American Songwriter » Folk

Bubba An Underlying Current In Steve Earle’s Songs (1989)

Steve Morley — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:00:29 +0000

The following article originally appeared in the March/April 1989 edition of American Songwriter. Click here to purchase this issue. I got a job but it ain't nearly enough A twenty thousand dollar pickup truck Belongs to me and the bank and some funny talkin' man from Iran I left the service, got a G.I. loan I got married, bought myself a home Now I hang around this one-horse town and do the best that I can. -from "Good Ol' Boy (Getting' Tough)" With these words, Bubba was born. More correctly, it was with these words that Bubba was consciously given an identity. He's existed for generations in small towns where there's little to do but "drive down to the lake and turn back around." Bubba may not be worldly, but he isn't stupid, and it's important to Steve Earle for people to realize that. Why should Steve care? Because Bubba's a close buddy of his. He's taken the heat for the controversial singer/songwriter more than once, when lines like "some funny talkin' man from Iran," and "you can't get far on thirty-seven dollars and a Jap guitar," resulted in accusations of bigotry. "Giving Bubba a name and a face," Earle explains, "started with me having to defend charges of jingoism, because of songs I've written. If you write in the first person, like I do, you have to develop characters. Otherwise the songs become very one-dimensional." The fact that critical listeners hurled such accusations at Earle is a testament to the realism of his characters. Speaking in the first person, Steve-as-Bubba was so convincing that Steve appeared to be his characters rather than simply being their mouthpiece. Earle is the first to admit that Bubba's opinions are somewhat uninformed, but he prefers not to settle for an easy stereotype when it comes to describing Bubba and his ilk. "When Northerners call us rednecks," he says, "I get irritated. People make quick stereotypes about other people without understanding why they think the way they do. Writing conversationally, I have to know what sounds right for a given character. Bubba was born out of trying to get inside a character and understand why they make the statements they make," says Earle. Earle perhaps described Bubba best in an interview for Music Row magazine, while discussing the character's importance as a songwriting tool. "Bubba works for a living. His world is thirty minutes of TV news that he watches when he's very tired, and he doesn't understand why everything that's happening is happening to him. So he lashes out at the first thing that's convenient. Bubba's probably a little prejudiced and narrow-minded about some things, but not everybody has time to drink wine and talk about politics," Earle says in defense of Bubba's limited perceptions. While Steve has proven his ability to breathe life into his characters on the page, they didn't just appear from up a nowhere road. They came in part from Earle's astute observation of people he's known. If he seems defensive about Bubba's short-comings, it isn't solely to protect the products of his imagination. It's also out of respect for the real individuals who have contributed significant portions to the rural hero of exit zero. While Steve's well-worn hitching thumb pointed him toward a lot of characters in his time, Bubba's most significant influences nonetheless come from the stomping grounds of Earle's youth --Jacksonville, Texas. "If Bubba's from anywhere, he's from Jacksonville, a deep South culture," Earle affirms. "Jacksonville has a population of about 10,000 --too small for anything to happen, but just big enough to hold you all your life," says Earle, summing up one of the major themes in his writing. "The people my dad grew up with there [in Jacksonville] are rednecks, but they're real smart. You can't imagine what they'd be like if they'd been born in a bigger town." One man Earle acknowledges as "a big part of Bubba" is his father's friend, Bill Willis. "He was a pipeliner, and he always managed to get laid off three days before deer hunting season. My dad used to say Bill Willis was his hero. Bill had a lot of control over his life. He had a little land, raised a few cattle, always had a nice truck...he made ends meet without a real job. "He and my dad hunted in a place south of Jacksonville called The Big Thicket. It was dense, like a rain forest. There were a lot of great storytellers out there, like Body George," Steve recalls. "He came from a poor, poor family --literally