The Americana and roots music authority
Reflections on a long weekend in Nashville
I swore last year that I wouldn't go back, that I was done. And then discovered how cheaply I could be bought: Two friends promised — promised — that I would be gifted with a bottle or three of the most difficult to find New Glaurus raspberry and/or cherry beers, and so I succumbed to temptation and once again for one more last time wrote the script [sic] for the Americana Music Association Awards & Honors, which long name is occasioned by Dick Clark's attorneys.
The beer, of course, didn't materialize. Nobody's fault. One friend found that she could not come, another found that TSA now confiscated beer even in checked luggage. I hope they enjoyed it, and am now wiser for the burden of this additional knowledge.
So...here's what I know.
(1) Sam Baker's latest album, his third, which is called Cotton, offers up some astonishing songs, particularly on the first half. It's the first time Baker has really been "produced," past spartan accompaniment to his almost beatnik singsong stories. Fleshed out...simply fleshed out, but still fleshed out...the work can be spectacular, and gutty. It can also wear thin. He lost a good bit of hearing when the Shining Path blew up his train in Cuzco years ago, and so his capacity for melody is somewhat limited. But, man, what a record.
(2) Ashley Cleveland can sure sing. I'm not at all able to understand why she was playing at the Basement at noon when she's got three Grammys, but maybe you can't eat statuary or maybe she just really wants people to hear the southern gospel album she's made. Which is well worth hearing. As is she, no matter one's religious convictions.
(3) J.D. Souther can be forgiven all those Eagles hits. First place, they sound like actual songs when he sings them. Second place, the bits of his newest album he played during a short, seven-song set at the Mercy Lounge -- just Souther, three backing singers huddled around one microphone, and a singularly carnal bass player — were considerably better. I'm fairly sure I don't have the album, though I will go spelunking for it at some point. Or, perhaps, succumb and actually buy music. Which I don't mind doing, except it's hard to explain to the wife. (And never mind the Mavis Staples twofer I picked up at the Great Escape will killing time before lunch.)
(4) I think I understand why Mandy Barnett has never quite made it, despite her considerable vocal skill. If you close your eyes, it sounds like she means it. But if you open them, it's clear that she doesn't. Oddly, I'd not seen her before that early afternoon at the Basement, but she was always one of those perplexing voices -- somewhat like Joy Lynn White -- who clearly deserved more of an audience than the record labels ever found for her. And she does deserve that, no matter my reservations. But her emotion is all technique, and she doesn't hide that fact very well. At least to me, or from me.
(5) Elizabeth Cook. I am not impartial on this subject. (So what?) She has a stunning voice, filled with joy and pain and every other human emotion, none of it held back. And she has Tim Carroll in her band.
And then there were the two panels I attended, opposite ends of each other. One was to teach musicians how to leverage the internet to market their product. Much of which I didn't understand, to the point that I was tempted to stand up and say, "Damn it, I have a life, I'm not going to follow some musician's Tweets. I'm not even going to Twitter. I've got enough to do. And if that's how you're going to market to me, I'm never going to hear your music." I didn't say that in public, at least not then, because even I knew it would reveal me to be a doddering fool well past his prime in the music industry. And, later, somebody added this thought: "Yeah, uh, how WOULD somebody market to you." Oh, yeah. That.
But I do wonder...internet marketing seems so focused on identifying committed fans and maximizing their commitment that I wonder how it proposes to attract casual fans who don't want to participate vicariously in the making of a new album, but who might be receptive to hearing and buying music. I dunno. I'm an old codger.
Which was further made clear by the panel on which I spoke, and too often. Something about the death of criticism or the death of print journalism or something. It was as close as I've come to a 12-step meeting, the whole room filled with freelance music critics confessing that they still did it even though it paid doodly and they didn't really have jobs anymore.
In one of those two panels somebody said something that I wish to ponder, and toss out here as fresh meat of a kind. What was said was, "The internet has taken away the authority of the critic. It doesn't value who you are. It apportions status based on how many other users follow/agree with your recommendations." (Obviously I'm paraphrasing.)
As I've thought about that, yes, it's fair to say that I can work up a fair bit of pissed-off-ness about losing my "authority" as a music critic. Decades spent not simply listening to and reading history (and liner notes), but learning to write...it's hard to toss that to the amateurs and accept that their verdicts are somehow better. I understand that they're better for the artists, I understand that all this chat can be leveraged into a marketing campaign. I'm not sure that it's better for the music, nor for the consumers of the music. (But, then, the negative review is mostly a thing of the past anyhow.)
One other thing. I don't understand how the new paradigm works. But I'm pretty sure that whatever the new paradigm is, it's going to change faster than most of us can notice, nor attend to.
