(This post originally appeared on my other blog Strawberry Flats, which was dedicated to my love of roots music.)
Greetings from the Comfort Suites in Abingdon, Virginia. I’m headed up to Blacksburg (right next door to Roanoke), where I will be spending the weekend with Jack Rose and the Black Twigs, (a.k.a. the Black Twig Pickers), who are playing a show together Saturday night at a club called The Cellar. I’m writing a feature on both artists for Yeti magazine.
I can’t think of any other modern musicians who have undergone such radical transformations. For the uninitiated, Rose and Twigs’ banjoist and fiddler Mike Gangloff used to make lo-fi drone/noise jams as members of the band Pelt. Ever since the late 1990s, however, both musicians have been increasingly preoccupied with exploring various permutations of American folk music. Rose, as many of you know, is one of progressive folk’s leading guitarists. Gangloff, meanwhile, is utterly obsessed with old time music, with the Twigs having become a fixture on the mountain music scene in southwest Virginia. As of late, Rose has been recording and gigging with the Twigs in this new context. They recently sent me a copy of a soon-to-be-released EP documenting their rapidly evolving collaboration. It’s simply awesome: a modernization of old time that honors the past, yet lives and breathes in the now. Plus, it rocks.
Instead of driving from my home in Asheville, North Carolina, straight to Blacksburg, I decided to “get in the mood,” so to speak, by taking a circuitous, back roads route through Appalachia and stopping off at some of the region’s musical landmarks. After following the French Broad River to the small town of Marshall, where they have old time/bluegrass dances at the train depot every Friday evening, I jumped on the Asheville Highway, which cuts straight through the mountains and descends upon Greeneville, Tennessee. From here I used the Kingsport Highway to cut across the Volunteer State and wind my way up to Hiltons, Virginia, nestled in Poor Valley, at the foot of the near-mythological Clinch Mountains. This is Carter Family country and home to several major landmarks all situated along the A.P. Carter Highway.
First stop: The Carter Fold, which is a performance space A.P.’s daughter Janette established in 1974 in hopes of preserving the mountain music her family helped make famous. Although The Fold is only open for concerts (about once a week — here’s the schedule), a more-than-gracious volunteer by the name of Bob Hurst gave a me a grand tour of a spread that’s really quite dreamy. It seats about 800, and damn near everything, from the exterior (see the picture below) to the stage to the full service concession stand, is immaculately stained hard wood and soaked in soft, white light. It’s a true shrine, designed to invoke reverence kind of like a church or Masonic Temple. Behind the stage sits a jigsaw puzzle of memorabilia: autographed photos, instruments and giant murals of A.P., Sara and Mother Maybelle. Next door to The Fold is the Carter Family Museum and the cabin and birthplace of A.P., which was moved from its original location somewhere deeper in the mountains. Both places are only opens when there’s show next door.After Bob saw me off and asked me to come back about 12 to 15 times, I ventured further down the highway to the Mount Vernon United Methodist Church. This is where the Carter family goes to worship, as well as to be buried (descendants stills reside in the area). The church and cemetery sit on a hill; A.P. and Sara’s graves have an amazing view of Poor Valley, as well as two mountains directly across the highway. Today, thick grey clouds and wandering mist clung to their rounded peaks. Almost all the trees were stripped bare, but there were still a few speckled here ‘n’ there retaining that deep, muted brownish-orange unique to late autumn. In woods behind the church lurk a small procession of gutted barns and cabins that somehow found away to keep standing. I was the only dude up there.
Before leaving the Fold, Bob gave me a brochure for the Mountain Music Museum in Bristol, the town where Ralph Peer, working for Victor Records, recorded the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and other country music pioneers in the summer of 1927. That sounded cool, so I took U.S. Route 58 (“The Crooked Road“) about 22 miles east. Entering Bristol I assumed the museum was downtown. But after taking a few laps around the main drag (State Street) I went back to the car and consulted my little pamphlet. And what do you know? The museum is located in the Bristol Mall. How rustic!
The Bristol Mall is where the romance of the mountains turns into a mix of gritty reality and rural surrealism. First off, it’s filled with stores that I didn’t know still existed, including Spencer’s Gifts, Kay-Bee Toy & Hobby and The Original Cookie. Secondly, the mall’s denizens could be divided into two categories: hip-hop speed freaks and the elderly. There were even a couple of old timers dressed in full cowboy regalia idly passing time in the food court.
The Mountain Music Museum is on the lower level. Including myself and a lady behind the counter, there were only four us in what looked more like the gift shop annex to Planet Hollywood, only filled with country music ephemera. I’m the only one under 80, while the gentlemen across the room is the only one in head-to-toe camouflage. Wild. As a museum, the place is a bit underwhelming; a bunch of showcases crammed with photos and old 78s — that’s about it. However, its old time/bluegrass CD section rivals anything I’ve seen in the country. I picked up three titles: RCA Country Legends: The Bristol Sessions Vol.1, The Monroe Brothers Volume 1: What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul and a Clarence “Tom” Ashley collection titled Greenback Dollar: 1929-1933. I snagged that last title because it contains “Little Sadie,” a cover of which Rose and the Twigs recorded for their new EP.
The woman who rang me up was a total doll. I struck up a conversation with her and Rambo’s grandfather. He was buying tickets for the gospel show at The Carter Fold on Sunday. Unfortunately, the museum was sold out, but she gave him the number of somebody who still had some left. She has the inside scoop because she also is part of The Fold’s sound crew. Awesome. We then talked about Clarence “Tom” Ashley,” who is one of her all time faves. Again, awesome.
Feeling tuckered, I drove the ten miles north to my present location in Abingdon. Tomorrow, I head back into the Clinch Mountains, where I will take yet another sinewy back road up to Blacksburg and meet up with Rose and the Twigs.
Ryan Bingham lived the hard life: without a home since his teens, finding work on ranches, and singing songs of sadness. Americana fans have heard this story many times, and it’s easy to dismiss Bingham’s debut album, Mescalito, as a slab of clichéd silliness — especially when he sings in both English and Spanish about desperados, trains, and even “working for a dollar a day.” And while his Gregg Allman-like growl gets a bit old after the third tune, it’s the kid’s very brashness and absurd self-mythologizing that make his music groove in ways alt-country rarely does. Bingham also has an ear for delicious sounds — a percolating wah-wah and droning fiddles buttress “Sunshine,” a metronomic banjo powers “Ghost of Travelin’ Jones,” etc. But at 14 songs, Mescalito is too long. Bingham isn’t that good a songwriter, at least not yet.
Rolling Stone recently ranked its 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. The list is packed with legendary artists, plus features a handful of celebrity columnists gushing over their fave crooners (Billy Joel on Ray Charles: “He was the minister and I was the congregation”). As with any all-time-greatest list, it’s also riddled with questionable choices and glaring omissions — at least that’s how I see it. With help from Rhapsody Pop Editor Rachel Devitt, I’ve compiled 10 artists who could and should be included in any serious conversation about great singers. Some are obvious, many obscure and a few will have you muttering, “What the… ?”
Let’s set the record straight. Despite a long list of rock writers claiming the contrary, Blitzen Trapper is not an Americana band. Sure, the band tinkers with roots rock: a little Creedence twang here, some Crazy Horse crunch there. But beyond the pedal-steel–led ballad “Stolen Shoes and a Rifle,” the Portland, Oregon, outfit is employing these rustic tricks to flavor an aesthetic that falls squarely in the glam/power-pop camp.
