Ever since The Beatles revolutionized youth culture, bands have held a mythic place in pop music. There's romance in the collective voice, in the esprit de corps, in the ne'er-do-wells who rise to nobility by becoming a generational rallying point. Despite what history has revealed—from the bitter breakups to the crash landings—the ideal prevails.

When Bruce Springsteen regaled audiences by testifying, "We're here to re-dedicate you to the power, the passion, the mystery and the ministry of rock 'n' roll," the we proved all-important. Spoken in the first person, a proclamation like that would have sounded pompous. Standing onstage with the E Street Band and sharing that message and glory with his compatriots, it struck a chord.

As chemistry teaches us, certain compounds are more combustible when working in concert than when apart. Doubtless, that explains why the Boss has had a greater impact with his band than when he's gone the solo route. The same can be said of everyone from the Fab Four and The Rolling Stones to The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Van Halen, Soundgarden, P-Funk and The Replacements. Certain talents just ignite when bouncing off a strong-willed partner or within a cooperative. Would Steven Tyler, Bono, Michael Stipe or Gwen Stefani work as well as solo acts as in their famous bands? Not likely.

So why is the mojo that galvanizes rock bands all but absent from country music? At a time when bands again are energizing rock 'n' roll and filling the sales charts, country music has fewer bands creating hits than at any time in the last quarter-century. Fewer country bands are signing record deals, and even fewer are being developed by the major labels on Music Row. Neither Warner Bros. nor Sony Records has a single band on its roster, and Capitol just signed its first combo in years. DreamWorks just dropped its only active band, Emerson Drive, though they're grooming a quartet, the curiously named Hot Apple Pie, to release a record next year. Mercury just put out an album by the Georgia trio Sugarland, the first record by a band the label has issued in ages.

All of this comes at a pivotal moment, too. Alabama, the only superstar band of country's modern era, played what they billed as their final concert last month. The quartet who proved that a bunch of Southern longhairs could sell millions of albums have been, in recent years, ignored by radio and their record label. They're going "home to Alabama," as they once sang, only now, they're tired and feel rejected by the industry they once helped revive. At the moment, the revolution they fomented looks similarly spent.

At the Country Music Association Awards next week, Music Row celebrates its most successful year in more than a decade. Sales are up nearly 15 percent from last year. A record six artists—Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, George Strait, Alan Jackson, Keith Urban and Rascal Flatts—have had albums debut at No. 1 on the pop charts since January. Perhaps most importantly, country music presented a rash of new talent this year, building on the momentum of several strong newcomers from 2003.

At Tuesday's CMAs, nearly every category is flush with best-selling acts—except for one glaringly weak spot, that of Vocal Group of the Year. Of the Vocal Group nominees, only Rascal Flatts and Lonestar have charted a Top 10 hit in the last year. Alabama have been nominated for nostalgic reasons, Diamond Rio have been quiet for more than a year, while Trick Pony are struggling and, so far, failing to regain the momentum they enjoyed when they broke out in 2001.

The favorite to win is Rascal Flatts; they're the only band generating the kind of record and ticket sales that attract votes from the business-minded members of the CMA. The carefully coiffed trio may be pulling in young female fans, but their overwrought albums haven't drawn much critical respect, nor do they have the kind of enthusiastic support from industry insiders that previous Vocal Group winners like The Mavericks or the Kentucky HeadHunters had in the past. Even the mass-market magazine People, which caters to the same demographic as Rascal Flatts, recently referred to the band as "the country equivalent of a boy band" with songs that tend to have "a treacly, dispirited sameness."

It hasn't always been this bad. In the '80s, after Alabama made country music safe for rock-influenced bands, a cavalcade of groups rolled out: Sawyer Brown, Restless Heart, Highway 101, the Desert Rose Band, Southern Pacific, Pirates of the Mississippi and others lent a sense of adventure and variety to country radio. Sensing Nashville's changing ways, the Dirt Band left the Southern California rock scene to score a string of country hits. By the '90s, groundbreaking acts like the Kentucky HeadHunters and The Mavericks led the way for the signing of The Tractors, The Derailers, Pinmonkey and BR549.

Somewhere in there, Alison Krauss & Union Station classed up the genre, although radio never embraced them the way fans have. Perhaps most telling, the Dixie Chicks—a band rather than a vocal group by country music's broad description—were poised to lead the industry down a path of renewed artistic credibility. Then they learned that the genre still prefers women who don't speak their minds.

So how did country music end up this way? And is there a way out? Over the last few weeks, the Scene interviewed more than a dozen of Music Row's top executives to discuss the reasons for the collapse and to gather ideas on how best to reverse the trend.

The music problem

The primary obstacle is this: country music is about singers and songs. Nashville was built by song publishers and record producers, and by the '60s, a system was in place where top songwriters provided material for entertainers. Just when Bob Dylan and The Beatles were starting to perform songs written from a personal perspective, country adapted the Tin Pan Alley approach of a community built around publishing companies that generated material for singers who were groomed by older, male producers with backgrounds as instrumentalists and arrangers.

