Compilation and tribute CDs are a dime a dozen these days, but if they’re done right, they can make good listening. Here’s a good example of a compilation in the country music category.
No Depression magazine is the bi-monthly bible of alternative country music, whatever that is. This disc does a good job of, if not defining alt-country, at least giving some good examples of what it is.
It wisely is bookended with two defining tracks. In the first, Johnny Cash sings “The Time of the Preacher,” his cover of the opening cut from Willie Nelson’s definitive concept album Red Haired Stranger. Here, Johnny is backed by the cream of the crop of mid-90s alt-rock musicians, including members of Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, who gathered in a Seattle studio to pay tribute to Willie on a disc titled Twisted Willie. The closing track of No Depression is the one from which the magazine takes its name, the Carter Family’s No Depression in Heaven. Well, actually, the magazine took its name from the Uncle Tupelo cover of that song, which arguably spurred the renewed interest in an authentic, rootsy type of music that today is loosely grouped under the alt-country banner. The magazine’s co-editor wrote in a recent column that its audience generally consists of two different types of fans: those who like authentic traditional country music that they can’t hear on country radio, and those who like authentic traditional rock ‘n’ roll that they can’t hear on rock or pop radio. That’s why these two tracks, one a rockified outlaw-country track by that great iconoclast of traditional American music Johnny Cash, the other an old-time acoustic song, an apocalyptic vision of the Great Depression by the God-fearing Appalachian Carters (into whose family Cash later married), so aptly begin and end this collection.
In between these two anchors there swirls true alt-country music in all its glorious variety. On the more country side, Allison Moorer, who is too country for contemporary country radio, sings a harrowing ballad about her mother (who was murdered by Moorer’s father), “Is Heaven Good Enough for You.” Robbie Fulks and Kelly Willis update the tradition of male-female duets with the perky and clever honky-tonker, “Parallel Bars.” The artist known as Hayseed duets with Emmylou Harris on the countryfied hymn “Farther Along,” their voices perfect foils for each other.
From the rock side of the tracks we have Alejandro Escovedo’s “Five Hearts Breaking,” Buddy Miller’s “Does My Ring Burn Your Finger,” Kevin Gordon and Lucinda Williams anthemic “Down to the Well,” and Doug Sahm’s psychedelic Texas-swing “Cowboy Peyton Place.” And somewhere in between come Whiskeytown’s “Faithless Street,” with Caitlin Cary providing warm fiddle and lovely harmony vocals to Ryan Adams’ alt-folkie moan; Neko Case’s tribute to her hometown, Tacoma, Washington, “Thrice All American;” Aussie twangstress Kasey Chambers’ take on Matthew Ryan’s simmering “Dam;” and “How I Love Them Old Songs,” a live cut featuring a raft of alt-country stalwarts in a tribute to Mickey Newbury.
One tangential note: Listening to the Carters sing “No Depression in Heaven,” one is struck by their pronunciation of certain words. In the chorus, they sing something like “I’m going whurr thar’s no depression,” and at one point lead singer Sarah sings the word “tribbalation.” It’s the kind of authentic regional dialect that has been largely wiped out in the U.S. by mass media, a trend that ironically was greatly furthered by the popularity of the Carter Family’s radio broadcasts from the 1930s to the ’50s.
(Dualtone, 2004)
