BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY—Caleb has proposed this beautiful rendition of “Our Town” by Iris DeMent as the Front Porch theme song.
(Anyone not moved by it is either dead or, worse, deracinated.) Herewith a few more tunes I would happily play on my porch, annoying family and neighbors with my wretchedly off-key croaking chorus. Though these carry YouTube links, I vouch only for the quality of the songs, not their visual accompaniment. I regret that I was unable to find an internet version of the Maine singer David Mallett’s “Livin’ on the Edge,” which is the perfect companion to DeMent’s “Our Town.” Nor could I find Tom Russell’s “The Ballad of Edward Abbey,” which is like “God Bless America” or “God Bless the U.S.A.” but written by and about a patriot.
Ya can’t please everyone, as Ricky Nelson learned. Peters will complain that I neglected Air Supply; Beer will ask where is Indiana? (Here it is, courtesy of R. Dean Taylor).
Please suggest your own tunes for the FPR Top 40. Songs by local and regional bands especially encouraged.
The Kinks: Village Green Preservation Society
The Kinks: Muswell Hillbilly
Steve Earle: The Mountain
Joe South: Don’t it Make You Want to Go Home?
Bruce Springsteen: Long Walk Home
Cowboy Junkies: Anniversary Song
John Mellencamp: Rain on the Scarecrow
Exene Cervenka: Will Jesus Wash the Bloodstains from Your Hands?
Graham Parker: You Can’t Be Too Strong
Gram Parsons: Return of the Grievous Angel
Show of Hands: Roots
Lynyrd Skynrd: All I Can Do is Write About It
Glen Campbell: Galveston
The Long Ryders: State of My Union
The Pretenders: My City was Gone
Little Steven & the Disciples of Soul: I am a Patriot
Dwight Yoakam: I Sang Dixie
Gerry and the Pacemakers: Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey
The Clash: Complete Control
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{ 88 comments… read them below or add one }
This is a tremendous idea, Bill. Localist/communitarian songs! I need to do this. Here’s a couple off the top of my head:
Another Bruce Springsteen–”My Hometown”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIqYn_1IdZU
James Taylor–”Our Town” (a different tune from above): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYrGQDZuOic
I’ll come up with more later.
John Gorka – Houses in the Fields
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvjT-Ta29jw
While not strictly about a home town as such, the song “Degeneration” is a great anthem of the loss of generational inheritance so prevalent today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKCRHhmHvjg
John Prine, Paradise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHHR_tA7eg4&feature=related
oops!,
Also Joan Baez and the Greenbriar Boys, circa 1965,”Down by the Banks of the Ohio.”
Woody Gutherie, “This land is….”
Bob Dylan, “North Country Blues.”
Nope, neither dead nor deracinated. What a wonderful song. Thank you.
Peters will be avenged for that Air-Supply crack. Be it remembered that revenge is a dish best served cold.
I don’t credit the “artist,” but there’s a lot of front porch sittin’ in this song.
The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, without whom life is incomplete, gave us “Down in Leatherwood.” But anyone who can listen to Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands do “Bury Me in Bluegrass” without dissolving into sobs ought to be consigned to a corner of hell where there’s nothing to read but this.
I did a whole series at my blog on ‘small town populism’ via songs. A couple of the most appropriate were:
Alan Jackson’s “Small Town Southern Man”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUhaqUHGeQU
Rodney Atkins “These Are My People”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4QROe7Xqu0&feature=related
…and I can’t help but throw in this other Atkins song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjcrUaIZCt0
The Beatles, “Penny Lane”
The Beach Boys, “California Girls”
Randy Newman, “Birmingham”
Bob Dylan, “Girl From the North Country”
The Band, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
Merle Haggard, “Okie from Muskogee”
Gladys Knight, “Midnight Train to Georgia”
Loretta Lynn, “Coal Miner’s Daughter”
Too many Kinks songs to name
Sometimes a place won’t let you go, eve if you want to leave…
Darrell Scott – “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su06XlGI-w8
Mic Harrison – “Poison Land”
“And I made up my mind/a long time ago/this poison land/won’t let a man go”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukal6cRfyUw
Charlie Robison – “My Hometown”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7osnZTch6UM (Ignore the video)
“Outfit”, and numerous other songs, by the Drive-By Truckers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyJ9JfWbKLE
Lucinda Williams – “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK3vf8ZgxZ8
(This one reminds me of the summer of ’90 which I spent as a displaced Yankee in the deep South.)
