UPDATE -- a note from the author: We spoke to Mr. Ames again this afternoon. He informed us that he thought the conversation would not be used in our article and that it was only for background information. He also stated that he does not recall some of the statements attributed to him. Neither Mr. Ames nor the author is implying that Ms. Chorney or her radio promoter engaged in any unethical practices regarding airplay. The comments regarding such practices were general statements only, not specific to Ms. Chorney. We regret any confusion. Mr. Ames informed us that he will be interviewing Ms. Chorney on his show on Monday, January 30, at 8:20 a.m. We recommend that concerned readers tune in to hear Ms. Chorney in her own words at this link.

Gordon "Big G" Ames

​The Linda Chorney Grammy thing just won't go away. It seems now Chorney is barraging radio stations with her latest album, hoping to gain a smidgen of credibility before going to the Grammys with zero album sales, which we presume is going to be an historic first.

Former Houstonian Gordon "Big G" Ames, the program director at KOOK-FM, "Real Deal Radio," received a copy of Chorney's CD earlier this week. He was not amused. In fact, he is so not amused his Thursday show is going to be themed "Making An Example."

"I've been around a long time and I know how things work," says Ames from his home outside Kerrville. "You and I both know that if you put a thousand dollars in a few hands you can get your album on someone's quote unquote chart. You know it, I know it. And that makes me mad. It's sad and pathetic what the Americana syndicate chooses to accept payment for."

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Photo by Jason Wolter

Jason Isbell (left) and Amanda Shires (right) are both more deserving than Chorney.

​The small world of Americana music is all a-twitter over New Jersey woman Linda Chorney's nomination for a Grammy in the Americana category. In case you haven't been following the story, Chorney discovered a way to game the system and managed to convince quite a number of Grammy voters (who obviously are a little under-educated and under-exposed to the Americana genre) to vote for her tepid album, Emotional Jukebox, to get it on the final ballot in spite of it not having sold a single unit so far according to Sound Scan, the official industry tabulator of album sales.

According to interviews she's given, Chorney seems to have very little working knowledge of Americana or the artists in it. The Americana Music Association, which normally issues a boilerplate congratulatory statement to all the nominees, has not done so this year and speculation is that the association is not happy about Chorney's nomination since she is not a member of the organization and has never attended any of the annual events.

Frankly, we don't care if she's a member of the AMA or not; what bugs us about Chorney's gameswomanship is that she has knocked a number of exemplary albums out of a chance to win. And we'll bet she hasn't heard a damned one of them. So here's a list for you, Linda, of people you are basically screwing over. Like we said, do the right thing and withdraw your nomination.

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​The comments sections on several articles about Linda Chorney, the woman who gamed the system and social networked her way onto the final Grammy ballot in the Americana category, tend to be pretty negative, although Chorney's publicist, husband and a few friends are trying to staunch the flow of irate bile that has gushed like BP's Gulf well last year.

Lonesome, Onry and Mean has been following Americana music since long before we first went to work in country radio in the early Seventies, and we've never witnessed anything quite as shameful as Chorney's calculated internet march to the Grammy ballot. We were revolted by our first listen to Chorney's tepid folky Emotional Jukebox. We can think of a handful of women in Houston who could kick Chorney's musical ass with one arm behind their backs.

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​Once again all the Grammy nomination razzamatazz has fired up, with local label ZenHill Records of course leading the charge with its recent press release, "ZenHill Artists on the Long List for a Grammy."

One of our editors took a couple of incoming email shots from a so-called "reporter" over at Free Press Houston for Rocks Off's alleged failure to cover and support our city's "wonderful Grammy nominees." Of course, if this Free Press reporter had done any homework on the subject -- homework, grammar, spell checking, fact checking not being particularly high editorial priorities at FPH -- he would've eventually stumbled upon this bit of less than pleasant Houston Grammy history and grabbed a clue.

So, local bands, labels, producers, music geeks, scenesters, time for the annual reality check.

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theatlantic.com

The Weeknd: Don't call him, he won't call you.

​A recent headline in The Atlantic - "For Indie Bands, the New Publicity Is No Publicity" - seemed to scream "music blog."

Since we Rocks Offers spend a goodly portion of our day weeding through emails and phone calls from publicists and aspiring artists, as well as the environmental catastrophe known as one-sheets and bios that are stuffed into every envelope along with a CD, we were actually thinking this "no publicity" concept might be something we could get behind.

