Americana - Classic or Dud?

http://www.citypaper.com/blogs/noise/bcp-with-its-awards-show-the-americana-music-association-embraces-blues-gospel-and-rb-20140922,0,3909868.story

Geoff Himes article:

To accurately represent roots music, you have to include country rock, string bands, and folkie singer-songwriters, but you also have to widen your umbrella to cover blues, R&B, and gospel as well. Though the organizers and audiences are still overwhelmingly white, they are making a good-faith effort to include African-American artists in the hope that African-American audiences and music buzzers will begin to feel welcome.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2014/09/24/351141281/roots-plugged-in

Ann Powers' take. No mention by her of the lack of African American artists

African Americana:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Enn0_EvFdms

the new Jake Xerxex Fussell album is so good, in fact all his albums are.

X post - just checked out that video with its lyrical reference to Americana!

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/americanafest-bristol-rhythm-roots-reunion-2022-re/

Geoff Himes asserts in this article:

And if it’s going to be an Americana song, it should be rooted in music older than your James Taylor and Roberta Flack records. I actually like Taylor and Flack, but they are not useful starting points for a musical tradition. Carlisle found his launching pad in the vein of the weird, wonderful blues and Celtic songs from the 1920s found on the Anthology of American Folk Music.

Eh, not sure of that.

Article covers many folks I don't know -- Willi Carlisle, Sunny War, Christina Vane, Queen Esther, Tiffany Williams, Bette Smith, John R Miller, Tami Neilson

dunno if we have an ongoing alt-country/country thread but thought this set was pretty good, especially that first song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn4q9j-ZCo0

xpost Willi Carlisle's Peculiar, Missouri was one of the best albums of 2022. top shelf stuff.

during the 77 rollout i thought, "it'd be nice to have more country/Americana/folk stuff on here ... perhaps i should try to rally those threads / votes in 2023" and then i realized that'd be a lot of work for, likely, very little gain. this - i'm talking specifically about non-mainstream country/Americana/folk, etc. - is a corner of the music world that has grown and gotten *much* more popular over the past few years as a wave of new artists build on the work of Isbell, Stapleton, Sturgill, Childers and others. i talked to Melissa Carper recently and she confirmed they can feel the surge in popularity on the artists' side, too.

some good things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh7guH2W688
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CJyipxyf6s

Oh jeez, Isbell and Drive-By Truckers and The Mountain Goats and Richard Thompson are among several Americana circuit regulars who have long had their own threads, visited fairly often, ditto Bonnie Raitt, members of the Roche family, The Wainwrights, others who set the example along time ago and still do good work. We've talked about Carper, Sierra Ferrell, Brennon Leigh, SG Goodman, Allison Russell, Rosali, Leyla McCalla, Amanda Shires on several Rolling Countrys. Also see threads for Dave Alvin, The Blasters, Giant Sand / Howe Gelb P0X
and Giant Sand / Howe Gelb P0X

Meant to end with TS: Lone Justice or Cruzados or Drivin' & Cryin' or Green On Red or Del Fuegos or Jason & The Scorchers or Long Ryders or Bodeans?

dow, are you responding to me? i was speaking specifically about this kind of music's representation on ILM's 77 Top Albums of 2022 poll. not general representation on ILM.

Sorry, but also just a general news thing, since these threads aren't nec. updated/visible all that often.

Reminds me, Iris Dement thread was recently updated w news of her forthcoming album (& now newsletter announcing at least one advance single).

https://americanamusic.org/americanafest/

The annual Americana fest in Nashville is always way too white. No southern soul (like on my Chitlin Circuit soul thread), no obscure Mississippi blues musicians like you can read about in Living Blues

So, uh, who is this Jesse Welles guy that is suddenly everywhere except, it seems, on ILX, where I only got one hit?

he's been growing steadily in popularity/profile over the past couple of years - a bit polarizing, it seems, but a good-sized chunk of the Isbell/Simpson fan base / authenticity police believes they've discovered the next guy who is writing "real" songs blah blah blah.

he was on Colbert the other night doing a song called "Join ICE" (which is anti-ICE) and when i saw the clip on social media, i thought, "Oh, he's about to rocket to a different level" ... lots of grey-haired lefties are going to love the guy, i'd guess.

oh cool shitty folk protest songs. just what everyone was asking for

It's weird, I think he's been around for a while but I'd never heard or even heard of him until a few months ago. I was scouring a Wilco forum over the summer, trying to figure out what time they were hitting the stage, and saw a picture of Tweedy with some dude I didn't recognize, and the caption was something like "my two heroes!" I was perplexed, since I'd never heard of him, then discovered he's been around for years, released several albums, and gets compared to Dylan. OK, I thought, and that still wasn't enough to listen to him. Then they started (had been?) playing songs of his on the radio here, and I thought, yeah, sounds a bit like Dylan (or Ryan Adams or whoever), and since then not a day seems to go buy without seeing his name somewhere. Still haven't listened, lol.

