i want the name of the one person responsible for the white dude in the old man hat voice

cuz he's going straight to hell.

this one. this voice. you know the one. but instead of a passing thing it just keeps going and going. plus, i watch america's got talent pretty faithfully and man there are so many hat dudes on that show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbu7pJWvEeY

otm

dave matthews' offspring but, critically, not dave matthews i think

I knew that song but did not know the performer's name was Sean Hayes; now all I can picture is the dude from Will & Grace singing that in a super-flamboyant Broadway-ish manner (but with the exact same voice, just lots of jazz hands and a big phony smile). Try it, maybe you'll feel better about the actual sound.

haha i was about to say the same thing

When I read "white dude in old man hat" I thought of Scatman John. Why?

this guy is super popular around here. and he lives around here. and i like him better cuz he kinda reminds me of some blueeyed country rock soul 70's dude that i would like. but man it is a serious chord he hits in sensitive subaru white folks. he hits them where they live. a whole episode of parenthood - my fave white people problems show big time - had a major ray lamontagne sub-plot!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LWpw3CMCEg

but the hat dudes in general - ugh - it seems like such a strange voice to emulate. but there really are a ton of these guys with that same voice/style. it always strikes me as really cloying and creepycrawly and just tooclose in general. but, hell, i'm sure they all get laid a lot, so maybe i'm just jealous.

ray lamontagne is weirdly huge without seeming very famous. he's doing an episode of vh1 storytellers!

my wife has at least one of his albums but the only song of his i know is the one that was in a cute commercial with a dog and was i think sung by the super dorky american idol contestant with the curly hair and glasses a few years ago

threads like this make me wish i had the teevee, cuz i'm missing out on so much ;_;

okay, so dave matthews + john mayer, i guess. they are both going to hell. is there someone i'm missing?

jack johnson!!! he is like number-one offender.

well bruno mars too obviously, but that's kind of a given

norah jones

is there an inverse of this, an old white dude in a young man's hat voice

what other kind of white age/hat voice permutations are there I am interested in songs rather than pictures but both will prob make me happy

not quite there but i feel somehow in the bloodline: mick hucknall

I like this dude's music but think he prob fits this voice?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdTL8Lmle3A

HAHAHAH

that's not that bad. more of an indiequirky thing. the dude has probably read books or something.

great name too. is that his actual name or did he change it for maximum farmer hat?

dunno, he did strings for cat power or something, one of my friends from tennessee used to crash on his couch or he crashed on my friends couch but whatever thee were enough crashing and couch combinations for my friend to not shut up about this dude, I still listen to his albums once in a while

people love this dude around here. i don't think i'd actually ever heard him till i moved here. they have a radio station here called The River and they love all this rusticana stuff. he's an older dude though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm74Fi5ezqQ&feature=related

kinda sounds like not psychopathic gira

"the old man hat voice" -- thank you for this, I have been trying to come up with a way to describe it

oh sorry, I guess that's supposed to be read as the "white dude in the old man hat voice"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RxYhue726Q

this guy, this guy

I wouldn't want to lump Cat Stevens in with these guys, but isn't he partly to blame for this aesthetic?

I feel like Underrated Aerosmith must have opinions on Greg Brown. He's an Iowa dude, IIRC.

chicken fried verson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yp40F93bw8&feature=player_embedded#at=19

version

I blame that fucking asshat minstrel G Love.

slightly off-topic, but i was struck earlier by how eddie's thing here actually sounds like some 70's loner-folk thing. he kinda nails it. who knew?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3SxCph5I1Q

but you know i'm not letting eddie off the hook. he has some explaining to do in front of his maker when he shuffles off this mortal coil. this right here is a perfect storm of something something:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClQvD99aItg

m ward

Jerry Reed!

