Way Above the Chimney Tops: A Pride Celebration of “Over the Rainbow”

As we celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride, let’s go “Over the Rainbow.” The amount of artists that have covered this song (written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg) is practically innumerable — and of course Judy Garland’s version from 1939’s The Wizard of Oz is the emerald standard. Yet we looked behind the curtain and found 10 roots, country, and folk-tinged versions that we think stand at the top of the heap. What’s your favorite version?

Eva Cassidy

This acoustic cover of “Over the Rainbow” made Eva Cassidy a star, but it didn’t happen until five years after her death in 1996 when a homemade video was shown on BBC’s Top of the Pops 2.

Willie Nelson

Why are there so many songs about rainbows? Willie chose Somewhere Over the Rainbow as the title of his 25th studio album, featuring 1940s pop standards, released in 1981.

Tommy Emmanuel

Officially released in 2004, Tommy Emmanuel had been playing this masterful solo version for years. He says he adapted this arrangement from Chet Atkins’ rendition, then allowed it to evolve over time.

Jerry Lee Lewis

Leave it to ol’ Jerry Lee to insert himself into the story. Even without a broomstick, he swept onto the charts with this cool rendition in 1980, giving him Top 10 country hits across four consecutive decades.

Leon Russell with Newgrass Revival

From a 1981 live album, this version smolders with understated keys and the unmistakable voice of Leon Russell. And this trippy video mixes color and black-and-white footage, just like The Wizard of Oz!

Martina McBride

She’s not in Kansas anymore. Released as a single in 2015, Martina sang “Over the Rainbow” on numerous TV broadcasts, including American Idol and the Opry. Give the people what they want!

Chet Atkins, Les Paul

A beautiful instrumental recorded in 1978, Les is on electric, while Chet provides the fingerpicked classical guitar. Look for it on the great and powerful Guitar Monsters album.

Ingrid Michaelson

Released in 2006, Ingrid Michaelson would go on to perform “Over the Rainbow” with a choir of kids from Sandy Hook Elementary School in January 2013. She considers it a “positive and hopeful song.”

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole (“Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World”)

Perhaps the best-known cover, the singer known simply as ‘Bruddah Iz’ around Hawaii found posthumous fame with this inescapable medley. According to NPR, he recorded the song spontaneously in 1988, intending it to be a demo.

Jake Shimabukuro

Iz isn’t the only contemporary Hawaiian musician to tackle “Over the Rainbow.” Check out this solo version by Shimabukuro, who has been playing ukulele since he was 4 years old. It’ll make you want to tap your heels together.


Photo by Redfishingboat (Mick O) on Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Capturing the Outlaws: Country Music Hall of Fame Salutes the 1970s

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

That Ain’t Bluegrass: Lonely Heartstring Band

Artist: Lonely Heartstring Band
Song: “Rambling, Gambling Willie” (originally by Bob Dylan)
Album: Deep Waters

Where did you first hear “Rambling, Gambling Willie?”

Patrick M’Gonigle: Matt [Witler] actually found the song. It was released probably seven or eight years ago now, as part of The Witmark Demos — a set of outtakes from when Bob Dylan recorded The Freewheelin’ sessions. He released a whole bunch of other music from that session. I think it was Matt that thought it would make a cool bluegrass song.

We actually have an interesting side note about that: We had a guy come to a show a couple of years ago and we played that song, introducing it as a song that didn’t make The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan record. The guy said he went home very confused. He had The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album, and he said, “I grew up listening to that record. I know that song intimately. And I never had The Witmark Demos. So I don’t get this.” When he found his copy and looked at the track order, sure enough “Rambling, Gambling” was not on the track order. Then he put the record on and “Rambling, Gambling” was on it! He had one of a very small handful of misprints of the stereo version of that record, and it’s worth a ton of money.

I thought this was going to be a Mandela Effect kind of thing!

It was actually on there!

The title of the song almost answers this question, but what made you all think this would make a good bluegrass song?

It’s got a great, classic chord progression. Also, the timing of the words allowed us to speed it up and have it work. A lot of songs, you speed them up, and the words just become insane or crunched together. The song itself, the words are at a slower pace, so when we sped it up, they totally fit. It’s super fun to play on as a soloist. It had all of the elements. We did the same thing recently with a song that we learned from Willie Nelson. If we hear [three-chord] songs that are slow, but also have a slow word flow, they lend themselves to this. “Rambling, Gambling Willie” was our first experiment with that.

