Joe Carter, one of the higher ups at Culture 11, is miffed at my dislike of Alison Krauss, and scornful of my enthusiasm for Emmylou Harris:
Berlatsky, who admits to being an “urban, over-educated atheist”, says that the “primary audience for [Krauss’] music is not transplanted rural workers who long for rigorous spiritual truth, but NPR listeners, who long for vaguely spiritualized prettiness.” Nonsense.
I was a rural worker (not yet transplanted) in 1987 when I bought Krauss’ first album with her brilliant band Union Station. For the next two years I waited expectantly — as did other hicks in my area — until she released her near-perfect album, “I’ve Got That Old Feeling” (the title song is still the greatest song ever). We were listening to Krauss a decade before the NPRites joined the hayride.
This was enough to make me skeptical of Berlatsky’s ability to discern good music. But he gives himself away by claiming that Emmylou Harris’ “heartfelt” Roses in the Snow is “one of my favorite albums ever.” The ridiculously overrated Harris may be a critics’ darling but we rural folk use her name as a shibbolith: If you claim to be a fan of country/bluegrass/Americana and use as your example Emmylou, we know you’re a poseur.
The fun thing about country authenticity, of course, is that everybody’s a poseur. I mean, Carter’s not a rural worker anymore, yes? He’s editing some wonky online website and all enmeshed in a virtual community. It’s all over, Joe. Embrace your rootless cosmopolitanism.
If Carter doesn’t like Emmylou, that’s cool…but suggesting she doesn’t have serious country music cred seems a little silly. Johnny Cash was a long-time supporter of her music — and, indeed, he pops up on one of the best tracks on “Roses in the Snow”. (Maybe Joe doesn’t like Johnny Cash either…?) Harris was all over country music radio in the 70s; I don’t think it was just urbanites who were listening to her. Also, I’ve got to say, if you think Alison Krauss is not a humongous Emmylous Harris fan, you’re out of your gourd (the reverse is certainly true as well — I’d be shocked if Harris doesn’t love Krauss’ music. In fact, I know they’ve performed together, most famously in “O Brother Where Art Thou.”)
I do despise Krauss, and I like Harris a lot (her old stuff anyway; the recent New Agey crap is pretty vile.) But in the essay I pretty clearly,and repeatedly, lumped them together — as I said, “The beauty and longing in an Emmylous Harris or Alison Krauss song is at once a kind of nostalgic pining for a lost backbone and a celebration of the pursuit of pleasures detached from specific moral values.” Carter impugns my rural cred (which I never claimed) by suggesting my aesthetics are off. This more or less confirms the point of my essay, which is that country has gotten to this place where credibility has everything to do with liking this or that product, and very little to do with any actual values or morals. Rural identity is just another affectation, bolstered through arbitrary product purchases. Kitty Wells tried to separate the sheep from the goats; now we’re left trying to separate one Joni Mitchell heir from another, and trying to figure out which of them is more rural.
Update: Helen Rittelmeyer has a really smart post in response to my bluegrass essay up on Culture 11’s Ladyblog. Though one hates to admit this sort of thing, I fear it’s probably better than my original effort. I think this post by Aunt B. probably is as well.
Noah, from here bluegrass hardly looks like dead festival fare (come to Truckers' World Flea Market this weekend). But more disturbing is Mr. Carter's notion that Emmylou Harris is a "shibbolith" [sic], a word few rural types know despite its Biblical roots.
None of my redneck kin would know what the crap he's talking about. Plenty love her, or her & GP; none compete for the Most Rural Medal. I do wonder that he doesn't tag "Family" on his surname for the ultimate rural-fight trump card.
Reminds me of some essay about whether Gillian Welch could sing bluegrass since she's from LA.
Do you ever pick up the Oxford American music CD?
Hey Bill! All this stuff is kind of relative, of course; bluegrass always had adherents, but as popular commercial music (which is what it started as) it definitely hit the skids at least from the 60s onward. It shifted to festivals, and it’s audience became a lot more hippieish (folks like Emmylou, for example.) These days it’s kind of like the blues; the original demographic still has affection for it and all, but what really keeps it afloat is the fact that it’s fetishized by hipster sorts.
I really dislike Gillian Welch for a lot of the same reasons I don’t like Krauss. It’s not about where they’re from; it’s about the production. Rural string music just sounds like crap when you jack up the production enough.
The more-rural-than-thou thing is an endless round. Authenticity…ergh.
Oh no! I think Time (The Revelator)’s a masterpiece– mainly for the songs, but the production’s stripped back compared to her others.
And I’m happy to report that, whether subsidized by the Bluegrass Museum in Owensboro (funny for an art form barely 60 years old) or Appalshop, or just as the Masonic lodge, you can still hear bluegrass with nary a hipster to be seen.
Are any of yall musicians yourselves? I am curios because as a folk musician myself, I know that one’s background or ethnicity has absolutely nothing to do with how well one can play and instrument. I am an American who plays the Scottish bagpipe and I have first hand knowledge that it’s not one’s birth place that counts, but how much music is inside of you. If anyone ever came up to me and questioned my ability to pipe because I’m an American, all I would have to do is get out my pipes and play them some piobaireachd.
If good music is good, then it matters not from whom it came.
I think we’re all actually pretty much agreed on that, Karl. Though…generally one’s cultural position vis-a-vis the music one is performing has some effect on material, style, song selection, etc. What that effect is, and how it relates to quality, will vary widely, though….
Agreed. Regional preferences do have a very important impact on what and how an instrument is played. The fiddle and pipes are perfect examples.
