For the past month, my eyes have been glued to a couple of exceptional books; one old, one new. Barry Mazor’s Ralph Peer and The Making of Popular Roots Music was published this past year, and the other was released 13 years ago and focuses exclusively on the Carter Family. That one was written by Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg and carries the title Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?
If this was a book review, and I’m sorry it’s not, I’d tell you that each is a riveting read if you have any interest in learning about how various styles of regional music were discovered and popularized throughout America in the 1920s and ’30s. With songs released on double-sided 78 rpm discs, you might be surprised to learn that obscure blues, jazz, and hillbilly music routinely sold in the hundreds of thousands each, and occasionally in the millions.
Here’s Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel #9 featuring Louis Armstrong on trumpet and his wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong, on piano.
Within the pages of each book, although neither necessarily focuses particularly on African-American influences and artists, there is a clear thread about how there was a cross-pollination not only foundationally in the music, but also on the business side of things when it came time to sell and market to both rural and urban audiences. What I find so puzzling is how we got to a place in modernroots music that has pretty much marginalized black music and musicians.
This is Uncle John Scruggs performing “Little Log Cabin in The Lane,” filmed in November 1928 for a Fox Movietone News story.
When you ask someone to define what roots music is, what we usually hear are terms like folk, blues, jazz, country, sacred, Cajun and bluegrass. It’s curious that hip-hop isn’t included, but here’s what No Depression editor Kim Ruehl wrote a few years ago in an essay called The History of African-American Folk Music:
“By the 1970s, a new brand of folk music started to solidify in the African-American communities of major cities like Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, and Detroit. Hip-hop borrowed rhythms from across the musical spectrum – from ancient African drum calls to contemporary dance music. Artists used these rhythms and the art of spoken word to communicate the emotions – from celebration to frustration – that characterized their community.
In the 80s, groups like NWA, Public Enemy, LL Cool J, and Run DMC participated in what came to be an explosion in the popularity of hip-hop music. These groups and others brought the folk music of their communities fiercely into the public consciousness, rapping about racism, violence, politics, and poverty.”
When many think of African-American folk musicians, the default usually runs from Harry Belafonte to this guy: Huddie William Ledbetter.
Perhaps the so-called big tent of roots music can be pushed out even further to include artists like Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Flash performing “The Message” below, and to those of color both before and after. Pardon the twist of words on a current social movement, but black musicians matter.
This was originally published at No Depression dot com, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.
I wrote this article for No Depression: The Roots Music Journal on January 22, 2014 and it speaks to the events two days earlier, on the national holiday where we honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. My youngest son and I had hoped to spend the day with Pete Seeger and members of a small community church in the town of Beacon New York. Pete had a dream for that day and we wanted to be a part of it. Five days later I got word that Pete had been taken to a hospital in New York City and that the news wasn’t good. In 48 hours on January 26, 2014 he passed.
When my editor Kim Ruehl from No Depression tipped me off that there was something goin’ on up in Pete Seeger’s town of Beacon New York on the day we acknowledge the life, work, accomplishments and passing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I hit the interwebs to dig up the information. In my mind, whenever the ninety-four year old Pete comes out to do something, it’s pretty damn big news. An event. A happening. A gathering. So it was sort of surprising to discover barely any details of what Pete Seeger and the town of Beacon were up to.
Having recently migrated across the country from California, I inquired around town to my new folkie friends here in the Lower Hudson Valley which led nowhere. Talking to all the Brooklyn hipsters I work with in SoHo led to blank stares. If you live in Manhattan south of 14th Street, the Bronx is considered “upstate”, Long Island is just a completely different state and anything above I-287 and the Tappan Zee Bridge might as well be Lower Canada.)