What was your process of arranging the song and putting it together?

It was a few years ago now. When we sped it up, the verses ended up being quite short. There are a lot of them — I think the original version has maybe eight or nine verses. We chose six of them. We chose the ones that told the story cohesively. We cut a bunch of them, and we realized, because we were speeding it up, it didn’t make sense to do verse-chorus-solo. So we did two verse-choruses in a row between solos, which kind of acted as one verse.

The other thing we did, when we worked up the harmonies on the first chorus of each pair, we would do a low harmony and, the second one, we’d do a high harmony, so it would still have kind of an arc over the two verses. One of our favorite, one of our most popular bluegrass songs when we arranged that song was “Born to Be with You” by J.D. Crowe and the New South, which we still play. That has a really cool arrangement style where the banjo finishes every break. We applied that to this song, too. When it gets to the chorus parts, because we would solo over verse-chorus, Gabe [Hirshfeld] on the banjo would always solo over the chorus part.

Bluegrass has always had this tradition of reworking and revamping songs from outside of bluegrass since the very beginning. Why do you think this still happens?

I feel like there are several answers to that. For us, we love — in terms of traditional bluegrass sounds — J.D. Crowe and the New South. J.D. is a great example of someone who does that. Like the song “Born to Be with You,” that’s a ‘50s doo-wop song by the Chordettes. The original sounds nothing like what J.D did with it.

Also, I think a lot of the bluegrass themes are pretty constant throughout bluegrass. We have a banter joke on stage that there are only like six themes in bluegrass: heartbreak, drinking or making alcohol, trains, God, and death. In pop music, especially folk revival — ‘60s, ‘70s pop music — there was a kind of poetic awakening and there was a lot more content. That’s one answer: You can talk about more complex themes.

Then, on the other hand, it’s just natural. Especially in this day and age, when there’s so much good music happening all over the place, if you grow up listening to the radio, it’s not just the Grand Ole Opry anymore. Everyone’s listening to everything.

You know that ain’t bluegrass, right?

Whatever, man. [Laughs] In our band, it’s different for everyone, but I think, in general, I see the term “bluegrass” as either a help or a hindrance. It’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, sure, it’s bluegrass. In my opinion, bluegrass is whatever anyone wants to call bluegrass. I’m not concerned with it. Maybe it’s not traditional bluegrass, if you define traditional bluegrass as anything that happened before 1953 or whenever. I don’t feel like it’s constructive, especially in our band, to talk about what is or isn’t bluegrass. To us, that song is bluegrass because we’re taking pentatonic solos over essentially a 1-4-5 [chord progression,] the mandolin is chopping, the banjo is rolling, and we have three-part harmony that’s stacked in thirds. That’s awfully bluegrass, if you break it down as a specific musical form.

If you start trying to define what bluegrass means to us, it can start holding us back, because we can easily decide that nothing is bluegrass. I think it’s better for everyone, especially touring, performing musicians who are trying to expand their markets, trying to talk about diversity, or any sort of expansion, because if you start putting labels on whatever bluegrass is, the conversation is over pretty quickly. Everyone has a different idea.

But, at the same time, bluegrass as a positive aesthetic is really powerful. Bringing in the imagery of traditional bluegrass, in a good way, to any sort of music, incorporated into any of those styles can be super awesome. People can immediately conjure some sort of nostalgic, rural, aesthetic. Those are powerful aesthetics that are very popular in American culture. That’s the double-edged sword, to us.

Ken Irwin had a very interesting thing to say to us after we played at Pemi Valley Bluegrass Festival in New Hampshire — that’s a pretty traditional festival. We were up there playing our music, but at that point, we were probably playing more of the Flatt & Scruggs and Bluegrass Album Band kind of stuff. I kept saying, “Here’s one of our songs” and then, “Here’s a traditional bluegrass song.” Ken pointed out that, if we say that, people will start putting those divisions in their own minds about our music. If the audience loves traditional bluegrass and they want to call our music “bluegrass,” then we should let them. But as soon as we start saying what is or isn’t bluegrass from stage, we might be steering someone’s opinions in directions they wouldn’t otherwise go.

A Musically Fashionable Reunion, Luck-Style

“Damn, I forgot how good-looking everyone is in Texas!” the woman next to me said, as we approached the gates of Luck Ranch. My smile was equal parts Texas pride and pure excitement, as I took in my hill country surroundings — an oasis amidst the SXSW madness. The women, men, and kids sharing Willie Nelson’s ranch for the day rocked various combinations of leather boots, chain-stitched denim, hand-crafted hats, and custom jewelry, as well as other items rooted in traditional craft. If you didn’t arrive in any of these items, there’s a good chance you left with one, after visiting the skilled Luck vendors. I know I did!

