Issue #100: Two years and a hundred issues later!

Ain't it funny how time slips away...We hit the DRTI slack to discuss

Welcome back to Don’t Rock the Inbox! Today we are celebrating our 100th issue, a big milestone here at the newsletter. Thank you all for coming along on this crazy country music ride. To celebrate and reflect, we hit the DRTI slack to share some thoughts and greatest hits. And please let us know in the comments (open to all for this issue) what you’d like to see more of, or less of, in the next 100 issues! And, most importantly, thanks for supporting our work!

-Natalie & Marissa

Natalie: 100 issues of Don't Rock The Inbox!! Just about 2 full years of the newsletter....truly wild stuff. Kind of can't believe it!

Marissa: It is! Obviously we must be responsible for country music becoming the zeitgeist now.

NW: LMAO yes we were really ahead of the curve.

MM: Who knew that on our 100th birthday we'd be gifted with a John Moreland v. Zach Bryan battle. We are blessed.

NW: It's so good. We really need to have John Moreland on and bring back Don't Rock The Inbox Live for it...in place of my face on the Zoom it will just be the "you dropped this king" meme.

MM: That would be the best gift we could ask for. John, are you out there and are you down? I hate saying "I told you so" but maybe I do get some small pleasure about being able to send people your piece on Bryan and be like...yeah, we have been telling you.

NW: How are you feeling two years in? Obviously the real heads know that this whole thing technically started in 2020 with some stops and starts along the way as we figured things out...

MM: I feel like I am so glad to have a place to talk about country music as we see it because lord, the industry (meaning the publishing industry) is a dumpster fire and the world is worse. Being able to have a place to react as we see it and share music we love, as two women in this business, is special I think. I've basically only ever had one editor in Nashville who is not a white man. And that feels like it's only getting worse honestly, not better.

NW: I think as much as a challenge as it has been at times to keep the train moving, I'm just so honored that there are people who want to read the more or less unfiltered/niche things that we've written for DRTI. That we have an audience that embraces rabbitholes and extended contemplations and whatnot is really cool, and I'm hopeful that we can keep offering something that is both informed by a super deep knowledge of and affection for this music AND has enough distance to still call it how we see it.

Both of us have careers and lives outside the newsletter but it was really important to both of us to have the majority of it not be paywalled, so that the ideas and stories we share here can have as wide a reach as possible — it probably makes for extra work but especially to all our paying subscribers, cheers to you for helping us make that mission possible.

MM: Yeah absolutely. I'm really grateful to obviously our subscribers, at any level, paid or not, and also the artists who have helped us build this — I know we are a newsletter and not a glossy magazine but shit, there aren't many of those left! And if we want to build something new we can't do it alone. So I'm thinking of Amanda Shires and Lizzie No and Lola Kirke who jumped on to do group zoom calls with us early on, and folks like Katie/Waxahatchee who were down for an interview.

MM: I'd be so interested to know, paid or not, what folks have liked most and what they want to see more of as time goes on.

NW: Yeah for sure, tell us your favorite DRTI offerings in the comments! It'll make us feel good and help us for the next 100 (!) issues.

It's such an interesting time for the music, with country being in vogue as you said and so much of the radio sound really being mired in kind of algorithmic slop...while there's so much vibrancy off the corporate country radio circuit (some will say as it ever was but I know both of us beg to differ!). Our quest to find those good radio anomalies while directing people to more never-gonna-chart types feels More Urgent Than Ever lol.

MM: And it's still surprising to me how little progress has been made in terms of looking at country music as just "cool outlaw stuff" and "bad country radio." If we've done anything, it's show people there is great music out there beyond all those binaries. How boring to limit yourself like that, and I'm looking equally at provincial city friends and folks in our states.

NW: Country music doesn't need to be saved (thank you Valerie June), but music as a whole definitely needs protecting from AI and algorithms. What we do here is our little battle against that...

I also want to share that I won this year's Chet Flippo Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism (!) for a piece that I really loved writing, about Midland's "Drinkin' Problem" and how it's transcended country (and how country transcends the racial boundaries that Nashville loves to enforce). That means that both of your DRTI hosts, Marissa and I, have won the only (??) award for country music journalism that exists. Pretty dang cool.

MM: Yes congratulations to Natalie!!! So deserved, that is a terrific piece.

NW: And as Marissa said this is in spite of a zeitgeist that, in being unfriendly to all journalists is especially unfriendly to women and every other marginalized group (because that's how these things work).

MM: And neither of us have ever won a writing award given out by a country music organization like the ACMs and CMAs and honestly.....badge of honor.

NW: Lol yeah forgot about those...whoops. I mean it's really tough to make a living not doing industry scribe work but we are doing our darnedest (now with a lot of your help!).

What's your favorite piece you've written for the newsletter?

MM: That's a really good question. I don't know if it's my favorite, but I wrote a piece after losing my mom about not listening to music at all. I needed to get it off my chest, and the experience of talking to readers about how they felt the same was just so helpful in navigating my grief and new normal. And I couldn't have written that for anywhere else. I know my favorites of yours I think are about Memphis Kansas Breeze and of course the Zach Bryan one. I also love your historical takes and chart deep dives and, of course, stellar playlisting skills.

What's your favorite you've written?

NW: I wrote about how country music is in its Chris Stapleton decade last year and I feel like that's the sort of thing that...I wish had a home in media at the moment but definitely doesn't outside this newsletter — just sums up a lot of my current takes in one spot.

I feel like you've done so many smart political takes that keep us on the cutting edge, but the one I always think back on is your piece about going to see Taylor Swift with your daughter — even as a non-Swiftie it brought me right into what made it so special.

Memphis Kansas Breeze...well talk about a piece that would not have a place elsewhere lmao. I maintain it was important lol!

MM: It was and is!

I mean, yeah, as freelance journalists with bills to pay of course we are always thinking, is there a home for story the media landscape? I hope at issue 200, that is less of a thought and this can be even more sustainable.

And thank you - I think the thing that has been valuable for me, speaking of that Taylor piece for example, is just bringing my motherhood forward at all times. I don't hide it and fuck if I haven't had to do that so many times over the course of my career. I can count the music journalists who are mothers on one hand

NW: For sure, I mean I really appreciate your bringing that perspective into your work. Any other parting thoughts as we (in Comedy Bang Bang parlance, sorry) break off another hundo?

MM: Hmm. I'm glad to have a partner in this! I don't think I could do it alone. It's lonely being a freelancer. You're supposed to only fight for yourself at all times, and you never have anyone fighting for you either. So that's nice!

I also feel like lord we're gonna have a lot to say about country music in 2025 because it's wild out there…

NW: LOL yeah the takes (and weird MAGA-dog whistle music) just keep coming. And yes!! Building this has taken a lot of effort from both of us but I think it's so special that we're making it happen this way. Freelancing is so dumb and hard and sticking together also feels like sticking it to the man :)

Virtual cheers to the next hundred (and all the playlists and picks and other good stuff in between)!

MM: Hell yes, cheers to that!