Music City Roots

It must be October. A day after the Chicago Cubs pulled off a four-run ninth-inning comeback against the Giants to secure their Division title (rock!), this week’s Roots featured: a band called the WPA Ball Club, Aly Sutton dressed like a cast member in A League of Their Own and four basses (we pun out of love). They were all acoustic upright basses belonging to four very different and thoroughly wonderful bands. Then we capped the night off with a solo performance which I can in no way force into my baseball metaphor. Except to say that we won. Our seventh birthday show looked really good on paper and it sounded amazing in actuality.

I just finished my friend Tamara Saviano’s heartfelt and fascinating new biography of Guy Clark, the lion of literate Texas/Nashville songwriting of the past 50 years. We’re still grieving the passing of Guy, who died in May. He was remembered and honored at a gala show at the Ryman in August. And he came up at this week’s Roots show. Noel McKay of High Plains Jamboree spoke in our interview about the life-changing impact of knowing and writing with Guy, whom he met after opening a show for him and Townes Van Zandt in the 1990s. It struck me during Zach Schmidt’s set that we had an entire lineup of songwriters who would have sounded great opening for Guy Clark. There’s always passion for the song in Americana music, but this roster brought a special focus to the art and the craft.

The easiest way to describe the Sept. 28 Music City Roots was Ladies Night – our four acts were all led by women. But outside of their creators’ XX chromosomes, those four sets of music had virtually nothing in common. It was an unusual night in more ways than that. With host Jim Lauderdale and “interview guy” Craig Havighurst at the IBMA’s annual gathering in Raleigh, Sam Bush and I were called in. Fortunately, golden-throated MCR announcer Keith Bilbrey was minding the store and maintaining standards.

Sam and his trademark mandolin, “Hoss,” appropriately opened the evening with a well-known musical female, Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country.” Although it’s not on his fine new CD, Storyman, it captured that album’s singer-songwriter approach while showing off his mandolin mastery, setting the song to a bluesy, Allman-style riff. Pound for pound, there is no better, more dynamic mandolin picker on earth.

Angel Snow, fresh from her weekend performance at Franklin’s Pilgrimage Music and Cultural Festival played the first set, backed by lap steel guitarist Jason Goforth. Recently signed to Nettwerk (Sarah McLachlan’s longtime label), she’s working on a folk-pop record that expands her sound with electronics, but it’s hard to imagine how she could improve upon the simple beauty of her MCR set, stripped down to two guitars and one voice, creating an atmosphere at once rootsy and ethereal.

AmericanaFest 2016 may be wrapping up, but more than ever, we took this year’s gathering as a battery-charger and an inspiring star map for what lies ahead. Hearing kind words about our new Roots Radio initiative on WMOT 89.5 FM certainly helped rev our enthusiasm from high to higher for the prospects of sharing and spreading the music and the stories of its makers. I had an interesting but sobering experience on the weekend teaching a seminar about the origins and legacy of Music City to a group of 50 adult learners enrolled at Bethel University. These were folks from outside our industry/music nerd circles, but I was surprised to survey them and learn that ZERO of them had heard of the concept of “Americana” music. Yet this is music for everyone. It’s our shared, connecting heritage in a divisive time, so I took this as a personal challenge.

Due to the unique time crunch of AMA week, I offer my annual condensed survey of last week’s action and this week’s show, which looks just splendid with an MCR debut by Austin “Ameri-Chicana” fiddler/singer Carrie Rodriquez and a celebrated blues guitar slinger. But as I sit quietly thinking about these recent days, I’m swimming in the echoes of some absurdly excellent performances: William Bell singing “The Three of Me” at the Honors & Awards show with staggering grace and candor, Aaron Lee Tasjan’s psychedelic country glam and River Whyless (MCR alums) playing sparkling, surprise-filled alt-folk.

And of course we threw a showcase on Thursday and couldn’t have been happier with our roster.

That radio countdown never sounded so sweet. Not since our first night on WSM in October 2009 did the top of the show – with its shot of Rob Ickes dobro and our emcee’s stentorian voice proclaiming us on the air from the Edge of Music City – have so much electricity for me. Yes, I know we send a video feed of MCR out over the internet across much greater distances than the footprint of an FM signal. But in my opinion, radio will always be the most refined and exciting and substantial medium – the one that matches technology and content in the most timeless and spiritual way.

I mean, think about it. The voices and instrumental sounds of Nashville’s finest musician and distinguished visiting talent went into microphones on stage, imprinting their nuances and truth onto a current of electricity. That signal went to a mixing board and then over an internet line to a studio in Murfreesboro where it was processed for broadcast and then sent a few more miles to a tower west of Percy Priest Lake where it was sent rippling across the land, reaching all of Middle Tennessee with rich analog fidelity. During the second set, I went out to listen in my car for a bit just to make sure it was real. After a number of months without that official radio home, we were back, and not on just any station, but a new Nashville-centric Americana station programmed by my friends and teammates, now known as WMOT/Roots Radio 89.5. It was a moving thing to hear.

Such elaborate hardware deserves top quality software and our guest artists brought it on this night dedicated to previewing the Bristol Rhythm & Roots Festival and celebrating the 1927 Bristol Session, as updated on the double album Orthophonic Joy.

Tuesday’s show was bound to sell out because Berklee forces arrived with a couple hundred students, faculty and alumni and because their very distinguished alums Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings asked if their performance and award presentation could be nested in a special Roots show. That means a lot to us, and both parties pulled out the stops to create one of the finest and most meaningful shows we’ve ever put on.