Uncle Tupelo – “Screen Door”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HViPYwTRao4
(Reminds me of the long summer of the flood of ’93, that I spent in Burlington, Iowa)
Son Volt – “Tear Stained Eye”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPf002gwyKw
The first line of this song hits me like a punch in the gut… “Walking down Main Street, getting to know the concrete, looking for a purpose, in a neon sign…”
All three of these artists remind me that the Mississippi River, and old Highway 61, really are the spine of American music.
Great topic!
Charlie Robison’s “My Hometown” is a definite candidate.
If you’re ever out West son
and you feel like slowin’ down
I’ll see you around
Around my hometown.
http://www.cmt.com/videos/charlie-robison/161427/my-hometown.jhtml
Billy Joel (an authentic New Yorker): “New York State of Mind” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZh8YjbDiVk&feature=related)
Seth,
Great call. That’s an awesome song.
“don’t sing with a fake British accent,
A southern man tells better jokes”
words to live by
I second “Degeneration” and also think Show of Hands’ “Country Life” deserves mention.
However, one of the songs that first made me question my naive progressive capitalism (which I acquired despite being the son of a farmer) was “32 Acres”. I know not who originally wrote it, though there are a couple of decent YouTube videos of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBuVjvoYgrw
“I saw the timber for the cabin floor
I build a plank fence out of locust boards
I work the corn rows in the early morn
And raise a family on a poor man’s farm
Thirty two acres of bottom land
Bought and paid for with my own hands
Worth a fortune to a working man
Thirty two acres of bottom land
I planted a peach tree now the leaves are dying
I watered a grape vine, it’s no longer mine
The country’s taking everything I own
Cause it’s on the right of way for a four lane road”
I’ve also often interpreted Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” in a fairly anti-modern way.
Mr. Kauffman, thank you. “Our Town” was tremendous. My own humble suggestions:
Josh Ritter — Lawrence, KS and Idaho
Out at sea for seven years, I got your letter in Tangier.
Thought that I’d been on a boat, ’til that single word you wrote;
That single word it landlocked me, turned the masts to cedar trees,
And the winds to gravel roads: Idaho, Idaho
Fleet Foxes — Ragged Wood
Palace — Ohio River Boat Song
The Entire Bob Dylan anthology, including his current devilish croakings.
Cheeks is right…most anything by John Prine as well
Speaking of croaking, Tom Waits is a master of the Front Porch Moment….however slightly seedy or dishabille.
Thomas G. is also right, the Delta Blues is automatically All Porch, all the Time.
Linda Rondstadt singing Heart Like a Wheel and Carole King’s “You’ve got a friend”
Lastly, “Moanin” by Charles Mingus just because it would get any porch stompin but good.
Howcome nobody said anything yet about the Allman Bros or Neal Young?
and lest we forget:
Grandpa Snazzy and His Hoosier Hotshots…cept you need a Victrolla
I’d put a vote in for an old George Jones classic. It’s a sad one, but who who can sing better than the Possum?
Where Grass Won’t Grow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOrnwIBiOKc
Well perhaps Mr. Sabin will post a video of himself lipsynching Grandpa Snazzy. I hope so.
Being Kentuckian I get to claim kissing-counsinship to all the folksongs of the British isles, so since “Paradise” has been mentioned already and “My Old Kentucky Home” is too obvious, I’ll nominate “My Ain Countree,” a Jacobite lament for Galloway that begins:
The sun rises bright in France
And fair sets he,
But he has lost the look he had
in my ain countree.
I sang it once at a Robert Burns dinner in Illinois, and I meant it.
Ms. Dalton, I got tears in my eyes! Thanks for that, I’m McLaughlin on my mother’s side.
One more Dylan song though it’s more about a cultural condition than place…”Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall!”
“Illinois” – Dan Fogelberg
And I add a second vote for Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country.”
Ah… “Girl from the North Country” always makes me teary for a lovely little lady I once fell hard over up in Canton N.Y. sigh…
I put forward Rank Strangers, of which there are a myriad of renditions. I am particularly fond of the Stanley Brothers’ version. Ricky Skaggs does a good cover as well.
