You Set Me Right: Favorite Songs of the Aughts

I am a compulsive anthologist. I like the way collections of things become unruly, each element rustling about with the energy of being paired with something else. We do this with words, of course, stringing together sentences, paragraphs, stories, novels, Norton Anthologies of American Literature.

For most of The Aughts I compiled my favorite songs onto CDs and gave them to a few friends as Christmas presents. My tastes skew sharply toward acoustic folk music so there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of anything that I like. A few of my people love it too, though, and they tend to be less diligent (obsessive) about finding the new stuff. That’s where I come in.

I claim no authority. These are just the songs that opened my eyes the widest from 2000-2009. Because I’d never stop if I didn’t impose some kind of limit, I have picked songs that fit on one CD (plus some honorable mentions).

If you like any of them, support the people who made them. And tell me what I missed!

Tanglewood Tree

but love is a light in the sky,
and an unspoken lie
and a half-whispered prayer

From Tanglewood Tree,
Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer
–Signature Sounds

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The Aughts are the Dave Carter years. I have written elsewhere about Dave and Tracy, and about this song in particular. Those who know me may be a little surprised to learn that it’s a love song. When I complain about sentimentality, this is what I have in mind as an alternative. Listen for the fierce truth of Dave Carter’s lyrics. Listen for Tracy Grammer’s beautiful harmonies and exultant violin. Listen for the whispered Hendrix lines at the end. Just listen; I can’t think of a better song, period.

Ironbound

Play Ironbound

I never liked me much but I tried for you
I never held my breath for anything good
so won’t you slow down.

From Time Spent Lost, Katie Sawicki

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“Ironbound” is in one respect another love song. It should be a testament to its greatness that I am willing to puncture my curmudgeonly reputation on its behalf. I love it because it acknowledges how riddled with self-doubt we can sometimes be, and how uplifting it can be to be believed in, whatever the context. Probably a happier song than “Tanglewood Tree,” but don’t get used to it.

Gentle Arms of Eden

this is my home, this is my only home
this is the only sacred ground that I have ever known

From Drum Hat Buddha, Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer
–Signature Sounds

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A creation story set to music that doesn’t require you to believe anything in particular–except that music has the power to create. In 3 minutes we go from an unpopulated universe to single-celled organisms to the industrial revolution to war. Like all of Dave Carter’s songs, it is reassuring and a little wistful.

Shirt

Play Shirt

and it’s the same old jar of car keys by the door
the same old scuffed up floor
the same old thirst for more until they put you in the dirt

From Kitchen Radio, Peter Mulvey
–Signature Sounds

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In Boston I attended a concert celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Signature Sounds record label, which is, um, well represented on this list. Peter Mulvey was one of several new discoveries that night. At one point I played “Shirt” so often that someone gave me my own corduroy shirt, which survived moving from Boston back to North Carolina but was no match for Sawyer’s teeth. The song is a cheerful account of a mid-life crisis, through which the smallest of comforts (like the familiarity of a well-worn shirt) are the only meaningful ones.

Oast Houses

Play “Oast Houses”

I could show you stuff ‘round here perchance might make you pause
I could take you walking
Show you certain things that move like wind upon the conifers
Hear the seasons whispering

From Broken Yellow, Jack Harris

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A few years ago the Dave Carter mailing list lit up with conversation about a young Welshman who was the hit of the Kerrville Folk Festival. He didn’t seem to have an album or a website though, so I promptly forgot all about him. Some time later I discovered that Jack did have a CD, and that Eric Taylor had produced it. The only way to order it was to send Jack’s mom (still in Wales) $23 by mail. “Oast Houses” is one of several songs on Broken Yellow that someone as young as Jack Harris had absolutely no business being able to write. Its language is exotic because Jack is from Wales and has a massive vocabulary. The acoustic guitar is like a slow-building thunderstorm. The lyrics are as much Annie Dillard as they are folk singer. Listen well.

Harrisburg

Some say that man is the root of all evil
Others say God’s a drunkard for pain
Me I believe that the Garden of Eden
Was burned to make way for a train

From Golden Age of Radio, Josh Ritter
–Signature Sounds

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I’d heard of Josh before I moved to his adopted home state of Massachusetts, but didn’t actually listen to him until Joan Baez covered his song “Wings” and I had to hear more. “Harrisburg” is as close as a song can get to being a train, Johnny Cash be damned. You listen to it and you think it has seeped as far into your brain as it can go, but then six months later it breaks through another barrier in your consciousness and you start walking to its beat for an entire summer.

Revelator

Queen of fakes and imitators
Time’s the revelator

From Time (The Revelator), Gillian Welch
–Acony Records

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In 2001 Gillian Welch opened an epic album called Time (The Revelator) with a song that I’ve been trying to unravel for lo these many years. It is full of history and ancient tones, and the songs are interwoven and essential to each other (and to you). “Revelator” is probably the most dense of these. I keep nibbling on it like my fourth slice of despair-flavored cheesecake.

Train Home

Now is what can be,
all the rest is wait and see,
those prophets never hear that cosmic laughter.

Train Home, Chris Smither
Hightone Records

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Chris Smither has made a career out of finding new ways to espouse his keen-eyed philosophy of having no idea what the world is really about (and being okay with that). He packs a lot of words into his songs, so you’ll probably want to read along as you listen. I moved to Boston just weeks after this CD came out and was lucky enough to attend an album release party. I might have hated living in that city but I found a lot of incredible music while I was there.