Almost nobody said anything about radio, except at the radio panels. Well, Americana radio isn't the strongest tool in the marketing box, but... And nobody said anything about video, which once upon a time (see: MTV, YouTube) was going to save us from anonymity. Or something.
What I really think is this: It's always about the music, has always BEEN about the music. The internet ensures that one's work is somehow available. It doesn't ensure that the music is interesting or important or commercially viable, and it probably makes much of that more difficult simply because there has been such exponential growth in the number of releases available on the internet. Not to mention all those cool old TV shows and such available on YouTube.
But there aren't secrets out there, no more than there have been since the telephone was invented.
The secret is how to find the audience. All the data mining and all the rest of it? It just means it's gotten harder, more complicated, and more expensive...unless that happens to be your skillset.
That's it. I've got laundry to fold, coffee to pour, and a cabinet to refinish. Y'all have fun.
The beer, of course, didn't materialize. Nobody's fault. One friend found that she could not come, another found that TSA now confiscated beer even in checked luggage. I hope they enjoyed it, and am now wiser for the burden of this additional knowledge.
So...here's what I know.
(1) Sam Baker's latest album, his third, which is called Cotton, offers up some astonishing songs, particularly on the first half. It's the first time Baker has really been "produced," past spartan accompaniment to his almost beatnik singsong stories. Fleshed out...simply fleshed out, but still fleshed out...the work can be spectacular, and gutty. It can also wear thin. He lost a good bit of hearing when the Shining Path blew up his train in Cuzco years ago, and so his capacity for melody is somewhat limited. But, man, what a record.
(2) Ashley Cleveland can sure sing. I'm not at all able to understand why she was playing at the Basement at noon when she's got three Grammys, but maybe you can't eat statuary or maybe she just really wants people to hear the southern gospel album she's made. Which is well worth hearing. As is she, no matter one's religious convictions.
(3) J.D. Souther can be forgiven all those Eagles hits. First place, they sound like actual songs when he sings them. Second place, the bits of his newest album he played during a short, seven-song set at the Mercy Lounge -- just Souther, three backing singers huddled around one microphone, and a singularly carnal bass player — were considerably better. I'm fairly sure I don't have the album, though I will go spelunking for it at some point. Or, perhaps, succumb and actually buy music. Which I don't mind doing, except it's hard to explain to the wife. (And never mind the Mavis Staples twofer I picked up at the Great Escape will killing time before lunch.)
(4) I think I understand why Mandy Barnett has never quite made it, despite her considerable vocal skill. If you close your eyes, it sounds like she means it. But if you open them, it's clear that she doesn't. Oddly, I'd not seen her before that early afternoon at the Basement, but she was always one of those perplexing voices -- somewhat like Joy Lynn White -- who clearly deserved more of an audience than the record labels ever found for her. And she does deserve that, no matter my reservations. But her emotion is all technique, and she doesn't hide that fact very well. At least to me, or from me.
(5) Elizabeth Cook. I am not impartial on this subject. (So what?) She has a stunning voice, filled with joy and pain and every other human emotion, none of it held back. And she has Tim Carroll in her band.
And then there were the two panels I attended, opposite ends of each other. One was to teach musicians how to leverage the internet to market their product. Much of which I didn't understand, to the point that I was tempted to stand up and say, "Damn it, I have a life, I'm not going to follow some musician's Tweets. I'm not even going to Twitter. I've got enough to do. And if that's how you're going to market to me, I'm never going to hear your music." I didn't say that in public, at least not then, because even I knew it would reveal me to be a doddering fool well past his prime in the music industry. And, later, somebody added this thought: "Yeah, uh, how WOULD somebody market to you." Oh, yeah. That.
But I do wonder...internet marketing seems so focused on identifying committed fans and maximizing their commitment that I wonder how it proposes to attract casual fans who don't want to participate vicariously in the making of a new album, but who might be receptive to hearing and buying music. I dunno. I'm an old codger.
Which was further made clear by the panel on which I spoke, and too often. Something about the death of criticism or the death of print journalism or something. It was as close as I've come to a 12-step meeting, the whole room filled with freelance music critics confessing that they still did it even though it paid doodly and they didn't really have jobs anymore.
In one of those two panels somebody said something that I wish to ponder, and toss out here as fresh meat of a kind. What was said was, "The internet has taken away the authority of the critic. It doesn't value who you are. It apportions status based on how many other users follow/agree with your recommendations." (Obviously I'm paraphrasing.)