Tom T. Hall — just about the entire ouevre, but especially:
Homecoming:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSyio3LfqOM
A Million Miles to the City:
http://www.last.fm/music/Tom+T.+Hall/_/A+Million+Miles+to+the+City
Subdivision Blues:
http://www.rhapsody.com/tom-t-hall/storyteller-poet-philosopher/subdivision-blues/lyrics.html
Two songs by the incomparable Martha Mears:
http://ockhamsbungalow.com/music/HomeOnThePlains.mp3
http://ockhamsbungalow.com/music/RosesOnTrail.mp3
and one by the anonymous ensemble of “Down Our Way”:
http://ockhamsbungalow.com/music/morning-glories.mp3
Bach’s take on the subject:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM4EDkkUWGg
Thomas G. nailed the FPR ethos with “Screen Door.”
Some other favorites of mine include:
Ben Nichols’ “The Last Pale Light in the West” (A song dedicated to Blood Meridian – yeah this is FPR material, alright)
Blitzen Trapper’s “War on Machines” and pretty much the entire “Wild Mountain Nation” album
Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s “You Remind Me of Something (The Glory Goes)”
Dr. Dog’s “The Old Days”
Joe Henry’s “Our Song”
Joe Pug’s “Nation of Heat”
Josh Ritter’s “Girl in the War” (“Idaho” was already mentioned and I concur, but having personally lost a young female medic in combat this one makes for a significant and symbolic favorite)
J.J. Grey and MOFRO’s “Florida” and “Lochlossa”
Lucero’s “On the Way Back Home” (for when you really need to get back to the Front Porch)
Over the Rhine’s “Ohio”
Ryan Adam’s “Oh My Sweet Carolina”
Son Volt’s “Live Free”
Sufjan Steven’s “Detroit Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Russell Kirk would be so thrilled to hear this song)
Waterdeep’s “Close the Door”
Wilco’s “Sky Blue Sky” and “Poor Places”
Uncle Dave Macon – “From Earth to Heaven”
The Carter Family – “Mid the Green Fields of Virginia”
Wolfe Tones – “The Town I loved So Well”
Another couple good but obscure ones:
Harrod & Funck, Carolina (as a jayhawk I’m principally opposed to any tarheel, but can appreciate the regional chavanism none-the-less)
http://www.harrodandfunck.com/carolina.php
Pierce Pettis, A Mountaineer is Always Free
http://s98119973.onlinehome.us/ppdiscog/discog/trackdetails/track4264_lyrics.html
Well, while we’re at it let’s pay tribute to all them olde commie-dem, FDR subsidized, troupadours that sang for God, country, a bottle, a night in a flop house: Woody, Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Eliot, Cisco Houston, Leadbelly, the Weavers.
I used to play those old songs on the guitar, three finger picker, but I haven’t for a long time and more’s the pity!
FYI, when Caleb first recommended to a few of us that we consider Iris Dement’s song as FPR’s theme song, it was suggested by one of our editors that someone write up a post with this song and some others, and invite readers for suggestions. I’m glad that Bill took up the challenge. I suspected we’d have at least a few suggestions, but this is truly an impressive response – and a great testimony to the localist spirit of this nation, and the great good taste of the readership here.
Expanding the category a bit, I take the liberty of here posting a link to a choral arrangement that was sent to me by its composer, Mr. Andrew Maxfield of Boston. He has been arranging some of Wendell Berry’s poems, and this arrangement draws from Berry’s “Sabbath” poems. The link is here, and the lyrics are:
“A gracious Sabbath stood here while they stood
Who gave our rest a haven.
Now fallen, they are given
To labor and distress.
These times we know much evil, little good
To steady us in faith
And comfort when our losses press
Hard on us, and we choose,
In panic or despair or both,
To keep what we will lose.
For we are fallen like the trees, our peace
Broken, and so we must
Love where we cannot trust,
Trust where we cannot know,
And must await the wayward-coming grace
That joins living and dead,
Taking us where we would not go–
Into the boundless dark.
When what was made has been unmade
The Maker comes to His work.”
The Kossoy Sisters and Erik Darling : BOWLING GREEN.
What’s more American than NYC Jews playing bluegrass?
I’d also like to recommend the Carolina Chocolate Drops “Cornbread and Butterbeans”.
CHORUS: Cornbread and butter beans and you across the table,
Eating beans and making love as long as I am able,
Hoeing corn and cotton, too, and when the day is over,
Ride a mule, a crazy fool, and love again all over.
Goodbye. Don’t you cry. I’m going to Lou’siana,
Buy a dog and a big fat hog and marry Suzy Anna.
Sing-song, ding-dong, gonna take a trip to China,
Cornbread and butter beans, and there to Carolina. CHORUS
Wearing shoes and drinking booze is going against the Bible.