Northbound 35

It’s just flashes that we own

Little snapshots

Made from breath and from bone

And out on the darkling plain alone

They light up the sky

From Stripping Cane, Jeffrey Foucault<
–Signature Sounds

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Early in The Aughts I got an email from a guy from Paris who runs a mailing list I was on, suggesting that I go see Jeffrey Foucault since he was playing in North Carolina. He didn’t realize that the drive from Asheville to the coast would be about 7 hours. I skipped the show but ordered the CD, which was a fantastic debut. A couple years later, Jeffrey released another album, with “Northbound 35″ on it. Of all the songs on this list, this one would fare best if you had to strip away the performance and just read the text as poetry. It is line after line of insight.

Happy Endings

Play Happy Endings

Carl had a way with the cotton,
Mother had a way with words,

And I had my way with a red-haired Catholic girl
.

From Scuffletown, Eric Taylor

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Eric Taylor’s albums are as dense and rich as novels, full of broken people and compassion. This song might as well be a novel in its own right. At the very least, it’s a Raymond Carver short story with fingerpicked guitar for punctuation. I’ve been listening to “Happy Endings” since 2001 and it’s still unfolding for me.

Wisteria

Play “Wisteria”

If we turn off the radio
I’ve only to close my eyes
And the wind in the sycamores
Will carry me home

From Somewhere Near Paterson, Richard Shindell
–Signature Sounds

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“Wisteria” is a beautiful testament to the power of memory to become overwhelming. I want to curl up inside of Richard Shindell’s guitar and listen to him play this song over and over again until I die. And then I would like to buy Richard a puppy.

After All

And when I chose to live
There was no joy
It’s just a line I crossed
I wasn’t worth the pain my death would cost
So I was not lost or found

From The Green World, Dar Williams
–Razor & Tie

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There aren’t a lot of songs about a subject as taboo as the contemplation of suicide, which is a horrifying thought if music is something that helps you make sense of the world. This song is a frank argument against suicide for those who aren’t religious or who are childless. Dar Williams excels at a certain grim kind of empathy that acknowledges how truly dark and alone the world can get, but she always brings along breadcrumbs in case you want to follow her back into the light.

Mother, I Climbed

Play Mother, I Climbed

sticks and stones might break this body and words might wound my soul
and phantom visions fly me where the faithful fear to go
but when this story’s over and my sun is sinkin’ low
open up your gate, marianna

From Flower of Avalon, Tracy Grammer
–Signature Sounds

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This song is a prayer for grace. The speaker’s fruitless search for the comfort that is supposed to come once one finds something to believe is only half of this story–it is even more important that she never ceases looking for something to invest her faith in. This pilgrim, who has embraced as many kinds of religion as she knows how, and found them somehow incongruous with her spirit, is still hopeful, still open to mystery. I try to be mindful of this in my own frustrating encounters with those who claim to speak for higher powers.

Mercy of the Fallen

There’s the weak
And the strong
And the beds that have no answers
And that’s where I may rest my head tonight

From The Beauty of the Rain, Dar Williams
–Razor & Tie

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Dar Williams’ songs about humility and the importance of finding your people and keeping them in your life always seem to come just when I need a reminder. Sometimes what you need more than anything else is an honest acknowledgment that someone else has been as far down as you are, and that sometimes that’s where you need to be. I think it just makes it easier to live with confusion when you have something in your life that is up front about how the world doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Here’s to having, and trying to be, humble friends.

Transit

The merge from the turnpike was murder, but its never a cinch

It was Friday at five, and no one was giving an inch

They squeezed and they edged and they glared

Half them clearly impaired by rage or exhaustion

The rest were just touchy as hell

From Somewhere Near Paterson, Richard Shindell
–Signature Sounds

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I will now begin to extricate myself somewhat from this sequence of sad songs (remember how happy things were when we began?). “Transit” is an odyssey by Richard Shindell at his wry and acerbic finest. Not too shabby on the guitar, either.

Long Time Gone

They sound tired but they don’t sound Haggard
They got money but they don’t have Cash
They got junior but they don’t have Hank
I think, I think, I think the rest is a long time gone

From Real Time, Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott
–Full Light Records

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What do you sing at the top of your lungs, with the windows down in your U-Haul truck, when you are finally escaping from two long years in Boston to come home to North Carolina? This. Also? The mandolin is so good in this song that Darrell Scott sings along with it.

Wagon Wheel

Headed down south to the land of the pines
And I’m thumbin’ my way into North Caroline
Starin’ up the road
And pray to God I see headlights

From O.C.M.S., Old Crow Medicine Show
–Nettwerk Records

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“Wagon Wheel” is so self-evidently fantastic I don’t know what I might say to change your mind if you disagree. It began life as a chorus by Bob Dylan, who abandoned it. Almost 30 years later, Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show resurrected it from that inauspicious beginning. The finished song’s loose harmonies almost insist that you sing along. If you’ve ever in your life been homesick for the South, this will make you feel better. Promise.

Come Home

No matter what you bought or sold
The only thing you’ll have to hold
Is the love you’ve loved and the truth you’ve told
When you climb up on that train.

From Songs for a Hurricane, Kris Delmhorst
Signature Sounds

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I had never heard of Kris Delmhorst until the Signature Sounds 10th anniversary show, where she played two songs in pigtails and pajamas and was much in demand on other people’s sets. She has an amazing voice and an obsession with bad weather. She can make a banjo sound like wind chimes in a thunderstorm.

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