Pam Gadd "Long Road" (Vanguard, 1997)
A solo album from a member of the Wild Rose band...

Pam Gadd "The Time Of Our Lives" (OMS, 2001)

Pam Gadd & Porter Wagoner "Something To Brag About" (Gusto, 2004)
Hillbilly old-timer Porter Wagoner had a soft spot for singing duets with purty gals -- first he had Norma Jean as his partner, then Dolly Parton, and later Pam Gadd, of the band Wild Rose. Porter sounds pretty washed-up here, but Gadd puts in a good performance. Good songs, but you can easily find better records by both of these artists singing solo, and they never really click as duet partners. You could pass on this one, unless you're really a super-duper dedicated fan.

Pam Gadd & Porter Wagoner "22 Country And Gospel Duets" (Tee Vee, 2007)

Pam Gadd "Benefit Of Doubt" (Home Sweet Highway, 2009)

Sue Garner & Angel Dean "Pot Liquor" (Diesel Only, 2004)
An interesting, modernized reworking of Carter Family-style harmonies and old-fashioned country murder ballads, along with some moody lo-fi instrospection. Sounds a lot like Freakwater, with maybe less of a rough edge, and while the subject matter tends to be bleak, it suits the music well. Later in the album, they get into some uncommercial "pop" stuff with weird harmonies and aesthetic choices that reminded me quite a bit of the Roches. Nice stuff, though it might fit more into the "rock" side of the altie equation.

Gale Garnett "We'll Sing In The Sunshine" (Collectables, 1998)

Gale Garnett "My Kind Of Folk Songs" (RCA Victor, 1964) (LP)
I suppose as a "folk" artist, actress Gale Garnett deserves a mention here, although she always had a pop-vocals edge, and got into trippier, more rock-pop oriented material later in her career. I do like this album, though... There's some slickness and calculation, but also an innocence and lightness that I find appealing. Not a ton of twang, but she is a pleasant artist.

Gale Garnett "The Many Faces Of Gale Garnett" (RCA Victor, 1965) (LP)

Anna Garrott "Only Time Will Tell" (Blue Steel, 2010)
(Produced by Rick Holt)
An independently produced album by an artist who sometimes tilts towards more commercial country, but seems comfortable with showing her indiebilly side as well. Garrott has a mousy little voice (the kind of mousy voice I like) which is perhaps best suited to smaller-scale production, but is pretty appealing on most of this album. About half the tracks were written by guitarist-producer Rick Holt, so I suppose it's as much a songwriter's demo as an artist debut; it's sometimes uneven, but the good tracks are strong. The set includes a couple of songs about domestic violence and related issues, including "Pink Roses" and "Only Time Will Tell," both co-written by Holt. Worth checking out.

Mary Gauthier "Dixie Kitchen" (The Orchard, 1999)

Mary Gauthier "Drag Queen In Limousines" (In The Black, 1999)
A striking, strikingly downcast set of well-crafted Americana ballads. The title track is an acerbic recollection of high school days in the South, with various brands of freaks running around, getting high or drunk any which way they can. Even more forceful is Gauthier's tribute to Karla Faye Tucker, the Texas convict whose death sentence became a national issue, particularly when (then Governor) George W. Bush refused to commute her sentence. Gauthier tells the story of Tucker's heroin addiction, the drug-fueled murder that sent her to prison, and of the jailhouse conversion that made her a devout born-again Christian, and finally of the hardness of heart that Texas justice provided. Most of the songs on here are similarly downer-iffic, though several, like "Lucky Stars," have a soft touch that shows the hand of a masterful songwriter... Comparisons to Lucinda Williams are inevitable, and Gauthier more than holds her own, infusing her songs with a similar white-hot intensity and glum, reflective passion... This is a very impressive album, with plenty of emotion backed by very solid songcraft... Recommended!

Mary Gauthier "Filth & Fire" (Signature Sounds, 2003)
A super-mournful, entropy-ridden set of alt.country sadcore, heavily laced with themes of ruefullness and thwarted redemption. With Gauthier's connection to Gurf Morlix (he produced and played on this album) I made the inevitable Lucinda Williams comparison, then found my thoughts drifting to the similarly mopey, spiritually-inclined Canadian folksinger, Ferron, and finally was able to hear Gauthier as her own artistic voice. She's pretty downerific, and the religious bent of this album can also be a little offputting (although Gauthier's not so much proselytizing as lamenting her own perpetual fall from grace, also potentially alienating for the casual listener...) Her songs are well-crafted, although not necessarily melody-driven: fans of the late Townes Van Zandt will probably find a lot to cheer about here. Good stuff, kinda high-concept and forlorn, but gritty, engaging and intelligent as well.

