Stories
It Must Mean A Thing
Because we sure have that swing. This week’s Music City Roots will celebrate that elusive and wondrous musical quality that put the snap in American music for decades, often in unexpected ways. Say “swing” to most folks and it will probably conjure up an image of dance bands from the 1940s or for country fans maybe Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, which did with fiddles what Tommy Dorsey did with horns. All that is absolutely on point, but the feeling of swing also permeates jazz, bluegrass and even some pop music, when the timing is right. It’s a heartbeat. It’s a groove. You know it when you hear it.For Whit It’s Worth
Once upon a time not very long ago there was a band that would have been perfect for Music City Roots even if their name was calculated to give the Loveless Cafe crew a culinary heart attack. The Biscuit Burners were a neo-traditional band out of Asheville, NC, which landed in all kinds of prestigious places, from the BBC to Mountain Stage and a bunch of great festivals. Perhaps you saw them.Say You Saw Her When
I have a good feeling about this. Music City Roots this week includes a performance by a young Nashville artist who’s made a remarkable stylistic journey and who (though I have a terrible track record at predicting this stuff) could be a big national deal by this time next year. Her name is Megan McCormick, and I’ve been driving around for the past month with her debut CD Honest Words in my car. It’s being released the day before our show, and as much as I’ve appreciated Megan in local venues and as a supporting musician to others, I had no inkling she was going to come up with something so complete, so absorbing and so beautifully crafted. This album, brimming with bold melodies, heart-torn lyrics and amazing guitar work, heralds a major arrival.Driving
I was on work/travel this week in Western North Carolina, so unfortunately I missed my first Music City Roots since the show began last fall. Definitely a drag. My consolation was to actually hear the show on the 650 WSM-AM (the point after all), and hey, wow, I loved it, despite some lightning zap interference. The storms pursued me down the Cumberland Plateau, while ahead a psychedelic sunset played out between thunderheads, and I hope you had as epic a setting for listening. It was super to have Jim Lauderdale back on stage after a few weeks away, and I was delighted to hear the voice of my friend Peter Cooper of the Tennessean filling in for me on the Honest Abe Front Porch.Sunny Boy
If you haven’t seen the video of Bobby Bare Jr. and his son Beckham singing Shel Silverstein’s “Daddy What If” then get thee hence to a computer (oh, wait, you likely have that covered at the moment) and check it out HERE for four minutes of endearing father-son magic. This wee recording session promotes the new tribute album of songs by the late great Silverstein, called Twistable Turnable Man, but there’s also a bunch of history packed into this unassuming little vocal duet.
A Spectral Spectrum
Each week I look at the lineups for Music City Roots and think to myself, ‘what’s the theme?’ What’s the hidden connection between these artists who were booked on this special day, because that’s when their booking agent said they’re available? Sometimes we set out to design a show and sometimes a collection of artists falls together by happenstance and the alignment of the planets. But always, always, always, they share one thing in common, and that’s a fealty to the founding fathers and mothers of our nation’s musical life – the traditions that bind us and define us, whether plunked on a clawhammer banjo, blown on a trumpet or shredded on an electric guitar.Summer Cool
Time off is good and necessary, especially in the summertime, when the Southern heat and humidity sap one’s strength. We’ve enjoyed our two weeks’ break, but we also find ourselves itching to get back on stage and continue our weekly exploration of the wide Americana music-scape. That happens July 14 at the Loveless Barn when Music City Roots premieres its Summer 2010 season.True and Blue
It’s no secret whatsoever that Music City Roots loves bluegrass. The genre itself, even in its pure “traditional” form, is an embodiment of our show’s philosophy: folk and roots styles updated for modern times. Because when Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys cooked up their very original sound in 1945, it was a pretty radical left turn from the old-time string band music on which they were building. And in an amazing turn of music history, the new sound proved so popular and viable that it spread worldwide and continues to grow and evolve.Daddy and the Musician’s Daughter
Roughly composed of one part Rolling Stones, healthy doses of Dylan and John Prine, plus a whole lot of Nashville hot chicken grease, DADDY is but the latest iteration and manifestation of the long-running musical bro-mance between Tommy Womack and Will Kimbrough. Their Southern pop/rock band the bis-quits in the early 1990s was short-lived but much loved. And while they’ve collaborated here and there since then, only in DADDY has the Kimbrough/Womack chemistry truly been rekindled. Add to their guitar/vocal attack the all-star rhythm section of Paul Griffith (drums), David Jacques (bass) and John Deaderick (keys) and you’re looking at a Music City supergroup with writing and playing chops second to none. They will be just back from a current swing in Europe when they play the Roots stage June 9.Bring The Family
It could be a Nashville trivia question years from now: What band played both the Schermerhorn Symphony Center and the Grand Ole Opry House within two weeks of the 2010 flood that disabled both venues? That would be Cherryholmes, the acclaimed bluegrass family band that came out of nowhere a few years ago to become one of the genre’s top acts.Couples
Music is a magic land where truly, one plus one equals more than two. When two great singers or players lock the right two melodic lines together, your brain and heart start making up more parts, filling in and forming a cosmic conversation between you and the music. We’ll get to hear that duo effect two times over at the May 26 Music City Roots, when we’re joined by one couple steeped in old-school country and another united by the blues.Knives and Fireworks
A virtuoso acoustic guitar shredder. A Knoxville chanteuse. A Californian who mastered bluegrass and jazz. And a former truck driver with a penchant for knife throwing. Isn’t this exactly the kind of horizon-opening, unpredictable experience you’ve been looking for? We thought so. Music City Roots on May 19 should be by turns jaw-dropping, serenity-inducing and wickedly funny. But hey, we’re a variety show in a barn, so that’s how we roll.“Now THAT’s Americana!”
