The Road to Nashville

Road to Nashville is to all intents and purposes a showcase for a selection of country music stars with an extremely flimsy plot that merely takes us from A to B allowing for song after song to be performed. For what it's worth, the story has Doodles Weaver being sent to Nashville to recruit musicians and singers to star in an upcoming movie about country music. But as I say, this is a virtually plot less affair which is aimed squarely at fans of this type of music.

I'm not really much of a fan of the genre myself, so much of the songs I didn't get too much out of. But there were some that did standout for me. The Carter Family sing a song synonymous with Johnny Cash, namely 'Walk the Line', only to then be joined by him for an emotional number entitled 'Were You There'. In this segment his future wife June Carter talks a little between the numbers too. But perhaps the real standout for me was a group I had hitherto never even heard of, The Stoneman Family. They knock out three numbers and the two women in the group easily provide the most energy and distinctive performances in the whole film. Their first song is a crazy up-tempo workout with a pretty maniacal mandolin being played in almost free-style by one of the women; in their final number the other girl takes over and knocks out some serious banjo action while maintaining an intentionally deadpan face the whole time. So, The Stoneman Family? Yeeha!

This film is ultimately a real treat for country and western fans, especially of the mid 60's variety. Some of these artists were very rarely filmed playing their songs, so it serves as a pretty cool document in that sense too. It's not in all honesty really aimed at someone like me who is pretty lukewarm on the genre but I still did get a kick out of some of it nevertheless.