Holding Things Together Revisited

Yesterday was one of those days when you finally get to hear a song or an artist you´ve wanted to hear for a long time. It´s always interesting to see if you´ll like it or not. Sometimes you´ve waited too long so you have to get disappointed first to lower your expectations. The second or third time, or a week or two later, you´re ready to hear it without expecting too much and finally you can hear the good music (if it really is good, that is). Other times the music just shines right through and you know you´ve found something really good.

Today it was a song that I´ve wanted to hear for a few years, Dwight Yoakams cover of Merle Haggards Holding Things Together. I´ve read about it as the highpoint of Dwights In Others´ Words album from 2003 which compiles songs from tribute albums. The recording of Holding Things Together is from 1994 and it surely was no disappointment. A straight and wonderful version of a great song performed alone with the guitar. It predates his acoustic album from 2000 by six years but would have had no problem to fit in among the remakes of his own songs.

Apart from being a great Dwight Yoakam recording it served as a way to rediscover what it was from the beginning, one of all those fantastic Merle Haggard songs. It´s sometimes good when a song falls out of it´s usual context, as this one did when I heard it separated from other Merle Haggard songs. Compilations of different kinds sometimes have that effect. A song that you know well suddenly stands alone, get´s some extra attention and you´re able to appreciate it even more than before. Maybe it’s an instrumental part, a verse you´ve missed, the actual meaning of the song or just the sheer power of it.

This time it was a song that I´ve heard a lot so it was more of a reminder of how good it is. It´s one of those songs that Merle is so good at writing. Very simple with a few strong words that makes all the difference. Set in a small environment he paints the picture of a man raising his child as his wife has left the family obviously not looking back. The child of course misses it´s mother and he does too. It´s painful listening to the story of how he sends a birthday present by mail signed Love from Mama so his little daughter won´t know she´s forgotten her. Not many people could write a song like that and make it believable. Merle is one of the few. And Dwight is one of the few who can take it and make it his own.

George Jones Told the Truth

Harlan Howard said that country music is three chords and the truth. I see no reason to disagree with him. Country music to me is simple songs with straightforward told stories about real life. Preferably the sad or wild side. Of course, the truth in this case doesn´t necessarily mean that the songs are autobiographical or the stories not made up. The truth means that it´s no fantasy stories from out of the blue, but rather stories that are easy to take in, to believe and take to your heart because it´s very likely that the story you hear could happen in your own life or in your neighbours.

There are lots of songs that are autobiographical too, and that is never bad for the song. To know that the singer has lived through what he´s singing about just makes it better (or sadder or scarier or whatever feeling you get from the song). Hank Williams is often credited as the man who started writing autobiographical songs, but if you ask Richard D Smith, who wrote the Bill Monroe biography Can´t You Hear Me Callin´, Monroe was writing what he called “true songs” before Hank. I don´t know about this discussion, I think those songs have been around even longer. Your own life is often the best inspiration. Our Baby´s Book by Ernest Tubb is just one example off the top of my head of an earlier autobiographical song.

One of the best to deliver lyrics and make you believe them is George Jones. Sometimes his songs fit him so well you think he has written them even if he hasn´t. It´s well known that George has lived a hard life and if you have read his book I Lived To Tell It All you know that he has probably been through what he sings about and more. I thought I´d bring up one sad example of how the life he has lived have made him able to make the darkest stories believable. On the album I Am What I Am from 1980 there´s a song called I´ve Aged Twenty Years in Five. I have always liked the song and first I saw the lines about his aging as just a way to describe how low down he was and that time had passed by to quickly while he´d been down and out. Then one day I looked at the photographs and compared them to his albums from the mid-seventies and realized that he really did look like he had aged twenty years in five. It was almost scary to realize that there was more truth to that song than you would expect. I guess it´s not really what you´d call autobiographical, but it´s a good example of why we keep listening to George Jones.

Willie Nelson and the Drummers

Willie Nelson has written a lot of great songs over the years, and he has recorded a lot of great versions of others songs as well. Some are real classics and some are not as well known to the larger public but as good. I realized that two of my favourite recordings have something in common that´s not the usual subject in a song: They are both about Willie and a drummer. One of them he wrote himself and the other was written by Basil McDavid.

