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November 25, 2007

"Come Together"

About the only thing George Will and I ever agreed on was the manifest evil of the Designated Hitter rule in baseball, and he has apparently softened his opposition to that. But I respect Will; he is a reasonable, thinking, questioning, agile conservative. David Brooks, his apparent heir, is a poor substitute -- less agile, far more dogmatic, and way too anxious to appear to please. He is not a reasonable man, no not really, no more reasonable than his louder contemporaries. But he plays one on TV.

So it was alarming to flip to the back page of this morning's Lexington Herald opinion section and discover Mr. Brooks essaying on much the same subject which filled my "Hello Stranger" column in the present issue of ND (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/opinion/20brooks.html): the disintegration of our common pop music language. Surely to goodness we don't agree on something, Mr. Brooks and I.

Mr. Brooks, or his research staff, notes that critics began despairing of this great divide in February of 1982, when Time's Jay Cocks wrote about our splintering culture. Time is not famous for broaching new ideas, and so one can safely assume that Mr. Cocks was synthesizing a sentiment that had been afoot for some time. (Perhaps we can blame everything on the Sex Pistols, though they were simply the commodification and synthesis of a surprisingly durable musical sentiment.) That was roughly the season when I abandoned punk for mainstream country, and I don't remember much else except working all the time and being broke.

The occasion of Mr. Brooks' commentary is a suggestion by Little Steven Van Zandt that schools adopt a high school music curriculum he has pulled together, and study the roots and branches of American pop music traditions. No disrespect meant, but if teaching it in high school didn't render rock 'n' roll terminally unhip, I dunno what would. How many generations of rock musicians had to rebel against the big band arrangements they were taught in school?

Brooks makes a larger point, though. "It seems that whatever story I cover," he writes, "people are anxious about fragmentation and longing for cohesion."

The Atlantic's current cover story on the candidacy of Barack Obama argues that he is uniquely suited to end the (Vietnam) wars within the ruling Baby Boom generation, because he is not of that generation. A piece in one of the New Yorkers adrift on the coffee table reminds that, counting George I's tenure as VP in the Regan administration (and has anyone thought to re-examine his role to see if it was more of a template for Dick Chaney than we've imagined?) we've had Bushes or Clintons in the White House since 1980, and Senator Clinton's candidacy seeks only to advance that dynasty further.

Anyway, the crux of the Atlantic piece (I'm not that well-read; I just keep things around the house and pick them up in odd moments) is that the American people are not nearly so divided as our political henchmen argue. And while the author offers statistics to bolster that position, and I have none at my desk this morning, I still think that a dubious reading of society.

Perhaps I remember too clearly the strength and fury of responses we received when ND chose to endorse John Kerry for president. Perhaps I am too keenly aware of the social nuances required when meeting people in this small town, for there is a great deal of feeling out which must be done before anything like a substantive discussion about god or politics or anything interesting can be launched. People hold their views with strength and certainty; a great number of them really don't understand why, for example, the ten commandments cannot (and should not) be posted in all of our public schools.

To some extent this is a failure of imagination: They cannot imagine that somebody would feel disenfranchised by that assertion of state religion, nor can they embrace the notion that a Jew or a Mormon or a Moslem (or a nonbeliever) might find it reasonable to choose a different path toward peace. But I digress.

It seems to me we have always been a fragmented society, a continent settled by marginal religions, destitute adventurers and convicts. (I mean no disrespect to the native peoples who were here first...only an apology for the cruelty of humanity.) Slave holders and abolitionists. Robber barons and union organizers. Hippies and squares.

We have grown in population to the point that each of our particular quirks has enough membership to assert itself, should it choose, rather than muting its peculiarities for fear of social, political, or economic retribution. We now have tens of thousands of albums to choose from each year, dozens upon dozens of TV channels, and myriad public and private paths toward inner peace. Or prosperity, which we congenitally confuse with peace.