lived in a shack. By the time I was old enough to hunt, he was too old, so he just sat around and lied a lot. He used to swear there was a man in The Big Thicket that lived in the pine tops and ambushed deer with a knife. Later, when I got involved in folk music, I saw the parallels to that kind of storytelling. "That's the kind of storytelling I'm best at --straight-ahead narrative. It was much easier to write "Copperhead Road" than "My Old Friend the Blues," Steve admits, affirming the seemingly universal writer's fear of revealing too much of one's own self. It wasn't just a reluctance to lay open his own soul that gave Earle difficulty during his fledgling days as a songwriter --it was also the realization that "being middle class, I didn't have a damn thing to say." Taking his cue from Bob Dylan, who hid his own background behind an enigmatic persona patterned after folk legend Woody Guthrie, Earle set out to create an alter-ego of sorts. "In order to have something to write about, I'm guilty of intentionally creating some of the tension in my life," Earle says candidly. "My accent was picked up from hitchhiking around the South." With a knapsack full of experiences and potential characters derived from his travels--both past and present--Earle need not dig into his personal life for song ideas unless he wants to, as he did on the seemingly autobiographical "Hillbilly Highway" and "Guitar Town." "Highway" traces three generations and tells the story of how his father escaped what had formerly been his family's small-town legacy, giving Steve a shot at a formal education. Ironically, Steve turned it down in an attempt to de-program his middle-class mentality, preferring to get his education on the road. Not surprising, coming from a man whose strongest personal statement to date might well be contained in "I Ain't Ever Satisfied." "That song was written for medicinal purposes," says Earle in typically dry fashion. "I had written songs about other people for Exit 0, but it was missing me, so I felt I had to do that." Earle's presence in "Satisfied" however, doesn't make itself conspicuous --the song could easily be a typical Earle character study, suggesting that there's a bit of Steve Earle in most, if not all, the individuals which people his detailed, real-life lyrics. While it's unmistakable Bubba whose newfound freedom in "The Week Of Living Dangerously" begins with him tossing his kid's car seat in a nearby dumpster, it isn't that big a stretch to imagine a workaday-filled Earle getting a similar wild hair. In "Angry Young Man," only the final verse--in which the son's protagonist escapes the small town syndrome--separates Steve from Bubba. Meanwhile, more tender songs like "I Love You Too Much" and "You Belong To Me" might lead the listener to assume it couldn't be hard-headed Bubba. However, Earle insists that "the whole idea of Bubba is that he does have a sensitive side. He was tough, and had football pals, but he was different when he was with me. I really do treat him like someone I know. Bubba can talk to me about things he can't talk to anyone else about. That's why he hangs out with me. "He probably is more sensitive than he admits. In that sense, there isn't that much difference between us. I'm just more open about it." But whether it's fact or fiction or a combination of the two, Earle's songs are distinguished by a sense of disciplined craftsmanship that one might not expect from a writer with Earle's unconventional tendencies. "I don't take anything away from craftsmanship," Earle says. "Nashville is the last Tin Pan Alley. I encourage writers to learn from it, but also to find a way not to get caught up in it, to find their own thing. "My songs," Steve continues, "are more powerful and concise because I learned craftsmanship." While Earle's pen is as powerful as ever on his latest Uni LP, Copperhead Road, he admits that he "wasn't as conscious of Bubba on this album. The characters on Copperhead Road aren't as everyday. But Bubba's still alive. John Lee Pettimore (the pot-dealing Vietnam vet who kicks off the disc) is a version of Bubba. "Like Bubba on bad speed," Earle says with a slightly dark chuckle. Indeed, all of Earle's characters are related in one way or another, through their similarities to Earle himself and well as in the traits that he admires in them. "I'd rather be like them--this is, the real people they're based on--than like any archetypical intellectual I can think of," Earle admits. "They're still having to deal with stuff on a day-to-day basis, living in the real world. I have a lot of respect for that."