The original is of course Me and Paul from 1971 about Willie and his drummer Paul English. The story manages in just a few verses to give a very good picture of their wild life on the road. The way of talking about travelling by mentioning cities (Nashville, Laredo, Buffalo, Milwaukee) and the namedropping (Kitty Wells, Charley Pride) gives a good idea of their situation. And of course there´s the advice of not leaving anything in your clothes in a Laredo motel if you don´t want to get busted. It´s really one of the wildest stories ever told in a country song and one of my favourite Willie songs.

The other song is Me and the Drummer from 2000. Almost 30 years later Willie is singing about a drummer again and the story is partly the same, but mostly a different one. First of all, it seems it´s actually not about a drummer, the drummer is more of a symbol for what keeps him going, the power inside him that keeps him moving. The heart of course, but also the rhythm of the music and the restlessness of his soul. It´s also different in it´s portrait of loneliness, the friend that was there in Me and Paul is not there, the parties are not there. The wild side is there though, the travelling and moving, but the drummer who is his travelling companion is a force that keeps him leaving everyone and everything behind. He is older and has made a lot of mistakes that he regrets but at the same time he knows that that´s who he is and accepts his destiny and keeps travelling on along with the drummer inside him.

What I find fascinating when looking at these two songs beside each other is that, even though Willie only wrote one of them, they are like companion pieces. Me and the Drummer could be a perfect follow up story to Me and Paul and to me it is.

The Saddest Song Ever Written

Before I started listening to country music I fell in love with the blues. I´ve always liked the sad songs and that´s what the blues is mostly about. The great Robert Johnson needed only two lines to summarize what most of all the great sad songs are about when he sang “I love my baby, my baby don´t love me” in Kind Hearted Woman Blues, his first recording.

When I started listening to country I realized that it had more of what I was looking for in the blues than the blues had. Country lyrics are often more direct and to the point than blues lyrics and they are very simple which gives the music a lot of honesty when it´s done right. In country I found what I was looking for and I keep finding great sad songs all the time.

It´s not easy to point out your favourite songs, there never seems to be just one. I don´t know how many “best song ever” I have, but there´s a lot of them. However there are songs that stand out from others in some categories. When it comes to sad songs I have a personal favourite. The reason that I can name one specific song is because it´s subject is different from the usual love story. It´s not the only song that has a different theme but this one happens to be on the top of my list. It´s a song by Hank Williams, not too surprising I guess. The song is My Son Calls Another Man Daddy, and it´s as chilling every time you hear it as it was the first time. Hanks sad voice telling the story of a crying man whose woman couldn´t stand him, and has left him for another is heartbreaking and enough to make it a good song. What makes this one different is the perspective, that he´s hurting not primarily for the loss of his girl, but his child. He describes a loss that is not as familiar to the average listener and that makes it interesting, sad and scary at the same time. The impact the song has on you tells quite a lot about Hanks ability to deliver a story. This one is not autobiographic yet you believe every word he sings and they shake you up.

So, that´s one of all those songs that for some reason you want to find and listen to over and over again, because it´s such a good sad song. If you´re already familiar with it, I hope you know what I´m talking about. If you don´t, you have some listening to do.

Nobody Follows Bill Monroe

Lately the music I´ve been listening to has been mostly that of Bill Monroe. It´s been one of those periods when you just don´t feel like listening to anything else. Of course, a lot of other music slips through too, but most of the time, for a long time, it´s just one artist or band. I really like those periods, it´s very inspiring to dig deeper and deeper into the music and find more and more favourite songs, while you learn more and more about the artist.

Bill Monroe turned out to be really well suited for intense listening. I´ve been a fan for a long time but suddenly I was really hooked. I started digging and there was so much music to be discovered. From the early years with his brother Charlie, the evolving of the music into bluegrass, the many shifting Blue Grass Boys who put their mark on the music to Monroes evolving into the Father of Bluegrass who just kept going for years and years playing and singing the musical style that he had created. After almost sixty years of recording it´s surprising how high quality most of the recorded material he left behind him has. There´s not many recordings that´s not worth hearing more than once or twice and lots of songs become favourites. The more you listen, the more you discover.