Mary Gauthier "Mercy Now" (Lost Highway, 2005)
This album has been hailed, rightly, as a modern-day Americana masterpiece. I'd recommend you skip the opening track, a plodding, interminable piece of Gothic twangery, derived from the Townes Van Zandt/Robert Earl Keen school of lofty 'billy poetics -- I know some folks love that kind of highbrow stuff, but it strikes me as unnecessarily dreary and difficult to slog through. I, for one, don't need to hear anybody sing dense, impenetrable songs to prove that roots music is "real art" -- I already know it is -- but if they can craft a few concise, well-chiseled stanzas and wed them to a memorable melody, well then I'm happy as a clam. Fortunately, Gauthier hasn't lost her touch in this regard, and this record is also packed with the same sort of deftly drawn songs that wowed me on her earlier albums... Songs like "Mercy Now," "Your Sister Cried" and "I Drink" are compact gems crafted with the same level of skill as Guy Clark or Lucinda Williams (back when she was still keeping things simple...) That's mighty high praise in my book, and sure enough, this record has stood up to several auditions and just keeps sounding better each time I listen. Produced by the ubiquitous Gurf Morlix, this has a streamlined simplicity and light melodic touch that'll keep you coming back for more... Recommended!

Mary Gauthier "Between Daylight And Dark" (Lost Highway, 2007)
So, like, is Ms. Gauthier in competition with labelmate Lucinda Williams to be the biggest, saddest bummer queen in Americana music today? I'm a big fan of Gauthier's skills as a songsmith, but while the quality of writing remains high here, the emotional tenor is unrelentingly and repetitively bleak. I found this a difficult album to get into -- the half dozen tracks that open it have ostensibly different topics, but the tone and the message is always the same: life is hard, life sucks, I'm not having fun and, really, neither are you. As the album title implies, the weary voices in her songs arise from Limbo, a joyless purgatory where nothing ever changes: life is hard, life sucks, I'm not having fun and, really, neither are you. It isn't until midway through that a sliver of hope appears, as she utters the words, "it's okay," and while the clouds don't entirely clear, at least the songs start to sound a little different from each other. The set closes with "Thanksgiving," a bitter working-class dirge about a family's holiday visit to a convict in prison -- with the oblique sadness channeled into anger, it actually is one of the more uplifting songs on the album. Fans of well-crafted, highbrow Americana will appreciate this record, although the utter lack of levity or reprieve may make it rough going for most of us.

Crystal Gayle "The Best Of Crystal Gayle" (Curb, 1993)
Think how scary it must have been to be Crystal Gayle... You're Loretta Lynn's kid sister, and in the mid-1970s ya emerge out of the lower rungs of the Country Top 40 to become a super-duper superstar in your own right, epitomizing the height of 70's pop-country cheesiness... Then, when you make a few sad little stabs at sounding country again (as heard here on songs like "Heart Mender" and "River Road"), you're brutally punished in the sales charts... This disc is an interesting collection, which hopscotches back and forth between her pre- and post-"Brown Eyes Blue" recordings, including a few less well-known tracks from the early '70s that show a slightly rootsier side to her work than we normally hear... In a sense -- a very limited sense -- I guess this could be considered her "true" country record... At any rate, it was thoughtfully assembled with an ear for material that Gayle's regular fan base might not know that well. The sci-fi-ish "We Must Believe In Magic," which closes off the disc, is a real disaster, though... But other that that, this disc has some interesting surprises.

Crystal Gayle "The Best Of Crystal Gayle" (Rhino, 2002)
The ultimate, horrible conclusion of the whole super-posh, pretentious torch song tendencies of the countrypolitan scene. Yeesh. If you've heard "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" (which, I hate to admit, I still sort of like, in a pit-of-my-stomach sick kinda way...) well, then you've heard the best she can do. The rest of her hits follow the same formula, but they aren't as good. I am horrified to find out how many of ther other songs I actually dimly recall hearing at one time or another. And they called this stuff "country"? Brrrrrrr. Scary.

Rayna Gellert & The Lonesome Sisters "Follow Me Down" (Tin Halo, 2006)

Rayna Gellert & Friends "Ways Of The World" (Yodel-Ay-Hee, 2008)

Bobbie Gentry - see artist discography

Geraldine Fibbers "Geraldine Fibbers" (EP) (Virgin, 1994)
This 6-song EP convincingly blends a mild, atonal twang with arch, John Cale-style, artsy-fartsy, punky-wunky rock'n'roll drone... It's less blaring and more melodic than some of their other stuff, and while I wasn't initially drawn to it, it does have more depth than your average twangcore disc, and bears up to repeated listens. Plus, they get major extra points for covering both George Jones' "The Tour" and Bobbie Gentry's "Fancy," with a little Rolling Stones "Sympathy For The Devil" interpolation thrown in towards the end... All these songs were later included on the What Part Of... album that came out a few years later. Definitely worth a spin or two! (Oh, and it has a hidden "mystery track," too! Remember those? How darling.)