As a lover of the English language I’m sensitive to the mis-use of words, as when people praise a singer/songwriter as ‘prolific’ when they mean wonderful or amazing. But all prolific means of course is that someone produces a lot. Some great artists like Guy Clark are not prolific. Some prolific artists are not fantastic. It’s hard to be both, but our buddy and musical host Jim Lauderdale has done just that for years. In fact it’s hard to point to anyone in Americana music who has recorded and written so many songs with such consistency.East Side Pride
When I was searching for my first place to live in Nashville in 1996, a lot of signs pointed East. Historic East Nashville was said to be a good place to find an affordable home in a quirky, developing neighborhood that was becoming an arts and music enclave - with a great view of the Nashville skyline to boot. So on an early house-hunting mission, I walked into the Radio Café at the corner of 14th St. and Woodland Ave. for the first time. Not only did I get a good breakfast, I met a guy who played drums with Steve Earle at the counter. I took this as a good omen. And once I moved into the ‘hood, there were many many great nights of music at the Radio, many of them by artists who lived right there in zip code 37206.Across The Great Divide
Bluegrass is a music of bridge-building, spanning multiple generations and styles. It’s one of the only music forms in the world that assimilates hard-edged old conservatives and youthful progressives, making it one of the last places where extremely disparate Americans can gather to jam and enjoy. That diversity has been cultivated by a handful of musicians who’ve had credibility on both sides of the cultural divide, like John Hartford, Vassar Clements and our guest next week, the great Peter Rowan.Strong Southern Stories
We Southerners take stories seriously. They’re our conversational currency, our living history. From Faulkner and Flannery to today’s bright writing stars like Nashville’s own Ann Patchett and Tony Earley, we celebrate those who celebrate life through words, just as we celebrate the regular raconteur.Connections
I loved that old PBS show Connections, where host James Burke would wander around the world describing how one small invention centuries ago led to this and then that and then ultimately to some earth-shattering change like, oh, the Great Depression. He was one my guides to looking beneath the layers. But I was already on board that idea thanks to my passion for music. Reading liner notes and books LONG before the internet, I built a framework on which I could hang new bits of musical knowledge. You think you know Led Zeppelin and then you find out Jimmy Page was in the Yardbirds first! You fall for Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue album and find out that the piano player Bill Evans had a solo career as well, and you check that out, and life is never the same again.The Real Deal On Your Dial
A note from Micol Davis was a reminder that Music City Roots: Live From The Loveless Cafe is about far more than just two hours of great live music on Wednesday nights. Micol is the female half of the husband and wife duo Blue Mother Tupelo. She and Ricky Davis are a bracing blues/rock team who can lay it down as a self-contained unit or scale up with a band. They’ve truly become friends of the show; we see them in the audience most weeks, hanging out and taking in the music and the atmosphere. This coming week, however, as Roots begins its Spring 2010 season, they will grace our stage for the first time as featured artists.Green Day
From an interview I did with Maura O’Connell in 2002: “A song from any time should feel comfortable in any time. A song is a song is a song, if it has potential to live past its own time. It’s a folk song, no matter where it comes from. I do like to sing songs like ‘Down In The Sally Gardens.’ It’s such a strong song it sits right next to a Patty Griffin song. They’re equally present in our day as poetry.”Touching The Sky
Musical innovation is a slippery, ill-defined concept. Does it live in novel melodies, or mash-ups of styles? Is it something made by fingers on frets or in the minds of the audience? I suppose it falls in the I-know-it-when-I-hear-it category. Or I could just point you to a Cadillac Sky show. Ostensibly a “bluegrass” band, the five C-Sky guys are an ever-changing ensemble of artists who absorb top flight influences but who make sure that what comes out the other end of their creative black box is always searching and never derivative.Highly Qualified
If this week’s show was presented like a resume, you wouldn’t believe it. You’d call a few references to check it out. “So, this bunch SAYS it wrote a massive hit for Eric Clapton, had a multi-platinum country album, fiddled with the Texas Playboys and played guitar for the legendary Sam Bush? Really?”
