This past summer I had the great fortune to see some of the best live music I’ve ever seen.  At the top of that list is the Josh Ritter concert I saw at Babeville, an stunning venue.

I first encountered Josh Ritter while working at Hear Music in Santa Monica, California.  His song, Me and Jiggs, was included on a compilation our shop released.  I was immediately drawn to the song from the line, “Sitting on our porch, singing Town Van Zant, we played guitar to burn off the hours.”  That sounded just right to me.

Years later my sisters reintroduced me to him through the epic, “To The Dogs or Whoever” on a mix CD they made for me.  I remember fondly the day when we decided/ figured out, that the song was all about love sought and found in the stacks of a library.  It remains one of my favorite songs to sing with my family.  Sometimes balls to the wall, other times slowed down to half speed, to appreciate every line, i.e. “Can you love me like the cross loved the nape of her neck.”

The night I saw Ritter at Babeville I saw someone who looked utterly happy and grateful to be doing what he’s doing.  I saw a man performing like a kid in a candy story, unabashed joy radiated from him the whole time.  He controled the crowd with the simplest, and most effective, dramatic guestures.  One song was played in complete darkness, other times he would kneel on the sage, letting his vocal mic pick up his voice from three feet away, creating an hauntingly distant echo which every quieted to hear.

But unquestionably, he gave the greatest encore of all time.  Seriously.  It is, without a doubt, the best encore I’ve ever seen.  Three songs:  The River/ Real Long Distance/ To The Dogs or Whoever. The first (one of the greatest Springsteen songs of all time!) he played acoutically, literally.  He steps away from the vocal mic with an unplugged acoustic guitar, causing, asking the crowd to close in to hear.  Notice on the video, there is NO other noise in the hall at that point.  The attention was direct, fierce, and palpable.  The later two songs he charged the audience, and let the energy explode in a fury of drums, guitars, and a catch-up-if-you-can sing along!

Ritter is a smarter artist than he seems at first, which is saying something.  He has a quiet and subtle control over everything he does, and seduced the crowd the whole time by his magnanimous attitude.  That fact that he does it without a hint of irony, instead glowing like he’s the one enjoying the show, sells the package that much easier.

The paper was titled:  “Everything’s Raisin’ But the Wages”: The poetics of class warfare in the work of two Hoosier songwriters.

From last winter in Wisconsin to last week on Wall Street, American has pricked up its ears to current extremes of class difference in this country.  Throughout the history of class disputes and labor struggles, music has had a place as a political and poetic form of communication.  Historically, songwriters like Sarah Ogan Gunning, Hazel Dickens, Joe Hill, and Woody Guthrie and many others have created an impressive body of songs that relate the woes of class warfare in America.  In more recent years, we’ve seen this mantle be taken up by folks like Billy Bragg and Tom Morello.  Here I draw attention to two native sons of Indiana, Otis Gibbs and The Reverend Josh Peyton, thus far left out of this linneage, but nonetheless deeply connected.

Otis Gibbs promotional photo by Todd Fox

Rev. Peyton promotional photo by Todd Fox

Recently, with many citizen’s attention be held by the Occupy Wall Street movement, NPR music critic Ann Powers sought to find the musical voice of the protest, asking those on the ground, if a musician or anthem had arisen to give poetic voice to their concerns?

It didn’t shock me at all to hear that the consensus was that so far, the movement hadn’t seen its musical poet laureate.  As Powers observes, the era of the single voice of protest, the one people remember Dylan to be, isn’t suitable to the kind of diverse and poly-vocal crowd that makes up the Occupy movement.  But there’s another dimension to this lack of key-note singer, one that was observed by Archie Green and George Korson in their work on labor and mining songs.  Both scholars noted that the best songs of labor movements were generally written in times of general peace and harmony for the unions (and by extension, workers), for in times of desperate strife and political upheaval, people are too busy marching, picketing and sometimes fighting literally fights to sit down and write songs.  In view of this trend, while neither the Rev. or Otis are directly tied to current protests movements, they are the ones writing the songs day in day out that bring a sense of labor history and class consciousness to audiences year after year.

Here I devote most of my attention to Reverend Josh Peyton, (Rev. – as he’s called by family and fans alike).  I don’t mean to short change Otis Gibbs at all, but I feel the disciplins I am trained in (folklore and ethnomusicology) gain more from listening to artists and learning from them than from mapping grand theories over them.  Since I wasn’t able to do the kind of fieldwork I feel necessary to speak with any kind security about Otis’s process and motivations, I don’t care to speculate here.