(j/k)

but seriously, Jerry Reed.

sean hayes was a cool guy when I met him playing around SF years ago. he had a song called alabama chicken with jolie holland (or at least, he did it with her when I saw him).

someone should make like an adam sandler-esque comedy about a smooth sean hayes type who gets hit in the throat with a golf ball or something and suddenly he always sings like a real weird old hat man like dock boggs

or even daniel johnston or that weird high-pitched goon from canned heat

i can't even really hear his voice in my head but isn't this jason mraz? i'm too scared to youtube him.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=9Ts&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&biw=1280&bih=647&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=jason+mraz+old+man+hat&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

Oh wait though where DOES M Ward fit into this? Is he too pitchfork indie to be lumped in with the "interesting" bro from the frat that plays guitar, which is basically the fanbase for the subject of this thread, besides the girls that are the only reason any of these guys started being musicians to get.

Confusing sentence, sorry. I'm saying the fan-base and the musicians are the same people basically. It's late, OK?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFbNESAySRM
marc broussard

first thing i thought of was ben harper

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYMYCUVuDYg

i would also like white women to stop trying to sing like billie holiday (wearing an old lady hat)

is there an inverse of this, an old white dude in a young man's hat voice

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, May 16, 2011 10:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

either me or my new OS are doing something wrong here.

soul singer in jughead hate youtube

ᎾᏍᎩ 5,340 ᏂᏚᎵᏍᏔᏅ ( 0.30 ᎢᏯᏎᏢᏊ)

this stuff is the worst but m ward shouldn't be mentioned as yes, he's too p4kian.

did Eagle Eye Cherry 'break' in the US back when?

he was the first thing I thought of re the thread title

Yes "Save Tonight" was a top 5 hit.

I think Ben Harper wins this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk3sJmept3k

Hats across the water

I blame Mississippi Gary

Uh oh the Bon Iver performance on Fallon totally gave me this vibe.

that shawn mullins shit

this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKHx3wJk6Zw

i like the one harlan t bobo album i have

one of these came on the radio the other day. some song a la rebecca black where the guy is in pajamas watching t.v. and he isn't gonna do anything cuz today is a day to do nothing or something? don't know the actual title. maria in the car: "Kids, this is the kind of song that your father and I really hate."

lotta different singing styles in this thread. is it whispery/gravelly old-man-ness? cuz we can maybe blame that on leonard cohen. and if it's an gotta have some bluesman affectation mixed in, then tom waits. sean hayes pushes the ancient, scratchy bluesiness way up, reminds me of both g-love and ben harper (did the the 90s give us a mini-boom in old man hats?), but also of contemporaries like davendra b.

Bon Iver, totally. I cannot stand the dude's voice.

First dude I thought of was Mraz. Some of the voices youtubed here are mort alt-folk-country, but I always think of the hat as signifying "I own some old jazz records." Plus, if you're going to make the hat the iconography for your product:

http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/jasonMRAZ-1.png

MORE alt-folk etc. Seriously half the GIS results have him in an old man hat.

Its true. The worst of them are the pop singer-songwriters who are a bit overboard on what they think sounds "jazzy" based on really cheesy cliche interpretations of the word. Its one approach to just being on the radio and TV and famous so they can attract "chicks."

I already made that last point sort of.

one of these came on the radio the other day. some song a la rebecca black where the guy is in pajamas watching t.v. and he isn't gonna do anything cuz today is a day to do nothing or something? don't know the actual title. maria in the car: "Kids, this is the kind of song that your father and I really hate."

― scott seward, Tuesday, May 24, 2011 5:10 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

"The Lazy Song" by Bruno Mars. #7 song in the country right now! he's kind of the corny dad rock pop hack of the top 40 world at the moment.

i have seen old men wearing hats like this. rocky balboa's boxing trainer used to wear one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3VjaCy5gck

anyway, this isn't that old man hat voice but more coldplay meets....someone. its "soulful" but it leave me a bowlful of cold. i'm probably just jealous that the ladies love him so.

Welcome my friends, to the good side of youtube.

hasa5x9 9 hours ago

this is the best cover i've ever heard, and it makes me feel Iceland in me, and Iceland is the peacefullest place i know, Thanks Bon!