Yet once we read through freelancer Jason Richards' piece, we pretty much wanted to slash our wrists and be done with the circus that surrounds the music business, and perhaps move to Idaho and work on a potato farm. In a nutshell, Richards uses bands who don't do interviews, don't post photos of themselves, and don't do the usual huge mailouts that have long been de rigueur in the business, citing groups like Cults and Crystal Castles, who have blossomed into buzz bands without the usual campaigns, to support his thesis.

According to Richards:

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​Last week Rocks Off put together a list of ten singers, most of whom are not especially shy about offering their political opinions, we thought could be the first ones to ride Osama bin Laden's death to the top of the charts.

We have a winner. Sort of.

This morning Rocks Off got a somewhat breathless email from Absolute Publicity in Nashville. We quote:

Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers have been waiting - waiting for the moment. The moment that the legendary Grammy Award-winning trio knew would eventually come. At last, on Sunday, May 1, loud and proud, that moment arrived.

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Marc Brubaker

Evidently shooting George Strait from this angle and distance is OK.

​Rocks Off does our best to shield our readers from all the red tape we have to go through in order to bring you a steady stream of concert reviews.

For one thing, it's pretty boring - a bunch of emails and release forms not much different from the paperwork common to about a thousand other lines of work. About 99 percent of the time, we secure the necessary credentials from the promoters, publicists and/or artist management, publish the review, and get on with our lives.

However, the old saw about sausage tasting better the less you know about how it's made applies to the music business more than a lot of other fields. But every once in a while, something sticks in our craw enough that we feel it's necessary to break the fourth wall.

And so it came to pass that last Friday, Rocks Off dispatched Rocks Off Jr. and Marc Brubaker to cover the opening night of George Strait's 2011 tour at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin. They loved it, an outcome only slightly less surprising than Slim Thug tweeting something off-color.

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This is how we feel about Christmas NOW... don't even try to talk to us after Thanksgiving.

​Rocks Off is not trying to interrupt your Halloween plan-making - getting a little late in the game, isn't it though? - but you might as well forget about it anyway. We feel it's our civic duty to inform our readers that as of this moment, it's officially the holiday season.

So deck the fucking halls already.

Actually, Rocks Off has been holding out on you all. As far back as September 30, we got an email that Dr. Elmo, of Elmo & Patsy/"Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" fame, has a new holiday album coming out called Bluegrass Christmas. Where is that reindeer when you need him?

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Pavement? Nope, not here.

​Tuesday, Rocks Off was a busy beaver keeping up with all the concert announcements coming over the wire. Along with the Fitzgerald's news, it was hard to keep up with everything going on. Interpol, Stone Temple Pilots, Drake, and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros all announced dates in Houston.

But as many things that we get in town, tons of shows still never make it here. We are still waiting for word on that Mastodon and Deftones headlining tour, and Ozzy is probably coming in the late fall. Sadly, we aren't holding our royal collective breaths for either of those though.

A recent epidemic we have noticed is publicists sending mass e-mail blasts claiming the band they rep is going on a "national" tour with 15 scattered dates, maybe hitting Milwaukee or Phoenix, but no Texas dates. Or, should we say, no Houston dates, because for some reason the state, if not the world, does not in fact revolve around us.

To be fair, most "national" tours that short also skip Austin and Dallas. Most of the time.

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In terms of sanity, it doesn't usually pay many dividends to look too deeply into what publicists write and email to music writers. If 80 percent of all teachers come from the lowest 20 percent of SAT scores, it's probably a safe assumption to assume approximately the same ratio when it comes to PR grunts.

Lonesome Onry and Mean recently received a tout message on behalf of up-and-coming country singer Michelle Turley from Gurley & Co. in Nashville. According to Gurley & Co., Turley's new single, "Hard Times," is one red-hot number waiting to move up to the top of the charts. Thus reads the press release:

"'Hard Times" is the title of Michelle Turley's debut single but radio is finding it an easy listen as over 109 radio stations have added the song. 'Hard Times' gives a little whimsical twist to some of the real pinch many are. Her voice has been described as part Emmylou Harris and part Paulette Carlson.

"Michelle sings, 'We've been livin through some Hard Times, My back is breakin just to make a little livin, I gotta crummy ole job and it doesn't pay much, Uncle Sam is taken what I'm givin.' The lyrics stop short of the classic Johnny Paycheck anthem. 'Take This Job [and Shove It].'"

Uh... yeah, lady, they damn sure do. In fact, about the only thing they don't stop short of is stupidity and banality.

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