I will mention that Otis, in a way, represents a more conventional type of labor songwriter, but even that doesn’t do his situation justice.  Born and raised in the township of Wannamaker Indiana, just southeast of Indianapolis, Otis now resides in Nashville, Tennessee.   It’s not exactly difficult to understand why Otis hasn’t found fame in the corporate sponsored world of Nashville, Tennesee, considering the titles of his last to albums:

Grandpa Walked A Picketline

and

Joe Hill’s Ashes

Otis, instead, has gained a loyal following in Europe, where he regularly tours with Billy Bragg, and sings in small folk clubs throughout the continent.

My concern here is to set an example of contrast, two artists with similar sympathies who’ve expressed themselves quite differently.  This is also interesting to see play out because Otis and Rev. are good friends, who constantly support one another and hold dear their Indiana connection.  While Otis writes songs to suit many occasions and themes, his political songs are overtly political and often specifically labor related.  Always performing in work boots and an ever-present IWW ball cap, Otis sings songs that evoke the names of Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the aforementioned Joe Hill and commemorate events like the 2006 West Virginia Sago Mine collapse that killed 12 men.  His merchandise quite consciously connect him to the images of labor history as created by Wobblie graphic artist Carlos Cortez.

While not operating strictly within the labor movement, Otis sings to people sympathetic to the goals of organized labor and generally on the progressive side of class reform.

Rev. Peyton walks a rather stranger and more complicated line of affiliations and styles, and for quite different audiences.

At Burt's Tiki Lounge, SLC, UT (photo by author)

I first met Rev. Peyton about four years ago while working with the public folklore agency Traditional Arts Indiana under the director of Jon Kay.  At the time I little about Rev’s work, but was awe-stuck at both his energetic stage show and deep commitment to his Hoosier identity.  One of the most personally gratifying aspects of being a public folklorist has been developing the tools to approach artists with the confidence to say, “Tell me more about what you do.”   The remarkable thing I’ve learned about survey work is how well it’s laid the foundation for deeper relationships to develop.  Over the years Rev and his wife Breezy and I have become friends, working on various projects together:  I write a paper about Rev. He teaches me to shoot a gun.

Author and Rev. in Brown Co. IN (photo by Breezy Peyton)

As opposed to Otis, who plays and sings songs in a country/bluegrass infused folk style, Rev. Peyton idiom is country blues.  He and his “Big Damn Band,” which consists of his wife Breezy on washboard and their cousin Aaron on drums, play up-tempo blues songs grounded by Rev’s impressive finger style, slide guitar.  More Bukka White than Woody Guthrie, I distinctly remember watching Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday celebration on TV at Rev’s cabin when he exclaimed, “That dude’s awesome!  I always thought he was kinda of geezer.”

Musically influenced by artists like Bukka White, Robert Johnson, and Charlie Patton. Rev also acknolwdges that growing up in southern IN, he was raised on  “all manner of hillbilly music, from Hank to Bill Monroe to everything in between.”   This confluence has had direct impacts on his songwriting.

Often in blues in general, the idea of writing a song gets lost, in technical prowess or silliness or whatever, and I like to write songs.  Somewhere blues songwriting got lost.  But ultimately music is about songs, that’s what matters.

David Evans has written that the blues idiom is essentially one of deep subjectivity, “concerned with the self, though in relation to others.  Lyrics are realistic (as opposed to idealistic).”  Here, Rev. brings that personal touch to rural living, feeling a desire to fill a gap left by mainstream county music misrepresenting rural American life.

It was a response to country music radio.  They name drop things like pickup trucks, and mud and ‘we drink beer around the fire’ just really generic stuff.

So he ended up writing “Born, Bred, Corn Fed” (which is also a mantra his has tattooed on his right bicep.) Rev. considers the song “a wink to people who really grew up in the country,” where he could name drop things that were more authentically rural in his view.

Over this past summer I had the chance to catch Rev and Breezy on break from their near constant touring schedule, and I had Rev. play some songs in his cabin in Brown Co.  A fortunate and rare acoustic solo, personal jukebox kind of concert.

Here’s Rev. performing “Born, Bred, Corn Fed.”

