At The 2000 CMA Awards Montgomery Gentry Ended An Eight Year Reign
Montgomery Gentry won Vocal Duo of the Year and ended the eight year hold of Brooks and Dunn on the category
A bluegrass leaning demo had passed through a Kentucky basement and acquired electric teeth
That trophy was bigger than one successful debut because Hillbilly Shoes had started as something closer to bluegrass before Montgomery Gentry took it into a Kentucky basement and turned up the guitars and used it to break open country radio
Before Columbia knew exactly what to do with Eddie Montgomery and Troy Gentry label people came to Lexington and listened to them where the music already lived
According to longtime band member Bo Garrett representatives from Nashville sat in the basement of the mother of Troy Gentry with a small handheld recorder while the group worked through songs that would become Tattoos and Scars
One of them was Hillbilly Shoes and the demo they had received was not built around the hard guitar attack listeners would later recognize because it was much closer to bluegrass
They Refused To Let Nashville Smooth Away Their Identity
Montgomery Gentry were arriving at an awkward moment for that kind of sound because by 1999 country radio was packed with polished crossover records
Eddie and Troy wanted something rougher with Merle Haggard and George Jones on one side and Lynyrd Skynyrd and Charlie Daniels on the other
Eddie told Radio and Records they wanted Nashville to let them be themselves with no smoothing and no doctoring and just the music they already played in Kentucky bars
Producer Joe Scaife largely let them have it and Hillbilly Shoes came out with sawing fiddle and a heavy guitar riff and enough rock weight to separate the duo immediately from the softer end of late 90s country
Radio reacted before the machinery was ready and the single entered the Billboard country chart two weeks ahead of its scheduled release and demand became strong enough for Columbia to move Tattoos and Scars forward to April 6 1999
Tradition Stayed Audible Beneath The Volume
The album did not abandon traditional country to get there because Lonely and Gone carried an older honky tonk ache and Daddy Wonβt Sell the Farm put rural resistance against suburban expansion
Charlie Daniels himself appeared on All Night Long and critics heard Marshall Tucker and Southern rock but also Haggard and Jones and Hank Williams and Dwight Yoakam underneath the volume
A year later the consequence became unmistakable at the 2000 CMA Awards
Country music with mud on its boots and Southern rock still humming through the amplifiers
The basement song had helped make room on mainstream country radio for a sound that would become increasingly familiar in the decade ahead and Montgomery Gentry had proved that volume and roots could arrive together without apology