As I've thought about that, yes, it's fair to say that I can work up a fair bit of pissed-off-ness about losing my "authority" as a music critic. Decades spent not simply listening to and reading history (and liner notes), but learning to write...it's hard to toss that to the amateurs and accept that their verdicts are somehow better. I understand that they're better for the artists, I understand that all this chat can be leveraged into a marketing campaign. I'm not sure that it's better for the music, nor for the consumers of the music. (But, then, the negative review is mostly a thing of the past anyhow.)
One other thing. I don't understand how the new paradigm works. But I'm pretty sure that whatever the new paradigm is, it's going to change faster than most of us can notice, nor attend to.
Almost nobody said anything about radio, except at the radio panels. Well, Americana radio isn't the strongest tool in the marketing box, but... And nobody said anything about video, which once upon a time (see: MTV, YouTube) was going to save us from anonymity. Or something.
What I really think is this: It's always about the music, has always BEEN about the music. The internet ensures that one's work is somehow available. It doesn't ensure that the music is interesting or important or commercially viable, and it probably makes much of that more difficult simply because there has been such exponential growth in the number of releases available on the internet. Not to mention all those cool old TV shows and such available on YouTube.
But there aren't secrets out there, no more than there have been since the telephone was invented.
The secret is how to find the audience. All the data mining and all the rest of it? It just means it's gotten harder, more complicated, and more expensive...unless that happens to be your skillset.
That's it. I've got laundry to fold, coffee to pour, and a cabinet to refinish. Y'all have fun.
Tags: alden, ama, ashley, baker, cleveland, cook, elizabeth, j.d., sam, souther
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Comment by Edd Hurt on September 22, 2009 at 8:50am -
At least you found something good at the Great Escape. I found some Billy Swan LPs on Monument, perhaps we even passed in the aisle there, Grant.
I only went to see John C. Fogerty this year at Americana. It was too crowded to enjoy anything, plus John Fogerty...well, he's short, real short, and his new covers record sounded so awful on paper I couldn't defeat my claustrophobia to stick around and see all his set.
I have come to believe that most music fans don't really want or need critics or analysis. Nashville is a town where, as Pauline Kael once wrote (reviewing Altman's film of the same name), practically the whole population has been turned into groupies. This probably applies to the world in general, Nashville being merely the most famous example. If we're all groupies and glad to be around such famous and musical folk, what's the point of saying anything about the actual music or making the kind of distinctions critics supposedly spend all those hours coming up with? Dunno.
A few weeks ago Caroline and I went to see the great guitarist Robben Ford, who brought on stage two famous Nashville pickers, Vince Gill and Brad Paisley. To jam, like in the olden days of jazz and cuttin' contests and so forth. Well, Brad did OK. Compared to Ford, he was like somebody just learning some B.B. King licks in high school, but it was acceptable. Vince comes out and these African-Americans in the back start heckling him: "Can he play? I don't think he got it. He can't play! Let's see what you got," etc. Well, Vince finally had enough, he looked rattled, and finally he said: "Fuck off!"
The audience was startled and of course, such bad manners to say these things to Vince Gill. Who played even more woodenly than Brad Paisley; Vince do not play the jazz. But that's the kind of musical reality the new non-critical, anti-cultural environment we live in (everybody is a star) encourages. Swims against history, you might say. Those hecklers were doing my job: being critics, bringing things down to a human level, adding some reality to the package for people who have, I would say, Grant, have forgotten all about history in their rush to Tweet and Facebook and all that crap. Being reminded that not everyone shares your notions of musical excellence and musical culture is something that our new paradigm doesn't always do very well, because we've been unmoored from what that culture was to begin with. Conflicting voices and all that. Again, cf. Kael.
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Comment by Grant Alden on September 22, 2009 at 8:59am - At some point music criticism became music journalism became celebrity journalism. The gulf between those of us who began as critics and wished only to write critically and knowledgeably about the musical texts set before us and those who entered the profession [sic] simply so as to gain access to and proximity to "stars" narrowed and narrowed until it was no longer possible to acknowledge the existence of such a gulf.
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Comment by Kim Ruehl on September 22, 2009 at 9:51am -
I have to explain Twitter for a second here, because, like everything else that's happening online (including this community site), it's nothing new. It's something people have been doing all throughout history, it merely gives us a different vehicle for it, which is to tell our friends, families, peers and colleagues (which now include worldwide peers and colleagues because we're in a global community) about our lives, our likes and dislikes, our interests and concerns. It gets small talk out of the way so that, when we see each other, we already know so-and-so was in a car accident, they had a good or bad day...or more apropos of this conversation, they got a new album by a new artist they really like. And we've already looked that artist up on youtube and watched them play live at the state fair in Ohio, and can now spend the face-to-face time discussing that artist's work, rather than spending time saying "Oh really, I've never heard of them. What kind of music? etc."
