Country music or what young people know as Alternative Country or Alt country

[zenikoy]

Interesting read on alt.country, Wilco's AM 20th anniversery and how the infant internet played a role:

https://medium.com/cuepoint/booting-up-alt-country-s-online-dance-d4c5ef87d743

 

I can certainly remember back to participating in newsgroups like alt.music.replacements and alt.music.wilco back in '97. Funny how newsgroups died, mainly killed by trolls, spammers and the text only format. To be replaced by more controllable (a good thing) forums like this.

Edited April 3, 2015 by enikoy

[keyse1]

here is a good summnation of Gram Parsons with a couple of paragraphs about singing that is well worth reading

helps explain where the hundreds of Alt Country music bands come from and a bit about what they are the alternative too

it is long but worth it

f Gram Parsons knew when he scribbled those words in a 1972 letter that 21 years later country music's biggest stars would record a best-selling tribute album to the Eagles, he probably would have been aghast. Though his oft-stated desire was to introduce pure, unadulterated country to rock audiences, Parsons inadvertently helped bring California rock to mainstream country.

Most likely, Parsons would have agreed with Elvis Costello's assessment in the notes to a 1982 Parsons compilation: "In the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram Parsons helped create a Frankenstein's Monster." Costello is among a remarkable collection of artists who have contributed to Return Of The Grievous Angel: A Tribute To Gram Parsons, due out July 13 on Almo Sounds. (It's the second Parsons tribute disc to be released this decade, following Rhino Records' Conmemorativo project of 1993.)

Overseen by Parsons' greatest protege and acolyte, Emmylou Harris, Return of the Grievous Angel features renditions of his songs by '90s acts including Beck, Gillian Welch, Wilco and Whiskeytown, as well as artists from the generation right behind Parsons including Costello, Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams -- all of whom, like Parsons, have tenaciously followed their artistic muses, damn the commercial consequences. These are the people for whom Parsons' message and music have been the most profound.

"Gram would be horrified by the state of country music today," says Harris, co-executive producer of the album along with Almo general manager Paul Kremen. "But he'd have a big ol' smile on his face to hear Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle and a lot of the great stuff out there that you won't hear on mainstream country radio."

In the last seven years of his way-too-short life, Gram Parsons (who died of a drug overdose at 26 on August 19, 1973) broke all the rules to make music his way. As a member of the International Submarine Band, the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, and subsequently as a solo artist, he wasn't afraid to pull out the stops to put across a song -- letting his voice break and sublimating his sorrows with drink and drugs, but unleashing his emotional highs and lows in his music.

Though classic country was decidedly uncool among rock audiences in the late '60s, Parsons became its biggest proselytizer. Into the twangy mix he added a soulful R&B feel and Dylan-influenced lyrics, creating what he called "Cosmic American music." As he also wrote in the aforementioned 1972 letter, "My feeling is there is no boundary between 'types of music'...I see two types of sounds -- good ones & bad ones."

When Parsons began forging his musical vision in the mid-'60s, country, R&B and rock audiences were about as stratified as you could get. Each looked suspiciously at the other; Merle Haggard, one of country's great songwriters, had scored the topical crossover hit "Okie From Muskogee". Most country and rock fans didn't get the irony in the song but saw it as an anti-longhair ode. The 1970 film Five Easy Pieces also played up the hipster vs.hick angle, via Karen Black's Tammy Wynette-loving dum-dum waitress.

Parsons, raised in Georgia and Florida, was weaned on C&W and R&B. A pivotal moment for him as a kid, then known as Gram Connor (before his world changed on Christmas Eve 1958 when his daddy Coon Dog Connor took his own life), was seeing Elvis Presley at the Waycross, Ga., City Auditorium in 1956. An impressionable nine-year-old, the boy soaked up the gospel/C&W/R&B brew that was nascent rock & roll and carried it through all his adolescent combos -- the Ventures-esque Pacers, the rockabilly Legends and the Kingston-Trio-styled Shilos -- and later as a Greenwich Village folkie.

