The American music tradition

I've been spending a LOT of time with Bob Dylan's music lately. I've always had respect for Bob, although I never real dug that deeply into his catalog. I've been digging about as deep as I can as of late, scouring the internets for bootlegs and rare live outtakes. Listening to Bob really does something to you, he's a living text book of American music. He has the tradition of American music within him, no, he has become American music tradition. You can hear it in the songs, he's not trying to sound like early folk, or early blues, or country, he just does. It really is like the music flows through him, like he's a conduit for it. It's effortless, you can hear it in every note. Nothing is strained, if you listen to Bringing it All Back Home, you will hear almost everything to come in contemporary popular song. And he does this all in a manner that sounds like it was meant to be the this way. Like the album simply had to be made and was waiting for the right person to make it. Like the music chose Bob, and not the other way around. The very man who refused to be defined by the expectations that his audience had for him, has become such a huge icon of American music.

I was listening to Woody Guthrie well before I started my exploration of Dylan's work, I was also very familiar with the early blues and rootsy traditions of Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, and Son House. I've always had a fascination with hearing something a little older and more influential than the last thing I had heard. I loved trying to get to the roots of this American music tree and then winding my way up through the little branches and leaves that spread out from it. You end up at so many wonderful places, garage rock, psych rock, punk rock, indie rock hip-hop, they are all so deeply rooted in the traditions and spirit and exuberance of early American music. As you wander the path you find very few artists that seem to carry a little bit of each progression that music made on it's way to them. Woody had it, Bob has it. I feel like Lou Reed has it, Patty Smith has it. Allen Ginsberg has it. But, to me the one guy who has it over everybody except for Bob, is Jack White. That man really is a walking American songbook. He lives it, and breathes it, and speaks it. And he does know his song well before he starts singing.

It's a little embarrassing the way I learned about the White Stripes. I'm not ashamed to tell the story though, I saw the video for Hotel Yorba on MTV2. There it is I learned of the White Stripes after they were already in MTV. Sad, I know. But sometimes you just miss stuff. But, when I went back and listened to their first album I was blow away. Here was this kid, playing with only drum accompaniment doing Robert Johnson and "Blind" Willie Johnson covers. He had balls, huge ones. Jack has a "Basement Tape" in him somewhere, I want him to sit down and play everything he knows from the American tradition and record it and release it. The music flows through Jack, he doesn't have to force anything, he is American music.

I've gotten myself into such a strange space, I want to spend a year or two in a room with a record player and whatever record I need to listen to at that moment. I don't need to eat or sleep or talk to anyone. I just need to immerse myself in the amazingness of the American sonic tradition. I want to hear it all, country tearjerkers, sonic room filling jazz, slave songs, hopscotch songs, field hollers, gospel calls, protest folk, blues, all of it. Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, Gram Parsons, Beck, Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, Eddie Cochrane, Buddy Holly, Ike Turner, Phil Spector, The Band, Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin, Little Richard, Nirvana, The Flaming Lips, Brian Wilson, Sonic Youth, Wilco, My Morning Jacket, Black Lips, Miles Davis. I want to hear them all I want to sit and make connections, piece it all together like a quilt. A sonic quilt that can wrap us all up and keep us warm with musical salvation. Rock 'n' Roll has the power to destroy evil, it helped to destroy racial divides. Woody Guthrie would write on all his guitars that "this machine kills fascists" and I believe him. Grab something powerful from your music collection this weekend and put it on, play it really loud, yell along with the lyrics. Let it free you.