Brooks and Van Zandt argue that it may not be possible for a band to find a huge, arena-sized audience in the way that the Rolling Stones (1960s), the E Street Band (1970s) or U2 (1980s) have done. Which may, in a way, be true, but it leaves out Garth Brooks and "High School Musical" and Metallica and a bunch of other acts who can (or once) filled the sheds. The problem is the homogeneity of the audience which joined them in this horrid rooms to hear something approximating music being made.

Brooks also slaps at we critics: "People who have built up cultural capital and pride on their superior discernment are naturally going to cultivate even more obscure musical tastes," he writes.

Once again I'm moved to ask why we refuse to listen to the smartest, best-educated person in the room? Why is an elite fighting unit considered to be a good thing, but an elitist critic (or intellectual or whatever) such a well-accepted pejorative.

Anyhow. I don't know who I want to be president next, but it doesn't seem to be anybody running for the job (and I have looked at both parties: Dogma and cant are marketing shields; I'm looking for simple competence and the ability to lead at this point.) I don't know if ND will endorse a candidate in 2008 because we haven't talked about it.

But Brooks is right: We need to find a way to come together. Not to agree on anything, but at least to agree on what it means to be a member of this society. What the joys and obligations of that honor (luck, that is) are, and how we believe those duties should be carried out. We are supposed to disagree about policy; that's the furnace in which ideas are properly fashioned. But we have to find a way to agree about what it means to be an American.

Art does not lead society; it gives us a mirror through which we may see ourselves.

All of which made far more sense when I was thinking about it than it did when I sat down to write it, and so it goes.

Posted by Grant at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 23, 2007

Questions, Answers, & Questions: A year-end playlist

It should be understood, of course, that the ongoing debate Peter and I enjoy concerning the virtues of singles v. albums is, to some extent, an argument for the fun of arguing. Which is to say we are both drawn to great songs, and both respect the rare accomplishment of a coherent and gripping album of songs.

I suspect, for example, that come the end of this fast-moving decade we will both consider Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator) a singular, signature achievement.

Regardless, I've quit noodling with my year-end compilation. Early in 2007 I wrote that it seemed to be a particularly good year for the music (if not the business), and pulling this year-end list together more than confirmed that hunch. This has been an extraordinary year for music, which may explain why I spent a week (instead of an hour) juggling my top-20 list for the magazine. Ordinarily I don't assemble this compilation until much later, but, this year, I dumped tracks onto the computer and juggled them while working. (Or pretending to.) In a couple of cases I came back to albums that were much stronger than I remembered.

All that said, the list that follows isn't a preview of my year-end ballot. Some of what's here is on my top-20, some not. Missing, for example, is a hard country segment. For reasons of space and sequencing, I was unable to include tracks from Jim Lauderdale, Gene Watson, and, perhaps, Porter Wagoner. I didn't go back to hunt for a track from him because I didn't think the sound would cohere with the balance of these offerings. There were several others like that.

What this is, then, is an attempt at an audio essay. It is a collection of the songs which moved and entertained me this year. It's a reflection of whatever it is I'm drawn to in music. My chief concern was sequencing twenty songs into a coherent whole that linked to and commented upon itself and added up to some kind of commentary. It's all intuitive. Sorta.

There are jokes and smirks and idiosyncratic logic within this list, and you'll see some of it and guess at more and not care at all, that's my bet. But here 'tis. The internal rule is that the album has to have come out in 2007 (which I've broken, once, to my knowledge), and I'll only use one song per artist.

