Editor’s note: In an occasional series called Through Lines, we’re taking a look back at records that help tell the evolving story of Nashville music, one decade at a time. Our installment on the 1990s comes courtesy of veteran music journalist Michael McCall, who has long served as museum editor at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Also see our installments on the 1970s and the 1980s.
For the Nashville music community, the new century started a decade early. In the 1990s, every segment of the music scene expanded toward where the city finds itself today, with a vast array of rich music scenes that in many cases have achieved national or international recognition. The ’90s were a damn fun time to be a music fan in Nashville, and these eight albums epitomize the decade and its changes
Dixie Chicks, Fly (Monument, 1999)
The decade found Garth Brooks, Shania Twain and Dixie Chicks (who changed their name to The Chicks in June 2020) releasing albums that topped 10 million units sold, leading the way as Music Row kicked open the golden doors of the top-floor suites of American entertainment.
The Chicks’ Fly, which has been certified 11 times platinum, suggested the possibilities of the coming century while summing up the virtues of the previous decade in country. The riotous “Sin Wagon” and “Goodbye Earl” embody the swagger and fun of Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places.” The honky-tonk of “Hello Mr. Heartache” and “Some Days You Gotta Dance” embraces country traditionalism broadly and Texas dance hall music in particular. Their songs draw on the best songwriting talent of Music Row (Matraca Berg, Marcus Hummon, Richard Leigh) and the developing Americana world (Patty Griffin, Mike Henderson, Jim Lauderdale, Darrell Scott).
A few years later, mainstream country radio and its fans torpedoed the group and its musical vision with a narrow-minded reactionist response to the band’s criticism of George W. Bush. Country music still suffers creative constrictions stemming from this very public blacklisting, with artists still afraid to speak out for fear of getting “Dixie Chicked.”
BR5-49, Live From Robert’s (Arista, 1996)
Lower Broad in the 1980s was populated by pawn shops, coin-operated porn emporiums and a few vacant bars with booths of ripped Naugahyde. The conversion into today’s flesh-packed neon strip catering to here-for-the-party tourists began when Robert’s Western Wear (now Robert’s Western World) and Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge gave their stages to musically astute traditionalists like Greg Garing, Paul Burch and BR5-49, who drew crowds of scene-makers and old-school country fans who wanted to dance.
Want to know what a night on the street used to sound like? Grab a dance partner, pop open a Pabst and put on the vital and visceral Live From Robert’s. Every night was a welcoming carnival, without the bachelorettes, country bros, long lines and vomit of recent years. The music was so much older (and wiser) then; it’s younger (and dumber) than that now.
Matthew Ryan, May Day (A&M, 1997)
The country-influenced punk rock and smart power-pop communities of the 1980s, which began to draw national attention, led to the rise of a professionally savvy group of roots rockers and artful boundary-pushers. The best featured inspired songcraft and skilled musicianship, a Nashville tradition. These acts conspired to move beyond what some called the “Nashville Curse” by proving a local act could find national success outside of country music.
A record-deal-driven festival called the Extravaganza, run by the long-gone Nashville Entertainment Association, strived to expose non-country acts to coastal-based record executives. The fest launched with a dozen prudently selected rock and pop acts. It grew into a sprawling event that crammed more than 400 aspirants into 26 clubs across four nights in 1998, its penultimate year.
Artists with national followings gave the city a boost by moving here, including Steve Forbert, Nanci Griffith, John Hiatt and Lucinda Williams. Some locals, such as The Cactus Brothers, The Dusters, Mark Germino and the Sluggers and Webb Wilder, also continued to grow their fan bases. Others used critical acclaim to build niche followings, among them Bedlam, Jim Lauderdale, Buddy and Julie Miller, Todd Snider and Matthew Ryan. As exemplified in the brooding, anthemic guitar rock of Ryan’s May Day, all of these acts created work that ranks among the best of the 1990s.