While this is not an overtly political or class-conscious song, it represents Rev.’s attitude to write songs that resonate with him personally.   There’s an important connection here.  Rev. has often said he doesn’t write political songs, he writes “social songs,” He says his songs have no agenda, other than to, “Tell the stories of people I know, my family and friends, who’s stories aren’t told.”

Locality is key to him, saying:

I would never write about West Virginia miners, because I don’t know what it’s like to be a West Virginia miner.  I just want to write tell-it-like-it-is songs.  We all know the economy is messed up, and I’m not claiming to know why, and I’m not claiming to know how to fix it, but as I see it, everything’s raising but the wages.  That’s a fact you can’t argue with.

In the climate of endless political commentary about the economy, Rev.’s simple assertion is a statement of class-consciousness, without the alienating distance of polemical rhetoric.  Labor activist and folksinger Utah Phillips once said that labor songs are “a better and more accurate picture of who were are and where we have come from than the best damn history book you ever read.”

Rev. is simply making the political personal with his song, “Everything’s Raisin’but the Wages.”

Unlike Otis Gibbs, Rev. is often performing to fans who don’t listen to NRP, know who Joe Hill was, or give a damn about political movements. He plays blues festivals, punk clubs, Biker Ralleys, BBQ Fairs, and twice played on the Vans Warped Tour.  A common quip from the Rev. is that the hippie and the redneck have more in common that they realize, and he’s living proof of that.  Yet it’s his sympathy for the lives of others, and the basic human desire to feel good about themselves, that drives the social message of Rev.’s songs.  Yet while Rev. says his songs aren’t overtly political, he also hasn’t kept his views in check just to make an easier way for himself commercially, his song “Walmart Killed the Country Store,” has guaranteed that his records will never be stocked by the countries largest music retailer, but he feels okay about that, saying, “I don’t ever want to write a song that makes people feel stupid.  Well, unless you’re the head of a major corporation, then I don’t care.”

But he goes on:

I like to not state what I would believe politically, but state it socially.  I get people coming up to me at shows wearing Obama shirts or Palin shirts who’ll say ‘I hate Walmart too.’  I want to take things that matter to me, and not paint them politically, but paint them plain.  Local businesses don’t get a fair shake because of Walmart, and that’s not fair.  And if you state it like that, you can turn more people onto it.

While these videos help get at the poetics of Rev.’s songwriting, but they misconstrue the performance context for the vast majority of Big Damn Band shows.   As I’ve said, most commonly, Rev. will be playing to large, rowdy crowds, either in small clubs or large summer festival stages.

For example (video not by author):

His songwriting, however, reveals an important dimension to Rev.’s work, and his efforts to present something more complex, accessible, and durable than the party band they show onstage.  In this regard, Rev.’s work is social in both the sense of offering a common ground for people to enjoy music, food, drink, and fellowship. And the more politically charged sense of socialism – believing music and song should include the perspective of the diverse individuals who populate the world – not unlike the current slogan, “We are the 99%.”

Rev. often quips that he believes the hippy and the hillbilly have more in common than they realize (he’s living proof of that), and as we were discussing this project, Rev. sent me this text message:

What do you think of all this occupy stuff?  What’s your gut saying?  Real thing or just the tea party equivalent of the democratic party.  I want to back it so bad.  I would love some real populist movement.  Not something cooked up in the board room, and not something that ends up being hijacked by the powers that be.

I think this speaks to exactly what he wants to see in the world.  A kind of 21st century, political minded, socially grounded version of “The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends.”  A good reminder when one sees this finger-style blues playing hillbilly playing music with punk rockers, a reminder that people are more complicated than the political pundits would like, and that complexity is a good thing.

I hate the term “singer-songwriter,” because, as a friend of mine said, “It usually means bad guitar players singing about what they had for breakfast.”

But there are so fantastic songwriters working right now, who’ve all eschewed the label “singer-songwriter.”  They know the term sucks too.

I began going through my favorite songs. I started with a short list of 100 songs and through repeat listenings and consideration, boiled it down to 10 of the best songs ever written in the last 10 or so years.  The top 100 included a lot of usual suspects. Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie,Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Townes Van Zandt, etc.  Unranked, I’ve culled ten recent examples of great songwriting that hold their own with the more famous heavyweights.

To download all these tracks, go HERE.

