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
Buy the Album
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
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
Buy the Album
“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
Buy the Album
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
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
Buy the Album
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
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
Buy the Album
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
Buy the Album
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
Buy the Album
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
Buy the Album
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
Carl had a way with the cotton,
Mother had a way with words,
And I had my way with a red-haired Catholic girl .
Buy the Album
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
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
Buy the Album
“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
Buy the Album
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
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
Buy the Album
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
Buy the Album
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
Buy the Album
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
Buy the Album
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
Buy the Album
“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
Buy the Album
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.
Honorable Mentions
| Rusty Cage, Johnny Cash – A ferocious man gets even more fierce as he chronicles his own slow death over five albums. | |
| Death Came A Knockin’, The Duhks – The lead singer’s got some pipes. And some tattoos, which is atypical for a folk band. | |
| Accidentals of the West (the whole album), David “Goody” Goodrich – This album has ruined me for any other instrumental music. | |
| Didn’t Leave Nobody But the Baby, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch – Stand-ins for the sirens of Greek myth on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. | |
| Everything Green, Christine Kane – A happy Asheville anthem, in which a celebration of the natural world soothes concerns over its possible destruction. | |
| Stealing Kisses, Lori McKenna – Another Signature Sounds alum, this one singing quiet desperation better than anybody. | |
| Blackbirds, Erin McKeown – Yet another Signature Sounds alum, this one rocking a very large guitar. | |
| Fall on the Rock, Buddy Miller – If gospel had sounded like this in my church, I might have turned out a little different. | |
| Streets of Omaha, A.J. Roach – Appalachian-tinged folk poet with a voice that could probably blow the leaves off a tree. |
Tags: asheville, dave carter, faith, music, pilgrimage, revelation, truth, unbridled enthusiasm
Seven is the number of a man
Seven years ago today a man I never met died. The sting of it lingers even now. Close members of my own family have died, and I have grieved and healed and gone on living, full of their memories, but the death of this one random person leaves me undone every time I think of it. I am beginning to suspect that I always will be.
I count the days in cups of wine and candles I have burned
Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer, 2000 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival
–photo by George Green (thanks!)
He was a songwriter named Dave Carter. I don’t expect you to understand; as it is, I feel an urge to apologize for the intensity of this loss, I resist the impulse to add “just” to that last sentence. He was “just” this songwriter, you know? It’s weird to still count the days, seven years on, even if you love music. Yet I know I am not the only one feeling a little lost this day.
He wrote what he called “postmodern mythic American” music. It’s the kind of acoustic, literate music that earns comparisons to Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Townes Van Zandt. I love it for its irreverence, its compassion, and its humble, wry wonder at the world.
Many who love Dave Carter’s music speak of it in terms of having uncovered a secret treasure, all their own. His singular ability to write songs that resonate on a deeply personal level makes us a bit protective of him, makes us want to share it with the world so his memory won’t fade. It is one of the few things about which I am evangelical.
Love is a light in the sky, and an unspoken lie, and a half-whispered prayer
I first heard Dave Carter and his partner Tracy Grammer as the opening act at a Joan Baez show. When Dave started telling stories, even before they began to sing, I felt like he was sharing the truth with me, gentle and horrible and silly, undiluted. This scrawny banjo player with an afro of curls and a wistful inflection had perceived through the haze of this world at least a slant of light and seemed to want everyone else to glimpse it too. He called all of his songs “true stories,” and talking about every one of them unearthed a dozen more true stories, more characters he’d met and places he’d been.
What I remember best is “Tanglewood Tree.” Dave began with a simple observation that became a chant before turning into a sermon that turned into the song. Just when I thought it was perfect, Tracy’s violin came trilling like revelation just before the bridge.
Mother the years pass outta countin’ but no prophet comes to comfort me
We live in an absurd, joyous, sometimes frightening world, often unforgiving, and what I look to for faith are the things that give me strength or joy or peace. I believe in trees, stillness, words, and my friends. I’ve been thinking of music in that context ever since I heard Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer. It was like finding the Rosetta Stone; they made the way I thought about my life make more sense and assured me, once and for all, that everything is worth another look, and another. They let me hear what it sounds like in my head.
I don’t think it’s sadness that I feel at Dave Carter’s departure from this world. He may be a little harder to find but the things he illuminated are still shining. I am bursting with the light myself, so there is little room for grief over his absence. Maybe that’s because Dave’s not actually the source of the light. He’s the guy behind the scenes shoving things out of shadow so the rest of us can see them. The more we see, the more we’re able to see. We need not rely on him to continue seeking revelation.
I will lay my burdens in the cradle of your grace
I wish, oh I wish, Dave Carter had gone on sharing new aspects of his gift with us for years to come. His task was an unending one, so of course it feels like it was prematurely arrested, because the work of untangling the world can never be finished. The longing for new Dave Carter music and the new understanding that comes with it brings me to the brink on days like this. Then I remember: his gift is generative. Others have been stirred to share their own new visions of the world because of the words Dave Cater wrote. That tribute keeps him as present now as he ever was, and my lament only delays its further uncovering.
