As always, an excellent and thoughtful post, Richard. I think song also lets us know we are not alone. I have found that many of my favorite songs, films, and art help me navigate the human condition and my own existence. Life is hard; songs and art make it easier.
When my sister died, I found great solace in songs about loss or introspection (I wrote about it in pieces titled "Electro-Shock Blues" and "Aiming For The Heart"). During the pandemic, I, like all of us, was confused and sad and found comfort in song and painting. In times of both devastating heartbreak and joyful love, I have always found songs that helped me understand my emotions, made me very introspective, and presented clues to help answer my questions or that I wanted to share with the person I had fallen in love with.
I also firmly believe that the "why" behind any story an artist tells is, of course, important information and context, but it should never get in the way of the story or emotions the viewer/listener brings to the piece. Even if they are entirely different from what the artist thought or intended. That is the beauty of art and what makes it a living, breathing, organic "object" with many possible stories and outcomes hidden within its music, lyrics, cellulose, text, and paint. In turn, this conversational exchange between viewer, piece, and artist intent can be deeply insightful, providing clues and a new perspective that helps answer questions the artist may be searching for but didn't realize were hidden within the piece.
Thank you, Michael. You're so right about songs being company and connecting us to company. I recall reading your very moving words on the Eels in connection with your sister.
I also agree on the importance of being able to detach the song and its origin from the biography of the artist and/or to recontextualise it. As well as needing to recognise that meaning resides in the ear of the behearer (to quote that brilliant Dewey Redman title), I think we do songwriters an injustice if we don't consider them as creators of fiction, or as playwrights, directors, or whatever non-music title works best for a particular piece. When Robbie Fulks introduces 'That's Where I'm From' in the liver version I like to it the piece, he makes sure to point out that the protagonist of the song is not him.
Trudell's AKA was another album (of so many) that I first heard through one of your magical cassette tapes sent me when I was at college or overseas. His follow-up Johnny Damas & Me is a wonderful listen too. Have you heard his spoken word album 'DNA: Descendent Now Ancestor' - the poem 'Me Up' is a truly beautiful thing.
Speaking of poets, the line you quote by Jane Hirschfield was a 'wow' moment for me. I don't know of her work. Will investigate.
Thanks, Martin, and Happy New Year to you too. I just listened to 'Me Up' on your recommendation; excellent piece. I don't really know that album. Some years back, I was lucky to get a copy of The Collection as a CD box set, which gathers the 1980s albums pre the revised AKA. Great stuff, with Jesse Ed Davis on guitar on several of the recordings.
That Jane Hirschfield quote is great. I wouldn't know it, or her work, if it wasn't for Joe Henry, who, of course, was an artist you introduced me to many moons ago. I recall a time when I played Kindness of the World (which you'd taped for me) every single day.
I appreciate your exploration of the ways in which we experience songs and what we learn from them. Looks like you have the makings of a taxonomy.
I loved the opening lyrics and your first paragraph and the Levinson quote at the end, but really, I found the whole post thought-provoking and packed with things I'd like to think about further.
That John Trudell song is startling in the claim it makes for the role of rock and roll in culture!
Circled back, but am still thinking :) Am trying to decide how much of thisI think applies equally to books; and also, maybe especially, am mulling that last point fromJerrold Levinson. I used to think that beauty had an ethical value in itself, a bit along the lines of his arguments here, though not as clearly articulated to myself. I'm not sure whether I think it still -- that is, it's in question now at least. Thanks for raising these questions.
Thank you. The 'lettered experience' that Agacinski writes about, via Bacon, derives from book reading, so that definitely applies, and I felt an intuitive 'yup' when I read her own term 'imaged experience', because I felt I'd come to know the world through visual art as well as through books. I especially felt that about films, where, of course, there's the combination of lettered, imaged and sounded experience.
For me the obvious overlap between books and music would be poetry, another area where I felt I learned lessons.
Like you, I'm unsure whether beauty itself can have ethical dimensions, but I enjoyed reading Levinson's thoughts on it. I just can't help but feel there are too many underlying judgements in all of that about what constitutes the 'good' or 'great' or 'beautiful'. And there is beautiful work which we know has been crated by deeply immoral people.
What I most appreciated from Levinson was the serious attempt to apply this kind of thinking to songs rather than just instrumental, absolute and/or classical music, which had been the implied or explicit object of discussion for countless philosophers of music in the past.