THE DUKE & THE KING: On the Horizon

Jewly Hight — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:18:10 +0000

The Duke and the King, at the Basement in Nashville on August 11.

Simone Felice’s journey from his sibling-led group, The Felice Brothers, to his new band with Robert “Chicken” Burke, The Duke & The King, lends itself to various interpretations. Sonically, it marks a shift from country-rock leanings to mellowed, harmony-sweetened country-soul, though he considers both styles incidental: “The Felice Brothers don’t try to sound like that—they just sound like that. And for me, it’s the same.” Lyrically, Felice intensified The Felice Brothers’ literary sensibilities, weaving strong narrative threads through the ten songs on The Duke & The King’s debut, Nothing Gold Can Stay. But nothing gets at the heart of Felice’s move from one to the other like generational theory. He was The Felice Brothers’ sole Gen X-er (everybody else being of Generation Y), and had a full decade on the youngest band member. For a group built on close familial ties, spirited music and the scrappy, collective pursuit of an audience, that didn’t matter. Until it did. Not that Felice had put the generational difference into words before being asked to during the interview for this article: “I didn’t sit down and think of it that way. But when you articulate it that way, it does make a lot of sense… I’m at a little different place in my life and I’ve had a lot of time on earth to have the kind of tragedies and jubilance that it takes to maybe write some different kinds of songs.” (No doubt, one of the tragedies he’s alluding to is losing the baby he and his longtime partner were expecting last winter. He told fans of the experience—and his new musical venture—in an open letter.) A song Felice contributed to the latest Felice Brothers album, Yonder Is the Clock, foreshadowed the direction he’d pursue on Nothing Gold; “All When We Were Young” is a reflection on youthful freedom receding in the rearview. “When I wrote “All When We Were Young”—I never really thought about it this way, but you just sort of brought it out of me—it opened that door,” says Felice. “The Duke & The King record, it’s all just true stories about the way my heart felt when I was a little kid, when I first got turned on to music.” With Burke, a longtime friend who’s worked with George Clinton and a capella group Sweet Honey In the Rock, Felice captured a particular season of life, one still close enough to youth to call to mind its innocent—and not-so-innocent—pleasures in detail, but beyond the point of retrieving them. Between album opener “If You Ever Get Famous,” pivotal tracks “Still Remember Love” and “Union Street” and closer “One More American Song,” a group of friends go from cruising around with ripped jeans, big dreams and fervently shared musical tastes to adulthood’s isolation and narrowing possibilities. All that’s to say, Felice’s new project pursues different themes than his work with The Felice Brothers. But there’s important continuity, too. Yonder is a Mark Twain reference; so is The Duke & The King, the names of two swindlers in Huckleberry Finn. “Here they are rolling down the river, and they’re setting up these bootleg Shakespeare shows,” Felice summarizes. “And it reminded me of how The Felice Brothers used to be when we first started. We used to just drive up and down the Hudson River and play anywhere we could, in any bar, in any subway…. And then also what happens to the Duke and the King is that they get tarred and feathered, obviously, at the end. So, for me, when it came time for us to say, ‘Hey, what are we going to call ourselves,’ [I said], ‘Man, if we call ourselves the duke and the king, then it’ll remind us that we need to be honest and to never roll down that road to getting tarred and feathered.’” Hometown: Catskill Mountains, New York Age: 32 An early musical influence: My mom had the Joni Mitchell record Blue and she played it everyday.

THE FEATURES: On the Horizon

William Hooker — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:17:08 +0000

Songs are not always what they seem; never confidently infer meanings of a lyric from a band's bio. . . .

Songs are not always what they seem; never confidently infer meanings of a lyric from a band's bio. For instance, on the sensitively swinging boogie "Off Track," the 12th song on Nashville band The Features' Some Kind of Salvation, vocalist and primary songwriter Matt Pelham sings "we've been told/that we've been close/that all is won/but mostly lost." Salvation is the first release since their abrupt separation with Atlantic Records, and Pelham's words seem mindful of being off-label, but also hopeful, when he sings: "We gotta get back in line/We're off-track again." Explaining the song's significance, Pelham tells us, "It's definitely not about the record label at all... it's more of a relationship thing." Whether or not being with a label can resemble the wavy, peak-trough pattern commonly marked by a romantic relationship, Pelham admits, "I suppose...with any type of relationship, one with a label can be as trying as one with a girlfriend." Pelham validates my question politely and I understand clearly that Some Kind of Salvation is no poison dart aimed at label chiefs. Not that there's no danger in his songs, the menace is just not in one precise direction; "Foundation's Cracked," "G.M.F," and "Temporary Blues" rock diffusely, power pop that neither exploits nor hides their Southern, rural roots. Asked whether or not the band might venture into darker, more experimental directions in the future, Pelham informs me that "most of these songs are five- to six- years old and when making the record we just wanted the songs to fit together... ultimately it comes down to being cohesive."

Another six-year-old track, "Temporary Blues," recalls Pelham's soul-crushing experience as a Pillsbury factory worker; on it he sings, "An occupation... they say it should be something you like/But hard times don't allow a poor boy to choose how he provides." Asked whether or not ex-co-workers might be listening to the new record now, Pelham suspects not: "I highly doubt any of them have ever heard it; when I left I kind of never looked back... although I imagine the feelings on the song were mutual for lots of the workers."

Pelham's focus on how he provides stems from his family. Despite living near Nashville, seeing local shows is not a priority. "I've always kind of wanted to get out more and see a lot of local bands and support the scene but I'm always extremely busy with work [as a printmaker], our band, my wife and two kids. It's always a juggling act to go out and see bands or even a movie for that matter; it's not easy."

Despite the hard work evident on Salvation, it's often light-hearted and summer-appropriate due in part to Pelham's falsetto-prone voice. This style, evident on the sunny chorus of "Lions," Pelham "developed over the years from what I enjoyed listening to; when I was really young I liked John Lennon vocals so much... and he was imitating Little Richard so when I was younger I would overdo it, and do it all the time. Hopefully now I keep control of it."