A necktie will make you die and cause you lots of trouble.
Streetcars and whiskey bars and kissing pretty women,
Whoa, man, that’s the end of a terrible beginning. CHORUS
Can’t read and don’t care and education’s awful.
Raising heck and writing checks, that ought to be unlawful.
Silk hose and pretty clothes are just a waste of money.
I can see how glad you’ll be to marry me, my honey. CHORUS
Several of Tom T Halls songs, like “Old Dogs and Children, and Watermelon Wine”, “Ballad of forty Dollers”
“The Year Clayton Delany Died”, “The Homecoming”, etc, are very “Front Porchy” in nature.
Has anyone mentioned Nancy Griffith?
“Simple Life”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSTGKeY7fLk
I really do think the correct answer is the tale of Virgil Cain–The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (written by a pretty “deracinated” Canadian [Robbie Robertson] who became obsessed with our South).
Pardon me for this most importunate crack on our neo-con friends but I wish to add:
Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys singin their classic hit “They aint making Jews like Jesus No Mo”
Utah Phillips should be in here somewhere too. He mighta been in the Wobblies but Hobos should always be an element of , at the very least, the back porch.
Also, “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” by the Byrds….a classic and made much more better by the fact that it was a commercial flop.
The First Studio Album by Crosby Stills and Nash, porch music for a rainy day.
Anything by Prez Prado and Luis Prima. What, you don’t think they got porches in Cuba?
Elton John’s “Tumbleweed Connection”…another classic and the last decent music that Loopy Fop produced.
Zappa and The Mothers of Invention and their classic “We’re only in it for the money”. Rest in peace, Jimmy Carl Black, Indian of the Group. Specifically “Flower Punk”, a play on the song “Hey Joe” and a vicious send-up of the supreme dopeyness of the hippy era.
Anything Zydeco
Anything by Hank Williams and Willie Nelson
Everything by Johnny Cash and not a little by his talented daughter.
Seems like we might need a Juke Box
I am nearly appalled that we have forgotten to mention Johnny Cash’s recording of the Great American Songbook. Not to mention he sings “Girl from the North Country” with Dylan.
The Newport folk festival is this weekend and I might not have to go now! I’m on vacation next week and will be spending hours listening to and singing this great music.
My contributions:
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – All the wrong reasons
As for my coastal New England perspective:
Billy Joel – Downeaster Alexa
Thomas Swan – Gaspee Song
On a lighter note:
Dropkick Murphys – I’m Shipping up to Boston, For Boston, and Tessie
Neil Diamond – Sweet Caroline
(while not specifically localized, around here this song is ALWAYS a sing-along with requisite chanting – thus achieving a communitarian impact)
Another Kinks song for the list:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjD7N26lsHU
Here’s one of my favorite entries in the enormous guy-gets-home-from-prison genre:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBcJKwoGQac
And speaking of homesick prison songs — this one includes one of the greatest couplets in the history of country music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaT6URKynZw
You’ll know the one I mean.
-Jesse
P.S. What the hell is Gomer Pyle doing in the Joe South clip?
Peter, D.W.
Virgil Cain…YES, I’d forgotten, YES!
Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, now there’s an American group, Oh yes!
You guys are great!
Did Michael Jackson do anything we can add?
At the risk of exposing myself to ridicule, I confess I’m a little surprised that John Denver didn’t make the list yet. Few songs have the power to move me like his version of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eaaR1Ay5P0 "Country Roads"] still does, every time.
My 19-month-old, though he hasn’t graduated from Tom T. Hall’s children’s songs yet, is sure glad the old hippie cowboy made it onto the list.
What great tunes. We may be absent from the corridors of power–no man born with a living soul would want to walk them anyway–but the many streams that make up our American cultures are fresh and alive.
By the way, Jesse, that’s Goober in the clip with Joe South and the Cashes. Gomer was the deracinated Pyle, a cog in the US war machine. Goober, a localist, was planted at the filling station.
Goober, yes. The one with the beanie. (And, if memory of long-ago Bill Kauffman articles serves, one of the trio of celebrities who endorsed George Wallace in 1968, along with Chill Wills and…who was the other one?)
