Alt. Country to start revolution in pop music
Is everybody in? Is everybody in? The revolution is about to begin.
Sometimes called “folk rock” or “new west,” alternative country blends delta blues with acoustic folk, southern rock and soul.
Just looking at the Grammy artists nominated for their work in 2001, it is clear that alternative country version 2002 has landed, and things are about to get interesting.
Spear-headed by the artists of “O Brother Where Art Thou?” and everybody’s “It-Boy” Ryan Adams, upstart Lost Highway Records garnered 16 Grammy nods, all coming less than a year after the label was formed.
Since the Spring of 2001, Lost Highway has signed and released CDs by high profile artists Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams and actor Billy Bob Thorton.
The “O Brother Where Art Thou?” soundtrack inspired a bluegrass revival of its own last year, along with a successful sequel, the live album “Down From The Mountain.” Now its stars Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch and Baton Rouge’s own Chris Thomas King, are finding Grammy attention and increased solo success in the alternative country arena.
But the brightest star of the Lost Highway bunch has to be former Whiskeytown frontman Ryan Adams. Nominated for three Grammys including Rock Album of the Year, Adams is working at a feverish pace.
In 2000 came his somber acoustic debut “Heartbreaker” that so impressed Elton John, he dedicated his latest album to the young songwriter from North Carolina. Next was Adams’ sweeping sophomore effort, the aptly titled “Gold.”
Timing is everything, and “New York, New York” was the first single released from the album back in September.
The energetic video for the single was shot four days before the collapse of the World Trade Center, with the Twin Towers prominently displayed behind Adams as he sings “I still love you New York.”
Back in the early 1970s, ex-Byrd Gram Parsons called it “cosmic American music.” Ryan Adams, who shares a birth date with the late Parsons, is a throwback to 1960s-era songwriters who recorded two albums per year.
Like a spinning top, fearing uselessness if he ever stops, Adams has already recorded four albums he’d like to release in 2002.
“If Ryan had come along in 1973 when singer-songwriters were the rage, he would have hit a home run commercially,” Lost Highway President Luke Lewis told the LA Times two weeks ago.
“Will it happen now? I don’t know. I’d like to think that people are ready for singer songwriters again,” he said.
Other alternative country musicians making waves this year are Josh Rouse with his new album “Under The Cold Blue Stars,” ex-Son Volt guitarist Jay Farrar — who recently played The Varsity, swinging low his sweet southern rock — and legend Bob Dylan.
More rural and playful than his 1997 Grammy-winner “Time Out of Mind,” 2001’s “Love and Theft” sees Dylan returning in-part to the ambitious country-rock roots he first explored with 1969’s “Nashville Skyline.”
While Adams and bands like Wilco, with its forthcoming release “Yankee Hotel Fox-trot,” will continue to fan the Americana flames, music listeners can hear the roots of alternative country through five essential albums that defined the alternative country genre: “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” The Byrds (1968); “Deja Vu,” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1970); “American Beauty,” Grateful Dead (1970); “GP,” Gram Parsons (1973); and “Elite Hotel,” Emmylou Harris (1976).
Jeff Roedel