Another song on Salvation, "Baby's Hammer" is a soft ditty that compares a destructive tool to "a significant other's displeasure... trying to please someone and never quite doing that; the hammer is her temper for not making it to church or not making enough money." Could this hammer possibly contain providence? "I definitely think it's good to have someone to keep you in line, it's not a bad thing."

Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee

Matthew Pelham Age 34 Favorite songwriter albums: John Prine, Sweet Revenge, Bob Dylan, Desire

Rollum Haas, Age 29 Enjoys Randy Newman's songs, particularly "Sail Away" & "Good Old Boys"

Mark Bond, Age 28 Favorite Songwriters: Elvis Costello and Brian Wilson

Roger Dabbs, Age 34 His Favorite Songwriting Duos: Rod Argent/Chris White of The Zombies and Dave Clark/Mike Smith of the Dave Clark 5

Stream The Townes Van Zandt Doc Be Here To Love Me

Drew Litowitz — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:31:35 +0000

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“Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." – Steve Earle By now, the name Townes Van Zandt stands as a relic of the past; a reminder of the gloriously gritty, cigarette smoking, whiskey-fueled days of country and folk music. Though never achieving much commercial success, while alive he developed a cult following and wrote some of the best songs the genre has ever seen. In death, his stature has risen immensely. He and his work are the stuff of legend. In the beautifully directed 2004 documentary Be Here To Love Me, interviews with the likes of Emmylou Harris, Joe Ely, Guy Clark, Kris Kristofferson, and yes, Steve Earle, tell a tale of a man who was gone too soon, but certainly not forgotten. The whole thing is up for streaming over at Pitchfork for “One Week Only.” Combining rare archival footage and intimate interviews with friends and family, the film provides great insight into just how important the man was to his songwriting peers, and how great of a loss his passing was. Check it out: Stream the rest here

BEN HARPER: Role Models

Holly Gleason — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:00:47 +0000

With White Lies for Dark Times, Ben Harper finds his genre-defying hybrid taking root in rockier plains—and that musical immediacy creates a tension that ratchets up his always on-point lyrics. Working with Relentless7—the latest incarnation of a Cinderella moment with a promoter’s runner Harper met in Austin, Texas—the impact isn’t just immediate in terms of attack, but also in grounding his always far-flung folk/Hendrix/world/jazz/beat-box songs.

"Keep It Together (So I Can Fall Apart)," “Lay There and Hate Me” and “Why Must You Always Dress In Black” bristle with an urgency that captures the ear with their razor-wire electricity, while the halting “The Word Suicide” is a meditation stretched taut over doubt and minimalism. It’s that how-now arranging, the leanness and the thrust that gives this far-flung collection a new kind of cohesion from the man who seems comfortable so many places he defies categories. Can you quantify music’s role in your life? My life without a soundtrack is stripped bare. To me, music’s not to be trivialized. Do not try to minimize or commoditize it. How does that give you a [creative] foundation? It’s never about anyone or anything… it’s really more a psychological or emotional necessity. [As a songwriter] you work from instinct, intuition and reaction. The songs will tell you: “Burn To Shine” has to be a rock song. So you let the songs tell you… What’s unique is the diversity of the songs, but it can also be my Achilles’ heel. You know, you’re not handing the record company 10 of one kind of song that they could market. So I’ll see mohawks, piercings, tattoos and yuppies… I’ll see the gentleman who signed me’s 80-something-year-old father, who’s a real old school Santa Monica nonconformist. Sounds tricky. Going hand-to-hand, ticket-by-ticket, show-to-show has given me a real appreciation of how you find your fans… I am loyal to my creative process, and you realize the music we love, when we put it on, something else enters the room. How does that reflect your working with Relentless7 and the evolution from the Innocent Criminals? In some ways, it’s a reckless abandonment of my past… but I’ve never landed in my past, as my fans know, I toured Both Sides of the Gun with the Innocent Criminals, we wrote Lifeline; but Relentless7 represent something I’ve been trying to do my whole life. It’s a scary place to be, and yet… how can I not [go there]? In those times when I’ve not done that—and tried to chase commercial connection—the business has always given me such a consistent smackdown, I can’t help but notice. Lessons like that, it doesn’t take an ass-whupping to figure out. Can you explain the change? Well, it feels like I’ve been trying to write these songs my whole life, and the evolution of a lot of it is connecting with Relentless7. I’ve never been satisfied with my own work, never felt comfortable with a creative arrival… What do I do with an exterior reality that gets me there? And you heard the previous band’s demo tape on a ride from a hotel to the gig in 1998? Yeah, I didn’t want to be the guy who says “No, I won’t listen,” even though to get onstage in front of 5,000, you need to be in a certain place. But when he puts it in, I’m floored: it’s the best rock record I’ve heard—and it stuck with me. I kept thinking back to ?uestlove and John Paul Jones… that experience kept coming back to Serve Your Soul. So I trusted it. We just played Austin City Limits and the fact they heard this record and wanted us the day they heard it was such a musical high. The things they get, the way they put it together—I knew we’d connected. More concretely, what about lyrics? I’m really trimming the fat now. You don’t do that unless someone’s over your shoulder at a younger age. You grow into it. I can feel the change aesthetically, genetically. If our species changes over time, it’s happening while we’re alive and making music. For me, it’s sparer. Can you explain? When John Prine writes “bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down… and won,” it’s simple. It is. Or it is not. You can’t negotiate a color, a moment, a feeling. John Prine is so good at that. He’s my Leonard Cohen. How do you apply it? We start breaking it down: like autobiography or journalism. It gets tricky, because it’s not always about something that happened, but the moment you sing it, you have to own it. Take it on. Are there things you always use as you make this kaleidoscopic music? Fearlessness, absolutely. Discipline. You also need open-minded creativeness that lets everything in. You never want to lose a word or a phrase, yet every one should count. Always the best language possible. And, finally, knowing when to leave it alone. Stop when it’s done. Ben Harper and Relentless7’s White Lies for Dark Times is out now on Virgin Records.