Being resourceful, I soon discovered that Beacon was south of Woodstock and north of Croton-On-Hudson, where Pete and the Clearwater Festival converge each June. That was the last time I saw Pete, leading the crowd in song as he has done for decades in June 2013 when there wasn’t snow on the ground nor a snap in the air. Turns out, it’s just a 75 minute ride from my apartment. A straight shot up the Taconic State Parkway along the Hudson River. My oldest son who lives in the city was busy, but my youngest said he’d be willing to wake up early on his Monday holiday and come with me. That is sacrifice.
With early sixties Bob Dylan tunes coming out of the speakers, my son slept while I drove. I imagined that as we got closer to Beacon the traffic would be backed up for miles. Images of Woodstock 1969 danced in my head. Maybe Pete would need a helicopter to get him to the church on time, although I think the log house is only about ten minutes out.
I shook my boy up as we rolled into town and drove down the main street, which may or may not have also been the name of it. ‘Look for the crowds’, I said. There were none. ‘Keep looking’, I said. There were none. ‘Over there’, he exclaimed.
So I followed the only other moving car on the street, and turned right when they did. A church. A steeple. And now I saw the people. I’ll guesstimate there were about two or three hundred souls who entered the doors and took seats in the chapel of this simple yet beautiful Baptist church.
Taking to the pulpit, a large and handsome man stood tall and proud. This was his flock. This was his community. These…or rather we…were his congregation. “Dr. King’s and Mr. Seeger’s dream for Beacon has arrived today,” said the Rev. Ronald Perry of Springfield Baptist. “We’re all God’s children and we come together in fellowship … moving forward for a better community and a better world.”
Seeger’s vision was “a community parade in honor of King, to accompany the annual birthday celebration” of which the church has been doing for thirty-five years, said Bonnie Champion, an event organizer and member of Seeger’s Hudson River Sloop Clearwater environmental group. He wanted to make sure that the federal holiday — the only one designated as a national day of service — meant something special to the community. “This is his dream,” Champion said on Sunday evening. “He wants his vision to grow with the children.”
And so, on three separate weeknights, Pete came over to the church to teach the local community the three songs he sang alongside Dr. King on the march from Selma to Montgomery. “We Shall Overcome”. “Oh Wallace”. “If You Miss Me at the Back Of The Bus”.
The last time I had a good, hard cry was in the days following 9/11. But sitting in that church, listening to the Reverend, waiting for Pete to come and lead us out to the street where we would march just around the block and raise our voices together…at that moment I felt a tear. And another and another and another. I could feel myself on the balcony of that Memphis motel standing next to Dr. King. In the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel with Bobby. And on the plaza with JFK.
Just as easy as I choke up simply writing these words, my body shook and my son put his hand on top of mine and held it there. I’m sixty-two, and all at once the weight of the past fifty years of life’s events enveloped and rained down on me. My eyes were shut when I heard the room get quiet. While on his way to the church, Pete felt too ill to join us and make the short walk around the block. He had the car turn around and he went back home. The Poughkeepsie Journal reported that the crowd was disappointed. They were not.
The Journal did get this part right:
It was clear that Seeger accomplished his goal; religious and political. “It has drawn such an attraction to the purpose of this day,” Rev. Perry said of the parade, ” and the people are coming out with children, celebrating, singing.”
And that we did. Filing out of the church we raised our voices in song. So proud to be here in this moment we marched, or in reality it was more as if we walked slowly. I don’t think anyone wanted to rush through this. Six short blocks. In a small town in upstate New York, south of Canada.
At the end, as we all filed back into the church one more time for a brief slide show on the history of slavery and the civil rights movement, along with food and more music. Someone with a guitar started to sing a song. A song that just came out of that cold Beacon air into the warmth of community. You probably know it, and perhaps sang it yourself sometime in your life.