On the repurposed set of the 1986 film, Red Headed Stranger, the annual Luck Reunion draws a specific audience in with its well-curated line-up of artists, vendors, and other creators who “cultivate the new, while showing honor to influence” in their work. It’s hard to believe this idyllic, single-day music festival wasn’t a mirage or dream induced by way too much of Willie’s Reserve. Here was a damn good-looking group of people listening to some damn good tunes.

Lilly Hiatt

Micah Nelson wearing Featherweight

Aaron Lee Tasjan in Lone HawkCaleb Caudle; and Devon Gilfillian

The Texas Gentlemen

Sam of Quaker City Night Hawks

Nikki Lane  in Wallflowers suit and Worth & Worth hat; Sam Lewis; and Onye  wearing her own designs, Effie and Onanu

 

Nashville illustrator Emily Miller

Marie of Lockhart Embroidery


Lede image: Ft. Lonesome

Traveler: Your Guide to San Antonio

San Antonio is a multicultural city with a rich history and vibrant art culture. A museum goer’s dream, the second largest city in Texas is packed with evolving and impressive museums and galleries galore. San Antonio’s music scene attracts outlaws, the art scene attracts Picassos, and the culinary scene attracts Mexican food perfectionists. Plus, who wouldn’t want to go to the city which holds a world record in tamale making?

Getting There

River Walk at Dusk. Photo credit: Tim Thompson

Located in south central Texas, San Antonio is nearly nestled against the Mexican border. San Antonio International Airport (SAT) is located northeast of San Antonio proper, offering plenty of nonstop flights in and out daily. If you want to tack onto a trip to Austin or Houston, San Antonio is a one- or three-hour drive, respectively.

Where to Stay

Inn on the River Walk

The Inn on the River Walk is a classic bed & breakfast, sprawling throughout three 1900s homes along the famous River Walk, while Hotel Havana is a boutique hotel overlooking the River Walk with a noteworthy bar called Ocho. There are plenty of affordable Airbnb options, too. Stick to looking in the downtown and River Walk areas, East San Antonio, Alamo Heights, and the King Williams Historic District for staying in lively areas.

The Hotel Emma

The Hotel Emma is a destination in and of itself because of its unique trappings and in-house upscale restaurants. It’s worth a meal just to peep the decor inside.

What to Do

McNay museum. 

San Antonio is museum central. Everything from Picassos to O’Keeffes reside in the McNay, a world-class modern art museum with more than 20,000 works. The Witte Museum is an interactive science-meets-nature-meets-culture experience, and the brand new DoSeum Children’s Museum features STEM-centric, hands-on exhibits for kids like Spy Academy and Sensations Studio.

Botanical Garden. Photo credit: visitsanantonio.com

Freshly renovated, the San Antonio Botanical Garden includes a family garden, Texas Native Trail, bird watching opportunities, and a tropics-heavy conservatory.

The Alamo. Photo credit: visitsanantonio.com

Though San Antonio is a history nerd’s playground, the Alamo is a given stop on any traveler’s itinerary. Originally established as a one of the early Spanish missions in Texas, the fortress has had many uses and is now preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s free and spans four acres, so it’ll take a few hours to cover the grounds. San Antonio Missions National Historical Park is home to four of the city’s five Spanish missions — outposts that date back to the 17th century.

Under construction and opening in 2019 is Ruby City, a contemporary art center designed by Sir David Adjaye — the same architect who designed the Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, DC.

If you like your learning with a side of live music, check out Jazz, TX at Pearl, Paper Tiger, and Willie Nelson’s Luck Reunion fest every March.

Eats & Drinks

Hotel Havana

With more than 1,000 Mexican restaurants, authentic Texas BBQ, and international cuisine from every corner of the world, San Antonio’s culinary scene is robust. The Pearl District and Southtown are restaurant-rich parts of town where you can point to pretty much any spot on the map and strike gold. Grab a drink at Ocho (in Hotel Havana), and you’ll be situated in a glass conservatory overlooking the River Walk sipping locally inspired cocktails.

The Esquire Tavern

The Esquire Tavern is a James Beard-nominated bar with the longest wooden bar top in Texas. Its vibe is informed by the year it opened — 1933. Don’t miss their smoky, chimichurri-doused chalupitas.