1)   ”Them Old Days are Gone”: Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band

Rev. Peyton’s homage to home-made aesthetics and small town life.  Best song he’s ever written, and sadly, not one he performs too often anymore.  Oddly, there isn’t a good YouTube video of this, so instead, here’s a little vid I shot at Rev’s cabin, singing another of his great songs, “Born, Bred, Corn Fed.”

2) “They Killed John Henry”: Justin Townes Earle

This song picks up right where the legends left off.  Not unlike JTE himself.

3) “Murder in the City”: Avett Brothers

The Avett Brothers, with their mussed hair, and baby blue eyes, sing heartbreaking songs of maturity, and make everyone fall in love with them along the way.   Their brand of emo-grass shouldn’t dissuade you from appreciating what their music really is – pop music for grownups.

4) “To the Dogs of Whoever”:  Josh Ritter

Not surprisingly, this MFA student pens songs that sound more like Pushcart winning short stories than folk songs.  Here, he reimagines the literary worlds, romantic and tragic, that are contained within the stacks of a library.

5) “Starting Over Again”: Millie and the Moonshine Boys

Millie, now a member of the Don’t Tell Darlings, recorded this song as part of an earlier outfit.  I keep coming back it it time and again. A good song to have in your back pocket when you, or someone close to you, is going through a breakup.  Again, there’s no video of this song, so enjoy another Millie original, “Indiana Star.”

6) “Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton”: John Darnielle wrote this song in tribute to the troubled teens he used to work with as a psychiatric nurse.   Here’s Sam Love and her sister Vanessa rockin’ it uke style in their parent’s basement, the way this song should be played!

7)”Caroline”: Otis Gibbs

Otis is making a name for himself in Europe, where he’s Billy Bragg’s right hand man.  In the states he’s living in Nashville trying to write good songs and sell them for money.  Problem is, his good songs are far too good for the likes of Nashville stars.  While often a strongly political writer speaking about issues of class and labor history, his best songs walk a more subtle line of struggle and hope.

8 ) “Look at Miss Ohio”: Gillian Welch

Gillian has dominated as one of the best songwriters of her generation.  Dave Rawlings has proven not too shabby himself.  In “Look at Miss Ohio,” everything is done perfectly.  And you know it too.  If you’ve heard this song once, you still remember it.

9) “In My Time of Need”: Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams was good long before he was famous.  His early years with Whiskeytown are also some of his best.  But on his  Bloodshot debut, Heartbreaker, Adams created a quiet masterpiece, which occasionally rocked. Unlike most of his career since, which has been a lot of noise and the occasional glint of something better.

10) “You Are Not Alone”: Mavis Staples (Written by Jeff Tweedy)

Tweedy’s genius here (and this is only his latest showing of his genius) is that he didn’t write a song he could sing, or, for that matter, really sell.  He wrote a song for a voice, an icon, a legend.  It’s the song Staples has been waiting for.

My good friend Breezy Peyton, of Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band, was kind enough to introduce me to some people she recommended in the area, both music scene veterans and local go-tos for all music knowledge.  We were introduced the way people are these days, via Facebook.  Our new FB friends, Marty and Susan, promptly invited us to their 4th of July cookout, the next day.

Marty and Susan turned out to be Buffalo people TO KNOW!  Here’s a sweet little radio doc. done on them and their private musician hotel:  http://www.prx.org/pieces/59690-rock-n-roll-hotel

Their home, fifteen minutes outside Buffalo, is a large farmhouse on a huge lot with expansive lawn and fields on all side.  The first floor has one standard guest bedroom, and the basement has five double beds amidst their thousands of LPs.

Both Susan and Marty work in the music industry in various capacities, but putting up travelling musicians in not a business, it comes from their good nature and years of seeing musicians long for the simple comforts of unforgiving touring schedules, usually to simply break even.

I look forward to returning to their home and documenting their generosity a little more.  As Marty pointed out to me, there were some things in the radio show he felt didn’t give the full story of what they were up to.  I responded that where journalism starts, ethnography starts.

This has given rise to the question of just what is, “pre-dissertation” research?  This question is playing on rotation in my brain with, “what is my dissertation project?”  Perhaps if I knew the latter, the former wouldn’t plague me.

Fundamentally, I’m looking at the music scene (with an eye on traditional music) of Buffalo, and thinking about what I’d like to know more about.