Marian Sylvia 3 days ago

anyway, this isn't that old man hat voice but more coldplay meets....someone. its "soulful" but it leave me a bowlful of cold. i'm probably just jealous that the ladies love him so.

a lot of people who don't like bon iver would probably like him better if it weren't for the trappings of his "identity"/persona/whatever the fuck you call his social status, what it "means" to like bon iver. he's a remarkable singer and has a pretty great sense of rhythm and better phrasing than anybody from the indie side of the street has had in some time, although he does mush-mouth some & I get how people don't like that. but scott if I'd found his "i can't make you love me" in a vinyl bin at the salvation army & it was some private press think from '89 you'd be all "this cat has got something good" I'd wager.

you think?? maybe. i don't actually think he has a remarkable voice. but it could be that him reminding me of coldplay automatically makes me frown a little. which isn't his fault. unless he is consciously trying to remind me of coldplay. and then it is his fault. its the radiohead thing too. that keening hearfelt thing that never really grabs me. i used to think i kinda liked the radiohead dude's keening sadsack soul thing but i couldn't take years of it like some people. kid a and i was done. i have no problem with the little that i know about this guy. i know VERY little about the guy. the actual bon iver album stuff that i heard i didn't care for at all.

i liked tim buckley when i was younger. don't really listen to him now.

and tim buckley did the faux-blues dude AND the keening falsetto sad sack dude. holy toledo i have tim buckley to blame for everything! and then his antichrist son! no offense to their spirits in heaven. but i think i have found the culprits...

when tim would sing "well i wish i was a buzzin' flyyyyyyy" like the bastard son of al jolson and then move into that hilililili falsetto, it took some getting used to.

Scott, I think if you saw Bon Iver sing in a small room and didn't know it was him, you would go fucking nuts. I think that's also true of a lot of the people who completely "hate" him: he's just a stand-in for the stranglehold indie rock has on a certain niche in soundtracks and commercials. I should own up, I only have one record of his (the Blood Bank EP) but I saw him sing in a thing down here of other people's songs and I was like - holy shit - dude can belt - and then I gave a hard listen to "Blood Bank," and it's a killer tune with a super interesting lyric and this sort of clip-clop rhythm that's just classic private-press style. Bon Iver's falsetto is a good deal less piercing than Buckley's, it's really more in the Christopher Cross realm of high voices: lots more whisper in it.

But yeah I think you, just knowing your tastes, you don't hate Bon Iver. You hate "Bon Iver."

I've never heard a Bon Iver song. Should I?

Ha, I just remembered that I actually have a copy of For Emma, Forever Ago on my iTunes. I'm not sure if I've ever listened to it. Maybe I should. My friend likes to compare Bon Iver to 80s Chicago, which actually intrigues me a little.

get in the mood for james blake & bon iver 'fall creek boys choir'

I blame this dude. It ain't easy being green.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lEXGZWAZUgk/TyLiOhV49OI/AAAAAAAAJdM/ttyIH394ZRI/s1600/Kermit-Reporter.jpg

I tend to group this stuff with other VH1 "You Oughta Know" (TM) music, like this kinda 'half-there' music so devoid of culture or any distinguishing characteristics - beyond an empty signifying at 'emoting' - that I still can't quite picture how it'll come across looking back on it

like yesterday's easy listening/soft rock/adult pop - Phil Collins, Sting - at least had some sense of culture or zeitgeist to it

other than the occasional fedora or whatever, contemporary adult pop is so remarkably featureless. although I guess Phil Collins felt this way for a lot of adults back in the day?... as a kid that stuff was actually kind of magical, in a way I can't imagine Gavin McGraw or Jason Mraz being now

well also phil and sting's music was just made better. and they'd been at it forever. phil started making music in the 60's! and sting played with jazz bands for years in the early 70's before joining the police. they had history. by the time they hit it big in the 80's (on their own) they had been through a lot. and i think you can hear that in someone's voice. young and fresh is fine for pop music, but if you are going for aching and soulful young and fresh sounds weird. or even strangely dishonest. unless you're a genius. or have a genius voice. or been through a ton of bad shit. not saying you have to have bad shit cred to sing aching and soulful sadsack songs, just that a lot of these guys sound uh ahistorical to me.

to be honest, actual teenagers do aching and soulful way better than 20 or 30-something hat dudes. just cuz they are genuinely bummed out 24/7.

yeah but scott just 'cause you're not acquainted with somebody's apprenticeship doesn't mean it didn't happen - I know people who've been making music with Bon Iver dude for fifteen years.

