Tag Archives: AmericanaFest

All Roads Do Not Lead to Nashville

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I’ve never attended AmericanaFest down in Nashville. If you’re curious to know why, there’s a multitude of reasons: Buddy and Julie have never offered me their guest room and it costs too much to stay at a hotel. You’ve got to pay dues and register with an organization that’ll likely spam you for the rest of your life just like the Unitarian congregation I joined seven years ago does. The lines are too way long at the Pancake Pantry and I’m gluten-free. I can’t stand the smell of smoke, have quit drinking and hate to fly on commercial airlines because of a severe peanut allergy.

But 2019 was different. On a whim at the last possible moment, I had a change of heart. There was no time to submit a vacation request at work so I called my boss and explained I was taking an unexpected spiritual trip to my homeland. Our company is quite progressive, with a mission statement of tolerance, diversity, and inclusion, so I was not challenged by my request but simply blessed with a Tibetan prayer.

I threw some clothes into my duffel and chose to bring the vintage Martin with the medium gauge strings just in case somebody needed a guitarist for a last-minute showcase or jam. From what I’ve heard, all thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers in Nashville have been booked far in advance, so one never knows and it’s best to be prepared. I plugged the cell phone into the dash on my car, opened up the Waze app, and told the lady to get me to Nashville by the fastest route.

Leaving New York City by dawn’s early light, I absorbed myself in listening to No Depression‘s roots music playlist while occasionally munching on raw nuts and drinking kombucha tea. I didn’t need to stop once, and in about six hours I pulled into Nashville. Boy … that seemed so damn fast. Not spotting any Waffle Houses or long-haired hipsters carrying banjos, I tapped the map and discovered I was just east of Niagara Falls in Nashville, New York.

I found a small group of friendly people walking together and fell in behind them. In a few minutes, we entered the home of Pastor Fred Holdridge and his wife, Joanne. They graciously were hosting the 49th reunion for past and present Nashville residents, and after we shared a hearty laugh on my GPS error, I was asked to join the party. Everyone had brought a dish to the potluck, and I had a bag of baby carrots in my pocket to contribute so I didn’t feel out of place. Meat and rolls were provided by the hosts.

As the sun dipped down I was back in the car and heading south. I knew this was the right direction and I wasn’t fooled when I saw the road signs for Nashville, Pennsylvania, as I hopped onto the turnpike. By morning I felt my stomach rumble as I parked in front of the Buckeye Deli and Grocery. Knew I was in the right place when I saw a flyer near the for the Mohican Bluegrass Festival later in the week. Hell yeah — AmericanaFest, we have arrived.

I guess Buckeye should have been the tipoff: This was Nashville, Ohio. Damn. I begged Waze to please get me to the real Nashville and not the ones in Wisconsin, Michigan, Vermont, Missouri, Oregon, or Nevada.

By lunchtime I stopped for a quick bite at a food truck parked near the Maquoketa Municipal Airport, just east of Nashville, Iowa. I didn’t even bother to stop in town for a second. Fool me once, as they say. Knowing I was getting close to AmericanaFest, I kept driving. Since it would be late when I would arrive, I called ahead to book a room at the lovely Cornerstone Inn. The website advertised it as just a “few steps from Nashville’s treasured shopping and dining experiences, art galleries, and entertainment.”

It was dark when I got into town and drove past a restaurant named in honor of Neil Young: Harvest Moon Pizzeria. It finally felt las if I had arrived in Music City. Couldn’t wait to throw my stuff in the room and see some of these showcases I’ve always heard about. Over three hundred artists would be playing this year! When the hotel desk clerk told me that I had missed the weekly Monday Line Dance and mentioned that the Little Nashville Opry burned down ten years ago, I felt a little queasy.

I’m back home now. I decided to stay at the Cornerstone Inn for a few days and explore the sights around Nashville, Indiana. Turns out it is home to the Brown County Art Colony, and the town is quite the tourist magnet. There is a nice park to hike around, lots of galleries and antique shops, wineries, and restaurants. Not quite the fest I was hoping for, but as Americana as one might imagine.

Next year I plan on visiting Nashville in North Carolina, Kansas, Arkansas, and Georgia. I also heard there might be a town by that name in Tennessee.

Just to be clear, this is a work of fiction. Not the song, but the column. 

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website. 

