Who are the young American songwriters these days? I might be out of touch, but I’m just curious as to who will fill the shoes of the legends like Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, etc. that wrote about society and what not.
I don’t know because that style of music isn’t packaged and shipped as easily as hip-hop, Lady Gaga, and the Jonas Brothers.
Or maybe it’s a dying genre…?
Nobody. Some shoes weren’t meant to be refilled.
[quote=“rocky raccoon”]Who are the young American songwriters these days? I might be out of touch, but I’m just curious as to who will fill the shoes of the legends like Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, etc. that wrote about society and what not.
I don’t know because that style of music isn’t packaged and shipped as easily as hip-hop, Lady Gaga, and the Jonas Brothers.
Or maybe it’s a dying genre…?[/quote]
Not by a long shot, bub.
Not that, obviously, there will ever be another John Cash, as there shouldn’t be, but in terms of the style, it’s all over the place in N. America, unfortunately (or fortunately, maybe), it don’t travel.
Use your Internet, boy.
There are hundreds of Americana/AAA/ND/Alt.country, choose your term, radio stations that stream online.
Check out the website for the annual SXSW Festival in Austin, the Vatican City of Americana.
A good portion of the festival performances are available for download, as is a sampler of recordings from each year’s attendees.
There are rafts and rafts of new, second- and even third-generation acts recording and performing oustanding work in this genre.
Off the top of my head:
James McMurtry (see avvie to immediate left)
Hank Williams III
Drive-by Truckers
The Bottle Rockets
Los Lonely Boys
Lucinda Williams
Corb Lund and the Hurtin’ Albertans
Fred Eaglesmith (ret.)
Good Ol’ Steve Earle
Billy Joe Shaver
Shooter Jennings
and these are all established artists, there are tons of brand new acts coming up all the time.
Not him. Come on, Cash is easy. Why does everyone forget these guys for Americana? Arthur Smith, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.
Oh, you said young. Never mind. Alligator boots and a new Stetson are more important now.
I like some of Ryan Adams stuff. Another is a band that I like that few people have heard of is Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers. Also the Old 97s are good too.
Ryan Adams did pop into my mind as well, but I’m not too familiar with his stuff…off to YouTube I guess.
Old 97s were in The Break-Up, that’s all I know.
Now that the mind is running around, was wondering if Spoon fits into this category.
[quote=“elektronisk”]
[/quote]
Too bad you can’t play that thing.
Still, you look pretty good holding it…
Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs? This is bluegrass, a subset of americana. Flatt’s an American legend, a great American songwriter and singer. Scruggs practically invented bluegrass banjo.
Banjo pickers who bring a unique style like Earl Scruggs and Bela Fleck are rare and as such probably can’t be replaced. Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys had far greater effect on bluegrass than Johnny Cash had on Nashville – “playing a lick,” that’s Earl Scruggs – but I really prefer the rawness of Ralph Stanley’s banjo take on Scruggs style banjo playing (woops, Dr Ralph Stanley). Stanley’s forward rolls are nearly unique in their expression of that little break with rationality that precedes ecstasy (in Stanley’s case, it’s religious ecstasy). That little break with rationality is also at the heart of ecstatic American Christianity today. I think it’s also what explains the public behavior of Sinead O’Connor (different flavor of ecstasy, though). Also, Stanley’s clawhammer style is so percussive and just drives the song. For example, Dickson Country Breakdown. Or The Clinch Mountain Backstep. Ralph Stanley can make the hair stand right up on my neck. His music is really spooky in a way that, say, bagpipe music is spooky. A Scots-Irish thing chased out of Pennsylvania and into Appalachia during our Whiskey Rebellion, spiced by the American Civil War and World War I, and that popped up in the hills of Virginia in the first half of the last century.
As the chief said upthread, Austin is the capital of americana music, but an excursion to the hinterlands takes place at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas, every fall. The national flatpicking competition is held (along with other national americana championships), and guitarists from around the world compete. The competition is way cool. What happens is that there’s a registration, a time and a big tent. If you’re registered, you show up at the tent at the designated time. They call your name, you step up and play your piece, applause, the next artist is up. They just flat get with the program. Intense yet warm, very serious, very competitive, very fair, and a jaw-dropping ninety minutes slides right by. Pretty amazing competition. And the mostly spontaneous, informal playing that runs every night in the campground is of amazingly high quality.
Alison Krauss, Del McCoury, Bela Fleck, Rhonda Vincent, Ricky Skaggs (a great, great mandolinist, guitarist, fiddler, and banjo picker and much underappreciated imo): this is a list off the top of my head of the most successful bluegrass artists today. There are literally thousands of others. Just about every state has one or more americana music festivals, lasting days each. Winfield, Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tennessee, Telluride in Colorado, SXSW and Austin City Limits Festival in Austin, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco: these festivals are where americana music really lives. Doesn’t really thrive on an MP3 or a CD, unfortunately.
Nice breakdown (get it?) of the old-timey, or “bluegrass” scene, as the Yankees call it.
While the “Americana” desgnation is only slightly less inclusive than, say, “rock”, I wouldn’t include the Applachian-based bluegrass style in it, since the term “Americana” was originally coined to embrace post-Nashville C&W-inspired styles that had previously been difficult to classify.
The Americana Music Association (good a source as any, I reckon) defines the genre as:
I have read somewhere it being described as “music made by people who grew up hearing country music, learned to sing in church and/or in the back seat of the car on family vacations, broke into performing by playing in heavy metal or hard rock bands in high school, and then picked up an acoustic guitar”.
No reflection on you, flike, your analysis and descriptions are spot on and terribly well-informed.
In fact a lot of the younger artists you mention are often included in lists of Americana musicians, but it’s usually due more to their departures or augmentations of the traditional forms than adherence thereto.
elektronisk is the bone in the hamburger steak here, but, after all, he is from Seattle, fer Cripe’s sake.
His idea of “mountain music” is a Rainier beer jingle.
[quote=“the chief”]Too bad you can’t play that thing.
Still, you look pretty good holding it…[/quote]
[quote=“the chief”]elektronisk is the bone in the hamburger steak here, but, after all, he is from Seattle, fer Cripe’s sake.
His idea of “mountain music” is a Rainier beer jingle.[/quote]
You are on a roll today. :bravo:
[quote=“elektronisk”][quote=“the chief”]Too bad you can’t play that thing.
Still, you look pretty good holding it…[/quote]
[quote=“the chief”]elektronisk is the bone in the hamburger steak here, but, after all, he is from Seattle, fer Cripe’s sake.
His idea of “mountain music” is a Rainier beer jingle.[/quote]
You are on a roll today. :bravo:[/quote]
No argument here, all that before noon and I’m still the prettiest thing in all Tu Cheng (!).
So what the fuck does a Badass Hebrew have to do to get back in your fucking signature any fucking ways*???
*©2001 Snoop Dog
Chris Smithers
I took some time and checked out his Origin of Species song, that was pretty good.
Also visited a couple of chief’s recommendations, J. McMurtry and Shooter Jennings. Very good stuff indeed.
Using the term “americana” pushed things in a certain direction, maybe I should have used “good songwriters” instead. One of the good things that I liked about the performers listed above is that their songs tend to carry a message. If I’m drinking and playing cards with friends I really don’t follow any lyrics so any some generic pop or rap is just fine.
But when I’m at work and it’s so quiet, my left headphone allows me to explore songs with substance.
Since SXSW was mentioned I thought I’d share a songwriter that I like. youtube.com/watch?v=4-IyAPn1mPk
It’s not really a whisky-drinking song…but there is a trumpet solo.
You just did it.