A great post, which ties in so well to what I was thinking about in terms of song and meaning (and it's not all surprising that you would write on a similar topic.)
On the topic of songs about coming from a place, I'll mention Corb Lund's "Especially A Paint" for the specific comment he makes about having grown up in a place and culture (Alberta ranching) which he has left to be a musician: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjM7cRSRLRc
"Well, I was raised in the West around, enough to hum the tune
But I never knew the place like the old boys did, chinook to mountain-view
'Cause this was all a cathedral then, and the cowboys, they all knew
That you can't keep a loop on paradise, but she disappeared so soon
Okay here's a selection of a half-dozen "where I'm from" songs (taking a couple of different approaches to the format. None of these are folky; I thought it would be interesting to start with some genres that aren't my normal forte (but some of them might be unfamiliar to you).
First, as you note there are a number of rap songs that would qualify, but one that I happen to be fond of it Talib Kwali's "Memories (live)" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQut7mOVXpE
"Life, living in Flatbush and going to house parties / Red lights, bumping, life is what you make it, then sorry / In my lifetime, ain't done too many things / better than watching your first son put his sentences together / Yo, it kinda make me think of way back when / I was the portrait of the artist as a young man / All them teenage dreams of rapping / Writing rhymes on napkins / Was really visualization / Making this shit actually happen"
"I was the third brother of five / Doing whatever I had to do to survive / I'm not saying what I did was alright / Tryna break out of the ghetto was a day to day fight"
I know you're familiar with this one. Hall has a number of autobiographical songs. This one is less explicitly about a place, but I still think of it as a "where I come from" song. He's said, about the origin of the song, "But Lonnie Easterly was his name. The way I got the name Clayton Delaney, it’s a good story. The hill he lived on was called Clayton Hill, and the people who lived next door to him were the Delaneys. So I didn’t want to move too much geography around and lose the feel of what I was writing about. So when I changed his name, I changed it to a hill and a neighbor. I kept everything on that hill, there in his neighborhood, to keep from losing that reality."
Thanks, these are great. I know the Kweli track well; it was a key song for me when I was first writing about music and place as a postgraduate student in the early 2000s. That's when I first wrote about the Alan Jackson track I mention in the piece, too, and the Jay-Z one. That group of songs has hung around me as examples of 'where I'm from' for over two decades, I now realise. I guess I need some new ones! Which is why I was delighted when I heard the Robbie Fulks songs and when someone reminded me in a class about the Diggable Planets, and why I welcome these suggestions of yours.
I know 'The Year Clayton Delaney Died', but hadn't heard the origin story before.
I wouldn't have thought about the Gil Scott Heron or Bobby Womack tracks, but they fit, don't they?
It wasn’t just that Peelie championed the song, or that it made his last ever famous Festive Fifty, it was the spontaneous and poignant tears he wept live on air every time he played it. When his widow Sheila appeared on Radio 1 after his tragic early death on holiday in Peru she said ‘”Whenever John played it, whether it was live on air or just in his room I had to go and give him a hug because he’d be in floods of tears, because it was just so Liverpool.”
Peelie himself commented on air that “It’s now reached the point at which it makes me cry every time I hear it so I may have to segue the next couple of records.”
A couple of songs which have a strong sense of place, but not from childhood memories:
Finally, it isn't quite a a "Where I'm From" song, but Si Kahn's "Crossing The Border" about his father's immigrant life makes me tear up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph3xyMpmp3Q
Then he moved down south of the border / By the mills on the Merrimack River / He pumped gas and kept store for a living / Raised up his daughter and sons / He's sit at the head of the table / Drinking Haig & Haig pinch bottle whiskey / And I'd wonder how someone so gentle / Could have done all the things that he'd done
He got old and he lived by the ocean / I went with my children to see him / He stared through the cataracts at them / But I think that he saw them just right / We buried him up in New England / And maybe that's home for the wanderer / But home is where the heart is / And my heart's with my Zayde tonight
Gosh, what a treasure trove! There are some songs I know in this list, more that are new to me. Your mention of Christy Moore's cover of the Ian Prowse song got me thinking about Iris DeMent's 'Our Town' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FikZwgj89HI_) and Kate Rusby's cover of it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6hzXLwW6PY). Because no specific place names are mentioned (apart from a generic main street) and because each singer brings a distinctive accent to their singing, it's possible to believe both versions are 'where I'm from' songs.
