Artist:Vandoliers Hometown: Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas Song: “Tumbleweed” Album:Forever Release Date: February 22, 2019 Label: Bloodshot Records
In Their Words: “I wrote ‘Tumbleweed’ for my father. The poor guy’s has to watch me struggle for a dream he doesn’t really understand — I travel too much, and I know it affects my health and my family. When I get home I’m a wreck most of the time; I’m tired from the long drives, late nights, and spending a month in a different bar or festival every night. But it’s a necessary evil when you’re a mid-level band that’s still cutting its teeth. The album Forever starts with a feeling of wanderlust in the lead track ‘Miles and Miles,’ about a dream of leaving my home town in hopes that I won’t be stuck in the same place the rest of my life. ‘Tumbleweed,’ then, is my return home song — but told from the perspective of my Dad, opening the door to see his son for the first time in months, beat up, broke, and tired from a long adventure. ‘A littler older and no wiser for the wear.” – Joshua Fleming, lead singer/guitar
A spry country tune driven by Chris Hillman’s hyperactive mandolin and Sneaky Pete Kleinow’s spacy guitar solo, the Flying Burrito Brothers’ “My Uncle” is not a song about family. The uncle they’re harmonizing about is Uncle Sam, who in the late 1960s wanted members of the band to kill others and possibly be killed in Vietnam. Gram Parsons had already secured a somewhat dubious 4-F deferment, making him ineligible for military services for health reasons, but the Army continued its pursuit. “So I’m heading for the nearest foreign border,” Parsons sings, resigning himself to the ignoble fate of a draft dodger.
In the late 1960s, rock and roll was rife with anti-war songs. Some were angry, like Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.” Others were riddled with mortal dread, like “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” by Country Joe & the Fish. But few sounded anything like “My Uncle,” an album cut from The Gilded Palace of Sin. For one thing, as the Flying Burrito Brothers ponder what they owe their country, they sound more melancholy than outraged, as though they’re singing a breakup song with America.
For another thing, they dressed their anti-war sentiments up in the threads of country music, which was already viewed as both musically and politically conservative: a counter to the counterculture, representing the moral/silent majority that finally put Nixon in the White House in 1968. “Okie From Muskogee” was the defining country hit of the era, a song that tsk-tsks the hippies, roustabouts, and even the conscientious objectors burning their draft cards. Merle Haggard may have written it to gently puncture the sanctimonies of an older generation, but listeners heard no irony or distance in lyrics about wearing boots instead of sandals and respecting the college dean.
Given the canonization of Parsons over the last few decades, as well as the gradual breakdown of genres and styles over time, it’s easy to forget just how contrarian it would have been for a West Coast rock band to embrace country and bluegrass. The Flying Burrito Brothers had risen from the ashes of the Byrds, a group which earlier in the decade had included Gram Parsons for just one album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. A relative flop upon release, it nevertheless invented country rock with a set of twangy originals and covers of songs by Cindy Walker, Haggard, and the Louvin Brothers. Aside from Dylan, who was covered by everybody in the late 60s, these weren’t especially hip influences at the time.
Draft dodging may have been anathema to country music, but “My Uncle” is at its heart about more than just protest. “A sad old soldier once told me a story about a battlefield that he was on,” Parsons and Hillman harmonize. “He said a man should never fight for glory, he must know what is right and what is wrong.” The Flying Burrito Brothers plumb that stark moral divide on “My Uncle” and every other song on their debut, parsing temptation from salvation, wickedness from righteousness, and painting a picture of an America where you might easily confuse one for the other. Country music becomes the ideal vehicle to explore ideas about violence, consumerism, free love, and more broadly, the notion of sin.
The idea of sin illuminates every song on The Gilded Palace of Sin. The rollicking “Christine’s Theme” opens the album with a woman bearing false witness: “She’s a devil in disguise, she’s telling dirty lies.” “Juanita” imagines an angel rescuing the band from booze and pills. “Hot Burrito #2” invokes Jesus Christ by name — not cussin’ but praying. “Do Right Woman,” a Dan Penn/Chips Moman number popularized by Aretha Franklin, is transformed from a lover’s plea into a preacher’s wagging finger. “Dark End of the Street,” by the same Memphis songwriting duo, is about coveting your neighbor’s wife: “It’s a sin and we know that we’re wrong.” When the Flying Brothers get to the bridge, “They’re gonna find us,” they might as well be talking about angels and demons.
