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* ND #75 Revisited, Part 1

If you've read this blog with any regularity over the last couple of years, you'll know that I do this little editor's commentary about the current issue shortly after each one is published, usually just mentioning a few stories or photos or headlines that had some sort of particular personal significance, or that I perhaps wished to shed a little additional light on.

With our final issue, which arrived on the racks and in subscribers' mailboxes over the past few days, I'm afraid there are too many of those kinds of details to cover in a single entry. So I'll break this up into two parts, the second to follow later this week.

It probably comes as no surprise that our last issue meant a great deal to both Grant and me and thus carried quite a bit of content that reflected the finality of the occasion. Looking back through its pages when it arrived, however, I was struck by just how much was drawn directly upon the magazine's history, and/or my own musical journey. Some of what follows will speak to that.

First, though, there were the letters. That old Wilco song-title which has served as our letters-page title for all these years didn't quite suffice this time, as the box wasn't full but overflowing. The two pages we printed were just a fraction of what we received, and that's not counting the 200-odd comments on our website. To those who wrote and whose letters we couldn't fit in, our apologies, but also our thanks for letting us know what ND meant to you. The elegance of your expression, and the variety of ways in which y'all expressed it, was a great inspiration as we put #75 together.

This issue's Most Valuable Player profile, David Menconi's interview with Eric Heywood, originally had been scheduled for #74 but there wasn't room. It seemed fitting that it ended up in the final issue instead, given that Heywood was onstage with Son Volt in July 1995 when I traveled to Minneapolis to see their first performances at 7th Street Entry while working on our debut issue's cover story. I've since seen Heywood bring radiant color to the music of several other fine artists (Alejandro Escovedo and Richard Buckner come to mind especially), and have long been impressed by not just his musical ability but his personable nature -- both qualities no doubt highly prized by songwriters who have taken him on the road. Can't think of anyone I'd have rather featured in the MVP slot for our finale.

That the Miked section was framed by Paul Cantin's review of the Cowboy Junkies' Trinity Session concert and my own review of the Reivers' reunion show spoke significantly to the path that led to the launching of No Depression. Though neither were tagged "alt-country" in the 1980s, both acts incorporated elements of country and alternative approaches into their music.

The kicker was that the section's penultimate review was Holly Gleason's account of a Jackson Browne show at the Ryman. You'll just have to trust me on this, but many years ago (the date on the word-file in my computer says May 21, 2000) I made out a list of the Top 25 albums of all-time which had most greatly influenced me -- not necessarily a critical "best albums" assessment, but a more personalized reckoning -- and the top three were Jackson Browne's The Pretender, the Reivers' Translate Slowly, and the Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Session. Somehow they all ended up in our final live-review section together.

One of the most gratifying consequences of the surge in advertising that allowed us to publish 144 pages was that we were able to add a few extra Town & Country pieces rather late in the game; as a result, from start to finish, that section is packed with acts who really deserved a place in our final pages. The Carolina Chocolate Drops had played at our Merlefest booth last year and were clearly rising stars in our midst; we'd written about them briefly in the live-review and record-review sections, but they very much deserved a profile. Grant had been quite taken with the Hope Nunnery disc that had showed up in the mail recently. Kyla had been telling us how taken she was with this new Seattle band called the Fleet Foxes that was preparing to sign with Sub Pop. Dawn Landes was someone I'd encountered in New York during a meeting with the folks from Hem (with whom she toured for awhile), and whose name just kept popping up in the years hence (indeed, I'll see her later this week when she opens for the Swell Season in Raleigh).

Band Of Annuals I'd stumbled upon by chance at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle a couple months back and was certain they were going places; I'm pretty sure they're the first Salt Lake City band to be in our Town & Country section. The Whipsaws were actually the second (if I recall correctly) act from Alaska we'd done a T&C on; I'd seen them at SXSW with Tim Easton and doing their own stuff and was rather taken with their songs and their spirit. The Waybacks clearly have made great strides in recent years, thanks in part to the recruitment of Warren Hood, whose late father Champ was one of the true good guys in Austin during my formative years there. The members of the Rite Flyers were also around during those Austin coming-of-age days, if in different bands; what they've created together in the present strikes me as something special, as was evident when they opened for that Reivers reunion show back in February.

That'll wrap up Part 1, then....check back later this week and we'll move on to the features and record reviews. Meantime, hope y'all are enjoying reading our print-bimonthly finale as much as I enjoyed working on it.

adios,
peter

Posted by peter on May 13, 2008 9:33 AM | Permalink