Thanks. I'll be curious to know if/when you listen to them which end up being the best fit for the theme.
There's an interesting songwriting question, in that there can be power in either strategic ambiguity (which lets multiple people connect with an image) or in specific details (which make it feel personal).
For example, I remember someone wondering whether Kristofferson intentionally chose a non-gender specific name for Bobby McGee . . .
Or, on the other side, I was recently listening to "Ode To Billie Joe" and the use of the specific names, "Choctaw Ridge", and "Tallahatchie Bridge" are really important to the song.
Also, from my list above, "Boxcars" could be a generic song, but his introduction makes clear just how specific the inspiration for it was.
I'll enjoy thinking about it, but I remembered one song that's definitely worth including -- Mississippi John Hurt, "Avalon Blues" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9i8RWcY00o
As always, an excellent and thoughtful post, Richard. I think song also lets us know we are not alone. I have found that many of my favorite songs, films, and art help me navigate the human condition and my own existence. Life is hard; songs and art make it easier.
When my sister died, I found great solace in songs about loss or introspection (I wrote about it in pieces titled "Electro-Shock Blues" and "Aiming For The Heart"). During the pandemic, I, like all of us, was confused and sad and found comfort in song and painting. In times of both devastating heartbreak and joyful love, I have always found songs that helped me understand my emotions, made me very introspective, and presented clues to help answer my questions or that I wanted to share with the person I had fallen in love with.
I also firmly believe that the "why" behind any story an artist tells is, of course, important information and context, but it should never get in the way of the story or emotions the viewer/listener brings to the piece. Even if they are entirely different from what the artist thought or intended. That is the beauty of art and what makes it a living, breathing, organic "object" with many possible stories and outcomes hidden within its music, lyrics, cellulose, text, and paint. In turn, this conversational exchange between viewer, piece, and artist intent can be deeply insightful, providing clues and a new perspective that helps answer questions the artist may be searching for but didn't realize were hidden within the piece.
Thank you, Michael. You're so right about songs being company and connecting us to company. I recall reading your very moving words on the Eels in connection with your sister.
I also agree on the importance of being able to detach the song and its origin from the biography of the artist and/or to recontextualise it. As well as needing to recognise that meaning resides in the ear of the behearer (to quote that brilliant Dewey Redman title), I think we do songwriters an injustice if we don't consider them as creators of fiction, or as playwrights, directors, or whatever non-music title works best for a particular piece. When Robbie Fulks introduces 'That's Where I'm From' in the liver version I like to it the piece, he makes sure to point out that the protagonist of the song is not him.
Trudell's AKA was another album (of so many) that I first heard through one of your magical cassette tapes sent me when I was at college or overseas. His follow-up Johnny Damas & Me is a wonderful listen too. Have you heard his spoken word album 'DNA: Descendent Now Ancestor' - the poem 'Me Up' is a truly beautiful thing.
Speaking of poets, the line you quote by Jane Hirschfield was a 'wow' moment for me. I don't know of her work. Will investigate.
Happy New Year, Richard.
I look forward to your posts.
Thanks, Martin, and Happy New Year to you too. I just listened to 'Me Up' on your recommendation; excellent piece. I don't really know that album. Some years back, I was lucky to get a copy of The Collection as a CD box set, which gathers the 1980s albums pre the revised AKA. Great stuff, with Jesse Ed Davis on guitar on several of the recordings.
That Jane Hirschfield quote is great. I wouldn't know it, or her work, if it wasn't for Joe Henry, who, of course, was an artist you introduced me to many moons ago. I recall a time when I played Kindness of the World (which you'd taped for me) every single day.
Really interesting post, Richard!
I appreciate your exploration of the ways in which we experience songs and what we learn from them. Looks like you have the makings of a taxonomy.
I loved the opening lyrics and your first paragraph and the Levinson quote at the end, but really, I found the whole post thought-provoking and packed with things I'd like to think about further.
That John Trudell song is startling in the claim it makes for the role of rock and roll in culture!
Thanks, Ellen. Yes, Trudell's words are quite something. That whole album is great.
Loved this, will reread tomorrow as I write about films and novels, and circle back with a more substantive comment.