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

Couch Potato’s Guide To AmericanaFest 2018

Photo by Engin Akyurt/Creative Commons 2.0

If you’re reading this you’re likely either on your way to Nashville for AmericanaFest or already there. Or, if you’re like me and a few hundred thousand other roots music fans, you’ll be staying right where you are and feeling awful because you’re missing all the action. I don’t normally get “festival envy,” but thinking about 500 performances at 60 venues over six nights and not having to sleep in a bag or get all wet or muddy to experience it sounds like fun. If I was going I’d top it off with a room on the concierge floor of the Vanderbilt Hotel, breakfast each morning at The Pancake Pantry, and hourly snacking on Goo Goo Clusters.

I’m sure this year’s events will be covered quite well here at No Depression and on their social media channels, and should you have masochistic tendencies and the need to boost your misery in not being there, here’s a few other websites that will also be covering the beat: Rolling Stone Country, The Boot, Wide Open Country, Billboard, and The Tennessean. NPR Music and World Cafe will also webcast the Americana Music Honors & Awards ceremony live from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. For all the kudos that SXSW and Folk Alliance get for showcasing roots music, from afar it looks like the Americana Music Association has now taken the lead.

It’ll be interesting to hear back from artists and attendees on whether last year’s complaints about a lack of diversity — less than 10 percent of the 300 performers were acts that weren’t made up of exclusively white members — have been addressed. And as Billboard reported after last year’s festivities, “not only has Album of the Year never gone to a person of color during the 18 years that the award has been given out, but only twice in the history of the Awards & Honors event has an act led by an artist of color won a voter-decided awards: Alabama Shakes in 2012 for Emerging Artist of the Year and The Mavericks in 2015 for Best Duo/Group of the Year.”

Don’t expect much change, as diversity and inclusion move at glacial speed. If you’d like to see this year’s list of nominees for awards and honors, here’s the link. I love the idea of a big concert and showcase night to celebrate Americana music, but also wish that they’d toss the whole award process out the window. There’s so much great music that gets released each year that it seems self-defeating for the promotion and growth of the genre to limit exposure to basically a handful of artists. The “big tent” concept of Americana music seems more like a six-person lean-to for the mostly Nashville-based voting members.

I’ve taken a look at the list of performers this year who haven’t been nominated for awards, and expect that they will offer up some sizzling sets; the talent pool is Olympic-sized. Here’s a few clips for y’all. Maybe I’ll start saving my money to travel down to Nashville for next year’s 20th anniversary.

Dom Flemons

The Milk Carton Kids

Birds of Chicago

The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band

Sunny War

The Earls of Leicester

Rev. Sekou

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboardand Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

Americana Music: A Study in Black and White

It’s hardly a new story, but for whatever reason this year’s annual AmericanaFest down in Nashville came away a bit battered and bruised from articles published in both Billboard magazine and the Rolling Stone Country website questioning the lack of diversity in a commercialized genre that defines itself as being inclusive of multiple formats. Both articles made a point to mention that of the 300 performers that were showcased during the six-day conference and awards show, only 10 percent featured acts that weren’t comprised of exclusively white members.

Billboard broke it down even further:

That percentage held for the annual Americana Awards & Honors show as well, where only two of the 21 separate nominees stretched across six voter-influenced categories weren’t white. Rhiannon Giddens and Hurray for the Riff Raff, both nominated for Album of the Year, were the sole representations for people of color among nominees. Notably, not only has Album of the Year never gone to a person of color during the 18 years that the award has been given out, but only twice in the history of the Awards & Honors event has an act led by an artist of color won a voter-decided award: Alabama Shakes in 2012 for Emerging Artist of the Year and The Mavericks in 2015 for Best Duo/Group of the Year.

 

As a reminder, the Americana Music Association defines the genre as “contemporary music that incorporates elements of various American roots music styles, including country, roots-rock, folk, bluegrass, R&B, and blues, resulting in a distinctive roots-oriented sound that lives in a world apart from the pure forms of the genres upon which it may draw. While acoustic instruments are often present and vital, Americana also often uses a full electric band.”

Reverend Paul Foster and The Soul Stirrers’ above version of “I Am A Pilgrim” can be traced back to the 1930s, when it was first recorded by the Heavenly Gospel Singers. In the ’40s it was recorded and commercialized separately by both Merle Travis (who received the songwriting credit from BMI) and Bill Monroe, and it’s been covered multiple times by musicians black and white. As far as I can tell, it’s a perfect example of an American roots music song, albeit stolen by a recording industry ethos that has traditionally leaned white.