Parsons didn't start playing country music until 1965, in the Ivy-covered confines of Cambridge, Mass., where he was briefly enrolled at Harvard. By age 18, he'd already suffered just about as much tragedy as the protagonists of the most maudlin C&W weepers: After his father's death, his mother married Robert Ellis Parsons, a fast-talking, sharp-dressing smoothie who adopted Gram and his sister Avis and changed their last name to Parsons -- even replacing Connor Sr.'s name with his on their birth certificates. Gram's mother drank herself to death over the next few years; she died the day Gram was graduated from high school. His freshman year at college, he got the news his sister had been shuttled off to boarding school after his stepdad married the babysitter who was hired to look after the daughter he had with Gram's mother. (Soon after, sister Avis fled home when threatened with institutionalization in a mental hospital for getting herself pregnant.)

No wonder country -- and the deep soul of Stax/Volt R&B -- struck a chord with Parsons. Inspired by his beautiful late mother, he wrote the bittersweet 1965 ballad "Brass Buttons" (which, surprisingly, he didn't record until several years later; it appeared on the posthumously released Grievous Angel). At Harvard, Parsons found an audience for his long-buried repertoire of old gospel songs and Hank Williams classics in a student advisor named Jet Thomas. Years later, Thomas told writer Ben Fong-Torres for his 1991 Parsons biography Hickory Wind that Gram "was a cultural outlaw doing country music and talking about it as a form of white spiritual music."

Meeting like-minded musicians on the scene, Parsons credited Boston as being where "I passed my identity crisis and came back to country music....[The musicians there] had their ears open and they actually reintroduced me to country music after I had forgotten about it for ten years. And the country singers like George Jones, Ray Price and Merle Haggard -- they're great performers, but I had to learn to dig them. And that taught me a lot."

His Boston band (The Like) relocated to New York and became the International Submarine Band. But only after the group moved to California did the music began to jell, beginning with Safe At Home. Cut in 1967 and issued in 1968 by Lee Hazlewood's LHI Records, the album featured a very loose-knit band, but Gram's deep-down soul came across. He was already writing such straight-ahead country tunes as the Hank-inspired numbers "Do You Know How It Feels To Be Lonesome" (a la Williams) and "Luxury Liner" (a la Snow). Safe At Home also featured two Johnny Cash songs; the following year, Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline included a collaboration with Cash.

The ISB didn't last long, and Parsons joined the Byrds in the wake of David Crosby's departure from that band. As fellow Byrd Chris Hillman recalls, "Roger [McGuinn] thought he was hiring a piano player but instead, as he's said, 'We got George Jones in a Nudie suit.'" Though his one album with the band, Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, is peppered with Parsons' compositions and song choices, it doesn't accurately reflect the sway he held in the group. That much becomes obvious upon listening to the 1997 reissue of the album, which includes alternate takes with Parsons on numerous lead vocals.

Hillman recalls being immediately knocked out by Parsons. "He had a great insight into country, real country music as well as R&B...the working man's songs, both of which, of course, came out of the church." Parsons and Hillman's collaborations in the Flying Burrito Brothers, which they formed in 1968 after they left the Byrds, resulted in a blueprint for today's roots-rockers, particularly on their 1969 debut, The Gilded Palace Of Sin.

"The best thing about the Burrito Brothers experience," Hillman says, "was that I plugged into Gram's insight into more R&B stuff, where he would take a song like 'Do Right Woman', which was really a woman's song, and perform it with a man's point of view. Gram gave that and 'Dark End Of The Street' -- these beautiful rhythm & blues ballads -- a country presentation, which really worked wonderfully. That's where he shined. He shined at that, and his knowledge and taste in music was impeccable. It certainly opened my eyes to blending country and R&B."

The Burritos began playing around the shitkicker clubs in Southern California's San Fernando Valley, where they jammed with Delaney & Bonnie and a group of Oklahoma-bred musicians including Leon Russell and Bobby Keys. "Gram discovered Bonnie & Delaney in a little club in the Valley," Hillman recalls, "and he literally dragged me there to see them. And there was J.J. Cale sitting down on the stage playing lead guitar and Bobby Keys who later played with the Stones. What a great-sounding act."