“Sin City,” the album’s centerpiece, is the band’s version of Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which mixes Biblical imagery with twangy country harmonies to create a startlingly dire depiction of Los Angeles as both Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s a place where avarice rules all, leaving even the determined and upright struggling for footing. “That ol’ earthquake’s gonna leave me in the poorhouse,” the Brothers sing, echoing Edwards’ assertion that all humans as sinners are “exposed to sudden unexpected destruction.” Wealth won’t buy redemption or avert damnation: “On the thirty-first floor, that gold-plated door won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain.” (That’s likely a sly reference to Larry Spector, the Byrds’ former manager, who lived on the thirty-first floor of a luxury LA high-rise).
Jesus shows up for a verse of “Sin City,” and he may or may not reappear in the close “Hippie Boy,” a spoken-word homily in the style of Hank Williams’ moralizing alter ego Luke the Drifter. Hillman tells the story of a boy caught up in the violence between the right and the left. In his 33 1/3 book on Gilded Palace of Sin, Bob Proehl suggests the band might have been inspired by the riots at the Democratic National Convention the year before. “The so-called riots in Chicago were actually more of a police action,” he writes, “a beatdown instigated by the gestapo tactics of Mayor Daley’s police force right in front of the delegates’ hotels.” Even before the song concludes with a rousing chorus of the old hymn “Peace in the Valley,” the song is a damning attack on anyone who would employ violence in the name of morality.
While they are using country music to interrogate the genre’s own high moral standards, the Flying Burrito Brothers don’t come across as scolds. Instead, they’re doing something more ambitious yet far more personal: They’re trying to find their own way in this sinful America, trying to find the moral high ground in shifting sands. On “My Uncle” they sing about dodging the draft with guilt and sadness, but they understand it is a moral predicament. “Heading for the nearest foreign border” is preferable to enlisting and killing. That makes The Gilded Palace of Sin unsettlingly prophetic fifty years after its release, maybe even inspiring in its spirit of dissent and moral defiance.
None of the Brothers would ever sound quite so political or quite so driven by moral inquisition on subsequent albums. Their follow-up, 1970’s Burrito Deluxe, sounds good but has little of the brimstone determination of their debut. Parsons left the group shortly after its release, and his pair of solo albums drive the roads of a murky, mythological America.
However, less than a year after the release of The Gilded Palace of Sin, the Brothers witnessed Biblical calamity firsthand when they played the Altamont Free Concert. Billed as a West Coast alternative to Woodstock, it included San Francisco bands Santana and the Jefferson Airplane, with the Rolling Stones headlining. The crowd of 300,000 was already agitated when the Brothers played their early set, and by the time the Stones took the stage, they were volatile, and hostile. During a performance of “Under My Thumb,” one of the Hell’s Angels working security stabbed and killed a black man named Meredith Hunter, stopping the show and casting a pallor over the event, if not the entire decade. It was intended as a show of countercultural unity, but it must have seemed like God smiting the hippie generation: the end of the 6os in great and gory conflagration.
This year, as we revisit the albums that resonated with each of us, we may not find a tidy, overarching message. However, the diversity herein — of style, content, aesthetic, format, genre, perspective, and background — demonstrates that our strength as a musical community, or zoomed-out even further, simply as humans, indeed comes from our differences. To us, these 10 albums are testaments to the beauty, inspiration, and perseverance we found in 2018.