1. "Juarez" by Sam Baker (from Pretty World).
2. "Down In A Hole" by Jason Isbell (from Sirens Of The Ditch).
3. "Dry Town" by Miranda Lambert (a Gillian Welch song from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend).
4. "Drinkin' Problem" by Lori McKenna (from Unglamorous, with Tim McGraw on harmonies).
5. "Methamphetamine" by Son Volt (from The Search).
6. "Oxycontin Blues" by Steve Earle (from Washington Square Serenade).
7. "If I Were You" by Chris Knight (from the long-delayed Trailer Tapes).
8. "If You Catch Me Stealing" by Eilen Jewell (from Letters From Sinners & Strangers).
9. "Poor Old Dirt Farmer" by Levon Helm (from Dirt Farmer).
10. "Long Dark Night" by John Fogerty (from Revival).
11. "Rescue Me" by Tom Gillam (from Never Look Back).
12. "Bible" by Romi Mayes (from Sweet Somethin' Steady). I realize this came out in 2006 in Canada, and that if it was released at all in the States nobody much noticed. Which is a pity.
13. "99 And 1/2" by Mavis Staples (from We'll Never Turn Back).
14. "Come Over Here" by the Spirtulaires Of Hurtsboro, Alabama (from Singing Songs Of Praise).
15. "Helen" by the Cave Singers (from Invitation Songs).
16. "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)" by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss (from Raising Sand).
17. "Rest Your Weary Mind" by Elizabeth Cook (with Bobby Bare Jr., from Balls).
18. "Blanket" by Gurf Morlix (with Patty Griffin on backing vocals, from Diamonds To Rust).
19. "Stay On The Ride" by Patty Griffin (from Children Running Through).
20. "Don't Cry A Tear" by Lyle Lovett & His Large Band (from It's Not Big It's Large).

I have toyed with explaining this more, and perhaps I'll come back and do so if there's any need. But for the moment, I'll let the music do the explaining.

Enjoy.

Posted by Grant at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 20, 2007

A Thanksgiving meditation on place

We were sitting around the Man Hut last night (anybody raised on Flanders & Swan will recognize that cadence, and too bad for those not raised on "The Reluctant Cannibal"), an artfully disguised closet with a TV and a refrigerator and bicycles hanging from the ceiling, watching my Titans fall apart on Monday Night and musing about the paths which brought us to this small town in Eastern Kentucky.

I am not yet a regular at the Man Hut, but some of my favorite people in town convene there most Monday nights, and they've been kind enough to invite me. Anyhow, one of our absent friends has just received a promotion, and I wondered -- while another Titan receiver dropped a perfectly-thrown ball -- whether that meant the promotion meant he would finally come to peace with living here, accept that his roots had been transplanted across state, and allow us to commit to long-term friendship. The rest of us in the room, see, we're staying here. But it's not for everyone, and we understand that.

I still have to explain my own peculiar trajectory when I meet people: Seattle-Los Angeles-Nashville-Morehead. But people want to know where you're from because it bears on who you are in ways I only slightly understand. And that itinerary seems to reflect only knotted brows and not much understanding until I mention little Maggie and her grandparents, and then it is accepted. More or less.

Well. I'll never be from here, but this is home.

Not simply because I'm tired of moving, but because this is home.

I've been writing in this space about the orchard we planted out at my father-in-law's place, and the chicken condominiums he and I finished for the BBQ special my wife ordered at his behest. And I've also written a few times about that place. It feels right, that place. It reminds me of the place which I visited for nurture for years on the north fork of the Skykomish River, but Garland exists now only on some indifferent slides and in memory. Which is fine, all in all.

(Nothing gold can stay, right Pony Boy?) (I can't pretend to know Frost -- is it Frost? -- but I do remember S.E. Hinton tolerably well.)

Occasionally, secular humanist that I am, I still need to walk across the fields and applaud.

And so, partly by way of experimenting with this software and partly by way of an answer to queries over the years, a photo. Once upon a time I worked at being a photographer, and wasn't much of one. Now I don't even work at it.

The orchard is at my back, and isn't much to look at just now, a bunch of leafless twigs in wire cages (to keep the dear off). Dan's garden, fallow now (though we just planted winter wheat) is in front of the barn.

Every once in a while I go out there on no particular errand. It's a good thing.

Mostly, though, we've been chipping away at work. And the chickens.