I've never heard a Bon Iver song. Should I?

this is Ph1l, right? I don't think you would dig it. But I think Scott would, a great deal, if the artist weren't NOTED GRAMMY WINNER AND HERO TO THE INDIE FOLK EVERYWHERE, BON IVER. And would tell other people to give it a chance.

I always quietly blame Tom Waits for the hat + young old man schtick.

i just feel like i can hear life experience in someone's voice. am i crazy? and i feel like a lot of these guys want to sound world-wearier than they are. it feels schticky. they should listen to that red house painters dude. he was young when he made those albums in the 90's, right? but he was really good at conveying supreme bummed outness and beauty for some reason. beyond his years. maybe he was just born with more soul or something. for most people listening, this is not a concern. at all. i'm just weird. and i am not an authenticity nut. i love bob dylan and the dead and they wanted to sound like 80 year old sharecroppers when they were younger and i have no problem with it. its execution in the end. how good you are at it. tom waits was good at it.

i just feel like i can hear life experience in someone's voice. am i crazy? and i feel like a lot of these guys want to sound world-wearier than they are. it feels schticky.

i get this, but almost every singer who reached greatness before the age of 25 basically did amazing things by pretending to sound world-wearier than they really were.

They all seem like they're playing Tom Waits dress-up to me. And TW was playing dress-up, so that's a couple extra layers removed from the people they were dressing up as, which is what makes them seem phony maybe?
I dunno.

"i get this, but almost every singer who reached greatness before the age of 25 basically did amazing things by pretending to sound world-wearier than they really were."

yeah they were better at it than these guys.

these guys should act their age. i'd like them better.

true, i'm just saying it's not categorically a sin

no, not at all. how old were some of my favorite rappers when i thought they were gods on mountaintops? probably a good percentage of them were my age or younger. i already feel like i've learned stuff from kendrick lamar as a writer.

i am the the same age as rakim. rakim was 800 friggin' years old when i worshipped him. i never would have known we were the same age back then.

i was so flipped out when i was doing my thing on todd terry for the emp conference and i found out he's only a year older than me. that's genius for you!

I have a weird thing with music, I love to listen to Korn, The Amity Affliction, Parkway Drive and then I just fall in love with Bon Iver. But what's not to like? :3

CoolWhhhiip 5 hours ago

kinda tempted to find out what the amity affliction might be...

seems like i'm far from the biggest hater of bon iver on here!

get in the mood for james blake & bon iver 'fall creek boys choir'

and i don't hate the guy. i listened to the album everyone loved - or parts of it - just to see what the hubbub was about and it was blah to me. and hearing the bonnie raitt thing...

and no i don't have anything against bonnie raitt. (bonnie a young white girl who dropped out of radcliffe and played in little clubs for a couple of years with people like fred mcdowell and tried to sound like an eldery black woman and almost immediately (2 years or so) got a nice deal with warner brothers and was the daughter of broadway royalty.) she had some catchy tunes.

kinda tempted to find out what the amity affliction might be...

They're a metalcore band from Australia. They're on Roadrunner. This is their new single, from their next album which will be out October 2 in the US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2BI3Fww1vA

i'm worried about my boy rufus. have to make sure he doesn't try to sneak any john mayer albums home.

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/485700_10151233250225908_473502823_n.jpg

white dude in the old man hat voice in the top 10 right now

http://necropedia.org/jdd/public/documents/celebrities/1525.jpg

awesome, awesome picture, scott.

jack johnson!!! he is like number-one offender.

― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Tuesday, May 17, 2011 1:28 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Regarding this motherfucker. Fuck, the first time I heard any Jack Johnson songs I was 22 and I was going through a really bad breakup and they played a block of his tunes on an NPR station. And I was like, "Wow, it's cool that they're giving this sad old middle-aged man a chance. He sounds like he's going through a mid-life divorce or something. You don't hear about too many new artists who are this old.

