By Michael McCall Photo by Michael Alan GoldbergTwo
young blondes with toothy smiles and hard-core work ethics, Taylor
Swift and Carrie Underwood, helped country expand its fan base in these
years of shrinking music sales. Meanwhile, Kenny Chesney, Rascal
Flatts, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and George
Strait kept filling arenas and at least maintaining their popularity on
the road, if not with record sales. But as has often been the case, the
best country music has little
The annual Country Thunder festival at the dusty Canyon Moon Ranch just outside of Florence is country music's version of a cattle drive, where over four days some of the bigger names in country music are herded on stage to bleat their biggest hits, then lassoed off to make way for the next artist. Country fans get a lot of bang for their buck, beer flows like the Colorado River, and despite their reputation as a boozin' and brawlin' fanbase, country fans are all about the "let's get drunk and h