Artists can, through Twitter, head off some of the questions reporters might ask them, by tweeting (as Angela Easterling does, since she seems to be the perfect example of an artist leveraging the internet) about her band members and the folks she's working with in the studio. Reporters who follow those tweets can better focus their interviews with her to discuss other elements of her art. They'll come into the interview already knowing who plays on the record, how she got them, how she feels about all that. They know what the process was like and what issues arose. Frees up time for talking about and analyzing and understanding the art.
I have to agree with what you quoted up there, except the part about status. I think it's not so much about status anymore as it is about community. Every artist is talking to someone and about something which someone else has experienced. What's happening with the tools we have online is that music fans can now understand that every artist has an audience. The better the artist, the larger the audience, but that's always been true.
There was some comment, I think from you, at that 12-step meeting about filters, and I've been thinking about that, because my gut response was, "Do we need filters for music?" Things like science and technology news, politics, etc., require filters because most of us don't innately understand exactly how those things work. But music is something I believe we all understand, even those who can't explain how or why they understand it. The best music reporting has always served chiefly to turn people on to artists and cause them to think about the art in a different way. Sam Baker's a good example - his music is great as is, but if you know his story, it hits harder. That role - the reporter discovering that story and sharing it with readers - is still important, still exists. The part that is irrelevant now is where the reporter says "...and so it's worth five stars." People want to decide that for themselves.
Music is about how it feels, and nobody can tell you what that will be. The focus now needs to be on cluing people into where they can find people who feel the same way they do, and telling them stories that make them feel more deeply. How's that for a long comment?
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Comment by Grant Alden on September 22, 2009 at 10:35am
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"Twitter gets small talk out of the way." Small talk fulfills a valuable function in interpersonal communication, and I'd be curious if any sociologists present (or communications specialists) would care to comment on what outcomes we might expect from its elimination.
"Reporters who follow those tweets can better focus their interviews..." is simply a substitute for a competently prepared press kit, and hardly an improvement to the extent that one does not, as a working reporter, necessarily know what artist one will be interviewing next month, so as to follow all that twittering.
Further, all this following and twittering and whatever...it's a huge timesuck, best I can tell. It is not -- NOT, I say, my best gospel voice -- a substitute for going out and actually interacting with real live human beings.
"People want to decide [five stars] for themselves." Most people don't want to think about that. Most people want simply to be told what's good, because they haven't the time nor the inclination to attend to the nuances of the music business. Further, in an environment with, what? 60,000 releases (over the 20,000 we once struggled with not so many years back), I'd say filters are essential.
Once upon a time you could judge a record, to some extent, at least, by what label released it. By who played on it, who produced it. By where it was racked in the store. And by what the critics said, if one troubled to read music magazines, or general interest titles that trafficked in such things occasionally.
My strong suspicion is that, for those to whom music is a less than essential component of their lives, all this online noise is simply another reason to tune out.
I mean to say this, in the end: I love music, always have. But I don't have time for this shit. It doesn't improve my knowledge, nor my choices, in any way that is useful to me.
But, then, we all know I'm a dinosaur.
I don't text. I won't tweet. There have to be limits to the extent to which I'm willing to be connected to this and other electronic tethers.
And isn't an artist "tweeting" about her recording process just another, less than impartial form of filtering?
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Comment by Kim Ruehl on September 22, 2009 at 11:12am
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I think "most people" depends on which people you're referring to, maybe. Maybe it's a generational difference - probably. I can only really speak for the people I'm around, which is generally, admittedly, people my age. So maybe I can claim at least some portion of my generation doesn't want to be told what's good. They want to decide for themselves. The doing away with small talk thing probably does have some greater implication to the evolution of culture and society, but I'd say in my life it cuts the crap out of my interactions with people. When I meet people I follow on Twitter, and who follow me, we already have a rapport before we get face to face. We know and understand at least some of our common interests and don't have to go through some of that awkward "do I even want to talk to you?" stuff you can go through with people you first meet.
Fair point about not knowing who you'll be interviewing until last minute, etc. But then you can go to their Twitter feed and get the basics by reading their last few weeks or months of tweets - it's far more interesting than a press release (which is, let's face it, generally not the most riveting thing to read), and much more revealing. By looking at tweets, you automatically know more than their handlers would want to sell you about the artist. Unless of course it's their handlers doing the Twitter feed, but you can usually tell which artists are tweeting themselves and which are having their "people" do it for them based on the tone of the tweets. The siblings Watkins, for example, both tweet a lot of photos from their various travels and exploits.