"In country music, it's the exception, not the rule, that the artist will be the creative engine, especially from a writer standpoint," says Susan Levy, vice president of artist development at Universal South Records. "There are only a few artists who have that kind of personal connection that ties their songs to their overall image, where the songs are intricately tied to who they are as artists. Alan Jackson does it, and there's Toby Keith, Keith Urban and maybe a few others. Their songs are who they are. When Alan Jackson sings a song about family or about the little man, it's his family and his commentary, not someone else's."

When it comes to bands, the exceptions are even fewer. "The Dixie Chicks, as a band, had an image and a point of view of their own, and if you go back, so did The Mavericks and the HeadHunters," Levy says. "But face it, most country bands are just pretty people who look good together and sing someone else's compositions. They're faux bands. It isn't a creative collaboration. That dynamic that you have in rock, where you have a strong, charismatic singer with a couple of distinctive instrumentalists and a band of friends who give voice to a singular vision, that doesn't exist in country music. It should, but it doesn't."

The result, unfortunately, is the middle of the road. In rock, bands tend to provide rebellious energy, but in country, they're mostly polite, well-mannered groups with expensive haircuts and stylish mall clothing. Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney leave their shows drenched in sweat and physically spent; Lonestar's Richie McDonald could walk offstage and get a table at The Palm.

"I think a lot of the current country bands lack that fun factor," says Holly Gleason of Joe's Garage, an independent media relations and management firm that works with Kenny Chesney, Terri Clark, Sawyer Brown and Pat Green—all acts whose reputations are built on energizing and entertaining audiences. "The reality is that a band has a chance to be rowdy and enjoy themselves in ways that a solo act can't. They can come on like a bunch of friends having a great time, but they don't."

As proof, Gleason points to the success of male duos, who tend to act like music is an excuse to have some rowdy fun. "Brooks & Dunn, Montgomery Gentry, Big & Rich go out there ready to ringmaster a party," she says. "But right now country music grooms bands for a certain demographic—the soccer mom, the working suburban housewife—and Nashville doesn't think those women are interested in partying or in guys who swagger with a hint of danger in their eyes. Nashville is wrong, because believe me, those women are still attracted to that."

The development problem

Part of that party-hearty attitude comes out of a band's sense of camaraderie, from working long hours together in the studio, then coming out stoked to present new music to fans. Rock bands tend to begin as collaborations among friends, or out of the desire of players to work within a style of music they all love. They start out in garages and living rooms, graduating to clubs in cities and college towns. They develop their own songs and sound, their own image and attitude. By time they sign to record labels, they know who they are and what they want to sound like.

By contrast, country bands typically begin by covering popular hits; their bread-and-butter comes from note-perfect renditions played for patrons of country dance clubs, honky-tonks, lounges and county fairs. Their audiences want them to mimic, not to originate. They aren't encouraged to write songs, to come up with a distinctive image or to develop their own instrumental style.

"It's hard to find a band that has its own sound," says Mark Wright, executive vice president at Sony Music and producer of Brooks & Dunn, Gretchen Wilson and Montgomery Gentry. "And if they don't have their own sound, why bother? The culture they come up in doesn't encourage them to develop any personality or style of their own. They're not supposed to stand out."

James Stroud, the co-chairman of Universal Music Group Nashville and the producer of Toby Keith's albums, criticizes the way bands record. "Right now, most bands are basically vocal groups with studio players behind them," he says. "A lot of them don't even play on their own records. They learn the parts and play them on the road after they become hits. The result is that bands don't sound any different than solo singers. We have to change that. We have to find bands who don't sound like anyone else. And we have to let them go in the studio and make their own music."

Budgets also are a factor in developing country bands. In bottom-line-conscious Nashville, rosters are much smaller than in pop and rock, so each new signing is chosen more carefully and investments are more tightly considered. "With a band, everything costs more," Gleason says. "When you go on a promotional tour, you're looking at more hotel rooms, more plane tickets, more meal costs, more clothes to buy, more hair and makeup people to hire.

"With photo sessions, there's more film costs, more time involved, more re-touching," she goes on. "Instead of making one guy or girl look really good, you've got four or five or eight people. And for what? Bands are a long shot anyway. It's a bigger risk and a harder sell."

The image problem

Country fans tend to be loyal to solo performers, not bands, mainly because it's easier to imprint the image of one person, as opposed to, say, five, onto the popular consciousness. Rock fans identify with rebellion and defiance. Country fans tend to see their stars as an idealized version of themselves; most want them to be heroes, not outcasts or outlaws.