Breakfast options include Bakery Lorraine, which moved from the San Francisco area to the Pearl in San Antonio and offers renowned tarts and macaroons. Chef Johnny Hernandez is a local celeb and his Frutería-Botanero will prove why. This Southtown gem serves fresh-pressed juices and smoothies by day and transforms into a Mexican-style small plate bar by night. If you’re feeling a good ole’ American meal of BBQ & beer, hit up the Granary.

Luck Reunion Tips

Valerie June at Luck Reunion. Photo credit: Nathan Poppe

An hour-and-a-half north of San Antonio, musical outlaws gather every March among the fading movie set facades for a musical reunion. Luck Reunion was originally Willie Nelson’s brainchild, beginning on his ranch in Luck, Texas.

Sure, the Reunion’s lineup is stacked with big names, but the fest is equally as dedicated to encouraging music fans to experience rising acts who are doing it all on their own terms. The festival organizers program the early slots to be filled with the artists they believe will be the next crop of rogue music legends.

The Nelson family’s cardinal rule is “Don’t be an asshole,” and that rings true during the festival. Don’t take the historic property, the people you’re surrounded by, or the music for granted while you’re (literally) in Luck. And, no, that is not a skunk you smell.

Lee Ann Womack: Keeping it Real

Lee Ann Womack had to get out of Nashville to make what she calls a real country music record. Specifically, she had to get about 800 miles away. For her eighth — and maybe her best — album, The Lonely, the Lonesome & the Gone, Womack trekked down to Houston, Texas, and set up camp at the historic SugarHill Studio, which has hosted famed sessions by some of her musical heroes: Lightnin’ Hopkins, the Sir Douglas Quintet, George Jones, and many others. Nashville has plenty of similarly legendary rooms, of course, but Womack needed to get away from the grinding gears of the country music machine — what she derides as “McRecords.”

“It’s like a factory,” she says. “What was great about being down there in Texas is that you’re in a studio where people go to work everyday and you have all kinds of music being recorded there. Nobody’s going in thinking, ‘We’ve got to lay down a three-minute uptempo love song for radio.’ They’re not thinking about how we’re going to make the most money out of three minutes of music. All they’re thinking about is going in and making great music.”

Womack is one of the few artists who can drop a phrase like “real country music” into conversation without sounding defensive, dismissive, or derisive — in other words, without buying into received notions of authenticity. Her definition of “real” is deeply personal and based on the country music that was popular 40 or 50 or even 60 years ago, but Lonely proves that even old tunes and old sounds can speak to this modern moment. Rather than restrictive, the term becomes freeing: These new songs range from the stately countrypolitan of “Hollywood” to the gritty blues of “All the Trouble,” from the beautiful reimagining of the 1959 Lefty Frizzell “Long Black Veil” to the remarkable insights of the title track, a country song about country songs.

Recording in Houston actually brought her closer to some of her Nashville heroes. Womack grew up in a small town called Jacksonville, Texas, about three hours due north of Houston. Her father was a country radio DJ, a profession that provided his daughter with a deep grounding in the music’s history. As a child, she loved Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys. “I thought he was funny. The music was upbeat and bouncy, which any kid would like, and then you’ve got this guy talking all over the tracks: [Imitating Wills’ falsetto] ‘Shoot low, sheriff! I think he’s riding a Shetland!’” She might have been laughing at the bandleader’s antics, but she was subconsciously absorbing the complex horns and fiddles. “It becomes part of the fabric of your musical DNA.”

As she grew up, Womack raided her parents’ record collection, which was full of albums by Ray Price, George Jones, Porter Waggoner, Dolly Parton, and, of course, Willie Nelson. “Twin fiddles and steel guitar and story songs — these were the things that I thought were country music, and I thought my idea of country music was everybody’s idea of country music.” Ironically, being in Nashville only distanced Womack from her first loves. “Growing up in East Texas, I was full of dreams and hope. Then I moved to Nashville and, after 20 years, you get kind of jaded. Things change,” she says. “Every time I go back home, I have a spark of that feeling I had growing up. I wanted that again. I haven’t made a record in that frame of mind in so long. I just wanted to be surrounded again by the things that shaped me growing up.”