Hi Noah, thanks for the columns. They got my blood boiling, but it’s a good discussion.
The bluegrass audience may now be more “hippieish” than what you would see at a Bill Monroe show in 1947, but the notion that the festival circuit is somehow a place only for urbanized hipsters is ridiculous. Have you ever been to Ralph Stanley’s Memorial Day festival in Clintwood, Virginia? Even Merlefest, the Disneyland of bluegrass festivals, draws a culturally diverse crowd in which you’re as likely to see Carhart as tie-dye.
Alison Krauss is a very talented musician whose work I soemtimes like adn sometimes find too slick and polished. That said, her tribute concert to Tony Rice (with him accompanying on guitar) was one of the best bluegrass shows I’ve ever been to. Her singing with the Whites is bluegrass gospel at it’s best and most pure. And her individual band memebers are each fantasticly talented and totally bona fide in the bluegrass world. Plus, I think it’s worth pointing out that she got her start as a fiddle prodigy from the bluegrass tradition, not as a Nasvhille vocalist (she also had a uni-brow and some serious hair frizz at the time. How does that reflect on her authenticity?) It’s also worth noting that she’s an incredible fiddler – right up there with Stuart Duncan, Vassar and the rest, in my opinion.
I also think there are some true-blue bluegrass bands that sound every bit at polished as AKUS. What about Mountain Heart or Blue Highway or the Grascals? All their recordings are VERY slick and polished. That doesn’t mean they aren’t bluegrass or aren’t authentic.
Trying to decree that some things are bluegrass and some things are not is a dangerous proposition. There’s got to be some definition to the genre for it to exist, but you can’t crystalize the sound and cultural aesthetic of Bill Monroe’s 1947 band and say that anything that doesn’t adhere isn’t bluegrass, or somehow isn’t authentic. The minute that happens, the music belongs in a museum and not on stage.
I really enjoy young accoustic bands such as The Infamous Stringdusters, the Punch Brothers and Crooked Still. They don’t fit the textbook definition of bluegrass, but they have something to offer and shouldn’t be ridiculed.
It’s also a bit silly to ridicule the entire body of work of an artist who has done as many different things as Alison Krauss. She’s been a member of the Tony Rice Unit, recorded with the Whites, sung harmony for Larry Sparks. She’s also churned out some bland pop country.
The thing I love about bluegrass music and its community is the sense of participation and the reduced barrier between artist and fan. Like many bluegrass people, I play the instruments, know the songs and go to the festivals both to jam and to listen. I like that you are evaluated on your musical and personal merits, regardless of cultural background. That’s a strength of the music, not a weakness.
-Rob
Hey Rob. As I tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to make clear in the essay…I don’t really care about authenticity. Alison Krauss is no more or less authentic than Emmylou Harris or Kitty Wells, two artists I like a lot.
Any commercial music is always already sold out. Marketing genres are, from their inception, about their own demise. I think country has reached the stage where it’s largely a hollowed out husk, and I think Krauss is a sign of that. But it’s not because she’s inauthentic or not really bluegrass. It’s just because (from my perspective) she makes bad music.
I find it interesting that both Mr. Berlatsky and Mr. Carter seem completely ignorant of ACTUAL bluegrass artists….when commenters point out other artists, (Blue Highway, Tony Rice, Grascals, Infamous Stringdusters, Punch Brothers..etc..) neither Carter or Berlatsky have any comment to make, and this is the first time I have ever heard Kitty Wells referred to as a bluegrass artist.
New “authentic” (i.e. rough, unpolished) bluegrass is still being made….I point to the Steeldrivers as a beacon of hope, and J.D. Crowe’s last album was remarkably “authentic”. Crowe always has had a way to seem current and yet raw simultaneously, something his protege’s like Doyle Lawson, and Ms. Krauss forget from time to time.
I agree that Alison is “easy listening” bluegrass…but that doesn’t mean the genre is dead…listen to other artists outside of what you hear on NPR sometime…you might find something worthwhile.
Kitty Wells isn’t a bluegrass artist in general; she made one bluegrassy album (that I’m aware of) — “Dust on the Bible,” which was what my essay was about.
I like Doyle Lawson a lot. I like Del McCoury too. Big fan of Ralph Stanley.
Saying a genre is “dead” doesn’t mean that nobody working in that genre is worthwhile. It means, that as a commercial, creative, living, evolving force, not much is happening. There are some solid blues performers, too, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a viable popular genre anymore. Same for rockabilly or (I think) jazz.
Doyle Lawson for me comes and goes in spurts….he’ll make a string of really good albums, then a string of overproduced albums that don’t really click at all. His first three albums were ground breaking, but after Lou Reid left the band the music became increasingly more bland until Russell Moore joined up, and after their first couple of albums with that line up, the band hit a long streak of boring/overproduced. “Hard Game of Love” and “Dig a Little Deeper”, both which saw Quicksilver in top form again, but their last two albums have been sleepers.
Bluegrass is an odd genre, it’s almost like punk: You have a dedicated group of “bluegrass fundamentalists” wanting to declare jihad on anything that doesn’t sound like “the way Bill or Ralph did it”. If you don’t appease the Bluegrass Taliban, you’re a “sell out”…you’re not punk anymore so to speak.
It staggers artistic growth, but new exciting stuff is being created. The Stringdusters, Cadillac Sky, The Steeldrivers, even Thile’s Punch Brothers, are all taking Bluegrass music places it’s never been before…but they aren’t always taking the fundamentalists with them.