Geraldine Fibbers "Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home" (Virgin, 1995)

Geraldine Fibbers "Live At The Bottom Of The Hill" (Virgin, 1996)

Geraldine Fibbers "Butch" (Virgin, 1997)

Geraldine Fibbers "What Part Of Get Thee Gone Don't You Understand?" (Sympathy For The Music Industry, 1997)

Geraldine Fibbers -- see also: Carla Bozulich; Scarnella

Terri Gibbs "The Best Of Terri Gibbs" (MCA, 1985)
Amazingly, even though she was a pretty huge star in the early 1980s radioscape, singer-pianist Terri Gibbs has all but dropped off the face of the planet, as far as the availability of her music goes. This best-of set is the only CD that any of her hits ever came out on (!) I'm guessing that either she ruffled some major feathers when she turned to Christian pop, or maybe that after she left the pop world, she put a block on her old hits staying in print. Or, maybe the public tastes just changed, and her brand of slick, synthy country-pop isn't of interest anymore. At any rate, Gibbs' music is mysteriously hard to find these days... I don't expect that'll last forever, though.

Terri Gibbs "Somebody's Knockin' " (MCA, 1981) (LP)

Terri Gibbs "I'm A Lady" (MCA, 1981) (LP)

Terri Gibbs "Some Days It Rains All Night Long" (MCA, 1982) (LP)

Terri Gibbs "Over Easy" (MCA, 1983) (LP)

Terri Gibbs "Old Friends" (Warner, 1985) (LP)

Terri Gibbs "Turnaround" (Canaan, 1987) (LP)

Terri Gibbs "Comfort The People" (Canaan, 1988)

Terri Gibbs "What A Great Day" (Morning Gate, 1990)

Susan Gibson "Tightrope" (ForTheRecords, 2011)
(Produced by Susan Gibson & Gabe Rhodes)
A nice acoustic album from country-confessional songwriter Susan Gibson, who is best known for composing "Wide Open Spaces," one of the biggest hits for the Dixie Chicks, back in the day. This is a stripped-down set, with just Gibson and Gabe Rhodes on second guitar... The vibe is pretty mellow, and there's a variety of styles, ranging from coffeehouse folk to the wordy, freeform folk-twang which these days can mysteriously become a Nashville hit, if it falls into the right hands. Gibson comes off as an appealing figure, an unpretentious, straightforward songsmith with some interesting topics and twists of phrase. Interestingly, though, she doesn't jump out with a passle of anthemic blockbusters ala "Wide Open Spaces," sticking instead to a more introspective, reserved feel. If you like folk-ish fillies such as Pam Rose, Holly Dunn and, of course, the Dixie Chicks themselves, you might want to give this a spin. Nice to hear an independent voice once in a while!

Eliza Gilkyson - see artist discography

Girls Next Door "The Girls Next Door" (MTM, 1986) (LP)

Girls Next Door "What A Girl Next Door Could Do" (MTM, 1987)

Girls Next Door "How 'Bout Us?" (Atlantic, 1990)

The Girls Of The Golden West "Home Sweet Home In Texas" (BACM, 2002)
One of the finest western music acts ever, the Good Sisters -- Dolly and Millie Good -- got their start in border radio and on regional radio in the Midwest. Then in the early 1930s, they became early stars on Chicago powerhouse WLS's "National Barn Dance" program, which made them national celebrities. This disc collects about two dozen prime tracks from their tenure on the Bluebird label -- it's all great stuff! The Girls are said to have been the first country music act to feature double yodeling melodies -- the rest of their harmonies are gorgeous as well.

The Girls Of The Golden West "Roll Along Prairie Moon" (BACM, 2004)

Gloriana "Gloriana" (Emblem, 2009)
Hyper-poppy -- and hyper-popular -- Top-40 country featuring four-part harmonies (two guys, two gals) that are carefully sculpted to sound like a mildly twangier Fleetwood Mac. Aside from the strummy-acoustic '70s-style tunes, there are also plenty of bombastic, wall-of-sound Nashville moments, with wailing vocals atop oceanic orchestrations. Not my cup of tea? Gee, how'd you guess? The sleek sounding Fleetwood-izations are okay, but I think I'd rather just dig out an old copy of Rumors instead: this is like getting into EMF when what you really wanted was a New Order album. Oh! I almost forgot to mention that reality show gal Cheyenne Kimball is a bandmember, for what that's worth.