In the meantime, the Burritos, gussied up in Nudie suits, were struggling to find an audience. "We would play Hispanic dances in El Monte, California, and we played a prison with Bonnie & Delaney," Hillman remembers. "We couldn't get arrested when we were together -- but we did get arrested once, literally. We were gonna do a high school assembly in the San Fernando Valley and we got arrested because we looked funny. They took us to jail! We were the Marilyn Manson of '69!"

Judging from live bootleg recordings, the Burritos crashed through Dixie-fried rave-ups and emoted ragged, raw country soul. They were a far cry from the Nashville countrypolitan sound of the time, and from what would become commercial country-rock. "We were caught inbetween," says Hillman. "It was too country to get on FM rock radio, which was emerging then, and Nashville hated us. It wasn't slick, polished stuff; we weren't good enough to be on the radio."

On a recording of a show at San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom, Gram's Southern drawl urged the audience to knock down the walls that stood between them and country music. Many who saw the Burritos live still rhapsodize about the experience. today. James Austin, a Rhino exec responsible for such box sets as The Buck Owens Collection, The Sounds Of the West, and most recently The Roy Rogers Collection, recalls discovering the band in Los Angeles and being blown away: "I saw Gram and the Burritos at the Ash Grove, with Bukka White opening, and at the Troubadour, but the most memorable one was in 1969 at the Brass Ring in Sherman Oaks. It was a weeknight and there was nobody there; more people were onstage than in the audience. The band was great. Gram didn't seem to care that nobody was there; he just played his heart out. During intermission he happened to walk over and sit down at the table right next to me. When I told him how much I loved his music and wondered about the next Burritos release, he looked me right in the eye and talked as if I was his only fan. He was very polite and sweet; it was like, 'Oh this is a fan of mine and I want to give him my full undivided attention.'"

"When I first met this kid, he was the cleanest guy in the world," says Hillman of Parsons. "He was hard-working -- a great guy. It was a good collaboration at that point because we were leading fairly normal lifestyles and most of the songs were written in the daytime. One guy would get an idea and we'd work on it. For example, Gram got his draft notice, so we sat down and wrote 'My Uncle'. I still look back at that as a very productive time working with him. The best vocal Gram ever did was 'Hot Burrito #1' and '[Hot Burrito] #2'. He put his heart into it. Cut the same night. I walked in, and he and Chris Ethridge had worked on those two and my mouth just fell open. "

And then things happened where we couldn't quite work that well together. He just went nuts."

By all accounts, Parsons was the ultimate fan when it came to the Rolling Stones -- and as he and Keith Richards bonded over music and amusements, it spelled the end to his tenure in the Burritos, not long after the Burritos played Altamont at Richards' behest. After missing gigs and showing up a mess one too many times, Parsons got his walking papers soon after the Burritos recorded their second album, 1970's Burrito Deluxe, which featured the definitive version of the Stones' "Wild Horses". "He had the talent, he had the spark," Hillman sighs. "He had no discipline."

That character flaw may have come in handy over the next couple years playing Richards' drug buddy and listening board during sessions for the Stones' Exile On Main Street in the South of France. When Parsons came back to California and returned to the studio in 1972 with ingenue Emmylou Harris, all the veneer had been stripped away from his voice; the indulgences had taken their toll. Yet his soul-stirring duets with Harris probably gained in emotional power as a result: Her pure, crystalline soprano meshed perfectly with his world-weary honey-crackle.

Their first album together, 1973's GP, documents the dissipated vet teaching the eager young student about real country music. "I was the audience he wanted to reach," says Harris, who had performed primarily as a folkie until her collaboration with Parsons. "I hadn't really heard [country]. I couldn't get past the layers and country music being politically incorrect. I grew up with rock 'n' roll and folk and was a huge Bob Dylan fan. But Gram really did bring the whole rock sensibility -- not just the attitude and lyrics, but the whole culture into this other culture. He really had one foot in each culture.