This little light of mine I’m going to let it shine Oh, this little light of mine I’m going to let it shine Hallelujah This little light of mine I’m going to let it shine Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine
Ev’ry where I go I’m going to let it shine Oh, ev’ry where I go I’m going to let it shine Hallelujah Ev’ry where I go I’m going to let it shine Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine
All in my house I’m going to let it shine Oh, all in my house I’m going to let it shine Hallelujah All in my house I’m going to let it shine Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine
I’m not going to make it shine I’m just going to let it shine I’m not going to make it shine I’m just going to let it shine Hallelujah I’m not going to make it shine I’m just going to let it shine Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine
Out in the dark I’m going to let it shine Oh, out in the dark I’m going to let it shine Hallelujah Out in the dark I’m going to let it shine Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine
A week later, on Monday the 27th of January 2014, a small paper from upstate New York reported his death. The story was posted on their website and then pulled down. And then the entire site shut down. Credit goes to The Fretboard Journal as one of the very first that reported the news, quickly followed by Variety and the New York Times. At the same time, there were several people who posted on social media that perhaps it was just a hoax. I knew it wasn’t. Pete Seeger had indeed passed on, but his music, accomplishments and memory lives on forever.
The photos for this article were taken by me, with the exception of the one at the top.
That is one helluva picture. You might recall that it surfaced this past June after Neil Young demanded that Donald Trump stop using “Rockin’ in the Free World” at his campaign events. Utilizing his standard and preferred method of statesmanship, Trump went on the morning news shows, called Young a bad name, and then tweeted this: “A few months ago Neil Young came to my office looking for $$$ on an audio deal and called me last week to go to his concert. Wow!”
Young, no slouch himself when it comes to using social media, seemed to confirm Trump’s assertion of capitalistic hypocrisy when he wrote on Facebook: “It was a photograph taken during a meeting when I was trying to raise funds for Pono, my online high resolution music service.”
That Neil Young would choose Trump to get cozy with as a potential partner is enough to cause the price of flannel futures to tumble. Besides, in the past several months, Young’s digital entree has entered and floundered into the ether of a disinterested marketplace.
Pushing that particular random thought-bubble aside, it’s time to talk about the annual readers and critics polls that focus on one type of music or another. These are soon to occupy much of our collective time and space via traditional and social media, using the skill sets and wisdom of random cubes tossed together in a Yahtzee cup and spilt onto the countertop. Can we all agree that this excercise produces an inaccurate and imperfect list of superlatives? At the very least, I hope it will open up new avenues of exploration for some folks, as well as simply serving to bolster our own opinions based on an album’s popularity.
It is the former that most excites me because, with well over 120,000 new albums being released each year, there is no possible way to see all, know all, or hear all. It’s the depth and diversity of new music that makes scanning these polls so much fun. Nothing beats discovering something that slipped through the cracks.
In late October, the editor of No Depression:The Roots Music Authority requested a list of my favorite titles (I think she used the word “best”), and this is the list I sent her:
Jason Isbell, Daniel Romano, John Moreland, Pharis and Jason Romero, Tom Brosseau, Noah Gundersen, Watkins Family Hour, Joan Shelley, Milk Carton Kids, and an exceptional concert compilation called Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of a Dreadful Film. (Note to self: Going forward, try to be nicer.)
I’m sure y’all can spot the problem. It was way too exclusive. Narrowing my favorite albums of the year down to ten is just plain silly.
I also would have loved to include releases from Calexico, Jessica Pratt, the Westies, Kristin Andreassen, Joe Pug, Shakey Graves, Sufjan Stevens, The Kennedys, Kepi Ghoulie, Leon Bridges, Meg Baird, the Lonesome Trio, the Deslondes, Frazey Ford, the Skylarks, Kacey Musgraves, Ana Egge, Darrell Scott, Nikki Talley, Lindi Ortega, Dave Rawlings Machine, Jill Andrews, Darlingside, Decemberists, Daniel Martin Moore, Susie Glaze and the Hilonesome Band, and my friends Spuyten Duyvil.
I really like the duos and duets too. Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield, Anna and Elizabeth, the Lowest Pair, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell. Not to mention the Honey Dewdrops, Iron and Wine and Ben Bridwell, Dave and Phil Alvin, and both the Wainwright and Chapin Sisters.