I don't know anything about this guy but "Join ICE" is a good song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61I4hlig78w

He's been a viral hit for a few years now. I think he's fine at what he does, I haven't listened to much but he gets off some good lines. He's kind of a like a liberal answer to Oliver Anthony — they share the shtick of doing live takes of their songs in rural outdoor settings — and as such I endorse his project even if it's not something I'm going to listen to on purpose.

I like "Join ICE" and in general wish more artists were engaged with the current political shitshow even if that means making John Prine knockoffs. This year's Margo Price album (very good) has a track that features him, too.

yeah, i don't feel strongly about this guy or this song but would love to know what Heez would rather hear/see instead.

it's a good question. i very much doubt it would come from Americana nowadays. i want something like Rage Against the Machine lol. this dude seems fine it just feels like he's trying to recreate some Dylan in the 60s thing that will not make it further than the grey-haired lefties mentioned above

Rage Against the Machine lol

Ironically, the first thing I think of when I think of RATM is Republican meatheads working out to it.

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/9ae/615/334ede6460683266f247f75c16d138c8bf-2----.rvertical.w330.jpg

Actually I think my answer is “not like us” so I’ll exit the Americana thread

Before I go, Imagine the next Super Bowl with Jessie Welles playing the halftime show and all these old grey hairs losing it in n the audience

will not make it further than the grey-haired lefties mentioned above

i guess if i was his manager i would care but i'm not, so fine with me? pretty short list of popular artists willing to sing about ICE, including Dylan who is still actively performing & recording last I heard. if Bob wants to continue releasing standards albums, i'm fine with some tiktok guy stepping up to sing about ICE, even if he's not exploring daring new frontiers of sonic experimentation. not that i'm like ride or die for this guy but he seems totally fine imo.

Yeah, I think that's a fair observation: if guy wants to sing about ICE or whatever, protest songs in the tradition of Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan, good for him, it's not like any/many others are doing it. Without knowing anything about this guy, really, he seems primed/aligned with Isbell/Simpson, sure, but also (why not) Zach Bryan, Noah Kahan, Tyler Childers, Billy Strings or a bunch of other crossover Americana acts whose fans afaict do not default grey haired hippies.

i'm not sure i'd care much even if i was his manager - if he can find the Isbell/Simpson audience i mentioned above, he'll do just fine. they're passionate/loyal and they have money.

xpost, obviously

i think Tyler Childers' and Billy Strings' audiences are mostly "lefties who will be gray in 10 years" as opposed to gray-haired hippies. not sure there's that much difference.

Bryan/Kahan is a different deal, obviously. hard to imagine this particular guy getting *that* big, but i guess you never know. i haven't heard any of his recordings, maybe he's got a little more major-crossover potential than i realize.

Billy Strings also has a massive following in the jamband world/broad network of Grateful Dead-related things

My parents love this guy to pieces, I think he’s been on Colbert a few times actually, that’s where they would have first encountered him I imagine. They even bought me one of his records a birthday present, which I havent opened yet though I did listen to him in the car when taking my dad to the doctor a few months ago and thought he was pretty clever, definitely seems to be hoeing a different row than Isbell or Childers, less of an all-around songwriter and more of a fairly cheeky folk poet

i dont care about strings in part because years and years ago an adjacent friend/relations group of jam/phish fans became obsessed with even the smell of his shit, o boy. he seems ok i guess

I don't know too much about Strings. Have the jam fans just adopted him, or has he actively courted them?

Not unlike the neo-folk VH-1 late 80s movement, I think there’s a wide appeal to something that balances out over-produced pop. The idea that it’s just for grey-hairs any more than Boygenius is seems off base.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFNC8HaUUsk

I don't know too much about Strings. Have the jam fans just adopted him, or has he actively courted them?

A bit of courting, he definitely plays jamband festivals, of which there seem to be a bottomless well of options. But he also has legit bluegrass roots and chops and there’s a lot of overlap between those scenes.

he deliberately courted grateful dead fans

but yes he is a legit phenom, an instant classic, has played with all the surviving greats

i love welles fwiw. though a little goes a long way

Tracer OTM re Billy Strings. Although he no longer plays Dead covers. Meet Me At The Creek is arguably his Dark Star

Funny the one dude I know who still puts Fox News clips on his FB is a Billy Strings fan, but yeah it comes via widespread panic and stuff like that

welles strikes me as more of a phil ochs than a dylan tbh

Yeah, and so far does no harm (agree w tipsy that new Margo album he's on is sounding pretty darn good these days). Maybe Nora Guthrie will give him some Woody lyrics and he can be the next Billy Bragg (don't know yet if he quite has BB's way with tunes, though).

Sorry, shoulda said Indexed, not Tipsy! (though I'm guessing you like it alright too, TM?)

Every generation gets the Wally Pleasant it deserves.