Gram showed me that you can bring all those influences together if you have a focal point. And what he gave me was learning how to sing and how to phrase. I got this point of departure that I didn't have before. Gram's writing brought his own personal generation's poetry and vision into the very traditional format of country music and he came up with something completely different."

This juxtaposition between musical cultures comes across vividly on tapes of live shows Parsons and Harris played with the Fallen Angels, some of which are documented on the Sierra Records album Live 1973 and various performance bootlegs. Raucous medleys of Chuck Berry tunes found a home next to trucker songs and old gospel numbers, while torchy ballads such as Boudleaux Bryant's "Love Hurts" and "Sleepless Nights" became Parsons/Harris masterpieces.

Harris says her transcendent harmonies with Parsons came about through "osmosis": "Just by singing with him," she says, "I learned that you plow it under and let the melody and the words carry you. Rather than this emoting thing, it will happen on its own. As you experience life and know more, then it's gonna come out almost unconsciously as you sing. You have to have restraint in how you approach a song. On 'That's All It Took', I was still into it being very dramatic and that I must go up very high. And Gram said, 'You know what? On this last tag, let's just voice it down.' That's one of the few things I remember him telling me to do specifically. Basically, less is more -- which is a cliche, but a cliche because it's true."

Of the Fallen Angels' one brief tour, Harris says she learned other kinds of lessons. "It started out pretty grim, because we had a week of rehearsal before we went out, but Gram was not a very disciplined person. He loved to just sit and play, and we'd just play a lot of songs with no beginnings or ends or arrangements. I'd never gone on the road before, so I just thought this is the way it's done; I just thought some magical thing happens when you walk out onstage.

"We were fired from our first gig in Boulder because it was just a train wreck. So we got on the bus and went down to Austin early and we rehearsed. And that night we rocked the Armadillo World Headquarters -- we got so many encores we had to go out and start the show over again since we didn't know any more songs. After that it was great."

Off the road, Parsons and Harris returned to the studio in the summer of 1973 to record the masterful Grievous Angel. "The first album was not as planned out as the second one," Harris recalls. "I was still learning a lot. We worked stuff out -- while we were on the road, we worked up a couple of things, like 'Love Hurts', that ended up on Grievous Angel, which we recorded only a couple of months before his death."

Parsons' last album sounds as powerful today as it was when released in 1974. Harris, of course, has been spreading the word ever since. "I tried to carry on as best I could as his student," she says, "and follow some kind of inner barometer that he instilled in me. Gram really bequeathed me an extraordinary life. He will always hold an extremely special place in my life and in my heart -- and as an artist, certainly."

Harris is the most obvious example of an artist who has taken Parsons' heritage to the masses, but Hillman suggests Dwight Yoakam has played a similar role, if in a somewhat different manner. "Of all the people out there, I sort of look at Yoakam as being the Gram Parsons that worked -- the operating model," Hillman says. "He's a very good artist and has that insight into what is very true and focused, as far as the music. He planned his career out and did quite well, and never sacrificed any integrity doing so."

Clearly, though, Parsons' legacy has resonated most strongly in the American underground. It's unlikely alt.country as we know it today would exist without the influence of Gram Parsons. "Every once in a while you hear somebody do something that has as much to do with Gram Parsons' take on country as it has to do with George Jones or Merle Haggard," Elvis Costello points out. "Particularly when the rock 'n' roll people do it, like 'Tear Stained Eye' by Son Volt on their first record. That sounds like Gram. Or 'Pray For Me Mama, I'm A Gypsy Cowboy Now' by Jason & the Scorchers -- it sounds exactly like Gram."

Says Hillman, "On this [tribute] album, when I heard Wilco's 'One Hundred Years From Now', I said, 'Boy, they really captured that early Burritos sound -- that live sound we used to have onstage. Nobody was doing that then; it was so out of left field. It was loose, but it was full of energy and life. Wilco really caught that for me."

Harris hopes the tribute album will lead more people to the original recordings, just as his work turned her on to the Louvin Brothers and Merle Haggard. "Gram really didn't put out a massive body of work," says Harris, "but it's like what Spencer Tracy said in Pat And Mike: 'There's not much meat on her, but what there is is choice.'"