JOHN VANDERSLICE: On Track

Matt Fink — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:04:41 +0000

Though it had a good run-from the whimsy of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to the harsh isolation of Pink Floyd's The Wall and the rock opera reprisal of Green Day's American Idiot-the concept album has largely faded out of usage, left as a punch line to be hung around moribund musicians who are too pretentious to realize that they've run out of ideas. But while few songwriters are eager to join the list of artists who have tried and failed to carry out a project with such weighty ambitions, the concept album lives on in the less grandiose visions of indie rock auteurs Colin Meloy (The Decemberists), John Darnielle (Mountain Goats) and John Vanderslice. The last of those, the restlessly imaginative and analog-equipment obsessed Vanderslice, has written no fewer than five conceptually-themed narrative albums, proving his mastery at sustained album-length drama by stranding his imaginary brother on an icebound observation station on 2002's Time Travel is Lonely and crafting post-911 vignettes on 2005's Pixel Revolt. But on Romanian Names, Vanderslice's latest and most inward-looking release, he has narrowed his focus considerably. "I set out wanting to write songs that were definitely not connected and definitely not in any way narrative or with an arched storyline," he explains, having just finished ordering parts for his vintage Neve console. "I love telling stories, and I love third and first person narratives, but I wanted to write a different album. Every song that I did, with only a couple of exceptions, was much faster than what I'd usually default to, and it actually made me write different lyrics," he says excitedly. "So in some ways, I think it allowed me to write shorter verses and write less lyrics. I think that it led to more impressionistic content, because I didn't have these really long verse forms to fill up with a story, and it ended up making the record more abstract. In some ways, there is a refreshing lack of specific information, which is against my judgment," he laughs. "I like to be really specific." That's not to say that Vanderslice paints only in broad strokes. There's a track about being stalked by a snow leopard ("Tremble and Tear"), and another about an Eastern Bloc gymnast escaping the control of her minders and falling in love at the Olympics ("Romanian Names"). There's a story about cross-dressing at summer camp ("Summer Stock"), and one about a self-absorbed man who only cares about how his lover's selflessly altruistic deeds reflect on him ("C&O Canal"). Long influenced by the storytelling methods of his favorite filmmakers, Vanderslice remains the director behind the actors in his songs, even if he's increasingly comfortable letting the listener imagine the scenes. "If you're going to be a songwriter, you have to believe that every minuscule slight has importance," he says. "You have to believe that every little loss that you've had is meaningful and can, therefore, be broadcast out in the world and be exaggerated and amplified into a song. There's a trick there at work, and once you recognize it, you can either use it or it can also end your writing career. I've seen people lose their ego. They've become much more mature and developed as humans and are unable to write from a first-person perspective. For me, I've long realized that any individual is about as important as an ant colony on a hill in West Texas," he laughs. "I didn't have a problem with my ego dissolving over time, as it naturally should," he says with a comic pause, "unless you're a sociopath or a megalomaniac." HOMETOWN: San Francisco, California AGE: 42 HIS FAVORITE FILM OF THE MOMENT: Synecdoche, New York, It really helped me to see it over and over. I think I saw it four times in about a week, so I really got to dig into it. I'm getting into the same kind of movies, what I call "puzzle movies." I don't think they work if you casually watch them. I think you have to believe in them and believe that it's important to dig into them. I think that in all art, there has to be a level of sympathy, no matter what it is.