So one more indulgence/experiment. For some reason Maggie felt it necessary to take one of the decommissioned wire enclosures we set around the trees and convert it to a time-out chicken jail. And we let her, yes we did. Well, Dan handled the chickens. I'm not quite trained up for that job yet.

Posted by Grant at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 18, 2007

Rated G

Since the late 1980s I have intermittently compiled song samplers, labeled only with the year of their creation, as a kind of audio diary. I don't store them anywhere particular, they just turn up every once in a while and sometimes accompany long road trips. And, with advent of CD technology, they have become Hi-Fidelity Christmas cards.

(Yes, I have figured out how to assemble compilations using iTunes software. I'm not such a senseless old dodger that I don't see some virtue in new technologies. But so long as it behaves like a slightly better educated cassette tape and knows its place, I'm content. I still mourn the end of the era of physical product, even as our daughter studies dinosaurs with her new-found reading skills.)

Since the computer has made the moving of tracks too simple, I've become much more obsessive about the sequencing of things. (There's an early tape somewhere, filled with classic rock songs, and then Mudhoney's "Touch Me, I'm Sick" at the very end. A provocation or a signal, I know not which, nor did I know then.) This year, as I try to sum up my hearing of 2007 for our annual critics' poll, I have taken to dumping a song or three from albums I liked onto the computer and making preliminary guesses about sequencing.

For the last few years these compilations have been meant as an audio essay, as commentary and autobiography. This year seems less to be shaping up differently, but I can't guess how yet. Assuredly not autobiographical, anyhow. (Once finished, whenever that is, I will post the list up here so y'all can poke fun.)

One of the tensions within No Depression remains concerns about our relative age. We are one of the few music magazines not obsessed with the doings of the youngest and the shiniest, and we remain committed to artists whose work will endure, whose careers will stretch past a handful of hit singles, who continue to find cogent things to say and sing and write about well past the sweet blush of youth. This, of course, is my prejudice, for I can no longer pretend to be anything BUT middle aged, and it becomes increasingly important to see and hear other creative souls of my general demographic continuing to bang as hard as they can against the outer edges of their skill and craft.

This does not mean we're uninterested in younger, emerging artists. But it does mean -- as it has these thirteen-plus years -- that we're engaged in writing and designing and conceptualizing an adult magazine about adult music for adult readers.

A couple days back Maggie needed diverting for a few minutes, and she was near to my forbidden (that is: too messy) office, so I invited her in and thought to play her bits of my assembling 2007 compilation. Maggie is four and a half, and, unlike her father, she likes to dance. I hope she always likes to dance, though I should prefer she not tromp on too many jewel cases. But I realized quickly, once lyrics began to kick in, that I'd have to do some explaining I'm not ready for if she paid attention to what was playing. So I skipped to the next song, and then the next, and then the next. And then was glad the need for diversion has passed, because there wasn't much amid these songs I wanted to explain to a precocious four-and-a-half-year-old. Nor, uh, to hear repeated to her grandparents.

Now, that's obviously not the tension we talk about between new and established artists, between younger indie rock stars (in whom I too rarely believe) and veterans who can still bring it when properly motivated. But I was struck that this really is adult music which engages us in these physical and metaphorical pages. It's not kid stuff. It's not supposed to be.

Posted by Grant at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

November 14, 2007

Alf Becker: A design footnote

Hillbilly Modern, for those few who paused at the upper right corner of the Sadies' opening spread in our current issue (ND #72), really is the name of the typeface used for the headline. It is one of 320 typefaces designed by St. Louis signpainter Alf Becker for Sign of the Times magazine (the signpainters trade journal, still extant) from 1932-1959, and that descriptive text comes from an anthology of his first 100 typefaces, published in 1941.