Circled back, but am still thinking :) Am trying to decide how much of thisI think applies equally to books; and also, maybe especially, am mulling that last point fromJerrold Levinson. I used to think that beauty had an ethical value in itself, a bit along the lines of his arguments here, though not as clearly articulated to myself. I'm not sure whether I think it still -- that is, it's in question now at least. Thanks for raising these questions.
Thank you. The 'lettered experience' that Agacinski writes about, via Bacon, derives from book reading, so that definitely applies, and I felt an intuitive 'yup' when I read her own term 'imaged experience', because I felt I'd come to know the world through visual art as well as through books. I especially felt that about films, where, of course, there's the combination of lettered, imaged and sounded experience.
For me the obvious overlap between books and music would be poetry, another area where I felt I learned lessons.
Like you, I'm unsure whether beauty itself can have ethical dimensions, but I enjoyed reading Levinson's thoughts on it. I just can't help but feel there are too many underlying judgements in all of that about what constitutes the 'good' or 'great' or 'beautiful'. And there is beautiful work which we know has been crated by deeply immoral people.
What I most appreciated from Levinson was the serious attempt to apply this kind of thinking to songs rather than just instrumental, absolute and/or classical music, which had been the implied or explicit object of discussion for countless philosophers of music in the past.
A great post, which ties in so well to what I was thinking about in terms of song and meaning (and it's not all surprising that you would write on a similar topic.)
On the topic of songs about coming from a place, I'll mention Corb Lund's "Especially A Paint" for the specific comment he makes about having grown up in a place and culture (Alberta ranching) which he has left to be a musician: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjM7cRSRLRc
"Well, I was raised in the West around, enough to hum the tune
But I never knew the place like the old boys did, chinook to mountain-view
'Cause this was all a cathedral then, and the cowboys, they all knew
That you can't keep a loop on paradise, but she disappeared so soon
She disappeared so soon"
Thank you. I didn't know that song. It's lovely. Hoping to write more on 'where I'm from' songs in the future, so I welcome any suggestions.
Okay here's a selection of a half-dozen "where I'm from" songs (taking a couple of different approaches to the format. None of these are folky; I thought it would be interesting to start with some genres that aren't my normal forte (but some of them might be unfamiliar to you).
First, as you note there are a number of rap songs that would qualify, but one that I happen to be fond of it Talib Kwali's "Memories (live)" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQut7mOVXpE
"Life, living in Flatbush and going to house parties / Red lights, bumping, life is what you make it, then sorry / In my lifetime, ain't done too many things / better than watching your first son put his sentences together / Yo, it kinda make me think of way back when / I was the portrait of the artist as a young man / All them teenage dreams of rapping / Writing rhymes on napkins / Was really visualization / Making this shit actually happen"
I'd argue that Gil Scott-Heron's "Small Talk at 125 and Lennox" is related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9_FDTcchgc
Bobby Womack "Across 110th Street" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSzT5BDNNPE
"I was the third brother of five / Doing whatever I had to do to survive / I'm not saying what I did was alright / Tryna break out of the ghetto was a day to day fight"
Otis Redding (with Carla Thomas) "Tramp" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF9w_ZRsLtc
"You know what, Otis?
What?
You're country
That's all right
You straight from the Georgia woods
That's good
You know what?
You wear overalls
And big old brogan shoes
And you need a haircut, tramp"
Chris Smither "No Love Today" (this version has an intro talking about his experience growing up in New Orleans" ) -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm4owjFJi2Y
Tom T. Hall "The Year Clayton Delaney Died" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcSUIkglCQw
I know you're familiar with this one. Hall has a number of autobiographical songs. This one is less explicitly about a place, but I still think of it as a "where I come from" song. He's said, about the origin of the song, "But Lonnie Easterly was his name. The way I got the name Clayton Delaney, it’s a good story. The hill he lived on was called Clayton Hill, and the people who lived next door to him were the Delaneys. So I didn’t want to move too much geography around and lose the feel of what I was writing about. So when I changed his name, I changed it to a hill and a neighbor. I kept everything on that hill, there in his neighborhood, to keep from losing that reality."
Thanks, these are great. I know the Kweli track well; it was a key song for me when I was first writing about music and place as a postgraduate student in the early 2000s. That's when I first wrote about the Alan Jackson track I mention in the piece, too, and the Jay-Z one. That group of songs has hung around me as examples of 'where I'm from' for over two decades, I now realise. I guess I need some new ones! Which is why I was delighted when I heard the Robbie Fulks songs and when someone reminded me in a class about the Diggable Planets, and why I welcome these suggestions of yours.