LEVON HELM > Electric Dirt

Michael Gallucci — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:37:34 +0000

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The latest solo album by the Band's drummer and singer is a lot like his last one, 2007's Grammy-winning Dirt Farmer. Like its predecessor, Electric Dirt is filled with such Americana-approved subjects as trains, family and working the land with your bare hands.

LEVON HELM Electric Dirt (DIRT FARMER/VANGUARD) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars The latest solo album by the Band's drummer and singer is a lot like his last one, 2007's Grammy-winning Dirt Farmer. Like its predecessor, Electric Dirt is filled with such Americana-approved subjects as trains, family and working the land with your bare hands. The music is rustic and dusty and sounds like it was made by a bunch of friends hanging out on the porch after supper. The album starts with a rollicking cover of the Grateful Dead's "Tennessee Jed," which kicks up a bluesy swing and twang, but it soon settles into a sort of musical complacency, tapping age-old themes and Helm's still sturdy voice for inspiration.

LARRY JON WILSON > Larry Jon Wilson

Brian T. Atkinson — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:37:17 +0000

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Wilson's first collection in a quarter century falters. LARRY JON WILSON Larry Jon Wilson (DRAG CITY) Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars Thirty-five years ago, Larry Jon Wilson ("Ohoopee River Bottomland") nearly measured flush against Guy Clark ("Desperadoes Waiting for a Train") in Heartworn Highways. Tauter storytellers rarely emerge north of Billy Joe Shaver. Unfortunately, paths diverge. Wilson quit recording. Today, Clark's newest vignettes ("Hemingway's Whiskey," "The Guitar") redouble standard, but Wilson's first collection in a quarter century falters. While his glorious voice-a gruff weapon, equally forceful and forgiving-still fills the echo chamber between Vince Bell and Johnny Cash, too many songs ("Throw My Hands Up," "Where From") ring hollow with cheat and cliché. Notable exception: the timely "Heartland." "There's a big empty hole in my chest now, where my heart was," Wilson rasps on the Dylan/Nelson cover. "A hole in the sky now where God used to be/because my American dream fell apart at the seams." The epic "Whore's Trilogy" buoys interest, but shallow ballads ("Me With No You," "Rocking With You") ultimately anchor discontent.

25 Of Our Favorite Songs From 1984-2009

americansongwriter — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:34:55 +0000

The older one gets, the more one looks back at those years now gone. American Songwriter's reached the ripe age of 25 and the best years are ahead. But as happy as turning 25 makes us, we decided to look back at all the songs we've found and loved since 1984, the year the magazine started.25 OF OUR FAVORITE SONGS FROM 1984-2009 Selected by the American Songwriter Staff
The older one gets, the more one looks back at those years now gone. American Songwriter's reached the ripe age of 25 and the best years are ahead. But as happy as turning 25 makes us, we decided to look back at all the songs we've found and loved since 1984, the year the magazine started. Coming up with a list of favorite songs spanning a 25-year spectrum is far from easy, but it's also a lot of fun. Thinking about songs we listened to on the radio (when we turned 16, before CD players were standard and before satellite radio), songs we danced to (sometimes with someone special, sometimes completely solo), learned how to play on guitar (not deftly by any means) and songs we sang along to (words memorized and belted way out of tune) ushered in countless memories. The process brought us together as a staff, just sitting around talking about the songs we love, while at the same time it affirmed the amazing songwriting that's taken place between 1984 and the present. 25 "The Dance" Garth Brooks Garth Brooks (1989) Written by Tony Arata Brooks' delicate vocals match the tone of the poignant lyrics. The song's got love, dreams, loss, pain, hope and life in one tight package; it can leave you crying for all the right reasons.

24 "Fast Car" Tracy Chapman Tracy Chapman (1988) Written by Tracy Chapman The song that put Ms. Chapman on the map blends the hard-knocks realities of poverty in America with a timeless sense of urgency and hope.

23 "Sweet Child O' Mine" Guns N' Roses Appetite for Destruction (1987) Written by W. Axl Rose, Michael McKagan, Steven Adler, Saul Hudson and Jeffrey Isbell What started as a joke, with Slash noodling on his guitar, turned out to be ‘80s rock songwriting gold. Axl's ear-splitting vocals put "Sweet Child" over the top.

22 "When Doves Cry" Prince Purple Rain (1984) Written by Prince A dance-pop masterpiece that's spurred a generation of awkward white kids to attempt to dance and sing falsetto-don't go off to college without it.