I sometimes write tedious paragraphs in which I argue that graphic design should not be purely decorative, that it should have content and resonance. This is a somewhat crude example of what I have in mind. As things work here, Peter wrote a headline without having seen the photos Beth Hamill had sent us from Canada. Sometimes the artwork (or my inspiration [sic]) ends up changing the headlines Peter submits with features; sometimes I've written one, if I was the lead editor on the piece. Not that it matters, except to us. But. In this case, Ms. Hamill had sent me a photo that she liked but thought was slightly off, and Peter wrote a headline which sent me in a clear direction.

So I was off to the bookshelf, pulling down a handful of books which reprise the covers of various kinds of pulp fiction. The rest was comparatively easy.

I've been hunting Alf Becker for about a dozen years, ever since I moved to Nashville and stumbled, one glorious day, upon a run of Sign of the Times magazines from the late 1940s into the late 1950s, many of them filled with otherwise unpublished alphabets from his pen. It's not complete, and so far I've resisted the temptation to add to it (or to sell it). By that point I'd somewhat accidentally begun accumulating signpainting text books, probably on my first trip through Burbank, which once had a patch of splendid used book stores, up until the earthquake wrecked parts of beautiful downtown Burbank (thanks, Johnny) and set it up for urban renewal. By the time I moved to LA in late 1995 they were almost all gone. Anyway, that seems to be where I found the first of these textbooks for would-be signpainters. I suppose it's possible to imagine Woody Guthrie buying one along the road (more likely borrowing it!) before the music thing worked out for him.

The irony, of course, is that I could no more draw a useful letter form than I could fly. I can't manage a straight line with a pen; if such a thing is possible, I draw even worse than I play guitar. Or piano.

Anyway, I seem to have managed to collect the whole set of 20th century signpainting manuals, traveling and browsing eBay: the great E.C. Matthews, right up until his last, self-published volume from the 1960s, William Hugh Gordon (from the 1920s), Bob Fitzgerald, Harry B. Wright, H.C. Martin. That's probably not everything published in that era, and I've never explored the British permutations, but in truth I don't need to know what I'm missing.

For various reasons Becker's 100 Alphabets has been a totem which would not let go. A songwriting signpainter, some years back, was kind enough to make a copy of his copy of the book, but I finally found (and paid dearly, by my standards) for my very own original volume. Which had arrived not long before the Sadies story came onto my screen. And so that little footnote in the upper right corner -- necessary, really, to complete the balance of the old pulps (tricky, since our opening spreads are vertical and the pulps were and are horizontal) -- is a kind of celebration of my collector geekdom. And an homage to a really wonderful and hopelessly obscure figure who had much to do with the way the United States looked for 40 years.

Signpainters rarely do hand work these days, alas. I ran into one at the Day in the Country folk art sale here in Morehead last June, fellow from Indiana named George E. Borum whose father and brother were (and are) also signpainters, and who was married to his present wife by Howard Finster himself. Borum's turned signpainting it into a folk art form (see www.possumcounty.com) which, I suppose, it is. He had a Gatemouth Brown construction I brought home from Day in the Country, and if I could figure out a reason to use him in our pages, I would, though he seems busy enough.

As am I, else I'd chase an obscure dream of collecting and somehow publishing all of Becker's alphabets. And of finding out a bit more about the man himself.

Posted by Grant at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 11, 2007

In defense of Norman Mailer's ego

The man could write. It is impossible, from this distance, to judge how much his voice came to influence mine (not, in the scheme of things, that it much matters, except, perhaps, to me), and it has been some years since I properly attended to his words. Waking to news of his passing from acute renal failure (1923-2007) this morning I can't help but wonder if we have seen the end of an age, the death of the last titan of American literature.

I never met the man, nor wished to. And there were, occasionally, books of his rescued from thrift shops and swap meets which proved grotesque, and unreadable. In which way he was like Mudhoney: Capable of scintillating brilliance or utter disaster, but always willing to try. To risk: My measure of the man. "Sing!" John Cale did, as I have quoted often: "Fear is a man's best friend."