Rayland Baxter, Wide Awake His career-launching musical epiphanies happened on a retreat in Israel some years ago, so Rayland Baxter’s decision to isolate himself in a contemplative space to write Wide Awake had precedent. The venue this time was an abandoned rubber band factory in rural Kentucky where a friend was installing a new recording studio. In that quiet, Baxter wrote songs about the noisy world beyond the cornfields, with perspective on its tenderness and absurdity. Later in the studio, his posse set the deft verses to enveloping, neo-psychedelic, Americana rock. Social commentary doesn’t have to plod, as the Beatles proved, and Baxter is farming similar terrain with vibrant melodies, saucy beats and a voice that’s entirely his own. – Craig Havighurst
The Dead Tongues, Unsung Passage I didn’t expect The Dead Tongues (aka Ryan Gustafson, guitarist for Hiss Golden Messenger and Phil Cook) to be my most-listened-to record of the year. But Unsung Passage is an album I find myself returning to again and again. The ten songs form a sort of travelogue for Gustafson, and you can hear the influences and rhythms of other cultures drifting throughout. It’s the rare record that’s both comforting and complex. –Amy Reitnouer Jacobs
Del McCoury Band, Del McCoury Still Sings Bluegrass Named after his debut record, which was released fifty years prior, Del McCoury Still SingsBluegrass seems like a painfully obvious, on the nose title for a record, but upon deeper inspection we realize that, because the album was built on his signature ear for songs and his unfaltering trust in his own taste, it is an immediately digestible statement of McCoury’s worldview. At this point in his long, diverse, uniquely successful career, most listeners would give Del a bluegrass authenticity “hall pass,” letting the more innovative, less bluegrass-normative moments herein by without a blink, but Del, from the outset, avoids letting himself fall into that paradigm. He chooses songs because, well, he likes them, and he doesn’t concern himself with what is or isn’t bluegrass, he just creates music that he enjoys to make with people he enjoys making it with. It’s a simple approach that may border on simplistic, but the result is a resoundingly bluegrass album that doesn’t concern itself with the validity of that genre designation at all. Which, after all, is bluegrass to a T. — Justin Hiltner
Jason Eady, I Travel On A fixture on the Texas touring scene, Jason Eady offered his most satisfying album yet with I Travel On. First off, he enlisted Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley for these sessions, giving the project a bluegrass groove with plenty of cool Dobro licks and guitar runs. Second, Eady wrote from the perspective of a man with some miles on him – the album title isn’t a coincidence, after all. His expressive country baritone is made for slice-of-life story songs like “Calaveras County” and “She Had to Run.” At other times, Eady looks inward, drawing on themes like mortality, gratitude and contentment. I Travel On may not be the most obvious album for a road trip but it’s certainly a worthwhile one. – Craig Shelburne
Erin Rae, Putting on Airs Her velvety, maternal vocals and the subtle, understated alt-folk production vibes of Erin Rae’s Putting on Airs might initially disguise the millennial-reckoning being wrought through these songs and their topics; from top to bottom Rae’s brand, her musical identity, defies comparisons with any one era of music making and songwriting. Her talent oozes through her writing, her melodic hooks, and her musical and rhetorical fascinations, which together in this song sequence feel like they epitomize a microcosm that contains all of our generation’s — and this particular historical moment’s — angst, but without feeling simply capitalistic, opportunistic, or “on trend.” Instead, her viewpoint is decidedly personal, giving us a window into her own individual reckonings — with her own identity, with mental health, with family relationships, with being a young southerner in this modern era; the list is potentially endless, determined only by each listener’s willingness to curl up inside these songs and reckon along with Rae. Which is the recommended Putting on Airs listening strategy espoused by this writer. — Justin Hiltner
High Fidelity, Hills And Home It’s in the nature of bluegrass to forever be casting backward looks at the giants of the music’s early years; nothing wrong with that, but when those who do it get aggressive about how they’re playing “real” bluegrass, well, that’s another story. High Fidelity’s eyes are firmly fixed on the musical past, but they’re also a modern, mixed-gender band who aren’t afraid to let their music do the talking — and what it says is that there’s a lot more variety, not to mention pure joy, in the under-appreciated gems of old than you might think. – Jon Weisberger
Angelique Kidjo, Remain in Light It’s not simply a remake of the Talking Heads’ 1980 landmark, but a stunning reimagining by the visionary Benin-born artist Kidjo. She doesn’t merely repatriate (er, rematriate) the African influences that fueled TH’s revolutionary stream-of-consciousness masterpiece — which opened the door for many to discover the wealth of those inspirations — she considers and explores the worlds that have emerged in African music in the time since, all brought together via her singular talents and sensibilities. Remain in Light was arguably the album of the year for ’80, and so it may be again for ’18. – Steve Hochman