21 "Wagon Wheel" Old Crow Medicine Show O.C.M.S. (2004) Written by Bob Dylan and Ketch Secor The best way to co-write with Dylan: find the scrap of an unreleased song and turn it into something wholly your own...well, Dylan still owns 50 percent, but you get the picture. Secor and Old Crow created a classic song that never gathers dust in our office.

20 "Sticks that Made Thunder" The SteelDrivers The SteelDrivers (2008) Written by Mike Henderson and Chris Stapleton A somber, chilling bluegrass number about...well...a tree. To be specific, a tree observing a Civil War battle-not many folks can pull a song like this off.

19 "Loser" Beck Mellow Gold (1994) Written by Beck Michael Hanson and Carl F. Stephenson Remember trying to memorize the words to this? Remember trying to figure out the chorus when the song first came out? If Beck is a loser, we don't want to win.

18 "First Day of My Life" Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005) Written by Conor Oberst Oberst's song is a wonderful, plain-spoken poetic statement on modern love. It's simple, delicate and feels new every time you play it for that special someone.

17 "Karma Police" Radiohead OK Computer (1997) Written by Colin Greenwood, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Phil Selway and Thom Yorke Radiohead bring the paranoia and chaos in this creepy classic. But the song's life-affirming coda ("for a minute there, I lost myself") is like a shot of adrenaline.

16 "Mr. Jones" Counting Crows August and Everything After (1993) Written by Steve Bowman, David Bryson, Adam Duritz, Charlie Gillingham, Matt Malley We all wanted to be big stars, and who among us doesn't want to be Bob Dylan? An inescapable hook and chorus just never lets this song grow stale. Sha-la-la-la-la indeed.

15 "Flume" Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago (2007) Written by Justin Vernon An eerie, lyrically vague number that swept us off our feet and dropped us in the Wisconsin wilderness. Vernon's DIY recordings from his cabin in the woods resonate and inspire.
14 "Independence Day" Martina McBride The Way That I Am (1993) Written by Gretchen Peters Our kind of patriotic song! It gets you all fired up about standing up for yourself in the face of something wrong-behind closed doors or in the streets. It's a must for any jukebox.

13 "Armchairs" Andrew Bird Armchair Apocrypha (2007) Written by Andrew Bird Not only does he whistle and play the violin like a mofo-Bird writes beautiful, endlessly unfolding tunes that make your soul ache with their loveliness.

12 "Mississippi" Bob Dylan Love and Theft (2001) Written by Bob Dylan Leave it to Bob Dylan to stay in Mississippi a day too long, write a song about it, and have said song be as deep and as powerful as the river it shares a name with.

11 "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Nirvana Nevermind (1991) Written by Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic Whether it's a lightning rod anthem for apathetic youth or one the best frickin' rock songs ever (or both), this tune will forever be one of our faves. Cobain ushered in the Grunge era with these contradictory lyrics, howling screams and potent guitar fuzz.

10 "Free Fallin'" Tom Petty Full Moon Fever (1989) Written by Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty The early dreams of westward expansion meet the not-so-happy reality of the present in Petty's tune, which namedrops L.A. streets and landmarks while echoing an urgency to flee. Doubt and heartbreak chased with a new dream of escape.

9 "Chattahoochee" Alan Jackson A Lot About Livin' (and a Little ‘Bout Love) (1992) Written by Alan Jackson and Jim McBride This devilishly straightforward song preaches the gospel of learnin', lovin' and livin' in the South. It's one of those songs in which lines unsaid are as important as those sung. It remains one of our favorites to crank up on a summer Friday afternoon.

8 "Forever and Ever, Amen" Randy Travis Always and Forever (1987) Written by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz Travis' singing can't be beat, while the songwriting team of Overstreet and Schlitz nail the earnest down-home sentimentality of a country boy on this one.

7 "Golden" My Morning Jacket It Still Moves (2003) Written by Jim James The guitar rambles and trots while James' vocals softly glide over. The lyrics about bars, concerts, and rock stars, delivered by James' alpine falsetto carry you off to a better place like a folk-rock lullaby.

6 "It's a Great Day to be Alive" Travis Tritt Down the Road I Go (2000) Written by Darrell Scott An American anthem about taking things day by day and enjoying the simple, offbeat things in life. The optimism lifts us up, gets us thinking about going to get new tattoos, and growing facial hair.

5 "Copperhead Road" Steve Earle Copperhead Road (1988) Written by Steve Earle Earle's song is a country-rock storytelling gem that'll always shine through. His musing on a descendant of bootleggers turned dope-grower in the Tennessee hills after two tours in Vietnam is bittersweet and blood-boiling-and butt-kickin' good.