[ferchersan]

@@keyse1

 

Good post mate. 

 

I saw this on Emma Swift's Facebook feed yesterday:

 

Keith Richards on Gram Parsons: "That mutherfocker could make chicks cry. I have never seen another man who could make hardened old waitresses at the Palomino Club in Los Angeles shed tears the way he did." 

 

Cheers,

Leigh

[keyse1]

Green green grass of home by one of the world's great singers

Makes Tom Jones sound cheerful

A serious teenage delinquent Haggard spent 3 years in prison for break and enter and was a member of the audience when JC came to play

In fact Johnny Cash once told Merle that he was the man and had led the life that people thought that he had

Famous amongst people who don't like country music for the song Oakie From Muskogee

One of Gram Parsons heroes whose singing style he tried to get his sound around

A country music God

[keyse1]

@@keyse1

 

Good post mate. 

 

I saw this on Emma Swift's Facebook feed yesterday:

 

Keith Richards on Gram Parsons: "That mutherfocker could make chicks cry. I have never seen another man who could make hardened old waitresses at the Palomino Club in Los Angeles shed tears the way he did." 

 

Cheers,

Leigh

Parsons and Richards were very good friends around the time the Stones made those 4 great records

Unlike the usual Stones associates not only could Gram afford to pay for his own drugs but had a ready supply of very high quality drugs because he was independantly rich

According to one story they spent a couple of days in the same bed trying to kick their habits

GP is one of the most wasted lives in music with a family straight out of some gothic Southern tragedy and one of the saddest voices in American music

Go and see Emmylou Harris in Sydney she still burns his musical flame

[ferchersan]

Hi @@keyse1,

 

I did have listen to the GP album for the first time after reading your earlier posts. While it wasn't what I was in the mood for at the time, I did enjoy bits of it. I will give it another go, along with Grievous Angel.

 

Cheers,

Leigh 

[keyse1]

Wait for a rainy day or a broken heart

It all makes sense then

[ferchersan]

Good advice.

 

I've also been meaning to check out some Flying Burrito Brothers... 

 

It's all on TIDAL, I've just saved a playlist on my phone. 

 

Cheers,

Leigh

[keyse1]

Good advice.

 

I've also been meaning to check out some Flying Burrito Brothers... 

 

It's all on TIDAL, I've just saved a playlist on my phone. 

 

Cheers,

Leigh

They only made one good record the first one

Contains my favourite song Sin City

In Hot Burrito song GP's voice breaks

As it does on Love Hurts with Emmylou on his record Grievous Angel which is how I think of GP

[ferchersan]

I just added "The Gilded Palace of Sin & Burritos" album to my TIDAL Playlist. 

 

I see it also contains *that* version of Wild Horses too.

 

Thanks @@keyse1

 

Cheers,

Leigh

[keyse1]

Went to see Emmylou Harris and Rodnet Crowell last night

I have only seen a handful of concerts better than this over the last 40 years or more

So much country music history wrapped around Emmylou

from the very first lessons in it from Gram Parsons 40 years ago she has remained true the Hank Williams Patsy Cline and the early bluegrass players

Enormously successful at first she simply disappeared from country music radio in the late 70's when the music turned insipid and relied on belt buckles and large hats to find an audience

And remains that way today with such a rigid hold on country music now that real country music has to be prefixed by the description Alternatve or even worse a new word altogether Americana

Always a traditionalist and a champion of great songwriters she is among the last of a kind now along with Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson

last night covered a lot of her history and that of singer songwriters across the decades and the Gram Parsons duets with Rodney Crowell were moving and the songs from their 2 records as a duo are as emotions and heartfelt as anything from the past

Crowell has written a lot of great songs and none better than Until I Gain Control Again which is up there with Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan in the writing stakes

We were in the the 3rd ro w a few metres from the stage in a half empty room and an audience as old as me with only a few young

people

Alternate country or Americana players are a dime a dozen now but

it takes decades of playing and remaking true to your self to have songs sound so real and have their emotional impact make such a large space seem so small