All of those old sounds inform the new record, which was produced by her husband, Frank Liddell, and finds Womack moving even further away from the country mainstream. Disregarding the need for radio airplay and signing with ATO Records [home to the Drive-By Truckers and Hurray for the Riff Raff] suggests she is cementing her place within the Americana market, adopting a rootsier sound for a very different kind of audience. As she recounts her career, however, Womack insists she has always gravitated toward this kind of music, even when she was just starting out. “When I walked into the offices of Decca Records to audition, I walked in with just an upright bass, myself, and an acoustic guitar. We played as a trio, right there in the office,” she recounts. “And that’s exactly who I was. My first record had a song on it called ‘Never Again, Again,’ and that was stone-cold country. Even in 1997, I felt like I needed to remind people of what country music really was.”

And yet, within the country sphere and without, she is best known for 2000’s smash single, “I Hope You Dance,” which achieved the crossover success so many Nashville artists covet. Recorded with Sons of the Desert, it’s a slick and sentimental pop-country anthem whose uplifting lyrics could double as a graduation speech or a Hallmark card: “I hope you still feel small, when you stand beside the ocean. Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens.”

To her credit, Womack doesn’t ignore or disregard her biggest hit, no matter that it is something of an outlier in her catalog. She still performs it at almost every concert, still sings it like it’s a brand-new song, still invests those lyrics with sincerity and immense generosity, even as she strips it down to its core. “Those lyrics still stand up with just an acoustic guitar,” she says. “I might have cut a couple of lightweight pieces along the way, but I tried to cut the best songs I could find. And now when I go out and play with fewer musicians in a more stripped-down setting, those songs hold up because they were great songs to begin with. I guess a lot of shit got put on them to make them more commercial.”

That is perhaps one of Womack’s most undervalued talents: She is a sensitive and intuitive song collector with a discerning ear for complex sentiments, sturdy melodies, and relatable characters. On her last album, 2014’s The Way I’m Livin’, she covered the Texas singer/songwriter Hayes Carll and managed to outdo Neil Young on her tender version of “Out on a Weekend.” Lonely includes a handful of old-school covers, but the standouts are those penned by young scribes like Brent Cobb, Adam Wright, and Jay Knowles.

During the sessions in Houston, there were discussions about the title track, which includes the line, “[Hank Williams] never wrote about watching a Camry pulling out of a crowded apartment parking lot.” According to Wright, who co-wrote the tune, “Some people were like, ‘Camry isn’t very cool. Is there another car we can use?’ But Lee Ann said, ‘No, it’s a Camry. Those are the lyrics and that’s what it is.’ And that’s the point, after all. It’s not a Jaguar. It’s not a cool car. It’s not romantic.” As she sings it, that is one of the most arresting lines in a song this year — country or otherwise — and she delivers it with a gentle despair and even a little resignation, as though measuring the romance of an old country song and the reality of everyday life. “The care she takes with these songs left a big impression on me,” says Wright.

For Womack, country music is real when it’s about real people — not just the musicians who write and sing the songs, but the listeners who play those tunes over and over again, who hear their own dreams and hopes echoed back to them. “I have this theme about myself and about others,” says Womack. “I don’t know how else to describe it, except to say that I am drawn to losers. I hate to call anybody a loser, but I throw myself in that pile.”

By “losers,” she means people facing down challenges bigger than they are, and that accounts for just about everybody on earth. “That’s why I’m drawn to songs like ‘All the Trouble’ and ‘I Hope You Dance.’ They’re about challenges, about hard moments in life,” she muses. “There was a time when country music spoke more to those types of people. Now it’s speaking to a different group of people. That’s fine, but I want to speak to the challenges of life. The lonely, the lonesome, and the gone? Those are my people.”


Lede illustration by Cat Ferraz.

WATCH: Kristina Murray, ‘How Tall the Glass’

Artist: Kristina Murray
Hometown: Nashville, TN
Song: “How Tall the Glass”

In Their Words: “For a month or so prior to writing ‘How Tall the Glass,’ I’d been on a listening binge of early turtleneck-wearing Willie and pompadour-styling Paycheck, and was just obsessing over both their exaggerated vocal phrasings and unique perspectives on love, life, and drinking — and how and when those things collide. Late one night last November, I’d been sipping Bulleit bourbon, missing my lover, and messing around just writing and picking, when I said to myself — as I reached for another beer — ‘Well, it’s just a two-step process from the fridge to the cup!’ I thought that sounded like something Willie would philosophize, and the song just poured (no pun intended) out from there; it really took shape with the refrain line, which muses and smirks in self defeat, ‘How empty the bottle, how tall the glass.” — Kristina Murray


Photo credit: Sarah McLaughlin

Charley Pride: Crossing Over Generations

Charley Pride might be 83 and a living country legend, but that doesn’t mean he’s not wise or proud enough to still listen to his wife. “It’s been six years since the last one,” Pride says of his 2011 album, Choices. “And my wife said, ‘Why don’t you try and find a producer you might like to work with?'” Pride heard her loud and clear and, together, they found Billy Yates, a renowned Nashville artist, producer, and songwriter. Even in his 80s, Pride wasn’t afraid to shake things up a little. Clearly, he’s never been afraid to take chances and drive from his gut — straight to 36 number one songs and spots in the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Grand Ole Opry.