So I keep on looking. I remember Dave Carter, with a swelling grateful heart. Following Tracy’s lead after his death, I commit myself to sharing this music with everyone who will listen. I do my best to celebrate the union of words and melody and all the things they touch. I hope you’ll join the chorus.
Tags: dave carter, music, stench of death, tracy grammer, true stories
There’s a new Nanci Griffith album in the world. Every time she releases a new one I am briefly overwhelmed, taken back to 12th grade, when her music changed my life.
I haven’t always been able to tell the difference between good songs and bad, but I have always felt them deeply. I knew the words to “Folsom Prison Blues” the first time I heard it on my grandparents’ radio when I was a kid. Country music was broken by the time I started paying better attention in the 80s and 90s, though; it got reduced to platitudes, binary states. The only way to be in those “hot new country” songs was in love or in despair. Every little thing was life or death. I couldn’t help it; my fevered teenage soul took it to heart.
My senior year of high school a friend insisted that I borrow a copy of Nanci Griffith’s album Flyer, the first thing I’d ever heard that wasn’t country or pop music. I couldn’t figure out what to do with it, but I kept listening to the songs, reading the lyrics as Nanci sang. The verses were dense, there wasn’t always a chorus, and the melodies and harmonies were more complex than what I had grown up hearing. Nanci’s voice wasn’t as smooth as the ones on the radio, but its cracks and unfamiliar intonations made me believe she knew what she was singing about.
And the songs…they were full of choices, full of compromises and alternate paths and resignation. They were songs about how essential it is to acknowledge how you get to each point in your life and then to press on. What could I do but fall in love with this music?
Being a bit of a completist, I dove into Nanci’s extensive back catalog, which is about as comprehensive an introduction to folk music as you can get, thanks to an album of covers called Other Voices, Other Rooms. From that one album I learned about Kate Wolf, Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, Woody Guthrie, and finally, I learned what the big deal was about Bob Dylan. I had a lot of catching up to do.
Eventually I exhausted my mental and financial reserves trying to get as much Nanci Griffith into my life as possible, which was just as well, because it wouldn’t be long until new albums came along. Like the brand new one I’ve been listening to tonight.
Unless you’re writing a Greek epic, do not under any circumstances explicitly invoke the muse. It pisses her off.
In a career spanning 19 albums, there are bound to be a few duds. Chalk it up to vanity projects, concept albums, the occasional overindulgence of sentimentality that evidently comes with age, and more vanity projects. She once recorded “From a Distance,” god help her. The last few Nanci Griffith albums haven’t seemed up to her usual standards, so this new one, The Loving Kind, had me worried, and not just because of the title.
I listened to it on lala.com, where you can listen to the whole thing, once, for free, without having to sign in or set up an account or fill out any form of any kind, because somebody in the music business finally figured out how the goddamn internet works.
First up is, unfortunately, just the kind of latter-day Nanci Griffith song that makes me stabby. It’s called “The Loving Kind” and is about Mildred and Richard Loving, who wanted to interracial marry the way folks want to gay marry these days. I’m all for using music for social commentary, which Nanci has a history of doing well. These days, though, it seems she feels the message has to be both oversimplified and very explicit. No shades of gray, no subtle metaphor, just straightforward this-is-what-I-think songwriting. It’s like turning the holocaust into a Disney cartoon and still believing you’ve delivered any kind of weighty social commentary.
Another song mentions “the muse” not once but twice. Perhaps worse is something called “Things I Don’t Need,” an anti-unnecessary-plastic-objects anthem. That turns into a love song. On the face of it, this doesn’t seem so bad, but consider that the same woman once prefaced a song with a 5-minute long story about the charms of Woolworth stores and the unnecessary plastic objects therein, this new song approaches scandal.
The best new material is basically just a mediocre catalog of platitudes and generalizations (see “Party Girl” and “Sing” and “Still Life” if you’re curious). When I hear something like this from someone whose music used to be so nuanced and thoughtful, I can’t tell if they can tell the difference. It would be one thing if she’s just tired of people not getting the point and decided to bust out the sledgehammer, but I can’t be the only one who’d rather chew off his own ears than be preached to.
This isn’t just a selfish wish for a new collection of amazing songs; I think of anyone out in the world today, ready to discover something that changes the way they look at the world, and worry if this is what they find. Of course, what worked for me isn’t likely the touchstone that someone else might need. This is a lesson I have trouble remembering.
What concerns me more is another possibility: what if all the old songs that woke me up are just like these, but I was young and malleable and couldn’t tell, and now through the nostalgic fog I remember them as more eloquent, insightful and inspiring than they really were. This prospect bothers me more than it should. It doesn’t really matter; I got what I needed out of those songs when I first heard them. But if I can’t evaluate them strictly on their own terms, if I can’t get outside of my own skewed perspective, that seems like a problem.
A problem Google should be able to fix with a simple tweak of their algorithm. They already collect more data on me than I can fathom, so they should be able to apply a filter to eliminate my particular shade of rose colored glasses. Click here to denude your childhood heroes.
Tags: all my heroes are dead, high school, music, Nanci Griffith, nostalgia, sentimentality, stench of death