Robert Earl Keen’s “A Bigger Piece of Sky”
“I gave up the fast lane for a blacktop country road
Just burned out on all that talk about the motherload,
I traded for a songbird and a bigger piece of sky
When I miss the good old days I can’t imagine why.”
and
Robert Earl Keen’s “The Front Porch Song”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQGmc4ugAPE&feature=related
This old porch is a palace walk in on a main street in Texas
It ain’t never seen or heard the days of G’s and R’s and X’s
And that ’62 poster that’s almost faded down
And a screen without a picture since Giant came to town
This old porch is just a long time of waiting and forgetting
Remembering the coming back and not crying about the leaving
And remembering the falling down and the laughter of the curse of luck
From all those son’s of bitches who said we’d never get back up
No Greg Brown??? Can’t believe this.
Not trying to be cynical, but ‘Whatever It Was’ is a good one about the loss of place, family and tradition.
“The little towns are lying on their faces,
All that’s left are fading parking spaces,
It’s been quite a week, there was a drive-by shooting in Lake Wobegon.
I was looking for what I loved…”
‘Heart of My Country’ is good as well. ‘Flat Stuff’ is good. I also like ‘Canned Goods,’ which is a bit of a stretch for this theme, but fits perfectly if you hear him sing it live with a big long story in the middle, about Grandma’s house, home cooking…
Also, What do y’all make of Sufjan Stevens? 50 States Project? Illinois and Michigan were pretty great albums (according to me, a hoosier)…
How about Gillian Welch’s “Red Clay Halo” for a beautiful song about the eternal endurance of our places that make us?
Iris Dement’s “Our Town” is a pretty song, no doubt. I vote yes on it for a theme song. There’s also Kate Brislin and Jody Stecher’s beautiful old-time version if you can find it.
But I’m sorry to say, but a lot this list is pretty bland. Sure there are a few seemingly traditional musicians who learned a little about the old music from Harry Smith’s anthology and Alan Lomax recordings. But they never lived it (they learned everything from records) and their recordings are mostly over-produced Starbuck’s ready crap. Affluence killed American music by the mid-1960s, and for the most part it never recovered, sorry. Gillian Welch and Sufjan Stevens??!!! Yech!!! Saddest though–not a single black artist on this list. Junior Kimbrough blows anything here out of the water in three notes, unless you don’t want to know about most of small town America. And more surprisingly, nothing much on the list from Sun Records, and little bluegrass and no gospel. Mostly liberal folkies or corporate country and rock. That’s crazy. Try the Soul Stirrers (with Sam Cooke), Charlie Feathers, Tommy Jarrell, and Ralph Stanley on Rebel Records. Don’t fall for the corporate imitations like a bunch of liberals!
lew
“Don’t fall for the corporate imitations like a bunch of liberals!”
Lew, well said!
Yet, a while back I mentioned Woody, Pete, Leadbelly, Cisco, (Blind Doc Watson I’ll add)?
Do you consider them too commercial, corporate?
Lew,
The bigger question is why are there no black posters on FPR?
Lew: The modern crew didn’t learn that much more or less from radio and records than many of the people they were imitating. There was self-conscious, commercialized revivalism then, just like now; and there’s communal sharing of musical traditions now, like then. The proportions vary from artist to artist, of course.
But you’re right about the absence of black musicians. Let me remedy that with another entry in the guy-gets-home-from-prison genre:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iHgGpUm30I
And what the heck, here’s some hip hop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF4fr3UL0ek
At last someone mentioned John Denver. I propose his “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane” as that was the unofficial theme song of the Vietnam “Police Action”. I second Patrick Ford’s nomination of “Country Roads”.
A lot of good suggestions above. I really like Don Edwards’ “Coyotes”, which includes lyrics like “and he cursed all the roads and the oilmen, and he cursed the automobile, and he said this is no place for an hombre like I am, in this new world of asphalt and steel.”
Here is a link to a live version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kVdOxXB8fg
Also, some of James McMurtry’s songs would be appropriate – “Out Here in the Middle” and “No More Buffalo” spring to mind.
Could I please nominate “Mulenberg County”, a John Denver song though I don’t know the original artist, (pretty sure it wasn’t John). It’s a song about paradise, and possibly front porches, lost.
Any Neville Brothers nominations? It’s been awhile since I’ve listened and I’m having a hard time recalling lyrics.
Must be satisfying to be Lew and know in your heart after one listen that any music that isn’t already in your CD player (or maybe he listens to gramophone, I dunno) is undoubtedly “corporate” dreck. That’s a cool trick, but even cooler is knowing which ones have had authentic experiences of their hometowns, its music, or penumbral musical traditions.
