What Is This?

The story of American music is about as varied, complex, confounding, mysterious, and strange, as the stories of Americans themselves. The amazing music writer, Greil Marcus has written two invaluable volumes on the subject, which if it were up to me, would be required reading for any budding musician, music journalist/critic/blogger, or anyone who calls themselves a serious fan of popular music: "Mystery Train" and "The Old, Weird America". The two books delve deep into, not only subjects of more recent history, such as Bob Dylan, The Band, Sly and The Family Stone, and Elvis, but also into their forbearers--the composers of dark murder ballads, the forgotten or nearly forgotten blues singers, the musicians whose subject matter came directly from the depths of reality brought on by hard living. The stories have, at times, undertones of mythology and mysticism. They are a mixture of supreme truth and pure legend, and at times it's hard to know which is which.


Take for example the story of bluesman Robert Johnson. He was a real person. This is documented. But the legend of Robert Johnson, the mystery, the epic tale of his life, makes you really wonder if he was actually real or a character straight out of Homer, vaulted into the backdrop of the American South of the early 20th Century. Truth becomes a dicey operation with this story, but we like it this way, don't we? The music, the legend, the deal with the devil at the crossroads--what's real? Any of it? All of it? In the end, his personal story isn't the truth that matters. The truth that matters is the power of the music itself. It is a truth that defies explanation and cuts straight to the very essence of our beings. Some artists just have that way of taking something as simple as sound, and crafting it into something transcendent, elevating, at times disturbing, at times joyful in the purest of the sense. These troubadours, troublemakers, and (ultimately) truth-tellers, some known, some largely unknown, have helped in painting a record of where we have been, where we are going, and what we are at our very core. Much of this record has been preserved for posterity's sake in album, cd, mp3 form, but much of it, I'm convinced, though lost to memory and without recorded evidence of their existence, exists as hidden, engrained, unconscious influence on those who dare travel the road of the truth-telling musician.


What I'm trying to do here is pick up where the Alan Lomax's and Harry Smith's of the world left off. These two were great collectors and archivists of this vast pantheon known as "American Music". The 21st century has both made access to music like this, easier and harder. Easier, because access to a huge amount of music, is pretty much instantaneous. Hard because there is just so much of it, that it's like trying to classify the individual grains of sand at a beach to be the ones that are most distinctive, interesting, and "beach-worthy".


So it's best to narrow-cast a bit. While I'm not going to confine my search for today's under-the-radar, "Troubadours, Troublemakers, and Truth-tellers" to one particular genre, I am kind of looking for those who are carrying on the legacies of Robert Johnson, The Band, Townes Van Zandt, Gram Parsons, but not solely them. I am looking for those who carry a spirit within their music that could live side by side with them and with anything that could be found on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, but also for those who are crafting new stories. Or maybe telling the old stories, just in a different way. Or maybe just grabbing the baton that has been passed along to them and running with it. Who are those today who are crafting the myths and speaking the truth? Who are those who put to music and lyrics what it means to live as a 21st Century American? Who are the troubadours, who are liable to rattle a few cages, start a few fights, make a few enemies, but all in the grand pursuit of their art? They are the types that maybe you wouldn't want to bring home to Mom and Dad, but whom you can't pull yourself away from, all the same.



In putting out feelers for this project via Craig's List postings to cities all over the country, I've received some amazing results and heard some truly incredible music. My goal is to bring you some of those findings on a regular basis in podcast form (at least once a month, but once the ball gets rolling, hopefully more frequently). My goal is to find out what's out there. Though people will decry the end of the music industry and of radio as it's been known for the past several decades, music itself is as alive and vibrant as ever. I'm doing this because I absolutely love music. I have spent many an hour being inspired by the musicians I've mentioned above, but also by those I've seen at small venues, purely by accident. And it's these accidental, unexpected finds that are often the most powerful and long-lasting, in terms of their influence. The history of America is marked by outlaws, innovators, underdogs, outcasts, and unique blendings of all of those things and more. And our music, at it's core is all of these things as well. So I invite you to join me on this quest and to help me along the way in making recommendations of who should be featured. I look forward to having you as a traveling companion.