If I, like many of my friends and colleagues, take some guidance from the late Warren Roberts, folklorists should actively “look at the overlooked.”  For in doing this, folklore has the power to honestly represent the 95% of human experience* not accounted for by history, sociology, and various cultural studies.  Buffalo then, seems a perfect place for research.  For what city evokes such a blank stare from the national consciousness?  What city fails to imprint the national imagination more than Buffalo?  Who is more overlooked than the people of Buffalo?

Coming from a city largely misunderstood in the popular consciousness (Salt Lake City, Utah) and further having lived in two cities which enjoy playing versions of themselves both in media and imaginations (NYC and LA) I firmly believe there is amazing local culture everywhere, and regions where that local culture gets the most attention are simply better at celebrating and exporting it; This is the case of North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, etc.  Having worked and researched in Indiana taught me a lot about locating people making creative existence within a commercial and homogenized landscape.

So far, I’ve been thrilled to explore Buffalo.  It seems a city prepared to make its own fun, since history has shown no one’s going to do it for them.  There is intense local pride here, and I imagine this will relate to the music being made in the area.  Think about the case of Ani DiFranco.  Local girl made good, bought an old church in downtown Buffalo, Babeville, and turned it into both a record label for export and a venue for local acts.

The frustrating thing about Buffalo as a research site, for a student, is that no one knows anything about this place.  We came here with very few tips or guidance. Which, of course, can conversely been seen as freedom.

These few weeks will be my attempt to learn Buffalo.  I have vague ideas of what I’m looking for, but mostly I’m trying to keep my gaze wide, my eyes and ears open.

*A percentage coined, the my knowledge, by my professor Pravina Shukla.  The accuracy of that number is, of course, unknowable, but I like the sentiment.

Mike Wesch has done great work on the new types of identities and communities being created online, especially in the realm of YouTube.  You can start to explore his work here: http://bit.ly/2XbmWm

This work resonates with me due to my love of YouTube, which in many ways translates to my love on anti-mass media.  That is, media created for a very small market, or perhaps no market.  People post to YouTube sometimes as a leap of faith, or a cry in the dark.  Saying, this is what I’m interested in, this is who I am! Does anyone care?

A few weeks ago my sister sent me a link to Sam Love playing her ukulele in her bedroom in Iowa.  I spent the rest of the night drinking a bottle of wine by myself and pouring over all her videos.  The aggregate was one of the great concerts I’ve ever seen.

I’m glad you posted Sam.  I care.

Check it out folks:

He’s tatted up, played a Martin dreadnought exclusively, wears a IWW cap and sings songs of hard living, labor history, good women, and perhaps the most American of Americana themes, loneliness.

He presents a real problem for musicians, which is how to remain a region identity in a place that doesn’t really value it, and how he has become an emissary for American culture, tropes, and ideals in Europe, where if often tours with Billy Bragg.

Here’s a video from my local radio station WFHB, with a bit of interview by Jim Manion with some good questions.

And one of my favorite songs (many people’s favorite) shot at what must have been the greatest house concert ever.

In my program, Folklore and Ethnomusicology, dissertation work involves several months of ethnographic fieldwork.  It’s fun to imagine who I might work with.  I’ve had a lot of thoughts about diss work.  Including labor songs, black country and white blues, roots music organizations and other less formed ideas.

Since I saw him at the Black Banjo Gathering Reunion in North Carolina a few months ago, I’ve been thinking a lot about Carl Johnson from Tennessee.  A great bluegrass banjo player and a truly amazing singer.

Here are some videos I took in Boone, NC, last spring.

John Hardy:

Rock Salt and Nails:

She was in the middle of telling a story about how she came to write a song, and talking about coming home late one night, turning on the television, and seeing the Nutcracker on.  She said, “being a good musician, the only channel I got was PBS.”

I understand that it was a quip, and it was live and she didn’t think it through, but it struck me as a terrifically arrogant, snobbish, and classist thing for an old-time musician to say.  I understand that PBS is sympathetic to the lives and interests of old-time musicians, but the suggestion was that it was the only thing worth watching. I would have prefered if she’s said, “being a broke musicians, I can’t afford TV and the only thing I get is PBS, which was showing the Nutcracker for the fucking millionth time!”

And the song that followed, inspired by the PBS Nutcracker, had nothing on the Rev. Peyton Big Damn Band song “Your Cousin’s on COPS.”