This post originally appeared on my other blog Strawberry Flats, which was dedicated to my love of roots music.

My friend Jody over at When You Awake tagged me. What does this mean?

Well…

“List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your life. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.”

This was a fun experiment. Hopefully, a few of the folks I’ve tagged will keep it going. I’ve added a couple MP3s to sweeten the pot. Oh, and by the way, that crazy yellow tree is in downtown Asheville. Autumn in the southern Appalachians is really quite special. No Photoshop enhancements needed!

1. Mason Proffit – “Sweet Lady Love”
I spun this jam on a recent installment of Strawberry Flats Radio, my Internet-radio program dedicated to rural rock, vintage folk and avant-country coolness. Dude from the show before was still in the studio and totally flipped out. As he said that day, “This song is heavy.” But it’s a heaviness that doesn’t rely on volume for its power. That comes from attitude, conviction and a gnarly neo-CCR groove. The ride cymbal plays the role of Atlas; it hoists the tune on its back and carries it through a countryside of foggy hills and abandoned barns. The pedal steel also does this neat trick of mirroring the guitar riff, which only further accentuates that groove. As for the vocals, the Talbot brothers can both growl and sing sweet folk-rock harmonies.

2. The Del McCoury Band – “Hello Lonely”
This is my current favorite off Del’s new album, Family Circle. Fiddler Jason Carter ducks and dives through multi-part harmonies for most of the tune. I love how Del’s band can forcefully propel themselves into a song without ever resorting to brute force. They’re hard swinging, yet graceful, too.

3. The Supreme Dicks – “That I May Never Forget and Stay”
Freak-folk (a.k.a. “new weird America”) seems just about dead and gone. Yet its roots in the New England underground of the 1980s and early ’90s have never been fully examined. Recent reissues of Kath Bloom’s work with Loren Connors has helped shed some light on this period. But where are the deluxe reissues of all the Supreme Dicks’ albums? A duo from Massachusetts, these guys were filtering lo-fi through vintage psychedelia, folk and even krautrock as far back as the late 1980s. They were far more indie and way less folkie than Bloom/Connors, but gorgeously creepy ballads like “That I May Never Forget and Stay” are clear antecedents to Devendra, Little Wings, Death Vessel, Joshua Burkett, Iron & Wine, Jana Hunter and so on.

4. Delbert McClinton – “Two More Bottles of Wine”
A wonderful number from 1975  about a guy and gal who pack up what little possessions they have and head for southern California. Of course, the guy dreams of being a star, but those are just dreams. Eventually, the gal leaves him. He then spends his time either sweeping warehouse floors or celebrating the fact that he’s got “two more bottle of wine” before the night is over. I just love celebratory songs about bottoming out, especially when they nail the West Coast country-rock sound to a tee.

5. Johnny Paycheck – “It Won’t Be Long (And I’ll Be Hating You)”
Years before “Take This Job and Shove It” transformed Paycheck into a platinum-clad outlaw of the 1970s, he was a George Jones-influenced crooner churning out some of the darkest, most anguished, country music to ever come out of Nashville. The Omni Recording Corporation has recently reissued this stuff, and it’s stunning. It can also be quite funny, with over-the-top lyrics/titles and melodramatic deliveries.  But when it does work Paycheck charts the the outer reaches of love, hate, obsession, revenge and guilt with brutal absolutes. Best line in this song: “After the beating it took my heart should be black and blue.” Like I said, brutal.

6. Charlie Parr – “Paul Bunyan’s Fall”
Mr. Parr is an extremely gifted folkie. And by that I mean the man is a real-deal folk artist. He doesn’t play indie-folk or anything of the sort. I saw him live last autumn in Roanoke, Virginia, with the the Black Twig Pickers. It was one of those rare occasions when regurgitating Mike Seeger’s adage about music of the “true vine” felt not at all cliche, but totally appropriate. But on “Paul Bunyan’s Fall,” a track off the sprawling Open Strings compilation, Parr ditches words and three-minute tunes and takes a stab at one of them neo-John Fahey extended compositions. It’s a stunner, too — steel-guitar bluesy and brooding, with a touch of “exotic twang” for flavor. Charlie tears into his instrument in ways most of his peers simply don’t. This piece isn’t meditative and heady; it’s visceral and from the gut.

7. The Weight – “Johnny’s Tune”
I’ve always been hot and cold with punkers going for the whole Springsteen/Social D roots-rock thing. And as a matter of fact, The Weight’s Are Men was doing very little for me the first several spins. But I stuck with it the record, and my “in” song became “Johnny’s Tune,” a desolate, little hard-rock song, wherein the narrator tells his pal Johnny, “Don’t you give your heart away/ You got to make her pay/ Yeah, you got to make her pay.”

I tag:
Great Notions
Fort Recovery
Spirit of Orr
Root Hog or Die
Dust-to-Digital
Earth is No Resting Place
The Supercollider

Other blogs that have participated:
When You Awake
Heartworn Highways
There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You