The result is Music in My Heart, 13 songs of tender country traditionalism centered on Pride’s warm tone and classic, twangy spikes of fiddle and steel guitar. After all these years and one of country’s most storied careers, Pride’s never found a reason to veer away from what he does best — songs that grow fruitfully from the genre’s original roots, watered with the souls of Bill Monroe and Roy Acuff.

“I’m a traditionalist,” says Pride. He repeats the phrase so it’s undeniably clear: “A traditionalist. You don’t have to worry about me crossing over, because I’m a traditionalist and I’m proud of that. People used to say to me, after ‘Kiss an Angel Good Mornin” started going up the charts, ‘Charley, when are you going to cross over?’ I said, ‘I ain’t going to cross over to nothing.’ They want me to cross over? They crossed over to me!”

Pride, who’s sold over 70 million records worldwide, has certainly earned the right to stick to his convictions — and he’s also proven the value of driving straight from the heart, with equal parts hard work along the way. Pride grew up the son of a sharecropper on a cotton farm in Sledge, Mississippi, and has lived a life worthy of the movie screens, so much so that a biopic has been in the works for years (at one point, Dwayne Johnson, aka the Rock, was even in talks to play the singer). Pride held tenure in the Negro baseball league, was drafted by the Army, and ended up in Nashville after his plans in sports crumbled. He took the bus to Tennessee, eventually breaking barriers with hit after hit in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Even now, he’s still working, performing sometimes 40 concert dates a year. The only difference is that he’s singing to multiple generations.

“I’m singing to three or four decades now,” Pride says. “I was in Indiana a few years back, and a lady hollered out in the audience, ‘Charley! You’re singing to five generations!’ I’m singing to grandmothers, grandfathers, granddaughters. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, but they’re still standing up when I first come on. They scream, ‘Oh, Charley. You’ve still got it!’ Not just the ladies; the men are, too. When you get that kind of thing, it’s hard to quit.”

Indeed, Music in My Heart is still very much progressing and alive. Instead of compiling an album of tributes, or something trying to appeal to country’s current trends, it’s unapologetic in its tone: it opens on “New Patches,” with fiddle that’s clear as day, undeniably traditional and Southern-rooted. Pride’s voice, too, has only honeyed as the years have gone on, deepening a touch, yet barely fraying. Even in his personal listening, he’s never strayed from the classics. “I listen mostly to Willie’s Roadhouse,” he admits, about his buddy Willie Nelson’s classic country show on SiriusXM. He sees Randy Travis as the dividing line of sorts between the new and the old guard.

“From Randy Travis came Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks, up to Taylor Swift, to now,” he says. “Most of them, I’ve met and they’ve been really good to me, same as my peers up to George Strait. I’ve liked not one or two of their songs, but a whole bunch. Garth Brooks, he treats me like a dad. Well, not a dad, but with respect, for my being a traditionalist.”

Predictably, it’s once again his wife Rozene — to whom he’s been wed since 1956 — who is the balancing force. “If I’m in her car, she listens to the people coming up,” Pride admits, though don’t ask him to recall any of their names. “The youngsters that are coming up right now.” Pride’s own youngster — his son, Dion — carries on the family tradition with some other famous offspring: Marty Haggard and Georgette Jones, something Pride himself brings full circle on Music in My Heart by covering Haggard’s “The Way It Was in ’51.”

With the genre’s recent embrace of traditionalism, it would be a pity to put Pride only in the category of dust-gathering legacy acts: He is one, undoubtedly, but he’s still making music that has ample power to scratch that modern classic country itch. Maybe that’s because he still sees his best days ahead of him. “I think this is my best work, and I’m not just saying that: I’m stating facts that I believe,” he says. “I culled these songs down to the ones I really love, the way I have done all my life. Like I’ve always said, I’m in the business of selling lyrics, feeling, and emotions.”