[keyse1]

Spent a few days last week listening to bluegrass music from the 70's on iTunes free music player

Now waiting for the results to arrive via fishpond

In the meantime courtesy of my brother in law

Bluegrass heaven

[keyse1]

Country music heaven

5 CDs of Emmylou in the 80's

4 CDs of Guy Clark from 80's

2 new CDs of Sturgil Simpson sounds a bit like Waylon Jennings

Have to get a few hours in early to watch Joel Parkinson at 3.30 in South Africa

[keyse1]

This is a great record by JC from 1982 towards the end of his recording career with Columbia

[Saxon Hall]

Green green grass of home by one of the world's great singers

Makes Tom Jones sound cheerful

A serious teenage delinquent Haggard spent 3 years in prison for break and enter and was a member of the audience when JC came to play

In fact Johnny Cash once told Merle that he was the man and had led the life that people thought that he had

Famous amongst people who don't like country music for the song Oakie From Muskogee

One of Gram Parsons heroes whose singing style he tried to get his sound around

A country music God

He probably does not belong here but Jim Croce died tragically young. On a tribute album it was mentioned that he had always wanted to record an Okie from Muskogee. Sadly he never got around to it.

Anyway I love that song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iYY2FQHFwE

[Ancientflatulence]

His body is getting old, his voice is getting shaky ........ but the song is as strong as ever ....................... :)

 

[Tony ray]

Gone from Violent Femmes to Emmylou Harris Anthology

 

Cruising sunday arvo

[Saxon Hall]

Gone from Violent Femmes to Emmylou Harris Anthology

 

Cruising sunday arvo

Who would have thought? 

Add it up

[keyse1]

this is wonderful

sounds great too

for bluegrass lovers of the world

Though the claim that Old & In The Way’s self-titled 1975 debut was once the best-selling bluegrass album in history is bogus—it never came close to Eric Weissberg’s 1973 chart-topping Deliverance soundtrack—Old & In The Way arguably did as much good for the genre as Deliverance did damage. While it was Peter Rowan’s sweet silvery holler and the quintet’s close dynamics that sold the Stinson Beach supergroup to audiences, it was Jerry Garcia’s presence that sold the band’s live LP to hippies, and—in turn—linked banjos to beardos forevermore. Mandolinist David Grisman’s Acoustic Oasis label now offers complete downloads of the two October 1973 shows at San Francisco’s Boarding House that yielded the group’s initial album, and they are every bit as magical and essential as the three separate releases previously drawn from the gigs. There’s plenty of olde-tyme nostalgia, but also the rare bluegrass comfortable in its own contemporary skin. The band animates Rowan’s pro-dope yodels like “Lonesome L.A. Cowboy†and “Panama Red†with suitably longhaired grace. Garcia sweetly croons the Stanley Brothers’ “Angel Band†and then-new Johnny Russell single “Catfish John,†but mostly lays back and adds reedy baritone vocals and delighted banjo rolls to the ensemble. The real stars, though, are the infinitely warm recordings themselves, courtesy of late Dead soundbeam-wrangler and one-time LSD chemist Owsley Stanley. Inside a tangible stereo field, the quintet’s instrumental mesh is every bit as blended as the harmonies—a high, lonesome wholeness forever haunting the hills of

Edited July 22, 2015 by keyse1

[keyse1]

Edited July 22, 2015 by keyse1

[keyse1]

Sorry

Bungled the cover

[keyse1]

Raining cold outside

Inside valve amps red wine and bluegrass players

If I live to be 150 it won't be long enough for records like this

[keyse1]

This is funny

At his age

What is he an addict or something

Thank god for Willy Nelson

BRIARCLIFF, Texas - Relaxing at his ranch outside of Austin, Texas, country music legend Willie Nelson discussed his plans to enter the marijuana market this fall.

Nelson said that he made the decision after the sale of recreational marijuana became legal in Colorado and Washington state in 2012.

“We’re setting up businesses there,†Nelson said, explaining that he hopes to have what he’ll call “Willie’s Reserve†available by September in Colorado.