Lambchop, How I Quit Smoking (Merge, 1996)
A young DIY crowd consisting of set-to-destruct bands as diverse as F.U.C.T. and Trauma Team were driven by angst and fuck-all attitude. With the valiant Lucy’s Record Shop positioned on Church Street as an all-ages temple of communion and Xeroxed fanzines, these bands sparked a politically minded youth movement that railed against boredom and injustice. Lucy’s joined other clubs in championing sonic experimentalists — the best of which, Lambchop, went on to international fame. How I Quit Smoking captures the band at its most expansive and complex, with songs that set understated horn and string charts against washes of pedal steel and electric guitar to create an ornate, downcast form of Southern chamber pop.
Count Bass D, Pre-Life Crisis (Work/Epic, 1995)
The NEA Extravaganza drew criticism from Nashville’s Black music communities for its lack of diversity: The late Aashid Himons, leader of the reggae-influenced Afrikan Dreamland, launched his own alternative festival after the Extravaganza included only a minuscule number of Black artists. Around the same time, the local hip-hop scene began to surface, powered by message-based, socially aware artists such as Count Bass D and Utopia State. Count Bass D’s debut, released on a subdivision of Epic Records, demonstrated as much ingenuity as higher-profile acts like Nas and A Tribe Called Quest. The work of Count Bass D and others set the stage for the success of rapper Young Buck in the Aughts and for local hip-hop leaders in years to come, such as Starlito (who began his career with Cash Money as All Star Cashville Prince), Chancellor Warhol, Mike Floss and Daisha McBride.
Rod McGaha, Preacherman (Compass, 1999)
Nashville’s jazz community has deep roots, and its profile rose at the end of the 20th century. The scene included several established leaders, including Beegie Adair, Lori Mechem, Dennis Solee and Roger Spencer. They worked with local musicians Rahsaan and Roland Barber, Chris Brown, Jeff Coffin, Nioshi Jackson and Jody Nardone. In time, these stellar musicians drew praise from and collaborated with nationally known elders, such as Larry Carlton, Kevin Mahogany, Jimmy Smith, Chester Thompson and Kirk Whalum. The pop-jazz a cappella vocal group Take 6, signed to Warner Bros., stunned audiences with their acrobatic harmonies and beatbox rhythms and attracted the support of Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder.
Chicago-born and Nashville-residing trumpeter Rod McGaha, in particular, found mentors in Max Roach, Clark Terry and other leading jazz lights. McGaha’s second album Preacherman was produced by Delfeayo Marsalis and released on Nashville-based indie Compass Records. The jazz world took notice, and rightfully so. Preacherman finds McGaha working a searching, spiritual depth into traditional swing and straight-ahead jazz arrangements.
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, Three Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Warner Bros., 1993)
The emergence of progressive acoustic music, initiated largely by musicians steeped in bluegrass and inspired by jazz improvisation, ranks among Nashville’s most important American musical contributions. The Flecktones, led by former New Grass Revival banjoist Béla Fleck and featuring brothers Victor and Roy “Futureman” Wooten, led the charge. Their work brought attention and collaboration from Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, Bruce Hornsby, Branford Marsalis and others.
Fleck was quick to cite how the interaction of a group of peers pushed all of the musicians to new plateaus. These top-of-their-field players, all of whom have attained international recognition, include Alison Brown, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer and Mark O’Connor. Their members have composed symphonies and soundtracks while collaborating with everyone from Yo-Yo Ma to Paul Simon to the Nashville Symphony. The Flecktones’ album Three Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, recorded during a stretch when the band was a trio without a player on reed instruments, is its most stripped-down effort. It dives even deeper into funk and ventures lightly into hip-hop while maintaining a focus on adventurous time signatures and joyous, improvisational flights.
Self, Subliminal Plastic Motives (Zoo/Spongebath, 1995)
Down the road in Murfreesboro, upstart Spongebath Records proved that a college town with a university recording industry department could draw awareness for a quirky brand of pop-rock. The success of one-of-a-kind bands like Self, The Katies and The Features pushed Spongebath to partner with major labels and attempt to provide a springboard to national recognition — especially for a mastermind like Self’s leader Matt Mahaffey. On Subliminal Plastic Motives, he established an inventive pastiche drawing on funk, pop and jazz to create a futuristic sound comparable to Beck, OutKast and Prince.