Yeah, it probably is a different kind of filter. I think maybe I misunderstand the word "filter" as something we need in order to tell us what to do. My point was, I think, at least for my generation and I reckon even moreso for the generation younger than me, we want access to every option so that we can decide for ourselves. It's what Google has done to our brains. Give us the buffet and we'll make our own meal, for better or worse. We'll eat crap for a little bit, because it's there, but after a while we'll get tired of the crap and make a beeline for the veggies. So to speak. We're getting there, I think.
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Comment by Grant Alden on September 22, 2009 at 12:14pm
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I'm still waiting for that beeline to the veggies!
The Google Generation has lost the capacity to (sorry) stumble upon things. That's what print did, it invited you in and then offered you stories you would not otherwise have had occasion to encounter. Or, at least, that's what print did when it did its job.
Teasing, joking, and provoking aside, I think it's an open and interesting question what all this technology is doing to us, how we are being transformed by it. We are, perhaps, being rewired. Certainly our attention spans are being adjusted, and our expectations of what constitutes a deep and revealing communication are being transformed.
To go back, quickly, before I fold the laundry, to the artist tweets...there may be a fallacy lurking here, that somehow direct communication to or at least from an artist will lead to a better understanding of the artist's work. Old college cliche: don't confuse the artist with the art. Artists lie, the conceal, and they often don't know what their work is about. All at the same time. Pretending that having a direct conduit to the creative process, to the artist's private or semi-public or whatever it is life is going to give us more "truth" per typed character than the work of a first-rate critic/journalist is, I think, well, wrong-headed. Not because I was and perhaps sometimes am a critic/journalist, but because I value their work in contexts where I am not expert: film, for example, though once long ago I dabbled. Or visual art.
Back up, Grant. Twittering will tell me more about the artist than a press release. What I want to know about the artist should be in their work. I don't give two shakes of a rat's tail for the shape of their love life, nor for their drug addictions, nor for their mortgage payments. I want to know about their work. They're going to lie to me about that, and it's going to be my job to figure it out. I don't expect press releases to be "interesting," I expect them to lay out a template which I can exploit to create an interesting piece of writing.
And then there's the twittering people you haven't met so as to avoid small talk. I just think that's a bizarre way to interact with other human beings. But, as noted above, we are being rewired. I just haven't showed up for my appointment yet, I guess.
I suspect, Kim, we'd have made a better panel than either of the two I attended.
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Comment by Kim Ruehl on September 22, 2009 at 12:53pm
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I just joined a site called stumbleupon, which actually does just that. You hit the little stumbleupon button and it stumbles you into another website you never would have found on your own. You can either "like" or "dislike" it and, based on that, it becomes more and more accurate to your tastes. Kind of like pandora, but for websites. It also chooses based on things you've already told it you like (for me, music, politics, travel, etc.) and things your friends like. Like Google, the more you use it, the more it refines to your tastes. Good stuff.
That chip will get implanted in your brain sooner or later.
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Comment by Grant Alden on September 22, 2009 at 1:18pm
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I don't want some machine refining my choices. Or stumbling for me. I can do both of those things on my own with the tools I already have.
For the rest, I'm going to shut up and see if anybody else chimes in.
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Comment by roburrito on September 22, 2009 at 2:53pm
- the "new" jd souther album is quite good! i'm off to pick up the latest supergroup - monsters of folk.
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Comment by Kyla Fairchild on September 22, 2009 at 5:55pm -
In base business terms I view twitter as another broadcast channel to use to attract fans and followers to your marketing message. If you are an artist it's a great way to communicate with your fans and create a more "personal" (I could feel you bristling as I typed that Grant!) relationship with them and make them feel like they are a part of your life. As I see it the future business model for artists is to connect directly with fans via any and all "broadcast channels" they are using (My Space, Face Book, Twitter, Linked In, etc.) and endear them to you and hope to compel them to buy merch, tickets, downloads, credits in liner notes, or whatever else artists can think of to sell them in an effort to try and eek out a living. For that I see Twitter as a valuable tool.
Kim has done a fantastic job using Twitter effectively for No Depression as a means to drive people to the web site to read blogs they might not have seen otherwise. She regularly sends out tweets with urls's that link back to interesting blogs and forum discussions on the site each day as a way to engage readers and remind them that we are here. We have close to 1600 Twitter followers and that's 1600 people who might be encouraged to visit the web site that wouldn't otherwise. As that number continues to grow the impact Twitter will have for us is considerable.
I'm not a fan of Twitter for personal use but as a business tool if exploited and used effectively it can have a great impact.
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