Ancient Evenings will doubtless be accorded its place among the lesser works in his canon, and I remember struggling through it as I would a year or two later struggle through Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation Of Christ, both of them big, floppy, unspeakably ambitious books. Ancient Evenings is a somewhat lurid, phantasmic tale of old Egypt told through characters as they reincarnate and fight and fornicate. Something like that. It's also about enduring love, I think. Regardless, it's a long book, and I read it during one of the two summers I spent weekends photographing rafters as they splashed down the Methow River in eastern Washington. I was working [sic] for a roommate who has mostly vanished into the mists of his own sadness, unable to create a second life for himself after his first crumbled. Long before digital cameras we had embraced the new technology of PolyChrome, a slide film one could develop on the spot. Kevin had built stands so we could mount two cameras side by side, shooting Ektachrome in one and PolyChrome in the other, then develop the instant proofs and drive quickly down the road to show them to tourists. Not so many ordered, and there was never enough money to pay me. And yet it I did it for two summers; we were and are good friends, and our long gin and tonic conversations in the kitchen we shared but rarely cooked in had much to do with choices I would make later.

Ancient Evenings was a good book for the riverside. Every once in a while you had to put it down and walk away because it had turned wrong. But the man could write, and there was little enough to do until the next float came down, and so it went along and along and, in the end, I came to respect the attempt, maybe even to like the book, if not to wish to read it again.

(The Last Temptation of Christ I finished while traveling across the country in my converted 1967 Dodge van. I was in Denver, that day, and had struggled mightily with the middle sections of that book. But the first thing I did was ask my hostess to take me to a bookstore, where I bought the two titles by Kazantzakis on their shelves. I ration his work, but am, perhaps, due to read another this year. We'll see.)

Mailer was not simply a serious novelist, but an accomplished journalist, a father of new journalism -- and one of the few new journalism voices whose work will, I think, survive (Wolfe will, and Thompson probably will; who can name another?). He taught us to bring to journalism the eye and storytelling acumen of a novelist.

He is also, I suspect, the end of a line which starts with Hemingway (whose star seems to have fallen from the literary sky) and peters into, I suppose, the work of William T. Vollman: The macho American writer, often abroad. If there is, presently, a voice as dominant, as powerful, as varied as Mailer's working the literary corridors, I cannot think of it, cannot even imagine it.

Mailer brawled, almost killed his second wife, married six times, ran for office, wrote about World War II and ancient Egypt and the CIA and Gary Gilmore and a dozen other things.

He was the writer I wished to be, and then found that I did not wish to be. There is the matter of talent, of course; there's always that. But there was also that ego, that presence, that confidence. And while I am not without ego, I am also not dazzled by its charms, and sought to learn to live more quietly in the world. (This is an inelegant rationalization; I have not a tenth of Mailer's talent as a writer, nor have I his drive and discipline.) When I tell young writers -- or songwriters -- that they need a formidable ego to pursue their art, it is Mailer I have in mind, it is Mailer who taught me that. I had to teach myself that I did not wish to be that person. By the time my daughter comes to care what kind of writer her father is, it won't matter, not at all.

Regardless, we read Mailer and awarded him and revered and reviled him. The man could write.

God help Norman Mailer if he rests in peace, for he couldn't stand the boredom.

Posted by Grant at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

November 8, 2007

Voting Irregularities

Just a wee bit above the button you pushed to read this brief rant is anther button leading to our first annual readers' poll.

And I'd really encourage you to have a bit of fun and fill it out. Once, please. Once is enough.

But I would also note that several artists, and/or their supporters, are working a little too hard to participate in this informal process.

It's not going to come as a surprise to anybody who's read many of my words that I don't like being played.

I don't.

We will work to find an ethical way to present the results to this little poll, which, so far, has been a most interesting and revealing reminder of a most excellent year of music. And I'm more than a little hopeful that the sheer number of responses we're getting will drown out -- level out -- the grasping of various factions for this particular brass ring.