Come on, Lew. Those are some fine suggestions. I don’t know why you had to slam on others’. It’s like you’re an emo kid in someone’s basement for a DIY show, but instead of playing the game of “My favorite band is more avant-garde than yours,” you’re playing the opposite. Rootsier than thou??
Let me second Josh’s mention of James McMurtry. “Out Here in the Middle” is swell. And his “Levelland” (also recorded by Robert Earl Keene, and possibly others) is spot-on honest about the mixed emotions one often has if one’s hometown is degraded–and ugly.
I can’t find a video, but “A Train Not Running” by Chris Knight just breaks the heart.
Son Volt has gotten some play here, but “Windfall” has not. It gives chills. “Catching an all-night station, somewhere in Louisiana / sounds like 1963, but for now … it sounds like heaven.”
I just remembered a perfect one: “In Memory of Fred”, by the Starline Rhythm Boys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gmysHzed24 .
It commemorates the 1998 Vermont Republican candidate for Senate, Fred Tuttle; he was a septuagenarian retired dairy famer with a 10th grade education who challenged a millionaire carpetbagger for the Republican Senate nomination and beat him in the primary. During the debate, Tuttle asked his opponent to pronounce the names of several Vermont towns and demanded to know how many teats were on a Holstein cow. He subsequently endorsed his Democratic opponent, because he feared that if he won, he might have to move to Washington, D.C., a fate presumably worse than death.
If that’s not FPR material, nothing is.
Josh is right about James McMurtry, but I am surprised that no one has nominated “Can’t Make it Here,” his wonderful anti- war, anti-globalism anthem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbWRfBZY-ng
Perhaps even betther though, from a localist communitarian perspective is JP Cormier’s “Great Harbour Deep” which tells the story of a fishing village in Newfoundland abandoned and finally destroyed by Canadian federal and provincial authorities. The townsfolk, who had been there for some six hundred years were forcibly removed because the only access to the village was by water. Immediately after their power was shut off and they were removed, a logging company, having scooped up the timber rights, built a road in to harvest the timber. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8t4w73ljx0&NR=1
For what it’s worth — re: no black musicians — I listed Gladys Knight way up thread. In addition to Knight (and the Pips) doing “Midnight Train to Georgia,” I could also have listed Blind Willie McTell doing “Statesboro Blues” and Otis Redding doing “Dock of the Bay,” just in terms of the Peach State alone.
Boy, the olden-tyme days, they sure were swell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mAFNwRsqOA&feature=related
But all affectionate joking aside, gnomies, a very fun thread…learnin’ lots of great stuff about griffith, son volt, and unknown kinks(!)songs.
Here’s what pops to the top of my denatured postmodernist musical mind:
1) In the spirit of things: Hazel Dickens, “West Virginia, My Home” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5L_HIgskEU&feature=related
2) With a postmodern twist: Modern Lovers, “Road Runner” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHv8Rok9UfA Somebody put a great lil road trip vid together!!!
Oh, and here’s the key Modern Lovers lyrics from another song:
Well the modern world is not so bad
Not like the students say
In fact I’d be in heaven
If you’d share the modern world with me
But when all is said and done, the only front porch that will matter is the one we enjoy aboard “The Old Ship of Zion.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZojzCEHzv0
Mellencamp’s “Scarecrow” gets a lot of playtime, but a truly tremendous song is “Minutes to Memories” from the same album:
On a greyhound thirty miles beyond Jamestown
He saw the sun set on the Tennessee line
He looked at the young man who was riding beside him
He said I’m old kind of worn out inside
I worked my whole life in the steel mills of Gary
And my father before me I helped build this land
Now I’m seventy-seven and with God as my witness
I earned every dollar that passed through my hand
My family and friends are the best things I’ve known
Through the eye of the needle I’ll carry them home.
Also, Marshall Tucker’s “Never Trust a Stranger”:
Today’s man is an outlaw
On that long road to freedom
You work him hard, take his pride,
And then you try to cheat him.
Then one day you figure out, it’s a long, long story
An outlaw is a man that takes care of his own.
Boy do you have a good mind for posts Mr. Kauffman:
How can anyone not include “Sweet Home Alabama” on your lists?