When interviewed by Rolling Stone Country, Rosanne Cash described her feelings when the term “Americana” actually became a genre:

It was like finding this really cool island that you tell all your friends about because the hotel is great and the weather is always sunny.

Yet it takes only a few minutes of conversation for Cash to bring up what she sees as the community’s greatest shortcoming.

The Americana community needs to embrace more black musicians. That’s the one area where I feel it should really strive to be even more inclusive. I, for one, wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if there wasn’t some black musician who had suffered in the South. That needs to be honored and if amends need to be made, they need to be made.

If the Milk Carton Kids and Van Morrison and William Bell can co-exist under the same umbrella, then I think that some deeper blues artists could come under that umbrella as well.

 

The AMA’s voting members are broken down by two categories: Artist/Musician/Songwriter and Industry. Jed Hilly is the organization’s executive director and the man credited with successfully lobbying on behalf of the genre. While he acknowledges that past award showcases leaned heavily on musicians based in the Nashville area, he believes it’s an honor simply to be asked to participate. Speaking with Billboard, he says:

Membership is membership, and there’s not much I can do – or choose to do – to change how people vote. That would be an impropriety. All of the nominees are winners, to be frank. How membership votes, I think that’s a question that afflicts every [music industry awards ceremony]; I mean, good golly, take a look at the CMA Awards. I think it’s funny that people are asking me these questions, when I think we’re one of the most diverse industry awards shows in the business.

I can say from an organizational point of view, we have demonstrated our philosophy in the bigger picture through the honorees for Lifetime Achievement. I’m very proud of the gender, racial, and geographical diversity that we continue to highlight. I was very proud to honor the Hi Rhythm Section this year.

 

On the flip side of this question of inclusion, Rolling Stone Countryreached out to a number of people for their take on it. Charles L. Hughes, author of Country Soul, says “The most insidious part of American racial politics, music industry or otherwise, is the part that says race doesn’t matter. Americana is very directly tapping into that mythology.”

Alynda Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff makes her point on the festival: “No matter what, there should always be more people of color, and more women, and especially now more radically minded people onstage. That’s something that needs to change with all festivals, and I can help anybody if they want that.”

Kaia Kater, the African-Canadian roots musician who has performed at the last two AmericanaFests, graciously took the time to reach out to me and share her thoughs. ““I believe the AMA has a lot of work to do. First in recognizing that Americana as a genre would not exist without Black forms of music. And secondly, in searching out and inviting more artists and voices into the fold without putting any particular agenda on them. Letting these artists own both the stage and the discussion on their own terms. Only in this deliberate way can we move forward.”

Tamara Saviano is a past president of the AMA and is writing a book on the history of Americana. She wonders if the genre is starting to take on the characteristics of the country music establishment it set out to defy 20 years ago. From Rolling Stone Country again:

It all goes back to who’s connected. Let’s just say you’re a young artist, and consider yourself an Americana artist, and you’re out touring and doing your own thing, and you’re not on the Americana radio chart. Well, that might be because you can’t afford to hire a radio promoter who works the Americana chart. In some ways, it’s like we created the very beast that was the reason we started Americana.

Blues musician Keb’ Mo’ sits on the AMA’s board of directors and has expressed that he’d like the organization to expand it’s definition of American roots music to include jazz and hip-hop. “My hope is that it becomes a place where you can go to the Americana Awards show and it’s just purely about music and no categories.”

As Americana gains in popularity and crosses over into mainstream country markets, one hopes that it doesn’t devolve into a parody of itself. UK singer Yola Carter sums it up best by warning “it could turn into one single genre in which I wear plaid and play guitar music, which is basically indie rock with pedal steel, and sing about dusty roads and trains. Chill out about trains!”

Since much of this column relied on the interviews and work of others, I’d like to acknowledge Isaac Weeks at Billboard and Jonathan Bernstein for Rolling Stone Country.

 

Lead Belly began singing “Goodnight, Irene” in 1908 and said he learned it from his uncles. It’s possible it was written by Gussie L. Davis in 1892; the sheet music is available at the Library of Congress. Lead Belly was recorded by John and Alan Lomax in the early ’30s while he was serving a sentence at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. In 1936 he recorded it again for the Library of Congress, and it later received a Grammy Hall of Fame award.

The Weavers recorded their version of the song in 1950, a year after Lead Belly had passed. In June it entered the Billboard Best Sellers chart, where it peaked at number one for 13 weeks and was named the top song of the year. Their version cleaned up the lyrics a bit – Timemagazine called it “dehydrated and prettied up.”

 

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.