Just for the record, though: It's real obvious who's gaming the system, and if the hope is that it's somehow going to draw favorable attention to the work of particular artists...it's not.

Besides, y'all: Let the people have their voice.

Posted by Grant at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 5, 2007

Several discoveries from the AMA

The last time I saw Mike Farris was, he said, the first time he'd sung a gospel song in a long while, and he didn't entirely remember the lyrics. It was, quite spontaneously, how he opened the Screaming Cheetah Wheelies' rehearsal, after we'd spent a long and idiotic day traipsing to the Jack Daniels distillery because an editor in Los Angeles at the same magazine which first brought us all the joys of Johnny Knoxville thought that would be a good way to...well, probably he thought it would be a good way to poke fun at rednecks.

And, anyway, I never got paid for that and several other stories they published, and so it goes.

As it happens, I never properly saw the Wheelies onstage, and wasn't entirely keen on their albums, but I liked the guys. Some of the band had formed a construction company so as to keep their night jobs, it turned out we'd all rather have played basketball than drive in a rented van to the county where Farris was raised, and the lead singer was both smart and charismatic. Three years ago, walking around waiting for the Subaru to be fixed, I saw a handbill in downtown Lexington for a Screaming Cheetah Wheelies gig at a lousy club, and felt bad for the lot of them. Two albums on Atlantic, one on the briefly rejuvenated Capricorn imprint, and they deserved better.

That was nine years ago, that day of hangtime. But I still have a strong memory of walking back to my car and thinking, Damn, the guy should sing gospel because it seems far more natural to him than what he's doing.

Six months ago my friend Traci sent me his new album, his second gospel outing, the press materials said, the bio hinting, too, at a long dark patch between the Wheelies and his new work. On record, anyhow, his voice shined, and his heart sounded full. Salvation In Lights isn't everything I want it to be -- I want it to be warmer and looser and more confident -- but his talent is unmistakable.

I come to gospel as an outsider, as a devoutly secular fellow, but even so I am drawn to the wonderful freedom and certainty of the joy it so often expresses. To its ability to rock.

Farris did one song at the AMA's opening Porter Wagoner salute, and apparently knocked people out. I'd have gone to see him Saturday night at 8 p.m. regardless, but it was sure nice to see the Cannery Ballroom well-stocked with people. The announced start-time turned out to be soundcheck, and revealing: Three backup singers (the McCrary sisters from Buddy Miller's last album, and another woman I didn't recognize), three horns (sax, trumpet, trombone), with Paul Griffith on drums, Dave Jaques on bass, and Buddy Miller sitting in. Plus a keyboard player and a guitarist who weren't familiar from my days at the Sutler, but no matter. We were in good hands.

It was all good, much of it extraordinary, and some of it was, to borrow Bill Friskics-Warren's word, transcendent. Mike didn't say much, didn't preach (which was a relief, and yet left things somehow incomplete), just sang his heart out. It took a few songs to get loose, to build and release enough tension to move on up to ecstasy. To get comfortable. And then it happened: Chills. The magic. It lasted half a song, and I'm too tired now to find his CD and remember the title, but it was fabulous. The whole thing was fabulous, but he hit that splendid and entirely too rare moment when everything locked into place and the magic soared, while I watched some normally reserved friends dance as if nobody was watching, and felt myself smile.

I'm confident there's a little tension playing gospel in a nightclub, and I'm not entirely sure all the audience understood that Farris meant every word he sang, that this wasn't a genre exercise, nor a study in kitsch revival, but the real thing. As real as he could make it. And there's no telling what will become of Farris, whether this will open doors or is simply a brief window opening and shutting between worlds and dreams.

But it's what he's meant to do.

An addendum: Traci sent me a link to Mike's performance of "Green Green Grass" at Porter's celebration.. Which, if all goes well, will now appear below.

Ah, but wait: There's more.