Oh, so the further point being that I was like "I'm going to go listen to this middle-aged man break-up music now" and because this was during the height of audiogalaxy, I just downloaded a bunch of his songs and listened to them in this middle-aged man context for a while and it wasn't until a few months later that I found out he was just a couple years older than me.

It's the Mike Love look.

'white dude in old man hat' is this guy to me:

http://anthropology.ua.edu/blogs/matthewgreenemeier/files/2012/09/home-improvement-wilson2.jpg

anyway, all these dudes are disgusting savages. i'd totally listen to wilson from home improvement's acoustic musings, though.

what a tragedy it is that earl hindman is dead while newton faulkner still walks the earth.

awesome, awesome picture, scott.

cosign

Regarding this motherfucker. Fuck, the first time I heard any Jack Johnson songs I was 22 and I was going through a really bad breakup and they played a block of his tunes on an NPR station. And I was like, "Wow, it's cool that they're giving this sad old middle-aged man a chance. He sounds like he's going through a mid-life divorce or something. You don't hear about too many new artists who are this old.

"He probably has to live in some sad, little apartment and only see his kids on Wednesdays or something..."

I saw a copy of Murry Wilson's album, the other day.

Thought better of it.

decided to google this (well known but i don't pay attention) cunt after hearing his voice in the pub every fucking day for the last three years - and he's english! what a cock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZp6dhheriM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRxccy-zcJ8

fuck. i've suffered so you should too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZp6dhheriM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRxccy-zcJ8

it's like watching a computer generated singer songwriter

i watched 30 seconds of the first video and that was enough.

This remains one of my favorite ILM threads. I say 'young man in an old man hat' to myself all the time. It's like one of the three modern diagnoses.

I can't outright hate Jack Johnson bc when my coworker's 6 yo son was on his deathbed (fuck cancer) Johnson called him on the phone and sang his favorite song to him (kid super loved JJ). I don't ever wanna hear his music but that was a nice thing to do.

aw, that is really nice. his curious george album sucks though. i bought that for rufus years ago thinking it was gonna be songs about, you know, curious george.

I actually like "Upside Down," Jack's closing credits song for "George." Probably couldn't deal with a whole album of stuff like that though.

I thought this thread was going to be about Jimmy Durante

Thread scarily prescient in presaging the rise of the Lumineers.

old man take a look at my hat, I'm a lot like you were

http://www.yeproc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/The-Happiness-Waltz_cover-384x350.jpg

that looks like a guy i went to high school with in an old man hat

Also looks a bit like Woody_Harrelson_stupid_hat.jpg

http://stupidhats.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/woody_harrelson_stupid_hat.jpg

Does Phosphorescent dude have an old man hat voice?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbyFTz1m5Ac

dude outside my store harrassing people on the sidewalk for Oxfam is totally wearing an old man hat and singing in an old man hat voice. i kid you not. God is punishing me!!

don't worry - he will get his comeuppance for singing at a job that requires no singing whatsoever

http://gawker.com/only-nine-people-have-given-to-zosia-mamets-hipster-ba-510278912?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Clearly it was Leon Redbone

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll88/JollyvilleChick/Squidoo/LeonRedbone/LeonRedbone_JohnKnox_1.jpg

that's a v nice old man hat imo tho

I think he pulls of that look much better than these johnny-come-lately scruffamuffins

Love Redbone. Yeah his look/act is kind of a schtick, but he's so great at doing what he does. Him and Dan Hicks.

at least he appears to be aiming for the same thing the bluesmen he's imitating were aiming for, i.e. trying to dress well

I mean jfc compare with the shitsmeared mug of the happiness waltz dude

http://images.aloud.com/v3/artists/310x174/ben_kenney.jpg

After a successful US headline tour; Incubus’ Ben Kenney has announced details of a debut UK tour for September.

