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Why is it than when one of our own group finally hits it big, many of us immediately pounce on them and tear them limb from limb? Kathleen Edwards made a big leap into mainstream media a couple years ago. I hadn’t heard of her before. I liked her brooding aesthetic; not my fav but better than 99.9% of whatever songs the radio likes.

Yet why do we eat our young? As Edwards' mainstream press went up, her “indie” cred nosedived. We’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again. The terms “sell-out” and “poseur” get bandied about. The only way one of “us” could make it out in the cold hard world was to compromise our deeply held principles, to water down our art and craft to appeal to the uneducated masses.

I myself certainly join the chorus. I get jealous and bitter than my special friends suddenly have many new fans that don’t know a thing about how the artist got where they are. I was Country, when Country wasn’t cool. We should wish for the best for all our friends, that they might sing the gospel of Americana music to the great unwashed; go forth and bring new blood back into the fold.

I’ll try harder to not be a music snob…. Now if the masses would just get themselves educated!


The rest of this week’s best:

I got thru the E section into F. What more can I say about Jay Farrar? Not much. My musical taste seems to follow Mr. Farrar. Altho we’re about the same age, I lag his work by several years. This ain’t so bad, actually, since by the time I catch up with him I can usually find his CDs in a discount bin.

Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel is a fav of 3rd Coast Music’s John Conquest. Chicago and Austin in one alt.country band? Great roots music.

Jeff Finlin is an Americana singer/songwriter out of Colorado, who has put in a lot of time in Nashville, and is actually more popular over in the UK than here closer to home. I came by his disc thru a compadre at KRFC and regret that I didn’t make the effort to get him on the Americana radio show. Finlin’s had some time to find his sound, and he finds a bit of Tom Petty, a bit of Bruce Springsteen, and a bit of John Hiatt on last year’s Epinonymous. Very soundtrackable tracks. A bit more electric and a bit more horns than my usual fare, but a nice bit of roots rock overall.

The Mountain: Steve Earle and Del McCoury released this joint project back in ’99, combining Del’s hard-driving bluegrass with Earle’s hard-driving lyrcism, and a bunch o’ true blue sidemen (e.g. Jerry Douglas on dobro). It also leaves out Earle’s sermonizing, for the most part, or rather channels it into The Mountain. From the liner notes:
I wish I were as sure about anything as Bill Monroe was about everything. Of course Mr. Bill came by his self-assurance honestly. He alone, as far as I know, could claim to have single-handedly invented an American art form.
It’s like the ghost of Bill Monroe sat up and said, “Now Mr. Earle, that there ain’t no part of nothing’. Well said.

John Eddie’s last disc was aptly titled Who the Hell is John Eddie. His bio calls out his friendship with Asbury Park’s (here he is again) Springsteen (who himself has ventured into Americana-land). It says more to me that Tift Merrit contributes vocals to the project. One part comic, one part profane, this is grown-up music from a guy that’s been around the block and done his time on the bar scene. Sometimes he gets a bit too much into himself, but the standout tracks make up for it.

The Elders are a celtic/roots-rock party band out of Kansas City that hits the Midwestern college town circuit. A fav at KRFC, I haven’t caught them live but have only heard raves about their show.

And the rest:
Bill Passalacqua and Ginn Sisters should be back home by now. New album should be hitting radio next week. Call and bug your favorite Americana radio station, online, inline, wireline, whatever, just get him to play Blood Oranges from Austin’s Ginn Sisters.

Conquest reviewed Tom Russell’s new CD Love and Fear in May 3CM: “No artist in my ‘I Don’t Get It’ category is quite as divisive as Russell…. I just think he has a marked tendency to overreach the boundaries of his talent. This time round, he keeps it real with a rugged, sometimes brilliant, set of world-weary songs that resonate with honesty and are utterly lacking in pretension…. Of course, having said this, Love & Fear will turn out to be the album that Russell fans don’t like.”


Last but never by any means the least, Johnny Cash’s Personal File came out last week. A blast from the past of the Man in Black.

-jc