John Prine, The Tree of Forgiveness No album this year brought me as much pure joy as John Prine’s latest. His first collection of new material in over a decade —which is way too long — The Tree of Forgiveness shows him in fine form, tossing out clever phrases and humorous asides that add to, rather than distract from, the low-level sadness thrumming through these songs. From the Buddy Holly bop of “I Have Met My Love Today” to the percolating existentialism of “Lonesome Friends of Science,” from the rapscallion reminiscences of “Egg & Daughter Nite, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1967 (Crazy Bone)” to the almost unbearable heartache of “Summer’s End,” every line and every word sounds purposeful and poignant, culminating with “When I Get to Heaven.” Prine sings about nine-mile-long cigarettes and bars filled with everyone you’ve ever loved, and it’s one of the most inviting visions of the afterlife set to tape. I hope he’ll save me a barstool. – Stephen Deusner
Jeff Tweedy, WARM The album lives up to its name. Following last year’s quieter Together at Last project, Tweedy now hearkens back to his country punk roots from Uncle Tupelo, and makes a perfect accompaniment to his must-read autobiography, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back). The new music reminds of his strength as a master songwriter and his place as one of the most tender and raw performers of a generation. It might have almost slid under the radar with its release at the end of November, but it definitely belongs on our year-end list. — Chris Jacobs
Marlon Williams, Make Way for Love Mere seconds into hearing Marlon Williams croon the opening greeting of his song “Hello Miss Lonesome” in 2016, I knew I’d found a euphoric talent. After poring over his debut Dark Child, my greedy ears immediately wanted more, and this year finally brought that much-awaited second helping. On Make Way for Love, Williams moves away from the rootsy Americana that defined his first album, and leans into darker, baroque explorations that nod to Scott Walker and Roy Orbison in equal measure. Exploring heartbreak — from the puerile but pacing “Party Boy,” to the seething “I Know a Jeweller,” to the pitious “Love is a Terrible Thing”— Williams dips into the jagged crevices that naturally appear when the heart cracks wide open. – Amanda Wicks
In Their Words: “’Bleach Blonde Bottle Blues’ is a punchy little number that lends itself to a stripped-back performance. We really had fun working it up just the two of us — this is the first time we’ve ever sung three-part harmony with Megan’s slide joining in as the third vocal! During the writing process, the rhythmic imagery of the lyric came so naturally to me that it almost felt like this song wanted to be written; it feels like a reminder of the importance in choosing to vibrantly live our lives while we have them: ‘You’ve gotta ride, feel the fire like a first kiss… you’ve gotta ride at your own risk.’” — Rebecca Lovell
Black Mountain, North Carolina-based Pisgah Brewing hosted their third Jam in the Trees over the weekend of August 24 and 25, bringing together a harlequin lineup of Americana, alt-country, string bands, and bluegrass in the idyllic Blue Ridge Mountains. Whether you were on hand for every second of the musical magic or you couldn’t quite make it to the festival this year, relive the two day roots celebration with our photo recap.
A beautiful setting for a beautiful couple of days.
Singer/songwriter Jane Kramer.
Gangstagrass
Fireside Collective
Lindi Ortega
Andy Buckner (far right) and band.
Just a couple of many vendors selling their wares.
Just a couple of many vendors selling their wares.
Toronto-based bluegrass band, the Slocan Ramblers.
IBMA Emerging Artist of the Year nominees, The Po' Ramblin' Boys.
The Steel Wheels take the stage.
Elizabeth Cook (for Sheriff!)
Ol' Flux himself, Jerry Douglas.
The Steel Wheels, quite literally jamming in the trees.
The Po' Ramblin' Boys, Ronnie McCoury, and Jim Lauderdale up to no good.
Elizabeth Cook and an attentive audience.
More banjos, please.
Jim Lauderdale, the king of broken hearts.
Shooter Jennings at Jam in the Trees.
Shooter on a gorgeous night in NC.
Just like his dad, Ronnie McCoury emanates joy on stage.
Jason Carter, fiddler for the Travelin' McCourys
The Travelin' McCourys with Jerry Douglas close out the main stage at Jam in the Trees 2018.
Photos by Revival Photography: Jason and Heather Barr
As this is being written, we’re on our way to the UK to prepare for our FIRST EVER international stage takeover, taking place next weekend at The Long Road Festival, in Leicestershire (near Birmingham). It’s a milestone event for BGS, and part of a larger initiative to reach our dedicated audience outside North America and shed light on some incredible talent that is putting their own spin on folk and roots traditions from other parts of the globe.
To prepare for The Long Road, held Sept. 7-9, we’ve summed up the top stuff we can’t wait to see and do while we’re in town. Hope some of you can join us to check out these highlights too:
1) That lineup tho… With main stage appearances ranging from Carrie Underwood and Lee Ann Womack to Billy Bragg and Joshua Hedley, TLR is representing a variety of talent from commercial [read: Pop] Country to Americana with a capital A. The lines between roots and country music seem a bit more blurred over here, and we can’t wait to see how it all comes together.
