Happenstance, Rachael Yamagata’s first full-length release in 2004, is the perfect way to describe the way I initially discovered her music.
Lucinda Williams originally came as a recommendation to me as a country artist. That always scares me, only because it seems that country music these days can mean so many things. Is it Hank Williams country? Garth Brooks country? You really don’t know.
In the musical landscape that is my iPod catalog and album collection, the setting is often a bleak and desolate one filled with what I lovingly refer to as “slit your wrists” numbers that encapsulate our angst-filled life and times. It’s funny that I unconsciously lean toward artists who consistently seem to be on the verge of the proverbial “throwing in the towel” since I, myself, tend to be a genuinely happy person. However, my music is often qualified by scorned lovers, heartache, and loneliness. I guess I’d rather have the barren, treeless truth than fluffy, cotton candy mountains dotting my scenery.
I first heard Neil Young’s music in high school, sitting on the passenger side of my friend’s beat up car. As we were pulling out of his driveway, he fumbled through a few cassette tapes, and, not knowing what he had chosen, threw one in. The album was Harvest Moon. The song happened to be “One of These Days.” My life has never been the same.
I first heard William Fitzsimmons before I saw him. As I stepped down the stairs of the Duck Room, the basement venue of the must-see Blueberry Hill in St. Louis, I took notice of the heartbreakingly tender voice that filled the hushed room. That soft voice forced me to pause; it contained this indescribable, poignant quality that instantly captured my attention. So, before I moved further to find my post in the audience for the rest of the show, I went to Fitzsimmons’s merch stand to buy his then latest release, Goodnight. Thirty aurally pleasing seconds was all I needed.
“It’s always been the honest kind of writing that strikes a chord with me.”Those were Brooke Fraser’s direct words to me as we spent around 40 minutes in conversation earlier this summer. Originally from New Zealand, Fraser was speaking from Los Angeles, getting ready for her summer tour that would take her all across the U.S. to perform songs from her most recent CD, Albertine.
It’s no secret that Ryan Adams has received his fair share of criticism – from both the media and listeners alike – over the length of his career. I’ve heard so many of the same, overused adjectives thrown his way that they’ve now become clichés to avoid. But, for the sake of argument, let’s review: prolific, eccentric, egotistical, volatile…just to name a few. I mean, didn’t Adams once kick an audience member out of a show after that supposed fan taunted him with a “Summer of ’69” song request? Or is that an urban legend?
A few days before I went to my first Mason Jennings concert at the now defunct Mississippi Nights, my mom came to visit me in Saint Louis. We had lunch at the famous Blueberry Hill, and we may or may not have had a few too many Bloody Marys with our hamburgers and fries. I knew that Jennings was playing an in-store set later that day up the street at Vintage Vinyl, and I dragged my mother along to check it out.
In the summer of 1998, I can’t remember exactly when, I went out and bought a copy of Neil Young’s Comes a Time. The album’s words have stayed with me for a long time; it remains one of my favorite Young albums, and I still don’t know what to call it: county, folk, or just great music that is timeless. I don’t mind that I can’t categorize it, because I’ll have it forever, and that’s all that matters to me.
Last week I read in an interview where singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards said she used to listen to music on the bus to school and wonder what others were thinking. Feeling so moved by what she was listening to, she “couldn’t understand how people weren’t as affected as [she] was.” Edwards went on to talk about the real music bug you eventually get when “you start discovering music on your own and not music that friends are telling you about.”