Don’t forget compilations with really long names that may or may not have been released this year, that I’ve been enjoying regardless: Arkansas at 78 RPM: Corn Dodgers & Hoss Hair Pullers, The Brighter Side: A 25th Anniversary Tribute to Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression, Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs By Karen Dalton, and Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music On the Mason-Dixon Line.
And then there are the names you already know: Iris Dement, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, Leonard Cohen, Jesse Winchester, Dwight Yoakam, Mark Knopfler, Fairport Convention, and Bob Dylan (the old new stuff, not the new old stuff).
I haven’t counted them up, but this longer list of mine can’t be more than 50 or 60 albums — a pitiful, sickly and puny little list. Seriously, I’m ashamed. There are at least 119,940 or more to choose from and I know that you can do better than me. Whether you participate in the No Depression poll or any of the thousands of others that lurk out there, relax and enjoy. Have fun, don’t stress, don’t argue. It’s all about exploration.
Postscript: For the record, Americana is a radio format and an association, not a genre.
Driving home from work on Friday night, I had yet to hear the news from Paris. I instead had new music from the Chapin Sisters filling the space in my car, and I was looking forward to seeing them play the following evening. My fingers were tapping the wheel as I glided through light traffic toward home. Their songs drained the workday tension from my body and lightened my soul. It was a good, crisp autumn night.
After saying hello to the cat and hanging up my jacket, I pulled one of the guitars off the wall for a few minutes of pickin’ before putting together a quick dinner. I took my plate and a glass of sparkling water, sat down on the couch, and turned on CNN. The world turned black. Again.
I was glued to the tube until one in the morning, zipping and zapping the remote to catch the latest sick detail and twisted image. Any time one of the newscasters hauled out a politician or expert on terrorism to explain to us the meaning of what happened and share their opinion, I’d change the channel. It was too early for such an intrusion. Sometimes you need to just sit alone with your own thoughts and neither deny nor define the pain.
Le Bataclan. That hall reminds me of every single show that I’ve ever been to — small club or large venue, inside or out. They were just people coming together for a few hours of a shared musical experience. Suddenly all I could think about were the words “soft targets” and “new normal.”
The Walkabout Clearwater Chorus was founded by Pete Seeger back in 1984 and is made up of people who simply love to sing together. Their mission is to promote environmental awareness and social action through song, education, and other activities. They meet and practice at a Methodist church about 15 minutes from my apartment, and they perform at festivals and events throughout the Hudson Valley and beyond. They also run a coffee house once a month, from October to May, where you can show up and sing with them before the show starts. On Saturday after the attack, they presented the Chapin Sistersand Kristen Graves.
I came in late, missing the sing-along. There were a couple hundred people in the auditorium, and as the lights went down I took my seat and felt my body get tense. I was in the last row, sitting alone, my back to the door. I recalled the shootings at the Unitarian congregation in Kentucky, and the church in South Carolina. Soft targets. New normal.
Lily and Abigail Chapin took the stage and were both radiant and glowing — flashing guitar, banjo, and smiles. They grew up here, and have been back for awhile. They left Los Angeles after eight years of making music, and now they are making babies. Each is pregnant.
There is a certain indescribable joy I feel when hearing close sibling harmony. From their opening notes, these sisters took the audience through a repertoire of songs for duos from the Louvins and Everlys, as well as original music from their past albums and the new Today’s Not Yesterday. And one from Uncle Harry.
Graves joined them for the closing song and there was a short intermission, complete with herbal teas and homemade cakes and cookies. My son called me from his place in Brooklyn to say hi, and we chatted for a few minutes. I told him I needed to be with people and listening to music, and I wondered if he also planned to go out. He wasn’t. I was relieved, but didn’t tell him.