Nashville's strength is working with radio and video stations to quickly establish an image to go with a hit song, and the machine works better when it can focus on one face instead of a group. Even now, fans can have problems identifying the individual members of even the most popular bands with years of success. They're not the only ones.

"A member of Diamond Rio could walk in here today, and I wouldn't recognize him," says Nick Hunter, general manager of Koch Records Nashville. "That's the problem bands have—they're faceless, and they don't have a lot of personality. They can get by on good songs, but they never really climb to the top tier. People will listen to a good song, but they won't become diehard fans."

The few bands who have lasted, like Alabama and Sawyer Brown, have a charismatic front man whom fans can identify. "Alabama worked partly because they were first, and partly because the way they merged Southern rock and country music and brought younger fans into the music," says Mike Dungan, president of Capitol Records Nashville. "They had a singer in Randy Owen who was such a strong presence in front. And they had that rebel flag as part of everything they did, and that became a bigger part of their identity than the rest of the guys in the band."

Sawyer Brown benefited from a similar focus on the bandleader. "You can't see Sawyer Brown and not notice Mark Miller, because of his energy and all the dancing he does," Dungan says. "He gets blasted for it, but that's why they've remained. They've had some hits, but they're still here because Mark Miller made people look at him, and enough of them liked him to build fan loyalty. He's got a personality that you either love or hate—like a lot of rock bands have."

The ego problem

The country music industry doesn't like strife. It prefers clean-cut, polite, hardworking entertainers who follow orders and don't make waves. Unlike rock, which thrives on conflict (or at least presents itself that way), country looks for performers who fans might want to invite into their homes.

The more members a band has, the more potential for one member to start acting out or clashing with another. It just takes one lazy person to throw off a schedule, or one wild-ass to take off on a bender or disappear with someone they just met.

"Dealing with four or five guys can be exhausting," Dungan says. "If you have five people in a band, then you have five different personalities and five different opinions. Everything takes longer. If the music is great, it's worth it, but it takes a lot more energy from everyone involved."

Tony Brown, the co-chairman of Universal South and one of Nashville's most successful record producers, came of age playing piano in bands, working with Elvis Presley, being a member of Emmylou Harris' Hot Band and, just recently, participating in a reunion of The Cherry Bombs, Rodney Crowell's band from the late '70s and early '80s.

"There's always a little tension in bands somewhere," Brown says. "It's not usually on the level where fans can see it, but those who work with the band see it and have to deal with it. Usually, it's about the lead singer getting too much attention, which is a cliché, but it's true. Someone else in a band wants to sing or write, things like that. The democratic nature of a band always seems to lead to an implosion."

Fixing the problem

Nearly every country band of the last 20 years has taken one of two approaches. There's the Alabama model, where a charismatic front man with a good voice leads what otherwise is a bar band of nondescript musicians playing watered-down pop-rock. Then there's the Restless Heart model, in which a vocal group happens to play instruments; the emphasis, however, is on the vocal harmonies.

There have been exceptions, like the Kentucky HeadHunters and The Mavericks, but they were basically rock bands with a slight country flavor. But both were self-generated groups who came together on their own and who rose from playing clubs to becoming national touring acts with major-label deals.

If country bands are to get back into the mix, they need to become more original, as well as more unified behind a singular vision generated by the band, not by producers or outside songwriters. One option might be Southern rock with country hooks—bands like Drive-By Truckers, who smartly update the sounds and sensibility of Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top and the Marshall Tucker Band.

Another possibility might be bands who can bring the precision and fire of bluegrass and yoke it to a rhythm section, building on what Ricky Skaggs created in his '80s hits, or bands who can come up with something as fresh as what Alison Krauss & Union Station have been doing for years.

Yet another possibility might be a honky-tonk act like George Strait's Ace in the Hole Band or Alan Jackson's Strayhorns, groups who created their own songs and feature a strong singer. Or even a band of top-notch musicians who could craft tight, combustible songs that left room for them to jam in concert. Imagine Nickel Creek with a better lead vocalist and more interest in commercially viable tunes. Or maybe the Russian instrumentalists Bering Strait, whose lead singer is as good as Stevie Nicks, could be Music Row's next breakthrough band.

Of course, popular rock bands like Three Doors Down, Five for Fighting and Matchbox 20 aren't that far away from what country radio plays now. Surely, a similarly young, engaging unit led by a songwriter with a good voice could be successful in country music.

As it stands, though, multi-threat acts like Keith Urban are forced to go it alone if they are to have any hope of making it on Music Row. Urban first gained a recording contract as the leader of a well-regarded local club band, The Ranch, but the trio's first album for Capitol bombed. Urban split off as a solo performer and now, three records later, is a million-selling act whose music has grown increasingly closer in style to what he initially created with The Ranch. It's too bad he couldn't have stayed with his initial band and, along with the Dixie Chicks, jump-started a trend in which country groups could have hits and garner widespread respect and credibility. Given another chance, maybe Nashville could get it right.