“This product is some of the best they have to offer up there,†he said.

Nelson said that he understands that there will be plenty of competition.

“You can go into any of the places in Colorado now and get good weed (and) smoke, (if) you want to," Nelson said.

He predicted that in less than a decade recreational marijuana will be available in every state.

“I never thought I’d see the day that pot would be legal anywhere in the United States,†he said.

“The bottom line is money, and once those old guys see how much money is being made in Colorado and Washington  -- all the places that it is legal --  they’ll say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. We may want to think about it,'†Nelson said, referring to lawmakers who are opposed to the legalization of marijuana.

But for him, he said it is about more than just money. It's about social acceptance of marijuana.

“It’ll generate talk, which is more important than money,†Nelson said.

Edited July 22, 2015 by keyse1

[keyse1]

Only in America

Only in Texas

[keyse1]

this is great

brand new possibly the best record i will hear this year

guaranteed to enhance your reputation as someone with impeccable music taste

buy it and be the only person you know that owns it

instant street cred amongst your friends

(i want them to be rich and famous enough to tour here soon)

 

 

The left hand invented rock'n'roll. That’s the hand that plays the bass lines on piano, the hand used by early keys pounders like Jerry Lee Lewis, Moon Mullican, and Fats Domino to put a little bit of boogie in their blues. That left hand gave "Great Balls of Fire" its lusty pep and "Blueberry Hill" its making-time thrill. So, when the Deslondes open their self-titled debut with a walking piano line played way, way down the left side of the keyboard, they’re not just playing a rhythm that sounds distinctive in 2015 but also conveying an entire pop history that spans New Orleans rhythm and blues, early Memphis rock, Louisiana Hayride country, and every pick-up jazz band ever to busk on Royal Street.

Plus, it just sounds damn good. "Fought the Blues and Won" lopes along on that syncopated bass line, which makes the band’s hangdog harmonies come off a bit more determined, even if they don’t sound quite triumphant. The blues will just show up again tomorrow, and they’re bracing for another fight. “It might hit you from all sides, or right between the eyes,†sings Riley Downing, one of four singers and five songwriters in the Deslondes. “Keep on going.â€

Using the piano as a rhythm section instrument certainly distinguishes the band from a lot of their country peers, who more often use it for melody or atmosphere. The Deslondes are highlights of an unlikely country scene based in New Orleans of all places, a city with a rich and renowned music history that includes everything but country. But a new generation of acts—including Hurray for the Riff Raff, Luke Winslow King, the Longtime Goners, and the late, lamented Sundown Songs—is marrying twang with Crescent City rhythms. The Deslondes cut their teeth in street bands busking for tourist change and in pick-up acts playing backyard barbecues, both of which can be laboratories for testing new ideas and distilling songs down to their essence.

So their debut introduces a band that sounds confident and fully formed. Every song contains some new flourish or some new idea to distinguish it, whether it’s the spidery pedal steel of "Low Down Soul", the spiky guitar riff that comes out of nowhere on "The Real Deal", or even the quiet clarinet solo that illuminates closer "Out on the Rise" from the inside. They take nothing about country or R&B or New Orleans for granted, but consider everything anew. "Less Honkin’ More Tonkin’" is too fast to really honkytonk to, and that’s okay because it’s about a traffic jam. Even "Louise", the most traditionally brokenhearted song here, is interrupted by a shuffling two-step guitar rhythm, as though the Deslondes know that the best thing about Johnny Cash wasn’t the clothes or the myth but the men backing him.

 

Somehow the country gospel of "Those Were (Could’ve Been) the Days" and the Morricone-on-the-cowboy-trail arrangement of "Time to Believe In" actually sound fresh in 2015. Even as these songs delve deep into the past, they never sound calculated or revivalist, which is refreshing after the parade of tweed jackets and uplifting choruses that have defined Americana for the last several years. Instead, The Deslondes sounds like something scavenged and salvaged, as though the band members found that walking bass line or that rockabilly rhythm just lying around on the street, unused and abandoned. They know it’d be a shame to let it go to waste.