by Chris Gray
It’s easy to skewer
country video as being nothing but a mirror image of the industry’s moribundradio scene. Too easy; both media have more than their share of vacant-eyed hat
acts doing their best George Strait/Garth Brooks impressions and Reba divas
recycling those piano-drenched quasi-pop ballads that would make both
Karen Carpenter and Carole King blush. But, unlike their radio
counterparts, the major country video networks seem at least willing to
try new things, which is good, because every once in a while, along
comes a video that takes every clich�d video convention and kicks it
squarely in the teeth, harder than a mule with a grass burr up its nose.
Earlier this fall, one of those videos hit the big time. It was a grainy,
black-and-white video, shot in a jail cell, for a two-year-old song by an
artist whom country radio still shuns like a leper: Austin’s own Junior Brown.
When Brown’s “Highway Patrol” was released on 1993’s Guit With It, it
went absolutely nowhere. Yet re-released on this year’s EP Junior High — and accompanied by a remote-stopping video — it fared considerably better.
“Highway Patrol” went to number six on Country Music Television (CMT)’s “Top 12
Countdown” and all the way to the top of The Nashville Network (TNN)’s
playlist. In the process, album sales for the then dead-in-the-water Guit
With It doubled. Country video may not be as important to the country
market as radio — or as important to country music as MTV is to pop, rock, and
R&B — but it’s getting there. Even without radio play, a hit video can
cause album sales to skyrocket, and “Highway Patrol” is a perfect example.
CMT seems to become more influential in the country music industry with every
passing video. Started in 1983 as a Nashville cable station, the channel went
national in 1991 when it was purchased by Gaylord Communications — the owners
of The Nashville Network. Although it’s only in half as many homes as MTV (30
million in the States; 39 million worldwide), it plays at least twice as many
videos. Instead of pandering to Gen-X advertising dollars with insipid
programming as MTV does, CMT plays videos, nothing but videos, 24 hours a day.
In Austin, CMT yields to the Austin Music Network (AM15) each night at 10pm and
resumes programming at 2am (Friday and Saturday at 4am).
Although AM15 is still, and probably always will be, the best place to see
locally generated videos, country or otherwise, it’s not as uncommon to see a
local artist on CMT as it is on MTV. Saturday nights at 9pm, CMT runs a program
called Jammin’ Country, described by the network’s programming
department as “A weekly, 60-minute series showcasing the best of country-rock,
with videos by progressive artists such as Dwight Yoakam, Travis Tritt, and the
Mavericks, plus country-influenced pop artists such as Bonnie Raitt and John
Mellencamp, demonstrating that country can really rock.” More importantly, it
demonstrates that the not-quite-country, not-quite-rock sound Austin audiences
have been listening to for years may finally be catching on outside of Central
Texas. Though Brown is as yet the only Austin artist to break out of Jammin’
Country into heavy rotation (four or more plays a day) on the channel, and
Asleep at the Wheel’s latest “Lay Down Sally” is currently in the channel’s
medium rotation, Monte Warden, Kelly Willis, Delbert McClinton, Joe Ely, Rosie
Flores, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Stephen Bruton, and Robert Earl Keen — as well as
semi-Austin artists such as Shaver, Lyle Lovett, and Lee Roy Parnell — have
all had videos on the show.
But while Texas-flavored country has certainly established a foothold on the
channel, don’t hold your breath waiting for the latest Don Walser or Derailers
video to show up on the channel anytime soon. CMT’s rotation is still heavily
skewed towards major-label acts. For independent country labels, pushing video
product on CMT and TNN is the proverbial uphill climb. For one thing, small
labels don’t have near the distribution capabilities as their major-label big
brothers, and the networks are reluctant to rotate a video from a record that
Joe Sixpack can’t walk into his local Wal-Mart and buy.
“The last thing CMT and TNN want to do is to help break an act that nobody
can buy their records,” says Craig Bann, Vice President of Marketing and
Promotions for Nashville’s Aristo Media, a company that promotes Brown’s videos
as well as those by independent artists like Don Walser. “It’s no good for
their viewers, it’s no good for themselves, it doesn’t do what the system is
set up to do.”
Jama Bowen, manager of publicity for CMT, says the system isn’t set up to
intentionally exclude indies. “We’re not looking at what kind of label
someone’s on,” she says. “We’re looking at the quality of the video and the
music and taking into consideration what our viewers are interested in at CMT.”
“You’re going to see more major-label artists,” Bann says, “Not because
there’s a slam on indie artists, but mainly because the major labels have
better marketing campaigns.” Is that how Brown, now on a major label, MCA/Curb,
made it onto CMT?
“Junior Brown made it onto the network into hotshot rotation with a very cool
video, a song that people really dig,” says Bann. “And I have to be honest with
you, he’s got a lot of fans in [Nashville]. While radio thumbs their noses at
him, people within the industry love Junior Brown and know he’s a tremendous
talent. So there’s a lot of that knowledge at CMT. He’s got a fan base there;
even among their programming staff, people are like, `Yeah, Junior’s cool, I
see him whenever he comes to town, I love him.'”
While artists like Alison Krauss or Don Williams are occasionally able to
break the indie jinx, the reality is that most indies just don’t have the money
to compete, and most of their artists aren’t as proven as Williams or as
transcendent as Krauss. And even if you do get your video played on CMT, it
doesn’t guarantee anything. Christie Warren of the Austin-based Antone’s/dos
label says Stephen Bruton’s “Blue Bonnet Blue” was played on Jammin’
Country between six and 12 times, yet the label saw no direct results on
record sales. “We expected a lot better,” she says, noting that the video did
enter hot rotation on CMT’s European cousin.
Other labels are reluctant to even produce a video. After CMT and TNN turned
down Don Walser’s “Shotgun Boogie” for being “too traditional,” another Austin
indie label, Watermelon Records, suddenly became reluctant to produce any more
videos, even for artists like the Derailers, who might ostensibly have a better
shot at cracking the demo than Walser. “We don’t get enough sales out of videos
to make it a high priority,” says Watermelon’s Sue Fawver. “Anything that
doesn’t drive sales isn’t worth spending money on.” Fawver says Watermelon
would rather support its artists in other ways, including in-house publicity,
advertising, press, and radio support. “If I can get a four-star review in
Rolling Stone, it’s going to help me more than one play on CMT,” she
says.
Other indies aren’t giving up on the video networks quite yet, however.
Dejadisc’s Steve Wilkison, who runs his label out of offices in San Marcos,
says plans are to shoot a video for Wayne “the Train” Hancock around the first
of the new year. He says the label will target CMT, TNN, and the numerous
smaller, regional-access video shows similar to those on AM15.
It’s going way overboard to call either Brown or Hancock the saviours of
country music, or to say that one hit video will alter the way Nashville thinks
about artists who don’t fit its rigid mold. (Remember, Austin artists who do
fit the mold, like Rick Trevino, still sell way more records.) But the fact
that Brown, an unlikely video star by anyone’s standards, can make a video his
way and have it become a hit, or that Wilkison has enough confidence in Hancock
to even give video a shot, does say something: It says that maybe, just maybe,
country music is expanding its periphery to include artists and sounds that
three years ago it would have dismissed outright.
For in a world where “Highway Patrol” can outrank Clay Walker and Reba
McEntire, if only for a little while, anything can happen. n
This article appears in November 17 • 1995 and November 17 • 1995 (Cover).