Sitting upstairs at 3rd & Lindsley (still not my favorite venue in Nashville) with two accomplished guitar players watching Eilen Jewell, we kept noticing the man on the Gretsch at her side. Jerry Miller, though she was careful not to announce his name onstage (wouldn't want to lose a player of that caliber). It is tough to be noticed playing guitar in Nashville, but it's been a very long time since I saw anybody that good whose name I didn't already know. Not showy good, not loud and proud (Warner Hodges and Dan Baird took care of that part with Stacey Collins the next set), but elegant and eloquent and as lyric as his vocalist. Should Marty Stuart ever need a replacement for Kenny Vaughan -- and I hope he doesn't, for Stuart has the best band in the business right now -- Miller could more than do the job, best I could tell.

Writing that makes it seem a bit like he overshadowed Ms. Jewell, and he didn't. Her voice holds the stage just fine, thank you, though she's still a bit diffident between songs.

The last discovery of the evening was even less expected. Lured by ennui to the Basement, we found what may be the next great punk stringband. Onstage Hoots & Hellmouth -- guitar, bass, mandolin, and guitar, with two tambourines on a miked wooden platform stomped for percussion -- reminded me, somehow, of the Lovin' Spoonful. Of what I imagine the well-scrubbed purveyors of folk music felt like in New York at the turn of the 1960s. They play quite well enough, and between them have several strong and versatile voices, each quite distinct. And for all their hair and thriftshop attire they still seemed like the guys you could bring home to mom (a metaphor meant to imply that the Avetts and Old Crows -- both of whom I like -- would be more problematic wandering through your better subdivisions). And I think they can write, though I was tired enough by then, and Scotch had been poured once or twice.

What I heard that night seems not to be on their self-titled debut. Some of it is, but I'm not sure listening to it will convince anybody else that I'm right about this: Put them in the studio with T Bone Burnett and, with the right song, theirs could be the first gold album in this brave new subgenre.

Which is not quite to say that I adore them, but which is to say that I see commercial possibilities in their work. If not in their bandname.

Of course I'd have sworn Blood Circus and Mike Ireland and Elizabeth Cook (still tremendous, by the way) would be big stars, too. And one or two dozen others, over the years. There ain't no justice. But there's at least one big-time voice in that band, and the rest will (or won't) come.

Quite honestly that's more than I've gotten from SXSW in years.

It is also the small moments which count. Watching Buddy Miller look upon the beautiful guitar Tim Shawl drew (and the folks from Gibson caused to be assembled) at the AMA awards -- he won as 2007 Best Instrumentalist -- was a highlight for me. As was the excitement in his sister's eyes as she prepared to take his new guitar onstage.

And this: After Otis Taylor's set with Guy Davis (and band) at the Station Inn, his fresh argument for restoring the black banjo tradition, I sat talking with the Red House publicist, Ellen Stanley. She had made a point of handing me Ray Bonneville's new album, Goin' By Feel, when I walked in. But after we'd talked for a while she came to some kind of decision and handed me a five-song EP of her own work under the name Mother Banjo.

I cannot guess what prompted me to choose that disc driving along the dark Bluegrass Parkway, cruising on Sudafed as much to stay awake as to beat a headache, but it proved a nurturing choice and I am reminded once again that in this musical world I am a squib, or a muggle (borrowing from Harry Potter), for I have none of the magic. Swing Low is probably not much more than a home recording, but the technology for that is pretty good by now. She sings over fairly simple banjo lines, a guitar and backing voice occasionally sliding into place. But the point of it, unexpectedly, is Stanley's voice, a strong confident instrument, not afraid to stretch, to break, to open most of the way up, to reveal. I tend not to do well with sensitive folk-style singers, but she has moxie, this one. And poise at the microphone. And songs, actually. I would hope that her employers not be troubled that I still haven't played the Bonneville album she was meant to be flogging, and that they not hold the fact that Ms. Stanley works at the label against her when next considering roster moves.

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