And Music in My Heart is beating fast and furiously with all of those things, 83 years in the making.


Lede illustration by Cat Ferraz.

3×3: Blake Berglund on White Guys, Willie Nelson, and Walking the LIne

Artist: Blake Berglund
Hometown: Kennedy, Saskatchewan, Canada — edge of Moose Mountain Provincial Park
Latest Album: Realms
Personal Nicknames: Ol Uncle Blake, the Double B, the Coyote, and the 333.

 

Sundaze. #TheRoad

A post shared by Blake Berglund (@blakeberglund) on

If you had to live the life of a character in a song, which song would you choose?

The Highwayman in the Highwaymen’s “Highwayman” — he keeps coming back around.

Where would you most like to live or visit that you haven’t yet?

I’m looking forward to a couple years of Van Life across North America. There’s a reason for the cliché of Southern Hospitality … I look forward to nestling into a couple pockets in the South and spending extended periods of time. Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas. If Mars is somehow in the cards in my lifetime, yeah, I’ll take that trip.

What was the last thing that made you really mad?

Ehh, “really mad” encompasses a lot of different emotions for me. I’m pissed off that the radio shuns female artists as much as it does, pretty disappointed in political apathy these days, and I’m downright sick and tired of entitled money hungry old white guys.

If you had to get a tattoo of someone’s face, who would it be?

Willie Nelson

Whose career do you admire the most?

My fellow Saskies (Saskatchewanites) are killing it right now, i.e. Colter Wall, Kacy and Clayton, Jess Moskaluke, Andy Shauf … the list goes on. I dig their career decisions.

What are you reading right now?

Fifth Business of the Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies, The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo by Ian Stansil, and Rant by Chuck Palahniuk

Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

I walk right down the centre. Gotta — artist and hustler.

What’s your favorite culinary spice?

Nice question … I bounce back and forth between cumin and turmeric.

What was your favorite childhood toy?

My Etch-a-Sketch


Photo credit: Chris Graham

Canon Fodder: John Mellencamp, ‘The Lonesome Jubilee’

The Lonesome Jubilee was released on August 24, 1987, just a few weeks after Def Leppard’s Hysteria and a few weeks before Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven on Earth. But unlike those two albums, it is not getting a new 30th-anniversary edition. No remastering, no bonus tracks, no unearthed live cuts or alternate takes, no new liner notes, no think-pieces or take-downs. But John Mellencamp’s ninth album certainly deserves the deluxe treatment — and not only because it’s a rousing collection of politically barbed folk-rock songs. The best reissues allow us to hear old music in new ways, providing a fresh context in which artists might speak to a different moment and to a different generation. The songs on Jubilee speak very loudly, and they have as much to say in 2017 as they did in 1987.

Mellencamp recorded the album in late 1986 and early 1987, taking his road-tested touring band into his Belmont Mall Studio outside of Bloomington, Indiana. As usual, he worked with his long-time producer Don Gehman, who had helmed his breakthroughs during the transition from Johnny Cougar to John Cougar Mellencamp. Two crucial things had changed in the singer/songwriter’s life, one professional and the other personal. First, his longtime label Riva Records had gone out of business, leaving him briefly homeless. He soon signed with Mercury, where he remained for the next decade. Second, his uncle, Joe Mellencamp, died from lung cancer, and his passing lends the record an intense mortal resignation. While many of these songs may sound like they’re about other people, in fact they are about John Mellencamp delving into his family’s personal demons. According to a 1987 New York Times feature, he wrote first single, “Paper in Fire,” about “my family’s ingrained anger.”

By all appearances, it didn’t look like he had very much to be angry about. Mellencamp was coming off an incredible run that had established him as one of the biggest stars of the decade, alongside such well-remembered celebrities as Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Michael Jackson. Starting with 1982’s American Fool, he had devised a form of heartland rock that was unpretentious yet inventive, universal enough to appeal to anyone who heard it, yet eccentric enough to show the man behind the music. He had an easy way of rolling social and political issues into his songs, avoiding the all-caps melodrama of Springsteen, as well as the studious obscurity of R.E.M.

Sound followed setting. Mellencamp hailed from Indiana, where small towns were suffering, farmers were hurting, and regular Americans were shouldering the burden of corporate greed with nothing to show for it. In 1986, together with Willie Nelson, he co-headlined the first Farm Aid concert and testified before Congress in support of Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin’s Family Farm bill. In that same New York Times article, he explained that the giant corporations are “willing to exploit John Doe and let America become a third-world country, economically, if it benefits them.”