2) Birmingham Less than an hour from the festival lies the city of Birmingham. What was once a hardened industrialist town is now a breeding ground for creatives and start-ups, fostering one of the youngest populations in Europe (nearly 40 percent of the population is under 25). There’s plenty to discover here — from the old Custard Factory market to four (4!) Michelin-starred restaurants — so it’s a great stopover before or after the festival weekend.
3) AMA-UK stage takeover Friday kicks off the fest with our friends at Americana Music-UK curating a stage featuring their freshest crop of British Americana talent. (Stay tuned to the BGS site for an announcement highlighting an upcoming collaboration with that team very soon….)
4) Moonshine + whiskey tastings?! Say no more. You can find us in the Honky Tonk for more than just the BGS stage…
5) Stanford Hall This is not your mama’s country festival. TLR is held on the grounds of Stanford Hall, a 400-year-old stately home in the heart of Leicestershire, sitting on over 700 acres of expansive parkland. Not too shabby!
6) Born in Bristol film screening Produced and presented by the Birthplace of Country Music, retracing the 90 years since the recording of the original Bristol Sessions the resounding impact that music has had on the world, the documentary features the likes of Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Eric Church, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Marty Stuart, Sheryl Crow, and Doyle Lawson. Special screenings of the film will take place on site at TLR.
7) The Bluegrass Situation Takeover at the Honky Tonk stage on Sunday, September 9 (DUH!) Featuring a cavalcade of fierce females from three different continents, our BGS-curated stage highlights everything ranging from bluegrass (Cardboard Fox) to country (Ashley Campbell, Angaleena Presley) to folk (Dori Freeman, Worry Dolls) to Americana (Danni Nicholls, Ruby Boots). It’s gonna be great. You can check out the full day’s schedule below:
Brent Cobb may have the coolest summer job ever – opening shows across the U.S. for Chris Stapleton and Marty Stuart. During some downtime in Oregon, the Georgia native gave the Bluegrass Situation the lowdown on 11 of his favorite songs.
“Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good” – Don Williams
I woke up today singing Don Williams’ “Lord I Hope This Day is Good.” Because it just felt that way, you know? It’s just a beautiful day, I kind of want to smell the smell of hickory smoke rollin’ around in the wind. That’s also what Don Williams makes me think of, you know? We got a little somethin’ on the smoker and a little Don Williams playin’ – it’s hard to beat that.
“New South” – Hank Williams Jr.
That kind of leads into the next one, it’s sort of the same path, but Hank Jr., “New South.” It’s on his album, TheNew South, his first record after he fell off the mountain. Waylon Jennings, Toy Caldwell, and Marshall Tucker — they helped him produce that record. The whole album is so good, you want to sit around a campfire sound, you know? That particular song, “New South,” it also makes me want to put something on the smoker on a beautiful sunny day, pick a guitar, and maybe throw some horseshoes.
“I Wonder Do You Think of Me” – Keith Whitley
After that, I got Keith Whitley, “I Wonder Do You Think of Me.” The other night, I was sittin’ up, a lot of times when I’m on the road it’s the only time that I have to go back to my regularly scheduled writing process program. My daughter’s not out here so I don’t have to wake up at 6 o’clock every morning like I do when I’m home, so a lot of times I’ll sit up and play music and I sat up the other night till about three in the morning listening to songs. This particular one – I had forgotten about this song, I rediscovered it and listened to it about 25 times in a row the other night. It’s just so damn well-written and the chords in that song are amazing. It seems like such a simple country song, but I can’t play it. I try to pick it out.
“Leaving Trunk” – Taj Mahal
Something we listen to every night before we go on stage is Taj Mahal, “Leaving Trunk.” It’s just got that dirty south, down south, funky, country feel that I love. You can tell that the Allman Brothers were borrowing a lot from Taj. And well obviously “Statesboro Blues,” that song particularly, it’s just got that … I don’t know, it feels funky. It also would be great on a day like today, just kind of walkin’ around and have that song playin’ in your mind and be-bopping to your own beat.
“Coming Home” – Delaney & Bonnie
That makes me start thinking of other songs you could listen to, to get in the zone. So I got Delaney & Bonnie’s “Coming Home.” That’s another one we listen to before we play. I know you probably know who that is, but for those who don’t, they would have Clapton and George Harrison and folks play on their records. They influenced a lot of their peers of that time, and Dave [Cobb, Brent’s cousin] actually turned me on to that track. I’d never heard it before. Yeah, just kind of that funky country, man, gets ya goin’.
