Americana: A Brit’s Eye View
Originally published in Middlebury College’s The Campus
Over the last semester, if you’ve tuned into WRMC on a Monday at 3pm, you’ll have heard me chatting away about my favourite country, Americana and classic American rock music during ‘The Americana Hour’. You’ll have heard about the history of California-country, the alternative politics and sound of Americana music, the new artists coming out of Nashville that we should be celebrating, and probably (a few times) my love for Bruce Springsteen – the only thing a little unusual for this kind of show, you’ll have heard it all in a British accent.
Over the last few years my love and passion for the music of America has grown to a point of near-constant headphone wearing. At home in the UK, my record collection consists of almost entirely American artists, and sometimes it feels like I’m the only person under the age of 60 looking for the Glen Campbell records at the second-hand record shops.
I don’t really know where this passion came from, or who the first artist was that sparked my love for the sound of country and Americana. But it’s never even just been the music, it’s the classic cars, the cowboy hats, the dusty deserts, the Steinbeck novels and the black-coffee-in-a-diner Americana that I’ve always felt a strange pull towards – maybe a romanticisation, but nonetheless, it’s a good story.
If you’re not very involved in the country world, you might not know that the number of subgenres is bigger than ever before. Whether you think it’s good or bad, country-pop has solidified its place in the genre and on the radio. Country-rock artists use pedal steel guitar like no one else can. Red Dirt country grew out of rural Texas and Oklahoma and has an undeniable sense of honest independence about it. Americana, in the music sense, is a genre that allows for a combination of American musical traditions including country, blues, folk and rock – it brings together the traditional with the modern and is often used by politically outspoken artists to connect American music with American morals.
Ultimately, whether it’s a cleanly produced country-pop chart topper you hear on the radio, or a poetically written alt-country ballad from an artist who seems to have emerged out of nowhere, they all have some kind of story to tell. Country songwriting has a very long history with roots in the folk songs of England and Ireland, fundamentally, it’s a type of storytelling and stories are inherently universal.
However, there’s still a bit of a stigma around country music in relation to the politics and its ‘worth’ in terms of an artistic genre. The immediate reaction to being a country music fan, at least at home in the UK, is one of definite surprise and confusion, with a little judgement added in too. Why would you listen to country? Isn’t it all trucks, beers and girls in denim? Some of it, yeah! Bro-country isn’t really my thing, but that’s okay, I’m pretty sure I’m not the target audience. But stunning lyrics, classic instrumentation and incomparable songwriting is. With artists like Zach Bryan, Wyatt Flores and Charles Wesley Godwin finding huge success with the honest music they create, there seems to be a bit of a revival of storytelling going on.
I knew even before I got to Middlebury for my semester abroad that I wanted to join the radio station, I thought that I’d find people here that listened to the same music as me – surely the Americans listen to Americana? To some extent, I did! I’ve made friends here that are just as happy as me to spend too much time debating whether the Eagles or The Byrds were the better original country-rock group. I tune into WRMC and hear someone playing James Taylor and it reminds me of being the youngest person in the audience at a JT concert in Manchester, UK a couple years ago. I take a class here on the Cultural Work of Country Music and spend seminars discussing anything from Buck Owens’ influence on the creation of the Bakersfield Country sound to how Tyler Childers’ songwriting connects him to his Appalachian roots. I’ve brought my interests to others too, my fellow-exchange-student friends from France are now listening to Kacey Musgraves and Sierra Ferrell.
For the same reason my favourite novel is S.E. Hinton’s ‘The Outsiders’, my favourite music has a distinct Americanness. It tells the stories of personal relationships, the massive moments, the mundane every day and the way that tomorrow will always bring another sunrise. It’s everyday life in America, the good or the bad. The ‘three chords and the truth’ tradition of country has allowed artists to share those truths for decades. Through my weekly slot on WRMC, I think I’ve told these stories. I’ve played 90s country hits just because they’re fun, I’ve played new artists whose voice I think should be projected and I’ve played the classic artists who have provided soundtracks to millions of lives.
So, why country? Why Americana? No, I didn’t grow up in Nashville, in Texas or in Laurel Canyon. But I grew up reading and listening to stories. I can’t explain why hearing a live-recording of John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ on a vinyl I bought for less than a fiver at a local record shop makes me feel at home in West Virginia, but it does. I can’t explain why the words of Paul Simon, Carole King, Jackson Browne and Gram Parsons provide me with a sort of comfort that no other music can, but they do. I can’t explain why Charley Pride’s ‘Roll On Mississippi’ fills me with a nostalgia for a place I’ve never even been close to, but it sure does. I can only suggest that storytelling has a home in Americana, and I found a home in storytelling.
So, thank you Middlebury and WRMC for giving the British girl the chance to have her ‘Americana Hour’. If you’ve listened over the last semester, I hope you enjoyed the stories.