Holly Golightly "Medicine County" (Transdreamer, 2010)
British garage rocker Holly Golightly has been on a twang kick for a few years, with her band The Brokeoffs showing a curious mix of styles -- raspy garage-blues with hints of cranky bluegrass and honkytonk country. The songs don't grab me the same way as her classic garage-pop gems, but if you enjoy noisy Brits-do-billy stuff such as Jon Langford and the Waco Brothers, you might want to give this a whirl as well.

The Good Old Persons "The Good Old Persons" (Bay Records, 1977)
A landmark early album from the SF Bay Area bluegrass scene, featuring future solo artists Kathy Kallick and Laurie Lewis... A fun mix of bluegrass and old-timey music, along with a touch of jazzy swing.

The Good Old Persons "I Can't Stand To Ramble" (Kaleidoscope, 1983) (LP)

The Good Old Persons "Anywhere The Wind Blows" (Kaleidoscope)

The Good Old Persons "Part Of A Story" (Flat Rock Records)

The Good Old Persons "Good 'N' Live" (Sugar Hill, 1995)

Tammy Graham "Tammy Graham" (Career Records, 1997)
(Produced by Barry Beckett)

Terry Gregory "The Handshake Years Anthology" (Renaissance, 2005)
Pretty much the complete works of this Top Forty back-bencher... Her biggest single, "Just Like Me," hit #15 on the charts, but even with numerous follow-ups, she never quite clicked with the bigtime... This collection reveals her as a pretty modest talent, alternately yearning and sincere or a bit overconfident and lofty (as on her cover of "Stand By Your Man," a song that requires a real belter, and not a Maureen McGovern wannabee...) A couple of tunes, like "I Need Another Lover (Like A Hole In The Heart)" have a perky lightness that's in keeping with some of the funner, sillier side of '70s country, but mostly this is pretty stuffy material, more geared towards the sappiest Top 40 AOR of the time, and a few dips into the nascent synth-country sound of the early '80s. Not my cup of tea, but I'm sure there are some devoted fans out there who will be psyched to find these old, hard-to-find indie recordings all in one place.

Terry Gregory "Terry Gregory" (Handshake, 1979) (LP)
(Produced by Mark Sherrill)

Terry Gregory "Just Like Me" (Handshake, 1981) (LP)
(Produced by Mark Sherrill)

Terry Gregory "From The Heart" (Handshake, 1982) (LP)
(Produced by Mark Sherrill)

Glenda Griffith "Glenda Griffith" (Ariola, 1978) (LP)

Nanci Griffith - see artist discography

Bonnie Guitar "Dark Moon" (Bear Family, 1991)
In her way, Bonnie Guitar was an iconic, groundbreaking female performer and musical entrepreneur... As a guitarist, she cracked into the Nashville and Los Angeles studio scenes, and is featured on numerous pop and pop-vocals albums; she also had considerable success as a solo artist in her own right. In addition, she was a pioneering DIY-er, starting her own record label (Dophin/Dolton records, which she sold after a few years), all of which was pretty remarkable for a gal in the Eisenhower/Kennedy era. As a musician, however, particularly as a country musician, I find her pretty underwhelming, pretty much epitomizing the snoozy, lethargic pop sound of the time. This collection showcases a bunch of her early stuff (though not necessarily her biggest hits...) Doesn't do much for me. There are also a bunch of original albums, but they strike me as too "pop" to list here... Even though she charted as a country artist, there's precious little twang to be heard in her work.

Randy Gurley "Let Me Be The One" (ABC, 1978) (LP)
(Produced by Harold Bradley)

Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion "Entirely Live" (Route 8 Records, 2004)

Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion "Exploration" (New West, 2005)
This earnest folkie duo cranks up the volume on a surprisingly sizzling, electrified album, with some for-real, heavy, funky rock grooves capturing center stage on most tracks. This disc is an amazing leap from their previous work, which I had classed in the I'm-rootin'-for-ya, even-though-this-is-kinda-choppy department... The lulls and gaps they showed before are almost entirely absent here, and most of these songs will really pull you in. They do go overboard on the loud lead guitar riffs and banging drums, but for the most part, this is a very solid record. If you like Buddy & Julie Miller, Gillian Welch, or the revamped Flatlanders, you might want to check this out! (And, yes, she is Arlo's daughter... If I was her daddy, I'd be pretty proud...)

Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion "Folksong" (Route 8 Records, 2009)

Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion "Bright Examples" (Rocket Science, 2011)

Guy & Ralna "Country Songs We Love To Sing" (Ranwood, 1973) (LP)
The husband-and-wife duo of Guy Hovis and Ralna English were regulars on "The Lawrence Welk Show" and had a built-in audience to help with their modest success on the charts. Most of their albums were gospel-oriented, a few were secular... I'm not sure how "country" the religious records were...

Guy & Ralna "Guy & Ralna Country" (Ranwood, 1974) (LP)

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Hick Music Index
Sisters Who Swung: Women In Jazz & Blues

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