The writer, musician, multi-instrumentalist and Incubus bass player is currently working on his fifth solo studio album and has just released new track "Concord" which has been trending on Reverbnation in the US.

Meanwhile Ben is set to release a brand new EP "Leave On Your Make Up" later this year following his UK tour.

my local guitar shop has a hat rack full of old man hats. they also sell a shitload of ukes.

lol, I'm picturing heading out the door with my new uke and the salesman is like "Wait...you're gonna need one of these."

He's a musician, a multi-instrumentalist AND a bass player? What talent!

he's a human, a homo sapien, AND a man too!

I saw Ben when he was with the Roots. Thought he was pretty good with a guitar, actually.

here's an entire long boring dvd of that guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT3vkyvPWYE

Boy, ninety seconds in and I'm glad that he didn't have a mic when he was in the Roots.

man, incubus dude has FIVE solo records? that is the most frightening thing to me.

holy shit leon redbone looks like marc maron in that pic upthread

For reasons I have yet to fully analyse I find the middle eight of this particularly offensive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahx77Mf2L9c

Also deeply annoying when people with almost caricature american singing voices turn out to be from the fucking midlands.

He attributes his distinctive voice to a severe bout of whooping cough that nearly killed him when he was a baby

Oh sure whooping cough always pushes your accent 5000 miles further west.

that song is like being in au bon pain at 6am and hating life

U guys should have seen the faces this guy I just saw made while straining to sing old man hat style

did we solve this? was it m. ward? that's even an old hat dude name.

I was thinking about going to see Sturgill Simpson on Wed, but not only is it sold out, he's opening for this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzmOZQdcYY

I really can't take this shit, I think it might be my least favorite genre of music.

That is the epitome of old man hat music. Absolutely no regard for the times, except to hire a video guy who makes it look like one long instagram photo. Shit.

this is like watching josh charles trying to audition for the role of lightnin hopkins

"no regard for the time" = exactly. It's like this guy thinks that "Americana" is an actual genre of music that was popular in the nineteenfthoriftties

Something about this bill is making me IA. Sturgill Simpson is so the opposite of this guy -- legit outlaw country expertly played/sung.

surprised the sturge is opening that bill, pokey just seems so run-of-the-mill

yeah. it's sold out too, wonder if it's more for him than pokey.

I don't really like these songs but I feel that with time I could train myself to like them and to understand what distinguishes the successes among the young men with old man hats from the failures.

i hate that video/song a lot, i shut it off two seconds after he started singing

jack wall2 months ago
a breath of fresh air in a world of crap music
Reply · 1

Tenacious V5 months ago (edited)
This song makes me wanna spit nickels and whistle Dixie out my asshole!
Reply · 2

RobertJStewart106 months ago
These guys have a truly unique sound, that is both jaunty and authentic.

fasteddie41451 month ago
My girl and I saw Pokey and the boys at a music festival in town. You could tell from the expression on people's faces that they had no clue what to expect....I elbowed my girl lightly and said "watch their faces when the band starts" as expected 2 Pokey fans entered that tent and 502 Pokey fans exited that tent.....

"no regard for the time" = exactly. It's like this guy thinks that "Americana" is an actual genre of music that was popular in the nineteenfthoriftties

Or as I like to call it: The Nineteenthrifties

This song makes me wanna spit nickels and whistle Dixie out my asshole!

Music that good, AND it aids in daily regularity?

Oh great, now we're in Gumby.

both jaunty and authentic.

I didn't dare share my love for this hat guy...until now.

http://www.wonderingsound.com/feature/keeping-music-secret-adam-torres/

although i guess its really jeff buckley and devendra having a baby that wears a hat...

y'all please help me make both jaunty and authentic the new No xxx, no credibility

btw that story how's life shared upthread about mistaking Jack Johnson for a middle-aged sadsack is almost hilarious enough to justify God'd baffling decision to create Jack Johnson

hatless old-man voice white dude was really throwing his soul into a furiously strummed acoustic gnarls barkley cover on the subway platform last night. ime the train has never taken longer to arrive.

c'mon people am i really the first to link to this guy

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I5exsScaHWo

that pokey guy upthread and his band bought records from me after they played at the green river festival in town one year. olde-tymey records. they were nice enough.