“Ohoopee River Bottomland” – Larry Jon Wilson
Which leads us into Larry Jon Wilson. Larry Jon Wilson was from Swainsboro, Georgia. He did a couple of records in the ‘70s that were super funky country. “Ohoopee River Bottomland” is the song I’m thinkin’ of. It’s also just that pre-show jam, you know? It kind of gets you down the road a little bit, and the way Larry – especially that song – would use Southern-isms or just rural-isms. He’d talk about, “this low rent land has turned to sand and I’ve done stood ’bout all I can I’m leaving…I’m leaving,” and “I got a wore-out mule and a no ‘count tractor quit now…and this is it now.” I just love the way he talks. You really capture his South Georgia background, but then he’s able to put it to some funky music.
“Play Something We Know” – Adam Hood
Alright so after Delaney and Bonnie and Larry Jon Wilson, that made me think of my buddy Adam Hood, because those are two songs that a lot of people may not know. It made me think of my friend Adam, I do a lot of writing with him. We wrote a lot of songs with this newest album of mine. He has a song called “Play Something We Know.” It’s all about hearing “play something we can sing to and play us something we know.” It’s about that guy or girl in the bar that’s slightly belligerent at your show, and they’re like “play me some ‘Brown Eyed Girl.’” You should check it out, it’s hilarious. Adam is just a great all-around artist.
“Forever Lasts Forever” – Nikki Lane
After thinking of Adam, it made me think of some other peers that I’m into, that I love, that have been good to me. Nikki Lane took us out at the top of last year and I think, in my humble opinion, she’s about the most authentic of our time. She has a song called “Forever Lasts Forever.” If you haven’t heard it, you should really check it out. It’s inspiring to listen to anything she writes, but that song is so wonderfully written. Just a wonderful breakup song, you know? Everybody loves a good breakup song.
“Hole in the Sky” – The Steel Woods
That brought me also to some other peers and also pre-show jams. The Steel Woods did a cover of Sabbath’s “Hole in the Sky.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with them, but son of a gun… It’ll get ya goin’, man. Their whole record is great. They’re recording a new record right now. That “Hole in the Sky” song, I remember the first time I heard it, I had no idea it was an old Sabbath song. It blew my hair back, it’s incredible.
“Anyhow, I Love You” – Guy Clark
Now this is gonna take us to after-show jams….the slow jams. Made me think of Guy Clark, “Anyhow, I Love You.” Man, talk about a damn well-written song. It took me a long time to get into Guy, not because I wasn’t into him…it’s just some things you gotta live enough to really appreciate it. That was one of those songs, man, “Anyhow, I Love You.” I could listen to that one, same as “I Wonder Do You Think of Me,” over and over and over and over again.
“Open the Door” – Otis Redding
That made me think of Georgia because Guy Clark is so good at writing about Texas. It made me think of an old Georgia artist, Otis Redding. Everybody knows him. “Open the Door” by Otis Redding feels like church. It’s like being back at Antioch Baptist Church when the preacher’s talkin’ to you and then he lays it on you.
It sounds like the start of a horror movie. A husband and father packs up the car with some clothes and a few guitars, bids farewell to his wife and kids, then drives deep into the Canadian countryside. He bunks at a friend’s country retreat, isolated from society, miles from the nearest human being. Or is he? Cue footsteps in the night, a dead bird on the doorstep, a shadowy figure barely glimpsed at the window. Perhaps there’s a death cult searching for the lost city of Ziox. Or some maniac with a pickaxe. Or some unnamed evil haunting the forest.
“It’s exactly like a horror movie!” laughs Michael Timmins, who is the man in that scenario and who write songs and plays guitar for the veteran Toronto band Cowboy Junkies. To pen tunes for their sixteenth studio album, All That Reckoning, he had to get out where nobody could hear him scream. “When I write, I have to be writing full time. As the years have gone by, it’s gotten harder and harder to do that, because I have more and more responsibilities at home. So I have to get away where it’s quiet, where I can sit around and think about nothing but songs. I have to get my head into it, so I have to isolate myself completely.”
He made it out alive, of course, but if All That Reckoning is any indication, the real horrors are the ones he encountered once he returned to society. An angry album whose outrage simmers coolly just beneath the surface, a thorny collection that ranks among the band’s best efforts, it chronicles a period of alienation, disappointment, fear, and paranoia. The guitars lurch and grind, the rhythm section lays out chunky, funky grooves, and singer Margo Timmins spits her brother’s lyrics with a strident combination of disgust and compassion. This is the Junkies in punk mode, decrying the hate and hostility that are scarier than any boogeyman.
