As Americana's identity takes shape — and boosts sales — the fledgling genre revels in its new momentum
Roots Take Hold
by Edd Hurt
You could spend a lot of time trying to come up with a working definition of Americana without succeeding even halfway, and it wouldn't be for want of musical examples that could bolster your case. Not exactly a genre and certainly not a style, Americana is probably best viewed as a series of connections in time and space — the apotheosis of various philosophies of American music. But for all the confusion the term engenders, Americana in the past year has achieved the visibility and critical mass its adherents have been seeking for over a decade.
Not only did the Recording Academy add a brand-new Grammy category for Americana, it stocked the nominations with a veritable continuum of American roots music, from Bob Dylan, Levon Helm and Willie Nelson to Wilco and Lucinda Williams. What's more, for the first time the coalescing genre can say that it is breaking artists. Americana adherents point to briskly selling recordings by otherwise unclassifiable acts such as the Avett Brothers — a pop-country-folk-rock ensemble of ex-punks who refuse to abide by the industry's no-size-fits-all categories, yet who played to tens of thousands of eager fans at this year's Bonnaroo.
It's a story that seems new, but its oppositions — rebellion and selling out — are as old as pop music itself.
As it has for the past 11 years, Nashville's Americana Music Association holds its yearly conference and festival this week, with dozens of artists playing its showcases. There are also Americana labels, publicists and other business people in attendance. It's a well-run trade show with a homey atmosphere, and the range of performers — everyone from country singer Elizabeth Cook to punk-rocker Jon Langford — is impressive. Attending the festival is a bit like time travel, since Americana artists are often well-established artists who have settled into comfortable mid-level careers, or new artists who work within the grooves of styles popular decades ago.
That means it's tempting to dismiss Americana as another name for what used to be called alternative country, country-rock, or roots music. And indeed, AMA Executive Director Jed Hilly has a simple enough definition of the music.
"I would say our definition is whole lot more clear than the current definition of country music, or the current definition of rock," he says. "Our definition is really simple: It's contemporary music that honors and/or derives from American roots music, period."
For example, the Mississippi singer and songwriter Paul Thorn has done well in the past year with a combination of story-songs about the South and a savvy variation on rock 'n' roll. His latest full-length, Pimps and Preachers, sat on top of the Americana chart — which, by the way, tracks radio play on Americana stations, not sales — and has seen action in Billboard as well. He writes songs such as "Ray Ann's Shoes" and sings them in an artless voice that puts one in mind of a Tupelo Graham Parker.
"I had a record deal on a traditional label, and having been through that, I think the big difference now is that I actually get to sing songs that mean something to me," Thorn says. "I'm 46 years old, and I don't want to be singing songs about holding hands with a girl on the front porch." He makes mature, well-observed music that holds its share of surprises — the strings and mordant melody of "Ray Ann's Shoes" reveal a subtle artist.
If Thorn's music recalls anything, it's the roots-rock of Little Feat, right down to the slide guitar. But it could be that bluegrass and acoustic music stand as Americana's ultimate signifiers. If jazz was one American musical style to which '70s artists looked for inspiration — one has only to think of proto-Americana artists such as Little Feat and Randall Bramblett — bluegrass has become the method by which contemporary artists assert their authenticity.
Born in Texas and now in her sophomore year at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music, Sarah Jarosz is a 19-year-old mandolin player and singer who is taking time from her studies to appear at the AMA. Much like predecessors such as Tim O'Brien, Jarosz is equally at home with Bill Monroe and progressive pop groups such as The Decemberists.
"Bluegrass was the result of trying to be different," Jarosz says. "I know there are a lot of bluegrass purists who want to keep it straight and preserve the music's history. But Bill Monroe was kinda breakin' the rules, you know, in creating bluegrass music." Jarosz isn't afraid to be arty, and her impressive instrumental skills carry you through some of her more callow moments.
Jarosz's eclecticism puts her in the tradition of the '70s and '80s artists upon which the edifice of Americana rests — Gram Parsons, Doug Sahm, David Grisman, Waylon Jennings, Guy Clark, The Mekons, Elvis Costello and all the rest of that ragtag collection of cosmic cowboys, punk-rockers and disaffected rock 'n' rollers. Like Jarosz and other Americana artists, they developed a vision of American music that combined traditional values with modernist sensibilities. This sort of experimentalism can seem alien to the average fan of pop music or the mainstream country follower — not to mention advertisers.
Still, radio seems to be lending support to Americana, with Nashville's WSM adding such artists as Justin Townes Earle to its playlists. As WSM program director Joe Limardi says, "I still believe that Americana is what country was before it became a big money machine and hit-making giant." Meanwhile, Sirius/XM's Jeremy Tepper programs that station's Outlaw Country channel, which features music that shows up on the Americana charts, along with Dylan and Tom Petty.
Americana does seem to be about these kinds of purely musical connections. Barry Mazor, a veteran music journalist who has covered both Americana and country music for such publications as No Depression and The Wall Street Journal, takes the long view. "In some ways, you can trace it all back to Capitol Records in the '40s," he says. "They had a whole set of records they started calling Americana. It was a little out there at the time. There's still a tension to American music. You can track it and place where it came from, in time and in history."
If those tensions produced rock 'n' roll in the '50s and '60s, the tensions that arose in the '70s produced the roots of Americana, which may well produce its own set of oppositions down the road. The great Nashville singer and songwriter Marshall Chapman will be talking about her career at one of the AMA conference panels, and she has been mixing rock, country and whatever else tickles her fancy since the mid-'70s. As she muses, "What if a young Jimi Hendrix arose in our midst? Where would he find a home? Probably Americana. Or a young Elvis Presley? Americana.
"Hank Williams? Definitely Americana."
