain slim to none.
However, if you're willing to stray away from the radio dial and venture off into un"charted" territory you'll have a far better chance of hearing music with a whole lot more substance. One of the bands off the map are J B Beverlry &The Wayward Drifters. They've just released their second recording, Watch America Roll By on their own, Helltrain Records label.
Nowhere on any of the twelve tracks on Watching America Roll By are you going to hear a voice catch in order to simulate emotion as the lead singer, J B Beverley, doesn't need to resort to such fakery. He sings with a voice that sounds like it's been scarred not only by what he's experienced personally, but by the empathy he feels for others and their stories. While it's important for a singer/songwriter to have been around the block a few times and had his or her share of what life can throw at you, what's just as important is how they express that in song. You can sing about yourself and be full of self pity, or you can sing about yourself in such a manner that everybody can identify with what you're talking about as you've taken the personal and made it universal.
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