Mellencamp’s “Lonely Ol’ Night” is good Midwest song
Bruce Springsteen has much to contribute from “Your Hometown” to “Darkness at the Edge of Town” to “The River”
Billy Joel’s “Allentown.” John Denver’s “Country Roads, Take Me Home.” Arlo Guthrie’s “City of New Orleans”
Try these links to Walter Hill’s movie “Southern Comfort” One is Cajun dance by the great Cajun musician Dewey Balfa: )http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2NIZexqb4U) and the other these the movie’s theme by Ry Cooder: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_121XW4uo0)
May I introduce you all to some Newfoundland music (a whole new territory) “Squid Jiggin’ Ground” by the great Canadian country music star Hank Snow. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyHJ7XU5eLE&feature=related)
Here’s another good Newfie song: (http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=94837094132&h=yThxW&u=ZjblU&ref=m)
Another great communitarian Newfie song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBz3wS0CjGU
Another Rodney Atkins tune: “It’s America”.
The Pogues – Dirty Old Town
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMMgIqW9vso
One more is the Style Council’s “All Gone Away” featuring the lyric:
Take a walk upon these hills
and see how monetarism kills
whole communities, even families.
There’s nothing left, they’ve all gone away.
Best use of monetarism in a song.
Anything by Greg Brown. The more I listen, the more it fits. Perfectly.
Stan Rogers is a good one for the coastal Canadian front-porchers out there…
I’m going to have to go with “Dixie Cannonball” sung by Hank Williams and written by Vaughn Horton.
“I’m headin’ back to Dixie, that’s the place I long to be, Where the
cotton grows and the Suwanee flows, that’s home sweet home to me.
Where they meet you and they greet you with the sweetest hi you all,
well shut my mouth, I’m a headin’ South on the Dixie Cannonball!
New Riders of the Purple Sage: Last Lonely Eagle
Bad Brains Banned in DC @ CBGB’s 1982
Let me just add something about that last post. I can think of no other musical genre that better represents the themes of ‘place” and “liberty” than American Hardcore Punk of the ’80s. It was local, with various scenes (DC Style, NY Style, LA Style, etc.) and had a strictly DIY ethos of doing without major corporations and, God forbid, the government.
DIY Punk is what made me a localist.
Speaking to that Hot Water Music’s “Southeast First” is one of my favorites:
i’ve seen heroic falls busted lips from microphone
brawls angelic songs sung by all within the
hardback walls it never mattered who you were or
where you worked it never mattered who you were or
what you earned what mattered was what you gave
and what you loved what mattered was what you gave
and what was learned like one for all for one
whatever turn of events may come we all live
underground where it stays warm community with
commin sounds we work together to break ground it
doesnt matter who you are or where you work it
doesnt matter who you are or what you earn what
matters is what you give and what you love what
matters is how you live and if you love
“Never Gonna Change” by Jason Isbell, formerly of the Drive By Truckers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plCnjjHNb90
“…There ain’t much traffic on the highway. There ain’t much traffic on the lake.
The ATF and the ABI got everything they could take.
Take it from me… They didn’t take it from me.
We ain’t never gonna change.
We ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong.
We ain’t never gonna change
so shut your mouth and play along.”
Puttin’ People on the Moon by the Drive By Truckers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obENG09NWq8&feature=related
“Another Joker in the White House, said a change was comin’ round
But I’m still workin’ at The Wal Mart and Mary Alice, in the ground
And all them politicians, they all lyin’ sacks of s—
They say better days upon us but I’m sucking left hind tit
And the preacher on the TV says it ain’t too late for me
But I bet he drives a Cadillac and I’m broke with some hungry mouths to feed”
“The Sands of Iwo Jima” by the Drive By Truckers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJqX0zC00gU
“George A. was at the movies in December ’41
They announced it in the lobby what had just gone on
He drove up from Birmingham back to the family’s farm
Thought he’d get him a deferment there’s was much work to be done
He was a family man, even in those days
But Uncle Sam decided he was needed anyway
In the South Pacific over half a world away
He believed in God and Country, things was just that way”
“Marry Me” by DBT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MapvZBeoNCE&feature=related
“All my friends are restless, all they do is talk it down,
two or eight lanes, it don’t matter, it’s just another town.
There’s a fool on every corner, on every street, in every one
and I’d rather be your fool nowhere than go somewhere and be no one’s
So Marry Me, Sweet Thing won’t you Marry Me
Your Mama thinks I beat anything she’s ever seen.
This old town’s alright with me, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.