Liz Longley has a song with a chorus that starts “You’ve got that way…” and wow, so does she. Armed with an acoustic guitar and her cool, smoky and nimble voice, she took the stage for our first set. The songs have become hits for me from repeated listening to her debut album. “Memphis” and “Bad Habit” are new soul folk standards. “Skin And Bones” has a darker Appalachian edge. Then it was on to a very different voice in Sierra Hull, with her musically entwined new string trio and songs from her fascinating new Weighted Mind album. After the title track we heard the baroque and intricate composed interplay of “Queen of Hearts/Royal Tea” (thank you Berklee training) and the silk pillow of a song that is “Lullaby.”

We were only one song into Maureen Murphy’s set when Photographer Tony whispered to me that we were experiencing the finest singer in the show’s history. There’s a case to be made. I’ve rarely seen so much refinement and technique mingled with so much power and passion. Murphy delivered four very different songs with a rocking, versatile quartet, but the capstone was her ode to her singing idol Lisa Fisher “How Can I Ease The Pain.” The song’s free form gave Maureen ample ways to shape and craft and massage and emote. It was simply breathtaking in its range of textures, from delicate to forceful. And she got to hit a classic money note in Martin Sexton’s “Smoke.” It would have been difficult to pack more musical range or magic into 20 minutes.

I’ve been watching Gillian and Dave perform for twenty years, and it’s always riveting. Certainly, seeing the MCR logo behind them was extra inspiring and gratifying. They opened with spectral unison singing on “The Way It Will Be,” making the harmonies of “The Way It Goes” and “Miss Ohio” all the more bloom-like. When Berklee President Roger Brown presented the school’s American Master Awards to them (as individuals by the way not a group), he cited Dave’s harmonically rich and inventive guitar playing. And yes, that’s one thing I’ve always loved about it – close, dissonant intervals delivered with bebop command and a staccato attack, like Bill Monroe downstrokes on Eddie Lang’s guitar. And on this night I got to be about 20 feet from his shredding solo on “Red Clay Halo,” one of my favorite Gill and Dave songs. Their final number “Everything Is Free” includes the line “we’re gonna do it anyway, even if it doesn’t pay,” and that’s how GW and DR always sounded to me. Their old friend T Bone Burnett, who collected the night’s other Master Award, played amiable electric guitar strokes and sang a bit on that final tune before adding a whole new verse about a certain orange presidential candidate in the rollicking Nashville Jam on “I’ll Fly Away.”

Peter Cooper - Opening Day

Kacy & Clayton

Strange Country https://youtu.be/r1yFxTh6DN8

If You Ask How I’m Keeping

The Rio Grande

Wood View

Nottaman Town

Rebecca Roubion

Don’t Know Who I Am https://youtu.be/8jK8v922EA0

I’ll Be Alright

Love Me Now

Vacherie Girl

Sometimes

Anywhere I Go

Lindi Ortega

Demons Don’t Get Me Down

Cigarettes & Truckstops

Ashes

Faded Glory

Run Amuck https://youtu.be/MyDGpeesCug

Alanna Royale

I Know https://youtu.be/lYfEmarN89Y

Animal

Cop Show

Big Time Me

I Used To Dream

Giving It All Away

Nashville Jam - Ain’t Too Proud To Beg https://youtu.be/EBsGufz7Fno

Jim Lauderdale - It Hurts

Victoria Canal - City Shoes https://youtu.be/2KP1BVjlJho

Badi Assad

Pega No Coco https://youtu.be/YWdQVKBli7A

Voce Nao Entendeu Nada

Little Lion Man

Sedated

Stranger

Vocal Improv

Jonny Fritz

Goodbye Summer

Are You Thirsty

Humidifier https://youtu.be/HNnntMMyCGQ

I Love Leaving

Happy In Hindsight

Stadium Inn

Seventh Song?!?! WHO IS DOING THIS JOB?!>! “Central Virginia?”

I Draw Slow

Valentine https://youtu.be/XEONV643Wj8

My Portion

Carolina

Goldmine

Twin Sisters

Little Switzerland

Luke Bulla

Temperance Reel

Cruel Moon

Midnight & Lonesome https://youtu.be/ICPZ7j-Moh0

Tie Me Down & Set Me Free

Who Loves You Better

Somebody’s Got To Pay

Nashville Jam - Rocky Road Blues https://youtu.be/n37G6xqVNpw

Jim Lauderdale - Can We Find Forgiveness

Lee Harvey Osmond

How Does It Feel

Blue Moon Drive

Come and Go (Dreams)

Oh The Gods https://youtu.be/GH1khPuwsgQ

Freedom

HONEYHONEY

Watcha Gonna Do Now

Yours to Bear https://youtu.be/jR4mwafD6S0

Big Man

Burned Me Out

Back To You

Eric Brace & Peter Cooper Band

C&O Canal https://youtu.be/kWffQ_gME7M

Boulder to Birmingham

Blue Ridge

If That’s the Way You Feel

Wait a Minute

Michael Martin Murphey

High Stakes

Campfire on The Road

Emilia Farewell

Wildfire https://youtu.be/5rTwVXt10zw

Geronimo’s Cadillac https://youtu.be/MkVv0XvQ5Lg

Nashville Jam - Workin on a Building https://youtu.be/hKfPn6eEnDg