Pokey is pretty much a fiend in human shape and is often seen slowly tooling about town in a Studebaker on white walls. Far below Pokey Reese, Pokey the horse, any other Pokey you would care to name in the Pokey sweepstakes.

http://hhhhappy.com/the-soul-voice-is-dominating-the-charts-and-more-than-likely-here-to-stay-are-you-a-fan/

I skimmed this article and my eyes kept getting wider and wider.

lol i know right

Peking Duk? Hiatus Kaiyote? Saskwatch? Chet Faker? smfh

"Sydney producer Joyride, a bearer himself of a James Brown-esque croon"

"erogenous vocal chords" (sic)

Just stop. Really.

that link reads like a clickhole link

Frankie Lee's old man hat game is off the hook

http://www.folkradio.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/frankie-lee-american-dreamer.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsacGSJsydI

not the typical voice but seems just as phony and annoying

saw langhorne slim at a radio show taping last month and yeah, white dude in the old man hat voice

Is there a name for the female equivalent of this? Apropos of nothing, here are two different young women covering the same Arctic Monkeys song using exactly the same overly-affected singing voice that I hear from so many female indie/folk musicians. Every phrase ramps up from a vocal fry/bottom of range syllable, every vowel stretched out of recognition, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVLFbGryE9s

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

Arkansas is a hotbed of all this, male and female versions, and I fear it may never end.

i think someone might have gotten upset on here when i called it the old cat lady voice. needs a better name though. it's so big with kids at talent shows. it's kinda the default voice for girl with acoustic guitar on youtube.

oh god i hate this way of singing. the UK has its own special variant of mid-late 20s female singer-songwritey over-affectations.

kind of reminds me of a less-Irish-soudning Dolores O'Riordan or something.

definitely seems internet-derived too. though you can trace it to specific singers that were pre-internet. like cat power and her peer billy holiday. at least kill whitey freak folkers don't try to sound like karen dalton anymore.

it IS kind of impressive how far-reaching it is though. i mean 12 year old girls across the nation slurring their words in the exact same world-weary way.

my really unpopular hipster opinion: i can't listen to karen dalton at all. i can't take that voice. would much rather listen to the sibylle baier style or sandy denny-style brit folk voice.

I think of this as Nelly Furtado-ism

It may not be entirely accurate but I usually associate this kind of thing with those radio stations that label themselves "coffee house"

i can't even remember what nelly furtado sounds like. feel like mentioning beth orton but she enunciated pretty clearly.

but also amy winehouse. she was a big influence on amateurs. and adele obviously.

especially if you watch amy doing acoustic stuff on youtube.

hey this is a good thread

scott you mentioned a while back itt "the river" in western MA, it's like ground zero for this kind of stuff. "featureless" "ahistorical" "tasteful" very accurate. part of this intersects very neatly w/ "craftsmanship consumerism artisanal" craft beer gastropub single origin coffee

that pokey lafarge thing is bad, but people love this shit. americana. i think i would be quite okay w/ a band like that at our local farmers market, it would be fun and theyd be wearing costumes like that but this shit is EXTREMELY popular and i can't hang with that. i dont really know much about mumford and sons but bland white folk-based pop is very popular and everyone recommends them as like "hey you like music a lot dont you, these guys are really good... this woman can really sing ... this guy is a really good songwriter"

Phil - see here for another take:

birth of the flattened cool: the origins of the indie voice?

this woman can really sing ...

i like saying this to people and then putting on lene lovich

scott you mentioned a while back itt "the river" in western MA, it's like ground zero for this kind of stuff. "featureless" "ahistorical" "tasteful" very accurate. part of this intersects very neatly w/ "craftsmanship consumerism artisanal" craft beer gastropub single origin coffee

― marcos, Friday, December 16, 2016 10:58 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Indeed the vocal style seems employed in a way that reminds me of the stuff at Pier 1 they force to look "rustic" if that makes any sense.