For those who ask where have all the folksingers gone, long time passing, I recommend they seek out Kristen Graves. She walks it and talks it and sings it and lives it. In addition to performing and recording, each year she spends months working to build homes in Mexico, and she brings music to the people on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation in South Dakota during the summer. Her voice is an amazing instrument. She closed her set by bringing back the Chapin Sisters and the entire Walkabout Clearwater Chorus. We all sang together.
In the spirit of Seeger, in the Valley of Pete, while the night could have been one of mourning and anger, it was not. There was music, there was laughter. There was talk about activism and the environment. There were songs of healing, and a few songs of sorrow. And there was light in the darkness. It’s what I came for, and what I left with.
This was originally published at No Depression dot com, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.
Illustration by Jean Jullien on the night of the attacks, which he posted to his Twitter and Instagram accounts.
Hats off to the astute reader who will glance at the headline, look at the accompanying picture, and come to the conclusion that the writer is confusing his stringband string-ology. He is not. The man in the hat is Tom Mindte — a bluegrass musician and the founder/owner of Patuxent Music, home to both a record label and studio. Ignore for a moment the mandolin he’s holding, because last year his label released a sweet collection of banjo-based performances that I keep coming back to like a bowl of peanuts on a bar.
Produced by Mark Delaney and Randy Barrett, both noted players in their own right, The Patuxent Banjo Project brings together 40 regional players from the Baltimore-Washington corridor, an area rich in bluegrass history and tradition.
Rockville is the county seat and home to over 60,000 people. It has the state’s largest Chinese population and is the area’s center for Jewish culture and religion. I’ll also mention that the town has two women’s flat track roller derby teams: the Black-Eyed Suzies and the Rock Villains.
More to the point, back in the mid-1940s, the entire area became a destination for the rural folks who lived in the Appalachian and Piedmont regions of the Virginias, Carolinas, and Tennessee. Attracted by job opportunities, the people brought the music from the hills with them.
Country music historian Ivan Tribes has written detailed notes for the banjo project, attesting to how the “barroom bluegrass” scene came about, and citing the ease of travel north to Philadelphia and south to Richmond to play at country music parks, festivals, and quite a number of bars and venues. Tribes notes key players such as “Buzz Busby, Benny and Vallie Cain, Bill Harrell, and Earl Taylor. Others,” he writes, “were known by collective names such as the Bluegrass Champs, Rocky Mountain Boys, Shady Valley Boys, Pike County Boys, and — perhaps best known of all from 1957 forward — the Country Gentlemen.”
In a 2010 article by Geoffrey Himes in the Baltimore City Paper, Mindte spoke about the bluegrass scene back in the ’60s and ’70s, and the clubs where the music went down:
These were tough places full of tough people. I remember going to those bluegrass bars in East Baltimore–the Sandpiper Inn, Club Ranchero, Cub Hill Inn, the 79 Club. When you walked in the door, you walked onto a floor of sticky beer and into a cloud of cigarette smoke. I thought it was great–this was how it was supposed to be. Bluegrass wasn’t meant to be sterile and healthy. It was meant for working-class, beer-and-shot joints.
Patuxent Music began back in 1995 when Mindte recorded fiddler Joe Meadows, who worked with the Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe, and brought the record out himself the following year. Next up was a blues record in the Piedmont style and his catalog soon expanded to include jazz, old time, swing, and country. With string bands being his primary interest, he has focused both on musicians with long careers, such as members of the Stoneman family and Frank Wakefield, as well as the younger players. Nate Leath from Old School Freight Train has released a number of albums on Patuxent; his Rockville Pike album features a 16-year-old Sarah Jarosz and 14-year-old Tatiana Hargreaves.
The Patuxent Banjo Project, which led me down this path of discovery, is a two-disc set with 40 tracks and a 40-page booklet. Some of the Baltimore/Washington musicians you might already know include Bill Emerson, Eddie Adcock, Walt Hensley, Chris Warner, Tom Adams, Dick Smith, Keith Arneson, Murphy Henry, Kevin Church, Roni Stoneman, and Mike Munford. Richard Thompson (not that one, the other one) from Bluegrass Today breaks down what you can expect to hear.