Throughout the 1980s, his populist mission informed songs that were based in strictly rock and pop sounds, in particular electric guitars. His catalog is littered with sharp and evocative riffs: the ominous growl of “Scarecrow,” the scene-setting rhythm of “Jack & Diane,” the horizon-expanding fanfare of “Rumble Seat.” While present on The Lonesome Jubilee, the electric guitar is primarily an accent to an arsenal of folk instruments largely foreign to MTV and the Billboard pop charts: fiddle and hammer dulcimer, autoharp and mandolin, penny whistle and accordion, dobro and lap steel. It wasn’t country, but it wasn’t folk either. Mellencamp called it a form of “gypsy rock,” rooted in his Dutch and German ancestry.

That musical palette gives The Lonesome Jubilee a special place in Mellencamp’s catalog and perhaps an even more impressive spot in pop music, more generally. Thirty years later, it might be one of the best-selling roots rock albums of all time, a bigger risk than the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack; there is something brazen about Mellencamp’s embrace of these sounds, something ornery in his insistence that these traditions had a place in mainstream pop music. And yet, it still sounds like nothing else. His band deploys these instruments in unexpected ways, giving what might otherwise be guitar riffs to John Cascella’s accordion or Mike Wanchic’s dulcimer or, most often, to Lisa Germano’s fiddle. In particular, the strident urgency of “Paper in Fire” is grounded in her sharp bowing, which is industrial in concept if not in sonics: like squealing brakes on a car, or grinding gears in a factory, or perhaps a quarry saw through a block of limestone.

Mellencamp’s gypsy rock does a lot to tease out the meaning in his lyrics, whether evoking a specific regional setting in which these stories play out or simply providing an optimistic counterpart to his sometimes pessimistic worldview. If Springsteen (to whom Mellencamp is too often and unjustly compared) wrote about dreamers either escaping or succumbing to the drag of life, Mellencamp is much less romantic about the ordinary Americans who populate his songs. Rarely do they even have dreams or vistas that extend beyond the city limits. As Robert Christgau wrote in his A- review, “His protagonists don’t expect all that much and get less, but they’re not beautiful losers — they’re too ordinary, too miserable.”

When his characters reflect on their lives, they do so with a generational nostalgia that often obscures the source of their despair. “Cherry Bomb” is a gentle song about looking back to a more promising time in life. “We were young and we were improvin’,” he sings, but the implication hangs heavy in the melody: Age has brought personal stagnation. They’re just getting by, focused more on the golden past than the uncertain future. It’s easy to mistake the song for exactly what it lambasts — a rosy view of the past as paradise, when America was “great” and life was full of possibility. It’s a deceptive illusion: “That’s all that we’ve learned about happiness,” he realizes. “That’s all that we’ve learned about living.”

A politically left-of-center missive from the heart of the Reagan era, The Lonesome Jubilee requires almost no adjustment for the late 2010s. Mellencamp begins every verse in “Down and Out in Paradise” with the same refrain — “Dear Mr. President …” — before relating some poor soul’s story. It’s a ploy that recalls Woody Guthrie without being precious about the reference or, worse, deferential. Mellencamp knew Reagan wasn’t listening, just as he knows that our current president doesn’t have the capability to empathize with or understand the hard lives of the everyday Americans who inexplicably voted for him. Meanwhile, those same small towns wither, those farmers have long ago sold their fields, and regular Americans shoulder an even greater burden with less to show for it.

Perhaps even more impressive than sneaking dulcimers and autoharps into the mainstream is smuggling this brand of American fatalism into arenas and concert halls around the world. The ordinary Americans suffer while the rich stuff their wallets. Maybe you could have once argued that some things never change, but the discrepancy between 1987 and 2017 suggests that some things actually get worse. “Generations come and go, but it makes no difference,” goes the Bible verse that Mellencamp quotes in the liner notes. “Everything is unutterably weary and tiresome. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied … So I saw that there is nothing better for men than that they should be happy in their work, for that is what they are here for, and no one can bring them back to life to enjoy what will be in the future, so let them enjoy it now.”

Maybe it’s not the most generous vision of human existence, but it’s certainly one that motivates Mellencamp’s empathy. Life is short, and we should make it as enriching as possible for as many people as possible. We should live squarely in the moment because yesterday, today, and tomorrow will all play out more or less the same. It’s a potent brand of cynicism, yet beautiful and American, too.