“I’m not a protest writer,” says Michael, “but there are times in one’s life when the two collide. When I was all alone writing this album, I began to realize that the personal songs are little political analogies, and the ones that are a little bit political are really personal analogies. One feeds the other, and you really see how they cross. I felt like I was taking stock of what’s going on in my life and in the Western world, thinking about having to pay the price for a few things.”
Cowboy Junkies don’t usually traffic in dissent or social commentary; they’re better at documenting the personal than the political. Over the last thirty years they’ve crafted a sprawling body of work whose main subject is their own lives, their sons and daughters and wives and husbands and brothers and sisters. The band is rooted in their everyday lives, such that it feels more like an extension of family than a profession. “Margo and I are basically the same age,” says Michael. “We’re only about a year apart in age. We have our separate lives and things we go through, but when I write about something, she can relate that to something that’s happening in her world. And then she’s able to relate it to the listener by singing it, by giving it voice.”
It wasn’t always that way. After brief tenures in a punk group called the Hunger Project and an improvisational act known as Germinal, Michael Timmins and bass player Alan Anton returned home to Toronto, where they started a new band and eventually persuaded Margo to join as singer. Early shows were wildly spontaneous, with the band laying down a groove over which she would improvise lyrics or sing snatches of other songs. They covered old blues songs by Bukka White and Robert Johnson; they played “State Trooper” like Springsteen was an old bluesman himself. Released in 1986, their debut, Whites Off Earth Now!!, was a modest success, further entrenching them in the Canadian alternative scene but doing little to break them south of the border.
“Before anybody was listening,” says Margo, “we were just playing for ourselves—like all bands. You start in the garage or the basement or wherever, and playing music is fun. So you do a rock song. And then you do a country song, and then you do a blues songs. Nobody cares because nobody’s there.”
For their follow-up, they booked time in Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto, claiming to be a Christian vocal band to allay any suspicions of sacrilege or heresy. The band recorded around a single microphone, capturing an ambience so strong, so distinctive, so immersive that the church becomes a member of the band. They reimagined “Blue Moon” as a eulogy for Elvis Presley, reinterpreted Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight” as an anthem of urban paranoia, and most famously recorded what Lou Reed declared to be his favorite cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane.”The Trinity Session sounded unlike anything else at the time, and it pointed in new directions roots and folk music might travel: lo-fi, place-specific, history-steeped, atmospheric yet conceptual, beautiful and weird.
“What happens is you have any album like The Trinity Session and then suddenly everybody wants you to sound like that forever,” says Margo. “They want you to do that quiet album again and again. And we just couldn’t do that. We knew it would kill us. We’d get bored really fast, and it would be the end of the Junkies. We did it the way we wanted to do it, and we’re still here.”
After the misstep of 1990’s The Caution Horses—a little too clean, a little too slick—Cowboy Junkies proved themselves a deeply curious and extremely experimental band, one that had much greater range that previous releases had hinted. Black Eyed Man from 1992 is their country record, featuring songs rooted in Southern experience, some written by Townes Van Zandt (including a lovely version of “To Live Is to Fly”). They followed it up in 1993 with Pale Sun, Crescent Moon, a lowdown and occasionally abrasive album featuring guitarwork from J Mascis. There can’t be much overlap between John Prine and Dinosaur Jr, but the Junkies made it sound like a natural progression.
Since then they’ve largely forged their own path, never fully embracing or embraced by the roots community but also never feted as a major postpunk influence. Their most recent albums have been a linked quartet of experimental releases based on seasons of the year: One record was based on Michael’s experiences living in China, another gathered eleven Vic Chesnutt covers. Cowboy Junkies have reached a point where they can exist well outside the trends and slipstreams of contemporary pop, indie, and roots music, where they become a scene in and of themselves. Perhaps more crucially they’ve shown how a band might settle into a long career, enjoying a cult audience more than hit albums. They’ve shown how to make a life in music.
In that regard All That Reckoning is all the more surprising for how relevant it sounds, for how well it surveys our current climate, most crucially for how it suggests that the band’s defining traits—the quiet vocals, the erratic guitars, the menacing midtempo jams—are specifically calibrated to speak to this very moment. As Margo sings on “When We Arrive”: “Everything unsure, everything unstable.”