Not only are there variations of three-finger banjo playing, old-time, there are two banjo/fiddle duets, a classical piece and a couple of twin banjo numbers, one of which features cello-banjo. All of which adds up to a major audio documentation of a versatile instrument.
Back on Father’s Day in 2013, I bought a five string banjo in Beacon, New York, the home of Pete Seeger. It seemed like the right thing to do, given his recent passing earlier that year. I got it from David Bernz, who produced of some of Pete’s last albums and who also runs Main Street Music with his son. Trying to teach myself how to either clawhammer or three-finger roll the darn thing was useless, and I’ve since settled on a two-finger early fingerstyle method from the 19th century. Most of the time it hangs on my wall, but The Patuxent Banjo Project has been inspiring me to try a little harder. More importantly, it’s carrying on an American roots music tradition to a new generation of players. Five strings down in Rockville. Hallelujah.
This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Roots Music Journal.
The local library was holding their annual used book sale, and although I’m trying to thin my own herd of paper and ink, it seemed like it might be a good way to kill a little time. My hope was that it would be a hodgepodge of mass market paperbacks and hardbacks with busted spines and missing pages — which would not have tempted me — but no such luck. The volunteers who ran this thing knew what they were doing: books were culled, categorized, arranged neatly on tables, and priced to sell. Since it was the last day of a four-day event, I figured there wouldn’t be much of interest left, despite the large handwritten sign written with urgency that everything was half-price.
To be honest, people-watching at a used-books-priced-very-low sale was much more interesting than browsing. Elbows flew, kids screamed, bodies slithered on the floor as folks looked under the tables for missed bargains, and the overall mood was one of frenzy. It seemed that everyone except me was carrying huge piles of books, but I was determined not to bring anything home.
And then I saw it. On the cover was a guy wearing a cowboy hat, walking down the street, holding a boom box. Damn. It got my attention.
Music USA:The Rough Guide was released back in 1999 by the travel and reference publishers, and is probably the best American big-tent roots music resource book of it’s kind that I’ve ever come across. It was written by Richie Unterberger, who is well known for his extensive contributions to the All Music Guide, plusarticles in almost every single music publication that you can think of. Unterberger is also the author of ten other books on subjects including the Beatles, the Who, Hendrix, and Velvet Underground. He wrote two volumes on the Byrds and the folk-rock genre, and the magnificently titled Urban Spacemen & Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators and Eccentric Visionaries of ’60s Rock.
The back cover describes the book as “a tour through the best of the country’s popular music, giving you the story behind the sounds of more than twenty regions.” That should give you a hint that this is approached from a travel guide perspective. But rather than putting music inside a geographic box, it’s written in such a smooth and concise stye that you can either choose to read it end-to-end, or randomly poke around.
The book’s claim of “critical overviews of the crucial performers and styles, from Appalachian bluegrass to New Orleans jazz, from New York klezmer to San Francisco psychedelia” is actually spot on. And despite being Sweet 16, the book’s sections on festivals, local venues, radio stations, record stores, and publications in some cases are either still relevant or warm and fuzzy nostalgia.
So what makes this book so hard to find? Along with the Rough Guide‘s other music titles that were made in this series, Music USA appears to be out of print. A damn national tragedy if you ask me.
Fortunately, the internet is the great equalizer, and as I write this you can find copies — one as low as 67 cents — at Amazon US and UK. For more information about Richie, visit his website. He also blogs at Folkrocks about travel and music, offering great information and tips on both.
This was originally published at No Depression dot com, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.
First heard on the Handsome Family’s Singing Bones album back in 2003, “Far from Any Road” was picked by the producers of HBO TV show True Detective two years ago to be used for a 30-second scene, and ended up — without Brett and Rennie Sparks knowing it was going to happen — becoming the theme song. The show became a huge hit and it took the song along with it.