So, it´s been a few good months with Bill Monroe beside me, but everything comes to an end. All these intense listening periods seems to fade out. That´s not a bad thing, you need to move on and find new music. Otherwise I wouldn´t be listening to anything but Hank Williams and that would mean too much music being left undiscovered. That would mean I wouldn´t have listened to Bill Monroe either.

So, for the moment the hours with Bill Monroe are not as many as they used to, but the best keep coming back to you and I look forward to my next long term period. One thing has been different this time though. When you decrease the listening to your favourite artist of the moment there´s usually a lot of music knocking on the door. This time however I found myself confused. I have a lot of records that I´ve been waiting to listen to, but somehow I just didn´t feel like it, so I put on a few old favourites that I know will stand the test and then I was back to feeling confused. After a while I realised that for the moment I can´t find anything to replace all that good bluegrass. So, what to do? I squeeze in a few old Bill Monroe songs among the other favourites and keep waiting for his shadow to accept the new songs. The blue moon of Kentucky keeps on shining indeed.

Johnny and June on Love and Murder

I thought I´d start this blog off with one of the big guns and it came down to Johnny Cash. No need to waste any more space on welcomes or introductions so here we go. Just another post, even though it´s the first.

In 2000 a 3 CD Johnny Cash-collection was released called Love, God, Murder. I think it´s one of the best titles ever, and of course there´s a lot of great music on it too. I´m not going to write any more about that collection though. Instead I want to mention two other songs on the subjects love and murder.

Johnny Cash recorded a lot of great music together with Rick Rubin during the last 10 years of his life, resulting in the American albums and the Unearthed box set. On Unearthed we find one of the songs I going to write about. The other one is not officially released but can be found on bootlegs. What they have in common except that they would have fit perfectly on the Love, God, Murder Collection is that they are sung together with June Carter. The reason I want to write about them is that I like the effect they have when you think about them as two sides of the same coin. Two artists perform two songs together but the songs are really each others opposites. Having a married couple singing these songs brings them both closer together and farther apart.

The song found on Unearthed is a version of As Long as the Grass Shall Grow, and it´s one of the greatest love songs I´ve heard. Not too sentimental, just a plain performance that you really believe when you hear it. Having June singing it with him adds an extra dimension. The other song is the murder ballad Banks of the Ohio, where you first hear Johnny sing the story about how he stabs his love with a knife and throws her into the water to drown because she won´t marry him, then June joins in to sing harmony. It really is the opposite story to As Long as the Grass Shall grow, and it´s odd to hear them sing it together. They pull it off though, and once again it becomes a better song because of it.

Johnny Cash was a great artist and this is just an example of what he could do with a song no matter what it´s about. He had such integrity that you believe every word, no matter if it´s about love or murder or whatever you can find in between. And yes, I think June was pretty damn great too.

Welcome

Welcome to The Country Music Blog. This blog is just getting started but soon I will start writing and I hope I´ll have a good time doing it and that there will be people interested in reading and sharing their thoughts with me.

So, why am I doing this? Well, as you probably can guess it´s primarily for the love of the music. But there is more to it than that. I need to do this. I´ve spent a lot of time listening to and reading about country music, but I haven´t spent as much time talking about it, especially not with people who like the music as much as I do, people who actually understand what I am talking about. The reason that I don´t talk enough about it is that I don´t know anyone who likes country as much as I do. I am from Sweden and people here generally don´t care much for my kind of music. So, this is my way to say the things I have to say to anyone who´s interested in hearing it.

What will I be writing about then? As stated above, it´s my reflections on country music. I won´t be reviewing new albums or write about what´s in the news of the day or something like that. It´s just my thoughts, some have been in the back of my head for years, some just flash by when I hear a good song on the early morning bus to work. There is a lot to say and I´ll take it as it comes along, the returning thoughts when they return again, and the flashes if I remember them. We´ll see what happens.

I can tell you a little about the music. It´s mostly about the country music of yesterday, meaning that it´s not about contemporary country or country pop. It´s about Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family, Ernest Tubb and Hank Snow, Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell, Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, it´s about a lot of people. It´s not just the big names, but if you like the ones I mentioned, you just might be interested in this blog. I hope so.