4 "Revelator" Gillian Welch Time (The Revelator) (2002) Written by Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch Sparse and elegant, "Revelator" has been hailed by some as one of greatest folk songs written in this century-we cannot disagree. The desperation, the wandering, and the abandonment found within are reminiscent of the mood and setting of a William Gay or Cormac McCarthy novel. Rawlings' picking on his archtop adds to the stumbling visions of moving westward, leaving the world behind. And here, especially, Gil and Dave's subtle vocal harmonies never fail to shiver spines and lift neck hairs.

3 "Ashes of American Flags" Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) Written by Jay Bennett and Jeff Tweedy Wilco are like an ATM machine of good songs. This one is filled with hundreds and twenties. For a small service fee, you too will come back new.

2 "Born in the U.S.A." Bruce Springsteen Born in the U.S.A. (1984) Written by Bruce Springsteen Bruce Springsteen's career reached critical mass with the Born in the U.S.A. album. The title song, deceptively simple yet decidedly complex, lodged him into our national consciousness for good, and helped turn the man from New Jersey into an American folk hero and protector of the people. Ronald Reagan famously misunderstood the intentions behind the Boss's lyrics. But just because the chorus wasn't meant to be patriotic doesn't mean you can't sing it with pride. As an electric rave-up or an acoustic blues, "Born in the U.S.A." resonates almost as deeply as the American Dream.

1 "Graceland' Paul Simon Graceland (1986) Written by Paul Simon Paul Simon considers this the greatest song he's ever written, and he's written a lot of great songs. Dealing in divorce, the holy road trip, and the ghost of Elvis, "Graceland" is based on a real journey Simon took with his young son, Harper. The song's sad center anchors its optimistic exterior, and the music blends different cultures (South African, American) into a joyous cappuccino of sound. "There is a girl in New York City, who calls herself the human trampoline. And sometimes when I am bouncing, falling, and tumbling in turmoil, I say oh, so this is what she means. She means we are bouncing into Graceland."

RICHARD THOMPSON > Walking on a Wire: Richard Thompson (1968-2009)

Hal Horowitz — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:04:48 +0000

Walking on a Wire: Richard Thompson (1968-2009)" src="http://www.americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/rthompsonbox_3dskew_300dpi-156x300.jpg" alt="RICHARD THOMPSON > Walking on a Wire: Richard Thompson (1968-2009)" width="104" height="200" />
Neither 2006's mammoth five-disc box of mostly acoustic rarities nor 1993's three-platter, non-chronological set-overburdened with live performances and unreleased studio outtakes-made the grade for a comprehensive overview of Richard Thompson's long, storied and rather confusing recorded legacy, at least for those who didn't already own most of his albums Label: SHOUT! FACTORY Rating: 5 out of 5 stars Neither 2006's mammoth five-disc box of mostly acoustic rarities nor 1993's three-platter, non-chronological set-overburdened with live performances and unreleased studio outtakes-made the grade for a comprehensive overview of Richard Thompson's long, storied and rather confusing recorded legacy, at least for those who didn't already own most of his albums. That has now been rectified with this four CD, 71-track compilation. It doesn't quite span the titular years (the newest songs are from 2007's Sweet Warrior), but effectively cherry picks material from 15 different labels spread across dozens of occasionally difficult to find side projects, soundtracks and solo albums. The result is, not surprisingly, a sprawling opus. It focuses on Thompson's eclectic artistry both as a dark spirited writer of generally morose, yet feisty songs, that occasionally veer to self-flagellation, and his stunning acoustic and electric guitar proficiency. Those sides have typically sparred for critical prominence, which provides a healthy yin-yang to music that revels in its artist's inherent dichotomy. Thompson's early years with Fairport Convention are somewhat under-represented with only five songs, but not so his six mid-‘70s/‘80s albums with ex-wife Linda Thompson, which account for nearly a full CD's worth of arguably his finest material. It's here that Thompson's gruff yet expressive voice finds a near perfect foil in Linda's sympathetic husky trill, a union that exploded, and unraveled, with the tension evident in the couple's white-knuckled personal and professional swansong Shoot Out the Lights. Mitchell Froom's overly fussy, slick studio work with Thompson has often been criticized, but the best songs from the producer's mid-‘80s through mid-‘90s years yielded plenty of quality material, boiled down to about a CD's worth on this collection. The compilers have successfully woven the diverse colors of the singer/songwriter's rootsy traditional U.K. folk, rock and pop palette, uncovering dusty gems and a few rarities while stretching the canvas to explore the many faces of Thompson's multi-sided personality. Neophytes to his extensive discography finally have a one stop smorgasbord to sample the man's expansive accomplishments before diving into individual releases for further exploration, all of which are guaranteed to provide additional delights.