Where There’s a Will
He had me at THIS. And by THIS I mean that CD that Will Kimbrough released in 2000 that told the world he was more than a mere sideman or band member. THIS was a superb debut album by a seasoned artist with a vision and the first of a string of striking statements that would have encompassed confessional folk music, sharp pop rock and alt-country twang. In the meantime, Kimbrough has become one of Nashville’s musical MVPs and recipient of an Americana Music Association instrumentalist of the year award.
Playing All The Right Cards
Too many people have spent too much energy trying to find the perfect definition of Americana music, the nice catch-all for contemporary music rooted in our great traditions of folk, blues, country and gospel. But if you want an illustrative definition, Americana is what you’d find at the many festivals that book both the Greencards and Darrell Scott, a la Merlefest of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Or Music City Roots, if you’ll give us credit for being a mini-festival every week.Hill Country Holler
If you study American music you can’t get away from the story of the Mississippi Delta, the cradle of the blues and home to pioneers like Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson. But East of there, running from northern Mississippi down the middle of the state is a stretch known as the Hill Country, and in recent years this region has at last been acknowledged as a hotbed with its own sound and traditions, perhaps most notably through the rise to fame of the North Mississippi All-Stars. This week on Roots, we’ve pulled together one of the strongest themed lineups of the year, one that draws from the Hill Country, with its strong African roots and its modern grooves.Dobro Mojo
Dobro players are an interesting lot. As hard as all the folks work who learn guitar, fiddle, banjo or bass, the guy or gal who feels the calling of the resonator guitar, with its sliding angularity, has to work harder. It’s unbelievably demanding on the right hand with its speed and timing, and over on the left, you’re on your own for hitting the right notes, without the aid of the guitar or mandolin’s frets. It takes a certain brassiness to even try.
Classic and Fresh
Nashville remains special because if you look closely, you can see the veterans who built Music City living and working side by side with the young artists who are building on their legacy and pushing the town’s musical traditions forward. It’s what gives the place continuity and soul.
So on our next show, Music City Roots presents prime examples of that dichotomy, as our musical guests include one of Nashville’s senior senators and one of its most remarkable alt-country youngsters: Cowboy Jack Clement and Chris Scruggs.
Souther Exposure
One of my best memories of last’s fall Americana Music Association festival took place in the middle of one of the showcase nights at the Mercy Lounge. A stellar band of jazz-aware sidemen took the stage, followed by a guy who looked a little, well, unfocused. J.D. Souther looked like a rumpled poet who’d slept in.
Nashville’s Rock of Ages
In case you haven’t heard of the Music City Curse, it’s this notion that developed over the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s that no matter how awe-inspiring a Nashville rock band was, it would never get a fair shake when it reached the New York and LA power-brokers who decide who gets big-time video and radio play or major label record deals.
Nature’s Way
Of the many fortunate connections and developments that took place on the journey to getting Music City Roots on the air, few can compare to our love-at-first-sight relationship with the Nature Conservancy. This extraordinary organization signed on as a major sponsor early in the game, and it couldn’t have been a better match. We stand for integrity and authenticity in music; they protect the integrity of authentic natural spaces and resources.
The Grass Is Bluesy
It’s hard to believe, but with this next show we’ll have reached the end of the inaugural season of Music City Roots. I’ve tried to describe each show on this blog as the weeks have gone by, but it’s really hard to adequately convey the week-to-week atmosphere in the Loveless Barn when mission control counts down the top of the show, cues our theme song and hands it off to Eddie Stubbs to announce that we’re on the air.