Sometimes I go into a youtube hole of bland, competent Americana and I feel sort of overwhelmed by how much otherwise not that interesting "talent" and "craftsmanship" there is out there, like there's an entire musical world that's the rough equivalent of the movie Cold Mountain.

Like there are just so many people doing this sub-Gillian Welch schtick that are objectively *good*, like if they were a regular at your local coffee spot you'd think "This isn't my kind of music but damn, this person could be big." And most of them are b-listers, maybe getting a little play on FUV, a few second tent spots at festivals, maybe never to be heard from again in five years.

the vocal style is as if someone described the word "lilting" and then the vocals are performed without lilt

Watching the launch concert for the Ken Burns Country doc on PBS rn, and this Ketch Secor guy's Old Man Hat Power is off the charts!

http://www.tedxnashville.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Ketch-Secor-2-of-28-1160x700.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3AHqcinzZ4

Buskers should be executed. Also if you gave that dude a belt he wouldn't use it for his pants.

he's wearing a belt!

oops

Should be wearing suspenders instead.

sorry to say but the name of the man responsible for that is Tom Waits

I always forget what those rectangular box drum thingies are called but nothing good ever happens when they're around

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajón
I've seen them used effectively and with joy but there's definitely a strong wook contingent

Very important in Afro-Peruvian music. Tempted to FP you two.

you got a lotta cajones to do that

very important in lots of music! but often awkwardly co-opted by us/uk artists unsurprisingly

waits didn't invent this stuff or necessarily influence most it but he's important for combining so many of the quite different white guy hat styles that have been alluded to here. he lacks some of the soul and post-grunge elements that are important in some versions

the smoother coffeeshop/youtube style seems like the offspring of one strain of this stuff (the boho retro jazz/blues thing) and indie voice

^ worst comment section ever?

Does this style of singing draw more on 70s beatnik Waits, or post-1980 hobo-in-the-gutter Waits?

yes

ha. great thread btw. couple thoughts:

when did top 40 music become inundated with ukuleles and whistling? has that trend ever subsided? it’s almost as though there was — off on the sidelines, in car commercials and corporate coffeeshop playlists — a cynical approximation of "indie" music that inadvertently caught on, and then became a dominant mode of music production.

is there anything more embarrassing than the cloying faux-sincerity of the bon iver guy? what is it exactly about his delivery that seems to suggest we should listen in quiet reverence to his Deep Lyrics? just yuck

I had never heard that guy until the Taylor Swift duets (which I think are great)... I tried checking out his own music, and it’s sort of like abstract indie r&b? Idk

i like budo jeru's "off on the sidelines" thing, like this stuff was a lab experiment that was never meant to escape its carefully regulated environment, and has no natural predators in the wild. somehow this sonic palette became widely accepted as a means of conveying sincerity, creativity, wistfulness, old pain, new hope, individuality.... blah!!!

I see this person has not been honoured in this thread:

https://www.neweracap.co.uk/explore/new-era-music/ragnbone-man/

(no old man hat tho, he’s got a young man cap to sell you)

for USxors: this has 1.2 billion views and counting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3wKzyIN1yk

As a guide to that track's bizarre reach and influence, my old man is in a 'rock' choir (he's 76 and the youngest by a distance) and they do a cover of Human.

was it hstencil who suggested an interesting answer to this question: kermit?

Does Mac Miller (RIP) fit this category? I listened to his 2020 album out of curiosity, thinking he was some kind of rapper; but I guess either I had him confused with someone else, or else at some point he reinvented himself on the model of Sublime's "What I Got"

(see the song "Surf" for a most egregious example of what I mean)

I don't actually hate it, musicwise; I just find the vocal affectations really distracting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKguzLCV2NE

serious answer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA1VQxaRQOI

lord buckley, for the record.

Excellent answer

I want the name of the one person responsible for the white instagram lady with the ukulele chunk-a-chunk sound

Lol

Nataly Dawn

Was gonna suggest Shirley Temple

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/05/c8/e7/05c8e7735dafa19741c454aabbeecaf9.jpg