What better time to talk about Americana music than on the Fourth of July weekend?
While most of us grill the meat, wave the flags, open the beers and enjoy the fireworks, there?s an overwhelming chance you?ll be listening to some tunes. A radio, stereo or other electronic device is most always streaming music into my ears.
And that?s the way I like it. Life?s too hard to live without a sound track.
Last month, I had an incredible run. In a 20-day period, I got to see three of my favorite music acts: Dave Alvin and the Guilty Ones, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.
To be sure, I?m betting dollars to doughnuts that the majority of readers will react to this monumental news with a resounding ?Who??
You?re right in thinking these are not what anyone would call household names, at least if you?re comparing their fame to that of the clich?-offering, hit-churning stars of Top 40 pop and FM country music.
None of the three played the big venues of Verizon or Scottrade, or even the St. Charles Family Arena. They played at local clubs Off Broadway and Plush.
Hubbard may be the best-known of the three. He wrote ?Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother,? an anthemic singalong at rowdy bars everywhere.
Alvin wrote ?Long White Cadillac,? which Dwight Yoakam took high on the country chart some years ago, and he also has placed a couple of songs on the hit cable-TV series ?Justified.?
In terms of recording albums, Alvin and Hubbard have been around for more than 30 years. Isbell, who started with the Drive-By Truckers, has been around about 10. Alvin is from California, Hubbard is from Texas and Isbell is from Alabama.
To give you just one example of the variety in this new genre of music, Hubbard said his major influences are Ernest Tubb, Lightning Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, playwright Flannery O?Connor and poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The obvious choices, right?
Throw into that gumbo that the cowboy hat-wearing Alvin cites jazz/blues singer Big Joe Turner as a musical light, and Isbell is an ardent Neil Young fan who offered a face-melting cover of the Rolling Stones? ?Can?t You Hear Me Knocking?? at his show here.
So obviously, the trio play music that is hard to pigeonhole. It is some delectable mix of rock and roll, country, blues, jazz, bluegrass and folk that has been given the good-as-any label of Americana music.
One of the things I find most refreshing about it is that it refuses to fit a convenient mold. There are too many influences in modern American society to force quality music into a one-size-fits-all genre.
And as you can probably guess by my trumpeting of Americana music, I?m constantly befuddled that more people don?t take time to listen to this undervalued style.
Surely, the music lover who lives inside most of us wants to find out what?s new on the scene, right? We want to do more than just keep listening to cookie-cutter performers regurgitating sound-alike hits, don?t we?
Come to think of it, that?s my problem with American politics, the oldest hit-churning, clich?-offering endeavor we have going in this country.
One side talks about justice, but then does everything it can to narrow one of the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights.
One side talks about immigration, but ignores the fact that many of its members supply the jobs that draw illegal immigrants.
And both sides talk incessantly about respect for life, when in reality they don?t oppose taking lives as long as they endorse the process which takes them.
Sadly, watching the two political sides run through their set list is like trying to find some major difference between Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift.
Once you get past the differences in hairstyles and marketing, it doesn?t take much listening to realize it?s all just the same old song.
egypt 4th of July Brad Stevens wimbledon declaration of independence fourth of july American flag
No comments:
Post a Comment