From Texas to Colorado
If you get a chance, see Jeff Horny’s new documentary “Behind the Confessions,” a close-up portrait of Texas music icon Radney Foster that tracks the making of his new album Revival. It depicts how and why Foster came to become one of the most beloved Texas singer/songwriters of his generation, a guy who has seen success at all the levels where it counts – commercially, critically and perhaps most important, on the sawdust floors of all those Lone Star State honky tonks and arenas, where to this day, folks of all ages line up to see Radney and his band.
Voices In Ones, Twos and Threes
The International Bluegrass Music Awards, held every fall at the Ryman Auditorium, is always a fabulous event, but it can be slow to change. Rhonda Vincent, for example, took home the Female Vocalist of the Year trophy for seven consecutive years. Not that Rhonda’s not fantastic, but in 2007 when that award came up and the oft-nominated but always-a-bridesmaid Dale Ann Bradley was announced as the winner, it made for one of the happiest and charged moments at IBMA in quite a while.
Livin’, Lovin’, Louvin
When the great Charlie Louvin visited Music City Roots on October 28 to sing a Loveless Jam duet with guest artist Dex Romweber it offered just a hint of the purity and authenticity we have in store on November 18 when Charlie joins us as one of our featured artists on what promises to be an exciting, eclectic evening of live radio.
Thanks For The Music
No disrespect to Christmas or Hanukah or New Year’s, but this correspondent’s favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. It’s about family and food, with no bells and whistles. There’s actually time to reflect on the blessings of the year and share the good life with the ones you love.
One Fair Autumn Evening
Tony Brown, the great Nashville producer who signed a whole bunch of excellence to MCA Records in the 1980s and 90s, said he got “zapped” by Nanci Griffith when he saw her play live for the first time. And he wasn’t the only one. From her origins as an Austin-based folksinger through hear early albums with legendary Rounder Records and then during her years with major labels, Griffith climbed a tall ladder and now sits in an esteemed position as one of the finest and most seductive songwriters in that fascinating overlap between country and folk.
Country Collage
Back in the day, there wasn’t one thing called country and another called bluegrass. It was all country (or hillbilly) music then, and everybody appeared side by side on the barn dances and in the record bins. This week’s Music City Roots recalls that era with one classic country singer and two state-of-the-art bluegrass bands.
Darkness and Light
The South is deep and sometimes dark, and we love artists who aren’t afraid (or afeared as some say it) to dig down into the clay, swim in the blackest swamps and plunge into the kudzu choked forest. That might be said of the music of Dex Romweber and Scott Miller, though they sound little alike. The night promises foot-stomping, greasy grooves as well as rich characters and in-your-face ideas.
Holy Smoke: Sam Bush and Mike Farris
There are plenty of ways to burn in music, and the second show in the inaugural season of Music City Roots suggests two of them. Sam Bush is a fiery virtuoso of the mandolin and fiddle, while Mike Farris brings rock and roll fire to gospel music. Together on one stage, they’ll offer modern and very personal interpretations of two great American music traditions, which is precisely what Music City Roots is all about.
Jim Lauderdale to host Music City Roots
Americana tribal leader Jim Lauderdale has signed on to be a semi-regular host of the much-talked-about Nashville music scene showcase, Music City Roots, Live from the Loveless Café. The show will regularly feature other guest hosts, due to Jim’s extensive touring and hosting commitments, but everyone involved agreed that no one represented the heart and soul of the movement like Lauderdale. Jim is also the regular monthly host of Tennessee Shines, a monthly show airing on Knoxville’s pioneer non-profit station WDVX.
Emmylou Harris to Headline Inaugural Roots Broadcast on 10/14
American musical treasure Emmylou Harris will grace the stage in a rare, intimate performance on the inaugural broadcast of the much buzzed-about Music City Roots, Live from the Loveless Café, on Wednesday, October 14th. Airing live on legendary WSM, the show’s producers felt that as an artist, Ms. Harris embodied all that the show endeavors to deliver to its global audience.
Music City Roots Partners with The Loveless Barn
The official announcement came at the 2009 Americana Conference in Nashville, TN... Legendary WSM will carry the first new weekly live music show in over 40 years – Music City Roots, LIVE from the Loveless Cafe. The New York Times called the Americana music scene “the coolest music scene” today. Upcoming acts include a who’s who in the Americana, Bluegrass, and Alternative Country world. Loveless Cafe entrepreneur Tom Morales says, “It’s the most exciting movement we’ve seen in a long time.