It’s not easy to write about these topics, but it can be even harder to sing about them. Before she even records her first notes, Margo road tests her brother’s songs, playing them in front of audiences, living with them so she can burrow into them, figure them out, and devise a plan of attack. For All That Reckoning she set up a makeshift studio in the ski chalet where Michael wrote the songs. “Often I don’t know what a song is about, and Mike won’t tell me. When he writes them, he just writes them. They’re mine to interpret and bring my life to and figure my way around.”
She has always been an imaginative singer, but these songs contain some of her best and most precise performances. The disgust in her voice on “Missing Children” is palpable, as is the disdain on “Shining Teeth,” but she sings “The Things We Do to Each Other” as matter-of-factly as possible, as though the lyrics were self-evident, as though a little compassion might help the lesson go down easier.
“Mountain Stream” plays like a record skipping, Michael’s guitar jangling like a pocketful of ill-gotten coins and Margo sounding hazy even though she’s relating a very grounded story about a king surveying his crumbling kingdom. “I wanted to sing it like… you know when you have a dream and you wake up the next morning and you tell somebody about it? You’re telling it in that kind of confused, almost stilted way of talking? You’re shaking your head going, I was here and I was there and then this dog came along. I wanted to sing it in that bewildered sort of way. But it eluded me. I don’t think I got it.”
Perhaps not getting it, perhaps hitting just off the mark, is what gives the song its haunted quality, as though nothing quite lines up, nothing quite makes sense. Everything unstable, everything unsure. “There’s something weird out there, something undefinable,” says Michael, pinpointing the album’s appeal. “We can’t really define it or figure it out, but it’s been out there forever, and for some reason it seems to be getting more common, more present.” The Junkies stare it down on All That Reckoning and they never flinch.
Welcome to Gig Bag, a BGS feature that peeks into the touring essentials of some of our favorite artists. With a guest appearance from his cat, Possum, Joshua Hedley details the items he always has nearby when out on the road.
Truck stop pillow: It’s cheap, it doesn’t need a pillow case, and it’s more comfortable than a van seat headrest.
Adidas Tracksuit: It takes up less room than a blanket because you’re wearing it.
Adidas Adilette Cloudfoam Plus slides: Just get a pair. You’ll see. P.S. definitely wear with socks.
Fanny Pack: It doesn’t matter what brand, I just like Adidas. Anyway you can keep all your stuff in it and it takes up less room than a backpack. It gets cramped easily in the van so minimizing clutter is key.
Bose QuietComfort 35 II headphones: I fly to Australia twice a year. That’s a long ass flight and the batteries in these things last FOREVER. They’re not cheap but they’re worth every penny.
Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson are familiar to every country fan – and more than a few would consider them the original Outlaws. In a brand new exhibit, Outlaws & Armadillos: Country’s Roaring ’70s, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville strives to explain how that name stuck. More importantly, it traces the connection between Nashville and Austin to show how these cities shaped country music in the 1970s, considered one of the genre’s most incredible periods of creativity and individuality.
The emergence of Willie Nelson as an iconic Texas musician is central to the exhibit. His blue sneakers and other parts of his casual wardrobe are emblematic of how he stood apart from country entertainers in that era.
Waylon Jennings and his wife, Jessi Colter (shown above), appeared on the first-ever platinum country album, Wanted! The Outlaws (1976). Guitars, a Grammy Award, and posters from Jennings’ performances in Nashville and Austin are on display.
A poster of the film Heartworn Highways is displayed next to a poncho embroidered with “… and Lefty,” which belonged to Townes Van Zandt. Items from Guy Clark, coach Darrell Royal, Alvin Crow, and Uncle Walt’s Band are also featured.
The comprehensive exhibit explains the contributions of Jerry Jeff Walker, Asleep at the Wheel, Michael Murphey, Doug Sahm and Freda & the Firedogs, through rarely-seen memorabilia provided by the artists.
Joe Ely poses next to the uniform he wore while working for the circus. Ely became a force in Texas music as a member of The Flatlanders and through a number of acclaimed solo projects. He also performed on opening night.
Texas natives Tanya Tucker and Billy Joe Shaver catch up at the opening night party. Jennings’ 1973 album, Honky Tonk Heroes, is composed almost entirely of Shaver’s songs. Tucker broke through in 1972 with “Delta Dawn.”
Text by Craig Shelburne
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