Do you know what constitutes having a hit single these days? It’s not being number one on Billboard magazine’s Top 100 chart, nor is it selling a million copies and having your picture taken surrounded by record label people while holding up a plastic gold or platinum record with shit-eating grins on your faces. No. If you want to know if you have achieved some career milestone, go to YouTube.
Back to the Handsome Family, though. Would you care to guess how many times “Far from Any Road” has been heard on YouTube? That’s actually a trick question, because it’s not just one audio/video clip that we’re talking about, but an infinite number of uploads. Before I give you the numbers, here’s the band’s “official lyric video,” by Jason Creps.
So far, there are 248,470 views of this version. Of all the uploads of that song, it’s ranked at number seven. Pretty impressive for any Americana/Gothic/alt-whatever band. But here’s the rub: the most-watched clip comes in at over ten and a half million views. No typo, no video, just audio. In the credits, it links to some Russian gaming website.
The next six uploads come from I don’t know where, but combined they equal over five and a half million views. Add to that a couple of dozen smaller uploads, and my cocktail napkin mathematical estimate is that on YouTube alone — we’ll skip Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Pandora, and whomever else — the Handsome Family’s 13-year-old song has been heard over 17 million times.
But it hardly stops there. No ma’am, no sirree. We live in a world of portable devices that allows everyone access and ability to cover, remix, and re-write melody and lyrics. You can mash it and smash it and turn it into something new. Or you can take the original and add your own pet pics or family photos. I could hardly believe that this is even possible, but when I used the search terms ‘The Handsome Family” and “Far from Any Road” on YouTube, it yielded 52,200 results.
Kim Boyko’s version above has been seen 222,787 times. For this song, it’s the biggest cover of the bunch. Admittedly, I’d never heard of her before today, and I almost wrote her off when I saw her Facebook page had only 891 followers. But her YouTube channel, SingingWithKim, is full of her versions of songs, from Stevie Wonder to Patsy Cline. And while nothing is quite as popular as this one, she regularly gets anywhere from 5 to 20 thousand views per song.
After Boyko, there are versions by James Liddle, the Virgin May, and Karilene that each exceed 50 thousand views. But this next one is a mystery. There is no credit other than the name of the person who uploaded it: ORACLEPAGER1029. A few other songs he’s done have only been seen in the double digits, yet this one is already at 26,232.
That’s a pretty darn good cover, despite a crooked camera angle in front of a fireplace. But is it performer or the song that is getting the interest?
Clearly, it’s the song. If it wasn’t such a hauntingly beautiful, lyrically dense song, why would so many people want to hear not only the original version, but these other ones?
I’m curious as to what Brett and Rennie think about all of this interest and exposure, and wonder if they are getting compensated fairly. Hopefully they are, since 22 years in the indie music trenches ain’t all peaches and cream. Last month, while on their European tour, they received some news that might put all this success and attention in perspective. Brett posted on their Facebook page:
Hang on folks, this is big. The Simpsons will be using our song, “Far From Any Road”, in episode 2 of season 27 — “Cue Detective.” Oct 4. Words cannot describe how I feel about this. I am a huge fan. To me the Simpsons are the ultimate compendium of pop culture. I’m freakin out.
Gabriel Blanco. 331 views.
The Handsome Family are home and in the studio. A new album is coming. Seventeen million new fans await. And Bart, too.
Image: “The alchemical formula for the Handsome Family,” by Rennie Sparks. For more information visit www.handsomefamily.com/
This was originally published at No Depression dot com, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.
For the past month, my eyes have been glued to a couple of exceptional books; one old, one new. Barry Mazor’s Ralph Peer and The Making of Popular Roots Music was published this past year, and the other was released 13 years ago and focuses exclusively on the Carter Family. That one was written by Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg and carries the title Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? 