I know 'The Year Clayton Delaney Died', but hadn't heard the origin story before.
I wouldn't have thought about the Gil Scott Heron or Bobby Womack tracks, but they fit, don't they?
I'm not going to be able to help you think of newer tracks, but here are a few more:
Rodney Crowell "Telephone Road" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSU145Cr9So
Ewan MacColl "Dirty Old Town" (better known for the Pogues cover).
Butch Hancock "Boxcars" (I absolutely love this performance; he comes across as someone who really has the music in his bones): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c150fjzCeXk
Two great songs which feel like "Where I'm From" but aren't (but good enough that they're worth mentioning anyway).
Leyla McCalla's setting a Langston Houghes poem to music, "Heart Of Gold" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDM-xw7igQg
Ian Prowse "Does This Train Stop On Merseyside" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6GK4vUtqCQ
(I prefer Christy Moore's version, but that's quite clearly not a "Where I'm From song")
The story about the impact it had on John Peel is remarkable: https://amsterdam-music.com/2015/05/31/10-years-today-since-does-this-train-stop-on-merseyside-was-released/
It wasn’t just that Peelie championed the song, or that it made his last ever famous Festive Fifty, it was the spontaneous and poignant tears he wept live on air every time he played it. When his widow Sheila appeared on Radio 1 after his tragic early death on holiday in Peru she said ‘”Whenever John played it, whether it was live on air or just in his room I had to go and give him a hug because he’d be in floods of tears, because it was just so Liverpool.”
Peelie himself commented on air that “It’s now reached the point at which it makes me cry every time I hear it so I may have to segue the next couple of records.”
A couple of songs which have a strong sense of place, but not from childhood memories:
Nanci Griffith "Spin On a Red Brick Floor" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqz7dvs0cCI
Michael Smith's "Gamble's Guitar" is a tribute to his friend Gamble Rodgers, but also a memory of his connection to Florida: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdbEjv58Uuw
Finally, it isn't quite a a "Where I'm From" song, but Si Kahn's "Crossing The Border" about his father's immigrant life makes me tear up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph3xyMpmp3Q
Lyrics here: https://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=1392
The last two verses:
Then he moved down south of the border / By the mills on the Merrimack River / He pumped gas and kept store for a living / Raised up his daughter and sons / He's sit at the head of the table / Drinking Haig & Haig pinch bottle whiskey / And I'd wonder how someone so gentle / Could have done all the things that he'd done
He got old and he lived by the ocean / I went with my children to see him / He stared through the cataracts at them / But I think that he saw them just right / We buried him up in New England / And maybe that's home for the wanderer / But home is where the heart is / And my heart's with my Zayde tonight
Gosh, what a treasure trove! There are some songs I know in this list, more that are new to me. Your mention of Christy Moore's cover of the Ian Prowse song got me thinking about Iris DeMent's 'Our Town' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FikZwgj89HI_) and Kate Rusby's cover of it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6hzXLwW6PY). Because no specific place names are mentioned (apart from a generic main street) and because each singer brings a distinctive accent to their singing, it's possible to believe both versions are 'where I'm from' songs.
Thanks. I'll be curious to know if/when you listen to them which end up being the best fit for the theme.
There's an interesting songwriting question, in that there can be power in either strategic ambiguity (which lets multiple people connect with an image) or in specific details (which make it feel personal).
For example, I remember someone wondering whether Kristofferson intentionally chose a non-gender specific name for Bobby McGee . . .
Or, on the other side, I was recently listening to "Ode To Billie Joe" and the use of the specific names, "Choctaw Ridge", and "Tallahatchie Bridge" are really important to the song.
Also, from my list above, "Boxcars" could be a generic song, but his introduction makes clear just how specific the inspiration for it was.
In general I was trying to think about songs which represented a specific city (side note, this comment about Halifax is pretty funny: https://barenakedladies.fandom.com/wiki/Hello_City )
I'll enjoy thinking about it, but I remembered one song that's definitely worth including -- Mississippi John Hurt, "Avalon Blues" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9i8RWcY00o
Specifically because of how that song led to the "rediscovery" of John Hurt. Here's a version of the story: https://www.thecountryblues.com/articles/mississippi-john-hurt-in-washington-dc/
(and here are some nice comments about him by Dave Von Ronk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d16RIY3kHa0 )