Long as they stay mad at one another, they can’t get mad at me ”
James River Blues by Old Crow Medicine Show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXXATMnn6j0&feature=related
“James River blues
That train came on through
And the work’s gotten slow
Now wheres a boat man to go
I think I’ll float on down
To Richmond town
They don’t need us anymore
Haulin’ freight from shore to shore
That big iron hauls much more
Than we ever could before”
The Who, Rael:
The Red Chins in their millions
Will overspill their borders
And chaos then will reign in our Rael
The country of my fathers
A proud land of old order
Like a goldfish being swallowed by a whale
Rael, the home of my religion
To me the center of the Earth
The Red Chins in their millions
Will overspill their borders
And chaos then will reign in our Rael
My heritage is threatened
My roots are torn and cornered
And so to do my best I’ll homeward sail
And so to do my best I’ll homeward sail
Now Captain, listen to my instructions
Return to this spot on Christmas Day
Look toward the shore for my signal
And then you’ll know if in Rael I’ll stay
If a yellow flag is fluttering
Sickly herald against the morn
Then you’ll know my courage has ended
And you’ll send your boat ashore
But if a red flag is flying
Brazen bold against the blue
Then you’ll know that I am staying
And my yacht belongs to you
Now Captain, listen to my instructions
Return to this spot on Christmas Day
Look toward the shore for my signal
And then you’ll know if in Rael I’ll stay
He’s crazy if he thinks we’re coming back again
He’s crazy if he thinks we’re coming back again
He’s crazy if he thinks we’re coming back again
He’s crazy, anyway
If a yellow flag is fluttering
Sickly herald against the morn
Then you’ll know my courage has ended
And you’ll send your boat ashore
I’ve been trying to think of a couple of Australian songs to suit the localist theme.
Two that have occured to me are:
Cold Chisel — Bow River
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdVRNDnTKTU
About a bloke chucking his factory job to return home.
The next may be a bit “Middle of the Road” for some tastes but it reminds me of my youth.
GANGgajang – Sounds Of Then (This Is Australia)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML9h3I5Uktw
The chorus is:
“Out on the patio we sit,/And the humidity we breathe,/We watch the lightning crack over canefields/And laugh and think that this is Australia.”
Also Slim Dusty’s version of Banjo Paterson’s “Man from Snowy River”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW7rgnNqgjE
I’m a bit late with this comment, but I would suggest “Prairie Town” by the Wailing Jennys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ByxB-i_0RI
This song by Old Crow Medicine Show is pretty dang good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug7IgB8MfWE&feature=player_embedded#t=55
An american who’s heard of Show of Hands! There’s hope for you folks yet ;o)
Although, Kate Rusby does a better version of Village Green than then Kinks do…. :oD
One that I have though of, very much lamenting the loss of simplicity through big government and war, is Renaissance’s “Kiev” from their Prologue album in 1972 (Annie Haslam’s vocalese omitted; the actual lyrics are unusual in begin sung by bassist Camp):
He was a man just a simple man
His thoughts and pleasures were few
His bread he shared with his father
That was the life that he knew
And how the snow fell in Kiev today
And how the wind drove the mourners away
Now there is only one man
At the grave of Davorian
And this man’s heart is too heavy to pray
He was a man just a simple man
Died at the place of his birth
His tombstone shared by the family
A silent place on the earth
An old man stands by the side of the grave
And this man’s heart is too heavy to pray
For he is numb with the pain
Of the love that he couldn’t share
Until he died there in Kiev today
He was a man just a simple man
Died at the place of his birth
His tombstone shared by the family
A silent place on the earth
An old man stands by the side of the grave
And this man’s heart is too heavy to pray
For he is numb with the pain
Of the love that he couldn’t share
And two men died there in Kiev today
Great Lake Swimmers – Your Rocky Spine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ6W_cq-zQ0
“This Old Town”. Janis Ian wrote it, but it’s perhaps easier to find versions by Nanci Griffith. Listenting to it, I’d say it was written about my Mom’s hometown, Drumright Oklahoma. But others will have their own opinions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1Lg4QRFTNA
Hi, Noodling around the website after getting a surprise newsletter on my e mail. Nice site. I love Iris DeMent. I was shocked, however, that such a sad, discouraging song was nominated for the theme song. I have no suggestions at the moment but something inspiring courageous optimism is more to my liking. The now is extraordinary. My brother was just saying he will have to live to be 400 to attend to all the important matters like revamping the medical system and exploring and promoting alternative building systems or my favorites – biodynamic agriculture, radiant field energy, etc, etc, ETC !! … I agree. 400.
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